by Michael Dymmoch
Thought I’d have more time to write when I retired from my day job.
NOT!
Having a day job gives you a structure that doesn’t allow for much procrastination. Anything that’s not absolutely necessary gets put away for weekends or for when I’m retired and have more time.
When you retire, all those I-OWE-MEs come due. You get Photoshop because you were always going to fix those great pictures that were a little over or underexposed. You dust off your Languages 102 CDs. You buy an exercise bike or yoga video so you can finally get in shape to be seen in public in a bathing suit.
But you never get to use any of them because…
You get emails for meetings of organizations you’ve never before had time to attend and you say, “What the hell. I don’t have to work tomorrow.”
You watch Charlie Rose at 2:00 am because he has a fascinating guest and you don’t have to get up for work.
You start a 570 page best selling romance just to see what such a thing is like. And you stay up all night reading it because—even though you keep telling yourself, “This is crap.”—the writer knows how to keep you turning pages.
You agree to read—and maybe blurb—a first novel. Or a poetry anthology. Or submissions for a competition being held by some organization you belong to.
And you still have to cook and eat and sleep and bathe, do laundry, clean the cat box, shop, get your car serviced (or take public transportation everywhere if you’ve ditched your car). You still have to drop everything if a friend needs help. You still have to call your kids (mother, siblings, friends).
But as you get older, everything takes more time. And your ability to keep focused deteriorates. And when you stop to smell the roses, you start to notice how many varieties there are. And how many other species of fascinating creatures you may never have known existed. You get hooked on books and cable shows other people raved about for years that you’ve never before had time to check out. You start a new novel because you get this terrific idea. But you never seem to get back to the one you were working on before…
Showing posts with label distractions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label distractions. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Don’t lose it. Use it!
by Michael Dymmoch
Sunday evening I was driving up Halsted when my left front tire started making an unfamiliar sound and my car started tracking to the left. I pulled into a CTA bus turnaround to investigate and discovered the tire was flat. Damn! As it happened, I hadn’t had a flat since I bought the car—three years ago. And I hadn’t checked recently to see if the spare was good. Plus I had a trunk full of assorted junk that had to be removed to get to the spare.
Fortunately, it had stopped raining, and I had an hour of daylight. So I shifted all the junk to the front and back seats and got out the spare and the jack and the owner’s manual. None of the CTA drivers who had to drive around me called the cops. A very nice drywall salesman stopped to offer assistance. In a short time I was back on the road.
As a driver, I was really bummed. Flat tires are a waste of time and money. Sometimes they can be life threatening.
As a writer, I was happy to be reminded that anything you do or encounter can be used—something I learned when I had a job with a narcissistic supervisor. Nothing I ever did was good enough for the guy. He was a genius at making every thing my fault. The only time he ever listened was when I prefaced my remarks with, “I spoke to an attorney.”
But he taught me to be a better writer. At some point, I started to take notes, to record what he said, and how it made me feel. When I really worked at finding the words to make a reader feel what I felt, I forgot to be hurt. Or angry.
Conflict is a bitch in life, but it’s the life force of fiction. So when you encounter it, use it. Get out a pen or your pocket computer and record the details. Not just the facts of the event, not just what was said, but what it felt like. What did the guy who got in your face say? What would you have said to him if only you could think faster? Was he scary or just infuriating? What did he smell like? What did he look like? How was he dressed? What was he driving? Why does he behave like that? (He’s just a jerk isn’t an adequate answer.) Be precise. Make your reader feel your rage and all the physical sensations that go with it.
Years ago I was driving a bus through a construction zone. One of the flaggers was busy yakking with his buddy, not paying attention to traffic. Suddenly he looked up to find a 47-foot bus passing him two feet away. (This isn’t particularly close for a bus driver. Sometimes we have only inches of clearance.) The flagger was startled enough to use the c-word to express his displeasure. I laughed and kept driving. But if I’d been able to think faster, I might have stopped and asked if I’d scared him. Someday I’ll use that incident in a story. My protagonist will stop and ask. The flagger will probably have to defend his masculinity with an R-rated comeback. The whole thing may develop into a huge fight, maybe even a murder!
The act of recording a conflict, concentrating on the details, searching for the exact words to describe how you feel, may dissipate your anger and give you something you couldn’t have made up.
Sunday evening I was driving up Halsted when my left front tire started making an unfamiliar sound and my car started tracking to the left. I pulled into a CTA bus turnaround to investigate and discovered the tire was flat. Damn! As it happened, I hadn’t had a flat since I bought the car—three years ago. And I hadn’t checked recently to see if the spare was good. Plus I had a trunk full of assorted junk that had to be removed to get to the spare.
Fortunately, it had stopped raining, and I had an hour of daylight. So I shifted all the junk to the front and back seats and got out the spare and the jack and the owner’s manual. None of the CTA drivers who had to drive around me called the cops. A very nice drywall salesman stopped to offer assistance. In a short time I was back on the road.
As a driver, I was really bummed. Flat tires are a waste of time and money. Sometimes they can be life threatening.
As a writer, I was happy to be reminded that anything you do or encounter can be used—something I learned when I had a job with a narcissistic supervisor. Nothing I ever did was good enough for the guy. He was a genius at making every thing my fault. The only time he ever listened was when I prefaced my remarks with, “I spoke to an attorney.”
But he taught me to be a better writer. At some point, I started to take notes, to record what he said, and how it made me feel. When I really worked at finding the words to make a reader feel what I felt, I forgot to be hurt. Or angry.
Conflict is a bitch in life, but it’s the life force of fiction. So when you encounter it, use it. Get out a pen or your pocket computer and record the details. Not just the facts of the event, not just what was said, but what it felt like. What did the guy who got in your face say? What would you have said to him if only you could think faster? Was he scary or just infuriating? What did he smell like? What did he look like? How was he dressed? What was he driving? Why does he behave like that? (He’s just a jerk isn’t an adequate answer.) Be precise. Make your reader feel your rage and all the physical sensations that go with it.
Years ago I was driving a bus through a construction zone. One of the flaggers was busy yakking with his buddy, not paying attention to traffic. Suddenly he looked up to find a 47-foot bus passing him two feet away. (This isn’t particularly close for a bus driver. Sometimes we have only inches of clearance.) The flagger was startled enough to use the c-word to express his displeasure. I laughed and kept driving. But if I’d been able to think faster, I might have stopped and asked if I’d scared him. Someday I’ll use that incident in a story. My protagonist will stop and ask. The flagger will probably have to defend his masculinity with an R-rated comeback. The whole thing may develop into a huge fight, maybe even a murder!
The act of recording a conflict, concentrating on the details, searching for the exact words to describe how you feel, may dissipate your anger and give you something you couldn’t have made up.
Sunday, August 05, 2007
So when’s the next book coming out?
by Michael Dymmoch
When I quit my day job, I thought writing a novel a year would be a breeze. After all, in thirteen years I’d written eight books, two screenplays, and a dozen short stories while working a forty hour week, raising a kid, and managing a house in the suburbs.
HAH!
I’m lucky to have a huge family, so some of my new “writing time” vanishes when my sisters (who live in Colorado and Georgia) call to ask, “Are you up for a visit?” or my son says, “How ‘bout hitting Lou’s for a pizza?” or my niece decides to get married—you get the idea. And I rarely turn down a friend who wants to "do lunch" or meet for dinner.
Somehow my two-bedroom condo (single parking space, closet-sized storage) takes more time to maintain than did my three bedroom house (with garage, garden and shed). Recycling in the suburbs took ten minutes a week—just drop it in the bin, put the bin out on recycling day. Here in the city, recycling takes dedication (unless you believe that moonshine about the Blue Bag program). We have a designated recycling dumpster in my building, but volunteers have to remove the garbage that illiterates throw in. (Guess who volunteers?) And clothing, books, and tech trash have to be delivered to other locations.
Other tasks that seem trivial soak up hours—cleaning the junk out of your spam filter, for instance, answering e-mails, looking up facts. The internet makes it faster. And slower, since there are more avenues down which to get side-tracked.
Distractions in Chicago are myriad. Ghiberti’s “Gates of Paradise” at the Art Institute, “Darwin” at the Field, free music and movies in Grant Park, and fairs and festivals all over the city, all summer long. Even just going downtown for a vehicle sticker can lure you into sight-seeing or people watching. It’s research. Right?
Since I retired, I’ve managed to join two more writer’s group, which requires that I do more writing, though not novels. One of the groups does screenplays; I get help with my scripts, but I have to reciprocate. Watching a movie takes two hours, covering the script for a two-hour movie a day.
Reading a MS for a friend is usually a treat. But for a compulsive editor like myself, it means twice as many hours as just reading a copy-edited, published work. You can’t fairly put “This isn’t working for me,” in the margin without at least suggesting why. And you don’t want to say “the Berwyn El stop isn’t in Roger’s Park” unless you’ve checked the Roger’s Park boundaries.
I have a book coming out in April (MIA, St Martin’s Press, ISBN 10: 0-312-37371-6). It’s done, right? St. Martin’s sent the check. But there’s the copy-edit to deal with. (God bless those nameless wonders who know that Nike’s weren’t available in 1968.) And soon I’ll have to plug the book. Publicity involves going to mystery conferences and conventions (four, so far this year, two more scheduled). They’re fun, but time consuming. So are book signings. And library appearances.
Since I write police procedurals, I couldn’t pass up the Sisters in Crime Forensic University program in St Louis this November, including the side trip to the gun range. And I just discovered there’s a symposium on criminal history record checks being offered in Springfield in September. And tomorrow, there’s an interesting murder trial at 26th and Cal...
When I quit my day job, I thought writing a novel a year would be a breeze. After all, in thirteen years I’d written eight books, two screenplays, and a dozen short stories while working a forty hour week, raising a kid, and managing a house in the suburbs.
HAH!
I’m lucky to have a huge family, so some of my new “writing time” vanishes when my sisters (who live in Colorado and Georgia) call to ask, “Are you up for a visit?” or my son says, “How ‘bout hitting Lou’s for a pizza?” or my niece decides to get married—you get the idea. And I rarely turn down a friend who wants to "do lunch" or meet for dinner.
Somehow my two-bedroom condo (single parking space, closet-sized storage) takes more time to maintain than did my three bedroom house (with garage, garden and shed). Recycling in the suburbs took ten minutes a week—just drop it in the bin, put the bin out on recycling day. Here in the city, recycling takes dedication (unless you believe that moonshine about the Blue Bag program). We have a designated recycling dumpster in my building, but volunteers have to remove the garbage that illiterates throw in. (Guess who volunteers?) And clothing, books, and tech trash have to be delivered to other locations.
Other tasks that seem trivial soak up hours—cleaning the junk out of your spam filter, for instance, answering e-mails, looking up facts. The internet makes it faster. And slower, since there are more avenues down which to get side-tracked.
Distractions in Chicago are myriad. Ghiberti’s “Gates of Paradise” at the Art Institute, “Darwin” at the Field, free music and movies in Grant Park, and fairs and festivals all over the city, all summer long. Even just going downtown for a vehicle sticker can lure you into sight-seeing or people watching. It’s research. Right?
Since I retired, I’ve managed to join two more writer’s group, which requires that I do more writing, though not novels. One of the groups does screenplays; I get help with my scripts, but I have to reciprocate. Watching a movie takes two hours, covering the script for a two-hour movie a day.
Reading a MS for a friend is usually a treat. But for a compulsive editor like myself, it means twice as many hours as just reading a copy-edited, published work. You can’t fairly put “This isn’t working for me,” in the margin without at least suggesting why. And you don’t want to say “the Berwyn El stop isn’t in Roger’s Park” unless you’ve checked the Roger’s Park boundaries.
I have a book coming out in April (MIA, St Martin’s Press, ISBN 10: 0-312-37371-6). It’s done, right? St. Martin’s sent the check. But there’s the copy-edit to deal with. (God bless those nameless wonders who know that Nike’s weren’t available in 1968.) And soon I’ll have to plug the book. Publicity involves going to mystery conferences and conventions (four, so far this year, two more scheduled). They’re fun, but time consuming. So are book signings. And library appearances.
Since I write police procedurals, I couldn’t pass up the Sisters in Crime Forensic University program in St Louis this November, including the side trip to the gun range. And I just discovered there’s a symposium on criminal history record checks being offered in Springfield in September. And tomorrow, there’s an interesting murder trial at 26th and Cal...
Speaking of plugging... Come meet the Outfit
Tuesday, August 7,
6:00 p.m.
at the HAROLD WASHINGTON LIBRARY
Cindy Pritzker Auditorium (lower level)
400 S. State Street, Chicago
6:00 p.m.
at the HAROLD WASHINGTON LIBRARY
Cindy Pritzker Auditorium (lower level)
400 S. State Street, Chicago
We’ll have door prizes, and a book signing after the program.
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