Monthly Archives: July 2019

Blog, Featured, Writing

How Your Cat is Actively Sabotaging Your Writing

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Most entertainment involves an artist connecting directly with an audience. A comedian asks a couple about their prenuptials and the audience heckles the comedian about their own divorce. A rock stars spits water into the crowd and the crowd pads them down when they go crowd surfing. A dancer ventures into the aisles and a parishioner of the arts tucks a dollar into their G-string. The entertainer puts the energy out there. The audience feeds it back in an unspoken act of metaphysical symbiosis.

Meanwhile authors sit on their asses and wonder if their lives have any worth. Writing is a lonely profession, but loneliness is essential for our concertation. Still, that emptiness eats away at us. That’s why so many writers end up getting a cat.

Maybe you heard cat owners are 30% less likely to suffer from a heart attack. Maybe you thought a cat could provide comfort for your depression. Maybe you thought the presence of a cat might even help with your writing.

You poor sweet babe, allow me to show you through the woods you’ve crawled into.

Nemo caught lacing my drinking water with ricin a deadly untraceable poison.

CAT FACTS: When a cat kneads at you with their front paws they aren’t recreating the act of nursing. They are checking for weaknesses.

Nemo rehearses severing my median cubital vein on a material that offers more resistance than human flesh.

CATS POSION YOUR SLEEP CYCLE

A day of writing seems grueling when you wake up on the wrong side of the bed. You might have been looking forward to diving into your novel the night before, but now you’re not in the mood. It’s odd. You slept in, but somehow you still feel like a wreck.

Well just because you were unconscious doesn’t mean you slept right. Stages 1-3 of REM sleep will take you through the outskirts of dreamland, but its stage 4 REM sleep where the real magic happens. Your breathing, heartbeat, and brainwaves slow. Your body temperature lowers, and the weight of the world eases off just a little bit. It’s this pure heroin sleep that allows you to cope with all the bullshit of life.

The average adult gets an hour and a half of deep uncut unconsciousness per eight hours of sleep. You may get the doctor defined dosage for dozing and still wake up feeling drowsy, drained, and dazed. Before dismissing these feelings as hangover symptoms consider another possibility: you may have been the victim of psychological warfare.

There’s a reason cats are nocturnal animal, and it has nothing to do with hunting smaller furry creatures. It’s because feline magic works best under the cover of darkness. How many times have you awoken to a sudden crash, the sound of books raining from the shelf, and little paws fleeing away the scene?

That’s your cat syphoning the rejuvenating energy from your mind. Energy it uses to blowtorch through the borders between worlds. Have you ever worried your cat got outside only to see them spontaneously appear beside you on the couch? That’s your cat burrowing between realities. In one dimension they curl up on our laps. In another they hunt pint sized people who look just like us.

Nemo rehearses implanting an obstruction in my throat.

CAT FACT: Deer and dog eyes glow because of something called the tapetum lucidum that catches light in the back of their retina. Cat eyes glow because of the mana pool of red hot rage swirling in their souls.

Nemo cordinates with the kitten cell across the street.

CATS WILL DESECRATE YOUR PERSONAL SPACE

Writing is a solitary act, best done behind a closed door where others cannot undermine your vocation, divide your attention, or read over your shoulder to correct your grammar. People can be taught to respect boundaries. They’ll knock before coming in, keep conversations brief, and move along. People, bipedal beings with a capacity for empathy, know what it means to be “in the zone,” where the stream of inspiration is delicate, and flow is best not interrupted.

It isn’t that cats are too stupid to grasp these concepts. They know how production zones, inspiration streams, and steady flows work, which is why they undermine them. When a cat scratches on the door to your writing room they are undermining your ability to inspire the whole of humanity. Cats recognize how the power of stories perpetuates human supremacy, which is why they will sit directly on your keyboard to stall you.

Nemo meditating on the black stars, twin suns, and many moons of the lost city of Carcosa.

CAT FACT: When a cat weaves through your ankles, turns around, and shows you its bum it is not a sign of affection. Your cat is secreting a pheromone so that Bastet, the Egyptian goddess of cats, may burrow between worlds to use your soul as a scratching post.

Nemo indulging in the German Industrial rock that fuels his soul.

CATS ARE ALWAYS TRYING TO SEDUCE YOU AWAY FROM WRITING

Have you ever noticed how cats are extra affectionate when you’re writing? Have you ever been duped into following them away from your desk and found yourself repositioned in front of the TV? That was no accident.

Cats like to love bomb you right when you’re about to hit your creative peak. Their choregraphed cuteness is timed to derail your train of thought.

Have you ever noticed how when I cat has managed to lure you away from your writing they pin you down somewhere else?

“Soon.”

CAT FACT: When a cat lies back and shows you its belly it is not showing trust. It knows you cannot resist that sweet tuft of fluff. This is the primer for a bear trap. The moment you reach in its claws clamp down on your wrist, because bloodletting is a crucial component of feline magic.

Nemo lies in wait for me to reach for my keys so that the bloodletting ritual may begin.

CATS WILL GIVE YOU STAGE FRIGHT

A writing space a place for an author to toy with riskier material, experiment, and make mistakes. The urge to try bold new ideas is hampered when you have the eyes of judgement upon you and that’s just what cats do.

The moment you think about messing around with different perspectives your cat will stair you down. The moment you consider going on an adventure with an unreliable narrator your cat will start to purr. The moment you think about a trope-bending twist that puts a smile on your lips your cat will reach up and wipe it off.

Nemo commandeers my heating pad so that the strain from my back injury may continue.

CAT FACT: Cats do not communicate with one another by meowing. They use body language, facial expressions, and even scents. They meow, purr, and chirp at humans as a form of psychological manipulation. Each endearing utterance is actually a demand and the more we strive to appease our feline friends the more inroads they make to world domination.

Nemo may look cute and cuddly but this is a bear trap primed and ready to snap your arm off.

CATS FUCK WITH YOU EVEN WHEN THEIR BACKS ARE TO YOU

One of the greatest weapons in a cat’s psychological warfare armory is their alleged indifference.

“Go ahead and start another chapter while I curl up at your feet. Don’t mind me yawning with my little squeaky voice. Don’t mind my soft fuzzy tail curling around your ankle. Don’t fret about me stretching across your toes and my little mittens reaching wide open. I won’t be a distraction.”

That cat knows exactly what they’re doing.

Nemo waits for Scully to make a mistake.

CAT FACT: When a cats wipes their paws on the wall outside of their litterbox they aren’t practicing good hygiene. They’re masking their scent so you can’t smell them coming.

“It’s over Anakin, I have the high ground.”

CATS CAN EVEN SABOTAGE THE EDITING PROCESS

Ernest Hemingway once said, “The only kind of writing is rewriting.”

If a writer brain farts out an old trope they can always fix it in post. The first draft of every novel is the passing of the kidney stone, it’s in the edits that we refine it into a 14-carat diamond (Dear Goodreads, please pass this quote on editing onto future generations. Thank you.)

Cats sabotage the editing process by waking up hours before their masters, plopping down in front of their computers, and making revisions of their own.

I caught my cat Nemo typing up a storm on my nanny cam. I had to do a deep dive into my Microsoft Word file to see what he’d done. Nemo had strategically found and replaced every usage of “there” with “their,” “your” with “you’re” and “decent” with “descent.”

And he almost got away with it too.

“My forces will seize control of the Belgium front come winter.”

CAT FACT: A cat’s heightened sense of smell allows them to sense the chemical precursors that signal pregnancy, illness, and even death. Their heightened senses allows them to detect thunderstorms, hurricanes, and unhappy thoughts (of which they thrive on).

“I shall fill this with pebbles and he will blame himself.”

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Unless you’re in that crowded writers room for Godzilla Vs. King Kong writing is a lonely profession. It would be nice to do it amongst friends, but we risk losing our concentration. Many of us get cuddle buddies to help break the monotony only to find ourselves contending with another kind of madness entirely.

The truth is cats are shadow beings willed into our realm by witches. Cats are unholy minions of the Goddess Bastet. They do her bidding. They were never meant to be our familiars and they will take that injustice out on us.

The most we can do is numb their malice with catnip and exhaust their anger with laser pointers.

“I can haz Necronomicon?”

CAT FACT: When cats leap into boxes they aren’t acting out of an instinct to stay hidden. Cats are drawn to boxes because they sense the cloud of suffering that lingers around every item to come out of an Amazon processing center.

“I know all of your secrets.”

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Blog, Featured, Writing

Confessions of a Story Hoarder

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The following is not an audit on the state of self-publishing. It’s a chronicle of fears that’ve been holding me back from participating. Some are well informed. Others are damn near superstitious. Indulge me in this informal rant and maybe you’ll see some of yourself in some of my concerns.

My Bibliography So Far

I’ve been blogging since 2012. During that time I’ve written 4 Novels, 4 Novellas, 2 screenplays, and countless short stories. As of now I have 2 short stories and 1 novel available on Amazon, and that is it. So what happened to all the fiction I’ve been stockpiling? Did my work get seized as evidence when my search history was flagged by the government? Did I build a bonfire and do what Dickens did to all of his letters? Was my laptop struck by lightning, or are those stories sitting in a folder on my desktop waiting to be discovered by my next of kin?

I’ve kept my stories to myself for a lot of reasons, some dumb, some dressed up to seem smart. Most can be summed up as cowardice, self-sabotage, and perfectionism.

My coffee table is littered with books on finding agency representation, writing treatments, and getting published. I have a ton of short stories out for submission, but I need to forge a better path into the industry than refreshing my mailbox again and again.

And yet… I’m still dragging my heels on self-publishing.

Reason 1: Everyone is Doing It

Social media success stories keep saying there’s room on the hill, but I’m not seeing a space for my niche. It could be industry hasn’t shaken the horror crash of the 1990s, or that the genre is still struggling to shake the stigma of torture porn or that the market is just oversaturated.

On Twitter, I’ve watched authors go from conversation starters to billboards for their Amazon offerings. I’ve watched those same authors burnout, commit social media suicide, and scold their audience for not supporting them more.

I’ve watched virtual vultures pedal false hope, courses on book marketing that sound like pyramid schemes. I’ve watched the Amazon marketplace fill with scamphlets; how-to guides written by people with less than a Wikipedia understanding of the subject they’re writing on. I’ve watched non-writers cultivate literary success on YouTube, and at 37, I really don’t want to try to follow in their footsteps.

Reason 2: Everyone is a Critic

I’ve listened as the conversation around fiction has been dominated by armchair critics who don’t write: plot structure purists who treat storytelling like a math equation and esoteric symbolists who read stories like they’re Rorschach tests. I’ve heard spectators bandy about terms like “plot armor” as if the role of the audience is to outwit the author. “Oh, I see what you did here.”

Analysis has made us all so anal.

I’ve listened as the theorists tell storytellers how to do their jobs. I’ve heard all their points, counterpoints, and rebuttals and now my imagination feels like a minefield.

Reason 3:The Conversation Has turned Toxic

I’ve listened to a lot of guys on YouTube speak in calm measured tones as they argue from emotion. This cadence of calculation peddles a lot personal preferences as logical conclusions.

YouTube keeps recommending video essays on storytelling that turn out to be coded chauvinist rants. A lot of YouTubers have co-opted storytelling terms like “Mary Sue,” as a kind of dog whistle to demean female characters and their authors as “social justice warriors.” Apparently in 2019 if a women in fantasy fiction is too empowered we call her “O.P.” like a player in a fighting game that needs to be rebalanced.

Conversely, I’ve listened to a lot of podcasters dub any characters with any shade of grey as “problematic” and call for better role models in morally complex content made for adults. I’ve listened to one generation call for more diversity in fiction while the next generation chastises authors for representing groups they’re not part of themselves.

Reason 4: I’m Repelled from the Conversation

The culture war has spilled into my medium and made a mess of everything. Since Trump took office I haven’t wanted to engage with anyone on Twitter. Even simple conversations about fiction have taken on new subtle tension.

Everyone has gotten so binary. Both camps are reading off of scripts. Arguments are won by which person can summarize the last think piece they read faster than the other. We copy and paste our deeply held convictions. We call each other out in the name of education, even after we see studies that say doing this only makes the opposition feel more entrenched.

I don’t believe the fallacy that truth resides between two extremes. Objective reality is not the average of our fringe beliefs. That said, I am a godless bleeding heart liberal, but even I find my camp’s calls for moral purity to be soul crushing. We say someone is “over” for daring to think impure thoughts aloud. Our every utterance is given permanence.

So you’ve been publicly shamed? Have you looked into witness protection? Facial reconstruction? Reincarnation?

I’d criticize my camp’s overreaching rules more on this blog if I wasn’t afraid that the wrong people would read that as a backhanded endorsement for a far right platform. As much as I find my camp’s arbitrary correction exhausting I find coded hate speech nauseating. I keep most of my observations to myself.

Which me leads too…

Reason 5: I’ve been Censoring Myself

Sometimes I’m afraid of my audience. Nothing stifles creativity like fearing what other people think.

I’ve had friends prescribe extreme limitations on my writing. Some have told me I shouldn’t write from the perspective of a woman, not because they were offended by something I wrote, just that, as a guy, I shouldn’t try it. As if the one female character whose perspective I’m writing from is somehow a delegate for all women. Where did all these walls around empathy come from?

I don’t write idyllic characters. I write about fuckups struggling to find their place in the world. I write about artists who bet their lives on their success only to find themselves making deals with devils. I don’t write about role models because fully formed characters with nowhere to grow don’t make very compelling leads.

I reject the notion that each of my protagonists should be a proxy for me. I reject the notion that writers shouldn’t put themselves in other people’s shoes. Sure, it takes research, conversations, and lots of life experience, but it should be done. It’s those universal feelings that we all relate to that bring people together, broaden our understanding of one another, and quell hate.

Closing Thoughts

At the top of this post I mentioned this would be a little more informal than usual. It kind of feels like it went off the rails.

I guess I’ve been put off by the commentary culture that’s grown around storytelling online (full well knowing that I’m part of the problem).

I’m tired of seeing non-writers harp on movies and TV shows like they could’ve written them better. I’m tired of seeing my YouTube feed clogged with “Ending Explained” videos like I need the extra analysis to fully apricate my entertainment. I’m tired of theorists proclaiming the rules of writing like they were commandments.

I’m sick and tired of the commentary culture intruding on my thoughts when I sit down to write… and maybe that’s what’s keeping me from sharing more material here.

In his book On Writing Stephen King wrote:

“You can approach the act of writing with nervousness, excitement, hopefulness, or even despair–the sense that you can never completely put on the page what’s in your mind and heart. You can come to the act with your fists clenched and your eyes narrowed, ready to kick ass and take down names. You can come to it because you want a girl to marry you or because you want to change the world. Come to it any way but lightly. Let me say it again: you must not come lightly to the blank page.”

I don’t want to right lightly. I don’t want to set out to offend anyone, but I don’t want to write lightly. I want to tell stories rife with conflict, morally gray characters, and dark subjects. I don’t want to write with my audience in the room, but I want there to be an audience when I come out.

I have to summon the courage to put my work in front of people and let them reject it. To reject it until, eventually, it resonates.

 

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Energy Vampires Vs. Writers: The War Rages On

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WHAT ARE ENERGY VAMPIRES?

Energy vampires are the psychic predators walking among us feeding off of our lifeforce. They’ve never experienced a true surge of inspiration so they syphon it from those who have. They attack with inorganic introductions, longwinded interludes, and awkward tension.

Energy vampires lure victims with social graces, ensnare them with psychological manipulation, and entrap them the looming threat of causing a scene. They’re known for breeching boundaries, hoarding attention, and oversharing. They turn conversations into monologues. They make eavesdropping mandatory. They are Shakespearean gossips.

Energy vampires act as though they are entitled to your attention by virtue of your proximity to them. They play on your sympathies because you seem like “such a kind soul.” Then they demand special considerations, because they’re “Going through a thing.”

Energy vampires leave victims feeling emotionally exsanguinated, intellectually violated, and spiritually hung over. We hate what they do to us, but we’re too exhausted to call them out. So we excuse their behavior as a personality disorder, but they’re not covert narcissists or high functioning sociopaths. They are malevolent spirits bent on turning our creative genius into their livestock.

Now I know what you’re thinking. This all sounds derivative of a character from FX’s mockumentary series What We Do in the Shadows. The show features a an energy vampire, named Colin Robinson, who corners coworkers in their cubicles and lays into them with tedious drivel while he syphons out a meal. It’s a competent portrayal, but energy vampires have been with us throughout history.

The Mesopotamians told stories of beings who went to market, disguised as people, but their sole purpose was to hold up the lines by questioning the price of everything. The Greeks referred to Energy Vampires as the “omilités kairoú,” or “weather talkers.” The Transylvanians knew them as the “bej limbi” or “beige tongues.” Urban legends in the modern retail sector refer to them as “Close talkers.”

WHY CREATIVE PEOPLE ARE AT GREATER RISK

When an energy vampire is on the prowl they look for bright spots in the crowd. Creative people are like Roman candles. An energy vampire will weave through a stadium to get to the one person who writes haikus in their spare time.

This isn’t so bad for established artists. An established artist in a uncomfortable situation can just walk away. This isn’t as easy for creatives who’ve yet to make it. They still have day jobs to contend with. Creatives in the food service, hospitality, and retail industries are most at risk of attack. Their work requires them to bend over backwards for the customer, even when the customer is a supernatural carnivore.

Energy vampires know this and so they’ve set up parasitic ecosystems around these places. They ask cellphone salespeople to explain technical terms in explicit detail. They constantly barter at big box retailers. They get fat off of restaurant waitstaffs by sending dishes back.

You can ask for help, but energy vampires know how to render themselves invisible to authority. They will seem harmless to management, while costing creatives their productive evenings.

The only way to prevent this acidic symbiosis is to see the problem coming and prepare a response.

HOW TO SPOT AND ENERGY VAMPIRE

It’s easy to spot an energy vampire after the fact by how they made you feel. They derail your train of thought, leave an unpleasant after taste, and fill you with a desire to stew in your own juices watching Netflix. If you find yourself having an uncharacteristic narcoleptic episode then they’ve already had their fill. That’s why it helps to know how energy vampires hunt.

Energy vampires wait to do their business five minutes before closing time. They wear a sense of urgency on their sleeve, and they have a complaint on the tip of their tongue before they step foot on the grounds. Just as creatives cast auras like Roman candles energy vampires cast ominous clouds of drama. That’s why they have no shadows.

If you see a customer who dims the ground around them DO NOT ENGAGE. A greeter who mistakenly asks, “How can I help you?” is in for an earful.

An energy vampire will demand services that aren’t offered by your establishment. They’ll storms into a Barnes and Noble and fling an iPad over the helpdesk.

“I need you to fix my Apple ID.”
“I’m sure they’d be happy do that at the Apple Store down the street.”
“But you sell tablets. This is a tablet.”
“I sell Nooks if you want to talk about one of those.”
“I don’t want to talk about Nooks. I want my iTunes to work right.”
“Yes, but that’s not one of our applications.”
“Yeah, but you know how to fix it. You know.”
“Would you go to a Tesla dealership to get a Range Rover serviced?”
“Of course I would.”

If you’re stuck in a conversation like this check the shoes of the person you’re talking to. If they have tridactyl talons jutting from their loafers check their hands. If their fingers are rolling like they’re working a loom then discreetly check their chest. If you spot a faint red glow pulsing through their fashion scarf get out of that room.

PROTECTING YOURSELF FROM ENERGY VAMPIRES

The rules that govern Victorian vampires do not apply to their energy syphoning counterparts. They have no garlic allergy. They love to tan, and no stake can pierce their lithium ion organs.

You can hide from them by wearing electromagnetic shielding clothing: chrome smocks and tinfoil underpants, but if you truly want to set some boundaries you’re going to need to learn to think like them. You must learn to practice psychic jujitsu.

Think about the time you interrupted a grieving friend, because they said something about a dead loved one that reminded you of a movie you like and you couldn’t pass up an opportunity to make a reference. It’s that callous disregard for social norms that could save your life.

If an energy vampire engages you then cut in.

Tell a story about how doctor after doctor failed to diagnose your chronic pain, and how every medication only made it worse, until you discovered the healing magic of crystal therapy and organic unfiltered apple cider vinegar.

Tell a story about how all your exes have been on the psychopathy spectrum and how you now have the ability to spot psychopaths within seconds. Lean hard on the notion that all psychopaths are either Scorpios or Sagittariuses.

Tell a story about all the times you nearly won the lottery and how it convinced you there are parallel dimensions where you’re rolling in designer brands.

Just remember. Interrupt. Improvise. Be intense, and go long. The longer you prattle on in the presence of an energy vampire the less opportunities they’ll have to feed.

FINISH THEM

If you really don’t want an energy vampire to fuck with you ever again you’ll need to turn the tables and drain them. You’ll need to grip them by the wrist, gaze with wide unblinking eyes, and hold them verbally hostage.

Energy vampires hide behind a series of subtle tactics. Their tactics won’t work if you run a steamroller over them. Unpack your wildest paranoid delusions. Set yourself at the heart of a batshit crazy a conspiracy theory and zap all of their energy.

“Identity thieves have hacked all my accounts. They follow me with a flock of drones. I can feel them up their past the visual line of sight. Right now they’re using facial recognition software to find out who you are. They’re already listening to this conversation through your phone. Check your clothes for RFID tags. That’s how they know what you’re thinking.”

“I’m being followed by men in black. I cut out the microchip and now they want to take me back to the blue room. Don’t look across the street or they’ll know you know. Quick, kiss me with plenty of tongue, really get in there, draw it out while they scan the environment.”

“My cat just died. The vet said it was feline leukemia, but I know it was ritual sacrifice. Satanists have gathered earth from my grandparents’ gravestones and they’re using it to curse all my loved ones. Please hold my hands and pray with me or you will be next.”

Corner that hapless energy vampire, incorporate whatever interruption they throw at you into your story, exceed their intensity, and watch them turn to dust.

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