Tag Archives: blogging

by Ben Trube | May 25, 2016 · 12:05 PM

It’s Turtles All The Way Down

Have you ever had only 20 minutes to write a blog post, and you realize you have nothing really to say that particular day, but it’s been a couple of days since you’ve said anything so you just write whatever comes to you? It’s important to check in every once in a while and let people know you’re still out there and to give a gentle reminder and plug for the various books you may have written, even some of the older ones people might have forgotten about but that are totally still worth buying. You can’t tackle anything too ambitious, with a lot of pictures or thought. We’ve all got a couple of blog posts floating around in our heads that we’d love to do if we ever sat down and had an 1.5 hours to format them and make a really good argument, but today isn’t going to be that day.

Then, just when you’ve started writing your twenty minute post, you realize that what you really want to write about is the thought process behind writing a twenty minute post. Maybe you want to get people to try to relate to who you are as a writer at that particular moment, or to offer some tip for people dealing with this situation. Sure it feels a bit meta to be blogging about blogging, but that’s only a couple of layers removed and you might really have something valuable to offer. We all have to figure out how to create quality content on a deadline, and being in the middle of an actual crisis may give you a special insight into how to help others get out of it.

Thinking about how to deal with writing a twenty minute post gets you to thinking about the best ways to give writing advice. Should you only be talking about the things you’re dealing with at a particular moment or should you write more reflective posts on the tips you’ve discovered after years of learning? Writing about what you’re dealing with at the moment can be a good way to choose topics, but it might not be the best way to offer any real insight. After all, you might just be guessing how to get yourself out of a situation without any real idea if that solution would even work. Perhaps you should write a blog post about the best ways and times to give writing advice. So we’re writing a blog post about writing an advice blog post on how to write a blog post in twenty minutes while trying to write the post in twenty minutes.

But we can go one layer deeper. We haven’t even begun to deal with the existential question of why writers write, and what’s the difference between a writer and an author. Are bloggers writers in the same sense as people who write books? If the majority of the writing you actually do is just nonsense falling out of your head without being applied to your current work, can you call yourself a writer? Sure words are magically appearing in front of you as you play the keyboard like a piano, or a well … keyboard, and that might be writing. But is it good?

Oh, I almost forgot. We could wonder if writing about how to give advice to writers is actually art, and whether such writing is considered professional or amateur. It could all be a meta-meta exercise designed to kill time and give the illusion of creating something interesting, when in fact we’ve been up our own butt for some time now.

Ooops … time’s up!

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Filed under Writing

Tagged as blogging, Books, Recursion, Turtles, Writing

by Ben Trube | September 21, 2015 · 12:35 PM

Motivational Malaise

When you’re writing, you’re writing.

Seems simple enough, but here’s what it boils down to for me.

Some people blog in place of working on their current “work in progress”. There are times where we think of writing as a finite energy that can only be applied to certain things. If I wrote a blog post today, then I didn’t write 500 words for my book. Writing in this model is like socializing for introverts. I may enjoy doing it, but I need a recharge and I’m only up for so much of it.

As I’m getting older I’m becoming a much more introverted person, so I understand this idea pretty well. And sometimes I act like it with my writing, assuming that I need the same recharge period if I’ve done a burst of creative output that I would need after going to a party with a lot of people I don’t know.

But I actually believe writing breaks the conservation of energy principle.

Time is a finite resource, creativity isn’t.

I have more to write about when I’ve been writing. Basically, this makes sense. One of the main topics of this blog is writing about writing and often thoughts for blog posts come from something I’ve been working on recently, a problem I’ve encountered, a new method I’m trying out. Other topics are fed much more by reading or listening to the radio, particularly the technology posts, but the desire to write them comes from … well … writing.

This isn’t about the spark of an idea, it’s about the motivational energy it takes to turn that spark into something on paper. I’ve thought a lot about this energy as habit, as discipline, and that’s not incorrect. But I think it still misses the point. When you write consistently, you can reach a point where you are typing faster than even modern computers can keep up with, where you just want to keep going even if it means you’re going to be late. Where it feels like you don’t have enough time to get it all down, where you are literally itching to work on something and it distracts your mind from everything else.

This is writing in the extroverted model. Spending time with other people energizes you. Writing energizes you. And not writing is draining, something you have to break through, a barrier you have to knock down.

I’ve been feeling … well … blah the last couple of weeks. Nothing’s been wrong physically, and I’m not significantly more or less busy than life always is. I just haven’t felt like writing and I let that be enough of a reason not to do it. This happens from time to time, often after spending a lot of effort on writing. I tell myself it’s because I’m tired, but I’m not really. I have the same ideas I want to write down, the opinions, the scenes from books that won’t leave my head. I’m just not in the mood to translate them into words.

Well, that’s just silly. Time to get back to work.

The Schedule

I’m so sorry for the lack of posts last week. It’s been a hectic time with work picking up and three trips in the last week. I added a new state to my list (Texas) though I can’t say I’m much of a fan of Dallas traffic or the DFW airport. This trip has taught me I need a damn GPS. And before you ask, no, I can’t use my smart-phone because I don’t have one (got asked this at least five times when I said I got lost). Thanks again to the little-red haired girl for her help.

I did see one of the best weddings ever (<5 min). It actually included a reference to The Princess Bride (Mawidge), and to Spaceballs. That’s right, they literally did “the short version”.

Do You?
Yes.
Do You?
Yes.
Fine you're married.

There were also burritos at the reception. Good times.

There will be a new chapter of The Sky Below Thursday April 30th. I’m working diligently on Chapter 7 and hope this will be something you’ll enjoy. The day before we’ll have a little summary of each character’s stories so-far since it’ll have been about a month since Chapter 6. This probably means The Sky Below will bleed into January 2016, but so be it.

What I did manage to do a lot of these last couple of weeks was reading. So as a special “treat”, I’m going to be posting my reviews of everything in my queue of “read not reviewed”. This is probably about 15 books so we’ll see how many we actually get to.

Ben Trube, Writer’s normal schedule will hopefully resume next week. If you guys have any tech questions for Trube on Tech Tuesdays, please contact me using the form or in the comments below.

And if you’re a fan of Buffy, take the time to read Brian’s fan-fic The Witch and the Dragon. Superb.

Writing the same scene differently

So here’s the thing. I’m writing a disaster novella. It has four characters each of whom get individual scenes. Chapter 1 introduced everybody, Chapter 2 showed two of the characters in the immediate aftermath of a crisis, and Chapter 3 will show two more. Essentially, the four scenes that comprise Chapters 2 and 3 are the same. A character realizes something has happened, comes to grips with it, and deals with some of the immediate aftermath in their surroundings.

I want to keep the reader hooked, to make these narratives feel individual and not redundant, even if they are treading some of the same ground. And I don’t want to skip a character moment of realization just because I’ve already written a couple of them. Everybody reacts to a situation differently, and if I’m doing my job of creating unique characters then I could have each of these people doing the exact same thing and the scenes would still come out different.

Terminology becomes a factor in my scenario. For starters, I’m still working out exactly what I should call the surface beneath the character’s feet. Is it the ceiling because that’s what it was a few minutes ago or is it the floor because that’s what it is now? Can we have such an animal as floor ceilings and ceiling floors? Probably the approach I’ve taken organically (i.e. typical seat of the pants technique) is to let each individual character think of the thing beneath their feet as the floor or the ceiling depending on what makes them comfortable.

It helps that I’ve thrown the characters into different kinds of physical locations, and given them different personalities and goals. These things alone can make scenes unique. And one thing that is already becoming apparent as I continue to plot and structure this book is that pairings matter. Even though these characters are largely independant of each other for now (and may remain so for the vast majority of the book), they need to interact in thematic ways. Sometimes the sharing is more overt (one character’s sister is with one of the other main characters at the time of the crisis), and sometimes it’s just a shared object, or a phrase, or a joke.

So you make things different by applying different variables, and you tie them together thematically by sharing elements. That way instead of just repeating yourself, you build on what has come before.

One other potential way to deal with this problem (though one I have not chosen to apply yet) is different timelines or non-linear timelines. If this was a book I was assured you could all read in one sitting, then I might play with the structure a little more, but as it is I want people to be able to follow individual character narratives from week to week, and not get to lost or forget who someone is after a month. But I may have moments where something happens explicitly to one character that is only implied in another (if that character has nothing to offer in the real-time reaction).

Every writing project gives unique problems to solve. Already figuring out how to keep a narrative thread going while tossing the ball to four different characters is a challenge, but one I am enjoying thoroughly. You guys will have to be the judge of whether I just keep repeating myself, or whether I have something new to say.