Story Concept Vs Story Theme

When I begin a story I often have a particular image, or scene, or bit of dialogue in mind. I'm rarely sure where it goes, but I try to build a story around it just so I can get to that piece. Sometimes it is an overall concept and I'm not sure what to do with it, but I spend a lot of time trying to make the story about that scene or piece that has haunted my brain for a while.

It's taken me a long time and I'm still not sure that my creative brain fully accepts the truth of this, but it's the wrong way to go. You see when I am writing the story I am so focused on trying to meet this goal of getting the scene in my head write or the dialogue to fit, that I mistakenly believe that it's what the story is about.

It's not.

As many writers have told me and many have advised in their books on writing. You simply write a story and find out what it's about later. I have a hard time with this. There's a bit of uncertainty of leaping into the void that I don't deal with well at all. I have to have some faith that my stories going to reveal something worth reading when it's done and I doubt that all too often.

So in writing, I focus on the idea or the concept as if that were the goal, and when it doesn't meet that goal I get discouraged and will often cease writing out that particular idea. It's a problem. If I were to simply write a story, any story that I'm passionate about and then be open to the idea that it could be about something completely different I'd probably get a lot more done.

I'm still working on accepting that. I have to be willing to experiment.

Con Man

I feel at times in my life like I have some how pulled one over on a great many people who know me. I had a meeting weeks ago with a woman who runs a book festival in PDX. I have volunteered for this festival in the past, but for the last couple years had to step away to make sure I was providing my work life with the proper attentions. I am volunteering again and wanted to meet with her to discuss what positions were available amongst the volunteers. When we met she had mentioned that other volunteers had 'mentioned me in tones of excitement'. Much of this is likely blowing smoke up my rear, but I'll it admit it made me feel good. I've got a pretty fragile sense of self-esteem.

But like alchemy it mixed up a concoction of clever wording and a sense that the quirky smirk I pose is more effective than I believe it is.

You see, I take heart in the fact that I am a kind, friendly, and sometimes a generous man. I like to make others feel comfortable when they tell me about themselves, when they divulge their thoughts and opinions. I like to let them know that I care what their about. Because I do. It intrigues me to know how  someone ticks. Not just their motivations, but the little quirks that are their signature. I like to see the poker-table ticks when they're excited, when they're sad, when they can't help but express the pieces that are truly their own. I'm not really great at responding to those pieces and cultivating them, but I tend to see the surface of their passions in brief flashes.

But it confuses me some when people respond to me in a positive way. When few detail that there's an appreciation for my presence; for my particular brand of company. I see myself in one way and the persona I display--I feel--is a bit different.

I feel I have managed to convince a great many people I am smarter, more capable, and kinder than perhaps matches reality. But perhaps this is a pervasive cloud of doubt.

I'm certainly not saying that such a personality is entirely absent in me, but I so very rarely see it in myself. It's jarring to hear a particular view when I carry a differing observation of my own. I feel like a con man. I feel like so often I have managed to put on a character that fits in well with the rest of society, that doesn't trip flags in anyone else's awareness. I feel as if I have worked hard to chameleon myself into the proper channels to get what I want.

But the dissonance comes when I hear someone discuss qualities I have affected upon the world. It seems odd that the persona I feel I put on, that I separate myself from, seems to represent a particular character that people can relate to. And one from which I feel distant.

I believe this all to be a personal flaw. I might be distancing myself from a rather accurate version of myself because of a lack of confidence in said simulacrum. When the con man is successful I can't seem to understand why. But when my image doesn't quite meet snuff I can step back from it and adjust the chemical balance to make the amalgam more palatable. By something of me sometimes gets lost in translation.

Douglas Adams  has a joke in his Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series details the effects of the pan-galactic gargle-blaster. Often the imbiber feels present at a distance of five feet to their left. Welcome to my life.

In Pursuit of Boba Fett

My brother was a fan of Boba Fett. I'm pretty sure he'd seen one of the Star Wars original trilogy movies in the theatre when he was very young and if my facts are correct it was most likely The Empire Strikes Back. He collected the toys for a while and had this really amazing 1 foot tall Boba Fett action figure that somehow ended up in my grandmother's toy drawer at her house. Boba Fett is a shadier character. While he's certainly dangerous, he lives by a particular honor code as many 'gray' characters do. I think it's possible it reveals something about my brother I don't believe I knew when he was alive, as I only interacted with him until I was eleven years old, before he died.

Why is this important? I'm not sure if it is to anyone else, but me. But for me it's another thread that leads me back to him. If you've read my writing or my blogs for any amount of time, much of my life comes back to him. He was a fan of Star Wars. He collected toys, he watched the films until he got into Horror and he even played the first Star Wars tabletop RPG.

He also read comic books. In fact I found his suicide note in his dresser drawer on top of a stack of his collection of comics. Mostly superhero stuff. He might have had a #1 X-Men if I'm not mistaken and he was a huge fan of Spider-Man.

I've never been the biggest nerd for comics, but I enjoy them. Most superhero comics annoy the hell out of me. The heroes come in and save the day per the nature of such fantastic narratives built upon heroic odysseys born thousands of years ago, but they always end destroying something or fucking up someone else's day and we're simply left to hope that everybody made it out okay as the building came crashing down around them. It's like seeing a small animal get hit by a car as it darts across a busy road. There's not a lot you can do for the poor thing, but you can't help but feel like shit anyway. And this guy was simply doing his job--probably accounting--when our superhero and the villain fought epically destroying the building to pursue justice or something. But I'm getting off track.

My brother liked Star Wars and he liked comics. And I can't help, but wonder what he'd say to me today. You see I work at Dark Horse Comics. A comics publisher. I've been here almost five years. I've worked as the Asst. to the President of the company, I've worked in marketing and soon I will be an Assistant Editor (No I won't actually really edit comics in the narrative or artistic sense until I've been editing for a long time. Mostly it's just admin paperwork, but it's a start). I work at a company that publishes Star Wars Comics. Yeah. You see where I'm going.

Without actually trying to I work to make comic books a reality and I do so in a place that publishes one of my brother's favorite franchises while he was alive and I'll do it under the leadership of an Editor in chief named Scott. Coincidence doesn't get much stranger than this. Okay so it does, but you catch my drift. This is an honor for me to be a part of Dark Horse Comics and something I take great pride in. Perhaps more so than the work itself.

I'm projecting, but Boba Fett seemed like a conflicted character doing what he could with the lot he was given. He seemed a bit lonely and isolated, but skilled at what he put himself to. My brother was so much more than that, but it's the tiniest little details that bring me closer to a memory and to a ghost I've created. I've been piecing him together for a long time. I won't find the real him. He doesn't exist. But that won't stop me from building an idea of him in my head. It's the insatiable lack. Much of me seems defined by his absence.

More than once I've wished I could sit down with my brother Scott and have a beer. I would love to have played tabletop RPGs with him, shoot the shit about comics and Star Wars, share Hellboy and BPRD comics, which I know he would have loved. More than once I've wondered what we'd talk about. And I imagine--somehow--Boba Fett would end up in our conversation.

10,000 Hours

My name is Spencer. I'm 30 years old. And for the last thirty years, I've been in my own way. I love to write and I have written a lot of stories, not enough mind you, but a lot of stories. And in that time, I have run the gamut of excuses as to why I should do something else with my life other than write. I have doubted my ability, my intelligence, my imagination, my dedication, my discipline, and my mental state.

All artists struggle, all of us battle demons created by ourselves and external sources to bring the cloud of doubt over our heads, a storm that follows us around as we work on every single piece we put ourselves into. And while I'm pragmatic and understand that economy plays a bigger role in the current popular artists on display in music, art, literature, film and theatre, the true stars, the legends of any industry, the people that history remembers in any venue of art are those that are in it for the art itself.

The names that are remembered, that are studied in academic classes, that are passed down from grandparent to grandchild are those that stand outside of time. Their art represents something human that sloughs off all pretenses of the building, the making, the writing, the performing. The pieces that stand tall against time's withering effects, connect with us in cultural sense. They connect with us personally. They connect to us on a human level that reaches into an understanding of our DNA. And while a market can initially force a tipping point, the piece itself must stand on its own when the market has left it for the next money-maker.

As a pragmatic, I try to temper my romantic side into seeing a realistic vision for my own near future. I'm no Cormac McCarthy, I'm no Faulkner, Woolf, or Hemingway. Hell, I'm not even close to your best grocery-market thriller writer. But I believe that I have stories to tell.

There's a theory about 10,000 Hours created by Malcolm Gladwell that putting in that many hours into your passion, will make you an expert, will make you...something. And while the "12-step program" spirit and the self-help fluff that has come to surround his idea is hard to swallow for me, the concept feels founded in something real.

Whenever I watch my favorite football players play the game, I can see the hours of practice they put in  every day. If it's not on the field then they are going over the plays in their head, they are reviewing game tapes of their opponents, they are getting out into the backyard and throwing 10,000 footballs trying to hit a single target. They love the game with all that they are and want only to leave an impression on those that supported them, those that mentored them, those that coached them, that played with them, that watch them on TV. They put in the time and the repetitions and the work to be the great players that they are.

It takes time to be good at what you love. Ira Glass has a wonderful clip talking about the same idea. He notes how our tastes as artists of our chosen passion are often great, but that our talent lags behind that for a long time as we try to form the ideas we have in our head. We want to present the ideas we have while setting aside our creation of them.

A playwrighting (and yes I choose to spell it in the old way for a reason) professor of mine in college subscribed to the theory that you write 90% crap to find the 10% of pure gold that sits inside of you. I think this plays into the same 10,000 hours theory. You have to sit down and write out the 90% of crap as you mine for the 10% of gold that each of us has the potential to present to the world.

You can find examples of this theory in a lot of places, and how it effects and inspires those of us who want to create art. When an artist you meet at a comic convention writes about it, or a favorite upcoming rapper sings about it, the idea has entered the human consciousness and has become more than just a theory. The idea has begun to stand alone outside of the marketing that seeded it in our minds in the first place. And while I have my issues with someone using an idea simply to make money (a whole other facet artists must deal with), this idea can't be ignored.

This blog was created for me to share my struggles in pursuit of 10,000 hours. I'm not sure I'll ever write 10,000 stories in my life time, but it's the journey that matters right? It's the pursuit of the ideal, it's the step after step in the chosen direction. I am passionate about writing stories. Life has shown me 30 years of change and people and wisdom, but writing stories has never left me. As much as I doubt, as much as I stand in my own way as life throws its curves and cliffs in my direction, writing stories always, always makes me happiest, despite the act itself being a pain in the ass.

I want to know what 10,000 stories feels like. I want to strive to find the gold in the bullshit I throw out into the world. I want to sit here and write the words that will tell the 10,000 stories. I don't think I'll ever reach perfection or stand in the ranks of the giants that hover outside of history, but I'd like to try. What else do we really have in the end but our journey and the decisions we made to reach the ideal we have in our mind.

Welcome to my journey!