Deadlock Part 2 - Remy the Writer

When I was but a wee alien lizard fetus, one of the regulars at the bar where my mother worked was certain I was going to be a lawyer. To hear Mom tell it, he came in frequently and would tip her well so that when I grew up, I’d be able to defend him. Some days, I wish I had been. Not only because I’d be making more money, but I’d also have a set path, clear goals and the kind of success which comes with fully committing to something. At least, that’s how I imagine it. Inspired by hearing this story many times throughout my life, I did take a law class in grade 12, but aside from writing the script for a mock trial of the wolf from Little Red Riding Hood – which included accusations of a steamy sexual relationship between said wolf and Red’s Grandmother – I retain few memories of the experience.  As an aside, even a class of twelfth graders didn’t appreciate allusions to anthropomorphic bestiality, and I can’t say I blame them. What can I say, I was weird. I suppose I still am. I quickly learned law wasn’t for me. I was going to be a writer, and every college course I took – from philosophy, to history, to psychology was meant to steer me towards that end.

 

From the tender age of six I have been telling stories. The first one I remember involved me meeting an alien. We ate jelly bean and sardine sandwiches – thanks 90s TV for that inspiration – and drank pickle fish milk out of trays like cats. Kids are weird. From there I’d go on to write all manner of childish oddities which culminated in a story about a young boy who was definitely not my video game fantasy self going on a magical adventure to save his parents from a ghost king who put them under a sleeping spell, because reasons. I called it Ghost in the Shadows, and I was very proud of it. My father – who worked as a copy editor for our local newspaper – even designed a title page depicting a spooky house, a boy in armor – who had my actual face – and a ghost which was the exact opposite of the creepy phantom king I had envisioned in my ten-year-old brain. When I was twelve, I entered the whole package into our library’s writing competition for young readers. I won – and totally not because they created a special category just for me – and received a cheque for a hundred dollars. I was thrilled; it was the first real money I would ever earn!

I spent the next five years of school constructing all manner of stories. Some, like the ill-fated sequel to Ghost in the Shadows called The Tower of Souls was abandoned before it really even began. Others like the fantasy based The White Phoenix – an adventure story about a pair of friends named Jade and Cyrus going on an adventure to … do something heroic and earth saving saw slightly more life. Suspicious minds – a teen drama about a pair of sisters trying to survive their abusive mother eventually turned into a thriller about mind control and genetically engineered psionic children before it fizzled out half-way through a scene. And then there was the Ancient Sword – Eventually retitled A Lost Hope. It was – and sadly still is – my crowning achievement, completion-wise if nothing else. I started writing it in grade 11, and for hours and hours I would write, read it, edit and  revise it. And was I doing all this in my classes while the teacher thought I was taking meticulous notes? Yes, yes I was. Thanks blindness. It was epic: the story of two brothers, both scarred by their parents’ death, embroiled in a bitter misunderstanding on opposite sides of a looming war. There were elves, goblins, Dwarves and every other fantasy trope you could think of. But there were also seeds of originality which would form the basis of a great deal of my writing going forward. I loved it! Everyone who read it said how vivid and imaginative it was. I don’t know what made me give up on it. It didn’t happen gradually. I didn’t run out of steam; I even knew how the story – the first in a trilogy – would end. But one day, I just stopped, and to this day I have never picked it up again.

I have started many short stories and novels since giving up on A Lost Hope. I have far off plans to go back to it, but The world originally imagined in that novel has germinated over the years into something far more unique. Picking it up again will require a whole lot of reworking.  I am genuinely proud of my ideas, if not their execution, But ever since those carefree days of my youth, something has been different. I have never written with the fervor I once did; even while unemployed for four straight years. Perhaps it is a dimness of mind, that long-perceived limited ability to concentrate and retain information I have suspected I possess. That Would explain why I feel like my ideas are far more grandiose and complicated than I can maintain. Perhaps it is a lack of physical exercise, or the bouts of moderate depression which come over me from time to time. For a time it was certainly going to school for it. Years of writing classes have made me a better writer, but have subdued the drive to write. Now I am forty-two, and to this day, I have nothing to show for my writing but a handful of potentially good, but vastly under-developed novels and short stories in various stages of completion and, surprisingly, an album’s worth of songs I can’t really sing – more on those later. And the cherry on top of this shame-on-me Sunday? My most notable piece of writing to date is a short story I wrote in grade eleven … about anthropomorphic sperm. Yes, you read that right. To be precise, it’s a comedic story I wrote in half an hour in a grade 12 writing class about the sperm’s whole journey from testicles to fertilization. Somehow, like a really horrible first sexual encounter, that one has stuck with people from high school to the point that it’s the first thing they – and sometimes my own mom – bring up in conversation. Maybe I’ve been writing the wrong kind of stories all this time. Maybe it’s time to reach out to Pixar.

I want to be known for more than just penis humor – even if sometimes penis humor is pretty funny. Sometimes I’m still a twelve-year-old boy. My point is, I’ve actually got what I and other people consider to be some pretty imaginative ideas. Oddly, while the writing classes were dampening my desire to write, they were somewhat motivating. Now that they’re gone, I realize I don’t need them. I’ve actually written as much out of school than in it. Not counting the ill-fated Suspicious Minds and A Lost Hope, I have four major started novels on the go – three of which are in the same series. One might say I need to get my priorities figured out and settle already and they’d be right. Problem is, I end up starting something, and then I realize “wait a minute, what happened before this story started”? So then it’s on to starting a whole new novel earlier in the series. It’s like I’m writing the series backwards. And that would be fine, if I was actually completing them backwards.

This brings me to the crux of my writing problem: I haven’t finished hardly Anything! I can say what I want about my dislike for a story about sperm – at least I finished it. Of course, I finished it in grade 12, so does that really count. I have all these pretty decent ideas, but what’s the point of a good idea if it remains underdeveloped? You can’t hope to feel accomplished, get published or really even be successful in your own mind unless you can say you’ve completed something – at least I can’t.

 I posed my concerns to Chat GPT recently and was given an answer that did help a little bit. “The act of starting – of imagining and building even partway, is an expression of your inner world. Every unfinished project still holds value—like sketches of a bigger mural. They aren’t failures; they’re steps in your creative mythology.” It’s a comforting sentiment, but it doesn’t address the problem.

So why bother being a writer? I need to feel accomplished to gain a sense of self-worth, and I’m not actually accomplishing anything. It takes a long time to be productive, it’s stressing me out and success wise, it’s such a saturated and competitive market I probably won’t amount to much anyway. So why not give it up? The answer is simple enough: I’ve always been a storyteller. Escapism aside, nearly every movie I watch, game I play and book I read is consumed to give me inspiration to tell stories. Every word I write, piece of music I compose, scene I design and line of dialogue I voice  is done to  help me convey these stories in a compelling manner. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I’m particularly amazing at it, but telling stories in some form has been such a big part of my life for so long that it feels like a part of what makes me, me. I just don’t know if it’s my heart, or my tonsils. The idea of giving up on that part of myself seems almost blasphemous, like spending years in a religion slowly bleeding you dry, only to discover it was all a careful lie. After all, if I don’t do it, then what was my entire time in university, not to mention the hours and hours of media consumption and creativity even for?

“So great,” the voice in my head says, “you’re a storyteller. So why aren’t you telling stories then? What’s holding you back?” I’d like to think I’ve worked out at least some of my problems with writing. As near as I can tell, they are the following:

 

1.       I get overwhelmed by my own ambition. Ever read a really epic novel and think to yourself “wow, how did the author come up with all this intricate detail”? That’s me. That’s the way I feel every time I read a really good book. For me, sitting down to write a novel is like trying to assemble a 3D jigsaw puzzle while not only being unsure where each piece goes, but also not knowing where each piece even is. It’s a daunting task, made more-so by my perceived mental limitations. To fix this, I suppose I just need to get over it. I’m sure lots of authors felt the same way when they started. Judging by all the plot holes, retcons and sheer incomprehensible nonsense in all the avenues of entertainment, I’m also not the only one who messes up. If people like that can become accomplished, why can’t I?

2.       I am not a planner. I am what is colloquially called a pantser. No, I don’t pull people’s pants down in public because sexual harassment, but I do write by the seat of my pants. The ideas come, I put them down. In truth I do write far more this way than if I were to attempt to make an outline. I don’t know if I’m disorganized, if the ideas are only quarter formed, or I’m just impatient to get to writing. There are aspects of my personality that suggest it’s a combination of all three. Whatever the reason, I end up doing a mashup of pantsing and occasionally planning the bones of scenes and filling in those plans in the outline while also writing  the book. It’s like I’m afraid I’ll forget what I’ve already written. It makes the subject matter I’m writing about seem far more intricate and complex than it probably is, and thus it becomes overwhelming. I wish I could just settle on one way or the other. Heck, I wish I could just plan it out, know it will probably change, and then write the silly thing. I genuinely don’t know how to fix this one, except to just keep trying to find out what works. It’s probably the least of my problems. Maybe I should write a Pixar style story about sperm after all.

3.       Research is not my strong suit. The old cliché states “write what you know”. While I think lots of successful writers ignore that (unless they’re all serial killers, spies, sparkly vampire-ferries or space pirates – I do see the benefit of understanding a subject before you write about it. This is another area where I often feel too big for my britches. To create a believable world, you need to understand foundations of society, culture, government, science – even soft science fiction is grounded in some reality – etc. You basically need to make even the strangest and most fantastical world believable. Honestly I am amazed so many people can do this convincingly! I’m not saying mine are bad, but researching and retaining all the information which allows one to create believability is an arduous task to say the least. One book I am working on is written from the point of view of an indigenous – in a made up world –young woman who can’t have children, but is forced to flee into a wintery wilderness with a newborn baby. I have experienced absolutely none of that. So I’ve done my research as much as I can, and sort of put the story off. I should probably just let this one go – apparently it ticks all sorts of “do not do this” boxes, but the idea’s been in my head for about eleven years now. Perhaps I just need to put more time into research, take better notes and find better sources. It’s hard because I can’t just go to a library and take out a book on a subject, but there’s this new fangled means of gathering information I’ve heard about. I think it’s called the interwebs or internet  or something. Guess I should use that a bit more.

4.       I edit while writing, and I mean a lot. It seems common practice to just write that first draft. Forget about making it great writing, forget about adding those beautiful descriptions, forget about perfect grammar and just write the thing with the clear understanding that yes, your first draft is going to suck like a happy Flintstone elephant vacuum. To a point, I can kind of accept that. But my second love language is words of affirmation. When people read my writing and find it good It gives me a sense of accomplishment, and that I’m not wasting my time. So I write a particular chapter to within an inch of its life, then show it off for what I hope to be positive – or at least constructive feedback. But the more time you spend decorating the bedroom before the walls go up, the less time you’ll spend building the house. Sure you’ll have one amazing looking room, once you get past the exposed beams anyway, but what’s the point if that’s all you’ve got to show for it? Besides, you might finish the house and decide that bedroom might make a better office. I’ve actually tried writing without editing it to death and seeking feedback, and it does mean I write more of the actual story. I just can’t feel as comfortable showing it to people, and without showing it to people, I don’t get those positive affirmations. It’s a vicious circle – I’m caught in a lot of those – and I know the only way I’m going to escape the loop is to escape my need for instant gratification – more on that later, too.

5.       I have a really hard time with the visual and spatial concepts in my writing. This actually goes along with number 4, and is why I spend so much time adding detail in subsequent edits. Whether I’m writing a story set in our world, or somewhere more fantastical, writing about the layout of places, the physical features, expressions and clothing of others, and maintaining special awareness of locations does not come easily. I’ll never forget a prime example of this in my creative writing classes. The main mode of transportation in my most recent novels is an Aerophant. It has four armored, spider-like legs, a hard scaly exoskeleton and the head and beak of a bird. It is also a fusion of biology and synthetic. And you can ride in them like you would a car. It’s a cool concept, and in the context of this techno-spiritual world, it makes sense. When I see it in my mind, it all just works. But I had a teacher give the class ten minutes to draw a picture of what they thought this vehicle-creature hybrid looked like. Everyone came up with something entirely different. On one hand, it fuels imagination. But on the other, it obviously doesn’t convey the idea in my mind. This appears to be the rule, not the exception. To this day, I still don’t have a complete picture of what one of the races in my Migrator Chronicles series actually looks like. It’s a stumbling block, and one I genuinely don’t know how to pass. All I can think to do is at least get the story done and worry about it later, but that seems like a dangerous bandage solution. I am curious how AI can help me with this. I had it draw that aforementioned Aerophant, and the results were quite interesting. Say what you want about AI – and many do – for a blind person, creating art has never been easier.

6.       I compare myself to the finished works of established authors. This is the most common and simplest issue to solve. After all, one simply needs to remember the finished product of a writers’ imagination is a process. You can’t compare your unfinished first draft to a real author’s final one. By the time you’ve read it, it’s been through several re-writes and probably a couple passes from an editor. Furthermore, lots of established writers feel the same way. They too had inspirations, and they absolutely have misgivings about their own work. Heck, I’ve been waiting twelve years for an author’s next book because he’s having such a hard time with it, and that’s only because I read it twelve years ago. In actuality the wait has been closer to fourteen, with no end in sight.

7.       Finally, I just don’t write enough. At the end of the day, this is the biggest problem. A writer writes, and writes a lot. And due to what essentially boils down to poor time management of other hobbies, work and family, I don’t write a lot. I have slowly worked on different ideas for years. And ever since Eliza has been born, I’ve probably written 140 pages – and that spread across three books. Compare that to the 300 plus page A Lost Hope which I worked on for two years, and you can see why I’m a little disheartened. Of course, I know it’s not a race. But it’s also not a snail’s journey either. I can fix this by actually sitting down at a keyboard and writing. There’s a perfect area down the hill from our condo – a rec center which is often empty and has no internet. It’s quiet, and I know if I sat down there and wrote, there’d be few distractions – other than the piano, but that’s another problem we’ll get to later.

So there it is; everything I can think of that embodies the writer in me. To summarize, if I’m going to do this, I need to stop editing every chapter multiple times and focus on the whole story. I need to stop seeking validation for my ideas at least until I have a full story. I have to try harder to research and be better about putting what I’ve learned into an easily referenced format. I need to stop worrying my ideas aren’t as good as other experienced writers. Above all else, I need to actually make time for writing, because if I do that, at least some of these problems will likely take care of themselves. And ten years ago, I might have been able to. But now My creative endeavors have grown.

Next up, the three aspects  of Remy the performer: actor, sound designer and musician. Can I really do it all, or should I sell the equipment and live vicariously through the successes of my betters?

Deadlock Part 1 - Plan of Action

I am Remy; also known by some areas of the internet as Renaissance Jack. I possess many talents, but am a master of none. But "a Jack of all trades but a master of none, is still better than a master of just one". I am large and contain multitudes, but I am stuck in a never ending cycle of deadlock.

The term Deadlock has many definitions, but when it comes to my current situation, two of them are most appropriate. First, it is the point during an argument when an agreement can not be reached because neither side will change its demands or yield to the demands of the other. In computer science, it refers to when a computer is attempting to use its resources to carry out an action, but said resources are currently tied up in executing other actions. Basically, the computer can’t do anything because its resources are spread too thin. Both definitions are me in a nutshell.

I am not a computer, but a human being with feelings. A computer would be able to think logically and allocate its resources to multitask like a boss! Come to think of it, many of the women I’ve known can already do this. Stupid penis. A computer would be able to calculate potential risks and outcomes, and come to an informed decision on which actions would yield the most favourable results. Me? I’ve spent the majority of my life arguing with myself about which paths to follow, which actions to take and how to manage my time effectively. I am not in a special situation; lots of people go through this. Still, I feel as though I’ve been stuck in a midlife crisis ever since graduating high-school. And I really, really want it to stop.

Sidenote: I started writing this back in 2021. I gave up on it thinking things might even out. While lots has happened since I started this, I still find myself in the same perpetual state, but now with a potential mental component to consider. Simply put, I am utterly convinced I am somewhere on the ADHD/Autism spectrum. I have felt this way well before ever getting any vaccines by the way. I am not officially diagnosed, but everything I’ve read and researched strongly suggests this is so. Heck, executive disfunction might as well be the subtitle of the following entries. If true, it would make so many things throughout my entire life finally make sense.

 

For a large portion of my life, I really believed I was going to be a writer, specifically a novelist. I went to school for it, I pursued it as a hobby and I even attempted to find jobs where it was a required skill. I have a real talent for it, if grades and feedback are to be believed. But year after year, nothing came of it. I wrote unfinished story after unfinished story, obtained a job in finance of all things, found, pursued and summarily exited religion, got married, became a father and discovered I really enjoy composing music, singing, doing sound design and voice acting. All of these latter skills are extremely competitive and require an inordinate amount of time to develop, let alone actually get good at. With all these interests, dreams, hobbies and responsibilities I am spread thin. I don’t know what to focus on or what to let go of. I feel I am imprisoned in a vicious cycle; a constant state of deadlock, and there is no one who can help me. I know this, because people have tried. Some people like my wife – bless her – have tried a whole lot.

This is my escape attempt. This is me evaluating myself and making a plan. Basically, this is the live, unflinching story of how  I, a forty-two year old talented, blind, white binary male am trying to find my place in a world brimming with seductive distractions and attractive pipe dreams. It will teach me more about myself, and give insight into my struggles, flaws and personality. It will make me accountable and force me to take action. It will be a story of triumph by gosh, because if it is not, then this deadlock – this state of unending purgatory is sure to prevail.

Over the coming weeks, I am going to dissect my hobbies, passions, responsibilities and personality traits to within an inch of their lives. And I am going to attempt to evaluate the positive and negative aspects of pursuing them. Finally, I will create a plan of action for how I can improve my skills should I deem them worth pursuing. This is meant to motivate me, because I know that at the end of the day, nobody can help me but me. I am doing this for myself, but if you’re interested in knowing more about me, I would welcome your support.

We're baaaaack!

Hello everyone, Remy here, back after so long, most of you have probably forgotten about us. Ever look back ten years and wonder what nasty little temporal racoon stole days upon days from your life? I've done that often. I especially did that when I saw the last post on this blog was nearly ten  years ago! Okay, it looks like it  was only five, but I cheated. The posts in 2020 were written then, but posted just now. So they're all new too! How different our worlds are now. Our daughter, barely more than a sperm, now 11, and wishing desperately to be a teenager. employment upgrades, or at least sidegrades. Chelsea and I, fully fledged adults now with a car loan and a mortgage. The dark constraints  of religious entrapment at long last a thing of the past; it’s loosening control allowing our personalities to blossom in ways only those who have lived and then left the life can truly understand. All of this in five long, short years. And there’s a dog.

I say all of this by way of reintroduction after being gone so very long. That we still have followers at all is a miracle. We are both vastly different and yet so much more than we were in 2016. While some of our followers might be unhappy with this, we hope you enjoy the new us and will find us just as entertaining, if not Moreso, because we’re still pretty awesome.

I do not yet know if Chelsea will join this resurrection. I will ask her, because she’s entertaining, informative and has done more for our blog than I have. I have chosen to return because of an in-depth self analysis I have been writing in order to make sense of who I am as a person. This will be an unflinching look at my strengths, follies and depths, and yes, there may be bits and pieces about deconstructing my time in a religion some of our followers still believe in whole-heartedly. There may be colourful language and opinions which differ from your own. Should this prospect offend you, please either stop reading, or understand that my path differs from yours, and that is okay. If you absolutely must comment on my decisions regarding this matter, do so TO ME, and only to me. Because this is my story, my truth and my choice. For the rest of you, have an open mind, strap in, and enjoy the trip. It’s going to be interesting.