When I started writing, I was very open to learning cool techniques and concepts about storytelling. I read magazines, blogs, talked with other writers, read their recommendations on writing books, taken seminars, and gone to conferences. Almost all talked about theory. Very few talked about actual techniques.

As I checked my emails, I saw one come in. And he, a published author, who mentors other writers, interviewed a woman, who is also published and mentors. She said something interesting:

Beginning writers tend to think of themselves as the center of the universe and expect huge successes. They’re often not open to criticisms. Blah blah blah…

I haven’t encountered that, but I don’t mentor other writers. In taking classes, I am asked to read others writing and comment.  Whether they listen to me or not doesn’t really matter because it’s not my work. Only they can determine whether the criticisms are justified.  I’ve applied many suggestions and criticisms and rejected those that don’t help the story. I don’t make changes from a place of fear. Another words, if I fear that my book won’t sell because I don’t have a certain element, then I’ll probably reject that criticism.

Now going back to the email, here’s an example of taking advice with a grain of salt.  The interviewer asked her why she got into writing.  She said (her exact words):  For me it’s been looking back over my life and seeing all the input I’ve received over the years. Folks told me I could write when I wrote Christmas letters. My teachers saw the gift. And, yes, mentors have helped me hone the gift and encouraged me to continue.

Paraphrasing:  Praise the Lord, for He hath layeth on me a gifteth!

Did you read that?  She, in her head, is the center of the universe. She thinks she’s special after she just said beginning writers think they’re special. She ain’t no beginner, so does that mean you don’t have the right to feel special unless you’ve acquired a certain level of success?

In every moment of life, people should feel special about themselves. Who else, besides our doting parents, is going to feel that way about us?  Everyone has the right to exist. Everyone has the right to follow their passions, to explore their lives in different ways, and to live it as they wish, barring hurting anyone outside of themselves.

And the interviewer went along with it.  And this guy is reputable!

There’s some good advice out there. But when it comes to a story that is close to your heart, trust that that story will come out well, use actual writing techniques that will help tell your story (don’t use a flat head screwdriver on a phillips screw), and be clear about where your story and characters are heading.  That way when people give you suggestions or criticisms, you’ll know what to implement and what to throw out.

I usually use Steven King’s method.  Pay attention to the most common critiques. It’s a good sign you may need to fix it. But I had a friend point out my character’s reaction to a tragedy felt false to her. She explained why and I immediately took her suggestion and made the change. No one else pointed it out, but it matched exactly where the character was headed.  This same friend made a similar suggestion farther down the story, but to change it would flatten the overall character arch.  So I rejected it.

No one knows your story better than you. So be confident in it. And be open to learn and see what others see. Sometimes we writers are too close to see the forest.

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I’ve never put much stock in what people say about me, whether good or bad. Though words do hurt sometimes, especially if it’s from someone close like family or girlfriends. And since I’m not trying to climb up the corporate ladder, I put little effort in improving my scorecard.

I was talking to a coworker the other day and she was upset that P90X didn’t shed the weight off her body like the informercial promised.  There are two issues here, or maybe just one.  First, it’s an informercial. Second, she didn’t try very hard.  Both led me to believe how unaware she may be.

One of the many quotes I have a hard time with is: The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result.

Being a former actor, one thing actors do is audition, audition, audition.  Most of the time they get rejected, which is normal. But every time they hope to get hired.  Is this insanity? No. Things can change from moment to moment.

What’s different is the day, the role, your attitude in that moment, the people involved, etc.  There are thousands of things that can be different that it hardly qualifies as the same.

Even though I was rejected by every literary agent I’ve submitted to, doesn’t mean I won’t submit to them again to try and protect my insanity. I think you have to be a bit insane in order to write a book and a dash of craziness sprinkled in to want to get published.

Being aware of my own efforts, aware of my own writing technique, open to others criticisms and suggestions, and adapting myself to accommodate the story (the bigger picture), which is what’s important, not me as the writer, I’m able to trust in myself in the direction that I’m heading.

My coworker should have done the same.  Was she trying hard enough? Was she watching what she ate? No, I found out. Her eyes were closed.  She placed the expectation of being thin on a product and not on her own efforts. Deep inside, I could tell, she secretly blamed the program.  It is an infomercial after all. But we sometimes don’t see that it is us we should be aware of and make little changes, like putting a little more effort, to yield huge results.

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I then calmly asked him, “What the hell is perfect practice?”

To me, it sounded like you couldn’t make mistakes while practicing when it’s really the best time to make mistakes. It’s those mistakes that we make in practice or immersed in our work that can give us some of the most profound insights. I told him there’s no one correct way of doing anything well.

It’s the geniuses, the innovators that create the rule, the market. Just look at the world of media. We have books and TV shows about wizards and vampires and wolves.

When I had my teaching and mentoring business, I was all about changing behavior. Shit. I was one of the laziest people I knew. I watched TV to no end. I had little passion for anything, or at least I thought I had little passion for anything. I slept for most of the day when I could. That was the life! Then something changed. A yearning grew. Not that yearning. Well…not the place to discuss.

I started to think about the things I wanted. Things I wished to accomplish. And somehow I was disciplined enough to go to the gym, write, have a social life, teach, and still have free time to just chill. How did I become disciplined? Hell if I know.

Actually, they were things that I wanted to do. Loved to do. I mean going to the gym was easy. There’s a lot of hot chicks there.

During the years that I taught, I made a slow discovery. As awesome a teacher as I was, I couldn’t make my students do anything. Yes, they listened to me. Yes, they behaved when I shushed them. But they eventually fell back to their shenanigans.

What I could do was listen to them, guide them toward their own well being, help them realize their own potential in real time physical exercises, and help them realize what they truly wanted in life. Their behavior was outside of my reach, outside of anyone’s reach, except their own.

One parent came up to me and was extremely concerned about her child’s time management skills. He loved to procrastinate. She was my client, so I did my best to try and change that behavior, asked him why he procrastinated, gave him specific things to do to swerve him from waiting till the last minute.

He made the changes for a day. Then he reverted back to his old ways. His grades never improved from the mostly A’s and B’s he already received. I know, I know.

Now in college, I asked him how school was going. He loved it, tried a slew of different things, as I suggested, so he could have a better idea of what he might love to do in life. I asked him how his grades were. Mostly A’s and B’s.

I asked him if he was ok with that. Totally fine, he answered.

Do you still procrastinate, I asked. He reluctantly nodded.

I laughed, told him that this was his method and that it seemed to work. If he felt bad about his grades, that he wanted to improve, then changes may need to be made (depending on why he felt bad). Since everything was fine, there was nothing to do but catch up on old times.

I had told my best friend this story, as he’s also close to this family, and the silence on the phone meant he didn’t agree.

He has his way toward excellence. I have mine. And as long as those methods work for us without any feelings of guilt or anxiousness, but with peace of mind, then whose to say that were wrong?

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Feelings of being the geeky, nerdy, lone Chinese kid, who people thought was smart, cheating off his paper (big mistake) came flooding back into my barreled chest. Too much? All I ever wanted in high school was to be the big man on campus. Not be smart. Psh.

Delving into the victim mindset was something I grew up with, so I knew it was just a reactionary moment of despair. Then I kinda laughed about it after drying my tears because I was meeting my mother later, and remembered that a five-year-old girl can hold her liquor better than I could. I wish I was joking. This leads me to my first point. Don’t cheat off my paper. My book smarts is limited.

One of my friends graduated from the university with a Theater Arts degree. She had showcases in New York and Los Angeles and felt she belonged in LA. She had an offer from an agent to represent her, but she declined because she didn’t feel connected to this person.

Now. To get an agent in Holli’s wood is probably just as hard for an author in Litty’s (literary) world. So I have to applaud her. In a world where the talent, yup, I’m part o’dat group, can be desperate to get representation, they’d take whoever shows a little leg. But the power comes back to the talent, still part o’dat group, when we choose who we want to be represented by. Because the whoever represents us talented must at the least love work.

This brings me to my second point. Know you’re talented.

When I researched agents, I read their blogs to find the one thing I could relate myself or my book in my query letters to them. I had found one that I liked with similar humor to me. I was like, ommahgawd, were made to be. Then I read one of his posts, which went something like this: Many people play the piano for fun and never want to play in an orchestra. Why is it that people can’t write for the pure joy of it without wanting to be published?

This guy’s world must be really small. Most of the people that I know who write, write for pure joy in journals, twitter, blogs, and have no want to be published in the traditional sense. I know very few who would venture into the publishing world. Hmm. Maybe my world is small. For some reason his comment turned me off.

Why?

Maybe because I wanted to be that popular guy who everyone looks up at. Which is hard since I’m not that tall.

“Hey. That’s Jimmy Ng! He wrote NIGHTFALL. He’s like the J.K. Rowling of fantasy.”

“Dude, man. J.K. Rowling is the J.K. Rowling of fantasy.”

“Oh, yeah,” I thought, while tapping my bottom lip.

Do I want to become popular in the high school sense? No. Do I want everyone to read NIGHTFALL? Totally. It’s a dream of mine.

But it’s an important question to ask. I wanted to write it because I thought it would be fun. It was. I want the world to read it and just enjoy the exhilaration I felt writing the book. I serve so people may have a little bit of escapism.

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And it pained me to do so for several years.

But something great came out of it. I had sunk myself into my new found passion, writing. Actually, it wasn’t writing as much as book one of the 7th Province: NIGHTFALL.

Thousands of my heart wrenching emotions helped fuel my main character’s emotions on paper. Losses that he goes through were better felt, understood. Of course, what I went through is nothing compared to his emotions, but without the breakup, I couldn’t have delved as deeply as I did. Tears was always a sign I was heading in the right direction.

Writing, however, requires some level of consistency. I have to sit down somewhere and write, be it on paper, computer, or imagination. Unfortunately, I’m a lazy person.

In my emotional turmoil, I had found a home away from home.

Borders café had become a place I could sit down from all the things that would tear me away from writing my book: TV, Internet, refrigerator, bed, couch, HGTV. OK. I was watching a lot of HGTV. OK. I still do. So to help focus myself and give me little excuse to do anything else, I bought a coffee or tea, glued myself to a small wooden table in the dark corner of the bookstore, and dove into the world of NIGHTFALL. Despite the babies crying, college kids laughing, soccer moms arguing, coffee beans grinding, and the constant frothing of lattes, I was totally undisturbed.

Time flowed by like a bunch of kids playing in the field with the warm sun shining.

I had spent thousands upon thousands of hours writing at Borders. People knew my name. I had seen cycles of baristas drift through like ghosts. Specialty drinks changed with the seasons. It was a safe haven for me to call upon my tormenting muse and write. My bliss.

Then there was a disturbance in the force, more aptly called, the Internet. Rumblings of Border’s financial troubles sounded through the grape vines. Months went by with nothing happening. Barnes and Noble fell into a similar predicament. They came up with a simple solution. They saw what Amazon was doing with the Kindle and created the Nook. It was a brilliant move and probably saved Barnes and Noble from bankruptcy.

Borders wasn’t so fortunate. They ignored the potential of e-readers. Their predicament became worse. They had dug themselves into a black hole by acquiring too many stores. Cut back their closing time from eleven PM to ten to nine. This forced me to change my schedule so I could still write. Reducing the hours did nothing to save them. So they heeded their competitors and came up with their own e-reader, the Kobo. Did it work? Kobo is a monetary unit of Nigeria. Not sure if that was a great choice.

News ebbed that Borders was going to close down low performing stores. I had no problems with this. I doubted my Borders would be closed. Border’s parking lot was always full. Except after closing but that’s obvious.

One day I had walked in and I saw this:

A few days later, I’d found out my Borders was closing and they had let go of all their baristas. An era had ended for me. My home away from home was leaving. My tormenting muse had no use for me. Simply put, I had gotten over my old flame. With it the completion of NIGHTFALL, four years in the making.

Borders may have been a conglomerate, but this Borders became my refuge. I, for one, am grateful. Thank you.

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Just watched Black Swan this weekend, starring Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis. The movie is about the character’s psychological breakdown, which parallels Swan Lake’s story between the dark and light side of the Swan Queen (and no, I’m not familiar with the story). A subplot in the movie is Portman’s character’s struggle of technical perfection in ballet versus artistic expression.

Good Girl

When I started to write consistently, I had struggled with wanting to be the good girl versus the bad girl (not sure I’m doing myself any favors here). The good girl is being technically good at writing, and the bad girl is allowing myself to suck and the freedom to just write whatever comes out.

Which is better?

Bad Girl

So I started with the bad girl (yes!). I started to write Nightfall, and allowed whatever to come out, come out. I wrote sixty pages worth of material.

Then I talked to my friend who’s constantly working on being a technically perfect writer. He turned me to books and seminars that taught me how to be a good girl, how to write well technically. They focused on structure, emotional techniques, how to build depth in character, scenes, overall story, and provided a mechanic’s dream full of tools. More than what any writer would use in any single work.

But deep in my heart, I felt the bad girl pounding, wanting to get out and expose herself.

I’d talked to a friend recently, and she told me she wrote a book with her eyes closed. As far as I could tell, she’d done little research on writing technique or structure but was inspired to write. I haven’t read it so I’m not sure of the quality. However, when I was listening to her talk, the good girl inside shook me and said, “She’s crazy!”

Was my friend unconsciously incompetent (the individual neither understands nor knows how to do something, nor recognizes the deficit, nor has a desire to address it)? Google the four stages of competence and you’ll see what I’m talking about.

To be fair, my technically induced friend does allow for inspiration, and my crazy friend could be a great writer. But these two people showed up in my life as symbols of two extremes because I asked the question:

Which is better?

Choose me. No! Choose me.

In life, too much of anything isn’t good.

Humans can’t live more than a few days without water. But drink too much of it and people can die of water intoxication. Take in what you need. Leave the rest.

Today, I’ve used very little of what I had written during my purely bad girl days. But I learned what not to do, and in the process of my redemption, I had taken the time to learn. In doing so, I found out something interesting about myself that is the fundamental philosophy behind Bruce Lee: When one has reached maturity in the art, one will have a formless form. It is like ice dissolving in water. When one has no form, one can be all forms; when one has not style, he can fit in with any style.

What?

Learn what you need to learn. Leave the rest. You don’t and can’t know everything. Just make sure what you’ve learned doesn’t imprison your soul, that you can still express yourself wholly. Another words, forget what you’ve learned and just go with it.

As renowned photographer, Rodney Lough has said, “Art is the language of the soul.”

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“We might as well not even show up, according to some of the experts,” Aubrey Huff said right before heading into the playoffs with the Phillies.

I’m not a baseball fan at all.  Hell, I’m not a sports fan.  I’ve gone to office sponsored games just because it was an excuse to get out of my 6 X 6 cubicle cell.

“We were underdogs the whole way, and all the experts out there picked us last,” Huff said after the San Francisco Giants won the World Series. “But we had heart, great pitching, defense and timely hitting. Experts be damned.”

Congratulations to the Giants as they did fight their way to the win.

Even I had heard from the experts, stating how the Phillies and Rangers would maul the Giants. But not only did the Giants kick ass, they literally mauled them, in baseball terms of course.

I’ve said this so many times on this site and to friends and family. The only reason experts are experts is because they are self-proclaimed, or know more about the details compared to the average person. Many have pieces of paper called degrees, or metal plates nailed onto pieces of dead wood called awards that prove their expertness. None of that helps people predict the future, especially yours.

When it comes to believing in yourself, going for what you truly want in life, and knowing who you are as a person, only you are the true expert. And even if an expert supports you, you still gotta get out there and do it, whatever that may be.

Keep a deaf ear to outsiders and listen to your heart.

Herein lies the problem. Most people don’t know what their heart says. I’ve asked what people want in life. What do they dream of? What would totally kick ass? Almost everybody says, “I don’t know.”

I didn’t know either. I had blocked out my dream so much, as it pulled my pant leg for twenty years, that I didn’t find it until I opened myself to myself. I asked probing questions. What do I like? What do I want? Ham sandwich or burrito for lunch? Blonde or brunette? How about both at the same time?

If I was financially independent, what would I do? After sleeping all day. After traveling aimlessly. After shopping for my twenty Ferraris and Lamborghinis.

If I was guaranteed to make a million a year, what profession would I choose? Would it be a profession?

I tried everything that had to do with the arts. Because I knew I wanted to do something creative. Martial arts. Writing. Drawing. Painting. Reading. Writing. Acting. Writing. Computer programming. Yup, that’s an art. Teaching. Film making. But the thing I returned to over and over was writing.

So I carved my life around writing. I went to writing conferences, seminars, read books on writing, discussed it, and bought software to help me brainstorm ideas. I bought a computer and printer. I got a new job that wasn’t as stressful. I had set times for writing. I wrote five days a week.

So I ask you.

What do you want?

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“Will they gain the life expectancy back with the time they put in the gym?” a salt-and-pepper haired man said.

“Not likely,” a chubby-cheeked man said.

“They’ve done studies where going to the gym doesn’t extend life expectancy but usually results in more injury,” salt and pepper said.

“It’s just a waste of time,” chubby cheeks said. “I have better things to do than spend my whole day at the gym.”

I wondered how much television they watched and how that was contributing to their quality of life. To some, a lot. To others who like to exercise and have passions outside of creating excuses for themselves, not much.

During my voluntary confinement in my 6 X 6 cubicle, what I’d like to refer to as my day job, my cube mate said, “I’m still carrying weight. I had him like a month ago.”

Her cube mate said, “It’s not like you’re a celebrity.”

One of the things I’ve done as a teacher, as an actor, and now a writer, is listen to what people say and do. You can read a lot about a person by what they’re saying. In both the above cases, excuses are being fed to themselves and each other about not doing something, exercise. But the excuses could’ve been anything:

“I don’t have time to pursue my art.”

“My passions aren’t going to pay for my bills.”

“It’s just a hobby. I can do it anytime. But with work, family…”

“I don’t even know where to begin. And who am I to think I can paint?”

“I don’t have them money to start this.”

I’ve definitely used excuses. What are they good for? Ultimately, excusing yourself from knowing the truth. What might that truth be? How powerful we are.

To attain anything great, we must first realize that we are capable. Once we become too entwined in our own self-doubt, we begin to create roadblocks that actually block us from moving forward.

I can’t tell you how many people widened their eyes and told me how impossible publishing a book can be. But the only way I can become a published author is to first write. If I don’t write and only focus on how difficult the road may be, I’ll never take the first step to get published. Does that mean those thoughts don’t occur in my head? No. I just focus on the task at hand, which is simply to write.

There are pundits at writing conferences that say you have to network, have a web presence, have white teef (teeth for you ghetto challenged), walk the walk, talk the talk, and be one with the all mighty universe (that would be Oprah) to get published.

Be as you wish to seem -Socrates

But none of that is important until I write. Writing to a writer is the most important task. Obvious write (right)? This simple philosophy is lost at writing conferences.

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Although, I’m not sure what the significance is. I thought I’d use it to announce that I haven’t found that ‘yes’ from an agent who will help bring my story to the world, yet.

But I’ve been told that I can’t force a tomato plant to grow by yelling at it, throwing money at it, or by giving it an ultimatum.

“Grow or I’ll send you to your room!”

The tomato will grow on its own with the right environment. Basically, dirt, water and sun. Dirt is pretty much free. Water is cheap. And so far no one is charging for sunshine.

Is getting published, breaking into Hollywood if you’re an actor, finding your soul mate, soul searching for your passions like growing a tomato?

I was talking to a fellow writer from work. He’s a rabid reader and especially loves fantasy. I’d talked to him at the beginning of summer about his book and he had finished writing chapter five. He asked me how long it took to write mine. I said about four years.

A few months later, I asked him about his progress. He said he was at about chapter five. So either he’s been doing some serious rewriting, or he hadn’t written much. We had gotten onto the subject of forcing art. He still loved the idea of his book, loved writing, but needed some balance in life. I asked if he used an outline, and he said he wanted to, maybe it would help the flow of his writing and story.

Steven King starts his books with an idea and writes until it’s finished. John Irving starts his book with a very detailed outline. He needs to know where the story is going before writing.

Who’s method is right?

Both.

I told my friend to find a method that works best for him and just go with it. He agreed but stated that he didn’t want to force the creative process. I totally agreed. But is knuckling down on your work forcing?

With any creative undertaking, the artist only has to provide the most minimal of ingredients. Just like the tomato plant, it just needs dirt, water and sun. Everything else happens by itself.

One of the challenging things about writing fantasy is the creation of things that doesn’t exist in our world. Many fantasy writers use Tolkienesque creatures, which is great. My story came to me outside of that, and I’ve spent a lot of time wondering what to call the different things in my world.

My process was simple: I ask the question. Like, what do I call this bug that my character eats? Then I wait. Sometimes it comes to me immediately. Sometimes it comes to me in a month. Nevertheless, it comes to me.

But it comes to me not just because I ask the question, but because I show up for the answer. I spend a lot of time each day fantasizing about my world. I imagine the feelings each character goes through. I think about the conversations they have, their goals, and their character arcs. Since the majority of my days are spent at work, I tend to find a lot of dead time that allows me to do this. Don’t tell my boss.

The point is show up. I show up to write. I show up to think. I show up and work. Forcing something would be like sticking strictly to my outline and not coloring outside the lines. Have an outline, but let the idea sprout. Let little surprises in. Let mistakes enter. For those are the things that can make any artistic project grow into something amazing like a tomato plant. Just watch out of the killer tomatoes.

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She had immediately asked questions about what certain things looked like, questions about the culture of my fantasy world, time line, etc. All of this within the first few pages.

There’s a couple ways I can take this. A writer should always ignite questions within a reader’s mind.  That’s a good thing. Create interest.  Reward them by giving the answers or enough to at least spark debates like the movie Inception.

A writing example would be the Davinci Code. Robert Langdon always comes across plot elements that forces us, and him, to ask questions. Why was he called to aid in a murder investigation?  He’s symbologist and the victim has a symbol carved into his chest. Did he do it?  We only met him when he got the call to help, so we’re not sure.  But we find he didn’t because of the victim’s granddaughter. She confirms the French sergeant is trying to pin the crime on Langdon . Who’s the nameless teacher?  We find out at the climax.

On and on with the questions but we eventually find out the answers.

So am I saying I’m just as great a writer as Dan Brown?

As I’ve lent my book out to people, they first see the book as not published and, therefore, not done by a professional.  They’re judging the book not by it’s cover but by it’s credibility.  As a result, they’re not patient enough to let their questions answer themselves, as I’ve made sure to do.

If she had placed the post it notes late in the book, then there would have been storytelling issues I would need to fix.  You can have certain questions linger on, like leaving the butler did it till the climax. Questions that either build the world or help move the plot along should be answered as we move along.

When we look at The Road by Cormac McCarthy, a post apocalyptic novel, we can’t help but ask questions of time, setting, and what brought this disaster? But they’re not answered.  I assume because McCarthy only wants the reader to focus on the father and the son, letting us be the judge of what brought the “flash”. But would my friend question him?  Probably not. McCarthy is, after all, a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist.

So perception is key, and I did ask her to just read it and tell me if she enjoyed it. She said she did, but the post it notes stopped abruptly. Either her questions got answered or she didn’t finish the book. Knowing her, she didn’t finish. And I’m all right with that.  I can’t make everybody happy. I can only make me happy.

And no.  I can’t compare myself to Brown. How can one perfect cherry blossom be better than another?

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