Joseph Little

A New Process

October 16, 2020 by Joseph Little

Dilemma

Well, it has been more than a year since the last time I posted. Why? Because I haven’t done any writing in that time. OK. That’s a bit of a lie. I’ve done SOME writing, but I’ve largely been avoiding it like the plague. You know, by socially distancing myself from it months before the actual plague hit the US shores.

I’ve had trouble starting and staying started. I have a ton of ideas … until I sit down to write them. The shear joy of writing becomes a chore I begin subconsciously avoiding well before I ever sit down at my computer. I’ve even asked myself, “If I’m struggling this hard to write, do I even really want to?” The resulting stomach ache that immediately followed told me that giving up was not an option.

So, how do I continue? How do I restart with the immense weight of failure constantly pushing against me like Sisyphus’s boulder keeping me from a summit I’ll never see.

Happenstance

Then at work, I took a Fundamentals of Agile Programming training. There I and my other trainees learned about Agile Software Development (often just referred to as ‘Agile’). Without getting too bogged down in the formation and history of Agile, the principles of Agile were outlined in The Agile Manifesto.

While the Agile Manifesto concerns issues seen in the world of programming, one of my superpowers if to see parallels that exist in dissimilar items. I believe I can indeed compare apples to oranges in a way as to make the comparison valid to the discussion at hand … assuming that at least one of the two is relevant to the context at hand. Using my big brain, I saw how I could use certain practices and principles of Agile to improve my attitude and general writing process.

What follows are the most helpful Agile principles to my writing process.

Sprinting

One of the principles of Agile is to work in short “Sprints” with a limited, known amount of work. As I often get overwhelmed by the shear scope of the task in front of me when I consider working on any of my novels, I immediately saw this as a possible process that can help.

A sprint lasts two weeks, from Wednesday to Wednesday because Mondays and Fridays suck for starting and stopping things. The things I would like to get accomplished in those two weeks are outlined, given points that follow a weighting system, and posted to a Kanban board.

When I work on a goal (such as this blog post), the Post-It-Note that represents the item is moved on the Kanban board from ‘Backlog’ to ‘In Process’. Then once it is completed, the item again moves to ‘In Review’ then ‘Completed’. A completed item scores me the points it was weighted as on the board. At the end of each sprint, we evaluate the number of points of items I was able to complete.

So far … I’ve not done well. BUT I am doing better, and this metric is largely due to this process.

Stand Up, Sit Down

Another principle of Agile is to have a daily stand-up meeting with the team to discuss the success, failures, and complications of the sprint. This has been very powerful for me. Just talking about what I did or did not accomplish the day before has kept writing on my mind. If writing is on my mind then I am usually more likely to think of all the things I want to accomplish than to think of Sisyphus’s boulder.

My ADHD pushes me toward avoiding even thinking about things that are overwhelming or boring. Now if you’re a writer too, you probably already know this, but writing is both overwhelming and boring at the same time. It’s also lonely, difficult, and provides the least instantaneous of gratifications I’ve ever experienced. That said, when it’s good, time flies as the real world evaporates around you as your senses live in another reality that for now only you know.

It is an amazing experience.

Then the next day you read what you wrote the day before, and it is complete shit. But you know what? It’s done. Done means I get my points. Sometimes that’s enough.

Scary Mrs. Mary

The biggest change to my writing process is having an accountability partner. In this case my partner is my wife. She takes most of the Agile roles we are using, and she’s the person that leads the daily stand-up meetings. She keeps daily notes, and honestly that terrifies me. She’s even started keeping a record of the total number words that I’ve written for the week.

When I fail to get up and write one day, my wife is there the next day to talk about it. She doesn’t judge me, mostly. The daily stand-ups are not meant for judgement. They are meant for communication and a kind of communion of the spirit to finish the project.

I like to write in the evenings because I work during the day. Oh sure I could wake up at 5AM and write for two hours before starting my day, but the evenings are when I’m best. So when 8PM rolls around and I’m doing literally anything but writing, my lovely wife can, on occasion, cast judgement like the best of them.

She has helped keep me on track toward better practices more than anything else. So find yourself an accountability partner. Self-flagellation really isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

What IS My ‘Why’?

May 28, 2019 by Joseph Little

Why is this sign in the middle of nowhere? Oooooh, now I get it. Clever.

Why do I write?

I’ve tried answering that question a number of times, but each time I do, I feel like my answer misses the mark. Here are some examples:

I just have to.
To be a good example for my daughter.
I always wanted to.
To fulfill the desires I had as a kid.
Because I create.

All of those feel right, but they all fail as well. I don’t know why.

There are days when I sit down to write, but for the life of me, I just can’t find the willpower to do it. I have ADHD, sure, but the meds don’t help me with this particular issue either. So what is it? I feel like if I knew my ‘why,’ it would help me get over this horrible push back, this resistance that forms somewhere in my gut and pushes me out of my chair to do literally anything else.

So what is my ‘why’?

I didn’t create this. I’ve never owned enough Legos to put something so large together.

I am a creator.

I am and have always been a creative type. When I was a kid I would draw. It was natural. Dinosaurs were an early love, then Godzilla, and eventually dragons. Reptilian-like creatures have a soft spot in my heart for some reason, but hey, dinosaurs, Godzilla, and dragons are really cool.

As I got older I would make things. I would take art that I loved from magazines, cut them out, and put them on my walls. I had things from a vodka ad where polar bears pulled a sled to Chester Cheetah stuck on my wall. I took my father’s tools and a slat from under my bed and made a sword. I used string and metal to make bolas. I enjoyed the wonder and possibility contained in these things and what they represented.

When playing with my action figures became less interesting as I grew older (maybe too old for some), I made dioramas with them. I put them in dramatic poses fighting one and another. The wizards I hung from a string from my ceiling since they could fly. Man, I wish I still had those figures.

When I moved into playing more and more Dungeons and Dragons as a kid, no one really wanted to run the games other than me. It felt like a natural calling to me though. Premade modules were where I started, but I was soon creating my own adventures. I wasn’t drawn to the stories behind the adventures at first, not for many years in fact due to my poor reading level and hatred of English class. I wanted to create interesting combinations of monsters, dungeons, and treasure. This really stirred my imagination.

It was only after I found that there were actually books that I enjoyed reading, that my skill with reading, English as a language, and storytelling began to develop. Unfortunately, this wasn’t until my sophomore year of high school. The sheer number of things I read in the next three years catapulted my language skills, but I only near the end of my high school career did I even begin to imagine storytelling as a possible future career. When I did, I was basically told I wouldn’t be able to hang with it, and in all honesty at that time with my undiagnosed ADHD (because it was not even a thing back then) and my short but frequent bouts of depression, I would have been as unable to hang with it as I was unable to hang with the architecture degree that I attempted.

I once drew a comic strip called “The Hillbilly Surf Gods.” It was fun. I could draw things that weren’t super complicated and write little short jokes and people enjoyed them. It was the ADHD that killed that, however. As soon as I started thinking that I might actually do something with my cartooning, it became more of a job and less of any enjoyment. So that fell away too.

I continued to play DnD, mostly as the person running the game (the DM, or Dungeon Master). This provided me lots of story creation experimentation. More it allowed me to do one thing that I really love. It allowed me to create characters. Lots and lots of characters. It also allowed me to create situations that would humor or intrigue my friends.

I am an attention whore

I am the fifth of six children, and I fucking love attention. I guess I was the baby for seven years until my little sister, the brat, came along, so I was probably the center of attention for a long time. Until I wasn’t. That probably had an impact. I also grew up a northern Catholic in a southern Baptist town. So while I craved attention, I had few opportunities to make friends to either give it to me or break me out of needing it. That’s probably why I became the jokester in our family – as a means of garnering attention.

I think ADHD also played a significant role in my road to becoming an attention whore. Getting attention from people is a little thrilling which is the kind of stimulation that people with ADHD lack. The stimulation makes us feel normal (or in my case ‘more normal,’ amiright fam?) This is also probably why I have made so many really bad and/or inappropriate jokes over my life. I often wonder how many people have I alienated because of my need to make any kind of impression possible. Man, ADHD sucks. What could I have done if I’d had a normal life up until now?

When I write, I get a little thrill when people tell me I did something they liked. I think I get a little thrill when they tell me they didn’t like it too. Only if I bore them do I feel like I’ve failed. Similarly, when I create something and people tell me they like it or that they can see I’m improving, I get a little thrill.

I start more conversations and insert myself into more conversations than I should. I really like the idea of sitting alone and not talking to anyone, but I think my craving the attention of others makes me want to insert myself. That really sucks to realize. I don’t think I would like me if I weren’t me, but I have a lot of friends that seem to like me so maybe I’m doing something right.

Getting the cold shoulder from someone is killer to me. I’d rather be yelled at or hit than for someone to just stop talking to me. All because of something I likely could not control. Mix in the depression I’d been going through a few years back and I can easily see me not being the kind of person someone would want to hang around with.

What is best in life, Conan?

For me, leaving something better than one finds it, is best in life. I try to smile a lot, because as my father used to say, “Smiles are contagious.” It costs nothing, but the impact a smile can have one someone else’s life can be significant. I can’t smile in the things I create. I can’t smile in my writing. But if I can leave a person happier for the time they have spent with my creations, then I have left them better than when I found them. I don’t think this is why I write, but I do think it is why I write the things I do write and how I write them. I want to entertain. I write to create. I write to get the beautiful attention. I write to entertain.

I cannot say that I write to make my characters’ lives better if not anyone else’s life better, because I do some bad stuff to some characters. I make them experience the feels hardcore. (I think that’s how the kids talk these days.) I don’t necessarily leave my main characters better off at the end of their journeys than I have them starting out, but I’m not writing for the characters.

Who am I writing for then?

I wonder if this is a valuable question. I mean I’m writing for me. If so, why do I desire to publish? Is it only for the attention whore in me, or do I have another reason? Will sales translate into validation? If so, then would I not be better off writing for the audience than writing for myself? Or is there some middle ground where I get to write what interests me and find an audience that is also interested in it as well? That seems like a really good way to remain undiscovered and lacking a real audience if you ask me. Luckily no one has yet asked me, but is the question of who relevant to the why? I don’t know. Not yet.

Is there more?

I often tell people that I don’t want to say anything special with my writing. I don’t want to teach anyone anything. And that is mostly true. If I could teach anyone anything, it would to be happier and to be more grateful. I would teach people to love and forgive. I would teach people that mistakes are natural, and not only are you going to make them, and make a lot of them, but other people are going to make them too. We can’t hold ourselves to an impossible standard, but neither should we hold others to standards that may be impossible for them at this time. Maybe my characters and the plots they encounter will eventually show a pattern of such things, but more than anything else, I hope that I entertain people.

Is it bad that I would like everyone in America to be just a little happier? Is it bad that I would gladly accept a single dollar bill for that little bit of happiness from each person? 😉

So, why do I write?

I write because I must. I must create. I must share. I write because I want the validation of people I don’t know. I write because I’m an attention whore. I write to hopefully make the world a little bit better than it was before people became aware of my work, and I write because it interests me.

I don’t know if I have a clear and single ‘why’?

I write because I’m a writer. Does there need to be more to it than that?

Book 3 and The Repeat of Everything I Thought I Already Mastered

May 20, 2018 by Joseph Little

I’ve completed 2 rough drafts of 2 novels and a couple revisions of the first one. Right now I’m trying to finish the 3rd rough draft so that I can make all the books work together nicely … and I’m stalling.

Stalling. Flaking. Procrastinating. Whatever you want to call it. All of my successes are irrelevant, and right now I’d like to do nothing more than get the f’k out of Paris.

The feel of book 3 is very different than book 1. Charlotte has undergone a lot of change, yet her primary problem remains the same. Book 3 is where she realizes this and has to confront it … or not because she has more options than ever. Book 3 is where she faces what it really means to be a monster even though she thought she had that down in book 1. Book 3 is where I take a bunch of loose threads and pull them all real nice tight on the back side of the story so its tits pop out real nice on the front side. Except … I’m not yet sure I have the tits for it. Or if I’m pulling the right stings. OR if I’m even working with a corset here … maybe I have some man’s stained tighty whities instead, and I’m showing junk most people don’t want to see. This has me kind of paralyzed despite knowing that this is exactly the kind thing (if not the same metaphor) I was dealing with toward the middle of books 1 and 2.

And then I have to remind myself … “Yeah OK, so what?”

Done is better than perfect because perfect is impossible.

I’ve wasted weeks of not writing because … I’m lazy. I’m blocked. I’m scared. I’m bored. I’m busy. I’m a liar to myself saying that I’ll do it tomorrow, yet every day is the same.

Still, people believe in me, or at least believe in my potential – which is just as good for me. And just as bad. But you know what? Fuck it. I’ve got work to do. So I’m going to do what I can to do and be happy to have it done.

You go do the same. Go create something new.

Who the fuck am I to be a writer?

May 16, 2018 by Joseph Little

So … yeah.

I need to go back and read some of my prior posts because lately, because lately I feel like the imposter that I often believe I am. I’m going to assume this is my default emotion until such time as all I’m doing full time is writing for a living.

It’s really hard to support myself and tell myself “Dude, you got this. Just do it. Who cares if it isn’t perfect? Done is better than nothing. Your family will give you positive reviews if nothing else. People love you. You’re the man. Two people actually enjoyed quite a bit of your first book’s crapy 2nd revision. That’s got to mean something. Think of all the things you can do when you’re doing this full time. You write 2000 words per hour. If you could do that for 4 hours a day, that’s 8000 words per day. That’s 240,000 words per month. That’s two novels a month! For half the work you’re doing now! And one day that will feel routine! JUST FUCKING WRITE ALREADY!”

And then I’m all … “nah”.

What the fuck is wrong with me?!

So yeah. I’ve got that going on.

I only fill you in on this because frankly I think future new writers need to know that the future great writer, Joseph K Little, was once a complete fraud just like they feel like they are.

But that’s the thing. I’m not a fraud. I might be shit as a writer, but I’m not a fraud … not unless I let myself become one. So that’s what I have to remember, to keep writing. I have a bunch of stories in me I don’t even know are in there yet, and they have to wait in line behind a bunch of others. I gotta write them all! *pikachu punch thing*

*sigh*

OK. Seems the dishwasher is being a dick. I need to go “fix” that. Again. Then I’m back to writing.

Now go create something new.

Mindset

April 14, 2018 by Joseph Little

One of the harder things for me to get around is my current mindset. I live in the negatives of life, always watching out for things to go wrong or for people to do me wrong. I am constantly considering what I have done wrong and how I could do things better. Rarely to I look at the positive sides of things, and when I do, I’m usually doing it in response to giving others critique or support. I’m also quick to forgive others, but I rarely forgive myself nor do I believe others will be quick to forgive me. After all I don’t deserve their forgiveness especially when all I can see is how wrong I’ve been.

Let me tell you that’s a shit way to live.

In my writing journey I have gotten to the point where I have my eye on the prize. It is a little terrifying, but if I can just keep my eye on the prize, and keep marching step by step toward it, I’ll get there. Yet somewhere deep inside, I keep telling myself, I don’t deserve the prize.

That’s bullshit. If I don’t deserve the prize then no one does, and I don’t mean that like I am the most deserving person in the world so much as the “prize” is there for whomever endeavors to strive for it.Things like education and titles don’t make one more deserving. These things may make a person more prepared or more confident, but no more deserving than anyone else. The single most skilled writer on the planet does not deserve the ‘prize’ if they never do what it takes to get it.

Or at least that’s how I see things.

Anyway, I hope you would agree with me that my general mindset is pretty shite. It’s the one thing that I have found that I need to work on right now. In Write Like a Boss by Honoree Corder and Ben Hale, they focus a significant amount of the book on Mindset. Honoree’s world and profession seem to revolve around having the right mindset in fact. During the 2018 Smarter Artists Summit in Austin, Texas earlier this year, hers was the first presentation and for me it was the most impactful. I’m still a few months from putting my marketing in motion, and I think I’ve learned everything that I can regarding writing until I practice for a while, but mindset? I’m so far behind that I seriously have to focus on that as much or more than my writing. This was emphasized to me when I read Chris Fox’s 5000 Words Per Hour. His last chapter is dedicated to mindset and almost seemed like it existed in the book just for me.

So yeah, that’s where I am right now. I’m working on book 3’s rough draft and trying to remember every day to say my new mantra, “So many people love my stories that I support my family on my writing alone.” It’s not true yet, but by making that personal mantra current, it helps set my mindset. Yes I am good enough. Yes I can do this full time.

Instead of thinking about who I want to me, I am going to start being who I can be.

Who do you want to be? Why not start being that person today? Decide on who you want to be and tell yourself every day, every hour, that is who you are. You will begin to act like that person. You will start to make decisions that person would make. Soon you will start seeing opportunities open up for you to allow you to fulfill your current dreams, not because you thought maybe one day it might, but because you said it would happen.

No go forth and create something new.

Words Per Hour and Quality

April 6, 2018 by Joseph Little

Hey folks. In my last post I said that I would soon post an example of my words per hour when I’m writing at 2000 words per hour versus 3750 words per hour. The difference is quite comical, I can assure you. Both of these examples will eventually have to be re-written or even discarded based on what happens during revision. The idea here is to illustrate that while the 2000 words per hour sample is much better in almost every sense, the 3750 words per hour example does something significant. It gets the story out faster and more pure.

So here’s my first sample. This is completely unedited from my original discovery draft of my third novel. Charlotte’s best friend has just woken her up as she sat with a pile of papers surrounding her. I’m trying to ramp up some mystery.

“Sorry,” I said wiping a small bit of very un-ladylike drool from the side of my mouth. I sat up in my chair and began shuffling the papers together. I hadn’t been able to tell what was what and couldn’t draw anything more than some vague ideas of what might be related to what, so I simply scooped those piles up together and then stacked the piles on top of one another.

“Oh Char,” Sophie said in the manner that always told me that she was about to lovingly reprimand me. “You need to get some sleep now that you are human again. And you need to eat right. Eggs and toast will not due anymore. You need fruits and vegetables too. And some proper meat on occasion.”

I winced when she said meat. I’ve eaten enough meat in the last couple years to last me several years, but I knew that she spoke the truth from a place of love. That did not make the fact any more easy to swallow.

“I know. I know,” I said. “I had gotten so used to never needing to sleep unless I was hurt. I feel like I’m sleeping my life away.”

Sophie gave me a look. “Yes my love. I know. Yet you only sleep about four hours a day, unless I count all of the minutes that you fall asleep sewing.”

I nodded.

“Or eating,” she continued.

I nodded some more.

“Or on the privy.”

“Hey!” I objected. “That only happened the one time.”

Sophie laughed. “I thought I had lost you. You had been gone for almost an hour.”

“It was some of the best sleep I have gotten in days.”

“The most disgusting too.”

I could only nod again.

OK. I can’t say that’s my best writing in the world, but it’s pretty clean for me. Now below is a sample from book two. This is from a bit that I was doing for NaNoWriMo. Charlotte and Edmound have broken into a merchant’s home and are looking for incriminating evidence or trade secrets, the like. Everything seemed to be going well enough until they are discovered.

I had 2 days to write 15000 words and it only took me about 4 hours … plus some change as the first hour or so I waffled on if I was going to be able to do this or not. Needless to say I could. My message here is that you can too if you get out of your own way. Now be prepared because this is pretty hard to read, even for me. And I wrote it.

There’s a pounding at the door and the knob begins to jiggle. Edmound is all “OH SHIT” Charlotte is all darn. Let’s move the desk in front of the door. Good thinking. Wait it weights a ton? What? No it doesn’t but it is heavier than I can move. Push man push! Edmound begins to push and then Charlotte starts to push in truth. She pushes just hard enough to allow Edmound to do all the work he can. He’s sweating and his sweat is getting on some of the documents causing the ink to run. They slide the desk over to the door just as the lock clicks and the door starts to open. Something gets in the door, a sword blade wide and keeps the door from closing, but the big old desk is all in the way. Charlotte and Edmound begin gathering papers and the things the decide to steal. Charlotte is all “how are we going to carry all this?” And Edmound is all our I brought bags and she’s all out? And he pulls out a pair of tightly woven cloth bags, like sail material and all double stitched. Where did you put this? In the back of my jacket. The bags have a pair of straps. Charlotte fills hers – she still has some space. Edmound fills his. Banging on door intensifies. So the tow are all ok now what the fuck. Charlotte is all, idk but I’m grabbing some of these books. What they’ll only weight you down? I’m stronger than I look. It’ll be fine. Whatever. Charlotte packs her back full of books. They kick open a window. It’s a long way down. Shit. But it isn’ very far up? Charlotte is all, I can climb that bitch. Bitches love to be climbed. So she climbs out the window, and climbs right up the side of the building to the top of what is the tower. There she finds some well placed rope which she dangles down to the window. Edmound climbs. The door is being chopped in two as Edmound climbs out of the building. Charlotte pulls him up as quickly as he can climb. When he gets over the lip of the roof, a crossbow bolt flies up nearly striking him. Shit. They got guns …l sort of .

Now, there’s some right comedy in there, because that’s how my brain thinks at high speed. In memes and swears. I can clean that up pretty well in revision. Granted some of it is almost golden in its own way, but that’s not the kind of story I’m looking to tell. Not this time at least.

In both instances, I got the story OUT. If you remember my insistence from the prior post, then that will sound familiar. GET THE STORY OUT. A blank page is potential and in a lot of ways perfect, much like the idea of a child. But if you really want to HAVE CHILDREN then you are going to have to realize you’re going to have to do some really nasty things in the beginning. The kids will almost never be exactly as you imagine them. And you might really f’k up a time or two. But that’s ok. That’s what editing … um … psychiatrists are for. Regardless, you’ll probably find that you’re having a lot of fun in the process. Especially in the beginning. 😉

Now I’ve revealed to you my shame. Look at those examples. So much editing needed. But that’s fine. I like editing my stuff. Revision is fun … at first at least 😀

No you go out and create something new.