My first post about writing... mostly.

Like most people with a creative bent, I am frequently plagued by consistently low self-esteem and crippling bouts of self-doubt. This often causes me to question both the wisdom and the motivation behind many of my decisions, although not usually until long after it is possible to make a different decision. This is why I'm dedicating my first writing post to answering the same question every other writing blogger has answered for their first post since time immemorial; "why do I want to be a writer", or more specifically, "why do I want to be a professional writer of fiction?"

I won't lie to you and say that people often ask me why I want to be a writer. They don't. The only writing related questions anyone ever asks me are, "when will your novel be finished" and "can I read it?" I won't be addressing those questions here though, as they are too easily answered ("eventually", and "only if you are willing to either buy it or edit it" respectively), and don't provide me with adequate space to be witty and charming on a blog that no-one few people read.

How "The Voice" ruined TV for me

I'll begin this, my first TV related post, with a few caveats. I don't actually watch very much television, and what I do watch has been Tivoed* and de-commercialed. I haven't seen more than 4 or 5 commercials in the last 15 years and I probably don't even know how to deal with a commercial break anymore. I very seldom watch a show on the same day it airs, and I would be lost if I couldn't rewind and fast forward at will.  I also watch a particularly eclectic mix of shows. The idea of turning on the TV and watching whatever comes on seems very foreign to me.

I can’t watch America’s Got Talent any more. Or Canada’s Got Talent. Or Britain’s GotTalent, for that matter. I used to enjoy all three versions of the “Got Talent” franchise, as well as both the British and American versions of X Factor, but they are no longer on my “to watch” list, and it’s all because of The Voice.

The Voice is, much like X Factor or Got Talent, a competition show primarily for singers (AGT has been won by a singer every season). The format of The Voice, however, is different in some very fundamental ways. On The Voice, in case you haven’t seen it, contestants are pre-screened by the producers and only the best are invited back to audition in front of the judges. The judges listen to the auditions while facing away from the stage, and judge acts based solely on their voices.

If they like what they hear they can hit their button and turn their chair, indicating that they would like to add the singer to their team. If only one judge turns their chair, they get that singer. If more than one judge turns, the singer chooses who they want to work with. After selecting their teams, the judges mentor the singers as they compete against each other. It is a format that emphasizes the skill and talent of the singers and minimizes the popularity contest element prevalent in the other shows.

I have to say that I thoroughly enjoy the variety aspect of the Got Talent shows. It isn't all singers doing much the same thing, with much the same songs. The sheer variation and the creativity people put into trying to make unlikely things entertaining is, in and of itself, entertaining. What I've never liked about the Got Talent series is the open mockery of people who plainly have no business being on a public stage, who generally seem unaware of their complete lack of ability, and who in some cases seem mentally ill.

What makes it worse is that what you see on the show has been prescreened by the producers. We are supposed to be laughing at the poor, hapless schmuck belting out an off key rendition of some tune that was barely popular in 1983, let alone now. I’ve never liked that aspect of the show and, after watching The Voice, I find it turns my stomach.

The Voice shows that you can have an extremely entertaining show based only on actual talent, where making a mockery of some person’s dreams and ambitions is as unnecessary as it should be. On a recent episode of Canada’s Got Talent, Stephan Moccio actually said to a fellow human being, “The best part was that you actually thought you could win.” What a smug little... well, let’s keep this post family friendly. Needless to say I don’t think I’ll be watching much of the “Got Talent” audition shows any more. I may stop watching the rest of the season entirely.

The only things I really have against the X Factor when compared to The Voice is the quality of the performers and the judges. During season 1 of The Voice, at one point Adam Levine made a comment that any of the contestants on the show would have won Idol or X Factor. I find it difficult to argue with this, as I was thinking much the same thing myself. With the exception of Josh Krajcik, I didn’t find any of the contestants on X Factor to be compelling enough that I wanted to hear more of them. I have bought both DiaFrampton and Javier Colon’s albums (didn’t care for Javier’s, but loved Dia’s album) and am planning to have a listen to Beverly McClellan’s album in the near future. Overall, a much higher quality of performer, I think.

Likewise, The Voice has better and more interesting judges than X Factor. Nicole and Paula (replaced for season 2) were clueless numbwits for most of the season. I cringed any time either one of them opened her mouth. L.A. Reid was competent but lacked anything resembling a personality, and Simon Cowell is Simon Cowell.

On the Voice, Blake Shelton seems like a genuinely nice guy, Cee Lo is 5’2”** of awesome, and Adam Levine is one of the smartest and best spoken music industry insiders I’ve seen. Christina Aguilera… well, she believes her own press too much, and doesn’t seem to believe in wearing clothing that actually covers anything, but is otherwise not overly offensive.

The Voice is a talent show the way talent shows should be. It celebrates great singers without regard for image, age, gender (it's sometimes surprisingly hard to tell by listening), or any other irrelevant criteria. It promotes the enjoyment of truly talented people without resorting to the public mockery of those who aren’t (but think they are). It is judged by people who are demonstrated experts in the field they are judging, and who are interested first and foremost in the careers of the contestants rather than their own waning and inexplicable fame (with the possible exception of Xtina).

The Voice airs Monday nights at 8/7C on NBC, or whenever you like on the “Tivo”.

*The Internet is my Tivo.

** According to IMDB he’s 5’6”, but he looks shorter to me.

So, You're Moving to China: The Sound and the Fury

Dear Imaginary Person,

[name redacted] mentioned that you were planning on spending some time in China and asked me to fill you in a bit about what to expect. As I do love the sound of my own voice (clack of my own keyboard?), I am happy to help.

The first thing that struck me when I arrived in China was the noise. Well, no, that’s not quite true. The first thing that struck me was the heat and humidity. I grew up in the Canadian prairies; 30°C is a hot summer day, and 0% humidity is normal. I arrived in Hangzhou on July 9, 2004. It was in the vicinity of 45°C with a relative humidity of sauna%. I had trouble breathing for the first few days.

Once I got used to the weather, though, the first thing I really noticed was how noisy China is. Chinese people will tell you that it’s because China has too many people¹ and it’s true that, at least along the heavily developed East coast, there is an awful lot of traffic, construction, and crowding – all of which contribute to the elevated level of ambient noise.  The thing is, while I lived for 7 years in Hangzhou, a wealthy city of about 10 million people (many of whom own cars), I currently live in a small city (DongYang) of only 1 million people and I have spent a lot of time in small villages of a few hundred people. They are all noisy. All of them.

I have developed a theory to account for this. The theory is this: Chinese people are loud. They talk loudly, they eat loudly, and they blow their noses loudly (and often without the benefit of a tissue). They watch TV loudly, and they listen to music loudly. I’m still not entirely sure why they are loud, but it isn’t because of too many people. On the contrary; the smaller the village, the louder the villager. Two middle-aged DongYang ladies having a conversation in an otherwise empty room are audible from three buildings away, and their cell phone ringtone can be heard in the next village². The default volume setting on most televisions here is “distortion”, and the majority of shops in most downtown shopping areas put large PA speakers outside their doors to blast passersby with the latest Japanese and Korean pop super-hits (and Lady Gaga, of course)³.

Don’t let any of this bother you, by the way. You’ll soon develop the ability to tune the majority of it out completely. You might not even notice it as much as I did. Keep in mind that we Canadians are a pretty quiet bunch (3 Chinese people make about as much noise as 30 Canadian prairie-dwellers), so it was a bit of a shock to my system. If you are from a bigger city, or a large family (especially a large Chinese family) you might not notice anything out of the ordinary at all; until Chinese New Year, anyway.

Chinese New Year makes the rest of the year seem like the cozy confines of a library or crypt by comparison. Everyone (and this will include you) who is in China for Chinese New Year makes a video of themselves “reporting from the front lines” of wherever the US is currently dropping bombs. The unrealistic aspect is that the US never drops that many bombs, that steadily, for that long. In the major urban centers they have restrictions on the fireworks and actually enforce them much of the time. In the country side… not so much. This most recent CNY (old-timer speak for Chinese New Year, of course) was our first in DongYang.

In Hangzhou the fireworks go on for two or three days. They are non-stop the whole day leading up to New Year’s Eve, and then peter off towards 3am or so. In Dongyang, we experienced 2 solid weeks of non-stop bombardment. I’m serious. For two weeks there was not a single moment of a single day that we couldn’t hear the explosions of fireworks. Day time, night time; it didn’t matter, stuff was exploding. Fireworks were being set off at the base of our building. We live on the ninth floor. Most fireworks sold in China explode between 8 and 12 stories up, so we had firework sparks hitting our balcony doors pretty regularly. It was insane.

At any rate, I hope none of this has scared you off or made you second guess your plans. I also hope you aren’t a light sleeper. You may want to acclimatize yourself by trying to have a conversation while blow-drying your hair or by hanging out with airplane mechanics while they work. The noise isn’t really a huge problem; it’s just one of the many differences I had to get used to.

Yours,

Mike

1. This is the reason Chinese people will give you for almost any oddity you mention about China. It is almost never the actual reason. China does have a lot of people, but the population density isn't that much greater than in many other places.

2. I'm exaggerating slightly.

3. I'm not exaggerating at all.

Look! Categories! ------------------->

The life cycle of the common blog is a strange thing. You would think, given that every blog springs forth whole from the forehead of its creator, that they would all be individual and unique and snowflake-like. Not even remotely. What you have to keep in mind is that, while people are indeed often unique and individual and snowflake-like, they are also even more often utterly predictable.

In the course of my research¹ for this post, I discovered that there are three types of blog. They are, in no particular order; the Bubble, the Blue Moon, and the Butterfly². They all begin in the same way and for the same reason. Generally speaking, a new blog is born because the would-be blogger has something to say. Maybe they have a newly formed opinion about something, or recently had an unusual experience that they want to tell the world about, or an awesome new recipe they tried. At first they find they have lots of things to say, and boy do they say them. The first few weeks of a new blog's life are full of frenetic activity as post after post is published.

The problem is, most of us don't have unusual experiences very often (that's why they're unusual) and opinions (as they say) are like assholes; everybody's got one, and most of them aren't very interesting. What this means is that, sooner or later (usually sooner) the new blogger runs out of things to say. This is where a new blog splits off to become one of the three types.

-   -   -

If the blog is of the Bubble variety, by far the most common, it pops and disappears never to be seen again. Having run out of things to say, the blogger loses interest and stops posting. In the fullness of time they may even forget that they ever had a blog at all. Sad.

If it is one of the less common Blue Moon variety, it doesn't disappear entirely, but rather becomes reclusive. The blogger still posts when the mood strikes, randomly and infrequently, and we only hear from these blogs once in a, you’ve guessed it, blue moon.

The third type of blog, the Butterfly, is possibly the least common of all. These blogs occur when, rather than ignoring or neglecting his blog, the blogger recognizes the problems inherent in every new blog and takes steps to save its life. Wrapping their stunted, ugly creation in strands of shimmering gossamer they breathe new life into it through a radical approach known as "planning". What emerges from the cocoon is, hopefully, something far more interesting and beautiful than what went in.

-   -   -

My blog, this blog, was never going to be a Bubble - I'm too stubborn for that - but it very nearly became a Blue Moon. I'm happy to report, though, that steps have been taken. Whether what emerges from the cocoon in this case is sustainable and beautiful, or a misborn monstrosity, only time will tell. I'm excited to find out.

The steps I have taken so far to save my blog consist primarily of talking to myself. I asked myself two questions: what do I want to get out of a blog, and what do I have to offer those misguided souls who choose to read it? Put another way, why should I write, and what should I write about?

The answer to the first question was fairly straightforward - I mostly just want to reinforce writing as a daily habit (the unbreakable, unshakeable kind). I quit smoking last year after 25 years of nasty, so I know firsthand the power and inertia a good solid habit holds. As a secondary goal, I'd like to improve the quality of (as Chuck Wendig would say) "my wordsmithy". Improving my penmonkey-ship (thanks again, Chuck), though, is more of a side-effect for me. The main goal is to write more.

The answer to the second question was slightly less straightforward, but not overly difficult to figure out. I looked at the blogs I read and realized that there are two main reasons I read a blog; because the author shares one of my interests, or because the author possesses knowledge or skills I want to acquire. The question of what to write, therefore, boils down to what do I like, and what do I know?

-   -   -

And so we arrive at this. Starting next week I will be writing on a specific topic for most days of the week. My non-alliterative titles are:

l  Food Monday

l  Music Tuesday

l  Technology Wednesday

l  Stuff I Watch (on TV) Thursday

l  Writing Friday

l  So You're Moving To China Sunday, and

l  Open Letter of the Month

Mondays will be about food, obviously. Generally I will share a recipe, as often as possible with a video to show how to make it. I'm a long time foodie, as well as being fairly competent in the kitchen. Also, I have lived in China for the past 8 years, so I've been forced to start making from scratch many of the things I would normally have bought pre-made back in Canada.

Tuesdays I will write music reviews. I'm a classically trained percussionist, and have played drums (jazz, blues, rock and heavy metal) for most of my life. I'm also an experienced singer and a not-so-experienced guitar player.

Wednesdays and Fridays will have some connection with tech and writing respectively. Both topics belong more on the interest side of things than the knowledge side, I'm afraid. I've wanted to make my living as a writer for as long as I can remember, and I took my first computer apart more than 20 years ago, so hopefully I’ll be able to muster up some insights into both of these topics..

We don't watch much TV in our household; living in China doesn't afford many opportunities for quality programming. Using undisclosed methods, however, I am able to get my hands on select shows of interest. I will use Thursdays post to talk about whatever it is we're watching these days (at the moment, season 2 of "The Voice", mostly).

Sunday will be my way of writing about life in China. I want to write about living in China, but it’s been done so many times by so many other Westerners in China that I came up with a conceit to make it more interesting (for me, not necessarily for you). I will write about living in China as if I were giving advice to an imaginary person who is planning on moving here. Woohoo, let the good times roll!

I'm also planning to do an "Open Letter of the Month".  My goal is to take various "-isms" and "-ists" and put them under the microscope. This will allow me to exercise my essay writing and rhetorical skills, and will give me a soap-box from which to pour forth my opinions. I'm a very opinionated person and if I don't let them out from time to time my head explodes.

So there you have it, a new era for the Lived-in Life. To the 7 of you who already read my blog, I hope you enjoy what I have in store. And to anyone who tags along in the future, I hope you find something here of value.

1. No research was actually performed

2. Pure coincidence that they all start with 'B'

Click Here, Searchmonkey!

As I travel around the intertubes these days, I see more and more articles and blog posts and Google+ conversations about marketing and SEO (search engine optimization, as it turns out) and, while I don't get why so many people spend so much time trying to game the system instead of just doing what they do, I thought I'd give it a go with this post.

I don't really care that much how many hits my blog gets in a day (a week might be a more useful time frame, actually). I know I will never be as popular as Justin Bieber or Jeremy Lin (until a few days ago I’d never heard of Jeremy Lin). I don't write about Apple or iPhones, or about Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum. I'm just an as-yet-unpublished author (much like Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, and Stephanie Meyer once were) carving out my little space on the internet. Oh, apparently J.K. Rowling is writing a new book. Aren't we all?

I could write about the iPhone, actually. My wife owns an iPhone, and I am responsible for iphone maintenance. We live in China, as you might know, so I am also responsible for jailbreaking the iphone and installing iphone apps on the iphone. I won't write about iphones, though, because I despise that iphone. I've lost track of the number of hours I've spent trying to get that iphone to do what I want it to do rather than what Steve Jobs wants it to do. It's my iphone Mr. Jobs, not yours. I've also lost track of how often I've had to reinstall all of the iphone's apps and media after someone plugged it into a new computer and itunes wiped everything from it. Stupid iphone.

After owning an iphone and an ipod touch for a few years now, I will never buy another Apple product, so no writing about Apple and iphones, and certainly nothing about the ipad, the ipad 2, or the ipad 3. I'm writing this post on my ASUS eeepad (Transformer TF101), which suits my needs more than an ipad 3 ever could. The transformer has a keyboard and USB ports, the ipad 3 does not. The transformer runs flash, the ipad 3 does not. The transformer allows me to work with common document formats and actually create content, the ipad 3 does not. No, I have nothing to say about the ipad 3, so I won't write about them.

I could write about Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, and Newt Gingrich, but writing about politics makes me too angry. I think Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum are both insane, Newt Gingrich is a liar, philanderer and a waste of skin, and Ron Paul isn't even a real conservative (I’m halfway convinced he’s not a real human – he certainly looks like some sort of zombie puppet). Also, my politics are generally well left of center and I'm not American, so I find it difficult to care very much about Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and their friends.

I could write about Jeremy Lin. I live in Zhejiang province (in China). Jeremy Lin’s mother’s mother was born here. She moved to Taiwan in the 1940s, married Jeremy Lin’s mother’s father and then gave birth to Jeremy Lin’s Mother. I am not sure when Jeremy Lin’s mother’s parents moved to the United States, but that’s where Jeremy Lin was born and raised. This doesn’t stop everyone in Zhejiang province from claiming that Jeremy Lin is also from Zhejiang province, of course. People are weird.

As to Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, and Stephanie Meyers; well, I really just included their names to get hits. Of course, if your only goal is to get hits, the best word you can try to work into your writing is “porn”. I did a quick check on a list of search word trends, and porn was far and away the most searched term in the whole world. Porn, porn, porn as far as the eye can see. I guess it’s true what they say about the internet having been invented solely to distribute porn. I don’t know if pr0n is as popular as porn… it looks like it isn’t. Porn is absolutely the king of search. Hooray for porn!

I'm not sure why anyone would bother with this sort of thing, though. Anyone who gets here as the result of searching for the keywords I've included will almost certainly be disappointed by what they find. Unless you are only trying to turn a quick buck through ad revenue (good luck, by the way), tricking people into landing on your page is a useless endeavor, and actually does more harm than good to your brand or image. A much better strategy would be to provide something of value to your target market/audience, and grow that audience organically.

I'd rather 10 people read my blog regularly because they enjoy what I write than have 10,000 people glance at it once and decide that I’m a douchebag; even if none of those 10 people is Jeremy Lin.

That's my boy

Yesterday was a hellish day filled with extended travel via public transportation and mind-numbing amounts of governmental bureaucracy. We had to go from Hangzhou to the Canadian Consulate in Shanghai to apply for Tyler's proof of citizenship card and passport. By the time we'd arrived back where we'd started (not home, sadly) we were sore, cranky and exhausted. I did, however, learn something very important yesterday. My son is awesome. I can't tell you how proud I am of that little man.

Our day began at 5:30am. It was raining, and we had to catch a taxi to the train station on the other side of Hangzhou's downtown. We counted on at least 40 minutes in the taxi, and our train tickets were for 7:00. What we didn't count on was the 20 minutes it took to catch a taxi, or the taxi driver's inexplicable refusal to drive faster than 40km/h. We also didn't count on Tyler throwing up in the taxi. We had debated, when packing for the trip, whether or not we needed to bring a change of clothes for him. Given that it was just a day trip we decided that extra clothes would just be extra hassle to carry. He has been sick for a couple of weeks with a sinus infection that recently relocated to his chest/throat, but he hasn't been having any stomach problems at all. Boy, were we surprised. On the plus side, it did convince the driver to go faster.

We arrived at the train station, smelling of sour milk and wet-wiping each other's clothes as best we could, at 6:55am. I grabbed all the bags and the folded up stroller (the week before Chinese New Year the crowds at any train station in China are a concrete example of what 1.4 billion people actually look like - no chance of actually using the stroller there) and my wife paid the fare (plus a bit for the puke) and grabbed the baby. We then proceeded to, as they say, "haul ass". We made the train with almost a minute to spare.

In a rare moment of clarity and intelligence we had opted to take the new(ish) high-speed train from Hangzhou to Shanghai. According to the display at the front of the car we were soon cruising along at a speed of 308km per hour. The trip, which used to take more than 2 hours, now takes 50 minutes. I love that train.

Upon arriving in Shanghai we unfolded the stroller and wandered around looking for an open ticketing window. After a time we found one and stood in line behind 1.8 billion people to buy our return tickets for that afternoon. The consulate was only open until noon, so we bought return tickets for 1pm. Tickets purchased, we grabbed a quick bite of breakfast. As a bit of advice, the Chinese KFC version of a sausage and egg McMuffin has all of the weaknesses of the North American McDonald's version (the sausage and the egg, primarily) with the added detriment of not even being on a muffin - they use a regular bun. Gross.

Now fed and ticketed, we made our way to the subway terminal that connects to the train station. We only had to go 8 stops, but in those 8 stops I learned that Shanghai's subway system is clean, efficient, and, at 8:30am on a Wednesday - very, very crowded. We managed to get off at the correct stop, however, and made our way up to street level where we remembered that it was raining.

I would like to pause here to point something out. Tyler usually gets up at 8am. Here it was, 9am, and we'd already been on the road for 3 hours. He'd been gotten up 2 hours early and had puked in a taxi, but my stuffed-up, coughing, sleepy little 14 month old was his usual cheerful self. On the train he sat quietly and ate a bit of apple, and on the subway he held on to the pole with me so we wouldn't fall over when the train stopped (giggling the whole way), and now he was pointing at and calling our attention to the sights of Shanghai as we tried to hold an umbrella over his stroller and walk at the same time.

Note: I didn't take this picture. This is from the portrait studio we went to about a month ago.

After a few minutes of trying to determine which direction the Canadian Consulate was from our subway stop, we'd had enough of the rain and the crowds and hailed a taxi. We knew it was only a few blocks, but we weren't sure which blocks and didn't want to wander aimlessly.

I truly don't want to re-live the ordeal at the consulate, so I won't go into details. I will say that handing in two applications involved standing in a rather long line three separate times and took almost 4 hours. Also, they keep the temperature in the consulate at a balmy 27 or 28°C, which would be fine except that it was about 6°C outside and most places in this part of China leave the windows open year round, so you tend to dress accordingly (in many warm layers). We roasted. Tyler spent the 4 hours wandering around (with his mother) and saying hello to strangers, and playing with my car keys. We left the Consulate, papers properly filed, at 12:48pm - 12 minutes before the departure of our train.

Knowing we had no chance of making that train, we walked back to the subway entrance (now that we knew where it was). Tyler had fallen asleep in the elevator at the consulate, and napped in his stroller until we got on the subway train. We rode the 8 stops back to the train station with the 2.4 billion other people who were also riding the subway in Shanghai that day, sitting in the seat that an old lady had shamed someone into giving up for us. Tyler spent the whole time telling the old lady a story (he can't really talk yet, but he doesn't let that stop him).

Once at the train station we stood in line behind the 3 billion other people at the ticket window to change our tickets to a later train. We didn't have time to catch the 2 o'clock train so we opted for the 3 o'clock. We grabbed some lunch in a little restaurant in the train station, and Tyler played a game of "funny face/giggle" with the waitresses. All of them. I don't think anyone else was served food the whole time we were there.

We made the train with plenty of time to spare, and Tyler spent a large portion of the 50 minute journey playing peek-a-boo with the lady across the aisle. Once back in Hangzhou, we stood in line at the taxi stand behind approximately 9 billion people. Tyler spent the wait finding litter to point at and say "臭"(chou="stinky"). Traffic was lighter than we expected on the way back to my sister-in-law's place, and we arrived shortly before 5pm - almost 11 hours after we'd left. After supper, an hour or so of "chase-auntie-with-balloons" and a bath he almost lasted through the first two verses of "Baby Beluga" before falling soundly asleep for the night.

While it is true that after our very long day Tyler slept through until 8:30 the next morning, woke up enough to drink a bottle of formula and then went back to sleep until noon, it should be noted that he made it through the entire ordeal without crying, fussing, and without a single temper tantrum. Like I said, my son is awesome.

Sheepish grin, begin again.

The two months of silence following my last post may have clued you in, but allow me to confirm what you may have already suspected: this year's NaNoWriMo attempt was, again, a complete failure.

Well, perhaps I should qualify that. I finished up the month of November at a word count of 5155 words - somewhat short of my (admittedly hubristic) goal of approximately 200,000 words. I failed to complete the first chapter, never mind two novels. I didn't even come close to achieving my goals, so in that respect I failed. I did, however, learn an incredible amount about myself, the writing process, and how the one fits with the other. 

You may have noticed, in my last post, that I referred to my plans in terms of how many hours I had available. I ended up setting my writing goals that way - in terms of time spent. This was a mistake. "Butt in chair" is a vital concept for someone who wants to be a writer, but it is a prerequisite, not a goal. I will forever more set writing goals in terms of words on the page, because that is the only metric that means anything. 4,000 words is 4,000 words but 3 hours of buttchair time could be anything from several thousand words to none (psst, it was none more often than not). The goal is to put words on paper, not to sit in front of a computer for a certain length of time.

Goals were an important aspect of my learning experience in this year's NaNo. I learned that I had set crappy ones. The goals I set for myself in November were concrete goals, so I didn't fall into that trap, but they weren't the goals I really wanted to achieve. On the day to day side of things, I didn't want to spend a certain amount of time in front of the computer, I wanted to write a certain number of words. With my goals for the month, I came to realise that what I truly wanted to accomplish was not so much the writing of a novel, but the publishing of a novel. While the writing of a novel is a necessary (and thoroughly enjoyable) step in achieving that goal, it isn't necessarily the best first step.

One of the reasons jumping right into the writing of a novel was a bad first step for me is that I lack endurance. A novel takes a very long time to write. Weeks and months of grinding away at something without getting any meaningful feedback from anyone but yourself. It seems impossible for me to maintain the self-belief necessary to keep plodding away in the absence of feedback. The doubt begins to creep in: I've never published anything. Why would I invest this much time and effort into something without a reasonable expectation of success? Keeping in mind that my end goal for writing a NaNo novel was always to get it published, and also keeping in mind how difficult this is to achieve, these doubts had the not inconsiderable heft of truth and reason behind them.

Luckily for me I was, at one time in my life, a high-performance athlete. I know how to build endurance. I know how to build it safely, efficiently, and (most important of all) how to maintain it once you've built it up. You don't build endurance by going as hard as you can for as long as you can, until you drop from exhaustion. You build endurance by going as hard as you can, for short periods of time, as often as you can. As the time required for recovery decreases the time you perform for increases until you can go as hard as you want for as long as you want and still go out dancing that night. Mind out of the gutter, people.

With that strategy in mind, and with my newly refined writing goals in hand, I have embarked on a new journey.

TaDaaaaaaaa!

I am signing up for "Write 1 Sub 1". The idea is that you write one piece of fiction (of any length) every week and submit one piece of fiction (not necessarily the same one) for publication every week for a year. As the first week of January is pretty much over now, I'll be writing two next week and then at least one a week after that. I've got my market listings ready to go, I've got duotrope bookmarked, and I've got a list of story ideas a quarter of a mile long. I'm locked and loaded. Time to build some endurance.

The writing part is under my control. I will write a minimum of 52 pieces of short fiction this year. Submitting is likewise under my control. I will submit a minimum of 52 pieces of short fiction this year. I'm hoping to publish at least one of those pieces, but that is less under my control than the others so I'm not going to state it as a goal (just a hope). Write and submit, this I can do.

Now who's with me?