Writing Stories about writing stories

Hi, Steve Barnes here with Life Writing Live. I am so sorry that it's been a while since I've been on here. Ever since I got back from NorWestcon, life has been harried because I had to jump right into a bunch of projects and get stuff done and it simply disrupted everything that was going on. So I apologize. Mea culpa. Mea culpa. Mea maxi. Mea culpa. I'm going to turn. I've got. Just got this. It's my new little. Let's see, what have I got here? It's my new little recording device. It's kind of cool and I actually kind of wanted to play with this today. And let's just see here. Okay. And boom, there we go. Is that working now? That working. Initializing. And it's going to start recording, hopefully. Yes, it is recording. So we are now recording. And I'm going to use this recording for other purposes. And I basically have a lot of stuff to talk to you about. Once again, if you enjoy these messages, please make sure to share them. It's the only way we know which ones are appealing to people. Like I said, been very, very busy. Been working on a television pilot script. I still can't say too much about it, but I can start telling you that it's based on Tananarive's collection on. Let's see, she did a short story collection about a year and a half ago. Some of the stories were set in a mythical town called Gracetown, a mythical southern town called Gracetown. And so we created. We've created a story that deals with that town that allows us to tell both sort of anthologized stories and continuing stories combined. And it's. It's a crossover between horror genre and another genre. I don't want to be too specific about that because that's part of the fun. And so far we turned in the script on it and we just turned in the second draft of that script. We've got two more drafts to go. People seem to be excited. I mean, well, you know, they're excited enough to pay us money. And that's. That's great. It's always great to hear. It's great to have. So that sounds. That sounds good to you, right? Sounds great to me. So let's see. This week I had to drive out to Harbor College to give a talk on diversity in science fiction. And that was really great. It was on a panel with a bunch of really smart, really good people. Had some fun there, hopefully did some Good. Somebody in the audience apparently said, oh, my God, he changed my life, which is always so good to hear. God, I love hearing that. I owe so much to so many people who changed my life. And the feeling that I can kind of conduct that light, conduct that heat just feels great to me. Been working on promotion for my new book, 12 Days. I'll be talking about that book. More. This is my first solo novel in a couple years, so I'll be talking a lot about that and how I did it and how things came together. Because it's been a very long process, very frustrating process in some ways. But there are a lot of things about it that I really loved doing and had an opportunity to work with. A lot of thematic elements that I enjoy. A lot of the types of writing that I enjoy, enjoy doing are wound into this. It took me years just to figure out how to plot it, how to actually structure the plot. And one of the things that I really enjoyed, I enjoyed hugely was Larry Niven was one of the, one of the first people who read it. And he said he thought that it was superbly plotted. He'd never said that to me before. And I just. Because I put a lot of specific work into that. You know, I felt it. I felt it. So that was like. That was great. Let's see what else is going on. In a couple weeks, I'm going to be flying up to Portland and I'm going to be speaking at the Right on the River Conference in Wenatchee. But before I drive to Wenatchee from Portland, it was a shorter drive from Seattle over to Wenatchee. But I decided to drive up from Portland because if I did that, I could stop in the Columbia Gorge and climb Dog Mountain. Now I want to climb Dog Mountain because dog Mountain is 3,000ft. It's a 3,000 foot incline. And if you can climb 3,000ft in three hours, you are fit enough to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. And that's my big goal for this year. I want to find out whether or not my body can handle climbing Kilimanjaro, whether or not I have the aerobic fitness for it and the muscular endurance for it. Whether or not my joints will handle all that stuff. 15 years ago. God, has it been that long? Just about that long since I went to Tanzania. I was totally confident in my ability to do that. But I just want to know, can I do it now? I mean, I might be fit enough, but my jo. My joint can't. My joints can't handle it. I Don't know. Everything could be fine. And if it feels good when I climb it, then later on this year, I will try climbing it two days in a row and see how that feels. But that's so. That's an important thing. That sound like fun? I mean, just like, really, it's so cool to have goals, things that motivate you so you're not just working out every day. You're working out so that you can accomplish something that you want, you know, because just working out, you know, just doing yoga or doing kettlebells or whatever, it's like, oh, God, I'm just another day's workout. But if I do this, I get this thing over here that I want. That's like, cool, right? You understand the motivation there. You have to keep yourself going. You have to find ways to make it meaningful to you. So let's see. What we want to do is. I wanted to talk today about. I've been talking a little bit about storytelling. I'm always talking about life writing and what life writing is. And what the thing we talk about over@lifewritingpremium.com is. You've heard that URL, right? Is about what happens if you take the skills that you use to write a story, in other words, the structural skills within a story, and you actually apply that so that you're writing a story about writing a story. If you're writing a story about someone writing a story, what would you have them do next? Right. It's a cute little piece of conceptual judo that you do that allows you to take the skills you would use in the story and apply them to the story. Then if you take another step back, you can actually judo that process and apply the skills of writing a story to. To the life that you're living. I'm writing a story about someone who has to live their life while they're writing a story. So now all the different skills. Isn't that cool? It really cracks me up. Once I got the joke on that, it's like an infinitely regressive hall of mirrors here. Once I got that, then I realized that the basic skills. Okay, let's take a look at what a story is. And we were talking about. I recently did a thread about whether or not it is true that every story contains someone who wants to move away from pain or toward pleasure in the arenas of their body, their career, their relationships. I think that it is true enough people had a hard enough time. We were able to find some stories, some very experimental stories by Jorge Luis Borris. That didn't exactly fit into that category, but most do. Especially if you say, well, they're not moving away from pain, they're going into danger, they're saving people. It has nothing to do with their personal. You're not looking at the question of how do people evolve from being selfish, caring only for themselves, to caring about their group, to caring about things that are so important that they're willing to die to sacrifice their lives for larger, larger goal, a larger value. That's just part of the process of spiritual maturation. So stories can start with simple selfishness and move from there to more complex concepts and usually do just like human beings do. And that's the process of maturation to move from short term pleasure. I want to eat this ice cream. To long term pleasure. If I don't eat this ice cream. And if I discipline myself, I can develop the wasteboard abs. It'll look great on the beach this summer or whatever it is that you're doing. So it's moving beyond from simple things to more complex things. But what is the simplest form of simplest explanation of a story that actually helps? Because it is possible. You can say, well, there's only one story. Or you can say there are 52 stories, or 26 stories, or a thousand. There are as many or as few stories as you choose to look at. I mean, that's the truth of it. But I think that it is useful. The question is, what's the simplest definition that is useful? And frankly, just like saying, well, somebody wants something in the arena of body or in the arena of mind or the arena of relationship, we could add greater specificity and break that down. But I think that it is useful that simplicity is useful. So simplicity allows you to make decisions rapidly. So when I say everything that you do is a matter of pain or pleasure, everything is either fear or love. It's not that there aren't things that kind of are slippery or don't quite fit in there. It's that you're dealing with a situation you can react rapidly. This person is angry. Anger is fear. What are they afraid of? If I can deal with the thing that they're afraid of, I'm going to be able to deal with them very effectively. Everything really fit into those categories neatly every time. Of course not. But as a broad way of making a decision rapidly, it works really, really, really well. Okay. So it allows you to make those. There's this story about a cat and a fox were both being chased by dogs and they met in the forest. And while they're taking a breath. The. The fox says, don't worry about those dogs. I've got a thousand ways to escape dogs. Dogs are stupid. And the cat said, wow, a thousand ways. I only have one or two ways to deal with dogs. So the dogs caught up with them and the fox was trying to decide which of the thousand things he was going to do and got torn to pieces. And the cat ran up the tree. So simplicity is a very useful thing. Even if, yeah, we can break this down more. I can break stuff down into thousands of different things. I can do that as much as I want to. But I also like to be able to move and think quickly. So when it comes to story, the simplest explanation of a story is that has been useful to me is to break it into three parts, okay? And that would be objective, obstacle, outcome. Someone wants something, that's their objective. They have to want something because otherwise they're not going to move. There has to be an obstacle. Objective, obstacle, outcome. There has to be an obstacle, something standing in their way. Because story is conflict. If I want something and if I want a sandwich and I go into the kitchen and make a sandwich, and there's peanut butter there, and there's bread there and there's a knife there, I'm sorry, that's not a story. It's an incident within a story. The story starts when there is conflict. And suddenly I don't have any peanut butter. I've got to go to the store. But something's got to happen on my way to the store. Because if I can just get in my car, drive the store, get the peanut butter, come home and nothing happens. There's no conflict. Again, there's no story. And the audience is wondering, when does the story start? A really, really good writer might be able to write that story so that there's no apparent conflict. But there are internal conflicts that are just barely present. And that is a very specialized, very elevated form of storytelling. And if you have not sold dozens of stories, don't try it in general. Go with the kind of thing I'm talking about here. Objective, obstacle, outcome. The outcome. What happens as a result of trying to achieve your objective, Right? So that's the story. Now, if you apply this idea to the writing of the story, you want to write a story, what's the obstacle? I have to find the time, I have to organize my emotions. I have to sit, apply butt to chair every day. That's the obstacle. Obstacle is my laziness, my lack of self confidence, my lack of knowledge, etcetera. Etc. Once I've got the story finished, maybe it's procrastination, maybe it's fear to send it out, maybe it's not knowing where to send out, lack of knowledge, lack of emotions, whatever that stuff is, those are your obstacles in writing the story itself. And then the outcome, hopefully, is a finished story, a story that you can send out. So if you write a story about somebody writing a story, we know what they want. They want to write a story. We know what the obstacles are. And if you're smart, the obstacles that your character is facing are the same as the obstacles that you face. Your fears, your hopes, your dreams. So that in the writing of the story, you force yourself to go through the same process in solving the character's problems that you are solving for yourself. Right? Does that make sense? Once again, isn't that cool? Can't you see how you can apply this to anything that you want? And if you take a step back, the character is in a life where there are other issues that they have. They have issues of love, they have issues of health. So if you're writing a story about a writer, the writing of the writing is only one segment of what they're doing. You step back, and now they're dealing with career and job and this and that. It's an amazing process once you look at this. And I used it in infinite ways. I mean, I use it every single day, and my students use it all the time. And there is a moment when the light goes on in their head and they say, oh, my God, we're just talking problem solving. And if objective, obstacle, outcome is the simplest thing, and it's possible to have extraordinarily complex ideas of story structure and the way story, character and plot and theme all interact. And you could get a master's degree or a doctorate in literature and keep exploring and keep going deeper and deeper. And I'll listen to editors telling me about aspects of story that I've never even considered. But then again, I've had critics look at my stories and say, oh, well, you were using this and you were using this. Yeah, not consciously. It's like saying, I choose rocks because they're pretty. And you notice that it's this type of rock and that type of rock and so forth. And, oh, my God, how did you know that this type of rock did this or this? I'm sorry, I didn't know. I just chose something that was pretty. And my aesthetic sense has developed over time. That's the same thing that's going to Happen with you. The machine, you know, that we talk about where you write a story a day or a story every other day, and you finish what you write. You know, at least one to four stories a month, and you put them in the mail, and you keep them in the mail, and you don't write except editorial request, and you read 10 times as much as you write and you don't stop for 100 stories. That machine is designed for you to be able to consciously, because there are only five or six pieces, and the human mind can hold about seven plus or minus two pieces of information at a time. You can wrap your mind around that entire process. And if you do this thing, you'll get everything else you're looking for, you'll get everything, you'll learn everything, and it'll all be at the level of unconscious competence and you'll be able to function. The same thing is true in life in general. If you say there are three major things I need to control my body, my career, my relationships. It's not that there are thousands of other things, but I can wiggle all those other things into one of those three categories. There's nothing you can mention that I can't wiggle into one of those three categories. So it's useful in its simplicity. But I acknowledge that there is greater complexity. But what I want is to be able to wrap my mind around it so I can just feel it. Have I worked on my career today? Have I told the people that I love that I love them today? Have I connected with the source of my own love within me today? Have I worked my body today? I'm going to be doing yoga as soon as I get finished with this. Actually, I prioritize. I wanted to communicate with you first because I have been remiss in my communications over the last week and a half. So that's out of balance. Got to take care of that. That's applying storytelling objective to communicate, to be in. To be in balance, to keep my career, my body, my relationships all going well. The obstacle life gets in the way that happens, I get tired, I get stressed. Yesterday, Jason had a major brain fart, Couldn't go to school, and it threw my entire day off. And I was in a funk. I mean, I was not happy for much of the day because we were trying to coax him. But by the end of the day, I said, well, I'm not going to let it run my whole day. I print it out, a copy of the book I'm working on with Larry Nevin and Jerry Pornell. Because I know that if I'm working on paper that I can see things that I don't see on the computer screen. So I can actually just sit. If I sat in front of the television, put on a movie and read through the book, just correcting spelling and grammar and closing in space on the paper, getting things done, that started shifting my mood. I started feeling better. Because I was feeling better. Jason wasn't as scared about my mood. We started being able to snuggle on the couch, you know, later on in the day, I was starting to feel. I was feeling. Was feeling much better. By the end of the day, I was feeling great. I'd gotten work done. I had not worked out. So I treated that. Except for my morning ritual. Always do my morning ritual. So I know I have to work out today. And am I going to do kettlebells today? Well, I talked to Tananari. They said, well, you want to work out today together? It says, no, we can't do that today. We can do that tomorrow. Okay, so I'll do yoga today, kettlebells tomorrow. So now I'm back on my schedule and also communicating with you guys. Objective to live a balanced, intense life. Obstacle. That intensity itself can throw things out of whack. But I keep trying to come back to balance. Okay, Outcome. I got work done on my book and other work done in terms of communicating with my agent about the. About the television pilot and let my body rest for a day, which is just fine. Your body needs to rest sometimes. So I got all those things taken care of, because the story I tell myself is that I am a storyteller telling myself stories about the life of a storyteller who tells stories. Okay, so it's that infinite regression. But it's all about the story that I'm telling myself. And that's what makes life writing so much fun. I mean, you can do this. I mean, can you see how you could apply this idea to you? What is your story? We talk about that a lot. What is it that you do with your life? What is it that you want to accomplish? What is your objective? What are the obstacles that stand between you? The objective, Easiest way to overcome your obstacles. Study people who are in the top 1% of whatever field you want to get into. Are some of them unethical? Bad people have corrupted themselves? That's fine. Okay? Ignore those people. Look at the people who've lived good, moral lives. I've never seen a field in which there are not such people. If you can, by some odd Consideration, you could not find them. What you have to do is study multiple people. This person is a successful writer and they write for five hours a day and they drink a bottle of booze every day. This person over here is a successful writer and he beats his children and he spends five hours a day writing. And this person over here is a successful writer and they shoot heroin and get into car crashes all the time and have no human relationships, but they write four hours a day. You start noticing that there are dishonorable bad things these people do. You know, they use drugs and drink all day and beat their kids and crash cars and lie and cheat and steal. But the thing that's in common is they're all writin for four or five hours a day. So you do that. You do the thing that they've got in common, okay? So you, you can make this work. No matter what your morality is, if you believe that you can't succeed without being immoral, you're lying to yourself. Just like unsuccessful people have a mythology that successful people have to be miserable sons of bitches. But successful people, just like successful people, have a mythology that unsuccessful people are lazy tools, okay? Just lazy leeches. It's just not true. In general, the difference between the two groups is you're using different strategies, you're looking at things differently. And usually you weren't smart enough to figure that out yourself. Usually somebody came to you and opened your eyes and said, this is the way to do it. You apprenticed with a master. I apprenticed with Larry Niven for writing and with Steve Muhammad for martial arts and with my mother for being a decent human being. And without those contributions, I would have had to try to figure it all out myself and I would have to have lived four lifetimes. You don't have enough time to figure it out yourself. So I told a story that's my story that I tell myself is that if I want to do something, find the people who've already done it and find out what their story is and begin to live their story. And this is not a matter. It's not talent. Can you see how this isn't talented. Talent may get. You may need talent to get into the top 1% or the top 1% of the top 1%, but not into the top 10%. You can get into the top 10% just by imitating the people who had more ability than you. Because most of that ability was a matter of their focus over time. Some of it is their smarts. There's no question about that. And Some of those smarts are just what they were born with, but an awful lot of it is, how do they spend their time? How do they see things? How do they feel about things? How do they deal with rejection? How do they deal with failure? That stuff you could learn. And in terms of, you know, you might also think, well, I don't have the time to be a writer. Remember the machine. We start with, you know, one sentence a day, right? Well, everybody's got time for one sentence a day. And you can write a book a year if you write one sentence a day. Because what happens is, if you're committed to writing one sentence a day, you stop lying to yourself about not having enough time. See, that's one of the things that happens. One of the differences between authors, people actually get their stuff published. And writers, people who often want to be writers but don't actually write, is the stories they tell. The writer who wants to write and does it is lying about how much time they have, is lying about how much energy they have, is lying about how much talent it takes. Most of it is just, did you do the work? Didn't you do the work? How did you deal with fear? Did you not deal with the fear? Did you model the behaviors of people better than you? Remember that? Read 10 times as much as you write. That's what that's all about. So objective, obstacle, outcome. What do you want to accomplish? What's standing in your way? Where do you want to be? I want to write a book. Laziness and fear stand in my way. And I want to be a published writer. I want to be an author. That's what I want. That's what I saw when I was a kid and I was surrounded by people telling me that I could not do it, could not do it. But I wrote anyway. And I found people who actually succeeded and listened to what they said. And the more of them that I listened to, the easier it was to figure out what the critical path was. They all did some things different, but they all wrote and they all read and they all found a way to deal with rejection, and they all listened to the people who are further along the path than them. And I'm telling you that it works in writing. It works in finding relationships, it works in developing your body. It works in any of these things. What is the story that you tell? Tell a story about someone who tells stories. Do that. And that's the core of what life writing is. It's why it's so great. It's why it's so powerful. Doesn't that sound cool? I mean, seriously, isn't it like, little light goes on. Oh, my God. Really? Does that really work? Yeah. Yeah, it really works. And it's so simple. It just starts with the assumption that you really are smart enough and good enough, you know, you really deserve and that you're writing the story of your life. And if you haven't achieved what you wanted to achieve up until this point, we all know that point in a story, it's the dark night of the soul, or it's the road of trials. And you'll need new powers and new. That's applying this to the hero's journey. That's what we do in Life Writing premium. But you can do it with objective obstacle outcome. Okay, so that's all for today. I have to do some physical work. It's. That's that time for me today. Thank you for joining me once again. I'm so sorry that I haven't been with you for a few days. It's been intense. It's been intense. But I love you. I really do. Life. What is it? Life is what happens while you're making other plans. And so that's true of life writing, too. So if you enjoyed this, you'll share this. If you enjoy this. Right? Okay. And you'll sign up over lifewritingpremium.com if you think that this sounds like something that will be good for you. Lifewritingpremium. Com and you'll let me know anything that you want to hear me talk about. I owe you people. You're my peeps, you're my tribe, and I love you dearly. And you take care and have a wonderful, wonderful day.