Procrastinate to Avoid Fear

Earlier this week one of my old college buddies - Summer - posted this article on her Facebook account: Why Writers Are the Worst Procrastinators by Megan McArdle.

It was an interesting read, and one that doesn't relate to just writers; it can be said about anyone who showcased natural talent in something. However, I feel like she sort of lost focus somewhere along the way. The end of the article didn't seem to relate at all to the starting thesis of "Writers are too good at English class". Which, by the way, you can therefore come up with the similar theses: "Lead singers were too good in Show Choir" or "Athletes were too good in gym" or "Lawyers were too good on the debate team", and so on. Anyway, while she did seem to get a bit off-track with her article's train of thought, she also came up with some pretty good points along the way. Thing is, these points aren't REALLY about procrastination. They're about fear. Fear of inadequacy - specifically - and how it tends to drive us towards procrastination.

A fear that she believes stems from school, and how English classes being easy for the majority of writers is actually a bad thing.

This teaches a very bad, very false lesson: that success in work mostly depends on natural talent. Unfortunately, when you are a professional writer, you are competing with all the other kids who were at the top of their English classes. Your stuff may not — indeed, probably won’t — be the best anymore.

She then explains how believing in just your natural born talent - which has gotten you through English classes effortlessly - makes you one heck of a procrastinator out in the real world; especially after realizing that you probably aren't the Cream of the Crop any longer.

If you’ve spent most of your life cruising ahead on natural ability, doing what came easily and quickly, every word you write becomes a test of just how much ability you have, every article a referendum on how good a writer you are. As long as you have not written that article, that speech, that novel, it could still be good. Before you take to the keys, you are Proust and Oscar Wilde and George Orwell all rolled up into one delicious package. By the time you’re finished, you’re more like one of those 1940’s pulp hacks who strung hundred-page paragraphs together with semicolons because it was too much effort to figure out where the sentence should end.

Does this fear sound familiar? That Schrödinger's cat theory of authorship: you are either excellent or terrible, but you won't know which until you're done writing, and so until you're done you can still be both. Therefore, procrastination allows you to stay in your "I really am a good writer; I'll prove it when I'm actually done writing" bubble. Once you stop procrastinating and you finish your project, however, that bubble just might have to pop. Sure, you could very well be just as awesome as you perceive yourself to be while in that bubble, but then there's that fear that maybe you aren't. As long as you procrastinate and don't finish your project you can avoid showcasing how much of a writing schmuck you truly are.

Megan McArdle discusses this concept with Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, who - according to McArdle - is "one of the best-known experts in the psychology of motivation."

[Dweck] discovered through her research, not everyone reacts to [failure] by breaking out in hives. While many of the people she studied hated tasks that they didn’t do well, some people thrived under the challenge. They positively relished things they weren’t very good at — for precisely the reason that they should have: when they were failing, they were learning.

All of us who procrastinate out of fear of failing should really pay attention here.

...the people who dislike challenges think that talent is a fixed thing that you’re either born with or not. The people who relish [challenges] think that [talent is] something you can nourish by doing stuff you’re not good at.
[Dweck] now identifies the former group as people with a “fixed mind-set,” while the latter group has a “growth mind-set.” For "growth" people, challenges are an opportunity to deepen their talents, but for “fixed” people, [challenges] are just a dipstick that measures how high [a person's] ability level is. Finding out that you’re not as good as you thought is not an opportunity to improve; it’s a signal that you should maybe look into a less demanding career, like mopping floors.

Haven't we all more-or-less felt this way at some point? Isn't this why it's so hard for people to both willingly ask for critiques and happily accept them? All us beta-readers and critiquers wish to do is help the writer improve. To show off the failings - maybe teach why they are failings - and help the writer overcome them. Help them grow. Yet, instead of seeing it as a growing opportunity, so many of the people I have beta-read for shrink away at the massive amount of notes I gave them; assuming it's official proof that they truly can't write.

They completely ignore the positive feedback I give them; the encouragement. They don't seem to recognize that I wouldn't bother putting in that much effort in correcting them and helping them improve if I didn't have faith in their writing. If I didn't see the talent they just need to nourish.

Yes, Omnibladestrike, I am looking squarely at you here!
STOP BEING SUCH A FIXED MIND-SET PERSON!!!

Although, to be fair, it has happened to even the best of us. To this day I have yet to submit anything in to the critiques section of Writers’ Huddle. Mainly because I see these more experienced writers on the board, and instead of thinking the way I should - that they are there to help me, and have the wisdom and experience to do so - I end up fearing that my work - which is still largely fanfiction - won't be deemed "worthy" in comparison. That they'll scoff at my lack of talent and/or ability. That they won't even bother critiquing because they don't see enough potential to put in the effort. That they'll look at my works like "Come on, kid, send us something when you're being serious."

Even though I KNOW none of that will happen, I KNOW that they will be kind and sincere and will genuinely put in the effort to help me improve, I still have that fear. I still get nervous that having more experienced writers than myself critique my work will prove that I just don't have the talent. Ignoring that I can still NURTURE the talent so I can become "good enough".

I won't state who because I wouldn't want to embarrass anyone, but I even had a member of the online writing group I started up - The Struggling Writers Society - inform me that even though he would love to have some of his things critiqued, he was afraid to show off what he had to the group. I reassured him that we're all very kind and nurturing people who just want to watch each other succeed. I don't think it helped though, because he hasn't spoken on the matter since, and there is still nothing in the critiques section of our group forum.

Megan McArdle discussed this idea even further in her article. Turns out it's more than simply a fear of hitting a Talent Plateau in something you thought you were astonishing at. It's a fear said plateau will reveal that you were never truly good to begin with.

This fear of being unmasked as the incompetent you “really” are is so common that it actually has a clinical name: impostor syndrome.

If [Fixed Mind-Set people are] forced into a challenge they don’t feel prepared for, they may even engage in what psychologists call “self-handicapping”: deliberately doing things that will hamper their performance in order to give themselves an excuse for not doing well.

"No, I'm not an impostor. I really am as skilled as I claim I am. I just didn't give this one my all, and that's why it's crap."

It's a nice shield to hide behind, isn't it? A way to explain why you can't measure up to The Greats in writing; or whatever field you're afraid of hitting a Talent Plateau in. The problem with self-handicapping is that you never show off your best. You're too afraid to show your best to anyone because your best might be crap. You're too afraid that your best won't cut it.

But, what if your best really is as great as you hope it is? No one will ever know, and you'll never become the success you wish to be. If it turns out that you were right in your fear and you CAN'T cut it right now, how do you ever expect to improve so you CAN cut it if you never give it your all, and then try to make your all better next time?

On top of all of that, you also need to remember that none of those Greats that you're measuring yourself against are truly as "great" as you think. The works you love so much you practically memorized them are all the finished, polished product. You never read any of them as a first draft.

Think about how a typical English class works...Students are rarely encouraged to peek at early drafts of [the works they are reading]. All they see is the final product, lovingly polished by both writer and editor to a very high shine. When the teacher asks “What is the author saying here?” no one ever suggests that the answer might be “He didn’t quite know” or “That sentence was part of a key scene in an earlier draft, and he forgot to take it out in revision.”

I know I always hated that part of English class. Teachers trying to get us to read in between the lines to see what the story is REALLY about. Always made me feel like my stories were too simplistic because they were straight forward. No hidden agendas. No subtle commentary. I wrote what my characters showed me and told me. Simple as that. Heaven forbid the same were true about any of the stories we read in school.

There is another valid point that McArdle makes in regard to not being able to read the earlier drafts of a classic novel.

“You never see the mistakes, or the struggle,” says Dweck. No wonder students get the idea that being a good writer is defined by not writing bad stuff....

Unfortunately, in your own work, you are confronted with every clunky paragraph, every labored metaphor and unending story that refuses to come to a point. “The reason we struggle with insecurity,” says Pastor Steven Furtick, “is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.”

Alright, so if we ignore McArdle's random sidetracks about kids being coddled and whatnot, what did we learn?

We learned that perhaps English classes coming easily to writers isn't the best thing for us, since we never really learned the concept of struggling to be good at our craft. Because of this, a lot of us became "Fixed Mind-set" people who believe that there is a Talent Plateau. We think that we can only achieve so much greatness, and that's determined by natural ability. We fear that we've already hit that plateau and can no longer improve. Or worse yet, that the talent we believe we have is actually PAST that plateau, and so we're not nearly as good as we assumed. We fear that showcasing our best efforts will actually reveal us as "frauds", and so we purposely don't give writing our all. That way we have a safety-net excuse as to why our talent doesn't seem to measure up to The Greats.

One of the main ways we Self-Handicap is to procrastinate until the last possible moment. That way if it ends up really good we can say "Huh, imagine how good I can be if I had time to edit that" or "And this was only my first draft!" However, if procrastinating results in a lackluster product, we can justify it as "Well, I only had time for a first draft" or "I was exhausted; I have no clue what I was even writing at the end there."

We also learned that perhaps even with the classes themselves being easy for us future writers, we could have still avoided this Fixed Mind-set by seeing the struggle in others. If only we could have read earlier drafts of classic stories, or seen quotes from our writing mentors explaining that they had to go through seventeen complete revisions before actually coming up with something decent. Perhaps seeing our idols fail and still become amazing in their climb back up would help us aspiring writers realize that being bad now doesn't mean we can't be fantastic later.

Again, that is what this blog is here for. It may be presumptuous of me to think that my struggle in finding myself as a writer will be any sort of example for other writers. I may be expecting too much of my future self to believe that I could become enough of a writing mentor to others that seeing me trip so frequently will help prove to them that they can make it too. The entire concept that this blog is my anthology of failings on my way to "greatness" may be insanely cocky.

Yet, here it is.

On the off chance that I am right in those insane assumptions. Just in case I'm correct in thinking that I've helped someone overcome their fear of inadequacy, by proving that I grew past that Talent Plateau, surpassing my natural talent after failing so frequently with just it.

Hell, this blog post kept me about FIVE HOURS to write! I knew I wanted to talk about Megan McArdle's article, but the whole thing seemed so disjointed. I went through THREE re-writes before becoming satisfied with this version. I even had a list of about four other things I wanted to talk about this week that just didn't quite fit in the final cut. Guess that just means I have blog posts all set up for the next week or so too, huh?

Anyway, I know I didn't talk about any of the progress I made this week - like I originally intended to talk about - so I'm sorry about that. However, I do hope that this break from my normal writing style helped at least ONE person out.

We CAN conquer that fear of inadequacy! It will be a struggle, and we may procrastinate even more, but we just need to retrain ourselves to "Dare to be Bad" and embrace failure as a way to learn and grow. Easier said than done...

Anyway, I want to finish up with a belated joint Happy Birthday to both ChibiSunnie and Ronoxym who shared a birthday last week.

Shadowcat and Wolverine Take Center Stage

I feel like this was a good week. Sure, I still don't have any prose written, but dang, did I ever have tons of brainstorm sessions over the past week. Every work break I was writing something down; so that's a bit exciting.

Poor Phfylburt. He and Hubby both had a LOOOOONG read first thing in the morning thanks to all that brainstorming. The biggest thing I was working on was the build of the two rooms that combined would have been the X-Men Danger Room. Yes, last week I stated that I figured out how I was going to separate the room in to it's two main features: customizable physical obstacles and traps, and a fully immersive holographic generator.

The holographic generator I decided to call The Orb; at least, as the working title for it.

I'm still trying to figure out what to call the other room; the one with the tiles that can stretch in order to form landscapes and the like. I think the working title I gave Hubby and Phfyl was "The Building Room" since you can "build" the obstacle course.... Super lame. Need to rethink that one; definitely.

Anyway, I also stated last week that I needed to figure out what an orphanage for Glitches would need such advanced training for; and why they would set up a sort of "task force" similar to the X-Men. I wanted it to be a different enough reason that it isn't just a rewrite of X-Men. This lead me to the headmaster and headmistress of the Xavier school in X-Future: Kitty "Shadowcat" Pryde and Logan "Wolverine".

I was curious as to why they would set up such a tech-heavy and advanced training facility. Sure, it could just easily be justified as "They need it to safely train power control", but at the same time, I feel there could have been a much more low-tech way of training the kids.

Then my mind wandered to a narrator opening the first comic book by explaining what Glitches are and how they are being treated; yada-yada. I probably won't use this exposition-heavy opening, but letting my narrator start off the book like that tends to give me more and more information about the world I'm building. For instance, back when I wasn't sure what to rename mutants, this same narrator was relaying over how people would comment about how there was some sort of "glitch" in the DNA, causing the mutations. That's when it hit me that people would therefore just start calling mutants Glitches; plus it fit well with the psuedo-cyberpunk categorizing of them that Hubby helped figure out.

Well, not only did this nameless female narrator - who may or may not be either Lia or Willow; can't tell - help me figure out what to call mutants, but she also helped me understand why The Orb and Building Room were made.

During her exposition of the world they all live in, she told me about the government snatching up Glitches. Usually the homeless ones so that no one would notice them missing. If they got caught they would justify it as a way to "keep the streets clean of vagabonds" or that they are trying to find help for these Glitches; providing them with shelter, food, and assistance with their powers. Yet, anyone who didn't blindly believe the propaganda would know the truth; the government was experimenting on these abducted Glitches.

The government wanted to know how they ticked. How is it that only some people mutated? What was the connection? What determined the powers? How did the powers work? Could normal humans be mutated in to these Super People via genetic manipulation? Could a Super Glitch be "bred"? Could mutation be a submissive gene, leaving "normal" people as carriers? Could Glitches become weaponized? Can they be "cured" of their powers? What is the most effective way to shut them down?

Experiments were performed on the usually harmless and weak-powered Glitches that became homeless either through average means - mental problems, drug/gambling abuse, jobless - or teens being abandoned by their parents. The more "dangerous" Glitches used for experimentation usually came through the prisons. Either there would be a claim that the Glitch had to go to a Powers-Only facility in order to properly detain the criminal, or the Glitch would be deemed "executed" so no one would wonder where it went to. The inspiration for that second bit I totally blame on re-watching Fullmetal Alchemist; the same plot device happened about 1/2 way through the series.

Anyway, back to my world and the X-Future characters.

Namely, Phfylburt's first character.

Lucas Kinney's backstory had him as the biological child of Wolverine's clone Laura, AKA - X-23. The sheer fact that a clone was able to give birth to someone caught the attention of some major organizations that wished to study, experiment on, and possibly weaponize Kinney. These organizations were SHIELD, HYDRA, and The Weapon-X Program. Laura and Lucas spent years of his adolescence on the lam in hopes of staying hidden from these organizations.

Now, since I didn't want the messiness of explaining away Laura as a clone - or why Logan was cloned in the first place - and I didn't want to have to rework original versions of all three of those organizations, I decided to use the government as a whole for this part of Lucas' life.

Although X-23 is still alive in our continuity, Phfyfl has never really used her in his role playing. Probably because Kinney was in his late 20s when we started up our game. What tough-as-nails, 20-something male interacts with his mom all that frequently? Especially when the man his mom was cloned from is right there as a sort of parental figure. Anyway, since I'm avoiding the whole "cloning" bit, and since Lucas' mom doesn't really play a heavy role in his overall character, I could easily write her out of the comic reboot. Kinney would therefore just be another orphaned Glitch.

I'm still determining if he was abandoned like so many others, or if his parents were killed; probably due to a hate crime.

Point is, Kinney was on his own, living on the streets. The government scooped him up - mainly because this was before Kitty started up the orphanage - and started experimenting on him. At some point, and for some reason I have yet to figure out, Wolverine broke in to the facility and released the Glitches. Kinney was the only child left in the lab, and had nowhere else to go but back out on to the streets. Logan decided he'd take Lucas in as a ward.

With the age difference - ignoring that Logan doesn't really age anymore, and so he's actually WAY older than he appears - I was thinking that Wolverine and Kinney formed a similar "adoptive family" dynamic as Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson. In other words: Logan was both a sort of father-figure, and older-brother-figure.

Both Phfyl and I really like this new take on Kinney's backstory because it still keeps the "pseudo-related" dynamic between the two of them. He plays that off well in the X-Future boards. Although, I am going to miss Kinney playfully calling Wolverine "Grandpa". Logan finding Lucas in a lab also allows for the "Kinney was captured and experimented on" backstory that seems crucial to his character as well.

Alright. All of this was a nice world build and character re-write. However, what does any of this have to do with The Orb or Building Room?

Well, after Logan saved and adopted Lucas, he became fixated on the idea of training Glitches to protect themselves from the normal humans. That way the tragedy and cruelty of that lab wouldn't repeat itself. In other words, the whole reason such intense training facilities were built was so Wolverine could help Glitches prepare for the worst.

When Kitty decided to open up the orphanage, Logan went to her with his idea for The Orb and Building Room, and wanted her to set aside enough of the estate she bought so that those two facilities could be built. This way, she could take in the lost children, and Wolverine could train them to hold their own.

As I mentally role played the conversation between the two of them, Kitty brought up a valid concern. The government was already harsh on Glitches. What would happen if they caught wind of Glitches training to fight against an oppressive government? At the very least, Kitty would probably be shut down as an anti-patriotic facility. At worst, the government would find it an aggressive tactic and terrorist training. They'd plow the whole place down. Bringing more violence to their door.

Because of that fear of bringing military action to her doorstep, Kitty denied Logan's request. If he wanted to build the training facility, he'd have to do it alone and off her property. It was a way to protect the children.

So Wolverine ends up building the facilities under the guise of an arcade; at least, that's the working concept for it. He uses the Building Room to create mazes or laser-tag/paintball bunkers or any other physical obstacle course for kids. He uses The Orb - which is actually a room with about a dozen of them - as generic Virtual Reality games. The government won't have any flags going up because it's just an advanced gaming business. However, either he has a separate VIP section where Kitty's students can train - their student IDs would be the VIP cards - or he opens the arcade up after-hours for training. I'm not sure which idea I prefer. Probably the After Hours one because then he wouldn't have to have enough money to build and run TWO of each of those rooms.

Although he wouldn't be fighting Sentinels, Chayse would still be able to use The Orb to recreate his one scene from X-Future. The best part is that Kitty would now be even MORE upset than she was before, because now her son is participating in what she believes to be a very dangerous activity if the government found out. This could create so much chaos and conflict in the reboot: Kitty vs Chayse, Kitty vs Logan, Kitty vs Student Body, etc.

This arcade can also be used when Devon's loyalty was in question. Willow can still be the one commenting about it: "Wait, you haven't tried out The Orb yet? You totally need to!" What makes it even better is that in X-Future Willow actually drags Devon to Wolverine's room to inform Logan that Devon had no clue what the Danger Room was. So dragging him to the arcade to let Wolverine know that Devon had no clue about The Orb could be a nice parallel. Then, either Logan - who isn't sure if he can trust Devon - or the Orb's AI can create the pivotal sequence.

As I was relaying this concept over to Phfyl to see his thoughts on the matter, more information sort of sprang up. He asked simple questions, and my fingers sort of answered before I could fully figure it out myself. What a fantastic way to be a Medium when writing!

The first big discovery was that obviously Logan and Kitty are no longer co-running the school like they do in X-Future. Apparently, they are going to have a dynamic similar to Xavier and Magneto in canon X-Men: friends who are at odds with each other due to their differing views on how to achieve Mutant Rights. I toned down "Magneto" a bit though. Instead of considering Glitches to be the next evolution - a superior human that should rule over normal humans - Logan also just wishes for equality between Glitch and Norm alike. So - as I mentioned to Phfyl - it would be set up more like if Xavier only ever just ran the school, and the X-Men were Magneto's team. The school would provide sanctuary, training of powers, and peaceful demonstration that not all mutants need to be feared or hated. Then there would be the near-militant-trained taskforce whose purpose would be to protect humans from the dangerous glitches - or other supernatural dangers - save glitches from human cruelty, and fight for equality. However, instead of the two being housed on the same estate - the taskforce also working as guardians of those training still - the two forces would be separate: Kitty's orphanage and Logan's arcade/training facility.

I still wanted the reboot equivalent of the X-Men around to fight The Brotherhood - which has become more of a violent street gang - as well as protect the students. I just needed to figure out what the connection would be between Kitty and Wolverine.

There's always the option that Logan just wanted to help Glitches his own gruff way, and went to Kitty as a stranger after hearing about her orphanage. I'm kind of "meh" about this idea.

Another option is that they are just friends, however they are already so similar to Xavier and Magneto now. Did I really want to pile more on by having the two of them be clashing friends too? Besides, having them just be friends seems so cliche and boring.

So I thought "maybe they're related?"

I tried it out as both "cousins, or some other semi-distant relative" and "siblings." The cousins idea seemed too convoluted, and only had one true plus side to it. The siblings idea was definitely the stronger option out of the two, but there was one major issue I had with it. Namely, if Kitty and Logan were siblings, than Kinney would be Chayse's adoptive cousin. I felt it would change the dynamic between Chayse and Kinney; being so close to each other. Kinney would no longer just be a very-respected teacher. I wasn't sure I wanted that change. The only plus side to the cousins concept instead? That Kitty and Logan would still be related without Kinney and Chayse being so close to each other; family-wise.

The last option I could think of seems to be the best one so far: Former Lovers.

They started drifting due to their differing views on how to handle the mistreatment of Glitches. I'm not sure if this drifting is before or after Wolverine takes Kinney in. I feel like that would be a nice catalyst, but at the same time I would think that would make Shadowcat try harder to find Lucas a "safer home" after the split; maybe trying to take care of him herself? So I sort of think that maybe Logan breaks in to the facility and saves Lucas AFTER the break-up. Maybe the catalyst was that Kitty wouldn't join him on the raid?

Anyway, the way I see their views on the subject is as follows:

• Kitty is very much like Xavier in her view of "Humanity is just scared. If we show them there is nothing to fear they will begin to accept us." Which is why she does humanitarian things such as build the orphanage, but she won't allow training that would teach the kids how to protect themselves against the normal humans or the government as a whole. She's a more maternal figure when it comes to other Glitches.
• Logan is a lot more gruff. He's jaded - especially after saving Kinney - and while he too wishes for a world where Glitches and Norms can co-exist, he's more realistic. He knows that there will be government abductions and experimentation, and he knows that there will be hate crimes. He knows the best defense is a good offense. He wants Glitches to be trained in extreme cases of self defense to protect themselves. He's almost like a military leader or intense self-defense coach in regards to the other Glitches.

Kitty finds Logan's views too pessimistic, aggressive, and provocative.
Logan finds Kitty's views too optimistic, passive, and complaisant.

Even with the split - and probable super heated arguments leading up to said break-up - the two remained friends. They realize that they are aiming for the same goal, just not on the same path.

A short time later, Kitty met Gambit and the two fell in love. Logan - who just isn't Wolverine without some sort of lingering feelings/unrequited love - is jealous of Gambit, but is still sociable with him for Kitty's sake. This lingering flame for Kitty is one of the reasons he tries so hard to protect the school/orphanage.

I'm just waiting to hear back on Hubby and Phfyl's opinions on all of that. Well, at least a better opinion than "Too Long; Didn't Read. Will Read Later."

In the meantime, I guess I need to switch gears and really focus on building my Brujah character if I want to bring her in to the vampire game this Saturday. TOTALLY meant to work on her during our "off" week, but with a 13-hr day last Saturday and my mind being overrun with X-Future, I totally forgot about poor Lottie.

Creating My Own Crown Through Stolen Gemstones

This - and any subsequent - blog post is going to be a bit interesting to write. My "E" key on my netbook decided it doesn't like working that well anymore. So I have to consciously press on that key while I only need to barely tap the rest of them. YAY!

Not sure if my father-in-law can fix the key when he eventually fixes the computer's internal battery, but I would feel so bad if he put all this effort in to reviving this thing only for me to have to buy a tablet or something anyway because one of the most crucial keys stopped working. Thus is my life...

So this is an open warning that - while I'll try REALLY hard to pay extra special attention while editing - my posts may have an increased amount of missed-E typos. Also, I may rage a bit in them, depending on how annoying this issue becomes to me.

On a happier note, I've done some writing. It's not the half-hour or 250 words a day I talked about last week, but it's still a major advancement for me.

As you may recall, I'm working on the painfully slow process of converting Hubby's X-Men forum roleplaying game - which I discovered is called a Play-By-Post game - in to an original comic. The trick was to figure out how to keep the essence of the mostly-original story the game created, while also erasing any connection to X-Men and Marvel Comics. This meant that I wanted to not have "straight conversions" of things like Xavier's school for the mutants; which also houses the mutant combat team The X-Men.

It was a struggle to think of another place to house all of our characters. I wanted them to remain teenagers, and to still be together in one central location. However, having mutants - or "Glitches" in my tale - all going to a school designed just for them was essentially just me re-naming the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters and pretending it was original. I thought about having it be a segregation issue; it wasn't a school these kids could opt to go to, it was one they HAD to go to since they weren't allowed in public schools any longer. I'm honestly still playing around with this idea since a large portion of the created characters were from the East Coast anyway.

It's also not terribly crucial that Willow be Californian, or that Ripley be a surfer. Hubby almost never really touches upon the surfing all that much, and so he could be really in to some sort of East Coast water sport; like kayaking or something. The other characters that would have some sort of regional significance could have a personal tie-in with the school principal, and that would explain the idea of them moving/sending their kid to that school instead of the "Glitch-Only" school in their area.

The only real curious thing would be why international students would come to the school. It's not essential that these students stay international; they could be first-generation Americans with the character's original home country be where their immigrant parents are from. I just don't want to mess with the character builds too much, though.

Anyway, a few months ago Ali Luke suggested that the school is actually an orphanage with an attached school. I feel like this might still be the winning concept. This would explain why kids would come from all over; the headmistress travels to try to find kids abandoned after their families realize they're Glitches. This half-way house is their home, but it is also their school; teaching both the same education as regular schooling, but also teaching the kids how to master their power and not despair at the hatred they currently have to face.

This concept allows so much conflict to naturally occur in the environment alone: segregation, hatred, fear, bigotry, abandonment, human inequality, etc. It's essentially the next step when it comes to fighting for equality. First it was abolishing slavery, then equal rights for women, and then racial equality. While we're still struggling with the racial equality thing, the biggest issue is for gay rights. Fast forward about 10yrs and it could be this near-future tale of mutants being the outcasts and second-class citizens of society.

There's also another fantastic dynamic and conflict embedded in the half-way house idea. Not every character in the comic will be an orphan. Some are there as if it were a boarding house; there is no other place where Glitches can train their powers and learn how to change how humans see them. No other place fighting for equality for these outsiders. So you have teens dealing with abandonment issues - or grieving their Glitch parents being killed through hate crimes - and intermixed with them are kids who are well-loved, safe, and doted upon by their parents.

All of this isn't really important to talk about right now, though. I already figured this out around the beginning of summer. After struggling with the hurdle of "where does this story take place so it's not a blatant X-Men rip-off," I had another roadblock: the Danger Room. For those that don't really know too much about X-Men, the Danger Room is a training facility on the Xavier grounds. It was originally a giant room with actual obstacles built in; things like motorized walls that slam closed or rings that catch fire or guns that fire stunning lasers. After the X-Men helped an alien race, the elder species gifted their Earthling allies with some of their advanced technology. Professor Charles Xavier used some of this technology to renovate the Danger Room. That way it had both the physical elements as well as holographic additions to help simulate any imaginable scenario - even ones that could occur on another planet.

It is this suped-up Danger Room that most fans know, and the type we use in the X-Future game. In order to avoid my orphanage feeling like Xavier's school again, I debated ignoring the Danger Room. However, the room has proven a pivotal setting for some of the key plot points in X-Future; plot points I want to try to recreate in the comic reboot.

So the battle I was facing over the summer was me trying to figure out alternate ways to have those scenes still occur in the comic reboot, but without actually using the Danger Room. Most of them I was able to figure out, but two were still too entangled in the holographic aspect of the Danger Room to really have it be any other setting. So, to my dismay, I had to figure out how to re-do the Danger Room for my story so that it wasn't blatantly the same training facility from X-Men.

Well, Friday night I finally figured it out. Break the room back down in to its two components: holograms and physical obstacles. Two different training settings instead of one that uses both environments married together. The one room - the one that is a throw back to the original Danger Room - has millions of tiny tiles across the ceiling and floor that can extend in order to build nearly any physical environment the Glitches wish to train on. Yes, this would essentially mean the floor and ceiling each need to be about 10ft thick to house the tiles when they're flush against the surfaces, and there are still some structural elements that can't be built this way, but it's a start. I'll figure out the rest later.

As for the two scenes dependent on holograms? I actually thought about an episode of Batman Beyond entitled "Hooked Up". In the episode they introduce a new virtual reality experience where you float in a giant orb; fully immersing you in to the fantasy.

So I thought, "Why not do something like that?"

Now the issue would be avoiding blatant thievery from Batman Beyond. So I tapped in to a writing article I stumbled upon about five years ago. One written by the great Holly Lisle: How to (Legally and Ethically) Steal Ideas. Honestly, I had forgotten where I had found the article when I tried to use it as advice for the writers I beta-read for, because of this I was sort of paraphrasing it over the last three years or so. It's not entirely accurate, but it still has the essence of Holly's article: "All writers are thieves; stealing from each other by way of inspiration. The trick is to be a smart thief. Don't steal the full crown, just your favorite gem from it. It will be easier to pass it off as a new item then."

My point is, I decided to make my own "crown" - the holographic device crucial for at least Devon's plot line - by "stealing gems" from a bunch of other "jewelry". The base was the VR orb from Batman Beyond. Then I added in the training aspect of the Danger Room. I also threw in the connectivity of the device from an episode of American Dad. In "The Vacation Goo" the family finds out that all of their vacations were staged. They were drugged and then placed inside goo-tanks that allowed them to all share the same virtual reality simulation; also allowing each other to interact.

I loved this idea, that way the Glitches can still train together in these VR spheres by having it be essentially a Co-Op online game.

Then there was the scene where Chayse pushes himself in the Danger Room; the other reason I really wanted a holographic element for the comic. For this part I tapped in to Ender's Game. There was a plot device known as the Mind Game. This was a game the psychologists in Battle School gave to the students as a way of secretly monitoring and analyzing the thinking and emotions of the children. The game had a very advanced, learning AI that was borderline sentient; much like the Danger Room's actual sentient, alien-technology AI that became the villain Danger. My version of this VR simulator would be just like the learning AI from both X-Men and Ender's Game; it would customize games and training scenarios based on the person playing them: their power-set, their intelligence, their current mental state, etc.

I just needed to throw in one last gemstone; one from another book-turned-movie: Divergent.

I have to admit that I have yet to read the series, but after watching the movie I had to steal its VR simulator as well. For those who don't know, citizens in this dystopia all go through a simulation that presents them with a problem. The way they solve the problem showcases what element of society they value most; and therefore helps them determine which faction they wish to put themselves in for the rest of their lives. Do they value strength and saving the weak; are they brave? Do they use intelligence and science to solve the problem? Is helping others and living altruistically most important? Are they peace-loving and prefer to work the land? Is the most important thing to be honest?

Well, at least the one faction uses the same technology to determine what you are most afraid of in order to help you conquer your fears. This is the part I want inserted in to my "crown". Along with the learning AI from Ender's Game - building scenarios based on your mental state when you log in - it will also purposely tap in to the player's greatest fears and - at least, perceived - weaknesses. So, not only would Chayse be pushing himself harder than the computer program would already be doing so given his mental state, it would also present him with a scenario based on his greatest fear: Failing to the point where Glitches are now being hunted to extinction.

Alright! So I have my "crown" all built. There's so many components from other sources that it's not a full thieving, but it will also still feel "familiar" to the readers; drawing them in from these other fandoms.

Now, to figure out why an orphanage for Glitches would find the need for these advanced training facilities - let alone how they pay for, house, or power them - if not to train an elite "X-Men-like" combat team. I need to stay away from that, because it will throw me right back in to the "this is just the poor-man's X-Men" problem.

On the plus side, though, not only is another major roadblock out of my way, but in the process of figuring out my version of the Danger Room I also came up with an original background character credited with building both rooms; as well as tasked to maintain them. Geoffrey Wilkins, AKA "Fidget". We all know how fantastic I am at naming things, so his codename might be reworked. Right now though, it feels fitting. He fidgets with electronics and technology, plus he himself is a bit of a fidgeter; never able to stay still for too long. He follows the typical techie-trope of finding computers easier to communicate with than humans, and so he's a bit reclusive as well. He only really has true human interaction with one of the faculty members. I'm not sure who said member is quite yet, but I'm possibly leaning towards my rework of Kitty Pryde, due to her maternal nature that drove her to build the half-way house in the first place. Maybe Fidget was the first orphan she took in?

I'm also struggling on his actual physical appearance. I know how he stands, moves, dresses, and even a bit of how he talks. Yet, I don't know what his hair, eye, or even skin color is. I feel like the cast of both X-Future and my comic reboot is mostly Caucasian; understandable since the players are White, and it's almost natural for us to all create characters of similar race as ourselves. However, I want a bit more diversity in the comic, and so I kind of want to switch it up a little bit at least with the background characters.

That, in and of itself, is a bit of a snag. I feel like having an Asian that is great with technology would sound stereotypical, but at the same time I don't want to avoid him being Asian for that reason either. When I first thought up Fidget I saw him as a lanky, freckled redhead. The problem there is that the "awkward redhead nerd" seems a bit Trope-y too, so I'm again on the fence. Don't want to fall in to a trope, but don't want to avoid that look JUST to avoid the trope. Then again, having him be a freckled redhead would also keep him Caucasian, and therefore screw up my initial thought of trying to diversify.... Originally - before even coming up with Fidget himself - I was going to just rework the X-Men character Forge, so maybe I should keep him Native American? That will have to be figured out more.

So, as per usual, one roadblock passed, only to discover there are now about a dozen more I have to swerve around. Fantastic.

Well, thus is the way of progress, I guess.

What about you guys? Did you have any writing progress this week? Let me know in the comments.

Bite Sized Chunks

I started off the morning sort of dreading today. Labor Day was this past Monday and so the past week in the deli was hell. I would come home exhausted, and would typically just collapse.

So. Many. Naps!!!!!

I swear, I slept through about half of the week when I wasn't at work....

Which meant not only did I not do any writing this week, but my inability to even remember yesterday means that any brainstorming I may have done over the week is completely gone. Can't recollect anything.

And then I woke up this morning, realizing I yet again had nothing to show for my week. I was ashamed to post one more "Excuses" update. "Oh man, guys, I didn't do anything, but I have this valid reason so that I don't feel like a loser!"

Yeah, because THAT truly shows dedication to a craft I wish to make in to a profession.

This guilt of letting another week slip by me actually kicked my butt in to gear. So I started my morning by FINALLY working on one of my in-queue snippets. Still not sure if it will end up in the official X-Future: Snippets, but it's at least some sort of writing.

It's the farewell conversation between Lia and Sasha. It's more for my own character-building knowledge than anything else. Better understand what Lia was up to over the summer time skip. Might even get back in to her head enough to work on the Lia In NYC snippet I need to legit write for the board.

Ironically, I wrote in Sasha's POV while trying to get in to Lia's head. Sasha isn't even my character! So the story is getting sent off to 2-feathers-and-a-stone to see if I kept the girl properly in character for this scene. Once I get approval on the snippet I may officially post it for you fine people to check out.

In the meantime, rejoice with me in the fact that I'm not as much of a bum as I thought! I can force myself to write! YAY!

Accountability and guilt does wonders for my motivation.

On a less formal note, Spink started role playing this past week. I couldn't find an organic reason for one of my girls to come across where she was, but Phfylburt sure as heck did. And it was fantastic! So her character Donna hid away in the laundry room, only for Hubby to have Deadpool find her. That interaction was fantastic as well.

After slacking off for a while, this morning I finally got Lia in on the action. Not nearly as fantastic as Deadpool or Nodya, but at least the girl is doing something. Sad to say, this was the first RPing I had her do since June!!! So stupid!

So, yay for finally having some roleplaying!

Hubby also set up a scene for Willow as well. She, Chayse, and another player who recently rejoined the board all stumbled upon a news report about the couple of students that went missing over the summer. Soooooo, there's that....

It also helps light a fire under me to write up what actually happened to those two. I've kind of been dragging my feet about it because the events are so epic I'm not entirely sure how I want it to officially go down. I sort of want to collab on it, but past events have proven that is sort of a bad idea. Either the other party is super excited and I drop the ball, or I'm super excited and the other party disappears from the internet.

Guess I just need to pull the trigger on that project.

In other Role Playing news, I'm back in moderately-regular contact with Neghya. We talked for a while last night about our respective online roleplaying groups. She added me to her Facebook-based group - I still need to try to catch up on that, but it's a bit of a daunting task with the FB formatting - and I in turn sent her X-Future: The Second Generation Begins as well as the link to X-Future. That way she can decide if she wanted to set up a "reading account" in order to see how things work there. She seems to love the concept behind X-Future, but sadly her two favorite characters - Beast and Storm - are already "taken". So I'm not too sure I can actually convince her to join. Still, if I can get her to read it, there will be one more person I can talk to about the board. That might get me excited enough to work on the next chapter of TSGB.

In fact, I was online specifically to work on said next chapter when Neghya and I started chatting last night. It's going to be a while before the chapter is ready for posting since I still have to sift through hundreds of posts, but at least I'm finally in motion again, right?

I focus too much on the end result sometimes. Then I see all the steps needed to get there and I become overwhelmed. I need to remember planning my wedding, and how I took things in bite-sized chunks in order to build up to such a major party/gathering. I was able to do so much with only my mom, sister, bestie, and fiance to really help me out. And even then I took the brunt of the work right up until a mental break down about 3 months before the wedding. That's when Mom called me a moron for not delegating more, and I truly let the others help me.

My point is that while I may not really have others to delegate to when it comes to my writing, I really need to start thinking the same way. Yes, it's a daunting task that seems too big and too overwhelming to tackle while looking at the big picture. That's what usually paralyzes me. That concept of time needed to accomplish such a massive undertaking. However, if I can change my POV to think in smaller bites, I may be able to conquer anything!

Ali Luke uses this concept a lot in her advice. Sure, the idea of writing a full novel in a year seems out of reach, but when you break it down to x-number of words per season, per month, per week, per weekend, or even per day, it seems achievable. Ali even figured out how to finish a roughly 81,000 word draft every 3 months; basically one a season. With Rachel Aaron's ability to write 10,000 words a day, she's capable of writing a full draft in a week or two, and then rework said draft multiple times before actually cranking out the finished product roughly every season or so. Hell, her editor probably works slower than she does. Then you have the idea of NaNo. Fifty-thousand word novel in just one month? However, even without Aaron's insane writing speed/availability, it's still achievable by a lot of people.

It's all about breaking it down.

50,000 words. Seems daunting and impossible for one month. Roughly 1666 words a day? Still a bit much, but definitely more do-able as long as you don't slack off. 81,000 every three months? Not as mind-boggling as NaNo's task, but still a bit overwhelming. Break that down to about 27,000 a month or - as Ali put it - about 900 a day? That seems manageable - at least for her - even with a toddler.

Now let's take someone like me who isn't as ambitious quite yet. What if I want to give myself the full year to write a 90,000 word novel? That's only 7500 words a month, 1875 words per week, or about 268 words a day. Heck, if we just divide 90,000 by 365 - to avoid the messiness of some months having more or less days, or the ones that have five weeks instead of four - that's even less! A simple 247 words per day will get me MORE than a 90,000 word manuscript within a year's time.

Heck, this blog post up to this point is roughly 1300 words and it only kept me 2hrs to write; which also includes taking time-outs for breakfast breaks, potty breaks, researching, and chatting with both celestialTyrant and my sister.

Not even 250 words a day!? That's essentially me just taking a daily half-hour time-out in order to write SOMETHING that would further my manuscript. THAT'S IT! If I'm inspired - or at least have the next part properly plotted out - I could write my daily amount in just ten minutes! Even if there is some sort of holiday or family gathering that prevents me from taking that 30minute writing break, I can easily bump up the next day's writing to a simple 500 words. If I get in to a good enough writing flow I could get the entire week's worth of writing done in one long session!

The only thing holding me back is motivation to try!

Still not sure how to beat that hurdle, but I'm working on it.

Which I guess is the best thing about this blog. I'm openly working on probably one of the hardest roadblocks in writing. I'm just laying my struggle out for the world to work through with me. I'm pointing out all the tactics I'm trying, and explaining whether or not they work and why. I'm figuring it all out publicly. So that maybe you - or some future writer who has yet to find my blog - can feel like someone else has your struggle. That you're not alone. That you're not a failure for having this problem. And maybe you'll try out new methods of conquering this beast with me. Maybe something won't work for me and I'll have to move on to the next trick, but something in that gauntlet of things I try will show you a method that is your golden key to motivation.

I have such insanely high hopes for this blog, don't I?

Regardless, I guess my latest task is to try to think of writing the NaNo way year long: one day's word count at a time. Simple, small bites. Who cares if it's bad? As long as it's completed. It can be edited later.

Well, okay, maybe THAT is my biggest fault. I get too excited about my projects and post them In Progress, and so each section has to be PERFECT before I can move on since I can't go back and edit later; it's already out for the world to see.

Me thinks I need to first master patience - not posting things until they're complete - and the art of sketching out full plotlines so writing each chapter moves faster and smoother....

I just gave myself so much homework, didn't I? Good thing the school year started again this week. And I WAS commenting on how I miss college...