Fall Season Reflections

Today is the last day of the fall writing season. It's time to reflect on what did and didn't work.

My approach with Daily Refills showed some success and some failure. It both worked and didn't. I was successful at writing a lot of short pieces on tight deadlines. I took some real pleasure in those pieces. I learned a lot about the rhythm of pieces of that length, and how long a piece could be before it would be impossible to get it edited and published in time every day. Reading over the pieces later, I think a lot of them are successful, and I've had the extremely gratifying experience of readers telling me that they enjoyed certain pieces, that certain pieces made them laugh. And it was definitely fun to play more directly with fiction. With the exception of the "Ben Writes About Stuff" pieces, just about everything posted in Daily Refills was either pure fiction or at least fictionalized. (Further credence to my argument that Free Refills is not a blog.)

However, doing Daily Refills and setting them apart from and not included in my 5000 didn't work. Yes, I'm nine months into the practice of every-weekday publishing, and I still haven't missed a day, so that part worked, but what I learned--what didn't work--is that trying to bring a piece from start to finish in one day just demanded too much energy. Sure, that I didn't include their word counts in my weekly 5000 had the nice effect that I certainly worked harder on my writing this fall than I have since my Double Month Writing Month back in January and February of 2012, when I wrote 100,000 words of zero-draft fiction (an experiment I intend to never repeat). That's gratifying in some ways, but the energy cost was just too high.

My choice to do the Daily Refills was highly influenced by my favorite webcomics, preeminently XKCD. Randall Munroe has been posting a new comic every Monday, Wednesday and Friday for years, and pretty much every Monday, Wednesday and Friday I check his site first thing. He does excellent work and I really enjoy it.

But the webcomic medium and prose writing are two different things, and while it was edifying to practice short, self-contained pieces, I found that ultimately it was getting in the way of doing anything more ambitious. And my ambition is pretty clear to myself: it's time for me to start--seriously start--working on the books that are calling me to write them. And that means making them the focus of my writing concentration.

I can't call any process in which I've learned as much as I did over the past 3 months a failure. But it's time to change my focus to something more sustainable and more in line with my long-term goals.

Sabbatical

For the next two weeks, I'll be taking a sabbatical from writing. I first discussed the idea here. As the holidays approached, the idea felt more and more expansive.

I decided not to stop publishing, though. It felt more powerful to continue my publishing schedule. So I've had a very busy week this week setting up all my pieces for the next two.

I'm still debating how much of a sabbatical I'm going to take from using the computer at all. Right now I'm thinking I'll keep it off for the entire week of Christmas, from Sunday the 20th through Saturday the 26th (except for one exception, which I'll discuss in a moment), and then will allow myself to use it during the second week, to make an effort to deal with some electronic clutter, the clearing out of which will bring some needed spaciousness into the new year.

And I will allow myself to use my tablet and my phone. I keep work pretty much separate from both; they'll be used for reading and research. I don't think I need to avoid all screens to get the benefits I'm looking for.

The exception I mentioned above: Tuesday the 22nd is the winter solstice, the true New Year, and I can't not write on what I consider to be one of the four holiest days of the year. Last year on the solstice I came to the computer, opened a file, and, with the words, "Happy winter solstice," set about embarking on my rebirth as a writer. More than 200,000 words later, I can safely say that it worked. I won't let the anniversary of that day go by unmarked and uncelebrated.

Gratitude, Unforeseen

I left the party early on Saturday night. I said goodbye to everyone, told them I had to get up early in the morning because I had to work. I smiled: keep having fun, I said. I'm sure they did.

I walked home in the cold dry air. I looked up at Mt. Royal and up at the stars.

A little later, after making the sandwiches for my lunch, I was packing my gear bag for the next day. The sentence, I have to work tomorrow, was still echoing around in my head.

I stopped for a moment. I have to work tomorrow, I thought again. And then aloud I said this:

"I get to work tomorrow."

The sun never sets on the Free Refills empire.

Happy Thanksgiving! Said My Stalker, in Her Own Special Way

I was pretty sure I packed my deodorant for our Thanksgiving trip but I couldn't find it. I didn't find it in the obvious place, which was my toiletries bag. It wasn't packed among my clothes, nor in the bag in which I put my books and computer, nor in the bag with the bottles of booze, nor among my ski gear, nor with the extra towels and sheets I brought even though the house we rented had towels and sheets. And it certainly wasn't in the bag of recycling that I'd for some reason put in the back of the car instead of leaving in the garage.

After Thanksgiving I'd be going to the condo, and I remembered bringing a stick of deodorant there, so going a few days without during Thanksgiving didn't seem like much of a big deal. I figured when I got back home, I'd find the other stick sitting on the counter. I must have forgotten it.

Except when I got back home after that week at the condo, it wasn't there. I looked on the counter in the bathroom and in the drawer below the counter and in the cabinet below the sink and it wasn't in any of those places. "What the hell?" I said.

And then it hit me: it had to be my stalker. Of course she's bewitched with my scent. Of course she is.

I sighed, rolled my eyes, and went to the closet where I keep the extras.

She's getting trickier, though. A few days later, when I got back to the condo, I found the missing stick of deodorant in my toiletries bag, in a pocket that I never use. The only explanation--I repeat, the only explanation--is that she drove up to the condo, broke in, and stashed it there, knowing the effect it would have on my mind.

I wonder: next time I go to the apartment, the yacht, or the beach cabana, will I find my deodorant sticks missing from each as well? None of those places is even in this state. Shit, I'd have to call the captain on the sat-phone to be sure, but I don't think the yacht is even in the this country.

I guess I'll know next time I visit those places. She's a tricky one, my stalker. Not always the most subtle. But quite dedicated.

DNGAF (II)

Whatever is the opposite of DNGAF, that is Hillary Clinton. You get the sense that her monomaniacal, fists-clenched ambition to be president started as a small child, maybe even in the womb. Her whole life has been aimed in that direction, and so you feel like nothing in her world happens without calculation. That it's only after careful vetting by her advisers in light of the latest poll numbers that she decides her position on what to order for lunch. "How is tuna salad playing in Peoria?" you imagine her asking.

Soon We Will Rule the World

Even if you're reading this days after I publish it so that the event in question is long over, even if you aren't a skier, first of all head over to opensnow.com and give a quick read of today's Daily Snow.

Did you catch that? How twice in that piece Joel Gratz mentions free refills? He might as well be giving me high-fives.

The sun never sets on the Free Refills empire.

Shredding

Competing in the Dew Tour today at Breckenridge, Shaun White threw both a frontside double-cork 1080 and a cab double-cork 1080 to come out of the qualifying round in men's superpipe in first place. The dude absolutely shreds.

Also today, also at Breckenridge, I performed my patented switch heelside get-in-the-back-seat-and-then-fall-on-your-butt-uninjured so yes I think it's fair to say I'm a bit of a shredder myself.

DNGAF

A description generally given with a certain admiration. The person who does not want, need, or care about our permission: We shake our heads a little. We give a little smile.

How much is it that admiration that explains how what initially looked like something of a practical joke on most of America appears increasingly likely to win the Republican presidential nomination?

On the Chairlift, Ima Radster Discourses on Race, Stereotypes, and Snowsports

WHICH SPICE GIRL DO YOU THINK WOULD BE THE BEST SKIER? OR SNOWBOARDER? SKIER AND/OR SNOWBOARDER?

I THINK MOST PEOPLE THINK IT WOULD BE SPORTY, BECAUSE HER THING WAS TO BE THE ATHLETIC ONE, BUT I ALWAYS THOUGHT SHE SEEMED MORE LIKE THE KIND OF GIRL WHO'D PLAY A LITTLE FOOTIE WITH THE LADS. THE TRACK SUIT AND ALL. I DON'T SEE HER AS A SNOW-SPORTS PERSON.

I BET IT WAS SCARY. WHICH WOULD SURPRISE A LOT OF PEOPLE, BECAUSE SHE'S BLACK, AND MOST PEOPLE THINK OF SKIING AS A WHITE-PERSON THING. BECAUSE THEY'RE RACIST.

I USED TO WONDER IF SHE WAS SCARY SPICE BECAUSE SHE'S BLACK, AND WHITE PEOPLE FIND BLACK PEOPLE SCARY. BUT NOW I THINK IT'S BECAUSE SHE BUSTED STEREOTYPES, AND ALL PEOPLE FIND PEOPLE WHO DEFY STEREOTYPES KIND OF SCARY. SHE WAS ALL ABOUT BUSTING STEREOTYPES

I BET SHE WAS A SNOWBOARDER, THOUGH. BECAUSE SKIERS FIND SNOWBOARDERS SCARY. THAT'S A STEREOTYPE THAT SHE'D EMBRACE.