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Ouroboros

Thomas Keaten

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September 1, 2024

There is no way that this winter is ever going to end as long as this groundhog keeps seeing his shadow. I don’t see any other way out. He’s got to be stopped. And I have to stop him.

Phil Connors, Groundhog Day

Hello again, Dwellers. It’s been a hot minute, and I want to begin by apologizing for that. To you, of course, but ultimately to myself. Dropping the ball always feels miserable, but I doubt it ever feels worse to anyone besides the one doing the dropping. Which brings me here. This is, of course, a familiar position. I’m well rehearsed in the cycle of failure, as you all well know. Part of my schtick at this point – that and the perpetual cycle of writing a story and then tossing out most to rewrite on whims that seem good at the time.

Don’t worry, I have no intention of turning this article into a pity party. Nobody wants that. Instead, it’s time to fight this particular little demon of mine – the Ouroboros. For those unfamiliar, Ouroboros is the symbol of the cycle of perpetual destruction and recreation, a serpent eating its own tail. This is a fairly common thing across several cultures, each with its own take on the serpent / dragon and the reasoning, but my personal version is simple enough. He’s the perfect representation of my writing “career,” if one wanted to use the label loosely.

They say admitting you have a problem is the first step in conquering it. If that’s the case, it’s a certain level of irony that I’ve taken that first step several times now (Here comes that little serpent friend again) and find myself back at it once again. My most recent editing sessions for Residuum have all been dismal failures as I struggle to find headway into the new path I thought I wanted to forge. Knowing myself from years of this, I understand the cause and where this can easily lead if not kept in check. In short, I don’t like the plan I thought I liked, and if I keep trying to force it I’ll just stay in a doldrum for months. That can’t be allowed to happen, so it won’t be. What’s next, then, is a short step backward. A review of where things stand and, far more importantly, where they stood before this rewrite pass began. I think part of my issue is that I actually did like a lot of what was in there before, and while I was trying to fix the things that clearly needed fixing I ultimately wound up uprooting those things for a totally new path. That was a bad call. I see that now. So, instead, I’m going to go back over the parts that I’ve identified as problems, compare them to the plan that I made, and see what I can do to merge the ideas or, if necessary, build new ones. Think of it as inventorying stock. I need to know what product is good and what needs to be replaced.

This process poses its own problems, but the most relevant of these is time. I don’t want this to become another drawn out excuse to ignore actual writing for the sake of another self-consuming snake named Outline. It needs to be quick, efficient, and clean. Find the problems, find solutions, and get to work. The work itself needs to be much the same – a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. It’s time to use the tools at my disposal to their fullest. It’s time to get this thing in a position for readers once again and then get to work on new things.

Speaking of, at the close of voting it seems Below won the vote for my Choose Your Own Adventure story setup that I plan to release on Substack. Appreciate those of you who took the time to comment, next time I’ll make it less clunky to do so. I intend to start outlining that story this month, though not with any high degree of focus. I’m planning to release the first part of the story (and info on how that’s going to all play out) at the start of the new year, so I’ve got time. Residuum is and must be the main focus until it’s packed up in a nice bow.

Should I get that wrapped up this month (Which seems highly unlikely, but hey, a man can dream), I’ll be splitting my attention four ways. One, of course, on Below. Another on outlining Catalyst and the full series it begins. Another on the story of a yet unnamed game a friend and I are working on. And, finally, the last on cataloging and planning the world of my Substack-focused Cyberpunk world.

I have a ridiculous number of ideas floating around in my head that have all been locked up for much too long, held hostage by life, in general. I almost blamed it on Residuum, but that’s certainly not the case. It’s on me. All of it is, and all this talking about stepping up is just that. Talk. I don’t want to be just talk. There’s too much of that in the world already.

It’s time to break the cycle. To crush the serpent. To do.

Thank you all for continuing to be an outlet. Next week, things will have a brighter tint. Promise.

Speed Bumps

Thomas Keaten

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August 4, 2024

Speed has never killed anyone. Suddenly becoming stationary, that’s what gets you.

Jeremy Clarkson

Hello, again. Thanks for bearing with a few weeks of respite from my end. Had a couple of weekends of family events back to back and it was nice to be able to fully take that time off. Nice, yes, but it was also a time that got me to thinking.

For those of you that follow me on Facebook or Twitter as well, I’ve been posting daily updates of my time spent writing. How many minutes, how many words, and ultimately what the total count is for each chapter as I get through them. As fundamentally upsetting as it is for me to say, this has been an incredible boon to my productivity. Being that accountable, at that level of granularity, has been the push I needed to get over some of my more recent hang-ups and just get the hell to work. Honestly, it’s been the best writing-based decision I’ve made this year.

I’ve been working with that for a couple of weeks at this point and have pushed through a couple of chapters. One a week, with a little bit of time capped at the end to review and make some notes for when I ultimately need to come back to edit. This last week I also added on a night session, which was actually ludicrously productive and I intend to keep myself to one of those per week, at minimum. I don’t expect the same sort of results, but the extra time is necessary at this point.

The next phase of this is getting around my speed bumps. What are those, you might ask? I have two, and they’re frustratingly common. They go by some pretty familiar names, too. Saturday and Sunday. You’re familiar, yeah? Turns out that when I’m not forcing myself to get up at 5, when I’m not put under a time crunch to finish my tasks before I head into the office for work, I end up pushing them off and doing some sort of brain rot until I can’t bring myself to sit in the chair and do the job. My hour-a-day tracking goes from perfect through the weekdays to non-existent, outside of this time right here. No story progress at all, defeated by the twin assassins procrastination and distraction. Well, in the eternal words of Joan Cusack in Addam’s Family Values, they had to go.

So, to that end, I’m no longer committing to just the weekday posts. It’s full on dailies, and I’ll be capping the week with some sort of snippet of the work itself. Getting a little prose out into the world. Might as well, right?

The engine is back on and I, for one, am not about to let it stall. Writing is as much work as anything else, and work never gets done without time. For every session like this last week’s nightly where I came off in an absolute creativity high and feeling euphoric, there are a dozen, likely more, sessions where it’s nothing more than pushing through. That’s just how it is.

And so I will push through, ever so gently pressing down on that accelerator. Keeping an eye out for the speed bumps and figuring out how to skirt them. There’s a lot of work to be done, still, to reach the destination and I’ve got my eyes set on that horizon.

If you’re wondering what spawned the banner, the director of the game that I did some writing for in the past messaged me about it again recently. No additional work for that quite yet, but it’s a potential on the horizon, and it led me to do a quick recount of all the things I am currently working on or intend to be in the future. It’s, ah… a lot. But I always set myself up for a lot. Tends to bite me in the ass, but I think I’m finally able to grasp the situation there and actually prioritize. So, to that end:

  • Residuum
    • Chapter 12
  • Catalyst
    • No goals. This is now fully on the back burner as it’s too difficult to plot out a multi-story outline while working on rebuilding Residuum. I’ll get back to this when Residuum is in the hands of beta readers.
  • Project CT
    • Basic character interviews for at least 5 characters.
  • ThemeAttic
    • Never miss a day of Residuum work, and post about it each day.
    • Post one snippet.
    • Begin prepping the outline for CYOA (Could still use people to vote, by the way)
    • Create an extensive watch list for planning my cyberpunk world.

Looked at the banner again and laughed at myself. I remember the days of wanting to try and learn more graphic design. One of the infinite number of things I wanted to be great at. Glad I dropped that like molten slag. Economies of scale, Tom.

Super Ultra Mecha-Hitler

Thomas Keaten

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July 14, 2024

Assumptions are the termites of relationships.

Henry Winkler

Given the start of this week was washed out by Hurricane Beryl, I figured the most obvious topic for today’s article would turn out to be about that. About losing power, handling expectations of clients from out of state, and dealing with people’s varying statuses of back-togetherness around town pretty much throws away all the best-laid plans. Would have been a pretty calm, measured, and normal post, in the end.

Silly me, thinking a natural disaster would be the most important topic in a given week.

Now, as I’ve said repeatedly before, I do my best to avoid politics here. I don’t that world to infect this one, as stories are, by their nature, outside such a petty, back-and-forth world. I am, however, a very political human being. Most of us are, in our own ways, and while I think that can be a good thing I confess a low-grade envy of people who can go about their lives fully ignoring that world. That sounds lovely.

There’s only one thing this can be about, though, and it’s the attempted assassination of a (likely) presidential nominee. The attempt itself, the fallout after, the questions and eventual answers – those are all moot and, honestly, not something I care to deal with here. I don’t want to talk about the news. There’s something more important afoot, and it’s our inability to give “the other side” any benefit of the doubt whatsoever. This open, obvious need to Other the opposition. This roiling hate that permeates every attempt to talk to one another.

Everyone knows the idiom “backed into a corner.” We know what it means on an almost instinctual level because, well, it is instinctual. It applies to pretty much every living creature. When that creature is given no place to run, there’s nothing left to do but fight. It’s an obvious thing that, in the end, all comes down to our need to live. Everything wants to live, and often times facilitates that in the easiest way possible. Backing away from danger until it no longer can, and then bearing into it.

People also do what they can to avoid discomfort, both physical and emotional. Conflict is a big point of discomfort for most people, and there’s little we can talk about that’s more a cause of conflict that politics and religion. I know I rarely discuss either of those things with people I’m not at least generally on the same page with. Something I’m working on, but for now it is what it is. This, in turn, leads to people forming their own little pockets in which they can discuss without conflict. Our own, personal echo chambers. The internet makes this far more powerful than it was, as we can find the narrowest pockets and even there discover voices that champion our ideas. We feel insulated there. Correct. Unassailable. We build walls around those beliefs and view anything looking to challenge them as someone trying to destroy our little place of safety. There’s no longer any reason, any need, to talk to people who think otherwise. Not only no reason, but an active incentive to not do so, as our relationship with someone outside those safe walls can be seen as a threat to the integrity of the group.

So, here we find ourselves, a few decades into building these walls around our respective camps, hurling insults at people we generally do not interact with in real life whatsoever, building straw men of their positions to set aflame in a constant ritual to display our purity to those around us, making sure everyone will still accept us. The walls are think. Tall. Strong. Our own little Helm’s Deep of ideology. Inside is safe and lovely. Outside, the barbarians are at the gates. And the barbarians are always getting stronger. They’re always threatening. They have to be, or why would we have to keep fortifying the walls?

This will come as no surprise to many of you, but I’m pretty hard right in my politics. I’ve also been immersed in the political world for decades. I’m old enough to remember that George W. Bush was Hitler. Old enough to remember that Mitt Romney was Hitler. And, now, certainly old enough to see that Donald Trump is Even-More-Hitler-Than-Hitler-You-Guys. I’ve seen people I know, people who I routinely spent time with in the past, describe people who hold my positions as intrinsically evil, irredeemable monsters that shouldn’t get a voice. When I said, “Hey, you know I have that view, right,” I’d get a dismissive, “Oh, well I don’t mean you.” Why not? Is it because you know me? Because you realize this straw man you’ve erected isn’t actually alive? Isn’t a real person? That maybe, perhaps, people can have different views and not be monsters?

That’s all well and good for those of us who do have a group that consists of people with different ideas, but as I said, there are a lot of people that don’t. A lot of people who are fully online, fully invested in one specific ideology, entirely walled in, entirely focused on Those Outsiders who they only know from the description of that group’s hyperbolic rumors. They’ve never met a person who holds any of the beliefs they hate so they can’t humanize them.

Put yourself in the shoes of a young person who grew up in that world. No real friends around them, parents around (maybe) but not really involved, fully absorbed into their online community. The community that tells them this particular person, if they’re given power, will destroy their world. He’ll rally the barbarians, destroy the walls, and wipe out everyone inside, including you. He’s the Real Enemy, and there’s a chance that, if nothing is done about him, everything that is bad will come to pass. He’s the apotheosis of all the vile things you know must be true about the Enemy, those things that came from the people you trust. So, naturally, something has to be done.

Men (and boys) dream of being heroes. We do it early and often. We have little fantasies about needing to protect those we love, about some random, even outlandish, situations arising that make us need to Heed The Call. We love that shit.

Trump’s been in the limelight of politics for damn hear a decade now, and for most of that time he’s been labeled as someone who will not only destroy democracy as we know it, not only rise to become a fascist, but will shackle the country, put undesirables in camps, and basically any other monstrous thing you can imagine. The American Hitler. Tell a kid that since he’s barely an adolescent, make him believe it, and, I mean this legitimately, what do you expect will be the outcome? He’ll be really riled up to hit the polls and vote? To be one voice in a sea of 350 million? Is that where you think that’s going, or is someone going to decide to be The Hero?

This isn’t really a call to soften the rhetoric. Political rhetoric has been wild since the dawn of time, and there’s no way that’s stopping. This is a call to get out there and know the other side. To realize that people can believe something else and their reason for doing so isn’t because they hate X group or want to strip the rights of Y group, but because they fundamentally believe it will be a better outcome for everyone. In the end, most of us want the maximum number of people to thrive. We want to see the prosperity of humanity, we just disagree on how we get there. If we keep fortifying these walls, we’ll never understand that, though. We’ll keep at each others’ throats, keep pushing, until more and more people find they’re backed into a corner and have no other option but to fight.

If that starts to become the norm, I don’t see how we come back.

With that bit of roaring optimism done, let’s see how the week played out.

  • Residuum
    • Ch 10 – Considering I threw it out AGAIN, this time I’ll be finishing it off for good. No more looking back. This will be the one.
  • Catalyst
    • Settle on the themes of the series as a whole.
    • Complete character interviews for each of the main four.
    • Set up the rudimentary arc/outline for one of the main four in book one.
  • ThemeAttic
    • Create document with at least 10 story plans to be used in the Substack.
    • Decide on the order of this and the type (Since there will be two types)
    • Begin the outline / plan for the first one.

I lost a lot of time and opportunity from Beryl, so I’m honestly pretty pleased with this outcome. I do continue to have the problem with prioritizing everything else BUT Residuum, but I plan to work on that little issue starting tomorrow. And, speaking of, here’s the plan for this upcoming week, bearing in mind I’m going to lose most of the weekend while I engage in FULL NERD MODE and watch Evo:

  • Residuum
    • Chapter 10
  • Catalyst
    • Complete Kahs’ arc/outline
    • Complete Yanis’ arc/outline
    • Complete Jennen’s arc/outline
  • ThemeAttic
    • Might be annoying and start posting my daily output, possibly with a little snippet. Not sure about this one, but it’s a thought.

Until next week, Dwellers. Go find someone you disagree with and have a chat. Let’s instill some humanity back in the world.

Half Out, All In

Thomas Keaten

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July 7, 2024

My approach to revision hasn’t changed much over the years. I know there are writers who do it as they go along, but my method of attack has always been to plunge in and go as fast as I can, keeping the edge of my narrative blade as sharp as possible by constant use, and trying to outrun the novelist’s most insidious enemy, which is doubt. Looking back prompts too many questions: How believable are my characters? How interesting is my story? How good is this, really? Will anyone care? Do I care myself?

Stephen King, Forward from Drawing of the Three

I’m sitting down to write this as the first bands of Tropical Storm / Hurricane Beryl roll over the sky out of my window and, truth be told, I wasn’t quite sure what the plan was to be. The title was a holdover from what I was supposed to write last week until the water damage fiasco scrapped that, so I thought I’d end up pushing ahead with the plan for that post – reviewing the year so far, with all its ups and (mostly) downs, and discuss the plan for the future – but as I sat here, drying off after moving our outside things into the garage, I found I didn’t really have the motivation for that recap. Yes, I know that looking back helps refocus, that it gives valuable information on how to better structure what’s next, but it just feels like a constant treadmill with that sort of thing.

So, I went hunting for a little inspiration in my saved quotes and stumbled back into the one above. I’m re-reading King’s full Dark Tower series at the moment and, when I came across this during my nightly reading time I had to pause and allow myself a moment to digest. That paragraph, and those questions in particular, felt like he’d drawn a laser sight directly to me. I’d read this before, I’m sure, but I was much younger then. Less experienced. I didn’t know myself the same way I do now, hadn’t been through all the halting, gnawing, overbearing moments of doubt and perpetual self-destruction of my work. Sorry, did I say moments? More like years. Epochs.

I’m in that now, in fact. There’s no better way to describe what I’ve been doing with Residuum. This constant backpedaling, revision upon revision, never satisfied with any single thing enough to not rip it out and rework it. The Groundhog Day of distaste in my own capabilities. It took me how long to get a rework of Chapter 10? I don’t want to look, so I won’t, but suffice it to say the answer is a ludicrous amount of time. An utterly untenable amount. And, guess what? This week I killed that version, too. Issues with believability. With interest. With skill. Everything he describes and more.

All those issues, this cycle, inevitably leads to the worst question of all. The final question. After everything; after all the work and rework, the changes, the shifts, the destruction and recreation of anything and everything – do I even care about this story anymore? That is, ultimately, the worst point I feel I can reach as a writer. Because, if it wasn’t obvious, a writer has to care. He has to care to make the story in the first place. The act of creation is born from a deep, nearly impossible to express need of caring. It’s giving voice to a part of you that cannot make itself known otherwise; a tale forged purely from will, desire, and time. Ideas come and go, but stories, stories that have been fleshed out and made real, to abandon those feels like giving up on a part of yourself.

I’d been concerned that I knew the answer to that question for a little while now, and that it was the answer no one in my position wants to have. There’s been a barely-concealed sense of distaste every morning that I push myself out of bed at 5AM to lumber into the office and stare at the same work, go over the same point, to see what else I’ve screwed up and how else I need to try to pivot the same story to make it right. I thought that meant I was done with it, that I was prepping myself to let it die. I think, maybe, that I might have thought it until this post, in fact. Until King made me realize what a ridiculous notion it was to assume this was something uncommon. Something that only us nobodies go through while trying to break in.

No. I had a story to tell then, and I still have it now. That hasn’t changed, and it won’t change. Residuum isn’t going anywhere until it goes to to people’s shelves, and it’s up to me to get past my own hang-ups and do what needs to be done. To stop nitpicking every little thing while I’m in the process of creating and just get on with the heavy lifting. I have a beginning, I have an end, and I have much of the connective tissue in the middle already in place. What had to change was necessary and good, and instead of working myself into knots dealing with what-ifs, I just need to flesh out the bridges. And I will.

I’ve found that traitorous little voice in the back of my head. He’s not snuffed out, not yet, but I’ve got a better understanding of the rules of engagement, now. It’s my time to win.

Yeah, I had a small list last week, but to be honest? Screw that list. Last week was apparently existential crisis week, so, despite most of it getting done, I’m not about to care enough to put that list here. We’re not focusing on the past, here. Not today. Here’s to this week, the one that truly kicks off the last half of 2024 around here.

  • Residuum
    • Ch 10 – Considering I threw it out AGAIN, this time I’ll be finishing it off for good. No more looking back. This will be the one.
  • Catalyst
    • Settle on the themes of the series as a whole.
    • Complete character interviews for each of the main four.
    • Set up the rudimentary arc/outline for one of the main four in book one.
  • ThemeAttic
    • Create document with at least 10 story plans to be used in the Substack.
    • Decide on the order of this and the type (Since there will be two types)
    • Begin the outline / plan for the first one.

If this feels like a smaller list than some I’ve shown lately, that’s because it is. I keep overbooking myself and setting myself up for failure, and that’s gotta stop. Not that this isn’t a lot – it is – but it comes with the caveat that I need to start putting more time into this to make the dream happen. Kicking a dead horse, as usual, but none of this is going to happen through good wishes and hopes. Nothing comes without work. So, let’s work.

And Then, Water

Thomas Keaten

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June 30, 2024

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

Mike Tyson

Well, I had fully intended for this to be a long post with a bunch of plans and cool things and whatnot, but, as the header image shows, water damage in my ceiling is taking precedence. The joys of home ownership. Turns our the pipes under the kids’ sink upstairs are leaking and have been slowly for a while and the whole underside of that thing is damaged. Who knows what that’s going to entail. So, with that in mind, here’s a (mostly) throwaway for the week. I’ll either do the intended deep(er) dive next weekend or put out some tidbits as I go through this week on the FB page / Twitter / Instagram.

A quick look at the plan and how that went:

  • Residuum
    • Ch 10
    • Ch 11
    • Ch 12
  • Catalyst
    • Decide on whether Kahs is appearing in book one.
    • Generic outline for the first quarter. (Up through the First Plot Point)
  • Project CT
    • Write the story intro for the game start.
    • Write the story leadup to battle 1.
    • Write the scripted events of battle 1.
  • ThemeAttic
    • Fully prepare for a July 1 launch of social accounts and Substack.

All in all, not so bad. I likely could have written Ch 11 of Residuum with how much I wrote and deleted for 10, but them’s the breaks. Also, I did manage to get a lot of plans in place for the July 1 launch, but I definitely can’t say I’m “fully prepared” so I’m not counting it.

This week is going to be a little different. With the holiday and plans and such – and a better understanding of my level of rust – I’m going to approach this one with a dose of extreme conservatism.

  • Residuum
    • Ch 11 – progress only, no need to complete.
  • ThemeAttic
    • Post social plans on all social outlets.
    • Begin joining places as needed.
    • Get Substack ready for next week’s article.
    • Start using all the socials.
    • Plan the initial several stories for the Substack.

VERY light on writing this week. It’s a prep week and there’s a lot to do at the house. There already was before this lovely event. Now, well, it’s going to be a blast.

Until next week, Dwellers. Where things will start looking a bit different around these parts. Or, well, around other parts.

Got Eyes Bigger Than My Days

Thomas Keaten

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June 23, 2024

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

‘Round and ’round she goes, this Ouroboros of goals.

This was a bad week for writing, overall. No excuses, I’m just really quite terrible at realizing the amount of time these tasks are going to take and end up wildly underestimating and suffering for that. You’d think I’d be used to that by now, but oh, well. Eventually, we’ll get there.

Short post today as I’m re-assessing some things to try and not fall completely flat on my face, but first that requires a quick review of the past week’s plan and where it ended up.

  • Residuum
    • Completely rewrite Chapter 10 in the new direction.
    • Write at least half of Chapter 11.
  • Catalyst
    • Decide on whether Kahs is appearing in book one.
    • Generic outline for the first quarter. (Up through the First Plot Point)
  • Project CT
    • Finish and print the PnP cards for local sessions.
    • Write the story intro for the game start.
    • Write the story leadup to battle 1.
    • Write the scripted events of battle 1.
  • ThemeAttic
    • Make up post for 6.16.
    • 6.24 post.
    • Figure out the whole Substack thing.
    • Develop actual social media plans besides “Exist on site.”
    • Set up all noted social media accounts.
    • Figure out the world / design of Dweller shorts and/or CYOA stories for site.

To start from the successes, I put a not-insubstantial amount of time into social media research. It was miserable, but them’s the breaks. That allowed me to get a pretty good grasp on the plan moving forward, which is great. I didn’t end up pulling the trigger yet because I want that plan to be more tangible than it is so I’m not fumbling after a week. There’s also a couple of decent, EXTREMELY high-level “outlines” for Dweller and COYA stories for the site(s). To shed some light – Dweller stories will be shorts that I put up for early access on this/Substack and the COYA (Choose-Your-Own-Adventure) stories will be ones that I throw up a chapter or two and leave up comments / a poll for a few weeks to determine what happens next, then take that for the next few chapters. Obviously, neither of those names are set in stone, but that’s the plan.

As to the PnP – turns out designing and making things usable physically is a HUGE time sink. Did not prepare for that one adequately at all.

When it comes to the novels, it’s a combination of rust (not as bad as I’d expected, but still there) and aforementioned lack of time. Nothing cataclysmic. I’ll get it under wraps.

Oh, and yes. Before you ask, Shadow of the Erdtree did, in fact, ruin a lot of what I’d planned to make up for in time this weekend. I am a weak man, and Miyazaki is an absolute legend that cannot be denied. My bad.

Where does that put this week? Well, obviously, a lot of retreading the same ground. I’m very clearly not going to make my goal targets for the month. It’s the last week, after all. The question becomes, am I the kind of person who is going to focus on maximizing the arbitrary number so it doesn’t look bad at the end, or will I sacrifice those easier pickings for pulling the trigger on goals that matter?

I’d like to believe it’s the latter, but I also know that I don’t have the mental wherewithal at the moment to sit down and force myself to crank out a few hours a night on revamping Residuum. I should, but I expect I won’t. Well…

Shit, the more I say it, the more I want to. Going to copypasta the rest of my writing goal list below and put some thought into this week. Imagine, if you will, I stopped clacking away mindlessly at this post for about 15 minutes just to figure out what I’m doing with my life, which leads to this list:

  • Residuum
    • Ch 10
    • Ch 11
    • Ch 12
  • Catalyst
    • Decide on whether Kahs is appearing in book one.
    • Generic outline for the first quarter. (Up through the First Plot Point)
  • Project CT
    • Write the story intro for the game start.
    • Write the story leadup to battle 1.
    • Write the scripted events of battle 1.
  • ThemeAttic
    • Fully prepare for a July 1 launch of social accounts and Substack.

And there we have it. Ambition, thy name is time. Going to make sure the family slaps me around if I’m not fully utilizing hermit time. The final sprint is here. Half the year is about to be over. I won’t let it go by like it has been. Until next week, Dwellers.

Filling In

Thomas Keaten

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June 17, 2024

“Go back?” he thought. “No good at all! Go sideways? Impossible! Go forward? Only thing to do! On we go!”

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

OH NO, WHAT DAY IS IT?

List, fam, I’ve got goals and those goals do NOT afford a missed weekly article, so here we are. A day late, a buck short, but limping over the finish line regardless.

Speaking of goals, how’d last week’s pan out? Well, a little hit or miss. To be expected, I suppose. I’d hoped to end things a little better, but given I was gone half the week and had absolutely no chance to do any sort of writing while gone, the results weren’t terrible:

  • Residuum
    • Polish up the new ending of Chapter 9.
    • Completely rewrite Chapter 10 in the new direction.
  • Catalyst
    • Decide on whether Kahs is appearing in book one.
    • Generic outline for the first quarter (Up through the First Plot Point)
  • Project CT (A new game project I’m working on designing and writing for)
    • Finish the first basic play rules.
    • Finish and print the PnP cards for local sessions.
  • ThemeAttic
    • Create a logo.
    • Compile a list of at least 10 audience expansion ideas.
    • Start fleshing out at least one of those.

Half a week, half the list. Acceptable. Something that exists as a bit of a standout on that list, at least for me, was the audience expansion ideas for ThemeAttic and, ultimately, for me as an author. Ten was a bit of a reach, in the end, and resulted in things that could probably be grouped together, but ignoring that, here’s the list, in no particular order:

  1. YouTube channel.
  2. Engaging in writer / reader Twitter threads.
  3. Engage with local writer groups.
  4. Engage with online writer groups.
  5. Choose-Your-Own-Adventure story on site based on comments.
  6. Dweller shorts on site.
  7. Substack.
  8. Transform Twitter account into true writing account / make a new one.
  9. Daily posts on ThemeAttics FB.
  10. Instagram (Apparently this is a major author platform?).

Some of these are obviously more involved than others, but I think, generally, I should be working through ALL of these ten things, not just a subset as I originally intended. All minus the first, maybe, though that’s probably the biggest possible impact point. I just… ugh.

Now, while I’d like to make this a post about anything other than my own goals, it’s something I’m putting together at the end of the work day as we draw closer to the release of Shadow of the Erdtree, so I’ve got a few, uh… non-writing related things to take care of before then. So, nah.

And that brings me to this week’s. No sense delaying:

  • Residuum
    • Completely rewrite Chapter 10 in the new direction.
    • Write at least half of Chapter 11.
  • Catalyst
    • Decide on whether Kahs is appearing in book one.
    • Generic outline for the first quarter. (Up through the First Plot Point)
  • Project CT
    • Finish and print the PnP cards for local sessions.
    • Write the story intro for the game start.
    • Write the story leadup to battle 1.
    • Write the scripted events of battle 1.
  • ThemeAttic
    • Make up post for 6.16. (You’re looking at it)
    • 6.24 post.
    • Figure out the whole Substack thing.
    • Develop actual social media plans besides “Exist on site.”
    • Set up all noted social media accounts.
    • Figure out the world / design of Dweller shorts and/or CYOA stories for site.

Make It Make Sense

Thomas Keaten

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June 9, 2024

The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.

Mark Twain

I am my own worst enemy in many ways. Many, many ways. I guess I could put all of them on the list of things to cover, but for now I’m focusing on the one that matters specifically for this site – my inability to get past myself to write.

“But ThemeAttic,” you say, “haven’t you written multiple drafts of multiple stories? Isn’t that getting past yourself and writing?”

Ah, if only.

Are any of those published? Have any of them made their way to something approaching a final draft? Clearly not. And why is that? A combination of things, certainly, but a big one is the overbearing need to have everything make sense. Every time I go over my work there’s some new loose thread I find, some comment made on page 10 that means something at the midpoint shouldn’t have happened the way it did which means the climax was built on a house of cards and discerning readers will see right through it. It’s a paranoia of sorts, and one that’s held me back for years. Decades, really. And continues to do so.

This deep-seeded story OCD gets me burned out and leads to me not spending the time I need to get past it, which just keeps me there longer and on we go in the perpetual cycle of repetition. It sucks. But, it leads to the question – can I fix it? Or, rather, is this something that I should even be trying to fix?

As much as I hate to say it, I think the answer to both questions is an emphatic “No.” Story cohesion is not only vital, I don’t think I could ever convince myself to give up that side of me. I wrote in the past how there are some necessary evils I just have to accept about myself, and this is one of them. Which, in turn, leads me once more back to the answer. The same answer I keep running into, the same one I keep bringing up, and the same one that I keep flubbing. Time. It needs more time. All of it. If I’m going to have to deal with this level of self-nitpicking, I’m going to have to allow for that time. Set it aside. Foster it. I’m just going to have to win.

So, back we go. Back to the public goals and weekly check-ins. I started all of this with an eye on publishing, and if I keep doing what I’ve been doing then this has all been for naught and I’ve just been leading all you lovely Dwellers along in circles. That’s not me, so back to putting up or shutting up. Let’s do this.

June is a bit of a mess for goals – most of my weekends are / have been booked solid and I both have and will later spend a lot of time out of the city, so it’s hard to accurately get things assessed. But, I mean, when has that stopped me before? Also, to spare you from all the personal garbage I put on normal goal lists, this one will be exclusive to writing. I’ve got 64 non-writing goals for the month (Gee, I wonder what the problem is when it comes to time?), but they don’t matter here.

Without further ado, the goals for 6.10 – 6.16

  • Residuum
    • Polish up the new ending of Chapter 9.
    • Completely rewrite Chapter 10 in the new direction.
  • Catalyst
    • Decide on whether Kahs is appearing in book one.
    • Generic outline for the first quarter (Up through the First Plot Point)
  • Project CT (A new game project I’m working on designing and writing for)
    • Finish the first basic play rules.
    • Finish and print the PnP cards for local sessions.
  • ThemeAttic
    • Create a logo.
    • Compile a list of at least 10 audience expansion ideas.
    • Start fleshing out at least one of those.

This will undoubtedly end up being a LOT, but whatever. Go big or go home. I’m behind enough as it is, might as well start with a big step forward.

Until next week!

Listlessness

Thomas Keaten

1 comment

May 26, 2024

I have a soul of lead // So stakes me to the ground I cannot move.

William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Apologies for the unexpected absence last week, I fell victim to a nasty case of the flu that’s had me down and out pretty much since then. I haven’t had the flu in… honestly, I can’t remember when, so it was something I kind of had to just wing it through. Didn’t expect it to be that big of a deal – I’m notoriously resilient even when I come down with things – but, like I said at the start, it laid me out. At first, despite the cold sweats, temperature swings, violent coughing fits, and intense headaches, I’d be lying if I said I hated the time off. Sure, it was mostly miserable and all the work remained something for me to do later, but it was what it was. That lasted for all of about a day. Turns out, I hate not being able to do anything. I expected that to be the case, but now I’ve got it proved out. Yes, I’ve wanted to catch up on some shows and games, but there’s only so much time I can give to unproductive things before I start to lose my mind.

Speaking of losing my mind, another side effect of the flu has been a general haze and difficulty giving a whole lot of thought to anything. That, and the occasional overwhelming wave of sweat, was what kept me off the work grind for as long as I was. I tried a few times to get back in the swing of things only to find myself just sort of staring at whatever project I was on, not really doing anything. So, back to being a vegetable.

It got to the point where I didn’t really want to watch anything. Or play anything. Or, really, do anything. I was tired of watching, of playing, of reading, and I didn’t have the mental wherewithal to do anything productive. Sort of my own little torture, really. This month had been set up to be one of my most productive since I started tracking goals, and I was on pretty good course to hit most of it down the line. That’s all in shambles now, and while the normal, logical side of me understands that’s just how it is and there’s no real avoiding it, another part is seething at the failure. At the continued failures, really. This is all just another in a long string, in the end. My failure inertia had me making excuses to not write this post, either, and just let another pin drop. Thankfully, public commitment seems to work well on me (obviously), so here I am, telling myself not to be a bitch, get in position under that boulder, and start pushing.

Which, naturally, makes me wonder how much I could have just willed and forced myself through earlier this week. How much did I allow to fall flat when it wasn’t necessary? Yes, rest was more important, but surely there was time to do something, the little shoulder devil says. Lucky for me, I’m still a little too fried to want to give him the time of day.

So, the last week was a bust. Oh, well. Toss it on the pile. I’ve allowed more than my fair share of those, this one just has the added benefit of being one with a reason. Nothing to get bent out of shape over there, and nothing to do now but pull that list up and see what’s left to salvage. The year’s almost half way over, somehow, and I’ve got a mountain left to climb.

As always, one step at a time, my friends. Onward, upward, etc. This boulder’s not gonna push itself, and these stories aren’t going to tell themselves. You’d think I expect them to at the rate I’m going.

Idiot Plot

Thomas Keaten

no comments

May 12, 2024

Content killed art.

It’sAGundam

Hello again, Dwellers. Back in the saddle for getting things up to speed. Full disclosure, a broken A/C unit caused some havoc on the planned schedule for writing, but I suppose such is life. I’m not going to take that L to heart, L though it was. We take those and move on.

Anyway, as the missus is out of town this Mother’s Day, I took it upon myself to spend it the best way I knew how – giving myself 21 tasks to complete and buckling down to do them. This article, in fact, is the bookend to that list. Many a load of laundry have run, rooms are cleaned, dishes done, meals prepped, etc. An added benefit to this home prep day was taking the opportunity to catch up on some media I’ve been meaning to get around to. Yes, I’m one of those “I’ll just add it to my list” Neflix people who ultimately have something totally untenable and frustrating to look at. But, every so often I get a day like today when I have things to complete that don’t actually require thought so I can enjoy some stories.

Or, rather, I can put something on and hope I enjoy it. I’ve not had a great track record lately, and running into marginal or outright bad shows / movies is rough when the time is so scarce. Thankfully, today wasn’t one of those days. I watched the first few episodes of Silent Sea, a Korean Netflix drama/horror/suspense show set in not-so-far future on a fallen moon base. I’m not going to bother with any sort of review since it’s still early, but so far, it’s been decent. Hasn’t blown me out of the water, no, but I’m invested enough that I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes.

This isn’t about Silent Sea, per se, but something more fundamental. An oldie but goodie, the Idiot Plot. An Idiot Plot is just what it sounds like – a story that only takes place and/or only continues because the people involved are all idiots. Not intentionally, no, that would be fine. In the Idiot Plot, you can see things happening on the screen and just ask yourself, “but why wouldn’t they just do X?” and it all falls apart. There are countless examples of this and I’m sure many of you can name a half dozen without pausing.

A few of my favorites from recent years are the ENTIRE Jurassic World franchise. Practically everything is kicked off by idiocy or allowed to continue from it. If you up your suspension of disbelief to buy the fact that they needed to create a genetically modified, bulletproof, camouflaging T-Raptor because the general public is bored of seeing dinosaurs at the only place in the world they exist, then the premise is fine. Hey, you might even say, isn’t that just part of the whole Military Industrial Complex plot? Sure, fine. Remember when it suddenly vanishes, though, and they think it climbed out of the top of the cage? And then proceed to just go in there and look around when they have a whole team designated to track them with implants? A team which, within like 5 minutes of screen time verifies that it is, in fact, in the cage still, causing the mayhem which ultimately lets it out? Or, how about the second movie, where they’ve somehow invented a laser which imprints a target on people to send raptors after them? How this works after the laser is no longer on that person is beyond me, but ignoring that, what the hell is the military use of this? If you can paint somebody with a laser you can just, you know, shoot them. Not send a much slower, larger, living creature after them to be killed before it does anything. Or, now in the third movie, what sort of braindead idea is it to genetically modify locusts to eat everything except the thing you make and think there’d be no impact or way of pointing that back at you?

And, after that wall of text, let’s not even get me STARTED on the new Star Wars content. I could go on for days.

But, that’s the thing, isn’t it. That’s the word of du jour. Content. So much of what’s being churned out today from whatever IPs are being “mined” (Thanks, Bob Iger, for that one) is nothing but content. Flashy with no substance, made to appease people with low attention spans who are just after the next cool moment. Better have your allocated number of actions scenes per episode. Better not let an emotional beat hit too long. Don’t worry about the ramifications of actions from earlier seasons, episodes, or even scenes. Just keep moving. Keep making. Produce.

Tom, you say to yourself, the hell does this have to do with Silent Sea? Well, there’s a moment between two of the protagonists that requires a little bit of setup. I’ll do my best not to spoil much in case you want to give it a watch. The captain of this expedition is there just following orders. He doesn’t know much as to what happened in this place, knows that this is being willingly withheld from him, and he’s being relied on to carry out the mission despite that. He also knows one of the chief scientists is there under ulterior, personal motives. He doesn’t trust her because of that. There’s a scene where she sneaks off to learn more on her personal goals, defying his order when he’s not around. During this, she witnesses one of the other crew members get killed by something she can’t identify, and as she’s standing over his body the captain comes in.

Now, modern storytelling trope brained as I am, I just instinctively expected this scene to be an excuse to generate more interpersonal drama. It would be used to add more tension between the team when we, as the audience, now fully understand there’s something worse going on here. I expected that because that’s what so many stories would do. It’s easy. Easy, and lazy. And one of those things you would look at and say – but, wait, aren’t there cameras around? Or, wait, wouldn’t the doctor know that this guy’s injuries couldn’t possibly have been done by this lady?

And, by God, that’s exactly what someone on that writing team asked his or herself. The captain questions her, but only briefly, then demands the examiner check the body and takes the bodycam from the suspected scientist, reviews it with her and the other people there, and just like that, everyone is aware that things aren’t what they seem. Instead of fomenting fake drama, this is used as a unifier. Captain By-The-Books now understands the lack of information he got isn’t something he can ignore, and immediately shifts from a “we’re here for the job” to “it’s time to survive” mentality, and things progress in a way that makes sense for this crew isolated on the moon.

That scene was so refreshing, so unexpected despite its obvious nature, that it immediately made me question how warped storytelling has been of late. How prone to taking the easiest route. I’ve been kind of railing against myself for taking so damn long on a lot of my outlining and new work, but the vast majority of that time has been precisely on trying to prevent this sort of thing. I don’t want easy ways. I don’t want to churn out Content. I don’t think I could handle being tied to making Idiot Plots, so I have to accept that it takes a little more to get things right.

All in service of the Story.

A little post-script here, but I wrote this article a good few hours ago only to have my youngest then cut his finger open and have us go to the ER to get that handled. Typical Mother’s Day activities. He takes after me so well.

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