I suppose a definition is in order.  What exactly is ‘Musterbation’?

Musterbation is allowing your life to be dominated by things you ‘must’ do.   A must could be something as simple as taking out the garbage every week to paying your taxes.  To be sure, we all have things we must do to survive (eat, sleep, drink water, pay taxes, breathe, etc.).  But the insidious trap we can fall into is if our days turn into an endless session of musterbation.  It basically means we have lost control of our lives.

How do we stop musterbating?

1- Say ‘no’ more often.

This probably the number one cause of musterbation.  The inability to say no to others that make requests and demands of your time.  Put a stop to it.  The best way to do this is to…

2- Know what you want and organize your life to be, do, and have more of that.

Even though many of us have been taught to write down our goals, the reality is that most people have no freaking idea what they want.  They go through life being carried along by the flow of the river without ever taking the time to really understand what it is they desire.  Truly desire.  And since nature abhors a vacuum, the lack of commitment to what you want opens up a gap in your life that will be filled with tasks and ‘must do’s’ from folks around you that know what they want.  Congratulations sucker…their goals are now yours.   But you can easily block this sort of behavior by changing your mindset that of a…

3) Be a Creator, not an Acquirer.

What do I mean by this?  Most people set up their lives to be acquirers.  Their goals are primarily related to having goals such as getting a house, a car, a million in the bank, etc.  The problem with acquisition goals is that they force you to work on stuff outside of your mind to get what you want.  Your power is pushed to the outside world where the object of your affection lies.

But have you ever thought about why you want something?  Think about it for just a minute.  You may have to ask “Why do I want this?” to yourself over and over.

For example, say you want a car.  Ask yourself, “Why do I want this car?”.  Then, when you answer it, ask yourself why you want that.  Keep doing this enough and at some point you are going to arrive at a truth.  The truth is that you don’t really want the thing…you want the feeling you think the thing will bring you.

Guess what?  You can bypass the thing and go straight for the feeling.  How?  Simple.  By focusing your attention and energy on the act of creation instead of attempting to acquire something.

So quit asking “What do I want.” and instead ask, “What do I want to create today?”.

This slight change in focus will work wonders to cure you of musterbation.  It is the first step in creating the kind of authentic life you really desire.  The type of life that leads to real, lasting happiness.  Which, if you did the exercise above where you kept asking over and over again why you wanted something, is probably the exact feeling you were looking for when you set the goal, wasn’t it?  You don’t need to acquire things to get that feeling.  You get the feeling you are really looking for automatically when you focus your attention on being the creator you were born to be.

Now, the novel wasn’t ‘done’ in three months. It went to my editor and she returned it to me with a bunch of edit notes I needed to go through. Some things needed correcting and others I just left alone.

What I did find is that I wanted to make some big changes to the plot structure. This was because I had not spent any time outlining the book.  I wrote it by the seat of my pants and it showed.  As a result of my impatience in the beginning, I spent far more time ‘re-writing’ than I did writing.

My next book should avoid this fate. For one, I am using yWriter which really helps me structure things so the story flows smoothly. The ups are where the ups should be and the downs properly placed as well.  Second, I have a much better idea of the type of story structure I like so I build them in at the beginning and then just write the story to get to the places I want to do.

So the secret to finishing a novel is to write everyday. But how much should you write? I don’t measure it in words because it is not important to me. My only caveat is that every single day, at 7 am (or earlier), I start writing. If I only write one word, then I have achieved my goal for the day and I am fine with that.

But you know this is a trick.  I generally write a bunch more. The hardest part is just getting started but now that it’s a habit it’s not a big deal.

Try it. Write every day…even if it is only a single word. Within a few years you could be one of the most prolific authors on the planet.

The protagonist in this book is a woman named Shawna Davidson.  She is a recent widow, having lost her husband to a plane crash.  The insurance company won’t pay out because they think the death was a suicide.  The loss of her husband’s income and a lack of savings force her to quit graduate school (she was going to Duke to become a genetic scientist).  Quitting school means she has abandoned her dream of using her knowledge to develop a life saving drug that saves thousands of lives.   To make ends meet, she gets a job working for a gene sequencing company that is under contract with the government to sequence the DNA of every US citizen.  She is not miserable, per se, but she is not living up to her potential either (as measured by her standards).  I think a lot of us can identify with Shawna.

I have started my next book and the hero in that is a woman as well.  This got me to thinking about why I have chosen women to play such important roles in my first two novels.  Here are my answers…

1- I like women.  Soft and sensual on the one hand and tough as nails on the other.  I like the extremes.

2- I don’t know women very well.  Having made the trip around the sun 45 times and being married to one for over 18 years and you would think I would know something about women.  Nope.  But writing about them and giving them interesting roles let’s me see the world through their eyes.  Perhaps when I am 90 I will understand them.

3- Women are complex and interesting.  Men, on the other hand, are dipshits. Feed a man and give him an opportunity to release his seed from time to time and life is pretty damn good.  Sit him on a LayZBoy in front of a sports channel displayed on a 60″ LCD and he’ll drool all over himself.  If he could lick his testicles like the family dog, he would never leave the house.

4- I like feisty women.  They scare the hell out of me but I like them.  I remember a girl from high school.  Her name was/is Michelle.  I teased her one day about dating a younger guy (I was a dork and dating no-one at the time so I had no room to run my mouth but facts like this rarely stop me).  She smacked the shit out of me for teasing her.  It was at that point I realized that women are amazing. Michelle was/is for sure.  (and no, I did not develop a fetish where I like women to beat up on me…at least one that I am willing to admit).

So there you have it.  Four simple reasons why I like making the protagonist in my stories women. Not saying it will always be that way, but as you can tell, I have a lot of issues to explore.  At least a dozen books worth.

As in, I’m gonna lose some weight (because my momma says I am getting fat), gonna stop drinking (because I won the neighborhoods ‘most bottles recycled award’), and I’m gonna stop peeing in the yard (because, well, it seems like the right thing to do),  etc.

While these are all good resolutions, most of them will be abandoned on a date that falls somewhere between January 1st and January 31st.  Especially the last one…such is life.

Me?  I said screw resolutions years ago (as well as most of the goals I dutifully wrote down in deference to the success gurus).   As a result, my New Years routine has been much simplified as a result.

Here is what I do now…

1- I stop doing everything and take time to turn around and look at how far I have come over the year.  Since I write in my journal just about every day so I will do a quick review of what I wrote over the year.  The tears flow, the laughter comes, mostly in realization of just how absurd this thing called life is.

2- I think generally about what I might want to work on next…not in the new year mind you, but next.  As in, right now.

I do plan to write another book in 2012 (The Discovery) and perhaps several more.  My first book, The Sequence (which will be out this year) was a total bitch to write.  Well, to be honest, writing it wasn’t so bad but re-writing it was and is the reason I think authors that call themselves Pantsers are self-loathing masochists.  I love myself too much to put myself through that hell again.  Goodbye pantsing, hello outlining!

And don’t forget the most important step…

3- After all this reflection and thinking, I sit on my back porch, eat a huge slice of pecan pie, drink a bottle of wine and pee in the yard…and then laugh with God at the absurdity of it all.

Here’s the thing.  I have to do it. I must, on a daily basis, express my creativity in some form or fashion.  This is not optional.  I am the mythical Sisyphus and creating something on a daily basis is the stone I am damned to roll up the hill.  And no, its not a particularly healthy obsession.  It is why most creatives are labeled crazy and often end up alcoholics.  But enough with the cynicism.  Here are the good reasons…

My favorite ‘thing’ in the world is a blank sheet of paper.  You can do anything with a blank sheet of paper.  From the mundane to the magnificent.  For me, I like to put words on it mostly.  Sometime pictures, but mostly words.  And here is why I keep at it day after day.

1- I love the magic of it all – Here’s an admission, I have no clue where the ideas or words I write come from.  They just come. Sometimes in flashes of insight as complete scenes in my head that I have to describe or as words that just find their way through my fingers, onto the keyboard and then on the screen.

2- Everyday, I Show Up Just to See Where the Path Will Lead -  Since I have no clue where the ideas or the words come from, everyday is one of awe and wonder.  Some of the stuff my muse supplies is absolutely magical and she is always full of surprises.  It’s amazing to play in my head sometimes.  And by putting the words on paper, I hope you can play in there a little bit too.

Science Fiction is a fun genre because you are not constrained with reality as most people live it day to day.  You can stretch it a bit and make stuff up.  That’s fun to do.  It reminds me of my childhood when I would make up elaborate games to play with my friends.  Pure fantasy stuff.

One game we played we pretended we were stranded on an island filled with cannibals.  Our entire neighborhood became the ecosystem of this island and we would imagine elaborate obstacles we needed to overcome just to survive.  Imagine that!  As adults, we tend to avoid obstacles but as kids we would create them just for fun. And this game would go on for weeks at a time.

Another game we played was like Star Trek except all of our missions were underwater and our spaceship was a super fast submarine.  We even had imaginary air locks we could go through to “dive” outside our submarine.  Even as I write this I can recall some of the specific  adventures we would come up with.  It was like our own TV show with a new mission that we would embark on every time we played.  Yes, the 7 year old mind is a fertile playground indeed.

So, here I am at 45 years of age trying to capture the imagination of that 7 year old blond headed kid.  And guess what, I think I am doing it.

So why do I write science fiction?  Because there is nothing cooler in the world than to be inside the mind of a 7 year old kid.  And I get to play there every single day.  Care to join me?

There is something very romantic about the notion of an author, ensconced in a room with a desk and typewriter, banging away at the keys until, as if by magic, the words ‘The End” appear on the last page.  I fell for this romantic illusion myself when I first started writing and within sixty days hammered out an 83,000 word novel.  Life was good.  I wrote “The End” and felt really good about myself.

I was a ‘pantser’ through and through. ‘Screw outlining’ I said to myself.  That’s for folks that can’t get in touch with their muse.  Me? I can’t get the muse to leave me alone…

The manuscript went off to edit.  I got it back a few weeks later with all the normal stuff ‘fixed’ and the obligatory edit notes.  Here is what I read that I liked – “It was a real page turner and would make a great movie.”  That’s cool.  The muse didn’t let me down.  But then I continued reading “You might want to work on character development a bit, the hero is a little one dimensional.”  Hmmmmm.  What does that mean?

So I set about doing the re-write and realized I had painted myself into a few corners with my plot. How?  By not paying attention to the pace of my story.  My muse apparently didn’t know anything about pace.

There is an old adage that a good story is pretty simple.  You somehow get the hero to climb a tree.  When she is feeling pretty good about her tree climbing skills, you throw rocks at her.  Then you get her out of the tree. Either by knocking her out with some hefty rocks or letting her descend on her own, torn and tattered.  Do that enough times over 80,000 to 100,000 words without losing the reader and you have a novel.  Maybe even a good one.

My problem is that my hero spent a good chunk of the early part of my story climbing one tree.  And she kept climbing and climbing and climbing.  And because my muse sucks at pace, my hero had climbed so high that I had a hard time reaching her with the rocks I was throwing at her.  I needed shorter trees. And more of them.

But here is the problem many ‘pantsers’ face. You can’t just go back and easily add more trees after the story has been written.  To do so, requires a ton more effort than banging out the original story.  Trees need to be planted, and nurtured.  Rocks need to be carefully chosen for size and weight.  Plus, the muse is easily bored.  At least mine is.  She wants to help me with the creative ‘new’ stuff, not ‘fixing’ the stuff we’ve already done.

Here is an embarrassing fact. I have spent more time re-writing than it took to write the original story.  I suspect that other folks that write by the seat of their pants have the same issue.  So I have come to the conclusion that ‘pantsers’ aren’t really writers at all.  They are ‘re-writers’. And because my muse and I don’t like re-writing that much, I have decided to do a little more planning on the next novel.

Not a full blown outline mind you.  My muse won’t tolerate that.  I am convinced that if I subject her to too much ‘planning’ she will run and hide and start drinking bourbon in the morning.  But I will definitely do some outlining and planning.  So I will become, in the end, a ‘pantser’ with a dash of “outliner’.  A ‘pantliner’… a hybrid.

Before I sit down to the write the next novel, I will at least think about the trees I want my hero to climb.  I’ll consider where I will plant the trees in my story.  How tall each tree will be.  How many branches the trees will have. Not every tree.  But the main ones to be sure.  And of course, I will choose some of the rocks I plan to throw as well.

But I will always leave some of the decisions to my muse. Why? Because when I give her some space, she grows some of the most interesting trees you have ever seen.  And don’t even get me started on the rocks she finds to throw…

One thing that has me concerned as I am getting ready to publish my 80,000 plus word novel, The Sequence, is the increasingly short attention spans we all have.  Is the time of the long novel behind us?  I mean seriously, who has time for it?  Even when eating, a task that is needed for survival, we only have time for the nuggets, not the whole chicken.

Fear not fellow novelists. I just read a cool post on CopyBlogger.com written by Sean Platt announcing his new ‘serialized’ novel Gone Tomorrow.

The book is delivered in six ‘episodes’, just a like a TV program.  Check it out here – http://www.copyblogger.com/ebook-revolution/

Is this the future of fiction?