A Weekend of Progress
[Originally published in 3 parts]
Last weekend was my birthday present to myself that I have been waiting on for months. I spent two nights in a hotel about 40 minutes from home, and just focused on the book.
Well, mostly.
I dedicated many hours of the trip to the book, but other things did happen. Some in my control, some completely not. For a bit of fun, and posterity, I thought I would provide a rundown of the events that transpired last Friday-Sunday.
My Friday began with a half-day at work. This gave me some time to tie up any loose ends before the weekend and have minimal work-related stress while writing. Mission accomplished.
Next, I hit up Target for some snacks and a new pair of lounge pants. And I didn't go for the cheap stuff like I had in the past. I went top-shelf for my lounge pants. That's right. I dropped all 24 of those dollars on some premium, store-brand comfort.
Because I'm worth it.
One Texas bar-b-que lunch later and I was on my way. I checked in to the hotel and immediately started working on settling in.
Snacks in the fridge. Bluetooth speaker by the bed. Duffel bag of clothes was thrown somewhere. Who cares. Not important. iPad, keyboard, and phone charger went on the desk. Everything was plugged in and ready for power. Then the Jeans came off, and the brand-new, Smirnoff-level pjs went on.
Oh yeah. There's only one more thing this party needed and you can bet your sweet-ass that I already had them at the ready: Barenaked Ladies.
"It's been one week since you looked at me..."
Grabbed a Snack Pack from the fridge, fell on the bed, and thought about how this hotel was far too nice for me. The relaxation had officially begun.
While I sat there I started to put together the plan of attack. First things first, I needed a goal.
"Drove downtown in the rain. Nine-thirty on a Tuesday night..."
I figured a good place to start was to look at the goals I had set in "The Reflection" back in June. Furthermore, I should reread the outline I've been putting together in order to make sure that anything I added to it wasn't too repetitive.
"Our whole universe was in a hot, dense state..."
Something I taught my students when setting goals for themselves was to use the S.M.A.R.T. method (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, & Timely). Since I preached it to them, and saw them make progress, I figured I should do the same in this real-life application. That night I would review those past writings and then make the goal to achieve my year-end goal of completing the outline for the entire first act (the year-end goal also included posting that online, but I decided I didn't want to post everything all at once. More on that later).
"You can't imagine so many monkeys in the daily mail..."
Now that my writing approach was settled, it was time for our first critter of the night: Me.
For the uninformed, a "critter" is the term used to describe a member of the fan-base for the online Dungeons & Dragons show "Critical Role." It's a group of some of the most esteemed voice actors who get together once a week and play D&D for the world to watch. You may laugh, but their revenue from Twitch was leaked recently and they. Make. BANK.
And deserve it. Great show. Hundreds of hours of entertainment released for free almost every Thursday night for the last five years (with a long break during the pandemic). But, I digress.
"Struck by lightning, sounds pretty frightening..."
Last Thursday night they released the first episode of their 3rd campaign (i.e. season, except each season lasts a couple of years). Do you know how rare it is that I have a block of 4+ hours free AND been caught up on their show so that I can watch it at the time it's been released? I don't know how rare it is either because it had literally never occurred. This was going to be my one chance for that.
I turned off the Barenaked Ladies (that's a depressingly true statement), hooked my iPad up to the hotel's TV, ordered room service, and watched the episode. It was great. Highly entertaining, gave me some good laughs, and removed a potential distraction.
When I was done, I started reading what I had previously written.
Look at me sticking to my goals.
My plan for Saturday was lining up nicely and I was starting to feel the twinge of tired approaching. That twinge that during the week I usually ignore so that I can stay up a few more hours in order to play video games or watch British panel shows with Rachel (these posts are starting to make me realize that I have really niche interests for entertainment).
However, tonight was going to be different. I was going to let the Sandman do his thing and go to bed early.
But then the second critter of the night made an appearance and I knew I had at least a few more hours before slumber.
The joys of being in a hotel 40 minutes from home is that it's far enough away that it feels like you're away. The downside of being in a hotel 40 minutes from home is that it's not so far away that you can't think to yourself, "I could go home real quick and then come back," forgetting that 40 minutes one way is an hour and a half round trip. That is assuming that there is no traffic. But I live in Dallas.
There's always traffic. Especially, I found out, at 10:00 PM on a Friday night. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Back at the lovely bedtime hour of 9:26 PM, I get a text saying that "there is an animal in the house."
My first thought is, "oh that's not good. She's probably locked herself in the bedroom and signed the title for the rest of the house over to whatever creature has entered the abode."
Next text simply reads, "I think."
Now I have multiple questions coming to mind, including "How do you not know? Are you already locked in the bedroom?"
Essentially, Zelda (our anxiety-ridden dog) was freaking out in the living room/kitchen. Rachel came from the bedroom to find Zelda pointing and sniffing at the cabinet under the kitchen sink.
Then Rachel "thought" she heard scratching.
Not super confident, so I asked some follow up questions. Tried to get some more specific feedback to figure out if she actually heard anything. I'm not saying I don't trust my wife, but that hotel bed was making some very convincing arguments about the validity of this story.
About 15 minutes later I was heading out the door for that wonderful round trip, that included 20 extra minutes of stand-still traffic. Being the big, brave husband that I'm not, I marched right to the kitchen cabinets and got ready to open them when I remembered that that was a stupid idea.
I went and grabbed the Swiffer (larger surface area for than a shoe. I'm thinking I need something that can provide both a solid squish or slap-shot, depending on what size of critter we were dealing with here). Of course, our Swiffer's handle has been shortened to be a height that isn't unreasonable for our fifteen-month old to use.
Not ideal.
I fling open the cabinets, wrap both hands on the inconveniently short weapon-of-choice, and prepare.
Nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
In her defense, we both would hear scratching a few days later and get pest control to come out and set a bait trap outside. Now we are fairly certain we have a dead rat under our deck, but none of that future information mattered at that time.
Rachel was able to go to bed knowing she was safe. And I was able to drive back to the hotel and go to bed a little after midnight.
Saturday was THE day. I knew that Sunday morning at the hotel was going to essentially be useless for any meaningful writing contributions, so I couldn't rely on pushing anything to the next day.
The schedule for Saturday was pretty straightforward: eat & write.
That morning I met some friends who lived close to the hotel for breakfast. It got me a solid meal and a prescription strength dose of dopamine for my brain to be in a good spot to get work done.
I got back to the hotel and sat down at the desk to start writing.
Unfortunately, the bed and my unconscious body apparently had a fight the night before and my entire back didn't like the idea of bending. It probably had something to do me with me ignoring the bed's sweet whispers about why I should stay at the hotel and not go to my wife, but alas.
I found that the only way I was comfortable was to lay on the bed, that manipulative mistress, with a pillow under my chest and my iPad in front of me. Thanks to my bluetooth keyboard, this was pretty easy to configure while still typing.
For about fifteen minutes.
Then I fell asleep.
A deep sleep.
Three hours of straight napping.
No interruptions.
I woke up almost angry at myself that I had just lost that much time. Looking back a week later, I needed it. The week that followed my hotel stay, I felt more energized than I had in months.
With the goal of finishing my outline for Act 1 by the end of the day looming overhead, I walked down to the closest gas station and tried to grab the most balanced lunch I could. Fifteen minutes, two roller corndogs, a cheese/nut/fruit pack, some Reese's peanut butter cups, and a Starbucks Double Shot Energy drink later, I was back at the hotel and ready to write.
I knew that with my limited time left in the day I was going to need to approach this outline strategically. Better yet, I needed to hit it with some Logic.
"Okay, I was gone for a minute but I'm back now..."
And I wrote. I started with the outline and just started knocking it out. Chapter 2. Done. Chapter 3. Done.
"Ayy, no pressure. Never graduated but I school 'em like professor..."
Every now and then I would get up and walk the room while talking out plot points or conversations. Movement is something I tend to do when I’m thinking. This can be pacing back and forth in a room (which drives Rachel crazy), moving around imaginary pieces on a table when I’m sitting, or driving. I get a lot of thinking done when I’m driving. I’ve tried to utilize this in the past by recording myself talking ideas out, then I could go back and listen to them later. But, inevitiably, I never do go back to the recordings.
In the hotel, I didn’t have the understandably judgmental eyes of my wife. Nor the self-imposed pressure of keeping my talking to a whisper out of fear of embarrassment from someone overhearing me run through the same conversation with myself for fifteen minutes.
I felt impactful moments in the story finally fall into place. How Ptolemy perceived the relationships between characters started to make sense in my mind.
“I’ve been on the low, I been taking my time…”
In trying to tell a story from one person’s perspective, I’ve been actively avoiding putting everything on the page that is happening. The narrator isn’t an omnipotent voice. It’s just Ptolemy. He only has the knowledge of what he saw during the events and what he learned about those events before he began telling the story. If he sees something happen at a distance, but isn’t going to learn the details of the event until after he has told someone about it, then I can’t have him give those details in his initial telling. That isn’t realistic.
It doesn’t matter how clear the details are in my head when I think of the event, which is why I think I decided to wipe the first two chapters.
Or maybe not. Future Ryan will make that decision. But it is on my mind.
First Draft Ryan needs to understand the world that the story is taking place. I need to be able to visualize the space (no pun intended) that Ptolemy is traveling through. This leads me to want to put more detail than is necessary. How does Ptolemy and his mother get to the L-Bo? What do they experience when on the Lunar station? Does the architecture and furniture of a futuristic space base look or function any differently than the architecture and furniture of a futuristic Earth home? If there is artificial gravity, do they even feel different from being on Earth? If not, what are the moments that make him remember or feel that he is no longer on his home planet?
I have lots of questions about the world. But the biggest of all of them is whether or not those answers need to be on the page. The first few chapters being the opening image, I feel more inclined to describe everything about the world. Not only is it new to the reader, but it’s also new to Ptolemy.
As more characters are introduced the world will become less interesting to our protagonist. Theoretically. The appeal of being an explorer is that you are constantly seeing something that is new to you.
“Chillin’ with the homies at the crib bumpin’ Pac Div…”
The outline of the next few chapters started to flow onto the page. Rather than single sentences per bullet point, I was putting a paragraph. Each chapters outline was getting more and more detailed. When I had lines or feelings of characters that I wanted to remember, I put them in the outline.
I could not believe how much I was getting done in such a short amount of time. Almost 6 hours had passed since I returned from the gas station. It was no longer light outside and the Logic had long since stopped. That’s when a text message came through and I had my plan set for the night.
It was a simple text. Only three words, yet no lower-case letters. And it had all three requirements of any all-caps message that can change your plan for the night: no punctuation, a single cuss word, and seven vowels used in a word that only requires one. You know. To convey how hype the sender is.
My only question was why was the sender so hype.
Turns out, the Atlanta Braves just took the lead in the NLCS and would go to the World Series if they hung on. Sounds great to me. I called down to room service, found the game on TV, and moved my iPad and keyboard to the bed.
I spent the next couple of hours watching the last five innings and finishing up the outline of the last few chapters of Act 1.
My goal was reached and the Atlanta Braves won.
“LET’S FUCKING GOOOOOOO” indeed.
I woke up Sunday morning physically refreshed and mentally jubilant. The mattress and my back had moved on from what ever altercation they had had the previous night. Meanwhile, my mind had a surge of pride for all that I was able to accomplish. All that was left to do was to gather my things and get ready to enjoy the day.
Since my hotel was near an Ikea, my Sunday was going to start there. I know a trip to Ikea doesn’t sound super exciting for a blog about my journey as a writer, but I promise it’s relevant.
What’s not relevant is the 5-o stomping of Manchester United by Liverpool that I watched later that afternoon. Because it’s not relevant, you won’t see me mentioning that game. Again, the game where Liverpool beat Manchester United, their biggest rival, by 5 goals to nil. In Manchester.
Don’t worry, I won’t be mentioning the first hat-trick ever scored by an opposing player at Manchester United’s home stadium in the history of the Premier League, the mass exodus of United fans who were leaving at half-time, nor the fact that throughout the game the Liverpool fans were singing the name of the Manchester United manager to show how proud of the job he is doing.
Not going to mention any of that because, again, it’s not relevant to the writing weekend.
But it did make me happy.
Anyways, back to Ikea.
Eventually.
You see, this recap of Sunday is going to be a lot like Ikea’s floor plan: long and winding. I’ve got a plethora of rooms to take y’all through before the cinnamon rolls, so I hope you grabbed a map.
Speaking of maps, I hope you always check your fire escape plan map when you get to a hotel because I needed mine. I don’t know how I forgot to mention this in last week’s post, but the fire alarm in the hotel went off that night after I had, thankfully, wrapped up writing. I don’t know if I would have been able to focus after all those festivities.
The alarm started off in the distance. I’m not really sure if it was down the hall or a different floor, but the joys of that sound is that it carries. I remember thinking two things in that moment:
1. “Am I not allowed to just stay in this hotel room after sundown?”
2. “I’m really happy they didn’t put any of the fire alarms in the actual room. It’s loud enough from the hallway to get my OHDEARGODWHYYYYYYY WHYYYYYYYYYY!?!?!?!?”
Once I recovered from the shock of the flashing white light and the ear-piercing chirp that was reverberating off the hotel room walls, I started my trek towards the stairwell at the end of the hall. Around the time I reached the elevators four doors down from my room, the alarm stopped. All the patrons confusingly looked at each other trying to figure out if we should continue down or just go back to our respective rooms. Some old guy shrugged and turned to trudge back to his room. He was more experienced than me in life, so I followed.
Not to his room. To mine.
Not with him. I was alone.
Just to be clear. I went back to my room alone and he went to his room.
I really wrote myself in a circle there. Welcome to my brain, everyone. Constant loops and hole digging.
Anyways, back to Ikea.
I left the hotel Sunday morning to grab some breakfast tacos across the street before meeting my wife and son at Ikea. We had a nice little breakfast taco tailgate in the parking lot and then went in.
At this point, I’m sure you are thinking, “Ryan, you said Ikea was relevant to your writing. Get to the point.” You are correct. It is. You see, I can’t turn my brain off and I can’t stop it from creating. That is all it wants to do.
And worst of all, I feel like all my good creative material is going into meaningless things. For example, my son has a stuffed dragon that needed a name. I looked at its key characteristics and the name was super obvious:
1. It’s green
2. It flies through the air
Booger.
(My wife hates that joke, but the stuffed animal is called booger. So I’m taking it as a win.)
Meanwhile, the plush baby baby toy (that is a plush human baby that is also a toy for a baby, not just a generic baby toy that happens to be a plush) was named “Baby” by my wife. Her argument is that it is a baby so it should therefore be called “Baby” so that our son has good word association.
Bump that noise.
We have two portable LED lamps that we use at night so we don’t have to turn on the far brighter, overhead light. To make them fun, they came with different stickers so you could create a face on the lamp. My wife’s doesn’t have a name. It’s just a name-less lamp with a cute face on it. Boring.
Here is my lamp:
His name is LEDward the LAMPire.
I want you to read the next statement without a single drop of hyperbole or irony.
That may be the greatest joke I’ve ever made.
Not only is the wordplay on point throughout, he also sparkles. Well glows. Don’t think too hard about it or else it all falls apart. The point is that it’s a brilliant name and I still chuckle about it to myself over a year later.
To be fair to my wife, she has her moments. We have two stuffed bunnies. They are identical in everyday except for their color. One is gray; the other is white. She named them Gandalf.
Not Gandalf the White and Gandalf the Gray. They’re both simply called Gandalf. In my mind, the white one figured out time-travel and wants to kick it with his cooler, younger self.
Anyways, back to Ikea.
Since before our son was born, we knew that we wanted to get him some different plush foods from Ikea. My wife loves to cook, so she’s forcing that love on to him early with food toys. I am no better as I am doing the same with my love of mythical creatures and monsters: see both Booger and LEDward above.
We did some searching but they didn’t have the options in stock that we really wanted. And then we saw the hugging toast plushes.
There may be nothing more loved in this world by our son than toast. He will reject everything he loves at some point, but not toast. It’s perfect. I don’t know if he is old enough yet to understand that they are facsimiles of the food that he loves to consume, but he loves these plushes regardless.
And so do I, for I have named them. Not only have I named them, I have written them an entire backstory. My mind was still riding the high of progress that had been made on my outline over the last two days, that simply giving them a name wasn’t going to be enough.
The butter-faced toast is a foreign exchange student from France. His name is Guy (pronounced ghee, because he is French. And also covered in butter.).
The other toast is named James. James’ family moved homes a few months into the school year, so by the time he transferred schools all the standard James-based nicknames were taken. Since no one knew what to call this James, people mostly ignored him.
That is until Guy arrived from Lyon. Guy didn’t know where to sit on his first day at lunch and, as any generic teen movie’s idea of plot convenience would have it, found himself next to the un-nicknamed James. The jelly-smothered toast was halfway through consuming his usual meal of an entire sleeve of Tim Tams when Guy approached.
It didn’t take long before the two struck up a conversation about the chocolaty biscuits fore Guy was worried about his new acquaintance’s health. Of course, Guy expressed his concern with a stick of butter in his hand that he was treating like a Popsicle, so he didn’t have much of a foot to stand on.
After a few days of eating lunch together, Guy began jokingly referring to James’ favorite treat as Jim Jams. It started off as a joke about Guy’s french-accent making it difficult for him to say Tim Tam, but it slowly began to stick to James. Soon, everyone in the school knew about the new nickname and Jim Jam finally felt welcome.
What a happy origin story. Here’s how it went down in real time:
My wife: “What are we going to call the toasts?”
Me: “This one is Guy. The French spelling of Guy, not the butter spelling. And this one is Jim Jam.”
My Wife: “That’s cute, because his face is grape jam.”
Me: “Absolutely not,” I said while reeling back in offense by her assumption. “It’s because he loves Tim Tams.”
I don’t know what she sees in me.
In case it isn’t clear from everything above, this sort of thing is a constant occurrence for her. I make a dumb joke and she looks like she has regretted every decision in her life that got her to this moment, while I sit there giggling.
If I was forced to describe it another way, I would say that she is legendary Manchester United coach, Sir Alex Ferguson, and I am legendary Liverpool FC player and coach, Sir Kenny Dalglish, reacting to Liverpool being up by 5 goals barely halfway through the game:
