500 (Or, a Writing Ritual)

I need to get to sleep, because I'll be getting up at 5:30 tomorrow. I will then shower, shave, and get dressed, but I won't put on my button-up shirt over my undershirt just yet.

I need to write first, and It's not as comfortable to write while wearing a collared shirt and tie. I need to be relaxed. I listen to Brian Eno's "Ambient" music while I do this. I've referenced Brian Eno's "Ambient" music in another journal entry; I love that music.

I now know this: I'm a morning writer, and I have a quota: 500 words.

It doesn't take long. I'm working on the first draft of a novel, and I just put the words down. I've charted out the plot. I know where I'm going. I write 500 words, and it advances the plot by another inch or so.

I didn't do this until recently. For more than 20 years, I kept journals, dumping random thoughts onto many, many computer screens over the years.

And until recently, that personal obsessive writing (I called it "comfort food writing") was pretty much all the writing that I did. Then I went to Los Angeles. I have no idea what it was about Los Angeles that snapped me into this groove, but now I can't get through a day without writing 500 words of fiction.

I do it this way: I pick one project (I have a whole bunch of other projects lined up), and I call it my JWTDT project. This stands for "Just Write the Damn Thing." I have no idea whether it's any good. I don't care, really. I just want to finish it, polish it, and then be able to say "hey...I wrote a book."

Then I will start another, and this next project will, too, be a JWTDT project. After I'm done each morning with my 500 words, I'll spend some time revising the previous JWTDT project.

I will write these books one after the other.

I'm in good company with this sort of thing. Anthony Trollope wrote every morning for three hours, making sure to write 250 words every fifteen minutes.  If he finished a book while he was in the middle of writing session, he would write "The End," and then start another book. That's the way I am, and that's the way that I'll write.

I've already gotten into this mode that doesn't dwell too heavily on how good this is going to be. I know that whatever I write, the next thing that I write will be better than the previous thing that I wrote.

And once I write those 500 words of JWTDT writing, I'm free. Free to write emails to friends. Free to write a stream of consciousness rant. Free to scribble an outline for a vague plot so that it starts to take shape.

It used to be 500 words of journal writing, and then 250 words of fiction in the morning. Now it's in reverse. I write those fiction words, and then type out my journal entry. I often pick up my uke in the middle of these sessions and strum a few chords. Right now, I'm teaching myself to play a classical ukulele version of "Waiting Room" by Fugazi. I am enjoying it, and making progress on shifting from F Minor to C# Major. Soon I will learn the chorus; it's tricky.

I don't have much more to say about this. I write every morning. On weekends, I'm going to shoot for 1,000 words. that's 4,500 words a week or, if I just write 500 words on the weekends, it's still 3,500 words.

Anyway. Tired. Bedtime. Good night.

The Kid With the Steampunk Welder's Goggles

To all my loyal readers, all half-dozen of them: you're rolling your eyes, I know. Steampunk has become a cliche. You've been all over this stuff for years, what with your manual typewriter computer keyboards, your penny-farthing motorcycles, your round-trip tickets to Europe via airship, and your autographed copies of The Difference Engine. 

As for me, I had no idea welder's goggles were such an integral part of the whole steampunk getup until one of my students came into the library wearing them. 

I asked to try them, and immediately, I wanted a pair. 

I now have a pair. They make me happy. 

When I ordered the goggles on Amazon, by the way, every comment said "Great Steampunk Goggles!" 

I felt behind the curve.

My affinity for welder's goggles, by the way, had nothing to do with the steampunk thing. I like them because I liked Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. Also, the goggles make me look like one of the scientists from La Jetee, or as if I belong on the cover of Thomas Dolby's The Golden Age of Wireless. 

Now, about the kid:

There's something life affirming about a middle school student who wears a Victorian vest, a pair of welder's goggles, and proudly carries around "The Steampunk Bible." It would be one thing if this were a middle school trend, but no; this kid is alone. 

Most of us would never have been able to pull something off like this back in the crushingly conformist environment of middle school. This kid, however, does it effortlessly. 

One of the best parts of my job is seeing a student who has the courage to be different, to completely be their own person. I meet a number of these students, as they often seek refuge in the library either after school or during lunch recess. They are not out of sync with the world; the world is out of sync with them. 

It gets better. 

As this kid showed me his welder's goggles, he talked about how he took a pair of 3-D glasses, and, with a Dremmel, fashioned a pair of 3-D lenses that fit inside his welder's goggles. 

So he wears welder's goggles to 3-D movies. 

This kid deserves a medal. 

I know that among the geekeratti, steampunk is mainstream, past its selling date. But it's still barely on the radar here at middle school. And this kid is there, with his welder's goggles, thinking of plans, no doubt, to create a clockwork interface for an Ipad, and to use, in the place of a cel phone, a flock of passenger pigeons. 

Priceless.