Writing Rules

I’m not usually the kind of writer who does a whole lot of pre-writing. But, as I mentioned in a previous post, lately I’ve been trying to reverse-engineer two plays I wrote years ago to try and figure out how they work, scrap what’s bad, keep what’s good, and form it all into some kind of novel. Turns out that there’s a lot to scrap and not a whole lot to keep. Yeah, I know that “Writer Critical of Earlier Work” isn’t exactly headline news, but it still puts me in an awkward position, because a lot of the problems that I’ve been finding have come from writing advice that I’m not entirely sure that I trust.

And man, I’ve sure heard a lot of writing advice. After one session at the Iowa Young Writer’s Studio, two sessions and the New York State Summer Writer’s Workshop, two creative writing classes, attending dozens of readings where the audience is entirely composed of aspiring writers trying to milk advice out of someone who’s made it, reading a ton of reviews and watching a ton of video essays, not to mention plenty of conversations about craft, I could probably rattle off a hundred tips off the top of my head. And, like the worst possible kind of student, I haven’t ever really interrogated what I learned. Instead I built it into a generalized idea of what a story should be and let it harden into dogma. Particularly tricky dogma, because most of the time it contradicts itself (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard “show, don’t tell!” except by saying that I’ve heard “anyone who tells you ‘show, don’t tell’ is an idiot!” just as many times).

So instead of just plotting out the kind of story I want to write with this novel, I keep getting side-tracked worrying if I’m meeting all the expectations for a good story. Even if I stop worrying for a moment about whether or not I’m fulfilling the expectations, worries about whether I’m sticking too strictly to the expectations come along and fill whatever space I emptied out. Because, with so many formulas for what makes good writing, it’s hard not to expect that the writing will become formulaic after a while. If you set out writing a story where characters go through linear arcs, every character contributes to a central theme, every action has a clearly telegraphed motivation, and the plot conforms to one of a limited sets of archetypes, then it seems like that only leaves you with so many stories that you can tell. Or, at the very least, it means that the best you can do is imitate a style that someone else had already perfected and described with mathematical accuracy. 

But what’s the other option, then? Some surreal, experimental piece where the only subject matter is whatever happens to flit across my mind at the moment and the only point is to convince everyone that I do some kind of hallucinogenic drugs? That’s an extreme example, but at least it would be an intentional subversion of the rules. Subverting rules is at least a step up from ignoring them, just plugging away for an hour a night with no direction until I pile up a manuscript that I’ll never have the courage to look at again. It’s better than being a lazy writer, and this month-long planning phase has been an extended attempt to prove to myself that I’m not a lazy writer anymore.

But, when you look at it too far in the abstract, writing stops really being writing anymore. At first it feels fun and professional to map out the plot of a story, but look at it long enough and you’ll realize that you’ve killed whatever authentic joy the story had in its dissection. I’m not saying that the rules are useless, but they’re only helpful to a point. The logical intelligence that comes from following plot maps ultimately has to yield to the imagination that the story comes from in the first place. It’s a balance, I think, and the reason why I’m having these worries is because I’ve tipped too far into the rational side of the scale and need to pull back. Odds are I won’t ever find a way to reconcile the helpful bits of writing rules with the way they seem to cast every story into the same mold, but that’s okay. Because once the writing kicks in, there’s no formula to explain the story anymore than there’s a formula to explains everything in the universe. It’s a world into itself, and that’s the real thrill of it anyway.

Philip Kiely Briefly Hijacks my Blog to Talk About Careers

Greetings! Philip Kiely here, which I hope you were able to gather from the picture of the young JFK impersonator above this post. John graced my email list with his humorous and insightful writing, which means you don’t get to read it here. Evil Laugh! Instead, you get some guest content. For more shameless self-promotion, or to understand my qualifications to write on this topic, check out https://philipkiely.com.

Part 1: How to Find a Good Job

John and I have intersecting views on what defines a successful career. Both of our chosen fields involve vast amounts rejection to alleviate the strenuous monotony of staring at a screen solving complex and abstract problems with nothing but our wit, experience, and the collective work of generations of experts in our fields to guide us. A fundamental difference is that very good writers often work caffeine-oriented service jobs while even a bad programmer can make a good living pretending to be a mediocre programmer. At the other end, the gap remains, the highest net worth programmer (Bill Gates) is worth approximately 100 times as much as the highest net worth author (J.K. Rowling), who at the time of writing doesn’t even crack a measly billion.

That said, I’m not here to flex (that would have been the post John wisely rejected: “How to have a lot of money and muscles”). I’m not here to depreciate John or his profession, he’s much better at that than I am ( “Top 19 Humblebrags” and “11 favorable comparisons to John Osler” were also rejected). Instead, I’m here for an Oslerian vulnerable and open discussion. My chosen topic is The Career, which despite appearances is an intensely personal topic.

Two recent events have me thinking about the topic. The first is September 1^st marking the beginning of Summer 2019 internship application season for ambitious computer science students. This may strike you as early, but in a world of rolling deadlines and exploding offers being first pays. The other is reading Dying for a Paycheck, a brilliant book by Jeffrey Pfeffer (Stanford professor) about the immense individual and societal effects of workplace stress, especially among people in “good jobs.”

The junior year internship is pivotal. If I have a successful summer and enjoy the employer, I will likely work there for at least three years after college, making it the equivalent of selecting a graduate program while barely past halfway through undergraduate study. Fortunately, I have a decent amount of relevant skills and experience for my age, so this early in the process I have high hopes of landing an ideal internship. Rather than a prescriptive list of companies, let me describe the most important thing I’m looking for having lived through my single-spaced resume.

The most important thing I’m looking for is a stress-managed workplace. Stress is the main subject of the aforementioned book and the main cause of minor to moderate health issues for me. Note that I don’t say low-stress or stress-free. I experience and internalize stress very easily, partly due to the all-or-nothing nature of my profession (code works or it doesn’t) and that I generally care very deeply about solving whatever problem I happen to be working on. Therefore, a supportive environment where everyone acts proactively to manage stress is essential to maintaining happy productivity.

The most important thing I’m looking for is fulfilling work. I don’t need to be curing cancer or saving babies. In fact, I don’t want to try to do either at this point, because most entry-level software engineers don’t tend to save the whole world no matter how many hundreds of startups advertise otherwise. I do want a sense that the work that I’m doing is making the world better by any margin. If I’m going to be stressed and work hard, there should be at least some greater benefit from it.

The most important thing I’m looking for is a sense of professionalism. Robert Martin and many other computer scientists have described issues with how many programmers are seen by upper management and society at large and in turn see themselves. I want to act and therefore be treated as a professional. My contribution is ethical and honest working practices, high quality output, and full disclosure of any issues with my work. My employer’s contribution must be appropriate tools and training and an environment where such attitudes are supported and rewarded.

And, yes, the most important thing is making a lot of money. I have a lot of things I want to do that require moderate capital investment. Furthermore, making and saving extra money in my twenties will have a compounding reducing effect on the time it will take for me to achieve financial independence. I will not deny a component of materialism either.

(Credit where it’s due to The Most Important Thing by Howard Marks. See, I can reference famous books as well.)

This list will differ from person to person, but I would be surprised if anyone specifically avoids anything on this list. It is critical to understand what you want and need in a workplace, and that understanding will only come from experience.

Part 2: How to Get a Good Job

To read the second part, please join my professional service club for a special introductory rate of $19.99 for the first two months!

Haha, just a bit of harmless content-marketing humor for you there. The first step in getting a good job is realizing how many there are. In my field, they are innumerable, but for college students generally free from geographic constraints they should be numerous in most fields. Every big-name company has its handful of competitors and scores of suppliers and subcontractors. Every hip startup and indie publisher is landlocked by similar enterprises. There are millions of people working jobs that regularly meet every requirement on their list, and you can be one of them.

The second step is to apply for every good job you see until you get one. This should require no more than a hundred job applications, which after the first ten should take only minutes each. There is a wealth of information online about how to do it properly in your chosen field, but in every industry it comes down to statistics and luck at the junior levels. It is important during this application stage to never compromise on your list of essential attributes in a job and company. The third step is not getting your soul crushed by the second step. The fourth step is figuring out how to recover from failing at the third step. “Hope fatigue” is a real issue in applications of all kinds, the cycle of attempt and rejection buffets the spirit. The fifth step, interviewing and closing an offer, brings you back to the domain of career services centers and pithy blog posts by people who make ludicrous sums (or often nothing at all) as “management consultants.”

Finally, a word on salary negotiation. After this long cycle, you will be tempted to take whatever they give you then keep your head down for years before asking for more. Even at junior levels, no reasonable employer will get mad with you for having a calm and professional discussion about the value of your skills at the end of a successful job application or the merits of your contributions after six months or a year of work. They might say no, but often don’t. Remember, a business will offer you the minimum amount of money they think you will say yes to. In my three-year career I have thus far increased my total earnings by at least ten percent through a few brief negotiations and there’s no reason that you cannot do the same. As raises, promotions, and new jobs often base compensation off of your previous earnings, a small increase now can have compounding lifetime effects.

Thanks for sticking with me and best of luck in your professional endeavors.

Sincerely,

Philip J Kiely

Synesthesia

I’m trying to adapt a play I wrote two years ago into a novel, and yesterday I got the idea to get a 10-pack of Crayola markers so I can color-code notes on various characters. This idea got me more excited than any adult really has a right to be over markers. And it’s not because I’m one of those hyper-organized people who gets a real kick out of needlessly complex sorting systems (anyone who’s seen my dorm can tell you that’s not me). It’s because there’s something that appeals to me in a deep, hard to explain way about matching people’s personalities to colors. Maybe it’s just that I played with brightly colored action figures as a kid, but I’ve always sort of hoped that it was synesthesia.

Synesthesia is a condition in which people associate one sense with another, so for a synesthesiac a note on a piano might evoke a color, or running their finger along a particular surface would elicit a smell. It’s how we all work, back in infancy when our brains are scrambling to figure out what the hell the world is. Most people lose it, but a lucky few don’t.

I found out about synesthesia in fifth grade, when I read The Name of this Book is Secret, which is about a secret cult who manage to reverse aging by eating the brains of synesthesiacs. Despite the strong implication that having the condition would put me on the hit list for cannibal cults everywhere, I immediately wanted synesthesia and went to work trying to convince myself that I had it.  The easiest kind, I figured, was associating people’s personalities with colors (even though personalities aren’t actually a sense), so every so often I inserted phrases like, “He’s so orange,” or, “She seems a little too purple for me” into conversation. I must have been a weird enough kid that no one paid too much attention, which is good because I might have accidentally crossed over into racist territory once or twice without knowing it. 

For years I assumed that I had the ability to see people’s innate colors and, since no one really cared, I stopped thinking it was that big a deal. Every so often I’d categorize someone according to color, but in a passive way, like remembering their birthday. It never came up until prom night, when I mentioned to my date that I had synesthesia. Her face immediately brightened as she launched into an explanation about how B minor always made her think of being hit by a balloon full of paint or that peeling glue off her fingers was the color of orange tissue paper help up to a red stained glass window. It was beautiful to hear, like her life was built on these poetic connections, a secret language lost to the rest of the world. But at the same time it hit me like a B minor chord, because it meant this whole time I’d been faking. And when she turned to me to ask how my synesthesia worked, what could I say? Sad people were blue, happy people were yellow, angry people were red? It was symbolism on a preschool reading level.

It shouldn’t have hurt me so much to find out that I wasn’t a synesthesiac, but it did. Even in those years when I didn’t think about it very much, it made me feel strange and creative and special, which is apparently all that us millennial want, according to cantankerous think-pieces (along with free health care and a trophy just for showing up). And now I was just another idiot who cared about his favorite color too much.

But maybe being just another idiot isn’t that bad. Even if I can’t explain why colors mean so much to me with some four-syllable neurological term, it still matters. And you only have to glance at the rich history of color symbolism in literature to see that it matters to people without synesthesia. There’s this quote in Dante’s Purgatorio that’s always stuck with me: “By such a curse as theirs, none is so lost / That eternal love cannot return / As long as hope maintains a thread of green.” Green’s always been my favorite color, so much so that I get seasonal affective disorder in the winter, not from shortened days, but from empty trees. That image has always stuck with me, of being trapped in a world drained of green, and striving for that single thread with all your might. That’s powerful, at least to me. Maybe that’s better than synesthesia. 

Credo for a Rewrite

My latest writing project adapting a couple plays I wrote two years ago into a novel, so for the past week I've been reading the plays and taking so many notes on it that I think the notes will be longer than the play itself. There's always this feeling of adventure when you start a writing project, especially when you're restarting one you have fond memories of, so I tried to capture that in this short note I wrote before starting.

I'm scared. All day I've been fantasizing about what it'll be like to return to the old drafts, like discovering lost secrets of an ancient ruin that you built by hand but forgot about eons ago. Soon I'll have turned the neat, stacked sheets of paper in front of me into messy, color-coded, nearly-illegible artifacts. And from all that I'll write a  novel, which I'll print out and let sit for awhile, and then I'll turn those pages into nearly illegible artifacts. And so on and so on, definitely for years, maybe for decades, until someday all those piles of paper will be made into a slim volume, which will get old and the pages will turn yellow and some copy will find its way into a used bookstore and someone will be struck by the cover art or something and buy it for fifty cents and, even if they don't like it, they'll still discover the same old ruins, except for this reader they will be new ruins, ruins made by someone they'll never know aside from a blurb on the back cover and whatever dumb photo they take of me. That probably sounds like a whole lot of hyperbole to most people, but it gets me excited. Excited and scared, because this scribbling feels sacred, something with real power to it, something that can inspire awe. And I'm standing on the precipice, not sure if I can follow through with it. Not sure if maybe all these delusions of grandeur will spoil it. Unsure if there's any meaning in the first place, or it it's all just ego.

A Thin, Straight, Brittle Line

I sent out the post I planned to use this week for an application for a column at Grinnell's student newspaper, so I won't be able to post it until I hear back. In the meantime, here's my only non-Bionicle poem to date! My lack of practice shows, doesn't it?

I can't stand poems that play around with shape and space.
If a poem is any good, you should be able to
Ignore the words and just focus on the
Ideas,
Images,
Inlightenment
It cetera.
Include interesting sounds, if you have to. Rhymes can be cool sometimes.
It's just too much for a poem to be
In your brain
In your throat
In the page, all at once.
It exceeds my mind's maximum capacity.
It shouldn't have a physical form, those wear out too fast.
Instead, it should be like a dream: beautiful, personal, fleeting,
Impossible to write a paper on.
I'm exhausted from all this reading and writing and running.
Illness from my head drains down my backbone to my legs.
In the mirror I look like a thin, straight, brittle line.
If things keep up,
I'll spend the rest of my life trying to achieve horizontality.
Unless I snap first. 

A High Schooler's Guide to Sex!

Two weeks ago I posted an article from the underground satirical newspaper I ran through middle and high school, which nearly got me suspended when I tried to post it on the actual newspaper's webpage. This week, I'm sharing an article from that satirical newspaper that somehow sparked absolutely no controversy despite being entitled "A High Schooler's Guide to Sex!"

Sex is a wonderful and fascinating part of many young Americans’ lives. But what is sex, why is it so important, and why does it cost so much? We at The Southern View are here to answer these important questions as all you bright faced youngsters prepare to graduate high school and go on to sex!

    

Sex usually lasts four years and takes place at a University or College. Sex is a lot like school, in a way, but you live away from home and have much more freedom as to what classes you take and how you schedule your day.

The main point of sex is to learn as much as you can in preparation for your future career. Most of that learning is done in classrooms, but sex is a lot more than just textbooks and classes! Sex is a social experience too, and since most sex requires you to live in on-campus dorms for at least your first few years of sex, even if you stay in your home town for sex you’ll still get a new, exciting experience! Now, temptations often accompany this newfound freedom, so it’s very important that during sex you stay away from dangerous activities drinking, drugs and pre-marital relationships of intimate nature. Sometimes sex can be overwhelming, and an unfortunate number of young people drop out of sex even before their first year is over.

     

With the advent of computing technology, the sexual landscape of America is changing fast. For modern and affordable options, some people even find sex online that is often comparable real-life sex! With so many options, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, so feel free to go to Edina High School’s wonderful counseling department and ask for sex advice; they’ll know just how to help you.

      

As the number one provider of information at EHS, we at The Southern View get a lot of letters asking about sex. To provide you the information that you need to make sure that your sex is successful, fun, and ultimately profitable, we have answered several of them below.

      

Junior Pete Gretchin wrote in during early September to ask “Is sex awesome?”

      

Yes, Pete, sex is awesome! It’s a great opportunity for you to expand your mind, meet new people and have a good time!

      

Sophomore Angela Oswald wrote in early June of last year, asking “My boyfriend and I kiss all the time. Does this mean I’ve lost my virginity?”

      

Thank you for your concern, Ms. Oswald, but we only answer questions about sex. Please send in a sex-related question next time.       

Senior Mitchell Impilman wrote in just last month. “I got accepted to go to Yale for sex early decision,” wrote Impilman, “But I don’t have enough money to go. Any advice on how to afford some of the very best (and most expensive) sex in the country?”

    

First off, good job of getting into Yale, Mitchell! Secondly, you should probably contact Yale to see if you qualify for financial aid. If not, there are numerous ways to pay for sex, such as working summer jobs or volunteering for medical experiments.

Losing Control

I spent some part of every waking hour, from our coach’s warning on Monday that the upcoming workout would kick our collective asses to the time on Tuesday when that workout came to pass, worrying about it. He wasn’t lying, and even now there’s a constant soreness clenching up my legs, but it didn’t kick my ass in the way I was scared it would. I was scared it would be another one of those times where I strained to put more power into each stride, but still saw the group I was supposed to run with draw further and further ahead of me as my time for each interval drifted from the mark. This time, even though the exhaustion had me stalled out and panting by the end of the second repetition, I stuck with the group and hit all the paces. Here’s the weird part, though: I don’t think I did better just because of better training or stretching or hydration or any of that. It was all in this psychological trick that I’d developed in middle school, used to great effect, stopped using because I deemed it sacrilegious, then became desperate enough to use again yesterday. I imagined that it wasn’t me running, that I was as inanimate as a little Hotwheels car on my own, but the finger of God was on my back, pushing me forward, so I had no say in the matter.

Now, to be clear, I don’t think I did well in that workout because of divine intervention. I doubt God cares all that much about NCAA Division III Cross Country and, if a heavenly miracle really did give me a boost, you’d expect it to more than a marginal improvement. It disturbs me that I went back to using that trick, because it seems almost like taking God’s name in vain and cheapening God’s power, if only in my own mind. But, really, I don’t think God has anything to do with it. It’s all about autonomy. Because, for whatever reason, I do better when I think I’ve lost control.

Losing control has been on my mind ever since. I was talking to a friend about the morality of self-driving cars earlier today, and an aspect of it occurred to me that I’d never thought about before: what would it be like to be in a crash in one? At first it seemed terrifying, to be speeding towards a wall or into a crowd, trapped in a doomed metal box with nothing to do to save yourself. But then it seemed almost freeing. Imagine if there was no one to blame, no one to bring to trial, just a one-in-a-million fluke that you had to accept. There’s something pleasant about giving up control, isn’t there? Maybe that’s where the appeal for predestination comes from. Whether you’re saved or damned, there’s no need to stress, it’s all been decided since before time by a dispassionate God so you might as well let your life play out however it will.

It's tempting to go ahead and adopt these thoughts as a sort of motto: there's nothing I can do, nothing I can change, I don't have control and I'm fine with it. It sure would be a less stressful way to live. For me, anxiety is always about control. It's not that I'm scared of something, but that there's something I should do to avoid disaster, something I should do but can't. It would be easy enough to run slow if I couldn't control my legs, but I can, so whenever I fall behind my pace there's always that thought that there's more I can do. So why not pretend that I don't have control and let all that stress fall away?

But every time I try to start thinking like that, even when I'm being pushed along by the finger of God, there's some part of me that won't stop kicking against whatever calm base I manage to build. It won't let me give in to blind trust. It won't let me forget that it's just me propelling myself forward, that I could always trip and fall in the lake and drown. So I've got to let fear keep prodding me forward, because if I ever stop being afraid, I'll stop moving. And, as much as I try, I can't help but feel disgusted when people say "Whatever will be will be." Isn't that just giving up on free will? Maybe that makes for a less stressful life, but taking out stress doesn't leave you with happiness. Maybe it just leaves you with nothing.

There's a balance somewhere here, I know there must be. But I haven't been able to find it yet.

Another Hellfire Cross Country Speech

Longtime readers of the run and lower-tier runners of Grinnell Men’s Cross Country will remember the hellfire sermon I gave at the LaCrosse Invitational last year. Well, I gave another performance this week at the Central College Invitational. Some background: instead of actually running the race as a race, we were just using it as an easy-to-moderate level workout. Also, there had been forecasts of severe thunderstorms all day and we were sure the race would be rained out, but instead there had just been a light drizzle. I’ve got no clue why I chose to write it with line breaks, it’s not a particularly poetic speech.

Look above you, men!

There is a storm a-brewing!

Not a storm of thunder piercing the earth,

 Or of floodwaters drowning the streets,

Or of wind picking up men like blades of grass

And dashing them upon the ground.

No, the storm above us, the storm of this meet,

Is really just a couple of dark clouds

That look like they could do some damage

But only really sprinkle a little bit

And can only be called a storm by a very loose definition.

This is the trial set before us, men!

We must run with patience! And reasonableness! And keep a conservative pace!

If we succeed, we’ll only have reached, like, half our potential,

And have met very low expectations.

But do not rage against the storm, men!

Do not yearn for suffering and sacrifice and hard-won victory!

For, at the end, we will have technically run a race

Without actually doing any work.

And that’s pretty cool too, don’t you think?