What Are You Not Including In Your Definition of Writing?
Five things you probably aren’t including in your definition of writing, but are intrinsic to the act:
1. FOOD
If you’re a writer, you’re a cognitive professional.
Cognition is not a mystical, magical or ethereal process: it’s a physical one centered in a physical organ: the brain. A MMA fighter or long-distance runner or football player or gymnast will all eat different diets, diets specific to their profession.
So why wouldn’t a writer?
Eating a certain way is simply part of playing football at peak performance. There are ways to eat that are part of thinking and writing at peak performance. Eat for your brain.
Since I’m not a doctor or nutritionist, I’ll let you do your own research and consultation, but here are some basic guidelines:
MORE vegetables, legumes, fish, nuts, tea and antioxidant-rich foods like blueberries.
LESS dairy, sugars, fried foods and fake foods (Cheetos, Twinkies, etc. - foods that can’t be “picked” or “caught”).
In general, the better it is for your body, the better it is for your brain.
The key is adherence: making small changes you will actually stick to will always be better in the long run than sweeping changes you drop after a week.
2. EXERCISE
I repeat: the better it is for your body, the better it is for your brain. The two are linked in a million (probably more) ways. The healthier your brain’s support system (your body), the healthier your brain. The healthier your brain, the more efficiently it works. The more efficiently it works, the better you think. The better you think, the better you write.
This is especially important in a profession that traditionally requires long stretches of sitting still in a chair staring at a computer screen/typewriter/piece of paper.
Try working standing up. Get a $2 kitchen timer and set it for 45-60 minutes at a time to remind yourself to get up and walk or jog around the block before resuming work. Drink massive amounts of water while you work so your bladder will force you up regularly. Or go all in and try writing on a treadmill.
3. SLEEP
See above. Body good=brain good=mind good.
4. ORDER
Creating any sort of art is a process of forging cosmos from chaos.
If your environment is chaotic, then the part of your brain creating order on a blank page and discovering unexpected connections between ideas is having to deal with two chaoses: the creative aether and your physical surroundings. It’s multi-tasking. Which the brain can’t actually do without drastically reducing the quality and speed of processing. Multiple studies have estimated multi-tasking reduces your IQ by 10 points and reduces productivity by about 25%.
“But it only looks like a mess to you. I know where everything is!” you’ll say. I know because that was exactly what I used to say. And you probably do. I did. But I had to actively hold all that information in my mind (“contract for Project X is about two-thirds down Pile A,” “research for Project Y is in Pile B and a little bit on Shelf C,” “printed confirmation for con pro badge pickup is in Bag D, in the corner,” etc.). Which was mental attention not being focused on the task at hand: writing.
Put it all in a file cabinet, and all you have to hold in your mind is the alphabet. We’ll get deeper into this with mental models below.
So do it. Banish the clutter from your workspace. You don’t need a complex system. In fact, the simpler the better. Try a filing cabinet. Try a checklist. Try a set of boxes.
You may take comfort from your mess. I did. But comfort is, in my experience, the enemy of improvement. Improving your game requires stretching and discomfort. I once participated in a training regimen designed to prepare for Navy SEAL physical entrance exams. It was not uncommon for me to find myself on my hands and knees in the grass, before the sun had even risen, puking violently. I was extremely uncomfortable. But by the end I could run so much farther and faster, could swim so much farther and faster, was light years stronger, leaner and fitter than when I’d begun.
No pain, no gain.
5. STUDY
No one is such an accomplished writer that they can’t learn more about their craft. Being writers, many of the greatest writers to ever live tended to write down their thoughts on what they did. Which means, thanks to the written word, you can study with the greatest writers of all time, both living and dead.
So do it. Don’t ever stop learning. Learn and learn and learn some more. While there is certainly an intangible element to it and perhaps some unquantifiables like “talent,” most of writing is a discipline that can be mastered like any other.
And here’s something that happens as you study: you add new mental models (AKA analytical rules-of-thumb, or analytical frameworks or heuristics) to your toolbox. Think of a mental model as a personal (or communal) algorithm. It’s a single principle or thought that contains a complex web of other interconnected ideas and outcomes.
For example: chess. Chess masters don’t think move-by-move like us amateurs tend to. They think in blocks of moves. A single action on the chessboard represents an entire series of future and inter-connected moves in their mind. With the processing power it takes you or me to consider 2-3 moves at once, they’re considering 20-30 moves. Just 2-3 blocks.
Another example: blackjack. Hi-lo card counting reduces 52 possible cards to 3 values: +1, -1 and 0. These 3 values are reduced to a single number the card counter has to keep in her mind. Like my earlier alphabetical filing example, an extremely complex system (dealer, 5-7 players, usually multiple 52-card decks shuffled together) is here reduced to a single number.
Warren Buffet’s right-hand advisor Charles Munger is famous for his 80-90 mental models, cribbed from disciplines as varied as physics and evolutionary biology, which give him, in Buffet’s words, “the best 30-second mind in the world.”
He uses his mental models for investing, but the same method works for storytelling: mental models allow us to quickly parse out complex skeins of structure, character, information and parallel events.
Here’s a few writing-pertinent mental models off the top of my head:
Alan Moore’s Page-As-Stanza. Sixteen-grid. Nine-grid. Four-tier. Container Series. In Medias Res. Chyrons. The Sekhmet Hypothesis. The Levitz Paradigm. Saving the Cat. Writes of Passage. Working Backward. The Hero’s Journey. Don’t Write Action Scenes. Three Acts. Four Acts. Five Acts. Lester Dent’s Master Pot. TK. Archetypes. The MacGuffin. Chekhov’s Gun. Red Herrings. The Three Unities.
Not to mention the mental models of productivity and time-management that will help you implement any of the principles in this post:
Ockham’s Razor. The Pareto Principle. Sturgeon’s Law. Parkinson’s Law. Hofstadter’s Law. The 100% Factor. The Principle of Priority. Big Rocks. Swallow the Frog. Contexts. Dreamlining. Adherence. Minimum Effective Dose. The Bike-Shed Effect. Resistance.
So there you have it.
Five areas that, if you’re not including them in your current definition of “writing,” you should.
Now back to work.
Available Tomorrow: Batman 80-Page Giant 2011 #1
Out tomorrow: Wednesday, August 10th, wherever comic books are sold, containing 10 solid pages of Batman written by yours truly and drawn by newcomer Geoff Shaw. Meet our new Bat-villain, the Falcon!
My story is titled “Fearless,” and is based on an I idea jotted in one of my idea notebooks back around 2007:
Notice the idea jotted directly below it. Now why does that sound familiar…? Multiple independent discovery and recombinant conceptualization strike again!
When I was in high school I redecorated my bedroom in Batman blue, with Batman and Robin sheets and Batman capes for the curtains. And now Ive contributed to his immense fictional universe.
I couldnt be happier.
Visit comicshoplocator.com and enter your zip code to find the closest comic shop to where you live, then order one for everyone you know. Batman comics make great gifts for birthdays, holidays, baby showers, housewarmings, bar mitzvahs, quinceaneras and more!
![kateoplis:
Japanese artist and lifetime fisherman, Iori Tomita’s stained and preserved specimen from his series, shinsekai [toumei hyouhon] (new world transparent specimens).
Photos and info about each specimen are available as an iPhone/iPad app.](http://30.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lmp8mfkgbJ1qzprlbo1_r1_500.png "kateoplis:
Japanese artist and lifetime fisherman, Iori Tomita’s stained and preserved specimen from his series, shinsekai [toumei hyouhon] (new world transparent specimens).
Photos and info about each specimen are available as an iPhone/iPad app.")
Japanese artist and lifetime fisherman, Iori Tomita’s stained and preserved specimen from his series, shinsekai [toumei hyouhon] (new world transparent specimens).
Photos and info about each specimen are available as an iPhone/iPad app.
(via allcreatures)
Sniff.
After 75 straight weeks, today marks the final Meltcast. Recorded live in front of an audience with a who’s who of comic stars and special guests.
MELTCAST 4 EVA!
MELTCAST 75: THE FINAL EPISODE
LISTEN NOW ON ITUNES! • LISTEN NOW IN YOUR BROWSER!
Wave goodbye…this is the final episode of the MELTCAST! And we’re going out in a blaze of glory.
Recorded LIVE in front of an amazing audience in the back of our home, Meltdown Comics, this is a Meltcast unlike anything you’ve heard before. Expect guests, surprises, singing, revelations, and a heartfelt farewell from Brew, The Hammer, Caleb, and Rosa.
Special thanks to our good friend and “The Fourth Man of the MELTCAST” Andy Khouri of Comics Alliance for helping to send us out in style.
Thanks and appreciation to our special guests, Mel Caylo, Josh Dysart, Josh Fialkov, Tony Fleeces, Matt Gagnon, Ed Laroche, Daniel Quantz, R.J. Ryan, Mark Sable, Felipe Smith…forever MELTCAST champions.
Love and big hugs to all the beautiful people who came out to cheer us to the finish line. We had a blast and hope you did too.
Thanks, now and forever, to Meltdown Comics and the crew at the store for their love and support throughout the past 75 weeks. If you are ever near LA, the store is a must-visit. The spirit of the MELTCAST was born there and shall continue to live there.
And thanks to you, our loyal audience, for supporting us to the end. Much love.
Music: Nelly Furtado - All Good Things Come To An End / Warren G - Regulate
MELTCAST: IS THIS THE END OF THE MELTCAST?!?!?!?! →
YES.
Ladies and gentlemen, the end is nigh: episode 75 will be the final Meltcast!
We’ve had a blast talking with you all and still love what we do every week, but we want to go out on a high note. And with a big party!
The finale, Episode 75, will be a LIVE episode with us, some of your…
MELTCAST 74: G.O.A.T. The Greatest Comic Books of ALL TIME
LISTEN NOW ON ITUNES! • LISTEN NOW IN YOUR BROWSER!
The countdown is on! For our penultimate episode, we go all-in and name the GREATEST COMIC BOOKS OF ALL TIME!
BECAUSE WE’VE GOT NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE!
That’s right, the most exemplar examples of sequential art in the history of the medium — we’ve got ‘em! From Europe to Asia, from the Golden Age and beyond, we, the brave and foolhardy crew of the Meltcast, step forward to declare which comics are BEST EVER.
Each of the four of us pick our top five, and reveal them in order. Which comics made the list? Tune in to find out!
Hit us up! We want to hear from YOU. Email, voicemail, smoke signals, it’s all at MELTCAST.COM!
Music: Europe - The Final Countdown / MC Hammer - 2 Legit 2 Quit
I won’t say what mine were…you’ll have to listen!
Photo from Episode 72, left to right: Aaron Brewer, Sam Humphries, Christopher Rosa, Ed Laroche, Felipe Smith, Caleb Monroe.
MELTCAST 72: Felipe Smith, Our Man in Japan!
LISTEN NOW ON ITUNES! • LISTEN NOW IN YOUR BROWSER!
Live and direct from Tokyo, we bring you a rare interview with the cross-cultural manga sensation, Felipe Smith!
Back in the states for a brief respite from writing and drawing comics like the Meltcast-approved Peepo Choo, we have an extensive and energetic chat with Felipe about living in Japan, and working in the high-pressure manga industry. Also, Felipe gives us an on-the-ground view of Tokyo after the earthquake and tsunami.
Having Felipe surprise us for the show was an extreme delight. I miss the days when shooting the shit with Mr. Smith was a weekly occurrence…
My picks of the week are Freakangels (5 volumes free online, read from the beginning here) and Wildcats 3.0 Year Two
(Despite being a co-host of the show, I’m two days late reblogging this, which is why you all follow the Meltcast Tumblr directly, right? Right?)
MELTCAST 71: Back in the Saddle!
LISTEN NOW ON ITUNES! • LISTEN NOW IN YOUR BROWSER!
This week sees the return of the full Meltcast crew, with Brew, Chris, Caleb and The Hammer together at the table — just in time for Fear Itself: Book of the Skull! Reunited and it feels so good.
MY PICK OF THE WEEK:The entire Ultimate Spider-Man run
The first minute and 30 seconds of this is exactly the way I felt every night of my childhood!
