patrick stephens at psjs.net

I’m in a rut, a creative valley, a box-canyon of clouded vision, a swamp of confused and tired metaphors. Everything I write reads like crap and nothing makes it past the backspace key. It’s been like this for months. Months and months and months at idle.

I’ve tried editing previous stuff and have rewritten page upon page. The problem is that when everything reads like crap, everything reads like crap. So as bad as the old stuff is, the new stuff isn’t much better. I’ve tried kick starting new projects only to see them stall and grind to a stop. I watch my inspiration—whatever meager scrap I’m clinging to at the moment–ossify and harden as I type.

It’s happening now.

It’s not just that my voice seems muted; it’s that I don’t seem to have anything interesting to say. I don’t why I’m in this funk and I don’t really know how to get out of it. I’ve tried the exercises, write and write and don’t stop and I’ve produced some stuff, but… ehhh.

I’ve tried to supplement with other creative action. I’ve made sour cherry and ginger syrups for mojitos. The other day I subjected dinner guests to plate after plate after plate of fruit topped with savory sauces. I’ve done ceviche trios, pork two ways, tacos carnitas with salsa explosion, caramelized scallops on green curry risotto cakes with grilled pineapple and a chorizo cilantro broth… and it’s all been yummy and healthy and satisfying but it hasn’t been translating to the page.

Writing about politics and economics exhausts me. And besides, there’s not much to say that I haven’t already said. I’ve thought about it, believe me , I’ve thought about it. But the truth is I don’t care enough about it right now to waste the energy. The administration is inept, spiteful and amateurish and the opposition party even worse. Long-term indicators are astonishingly, mind-bendingly awful and outside a handful of econ departments nobody seems to care. Want to know what I think? It’s all here.

I’ve thought maybe it might be my body and my woeful health. So I hit the gym. Now I’m there every day, pounding on the treadmill, working out the cross trainers, doing speed intervals and circuit training, doing chin ups and military presses, squats and curls. I do 5 miles a day and am stronger than I’ve ever been in my life. I’ve lost 25 pounds and I definitely notice the difference.

But still… stories languish in limbo, plot twists seem more and more hackneyed and trite and dialog stutters and tumbles as if I’d stapled stilts to the characters’ legs.

Part of the problem, I think, is that I write for myself. I don’t have deadline pressure and nobody will complain if I spend three weeks revising two hundred words, only to revert at the end to the original. There are no readers knocking on my door or sending me angry emails. No one is second-guessing my priorities and wondering why I choose to spend my time sitting on the couch with my family watching yet another food-based reality show instead of at the keyboard getting Laiathal out of prison, helping Renée get someone’s attention, or figuring what the hell Colin’s fucking purpose is in the first place. Mike is swimming in his own depression while Susan is in Japan and I haven’t done anything to help either of them. I’ve got to kill Chip and I don’t know how to do it–maybe I’ll just kill  Hiroki instead, but I don’t know. Alex’s ending changed twice and in each version it just feels like I’m punishing her, whether she gets her guy or not. Harold has cheez whiz in his hair and probably some bodies in the basement, but who knows? John can’t get out of his goddamn bedroom to move the story along.

Maybe if my characters could complain, I’d figure out some way to push them along.

But they can’t, of course. So they languish, unwritten and incomplete. And I can’t find a way to make myself care about them.

And of course, there’s no happy conclusion to this post. I don’t have a resolution to my problem or a magic answer for anyone else suffering from a creative depression. But I know that it sucks and I want to get out of it. I just don’t know how.

Any ideas?

Meanwhile, another chapter up here. It’s an old one.

I put up another sample chapter.  This one, “Birth,” introduces us to Wedge.

The offer to read all of what I have so far is still open. Currently, I’ve got a little over 105,000 words down (about 500 pages) in what’s essentially a first draft. Right now I expect the end result to come in around at around 180,000 words, so I’ve got just a shade over half done. I’m happy to bundle it all up and forward it on to interested readers, as long as I get a promise that the reader will provide lots of critical feedback.

It’s fun to write, but it’s hard and the process is slow.

Anyway, the chapter is up here.

Today, President Obama releases a new policy governing the of nuclear weapons.  He breaks with over 60 years of American foreign policy and promises not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states that are in compliance with the nuclear non-proliferation treaty even should they attack the United States with biological, chemical, or other weapons of mass destruction.

This is the second time Obama has demonstrated his hallmark foreign policy dictum: unilateral preemptive concession. But unlike some others, I’m not as amazingly incensed by this latest absurdity.

Sure, it’s bad negotiating; you don’t announce in advance what you’re willing and not willing to do.  You leave those options available and you remove them from the table in return for concessions. (Hillary Clinton made exactly this point during the campaign, in response to candidate Obama’s howler about taking the use of nuclear force off the table.)

And sure, it certainly seems to privilege the health of foreign states over the security of the American people, which is rhetorically troubling and makes me wonder where what Obama’s priorities actually are.

But really, it’s just silly.  Strategic and tactical decisions will still be made in response to actual developments.  The decision about whether or not to deploy nuclear weapons–in any case that even remotely argues for their use–will not be decided by a statement sheet issued on a slow-news Tuesday. These kind of policy statements do not bind the current administration, much less future ones. This is the foreign policy equivalent of a campaign promise.

“I will not use nuclear weapons–even in self defense–to protect the American people from countries that have signed this treaty.”

is as meaningful as,

“I can make a firm pledge, under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”

But, you know, he did get a Nobel Peace Prize for nuclear nonproliferation.  Maybe this is his effort to earn it.

With a meaningless, pointless, empty promise.

Following up on a meme that was started by Tyler Cowen, “The Ten Books that influenced me the most.”

The list is heavy on the fiction and light on the non-fiction.  Partly that’s because the most influential books were the books I read when I was younger, but also that’s partly because narrative has always played a strong role in my life.  I’ve read a number of books on philosophy, politics, and economics and while some have been enormously educational (Nozick, Hayek, Mises, Aristotle, Plat, etc…) they haven’t had as visceral an impact on my day-to-day existence.  Books that changed the way I thought about my life and my work, or profoundly affected the way I live my life… those are the most influential books I’ve ever read. In no particular order:

The Lion in Winter, by James Goldman

Henry II: The day those stout hearts band together is the day that pigs get wings.
Eleanor: There’ll be pork in the treetops come morning.

I love this play. The language crackles, the characters are enormous and the drama fantastic. Like most people, I saw the movie first and for me, Peter O’Toole and Katherine Hepburn will always and forever be Henry and Eleanor.  This was the first play in which I realized that every single word was precious. (As much as we lionize Shakespeare, most of the Bard’s work improves with judicious editing.) Every motion, every breath the actors take is important on the stage. Every glance and every touch means something.

Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand

Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns–or dollars. Take your choice–there is no other.

Atlas Shrugged is my intellectual lodestone. Or maybe that should be dead-weight?  Fountainhead? Whatever, it’s a big giant brick. It’s also a masterpiece in every sense of the word, compelling, difficult, complex, agonizing, confounding, enlightening and fabulously gigantic.

Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre by Keith Johnstone

In the park we’ll notice the ducks squablling but not how carefully they’ll keep their distances when they are not.

The book is a philosophical and pedagogical mess (and Spolin’s books are probably better introductions to theatrical improvisation) but Johnstone’s section on status is priceless. This book completely changed the way I approached the craft of acting and had an enormous effect on my directorial style as well. If you’re at all interested in theater, read this book.

Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

An odd choice for “influential,” I know.  I read it in high school, over a rainy weekend on the Florida Gulf coast. My best friend read The Fountainhead during the same weekend. We kept telling each other, “You’ve got to read this book.” Influential because of the extraordinary language and breathtaking writing. Influential because it’s a story of obsession and love and a desperate confusion of the two. I was in the middle of a desperate sort of obsessive and un-requited love and Lolita rocked me. It would be a few years before I was finally able to finally unravel my own obsessions and set them aside, but Lolita was the book that warned me to start.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, By Mark Twain

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.

This is the first “real” book I ever read by myself.  When I was eight, my mother and I started by reading chapters aloud to each other. After the first few chapters, the pace was too slow and I asked if I could go read and finish it by myself. Later, as a freshman in high school, this was the first book in which I recognized theme and subtext.

Silver Age of Marvel Comics, by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko et. al.

It’s clobberin’ time!

My stepfather collected comics when he was a kid.  As a result, I grew up with an enormous chest full of early Marvel comicbooks.  Fantastic four #1, Daredevil #1, Spider Man #1, Iron-Man #1, Doc Strange #1, Nick Fury and the howling Commandos, Thor, Hulk, the Avengers, the X-men… I had all them all. And I read and re-read them and then read them all again. It’s odd to describe them as influential, but they certainly were. I identified with the alienation and angst that drove so many of Marvel’s heroes and saw in their cartoonish and silly struggles a metaphor for my own life.

Economics in One Lesson, by Henry Hazlitt

The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

Essentially a retelling of Bastiat’s essay on the Seen and the Unseen, Hazlitt’s little book taught me to think about economics and public policy in a completely new way. The lesson is simple and direct and almost entirely ignored in modern policy. The book is available as a PDF from the Foundation for Economic Education.

A Brief History of Time, by Stephen Hawking

… a particle of spin 1 is like an arrow: it looks different from different directions. Only if one turns it round a complete revolution (360 degrees) does the particle look the same. A particle of spin 2 is like a double-headed arrow: it look the same if one turns it round half a revolution (180 degrees)… there are particles that do not look the same if one turns them through just one revolution: you have to turn them through two complete revolutions! Such particles are said to have spin ½

It took me two times through before I thought I understood all of it. It took me another two times through before I realized I didn’t. It’s not the best book on advanced physics or the origins of the universe, but it’s the first one I read. Hawking changed the way I thought about physics and science. I do remember that I once developed a partial solution to the unified field theory in the shower. I can’t remember all of it, but I do remember that it involved rethinking relative acceleration and position and treating light as a fixed reference…. I once spent a day rambling about it to a physics grad student. He was exceedingly polite.

A Room With a View by E. M. Forester

I only wish poets would say this, too: love is of the body; not the body, but of the body. Ah! the misery that would be saved if we confessed that! Ah! for a little directness to liberate the soul! Your soul, dear Lucy! I hate the word now, because of all the cant with which superstition has wrapped it round. But we have souls. I cannot say how they came nor whither they go, but we have them, and I see you ruining yours. I cannot bear it. It is again the darkness creeping in; it is hell.

I’ve been in love with this story ever since I first saw the Merchant-Ivory film adaptation. The book has a quiet grace that fills my heart; it’s full of tender moments and surprising passion. This book fills me with hope and promise. When I close it–each time and every time–there’s a smile on face and sense of wonder and hope in my heart, “… by the side of the everlasting Why there is a Yes–a transitory yes if you will, but a Yes.”

Early Autumn by Robert B. Parker

…he doesn’t really know how to be a good man, so he goes for the simple rules that someone else told him. It’s easier than thinking, and safer. The other way, you have to decide for yourself.

Funny. Charming. Disarmingly spare. Parker’s Spenser was my first literary role-model. I recognized very early (I began reading this series when I was 13 or 14) that the core of Spenser’s character was not violence or mystery but integrity and honesty. Parker’s hero has been derided as a cardboard cutout, flat and dull–and he often is. But it’s rare to find a character in modern fiction driven by an authentic commitment to principles.

Spenser isn’t a simple fantasy (although he is often fantastical) of unwavering commitment to an abstract code of honor, he’s a man committed to making principles work in a messy, complicated, often difficult world. The novels are at their best when they explore the moments that Spenser’s principles compromise him and make him vulnerable. Early Autumn is the most thorough exploration of those principles.

The health bill will penalize businesses if they fail to offer a certain minimum standard of coverage… if any of their employees requires federal subsidies to afford such coverage.

The consequence of that policy will be that some businesses, to avoid the penalties, will avoid hiring employees that require subsidies. Low-income workers and low-income single mothers in particular will be the hardest hit.

The bill will result in lower employment for low-income single mothers.

That’s a consequence of the legislation, unintended to be sure, but a consequence none-the-less.

The bill will also cause small health insurers to close. From Steve Horowitz,

The support for the bill coming from the major insurers should be one piece of evidence that they expect it to be good for them, particularly due to the provision that requires Americans to buy health insurance. In addition, as is the case with almost all regulation, larger firms are better able to absorb the fixed cost of compliance than are smaller firms. Given that this bill authorizes the hiring of over 16,000 new IRS agents to enforce its tax code provisions, such compliance costs are sure to be high, which will have a higher relative burden for the smaller firms.

The bill’s mandate to cover pre-existing conditions will work in a way similar to the fixed costs of bureaucratic compliance. Such coverage isn’t really “insurance” as pre-existing conditions have a high probability, if not certainty, of requiring expenditures. It’s as if you wanted to buy insurance on a car that was near certain to have brake failure. You aren’t buying “insurance,” you’re getting a straight subsidy of your medical costs. In order to cover the known costs associated with such conditions, firms would normally have to raise premiums on other customers who are genuinely buying insurance. If the new law limits that, the fixed costs will have to come from elsewhere in the firm, much like the compliance costs. And it is big firms who can better absorb these costs than smaller ones.

The law’s mandate that no “stand alone” company can sell dental insurance will drive small dental-only insurers out of business as well, leaving that market to the big firms. The result of all of this will be increased concentration and market power in the medical insurance industry, which is sure to lead to more questionable behavior and more complaints about insurers.

The irony, of course, is that the very same progressives who have supported this bill will be summarily outraged by the decline of small health and dental insurers and the oligopolistic behavior of the remaining large ones. Not that they will accept it, but they have no one to blame but themselves for supporting this bill as its changes will be the cause of those problems.

And sadly, you can bet that their proposed solution will not be opening up interstate competition and repealing elements of this current bill, but calling for the even worse solution of a single-payer system as the very market they destroyed continues to get more inefficient.