Statute of Limitations: Personal Narratives, Coming-Of-Age, and Employment Tales

Quick show of hands, folks?  Who's seen High Fidelity?

How about Kevin Smith's breakthrough comedy, Clerks?  If you have, you've probably figured out that they both feature protagonists who work in a shop of some sort, deal with romantic stress, engage in all sorts of hi-jinx with their colleagues, and tell a now-legendary "coming of age" story about how the main character comes to terms with their aging.

In High Fidelity, John Cusack's character Rob Gordon deals with a pretty miserable break-up.  He cavorts with the employees he's hired to work his record store (dated?  Perhaps!), and with their help he figures out how to set his life on a "better" path.  He frequently talks to the viewer directly, opening the movie with the story of his Top-Five Breakups.  There's the early-on elementary school disaster, the high school disaster, and the college disaster!  Rob follows up with his past loves, trying to figure out what to do with his present despair.  It's a funny tale, and it's got some great music in it to boot.

More renowned with the budding creator, however, is Clerks.  Filmed by nerd legend Kevin Smith on a shoestring budget, at night, at the convenience store he worked at, Clerks is about Dante Hicks and Randall Graves, two miscreants (well, Randall is) who fuck around at work all day, play hockey on the roof, and - oh, yeah - have to come to terms with the fact that they are getting older.  Dante's conflicted between two love interests, and in the end he has to deal with that problem, as well.

You're not here for a compare-and-contrast essay, though.  There's thousands of points of comparison!  There's equally as many differences between the two.  None, though, are more stark than this one fact:  High Fidelity is based on a 1995 novel of the same name by Nick Hornby.  Did I know this when I first watched the movie?  Nope!  In fact, I have yet to read it.

But I have learned something from this contrast, and from both films put together:  Stories change and become distant over time.

Statute of Limitations

Both stories are about young, disaffected men having relationship issues, employment disassociation, and general-old-lives.  They have fun with friends!  The events of each film (debates over music; debates over Star Wars) are pretty familiar to any twenty-something American male.  It's a universal appeal that practically begs people to tell their own twist on it.  And that's a danger to any writer - tropes are attractive because they're easy to fall into, but virtually impossible to pull off.  You need, at the very least, a hook.

You also need to have something you can still relate to!  After fifty or so years, you just won't remember the details.  It becomes hard to remember exactly why your friend Billy was hilarious, and you'll have boatloads of difficulty explaining why the events of May 27th, 1997 were so incredibly awesome!  And explaining it?  To a reader, or a viewer?  Even when you decide to twist the actual events and embellish it, you're still not doing anything more than patching the core of the story up.

Fiction often has a core of truth; writers draw from their lives all the time.  They're stories about fake people, and the circumstances they find themselves in are only somewhat lodged in what can possibly be real.  An autobiography, a personal narrative, a story about your youth?  These contain facts, or at least are supposed to!  But time adds a fog to certain things, and even well-kept journals and friends who retell their experiences will differ from your recollection.

The point, here, is the same as any other time you, as the creator of art, have an inspirational flash.  If you plan to tell a story, tell it while it's rather fresh.  Sure, you need a few weeks' removal from it, to really process what happened.  In fact, sometimes even a couple years could benefit the wordsmith!  But with each re-telling, each re-hashing, each passing minute, the raw impression of the incidents you were so enamored with become fainter and fainter.  It's a balancing act, just like the act of editing and processing a story can fundamentally change it from it's more primal roots, waiting too long can cause your memory of an experience to go beyond crystallization and into fracture.

Sometimes, you just have to act.

Jesse Pohlman releases his latest novel, Protostar!

Hey internet world!

This is just a quick reminder that I've put out my latest novel, Protostar!  It's a Kindle exclusive, at this time, but if demand is high I'll convert it to a hard-copy book.  The teaser text goes something like this...

Ensign Lahira Ocean is the chief navigator of the Human battleship, the "George Washington." Born on the world Magellan, she comes from a wealthy family and joined the fleet as a precursor to her future as a trade magnate; aside from astronomic charts and hyper-drive calculations, she studies history as a pass-time as well as a rationalization for her circumstances. She regularly muses retirement, despite her incredible skill in military affairs. Fate intervenes when another world, Hudson, picks up an group of alien ships heading straight for it. The "George Washington" is deployed to help handle this initial contact, but the exact nature of the response is as shocking as it is stereotypical of a 20th or 21st century science-fiction epic!

Now, Lahira has little choice but to accept command of a brand new generation of ship, one born just on the temporal edge of a war unlike any Mankind has seen before. Bringing together a hard-nosed specialist in military doctrine, a free-wheeling reformed space pirate, a nonchalant communications expert, and her own chief rival as a chief navigator, can the now-Captain manage to survive her own crew long enough to face the alien menace? What has made these foreigners so ready to wage war against any species it meets? Will she be up to the task of leading the counter-attack against these mysterious Orphans?

Now, you might remember Protostar from my 2011 National Novel Writing Month expedition.  It was a successful mission, and Protostar was the result.  Well, a year and a half later and it's done!  Now, I might do a sequel to Protostar if it's effective, but I'd do it as a 2013 NaNoWriMo.

So...Encouragement, maybe?  ;)

Why I'm Not Celebrating Valentine's Day

Tomorrow, on Thursday, February 14th, the world will celebrate a holiday based on love.  Okay, so it's based on the imprisonment of a man who performed weddings for Roman soldiers, and who was ultimately executed, but that's fine.  The main idea - a holiday based on love - exists today to remind couples how happy they are, or to at least fuel the diamond and jewelry industry; and, of course, for this particular author to offer his novel (which contains a love story!) for free on Amazon's Kindle.

Sorry, do I sound cynical?  Well, if I am, there's certainly a reason for it.  A few months ago, immediately after my dad got out of the hospital, my girlfriend of nearly three years dumped me without ceremony or warning, and began dating someone who will almost assuredly be her Valentine, this year.  It was a crippling blow, but I've learned something in the time since that rather grievous Friday.  First, I have some amazing friends who I really am happy to have; and, two, I'm not alone in being alone, and that's okay!


The Boring, Depressing Background.

See, for the longest time I had allowed my relationship status to define me.  I watched who I talked to, worried that speaking with a pretty girl might convince my girlfriend-at-the-time I was cheating on her (while she cheated on me, naturally).  I moved in with her, but by the time we settled on an apartment I knew it was out of my affordability range - and I went with it, because it's what she wanted.  Vacations, dinner plans, hanging out with friends?  All of these are things I had sacrificed to make sure I kept that relationship status.  It was one I didn't even necessarily want, and for all the love her and I had truly shared at one point, by the end it wasn't hard to see that it was over.

Oh, there were good times.  I got her a giant penguin for our very first Valentine's day.  Trips to other states, places I'd never been and might never have gone in the first place.  She was there, in the hospital, when I had my shoulder surgically repaired - and though she could have taken better care of me, immediately post-op, she didn't leave me to suffer all too often.  Most of her family was miserable, but some of them weren't so bad, and I had some good conversations.  What's more, some of the friends we made together have become long-lasting friends of mine in their own right.

Nevertheless, this break-up was by far the harshest I'd ever been through.  It came at a time when I was still in a fairly decent amount of physical pain, still fighting an insurance company for physical therapy, and still fighting to keep the few family members I have left, well, here.  It also didn't help that I had grown very attached to our cats, and that one of -them- had been in the hospital just weeks ago (I offered over $3,000 dollars to pay for his treatment, asking only for about $500 back within a year).  Or that all my stuff was at her apartment.  Or that we were under a month away from our three-year anniversary.  Like I said, it's a good thing I have good friends, or I'd probably have ended up in a much worse place than I did.

It was time to start learning from this fairly-modified picture of one of our happier times, and the lesson should be pretty obvious.

Being Okay Being Alone

In that wedding-scene, open-bar-influenced photo, my left (pre-surgical; painful, thusly-medicated, but not crippled) arm is pointing at her.  The idea was obvious:  I cared about this person, and this person was #1 to me, even as we gave one-another bunny ears.  It was nice, and the memory would warm me if it didn't hurt at the same time, like getting too close to a bonfire.  However, I've learned that this finger really should have pointed at me, instead, as it should for all people in any relationship.

That doesn't imply someone should be selfish.  It indicates, instead, that people have to take care of themselves, and as much as someone may "Complete" you, they can't do so without first taking into consideration the thing known as you.  Modern day love stories always involve two people who, come hell or high water, are destined to be together.  It's fate.  One virtually completes the other, like those broken-heart necklaces; half a heart that only fits with it's chosen mate.  For that matter, you might as well think of shoes as a metaphor - you've got the left one on, now go find the right one.  And make sure it's the same damn shoe!

No, no, and no.  I have, as a meagerly-successful, reportedly-handsome, hopefully charming man, the opportunity to call a girl up tomorrow, ask, "Hey, do you wanna go out to dinner?  Do you wanna be my Valentine?," and probably get a positive answer in response.  As a kid, as a hopeless romantic, all I'd ever wanted was that precious status!  To be someone's Valentine, or their boyfriend, or more!  Hell, I was a gentleman, right?  I needed to find a nice lady to settle down with, to fall in love with, and to be happy with!  This was so important that I never even took the time to, A, figure out who I was when it came to romance; B, to make the classic mistake of confusing sex for love; and, C, most of all, develop the courage and tact to actually approach any of the girls I secretly admired.

In short, I became a Nintendo generation cliche:  Full of pitiable, emo-model unrequited loves, long-distance relationships, and even weaknesses in other areas of my social life.  The very pressure of this monogamous, hollywood-style romance that fuels Valentine's Day had really kicked my ass, huh?!  And even as I grew older, wiser, and bolder, I still measured my positive traits based on how, frankly, they enticed whoever I was with.  Did this girl like me more as a writer, or as a goth?  Did she like me more dominant or submissive?  Did she prefer McDonalds at home or hibachi at an expensive place?  What did I need to do to win that girl of my dreams?

To paraphrase Bruce Willis' character in Lucky Number Slevin, I woke up to find my dreams were the stuff of pipes.  Though, if I'm not bold in my reinterpretation of cliches, a "pipe dream," derived from friendly herbs in accordance with local and state law, doesn't sound too bad when I think about what I'd gone through!

Now, Then Worry About Later

So you know the story and you know the lesson I had to learn.  I knew, even as I recovered from the shock of the split, that a "rebound" relationship was a bad idea.  I focused instead on developing good friendships with as little pressure as possible, and I am so proud to say that the friends who have chosen to trust me so far are helping, a lot.  And I hope I'm helping them!

And right now, I'm starting to see the both forest and each individual tree.  I don't feel like I have to force a relationship to manifest.  I don't feel like I have to wait, on my tippy-toes, for a text message back from someone I'm interested in.  People have lives, and they live them.  I'll wait for a while, then I'll move on until they return.  I'm learning that I don't need someone to complete me.  Compliment, perhaps, but those are different words with different meanings.  I don't need to spend every waking minute with a person, nor do I feel any unnatural obligation to devote blocks of time to a specific someone.  What I do, I choose to do when it is reasonable for me and for those I do it with.

That's not to say I'm turning into a man-whore or a drifter.  Eventually, I'm sure, the time will be right for me to settle things down.  Eventually, things will be "official," and there will come a February 14th wherein I once again live up to that old, childish goal of having a Valentine.  However, it will not be this year, and it isn't a goal which must be met in time for any certain, pre-designated year.  As many nagging feelings as I might get about Valentine's day, this year, I don't have any obligations.

And that's a feeling I'm quite in love with.


Jesse Pohlman is a starving artist, sub-species writer, from Freeport, New York.  He is me.  Buy my book - or get it for free, on the 14th, in a universal "fuck you!" to the commercial system perpetuating this holiday's hyper-importance!

Writing/Art Tips: Dealing With Project Sprawl

Hello, fellow creators!

While I was working on my lego comic, and debating on drawing some more cover art for a book I'm almost done with, I was networking and writing my local news blog and...

...And I realized I have a problem.  See, I have a lot of projects on my hand at any time.  Sometimes I get commissioned to write an article, while other times I just end up in a pointless debate with someone on the internet.  Most of the time, though, I'm working on a book.  And there are lots of them I'm working on, and lots more that I've de-facto abandoned.  That's probably the greatest shame, because I've written them all in my head!  Just not on paper!

But if I were to start on them, then I'd leave other projects un-done, and therein lies the problem.

Focus On One Thing?  Hah!

Some people's first bit of advice is to pick one thing to focus on at a time.  For many people, that works - and if you're that lucky, hey, good for you!  Put that talent to use.  But many others find themselves always waking up, each day, with a different "feeling."  Maybe some day they feel like writing, while another day they feel like painting.  If they don't write, their manuscript goes unfinished; but if they try to force themselves to write when they want to paint, well, nothing gets done except for the denial of the true desire!

In my case, I wanted to write this article because I was working on the cover-art for my next novel, and realized that I was all over the place in terms of goals.  There's so much I want to get done, but so little I can.  It's a problem.  So I decided I needed an image that really demonstrated this feeling, and showed what "Sprawl" is.  Creating the above picture took me about 20 minutes.  True, I learned some new GIMP tricks that, had I known them earlier, would have sped the process up!  But it's still a significant expenditure of time, especially when time is unpleasantly short.

So what's my answer?  Well, one thing is to try to have a schedule.  "Day one, work on project one.  Day two, work on project two."  Whatever it is.  Sometimes, however, my daily life limits me to only having 15-20 minutes of "Creative time."  This forces me to pick something I can get done quickly, or at least something I can make a major contribution towards.

Truly, sprawl is a problem.


The Answer Is Patience

Most of all, I feel like I'll never get something done in time.  That the book cover will take so long I don't want to do it; that finishing a novel will take forever; that doing the research I need to perform in order to properly establish my older novels as viable is just going to be a brick with which I can bash my own head, and little else.

And none of that is true.

See, I'm young.  I'm 28.  But even if I were 68, I'm probably not dying tomorrow.  I'm probably going to wake up tomorrow and have time to work on my next idea.  The biggest reason why people seem to differentiate into working on dozens of projects at once is because they don't know how to be patient, to put their ideas on paper until the ones they're already executing are complete, and come back to it later.  That's right - patience.

For me, it's patience to know that, yes, this cover-art will get done; yes, the book will be released; yes, I can re-release old ones, and - finally - I can put out new material.  I can clear this massive plate I have in front of me, and I can think about new ideas and not feel like I have to immediately act on them in order for them to ever happen.  The key?  If they are strong enough ideas, they will be there when I'm finished with what's got me busy.

For others, I'd recommend the same - or, at least, a conscious evaluation of which projects should take priority and should be the subject of the most effort.  Immediate performance and financial income isn't the only guideline, here; existential reward and personal satisfaction matter, too.  Each person will be different, and there's always some creep, but sprawl should be kept to a minimum - before it gets out of hand, and nothing gets done.

Dystopian Reality: The Aaron Swartz Story | Suite101

I have a channel on Suite101.com called Dystopian Review.  I actually write for it fairly regularly, about once a week.  I recently wrote a particularly powerful and well-received article, so I figured I'd hit it up with some attention.  Give it a few minutes of your time - it's worth it.

Dystopian Reality: The Aaron Swartz Story | Suite101

Dystopian Lit Guest Post at BookGoodies

Howdy, sports fans!

I open with this line because if you're a sports fan, you're well aware of the Har-Bowl coming up?  Sweet.  I dislike that the Patriots made it that far, but at least they ain't gettin' another Super Bowl!

Moving on.  I recently submitted a guest post to BookGoodies.com, and low-and-behold they posted it, today!  This marks the second one they've posted by me, the first being about NaNoWriMo.  It's about Dystopian literature (and art in general), and it serves as a fairly basic introduction to the genre.  All in all its a fun, quick little read to get you into the spirit of nightmare worlds!  I might write another one for them, one about Hyper-Local Journalism.

Moving on.  Again!  Today is a special day for me because it's the year-and-a-day of Physics Incarnate.  My precious little baby novel is getting so old!  And as much as I'm working on its sequel and other projects, I'm celebrating by having it as a free book on Kindle, today.  So, check it out!

Enjoy yourself, and stay safe!

Why I Love Video Game Music

So.  I've been writing.  A lot.  Whether its celebrating the one year anniversary of Physics Incarnate, or working on a second season (and new site!) for my Lego comic Chronicles of Alleron, or even editing Protostar and working on Physics Reincarnate, well, I've been busy.

And busy writers need music!

Now, I love bands like Silversun Pickups, but as a young kid I played a lot of video games.  Be it the 8-bit Nintendo, the 16-bit Super Nintendo, or the 16-bit Sega Genesis, music is just an awesome force.  Video game music has, well, some really bad examples - and some awesome ones.  Instead of focusing on lyrics, game soundtracks of that era had to create atmosphere.  Entered into a dark cave?  You need some seriously dark music.  About to fight a boss?  How about something fucking energetic?!

This is a re-iteration of a song from Secret of Mana called "Danger."  It's mildly edited, but true to the original:

Between the loud, shocking notes of the opening, the grim rumbles of the middle, or the triumphant tones of the end of each cycle, well, hey - it's downright energetic, alright.  It gives listeners a rush.  It lets you know that damn right you are fighting for your life.  But how about something else?  How about something sad?  How about Final Fantasy Six's Opera Scene?

Not only is the music important, it's a section of a game dedicated to a song!  And that's awesome in and of itself.  I'm a huge fan of this scene, and the song?  Not bad, either.  Another good tune I like is this diddy from Xenogears, a game I've talked a hell of a lot about, already:

One thing you might note is that, so far, all three of these games and their soundtracks belong to Squaresoft games.  Two of them are 16-bit, and one is a Playstation One game.  They're all roleplaying games.  Is that a surprise?  It shouldn't be - atmosphere is huge in these kind of games, and Square made a lot of RPGs at that time.

How about a Capcom game?

I know, that's another RPG on the SNES; but it's not Squaresoft, at least!  Anyhow, if you were curious, here's Screwattack's top-10 music themes.  Here's 10 more songs, and they're the top-10 ever.  They took nominations.  15,000+ were offered.  Wow.

Anyhow, I just wanted to give you a little taste of one of the influences of my writing.  It's chaotic, it's random, it's weird - but it's there.  This is just what I enjoy!  And there's a clear reason for it, and I think I've proven my point.