1. What creative things are you doing?
Well, I write, mostly. Almost exclusively SF. Often I find myself including Artificial Intelligence as a major theme (or a minor one), and I also seem to enjoy writing characters who are particularly flawed and dysfunctional in one way.
Mostly I write short stories, although there are a few novel like works in progress. I find for some reason when I write novel-length I'm usually writing them in a Young Adult style (or outright children). I don't know why, maybe it lets me look past my own perceived flaws since I'm imaginging my audience not being _as_ picky, or maybe I just find children/teens better characters because I was a functional child/teen once but never managed to become a functioning adult. ;). Or maybe it's my comic background, and the type of ideas I want to explore novel-length are more along the lines of the adolescent fantasies.
Anyway, right at this moment in writing I'm mostly working on a novel-length.
For fun, once in a while, privately I also adapt (or plot to adapt), which is similar to writing but I find uses a slightly different creative muscle. More working out problems and economizing not just space, but key moments, emotion, etc.
I also do occasional other things like icons, though not as much as I used to.
2. What motivates or enables you to get them done?
Enjoyment, to a degree. Desire to make a living off it. More specifically, I write to a specific schedule. Right now it's 8000 words every other week (writing 2000 a day for each non-work day). So in the rough moments, when it's hard to write, knowing I've got a break coming as soon as I finish helps, and trying to keep to a schedule gets me writing even when I don't want to, usually.
3. What creative things do you want to be doing, but aren't?
I'd like to be doing _more_ writing. In addition to my own stuff, I'd kind of like to work a little more on writing things like comics, cartoons, tv shows, and/or movies. (Well, scripts for such, since I'm unlikely to be able to do it for myself).
4. What stops you from doing them?
Laziness, in part, and I get burned out working, even writing, straight without a break. Also lack of self-confidence. I think that if I could be convinced that what I was writing wasn't complete drek, I might find the energy to do it more. Unfortunately only some level of success might help with that.
5. Are you distressed at the thought of the things you aren't doing? Why or why not? If yes, how do you deal with this distress?
A little distressed that I'm not writing more. I'm not so distressed that I'm not writing the particular things I'd like to work more on - I've made my choice of what to do with my available energy and I'm not disappointed with that, but I do, as written above, feel I should have more energy for writing. How do I deal with it? I dunno, I just keep going with what I'm doing.
From writing onto reading, it's time for Book Foo!
Finished: The Sky People, by S.M. Stirling
Started: Otherland Vol 4: Sea of Silver Light by Tad Williams
Sky People review under the cut. Some mild spoilers. Short version: Meh.
Okay, the Sky People take place in an alternate history, running off the premise that Mars and Venus turned out to be more like they were depicted in early SF. So when the Russian probes landed on Venus in the 60s, it found a lush jungle world, filled with primitive humans and dinosaurs.
It's an irresitable premise, for me. Maybe a better premise than it is a book. Or maybe it's just the writer's execution.
See, to me, the great thing about an alternate history is exploring the alternate history, how small changes spiral out into big things. There's a little of that here. Not much. And most of it is confined to the encyclopedia entries that introduce chapters. And when you're more interested in reading the encyclopedia bits (as I was) than the story, that's a bad sign.
But the problem is, the story's almost entirely set on Venus, where there's already a military base that's been there for a decade or so, and it's an adventure _on_ Venus, outside the base. This does not leave much room for alternate history. What it is, is basically Stirling writing an old-style adventure set on Venus in the days where it seemed plausible, and only just enough alt-history content to justify that. And the problem _there_ is, if I wanted one of those stories, I'd just go _read_ one of those stories. I wanted a story dealing with that irresistable premise of seeing how history was changed with mankind having two inhabited planets nearby.
And it reads very much like stock Stirling. There's the competent hero who comes from a background/part of the country/religion that is colorfully unusual, and who uses phrases from that to spice up their dialog. There's the guy he has a bad feeling off right off the bat (who really is up to something nefarious). There's people isolated from technology save for some examples of it they're able to save. There's violent encounters with savages and cannibals. Even a few stock phrases pop up. I've said before I like Stirling more for his ideas than for his writing, and I think this is why. I feel like I've read it before, and this is just shuffling around the plot a little. There are some surprises, certainly, but not enough to get over my disappointment. I'm not even sure I'll read the sequel, now (set on Mars). Maybe. If I can find it used, I might. But I was planning on picking the series up new (in paperback) eventually.
Finished: The Number of the Beast, by Robert A. Heinlein
Started: A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
NotB review under cut. Some spoilers. Short review: Oh, Heinlein, how you lost your touch in later years.
The Number of the Beast involves a group of four
people, two men and two women (who couple up extremely quickly), who basically have a car/spaceship with a new invention on it that lets them teleport instantly anywhere, including to alternate dimensions.
Firstly, the style of writing isn't very engaging. There are stretches of paragraph after paragraphs that are exclusively dialog, but it's not very entertaining - half the time I can't keep track of who's talking because they sound exactly the same to me. Everyone's a genius or near genius (just having slightly different specialities), excessively competent, rugged individualists, everyone's always horny. They all seem to share roughly the same ideas about everything (and even if there is a mild disagreement about something it usually only lasts long enough for one of the characters to explain why they think the way they do, whereupon the other character starts to agree). About the only major difference is that one character has a problem with taking orders from his wife, and the men are a little overprotective.
There's really no plot, in the sense of having a deliberate problem and quest and going about that quest. Instead they explore a few worlds stay there for a while, get in trouble, bicker for extended periods, etc. In the hands of really good writer (or in the format of a TV series of ongoing comic), this is not necessarily a problem. Here though, it just reads like Heinlein decided to write about them visiting whatever came into his mind next. There's a hint of a giant threat that starts the plot off but they barely play any role in the rest of the story. And when some of these universes are not only fictional but magical and characters get magical attachments to their flying car, I cease to care. It's like the old adage: "If literally _anything_ can happen, who the *@$! cares _what_ happens?". I stopped caring what happened when they got to Oz.
And, of course, there's the sex. Now, I don't have a problem with sex in SF. But Heinlein writing sex never really felt right to me. It feels to me uncomfortably like how I'd imagine it would feel finding the fetish porn sites my grandfather surfs on the internet. Scratch that, it's more like hearing my grandfather talk about the fetish porn sites he browses on the internet. Having female characters describe their 'teats' in the first person for several paragraphs, every girl's nipples are a barometer for her mood, everybody superbly pro-nudity and happy with polygamy.
Now, we must forgive Heinlein, he is one of the masters of the genre, and this was written in 1980, making it quite late in his career (and in his early 70s). I'm reminded of Claremont, in the way some writers are great in their heydey but tend to lose it somewhere along the way, either due to their own efforts or just because they're so successful they're more able to resist editing.