An Introduction or: Three Things to Know About Me

The first thing you should know about me is that I have a bad habit of putting the cart before the horse.

I leap head-first into ambitious endeavors with all the enthusiasm of a sugar-charged three-year old careening toward a ball pit at Chuck E Cheese. Feasibility, you say? Nay. My completionist brain catalogs every minute detail that could possibly be factored into said endeavor and begins the process of my “new great undertaking.”

Take, for instance, my books. I wrote the first three novels of the Seven Stones without trying to sell the first—without even getting feedback on them from anyone except for my lovely wife. When I started a business, I spent months perfecting a product without testing the market to see if anyone was actually interested in buying it. Hell, when I started this blog, I spent weeks learning the ins and outs of various wiki softwares and WordPress plugins before a single thought was given to generating, you know, an actual post…

I’m not sure if this trait comes from naivety or an overabundance of confidence. Perhaps it’s simply a by-product of daydreaming too much. You know—catering to those “what ifs” in lieu of chasing down the “what’s next” to finish my current task. I’m a serial philanderer when it comes to passion projects. My intentions are good, but when a new idea takes hold, ambition and enthusiasm get the better of me, and I swerve into the path of yet another grand project before completing the first…or possibly second, or third.

In my defense, I don’t fully abandon these undertakings. They (mostly) get done…though my track record for accomplishing them in a timely manner leaves much to be desired.

And I lay this failure squarely at the feet of the second characteristic I’ll confess — which is that I’m a perfectionist. Or rather, I should say, I suffer from perfectionism. Because it is suffering. The life-long kind.

When I worked as an editor in Hollywood, I’d often polish my “first cut” to ludicrous extremes, working late into the night, knowing full well that the studio would have many, many notes. And I’d always wished I’d saved some of that creative energy for the second, third, and however many versions that would follow.

With my books, this manifested in an unhealthy attention to world-building. Going back to my “cart before the horse” tendency, I’ve been compelled to fully-flesh out every religion, culture, and geographical minutiae that a scene in the story might touch upon, no matter how brief, in such ubiquity as would make Tad Williams blush. As such, the actual book writing has come along slowly.

Now, if I am to build something—oh boy. That OCD really kicks in. I can’t stand to do a job “half-assed,” as my dad liked to say every time my brother and I did something “half-assed” growing up—which apparently, was often. Whether it’s an edit, a house project, a part-time gig—I know no other way to approaching the task but to throw my all into it.

Thankfully, there are some upsides to perfectionism. My edits usually pleased the studio heads. The services my business provided made all my customers happy. And the books, I hope, may hold some merit.

What I’m saying is, I eventually get where I’m going, even if the going is neither quick nor easy. The road not taken, in my case, is the simple one.

And before you tell me…I know, I know. I promise you, I’ve read every fortune-cookie platitude about the futility of chasing perfection and can tell you—it doesn’t matter. It’s always been this way and always will be. At this point, it’s easier to accept the ineffable futility of fighting my nature rather than change it. As Logen “Ninefingers” so eloquently reminds us, “You have to be realistic about things.”

Perhaps you’re sensing that third, special quality in my words? What do you mean, “long-winded?” No, I was talking about stubbornness. Well, I like to think of it as “determined.” And it’s the only saving grace given my other tendencies.

I won’t elaborate on determination. If you’ve made it this far into my post, you’re well familiar with it…

All that said, the point of this introduction — and reason I’ve told you these three things about myself — is so it might make some sense why I’ve never kept a blog.

You see, a blog is immediate. Rough. Unfiltered. It flies in the face of perfection and over-planning, exposing your thoughts before you’ve had time (read “years”) to organize them. God forbid you post something that isn’t ready to be read.

It’s also not overly ambitious. Why would I waste an hour sharing my thoughts on a website when I could be tackling my fifteenth revision on an Academy-award winning spec script, coding an alternative social network that will dethrone Zuckerberg, or devising a third political party that is certain to succeed where others have always failed?

Then again, it could just be that, at the end of each day, my impractical ventures have a tendency to leave me a bit winded, so that the only “urges” I have leftover are basic ones — eat, unwind, lose myself in a good tv show.

So why start one now? Well, I can think of at least three reasons.

One. Exposure.

Yes, every writer’s worst enemy — attention. We rest easy in a quiet room where we construct made-up lives, but sharing what is written…oh, now that is hard. To inure myself to this repulsion, I need to practice putting my words in public. Get feedback. Hear criticism. Maybe even taste a word of encouragement here and there. Whatever the result, I have to start cracking open the door to that quiet room.

Two. Practice.

I need to write outside the genre I’ve trapped myself in. Though I’ve developed the discipline to treat writing as work, put in my hours, and meet goals, I’ve cordoned off that regiment to fantasy fiction. Any forays into articles or short stories were short-lived and inevitably sidelined by the “I’ll do that once the books are finished” mentality. Well, I need to fix that, and my hope is that by putting the same effort into a blog that I have the novels, I’ll be able to hone my craft outside genre fiction.

Three. Catharsis.

I’ll be honest. Trying to self-edit my novels and carve them down to manageable word counts takes a toll. There have been many so many ups and downs, and I haven’t really gotten to the submission stage of things yet. Blogging about the journey and all of its hardships is probably the best thing I can do at this point. A healthy distraction, so to speak. At least it will take away from some of the time I spend fighting myself.

I’m sure there are many more reasons why I should keep a blog, but those three are enough to sell me on the idea. So here I am, starting one two decades later than I should have. Time and energy being in low supply around here, I can’t promise that I will post regularly, but I will offer this pledge: I will forgo the usual tinkering and rumination that delays all my efforts and simply write. The goal is to keep a steady journal of what’s going on in my life…at least, as it relates to the story I set out to tell.

I’ll also include tidbits of lore, as often as I can, since make-believe, what ifs, and imaginary worlds are my happy place. And yes, I put those wasted days to good use and went ahead and made a “wiki” section just for that purpose!

There isn’t much else to this post. A short first entry, I think, with a very loose promise (remember, I can’t be held to deadlines) to return soon with meatier entries.

On that note, I must admit that if there’s a fourth thing about me you should know, it’s that I never use five words when ten will do. Or twenty, even. A great irony, seeing as I worked so long as an editor myself. And a great annoyance to my own editors, should I acquire any.

Until next time,

C.C. Haber