timwburke

A year ago this past June, I couldn’t handle my management job anymore. I had been promoted from within a department that had gone without direct supervision for several years. It had no Policies and Procedures, no progressive discipline, even no employee review until I had become manager. My supervisory stream’s motto was “We are not going to go to labor court.” Unknown to me at the time, I even had an employee who had sex with another department manager in her work cubicle, then told her coworkers (please sue me for saying this, Employee; I will subpoena your cuckold and your other guy too).
But the manager job paid more than I thought I would ever make working in video production. After seven years on the job, I had paid off my car, had no debt, and lots of money in the bank. My parents’ estate was liquidated, and I received even more money.
I wanted to be a writer.
Hans Gruber in “Die Hard” tells us of Cortez, who burned his ships to cement his commitment to success.
I quit. Flat-out quit. I’d been living off savings until this summer. Now I got a job at a Major Big-Box Store Chain as a sales associate and rented a room from a friend.
This is all to further my writing.
I am fifty years old, and frankly this is My One Big Shot At Success.
Since quitting, I finished a horror novel, polished a fantasy fiction novel, drafted most of another fantasy fiction novel, and wrote a few short stories, and helped to establish a new publishing imprint.
I am down to 1/3 of my original amount. I am at a net loss every month. Moving and getting a job has staunched the flow by about ½.
I do have a retirement fund which WILL NOT BE TOUCHED.
There are days when I could be more productive. However, when I consider I would have lived in my car rather than stay in my manager job, I feel I did the right thing.
Many good things are in the works. I will tell all as evidence of those things accumulates.

One way to improve your art (writing or performing) is through creating surprising, realistic characters. All the writing books suggest using people you know as templates for characters. In improv, some of the more liked characters I’ve done are based on people I know.
But what if you put your friend in the weirdest situation? Have them react realistically to the best of your ability. In art, there is no wrong answer, only a more plausible and committed answer.
My story “Flammin’ The Haints” was based on my friends Martin and Michael, who had a deep respect for each other and years of routines they would perform in conversation.
The oddness was that I put my friends into an alternate United States in 1910. This alternate world had discovered a way to mass-produce spiritualists. Through medical operations and mystic procedures, the bodies of the living could be made homes for the souls of the dead. The poor would be pressed into becoming possessed by the souls of the wealthy and powerful. Over time, the possessed bodies would take on the physical characteristics of the possessing soul.
My friends Martin and Michael are African-American. Michael’s preferences ran to cardigan sweaters, classical music, and cooking. Martin was a self-taught autodidact with years of acting experience. Both loved speculative fiction. Martin would make fun of Michael, saying he was “an undercover White man.”
I’d had the idea of the alternate society for months before author Lawrence Schoen suggested “why don’t you have a conman in this society who can pass?”
I immediately thought of Michael, which meant that I immediately thought of Martin. Michael became a man who came north to Philadelphia with faked credentials and scars to give scam lectures about the spirit world and live off the donations. Martin became the educated local who saw through Michael’s con. Michael and Martin team up to give each other more clout and credibility. I even adapted their running gags to the times, and there two well-received characters were born.
“Born” is the correct term. Normally, I plan out a plot and the characters move it to its resolution. Using Martin and Michael, their personalities were so deeply real in my mind, that at the very moment I was writing the story climax, they took it into another direction and came up with another ending.
This is good: anther thing the writer books all say is “If the writer s surprised, then the reader will be surprised.”
Obviously, using your friends can be socially awkward. I got Michael’s permission to write and gave him final say over the credibility of his and Martin’s characters. To appropriate from “the other” is challenging enough, but to appropriate your friend without his input? That’s rude.
Right now, I’m slushing around in my head a character who is a twenty-five year old fanboy who won $400 million in Powerball. The plan is for this character to take this money and use it to better society using Spec-Fic Methods. Form a Nerd League of Justice. Using hired mercenaries and their own 4Chan.
I say “hope”, because he may surprise me. I’m basing the character on a popular, outgoing guy I know, and that character may take it in a whole different direction.
That adds to the excitement. I’ll let you know how it goes.