Trail Log 02
Habits, Lessons, and...robots?
Architecting Consistency Through Atomic Habits
It is a new year, and that usually means resolutions. It is a reminder that I’ve spent most of my life at the mercy of my consistency (or the lack thereof). For years, I operated on the “burst” model: wait for a spark of inspiration or a deadline-induced panic, work until burnout, and then stall out for weeks.
It was an exhausting way to live that made me feel like I wasn’t getting anywhere.
I started my journey by learning to timebox. I liked the results, but I still felt like I needed help with discipline. Several sources recommended Atomic Habits by James Clear. It changed how I saw time and goal management.
The core takeaway was simple: You don’t rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.
The biggest shift for me was moving away from the myth of willpower. Willpower is a finite resource; it fails you when you’re tired or stressed. Instead, I started engineering my environment using habit stacking. By anchoring the things I wanted to achieve to the things I was already doing, I took the choice out of the equation.
It was no longer about doing more work, but about how I distributed my time. My focus shifted from the “busywork” of a disorganized life to the things I actually want to achieve. Writing short stories and working on my novel simply became the latest beneficiaries of this shift.
I no longer believe that consistency is a personality trait you’re born with. It’s a design choice.
My recommendation: if you’re struggling to maintain your habits, stop looking at your lack of “motivation” and start looking at your architecture. Once the system is built, the results (stories, health, or skills) follow the system.
Ideas to Raw Material (More NaNoWriMo)
Writing, like any project, is a wonderful thing while it floats around in your head. It isn’t real, so it can be anything. Actually writing it down makes it real—and that can be scary.
Challenges like NaNoWriMo help many authors shift from the intangible to the tangible.
I decided to write a novel in September, and the idea I came up with quickly expanded into a trilogy. When I learned about the November challenge, I dove in. I spent October researching, mapping characters, and producing a very rough outline. By November first, I was ready to go.
I didn’t quite make it to the finish line. I didn’t finish the novel or hit the 50K word mark, but I was happy with the progress. Most of the story is now written, with only three major action sequences left.
To ensure I had a positive word count each day, I made a “rule” for myself. I couldn’t go back and rewrite earlier chapters. This was the only way to maintain forward progress and keep the momentum.
I found the entire exercise a huge success, but now comes the editing. The rough average (if you are daring enough to calculate one) is that it takes about three times as long to edit as it does to write. Given my “amateur” status, I suspect it will take me much longer.
The draft of Labyrinth’s Ghost is now “raw material.” I have subplots to fix, characterizations to bridge, and technology to integrate more effectively into the early chapters.
It will be a journey—and a New Year’s resolution. The writing was the easy part. The engineering happens now, and it is a little more fun for me than the raw writing. In the end, I will have a complete novel: Labyrinth’s Ghost.
I wonder if I will have time to prep for the second novel by next November?
Tokyo’s Robot Restaurant
When you visit Tokyo, you should most certainly enjoy the art, culture, and history, but if you want a surreal experience that is uniquely Japanese, then make your way to Shinjuku for something less traditional.
You see, there is “over-the-top,” and then there is Robot Restaurant.
We began in the spacious, white, and very crystal-bright lobby while a demon heavy-metal band serenaded us by playing...soft lounge hits.
It was a descent to a small theater to watch a multi-act collision of cabaret dancers, taiko drums, Mighty Morphin Power Ranger-inspired villains, Kung-Fu Panda, techno music, and robots. Lots of robots. Big robots. Small Robots. Snake robots. Shark robots.
Every inch of the space is engineered to overwhelm the senses until you have no choice but to surrender to the spectacle.
Between the first two acts, I told the Australian sitting next to me that the only way the show could get better was to become more absurd. When it ended, I declared “much success” with two enthusiastic thumbs.
We often look for logic in settings and world-building, but maybe sometimes, it is just an unexplainable sensory overload.
For me, the Robot Restaurant was an experience straight from a neon-lit science-fiction fever dream, and I loved every minute. Both times.
Stray Signals
We spend a lot of time thinking about what we'll do when aliens finally make their appearance, but what if we're asking the wrong questions? Check out my free story, "The Forsythe Ambition,” where we learn who is really ready for first contact. https://trnaus.com/stories/
I recently added Sister, Sinner by Claire Hoffman to my Goodreads as I prepare for the author’s upcoming University of Mary Washington’s “Great Lives” lecture. The story of Aimee Semple McPherson is incredibly interesting and surreal enough to remind me that truth can be stranger than fiction. Seeing how a real-world figure in the 1920s could command such a massive, media-driven following makes me realize that the “larger-than-life” characters we invent for speculative fiction aren’t nearly as improbable as the people who have actually walked among us.
I’ve just added “Test of Faith” by Senzo to the Cyberdyne playlist on Spotify. Senzo combines the modern shamisen style I’ve always loved from the Yoshida Brothers with a heavy techno backbeat. The result is a phenomenal sound that feels right at home in the techno-noir world-building of Labyrinth’s Ghost. If you want to hear the rhythm of the city I’m building, this is it.
Submission Tracker: 32 submissions, 28 rejections, 2 acceptances.