Herald of Darkness & Creative Joy (video)
So I just played a video game (Alan Wake 2) about a writer who is stuck in a nightmare-ish alternate dimension. I loved so much about the game (it doesn’t hurt that I’m also a writer who is stuck). BUT… it’s a horror/suspense game that most of my writer friends aren’t going to play. So, in this video, I thought I’d tell you (in a non-horror-y way) about one chapter in this video game that I found particularly fabulous, and how it connects to one of my approaches to creative projects.
The Achilles Tendon Incident + Migraines (video)
Who wants to learn about my ruptured Achilles tendon alongside chronic migraines??? I’m guessing at least 23.78% of y’all wanna know! It's a fun ride! Check out the video… (Plus a second bonus video below.)
Intentional Disappearing: Ghosting Your Creative Projects (video)
So I disappeared for a little while... I haven’t posted a YouTube video in more than three months. My blog hasn't seen much action. I haven't been writing much over the past few months. 😭 Even though I didn't do a good job of communicating this disappearance to you, it was an intentional disappearance. And it's something I do when personal issues, health issues, family issues, or coup attempts come up in my life. 😱 Check out my new video to get a better feeling for what the hell I'm talking about. (What? Did you think I would spill the tea right here in this post? How else is my video going to get 12 views instead of 0 views?! And also, SOMEONE is going to have to appreciate how crooked my glasses are in this video! And ALSO, did you notice that I'm keeping up with the kids these days by saying "spill the tea"???)
Questions to Ask Adela (a short story)
Well, it’s been a while since I’ve gotten a short story published… To be honest, I was second-guessing whether I still remembered how to write a damn short story. 😭 I’m excited to tell you that my story QUESTIONS TO ASK ADELA is now online at Flash Fiction Magazine! 🎉 If you want to jump right to it, here’s the link. 📗 If you want more info about my writing process, read on. ✍️ And if you don’t care about any of this crap 💩, then why did you get this far into the post!?
Do It in Your Own Awkward Messy Way: Tears of the Kingdom Review (video)
So I got obsessed with yet another video game. 🕹️ This time it’s Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. It’s a hell of a game—maybe the best game I’ve ever played—and this video is about how it has affected my creative mindset. (I mean, I needed some excuse to connect video gaming with my novel writing!) Also, you get to see some of the awful failed vehicles that I attempted to create in the game… 🚀💥
I’m a failure!… And I love it! (video)
It’s easy to analyze my creative ventures and come to the conclusion that they are failures. 😩 And it used to be easy for me to conclude that I was failure as well. 😭 But I’m not a failure… I was just looking at the wrong numbers. 📉📈 I love what I’m up to… ❤️️ And here’s a video where I talk it all through… 😜
A steaming pile of new features for Neurotic Stix Pro!
I’m not sure how many of y’all know that I have a mobile app in the iOS App Store, but I do. It’s called Neurotic Stix Pro and it’s even more neurotic now because I added a bunch of features to the latest update. 🎉🎉🎉 The app lets you create quirky, twitchy, digital stickers with your own captions using more than 40 different templates… Now it has more stickers, more colors, more options, and many other neurotic things. It’s free to try, but I charge a few bucks for the full version. It’s mostly a labor of love, though I also wouldn’t complain if I made a bit more money on this laborious love. 👩🎨❤️ Here are the kinds of things you can easily create with the app 👇👇👇
a novelist acts like he’s the first person to discover video games (video)
❤️ aka: my fascination with narrative-driven games ❤️️
OK. I know I’ve been talking about video games a lot lately. 🕹️😱 It’s been a point of fascination and obsession the past few years. But I thought I’d take this opportunity while HBO’s The Last of Us is on the air (a great show based on a great video game) to dig into my history with video games (including my secret obsession for Dance Dance Revolution and the time I broke my hand playing VR!). In this video, I talk about why I love video games so damn much and how it inspires me while writing a novel. ✍️👾
Present Before the Future: Chronic Pain & Creativity (video)
There’s been something on my mind lately about how I approach my chronic pain (migraines! 🤕) that has similarities to my approach with creative projects (writing! ✍️ YouTubing! 📽️ coding! 👨💻 podcasting!). It relates to the distinction between future-focused issues 🔮 and present-focused issues 🧘. And so I tried to capture it in this video…
where yuvi talks about the video games he played in 2022
(CONTENT WARNING: This post is about video games. And it also involves a lot of parentheticals!) (Like, A LOT!) 🫠🕹️😵💫
So among other activities this year (like publishing a novel and blogging and YouTube and migraines), this was the year where I went more deeply into video games (and ventured outside of the Nintendo Switch). Specifically, I got an Xbox Series S (i.e. the cheapest of the new generation of consoles) and Xbox Game Pass (i.e. sorta like Netflix for gaming). During nights when I was too angst-ridden to sleep or get stuff done (i.e. A LOT), I played games. When looking at the list, it's a little bit alarming how many games I played! (How the hell did I have time for all these damn games when I didn't have time to clean my room!?) 🕹️
a fuzzy reflection on my creative life (video)
I'm not so into new year's resolutions 🎉, but I still wanted to awkwardly think through my attitude (mostly around my creative life) 🧑🎨 in 2022, and whether it needs to change in 2023 🌪️😭 (beyond just using fewer emoji in place of real feelings)…
more than zero: an overly simple plan for my creative projects (video)
I’m not the fastest writer in the world (ten years between novels!?). ✍️ I’m also a really slow reader. 📚 I’m slow at creating YouTube videos. 📽️ I’m slow at a lot of things. 🐢
But I also continuously nudge myself to create interesting things. As I mentioned in my last video (wait, what!?, you didn’t watch it!? here it is: to hell with your productivity tips), I’m not into having a rigid productivity plan for my creative projects. But I do try to follow one simple rule: More Than Zero. I need to make more than zero progress on all the important projects each week. Roughly. Mostly. Usually.
to hell with your productivity tips (video)
Around ten years ago, I was VERY into productivity. I was always on the prowl for a new TO DO app, or a new mail app, or a new productivity hack, or some new technique that would magically make me ultra-super-hyper-productive. The thing about it was that I spent way too much time with these tools and tactics, and not as much time doing the things I actually wanted to be productive about. Nowadays, I’m much less into productivity methods, and I just try to do the things I want to do, with as minimal structure as is reasonable. Here’s a short video about my anti-productivity journey (which, I’m sorry to admit, takes a short detour into a Rick and Morty episode)… 😜😱
Prompts: A Simple Storytelling Exercise (that I'm giving away for free)
For some context, I need to explain two things. First of all, for my day job (as a technical writer), someone asked me to facilitate an icebreaker exercise for 80 people (both online and onsite). Separate from that, I volunteered to facilitate a creative writing workshop. For both of these exercises, I started gathering all my favorite writing prompts, especially the ones that could also be conversation starters. I decided to create a web page on my site that displayed random prompts to get people telling stories. The exercises worked well enough that I decided to leave this page up for anyone to use.
my (semi-animated, semi-authorized) book launch event, now on YouTube!
Did you know that I foolishly went around from bookstore to bookstore with all my crazy A/V equipment in order to show animated videos and presentations alongside my book readings? Yep, it cost me a lot in therapy visits and chiropractic visits, but it was also really fun to mix up the book reading event with some of my bad drawings and animation gimmicks. If you didn't get a chance to see this stuff at a bookstore, then you're (arguably) in luck, because, here it is!
a few more ways to spot a yuvi in the wild before he goes into hiding in his attic…
If you know me at all, it’s probably obvious at this point that I’m an introvert. Mostly, I prefer to hide in my attic, and only communicate with the world through YouTube, Zoom, or some other well-bounded digital method. But I do have this exhibitionist streak alongside the introvertedness. It’s a complicated cocktail of angst and delight, but I do love to chat with actual humans in actual bookstores about actual books.
The Fuzzy Secrets to Writing a Decent Novel (video)
It’s been on my mind lately how the act of writing (and completing) a decent novel requires some particular qualities beyond just learning the craft of writing. And so here is a fuzzy video about the fuzzy art of writing a NON-fuzzy novel. 🌪❤️️
How do you promote a thing when the world is collapsing around you?
Oh. I hope you weren't expecting me to answer that question. This isn't one of those "smart advice" or “good insight” blog posts. 💡 This is more of a I-don't-know-the-answer-and-I-have-no-idea-what-the-hell-I’m-doing-and-I'm-trying-to-write-my-way-through-it situations. 😱🤯
Most People Don’t Give a Shit About Your Thing (video)
This latest video talks through the mindset shift that I’ve taken on this year (for all my creative pursuits). I knew that I didn’t want to be too disappointed by any activities related to my new book. There are just too many factors to consider with a book release, and many of them are out of my control. As much as possible, I wanted to savor the good stuff without having unrealistic expectations. I also didn’t want to ever feel gross with how I share or promote anything. So I boiled down the mindset to “most people don’t give a shit.” Think of it like a second-rate, neurotic version of Buddhist ideas related to unmet expectations and the problems with a “wanting mind”… or something like that.
On Writing with Chronic Migraines
My essay on chronic pain and creativity is featured in Catapult Magazine this week. 🤕 Here’s an excerpt: “It’s hard to explain chronic pain to someone who doesn’t experience it, the way the physical pain blurs together with the psychological toll it takes. I mean, the actual pain is plenty painful—sometimes so bad that it’s hard to want to live. But a lot of the time it’s more about the accumulation of the pain. It’s like listening to that leaf blower outside that isn’t too annoying for one minute but grows maddening after two hours. It’s hard to imagine that the leaf blower will ever stop. Or when it does stop for a moment, you’re just brooding, worrying, waiting for that asshole to start it up again.” 🤕 To read more about my chronic pain, and my chronic creativity, and my dislike of leaf blowers, click the link in this post.