Category: blog

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this is a post about sweaters (no, not those sweaters)

Posted on By Wil

It’s been a strange couple of weeks, here in Castle Wheaton. Anne was gone for six days, came home for literally twenty-two minutes and left again for another day. When she got home, we saw each other for about an hour, and then I had to go to sleep early to wake up early to fly across the country for two days. When I got back, she had to leave again for Piggy and Pug promotion, and it wasn’t until last night that we finally had an opportunity to make dinner together and catch up on all the stuff we did while we were gone.

“I have been feeling this strong compulsion to clean stuff up,” I told her while we were finishing dinner. “I wonder if it’s some kind of Spring Cleaning impulse that I’ve never noticed before.”

“More like never had before,” she reminded me.

“Okay, that’s fair,” I said.

We ate the empanadas we’d made. They were better than I expected.

“Hey, speaking of that,” she said, “will you come into our bedroom with me for a minute?”

Heckyeahsexytimesdottumblrdotcom I thought. “Sure,” I said.

I have this big pile of sweaters and hoodies at the foot of our bed. I keep meaning to put them away, but my closet is a shitshow and the shelves are a disaster. I have a box on the top shelf where most of my sweaters and scarves live when we aren’t having our three to five weeks of winter in Los Angeles. It is currently … not optimal.

“What’s going on with …” she indicated with her hand, sort of twirling it around like Vanna White, but with a little more distaste, “… this … stuff. Here.”

“Oh, those are all my dumb sweaters. I already put a bunch of them away, and I just need to find some room in the closet to put the rest of them away.”

“Isn’t that what your box is for?”

“Yes, but it’s already full. I must have added sweaters to my life this winter, and now I’m past the critical mass for sweaters.” I shrugged. “But don’t worry, I’m going to put them away tomorrow. I just need to clean up that shelf and get it more organized.”

“You’re going to put them in the bin that’s already full?”

“No, I’m going to put them in the spot next to the box, which is currently a jumble of kilts and horsemasks.”

She looked at me with a mixture of amusement and disbelief.

“…a jumble … of …” she was unable to finish the thought.

“This is who you married,” I said. “You did this on purpose.”

 

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an incomplete collection of #wordmetrics from my recent rewrites

Posted on By Wil

Before I get into this post, I want to thank everyone who has sent me feedback about my speech to NAMI.

I never know how these things are going to go over, and I never know if what I had in my head and my heart when I wrote a thing will translate into something similar in the audience. I am always anxious about being misunderstood, even when I’m speaking on a topic I know a lot about. Yay for anxiety! It’s super effective!

It means so much to me to know that I’m helping people. I’ve heard from a ton of parents who didn’t know their kids were living with anxiety, but after reading (or hearing) my stories about my experiences, they can see that their kids need the help that I didn’t get. All I want to do with my time on this Earth is make things that matter, and use the privilege and success I have to help make other people’s lives better. It’s so wonderful to know that this speech I gave (and the essay it is when it’s written) is making a positive difference in the world.

Okay, on to what this post is about: Writing!

Well, rewriting, specifically.

I’ve been working on the rewrite of my novel, which is currently titled All We Ever Wanted Was Everything. It’s a semi-autobiographical work of fiction, about a twelve year-old, coming of age in 1983. The protagonist is a kid who wants to be a writer, and I have no idea where that inspiration came from.

So every time I finish work, I make a post on my Tumblr thingy with the word count and some thoughts about what I did that session. It’s kind of how I cycle the airlock when I come back inside from the deep space solitude of writing all day. It feels good to write it, and I look forward to it every day. It’s like my reward for doing the work, in a way, and it’s nice to have this little diary of the process that I can look back on, to see my progress in more detail that just a word count. I know that some of you who read my blog want to know what’s going on in my creative life, and what I’m working on, so I thought I’d share some of the recent entries.

Each bolded part, and the words that follow it until the nifty little horizontal line, represents one day’s work.

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My name is Wil Wheaton. I live with chronic Depression, and I am not ashamed.

Posted on By Wil

I’m about to go speak to NAMI Ohio’s statewide conference, Fulfilling the Promise. These are the remarks I prepared for my speech.

Before I begin, I want to warn you that this talk touches on many triggering subjects, including self-harm and suicide. I also want you to know that I’m speaking from my personal experience, and that if you or someone you know may be living with mental illness, please talk to a licensed and qualified medical professional, because I am not a doctor.

Okay, let’s do this.

Hi, I’m Wil Wheaton. I’m 45 years-old, I have a wonderful wife, two adult children who make me proud every day, and a daughter in-law who I love like she’s my own child. I work on the most popular comedy series in the world, I’ve been a New York Times Number One Bestselling Audiobook narrator, I have run out of space in my office for the awards I’ve received for my work, and as a white, heterosexual, cisgender man in America, I live life on the lowest difficulty setting – with the Celebrity cheat enabled.

My life is, by every objective measurement, very very good.

And in spite of all of that, I struggle every day with my self esteem, my self worth, and my value not only as an actor and writer, but as a human being.

That’s because I live with Depression and Anxiety, the tag team champions of the World Wrestling With Mental Illness Federation.

And I’m not ashamed to stand here, in front of six hundred people in this room, and millions more online, and proudly say that I live with mental illness, and that’s okay. I say “with” because even though my mental illness tries its best, it doesn’t control me, it doesn’t define me, and I refuse to be stigmatized by it.

So. My name is Wil Wheaton, and I have Chronic Depression.

It took me over thirty years to be able to say those ten words, and I suffered for most of them as a result. I suffered because though we in America have done a lot to help people who live with mental illness, we have not done nearly enough to make it okay for our fellow travelers on the wonky brain express to reach out and accept that help.

I’m here today to talk with you about working to end the stigma and prejudice that surrounds mental illness in America, and as part of that, I want to share my story with you.

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so this happened (one in an ongoing series)

Posted on By Wil

Since last week, I’ve been working on the season finale of The Big Bang Theory, and today we shot Amy and Sheldon’s wedding.

It was an incredible day, and I am still in disbelief that I got to be in multiple scenes with Kathy Bates, Laurie Matcalf, Jerry O’Connell, Brian Posehn, Lauren Lapkus, Teller, Courtney Henggeler, and this guy, who is not only one of the kindest people I’ve ever worked with, but is also from a science fiction franchise, just like me!

All of my dumb jokes aside, Mark Hamill is exactly as awesome and professional and funny as I had always hoped he would be, and he will go down in my Life Book as one of my childhood heroes who I was delighted and honored to meet (and work with OMG I GOT TO ACT WITH MARK HAMILL).

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perspective and clarity, clarity and perspective.

Posted on By Wil

I did a hell of a lot of work over a few days to finish the first draft of All We Ever Wanted Was Everything. I did three or four days in a row right around 2500 words, and then on the last night before Anne and I left for vacation, I did about 6900, so I could finish the draft. It comes in just over 61000 words, and once I’m done with cuts and rewrites, I think it’ll end up right around 60000.

I started the rewrite yesterday, mostly going over the first part of the story, seeing where I was clearing my throat, figuring out how I can smooth it out and lay the foundation that the rest of the story will build upon, and discovering that a lot of it holds up better than I expected it would, a year after I wrote it.

I made a few small cuts, added some stuff here and there and smoothed out a few places where I was clear in my head but not on the page. I decided this morning that I’m going to completely rewrite the first chapter, to better and more clearly define the geography of the story, and to better introduce all the characters. I’m glad I have the perspective on it that I do, now, because I can see the places where things make sense to me, but will be unclear to a reader unless I change them. I’ve spent so much time in the back third of the manuscript, this early part I’m working through now almost feels like a different book, which makes sense, because I didn’t know I was writing a novel when I started writing this novel.

So yesterday, I did twenty-one pages before I ran out of gas. Twenty-one pages doesn’t feel like a lot, but we all have to start somewhere, and I feel good about my progress.

I know I have a lot of work to do, and I’m looking forward to it. It’s going to be fun and challenging and stressful and cathartic to go back into this manuscript and polish up the parts that need it. The last bit is going to need more work than the rest, because it was all done in such a short amount of time, but I’m doing so much work on the beginning, getting so submerged in the natural current of the narrative, by the time I get to the end and do that work, it may not feel as clunky as it does right now. Does that make sense? I feel like I’m reading and rewriting someone else’s work right now, making it my own for the first time.

I look back on the last three weeks, the focus and discipline that I needed to stay on target and finish telling the story. I keep thinking that I should have just stuck with it back in 2017 when I gave up on doing anything, because of Shitler and my Depression being the worst it’s ever been since I got treatment and started taking better care of my mental health. I keep thinking that this book would be with readers right now, if I’d just kept working on it and finished it a year ago. But Anne pointed out that I needed that time away from it, so I could do the work I needed to do on myself, to be in the place I am now, so I could finish it.

She was right, and I probably (definitely) spent more time beating myself up about not writing than I actually spent writing. It seems so obvious when I look back on a year of little productivity now, with all this perspective and all this work actually done, that even when I was frustrated and not as productive as I wanted to be, I did the best that I could at that moment. I’m always telling kids to do the best they can do, and to be gentle with themselves about it, to acknowledge that what their best is will vary from day to day. I forgot to be awesome to myself, to give myself permission to accept that my best may not have been what I wanted it to be, but it was the best that I could do at that moment. For almost a year, I did the best I could do, and it wasn’t very much, because I hadn’t yet done the emotional and personal work that I needed to do so I could be more creatively productive. But once I did the work I needed to do, including some painful introspection and emotional therapy, I was able to do the work I wanted to do. And now that work is done (well, the first step is done, anyway). And I am proud of it.

Anne is away for a few days at C2E2. I had planned to spend this time I am home with just the dogs in Skyrim, but I feel so good and so excited about working on this rewrite, that instead of goofing off with my NPC friends and looking for power converters, I’m spending this time in a world that I created, in my own head, working on my own story, and then rewarding myself with some Skyrim at night when I’m done for the day.

I’m proud of myself, and I feel good about who I am, where I am right now in my life, and what I’m doing. It feels so good to be doing creative work that matters to me because I want to share it with the world