{ 35 } Art Imitating Life or You're So Vain

First, the writing is coming along. Not as fast or as furious as I wanted it to, but that's they way these things go. Plus, it doesn't help when there are two very different story with two very different sets of characters trying to fight their way out of you.

Sigh.

As I'm writing, my thoughts will often turn to you, my dear reader. Not the anonymous ones, but the people that I know personally and have read my stuff in the past and will, hopefully, read my stuff in the future.

If you were to ask me where my ideas come from, there's only one obvious answer: nowhere. Really. As I stated in Post { 31 } I Suck at Life, it's all about the Magical Sentence popping in to my head to get the process started. Then things fall in to place.

However, even though I might suck at life, I don't live in a vacuum (HA!), so often friends and acquaintances make their way in to my writing. It's the curse of knowing a writer.

When you read things, you might think to yourself, "Holy crap! That's me! She wrote me in to a story!" Then you'll be either happy or furious, depending on the character and how you think I interpreted you.

Well, hate to break it to you, but you're only half right.

To date, the only things I have written that were actually about someone in particular are the two obvious examples: "Billy" and "Sam." I don't think it gets much more obvious than that.

But the rest of the time, characters and conversations and situations are an amalgamation of all sorts of different crap, some of it real, some of it not. That's why you might think, "Huh. She wrote about my love of vintage Converse High Tops and the time I burned off my eyebrows lighting a cigarette on the stove, so I know it's me, but why did she say I'm a pig farmer in Vermont? Everyone knows I'm a federal judge!"

Because it's not you, silly. I obviously borrowed what I needed and dropped the rest. When I'm ready to write your biography, I'll let you know. (FYI: I don't know anyone that fits any of that description. I wish I did.)

Having said that, my writings aren't autobiographical either. I do have a habit of writing females whose names begin with "B," but that's about it. Yes, somethings are real (I actually did work for a perpetually hungover manager that would send me texts meant for his girlfriend and get mad at me for no reason), but again, the biggest relation I have to my characters is that they came out of my brain.

I suppose I really don't need to explain all of this to you, with you being the smart people I know you are. But my brain gets all stupid and panicky about this sort of thing. I guess that's the curse of being a writer that knows people.

{ 15 } Fear Is The Mind-Killer

Damn it.

I got home from a three-day work excursion to Wyoming twelve hours ago. I had one mission on my mind: get something published.

To most, this probably sounds like a daunting task. Write something. Send out fifty manuscripts. Get fifty rejections. Blah, blah, blah. True, but that's the old way.

Enter the concepts of print on demand and vanity press. They've been around for quite some while, with the likes of Twain, Sinclair, and Thoreau all using them to their advantage. But in the age of The Series of Tubes, printing your own crap is really, really easy.

How easy? Underwear Gnomes could do it:
1) Write something;
2) Take five minutes to upload it;
3) Profit.

Ease aside, what the hell did I exactly intend to publish tonight, considering HOS is in my brain tornado and my young adult novel is about 30,000 words from seeing the light of day ( I DID hit 10,000 words Monday night, thankyouverymuch)?

I really don't want to say the word, but I believe you'll forgive me: poems.

I know, I know, I KNOW: everyone and their father is a poet (my daddy is: American Poetry Anthology, 1984, ISBN 0-88147-008-2. Poem is called Brecken. Go fig...) . So where am I hiding the high and mighty horse that I rode in on?

No where, actually. I know I have written a lot of crap. I figure for every quasi-good poem I wrote, ten more vile examples of juvenilia spilled from my pen. But about 50% of those quazi-good poems were actually great poems. I decided I was going to publish those.

So what the hell happened in the last twelve hours? Why have I not given you an ISBN of my own? Because I got scared. I got so scared, in fact, that I started playing a little game I made up called How Many Things Can I Do To Keep Me From Doing The One Thing I Need To Do? It's a very familiar game; I've played it for thirty years.

The premise of the evening was easy enough:
1) Go to my office and find the notebooks containing the poems I wanted published;
2) Take five minutes to upload them;
3) Profit.

Let me give you a little run down on what I did instead...

• Browsed Wordclay.com, Lulu.com, and Createspace.com for the best DIY publishing bang for my buck,
• Read a ton of really bad self-written blurbs for really bad books sold through said sites,
• Digested another chapter in Alice Sebold's "The Lovely Bones" (no, I will not be seeing the movie; Peter Jackson be damned!),
  
• Drank a few beers,
• Read 100% of the archives at Wedinator.com,
• Made fun of the dogs,
• Cross referenced Wordclay and Lulu authors with Amazon,
• Thought about sleeping.

At this point, Step 3 of the Underwear Gnome's formula is non-existent.

But what the hell was I afraid of? This question is easier to answer then a moon/elephant quandary. Since I seem so fond of lists tonight, here's another, in no particular order:

• Sharing some of my misery from years ago,
• Being made fun of for said misery,
• Having to actually relive all that misery,
• Trying to pimp my for-profit book based on that misery.

For a brief moment, I thought about publishing it under an alias. Safe. Very safe. But what the hell good would that do? I mean, if you're book hunting, is your first thought, "Oh look! A self-published book of poetry from an author I've never heard of! I'll buy it!" If I was to profit, self promotion was my only way.

I got stuck. I got scared. I did nothing.

But you know what? I can't live in this constant state of apathy, fear, laziness, boredom. I am a goddamn writer. Writers write. And good writers publish their work. My BF constantly reminds me how amazing it would be to say, "I'm a published author" when people ask me what my job is.

So here is my promise to you, dear reader: before the close of 5 Dec. 2009, I will have published my poetry book, be it lame or not. If you want to buy it, I'll tell you where. Hurdle One is looming, and I swear I'm gonna jump.

I will leave you Dune freaks and you curiositors with the full Bene Gesserit litany:

"I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain."

Good day, faithful readers.

{ 10 } Brace Yourself: Here It Comes

No, nothing good. Just my freaking birthday. Didn't I just have one of these a year or so ago? I am stressing out, not just because of that, but because of life in general. Bills, mostly, but I've been incredibly stagnant on writing.

I'm meeting with Josh again this week. I know that will help. I need to get out of the funk of daily life and harness Mr. Creativity again. Where did he go? Oh, I remember: his energy has been spent on organizing the house, not freaking out about the holidays, and trying to remain mindful of being a good person.

Well, after tomorrow, things will be calming down. No more holidays, no more birthdays (for a little while, at least), and work should be getting back on schedule.

I pose a birthday eve question to you, dear readers: In all the media you've encountered, be it film, books, opera, whatever, what is something that got your emotions running high? Like, so high you had to put the book down or pause the movie so you could get your breath. I'll give you a few examples from my life to get you started...

• Max Schumacher's speech in the movie Network: "You need me. You need me badly. Because I'm your last contact with human reality. I love you. And that painful, decaying love is the only thing between you and the shrieking nothingness you live the rest of the day." It blows my mind to read it typed here, let alone see it.
  
• The end of We The Living by Ayn Rand. I have never cried as hard as when I finished this book. I will not spoil the ending for you (like you read Rand...).
• When Catherine declares " . . . he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire." about Heathcliff in Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. Really, the whole book gets to me. Say what you want, but as Brontë's only novel, you have to be blown away.

There's a few to get your brain juices flowing. Leave me some more in comments and wish me happy birthday, dammit!

I'm off.

{ 6 } Dispair And Desperation

It's almost six in the morning. I browsing Amazon.com, searching for more books to digest that might help my novel. I am being punched by a wicked thought: what if this novel of mine is too big? What if I'm not ready to handle it?

This novel I am writing is to be the one. I've said it time and time again: it's my magnum opus. But what if I'm still too naive as a writer? What if I haven't truly found my voice? What if I fuck up the best thing I am ever supposed to create?

I'm wondering if I shouldn't try to write a less important book first. "The Great Gatsby" wasn't F. Scott Fitzgerald's first. "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" wasn't Mark Twain's first. "As I Lay Dying" wasn't William Faulkner's first. Hell, "The Da Vinci Code" wasn't Dan Brown's first either. Should I try and write something else as my first to find my "writer's legs"?

This all leads me to think about J.K. Rowling and Stephenie Meyer. Their first books were international sensations. Of course, I hate both of them due to their "I just had this idea..." attitude, but could I join their ranks with HOS? I mean, honestly, I just had this idea...

My biggest fear while working on HOS is that it will be poorly received and I will have failed at the one thing I have a true passion for. Do I need to write something else to get my name out there and to make sure I know just what the hell I am doing? Could I even begin another book with all the HOS stuff in my head?

There are so many good books out there that I've never heard of by authors I've never heard of. There are also some really bad books out there by authors I have heard of. I am torn between two worlds: write HOS and hope it's all I know it to be, joining the ranks of Rowling and Meyer, or push something else out there and hope by the time I get to HOS I can be the next Fitzgerald or Faulkner?

Isn't being a writer supposed to be easy?

{ 4 } Plot, Plot, Plot. Dot, Dot, Dot.

Perhaps as a sign, my computer rebooted and I lost the links to my final research materials. Not a bad thing; I have more then enough, as mentioned.

As I previously discussed, I need plot. So, I've started digesting books like dinner. I read super fast and I know that the best way to be a good writer is to be a good reader.

I'm rereading things I haven't read in awhile. This is working out well: since I already know the basic plot, I can focus on subplots and conflicts. It's funny how much you forget of a book, even if you've read it a hundred times. I remember the basic plot, but all the little subtleties just escape you.

It's like my novel: I know the major plot. It's everything in between I forget (because I don't know what it is yet!). Though I still haven't sat down to write or even outline, I'm starting to knock more and more of it out in my head. Thank goodness.

AND I'm actually remembering to take a notebook to work with me so I can jot down notes on break.

I'm not entirely brain dead... Yet...

{ 3 } Panic In My Brain Space!

I was sitting in my car at lunch break, about 1 a.m., talking on the phone to my BF. He asked if I brought lunch and, since I had not, he told me to at least do something productive with my half hour. Productive, huh? Well, of course that led me to thinking about the novel. I decided to formulate a brief outline in my head so I will be better prepared when it's actually outline writing time.

Then it struck me: I don't have a novel. I have an opening, a huge plot point, and, finally, an ending. I have two underdeveloped characters. I have no side stories. I have no catalysts or motivators. I have a three line description of a story I have been working on for almost a third of my life. When telling people what my novel is about, I filled in all the details with "Then some time passes and..."

How could this happen? Easy: since I have not had an ending I have not been able to write. Since I have not been able to write, I didn't bother to formulate the actual story. Simple, stupid answer. I got arrogant and figured that, by the time it was time to write, I'd have it all worked out in my head. Oops. I forgot to think about it.

Still sitting in my car, panic sets in. I start babbling to myself trying to remember any book I've ever read and what the point of it was. Blank. Nothing. I've read hundreds if not thousands of books and I can't remember the name or plot of a single one of them. I try to mentally scan my bookshelves back at home. It's all a blur. I try to think of movies I've seen. All that comes to mind as of recent is The Strangers. That is so not helpful.

I finally start to get titles: Anthem by Ayn Rand. Too simple; no good here. Dead Eye Dick by Kurt Vonnegut. Really? You're not Vonnegut, baby. The Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy. What? I haven't even read that book!

For the life of me I could not figure out what people in books actually do, especially my people in my book. I know what they don't do. They don't mill around while the writer says, "Then some time passes and...". That is not a plot. Hell, it's not even remotely anything even valid. Things happen in books. That's why they exist. To be obvious, without a story, you have no story. Duh.

There I sat, still mumbling to myself, not caring that I was in full view of my coworkers in their cars, probably thinking I had lost my mind. And I had. I presented myself with a whole new set of problems, ones that no amount of research in the world will fix.

So what to do? Other then cry, I just need to start working on the actual writing of this damn thing. I need to get to know my central characters a little better and find out what makes them tick. I need more story for my story.

Crap. I'm doomed...