Writer's Trickle

Written for my Creative Writing portfolio.

A logical question to pose someone with multiple published novels at the age of 21 is why she would wish to take an Intro to Creative Writing class at all. My knee-jerk answers have been that this is a prerequisite for other Creative Writing courses that I want to take, I need the credits, I believe I still need plenty of assistance before I reach a level I want to be (regardless of where I am compared to my classmates), and that it's more fun than anything else I can see around here that will help get me to graduation. These are all true, but upon reflection there are some deeper things going on here. First, I am retaking this class to spite the universe for giving me a health-related catastrophe that forced me to withdraw last time. Second, I am struggling to get through the driest writing period I have had in six years, where I am writing more than most people do, yet all the while internally panicking about whether the well is running shallow.

It hasn't been writer's block, fortunately, because the last time I seriously had that it was the worst three months of my life. I've been able to eke out the little bits and one decent short story you will see in this compilation, though it's been like going from dancing to shambling in terms of ease. I'm also working on a one-act play for a different class. I even produced a few well-received pieces of one of my old guilty pleasures, fanfiction. So someone who doesn't know me well could look at my output and think that I am being productive.

I don't feel like I am, though, not compared to the real me. I was used to writing at least ten pages a week of unassigned original work for the sheer joy of it, constantly eager to get to the next book over the horizon, playing out scenes in my head every waking moment not occupied by immediate concerns. I don't know what happened. And when I try to talk about this, people usually say I've written plenty already, that it's okay to be low on inspiration for a while when I have done so much. Guess what? I've eaten three meals a day almost every day of my life, but eating nothing one sandwich every two days would leave me hungry and weak no matter how well-fed I was to start with.

Taking this course has been part of my attempt to fix this issue. If I was required to write, I thought, maybe I could tap into the source again by sheer brute force. Perhaps the prompts would awaken something. At least in the meantime I could refine my phrasing and improve my cliche elimination rate, get better at receiving criticism, possibly be helpful to others, and work on all the other little things while the big things elude me for a while.

I succeeded at the last, anyway. The short story is pretty good, especially after the editing help, and I think is worthy of sending out to be published. The journals were at least therapeutic. The exercises have their moments of charm, the occasional clever sentence. I am still feeling pretty empty and alone in my head. It reminds me of the end of The Amber Spyglass when the heroine can no longer magically use a certain oracular device, but instead has to learn how to read it slowly and painfully. I realize that this may sound ludicrous to many. I have a candle flame to light my darkness, still. I feel petty for it, but I long to have a forest fire again.

300 for 30: Day 18

I'm going with something half-baked today, because I'm tired and starting to slide into another depression. Who knows, I might perk up in the process.

So you get a list! (And there was much rejoicing - insert dispirited 'yayyyyy'.)



Writing-Related Things I'm Doing At the Moment

1. This 300-for-30 which is going to morph into 750-for-Clarion on the 26th.
A. Some it, as you have seen, is miscellany like this.
B. Another portion is my Raw Ghosts of Thailand expansion, again obvious on this blog.
C. Though I'm in composting mode, letting Sweeping the Puddles Away mature in my brain before I make a serious attempt at it, I may take a few nibbles as part of the Write-A-Thon if I tire of A and B.

2. A "translation" of a Shakespeare play into modern English [I won't say which publicly; I signed a non-disclosure agreement], ghostwriting for a $200 payment. Due on the 25th. I'm glad it's not overlapping with the Write-A-Thon.

3. Editing the first manuscript in my new long-term position, for $50. Low pay but great resume/work experience credit; the publisher is quite snazzy. This is due on the 22nd. I have not received the actual manuscript yet. If I don't get it by tomorrow I am requesting an extension, because I said I'd need a week to do it, and they had better GIVE me a week, by Eru! And they'll give me another one immediately afterwards that I must have done before August 1st, since they "had to fire one of their copyeditors".
* I must admit, I am curious about what the copyeditor did.

4. Waiting to hear back from Queryshark, of queryshark.blogspot.com , to see if she is interested at all in either posting my query for Seasons Four Open the Door on her blog and eviscerating it, or on, just maybe, requesting pages. In the meantime I am polishing the query until it screams, so that if 90 days pass with no reply I can resubmit a better one in September.

5. Waiting to hear back from various other agents for Seasons Four.

6. Promotion, promotion, promotion for Humans and Demons and Elves. I'm hoping to get the Facebook page fanbase to at least 300 before July 7th. I will have to take some time off my Embassy job on the big day to be available on live chat during my appointed hour, and draft up some contests/"press releases" to put on the Yahoo loop.

7. Waiting to hear back from The Memory Eater anthology about whether a story I submitted pleases the editor enough to be included. I would get a share of whatever the book makes. I adore the Ryan-North-edited Machine of Death anthology this is inspired by, and would love to be part of a similar project. I'm on equal footing with all the other submitters credential-wise, though, since the editor has explicitly stated s/he doesn't care about that. But their twitter does follow mine, which can't be a bad sign anyway.

8. Growing my Twitter community- largely consisting of trying to find interesting things to say on command, like a trained parrot.

9. Occasional fanfic, because I'm a writingslut like that.

10. And a partridge in a pear tree.

300 for 30: Day 3

This is meant for my expansion of The Raw Ghosts of Thailand, book 6 in the Laconia series, and as it originally stood by far the shortest. I have since come up with some plot developments that would lengthen it but haven't gotten past Ferdinand being put in solitary confinement by a bunch of misguided scientists studying kidnapped vampires. Here he finally wakes up with company. Note that Ferdinand found out less than three days ago that his best friend and housemate, Dr. Nat Silver, has been in unrequited love with him for several years.

Light, light, bright light...too bright...but at least his eyes were working. Ferdinand had started to think he would never see anything again. His head hurt.

“Sometimes I really hate you,” he heard a familiar voice say. Nat?

Cupping his hands around his eyes made it possible for him to get a better picture of his surroundings. They were in a little room about the size of his bedroom closet at home, cement walls and slick, wet linoleum floor, with a cracked squat toilet, a roll of paper, and a faucet that was ticking out of the wall about five feet up, facing the wooden door. Ferdinand had been propped up in a corner like a stuffed animal missing some of its filling. He realized he was still naked, and Nat was in the room too.

“Relax, I’m still a doctor. And they gave me your clothes to give to you.” Nat crouched and held out the neatly folded pile. “I had to check for concussion. They stitched you up but I don’t trust them.”

As he took the bundle Ferdinand must have been making faces, because Nat rolled his bloodshot eyes - already quite red in the irises to begin with - and turned his back to give Ferdinand some privacy.

“Sally, Taylor, and Rivki are just outside. We’re in a different cell now, but there’s the bathroom for Taylor, in a suite if you could call it that, and a pair of mattresses at least. They’ve separated us out. Taylor gets food but we don’t.”

With a throat that felt like it was coated in that chunky kosher salt, Ferdinand croaked, “Why?”

“I’m surprised you need to ask, bright lad like you, unless you gave yourself permanent brain damage with your idiocy.” Nat’s voice turned to venom for a moment, then softened again. “Are you dressed yet? You should lie down.”

“Nearly.”

Bird by Bird: A Recommendation

Just read Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott - got it on Kindle and devoured it in between the chunks of other urgent things to do over two days - and I can see why so many people love it. For one thing, I have resolved to follow her challenge of writing 300 words a day for 30 days while I try to figure out what novel I'm doing after Seasons Four Open the Door, as I currently have no idea except for the neat title that's been bouncing around in my head for a couple years now.

Even if it doesn't galvanize you to any sort of action, though, this is a friendly, wry, clever, eminently lovable book about writing and healing the self. The chapter on how being published, though a valuable thing, does not solve all your problems, rung especially true for me. Before I was published all I wanted was to be published. Now I long for a bigger publisher. Then after that I'll probably yearn to go on talk shows. And so on. It never ends.

The book is a real treat. I give it all the stars allowed.