Where has the time gone? No, seriously. Where? I don’t mean since I last blogged, though it does feel like Friday the 13th was yesterday. But yesterday was Tuesday the 16th and there were some other days before that, though I can’t recall how I spent them. October is slip, slip, slipping away…
Which means November is around the corner. November! Thanksgiving. Turkey. Pie. Parades. Christmas shopping. Sheri. NaNoWriMo.
I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to participate in NaNoWriMo this year. I participated in the book-in-a-month challenge for the first time in 2003 and failed miserably. I think I managed around 15,000 words before I quit mid-month due to illness and holiday stuff. Undaunted, I joined up again in 2004 and completed most of a novel, making the 50,000 word goal in an amazing eighteen days and writing another 6,000 words before taking the last week of November off to hang with Sheri. I skipped NaNoWriMo last year due to my academic workload, reasoning that I needed to work on research papers more than I needed yet another unedited, mostly finished novel languishing on my hard drive.
So, here we are at the threshold of this year’s NaNoWriMo challenge. I’ve signed up at the site, but I don’t know if I’m ready to commit to writing a book in November. I’m still finding it hard to believe I wrote 50,000 words in eighteen days in 2004. Where did I find the energy, much less the time? Sheesh. Plus, I don’t have an idea yet. I vaguely recall having a possible novel idea a few months back when I was obsessing over Lilith and thinking to myself it would be perfect for NaNoWriMo, but I have absolutely no recollection of it now.
There’s still time to come up with an idea. Not that I don’t have a few novel ideas floating around in my brain, but this project requires a certain amount of energy that can only be sustained by a fresh, new idea. Hmm. I feel like I’m talking myself out of this even as I’m writing these words.
I guess we’ll see in thirteen days whether I’ll be up for another round of NaNoWriMo madness. As if I need more madness in my life…
“Everything in your head kicks up a notch, and the words rise naturally to fill their places. If it’s a story, you find the scene and the texture in the scene. That first level—the world of my room, my books, my rug, the smell of the gingerbread—fades even more. This is a real thing I’m talking about, not a romanticization. As someone who has written with chronic pain, I can tell you that when it’s good, it’s better than the best pill.”—Stephen King
When I was a teenager, I had a tremendous crush on Stephen King. I adored his twisted, creative mind and I wanted to write just like him. I played around with the horror genre for about five years, but it wasn’t me. I couldn’t write like King and I hadn’t yet discovered my own voice. I eventually went on to write other kinds of stories and found my voice in the process, but I kept reading King and his writing style influenced my own. Still influences it, in fact, as I use some of the techniques I learned from him.
My romance with King’s novels faded over time and I stopped reading every new book the week it hit the bookstores. I don’t know if his writing style changed or my taste in reading material changed, but his writing seemed to get darker and darker and I stopped enjoying that feeling of dread he so easily creates. I knew the love affair was well and truly over when it got to the point that I would buy a new book out of habit and then let it sit for so long it was released in paperback before I ever got around to reading it in hardcover.
I still love Stephen King. Love and respect and admire him, even if I’m not always able to enjoy his fiction the way I used to. Any time he writes about writing, I find myself nodding in agreement. (As if I’m in the same league as Stephen King. Right.) But there are times when I read a quote-- like the one above-- and I think Stephen King is reading my mind.
King’s book On Writing should be read by every writer. Not because every writer wants to be Stephen King or because his path is typical or even possible for most writers, but because he writes about the process of writing in a way that acknowledges both the magic and the mundane, the creative genius and the scruffy muse. He is not glib or smug about his success, he does not take his talent for granted. He respects writing, respects writers, and manages to explain the unexplainable. Which, I suppose, it what he’s always done.
King has another great quote in this article that serves as a reminder never to take myself too seriously. It’s not exciting or magical, but it’s true:
“Dig this: The so-called “writing life” is basically sitting on your ass.”
(*With apologies to John Hiatt for changing his title to fit my meaning. It’s a great song, though.)
September story sale #4 came this afternoon. That was a nice surprise. I really don’t have many submissions out currently-- and I need to work on that-- but it’s been all sales, no rejections lately. Very nice. I’ve updated my rather boringly named writing resume, if anyone is interested in knowing how prolific I’ve been this year. I don’t feel all that prolific, to be honest, but it’s nice to see the list of sales grow.
I still have six more anthology appearances to come this year (including this one I just added to the sidebar), with four more already scheduled for 2007. I would really, really like to add a novel sale to that list soon…
I’m off to write…
There is a saying that goes something like, “A high tide floats all boats.” Meaning, one person’s success helps others succeed as well. In this case, I just found out that one of my favorite editors, Rachel Kramer Bussel, has landed herself a terrific book deal. I’m thrilled beyond words for her success because I’ve watched her work very hard to get to this point, going against convention and doing things that weren’t always practical, but worked for her. And that’s key, isn’t it? Taking the blood, sweat and tears and turning it into something magical despite the odds. Rachel did it and I’m very happy for her. It also gives me some hope for my own rather impractical goals and aspirations…
(Oh, and at the end of Rachel’s blog entry about her book sales she mentions the lineup for one of her forthcoming anthologies. I’m happy to say my story made the final cut-- which proves that a high tide really does float all boats-- and makes three short story sales for me in less than two weeks.)
Robert Olen Butler has published a new collection of short stories and the title, Severance, and cover, caught my eye. I haven’t bought it yet, but given my current mood, I probably will. How could I resist this description?
Sixty-two entries, each in the voice of a beheaded historical, mythical, animal or modern figure, make up the collection. Each is exactly 240 words, Butler’s estimate of the number of words that could be spoken by a decapitated head before oxygen runs out. Among the post-mortem monologues Butler imagines are John the Baptist, Medusa, Cicero, a chicken, Nicole Brown Simpson, Maximilien Robespierre, Valeria Messalina and himself, “decapitated on the job” in 2008.
I discovered Butler in a creative writing class (it’s no surprise he’s big on southern college campuses, he teaches creative writing at FSU) and his writing stayed with me the way a nightmare will linger days after you experience it. He has a way of skewing reality and fantasy, like the surreal image of blood on white cloth, that makes the words “beautiful tragedy” seem fitting. It’s painful to read him sometimes, I can’t imagine writing like him.
If you haven’t read Butler before, I recommend his story “Jealous Husband Returns in Form of Parrot.” It is a bizarre, amusing, heartbreaking story and a good sample of his unique, voyeuristic style. He’s an odd bird, no pun intended.
On second thought, maybe I shouldn’t read this book right now.
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