I’m late! I’m late! For a very important date! Tuesday, Nov 11 2008 

short stories and writing , , thewritingspider 2:34 am

No time to say hello good-bye I’m late!

     I feel like this a lot, like Alice’s White Rabbit with his huge ticking pocket watch forever running to the Queen’s croquet match. I’m not talking about being late for work because I am often late-ish. Because I don’t really like my job my passive aggressive defense is to be a little later than other people. I get everything turned in on time, I get to all my meetings, but…late-r.

     When I look at what I do all day compared to what I want to happen in my day, I panic. My day is equal parts day job and sleep (there goes 16 hours), hygiene (two, including trips to the loo), eating (2 hours), travel to and from work (1 hour), entertainment/writing/exercise/friends/Husband time (five hours).  

     Come to think of it, if the day job went away, I’d be fine, because I want that 8 hours for writing of any kind. Damn you day job and your siren song of health benefits and a steady paycheck, lest I be dashed against the cliffs of the bad economy!

     I feel like I’m running out of time to do stuff I want to do. Like write a lot and go places and do stuff. I can’t even think of what it is I want to do! That’s how restless and unfocused I can be.

     I get home from work and if I’m lucky I have a couple of hours to do as I please. Here’s about what happens:

    I tell Husband “I’m going to be a writer now” which is code for “leave me alone and close the doors because I can hear you talking to your internet friends in that game with the purple trees where you look like an elf.”

     I sit down.

    I open WordPress.

    I open the story I’m working on.

    I write some on both, or one, then erase and look at Facebook.

    I think I should read some Neil Gaiman.

    I realize I have a ton of books to read including a new Neil Gaiman and a bunch more that I bet would help me write now if I had only read them. Maybe I should read them now, but I can’t read four books at once, so I end up cruising through a few pages of each.

   I look at Neil Gaiman’s blog.

    I write a page or so in the story, think it’s crap, eat some cookies, and go read Jane Austen in bed.

    I need to hire a hit man to knock off my internal editor and a personal trainer for writing.

 

The Madness Within Saturday, Nov 8 2008 

Anxiety and writing , , thewritingspider 11:49 am

     Take a big pot. Throw in the shorter darker days of November. Toss some restlessness, hormone fluctuations, and an overactive imagination. Sprinkle liberally with moodiness and finish off with a touch of job hatred. Heat to simmer.

     This morning I have just woken up from a bad dream, my head throbbing and nearly in tears. Of course the best thing for what ails you is a cup of very hot tea and a look at the internets. I still can’t shake this little twinge of disorientation from the dream, and what I think is going on is all of the above. I’m what my dad might call ‘pixelated’ and my mom might call ‘out of sorts.’ Indeed, I am feeling quite out of sorts.

     I watched Constantinelast night. I love that movie. I love how it mixes up religion and the supernatural and human madness, but I cover my eyes in the flashback when teenaged John gets a little jolt the the brain in the EST scene. As a kid, I had a weird fascination with what today we call mental health and EST terrified me. It still does. I come from a long line of mental weirdness.

     I’ve also been working on this story that is turning out to be something completely other than what I thought it was going to be. Last night I revised the whole thing, chopping and moving things around. I’m not done with it, not even a draft, but I think the direction I’m going with it is much better. It’s more interesting than the wishy-washy bits I had before. Though, it makes it all the more difficult to write because I’ve just complicated the whole thing. Stay tuned for more updates on the story. And my ongoing pixelation.

 

Writing Update Tuesday, Nov 4 2008 

short stories and writing and writing groups , , , , thewritingspider 11:45 am

     The Writing Spider hasn’t written much of late, has she?

     I have been sickish/busy/burned out from my job/apathetic/finishing reading a great book mostly the last few weeks. I started to write a post about my 10 year college reunion a few weeks ago and I still have the draft rolling around. Plus I started work on a new short story and I’m kind of at the point where it’s getting difficult.

     I am a character-driven writer. I love coming up with cool people to spend time with in the world of the story. This may be why I enjoy creative nonfiction so much but that’s another post entirely. So I came up with this character and started writing this piece around that character. Remember your junior high English classes when you had to figure out the structure of a story? Characters, setting, conflict, action, resolution, end. I love the first two but I can do without the rest.  I’m terrible at making up a conflict. I know it doesn’t have to be something huge – Kurt Vonnegut said every character must want something, even if its a glass of water and conflict comes from putting an obstacle in the way of getting the water. Maybe I should write a story where everybody wants a glass of water.

     My point is, I’ve created the characters and the setting and now comes the difficult work of making you care about them at all. This is usually the point at which I just give up but I actually really love the concept of the story and feel that if I can do it well, I will be very happy with it.

     I made a little plan about writing. I am forever making plans and sometimes they work. Part of my plan was to write more. Part was to get proactive on the rest – find a writing group, read more about writing, etc. Incidentally, part of this alleviates the boredom and frustration I often feel at my day job and thus helps to take care of my Day Job Problem.

     I would be a famous writer by now if it wasn’t for my Day Job Problem. Or sleeping. Or television. Bah.

     In another bid to motivate myself, I am continuing to listen to Mur Lafferty’s podcast, I Should Be Writing, and reading any author blogs I can see at work. Another part of the Day Job Problem is that I can’t see blogs because I work for a bunch of Fascists who won’t let you see anything remotely fun. Thank goodness for iPhone, but I digress.

     Neil Gaiman’s website is available to me at work which is a good resource but also makes me feel sort of like if I talked to Neil about writing he would laugh at me for thinking I’m a writer at all. No, he wouldn’t, he’s not that kind of guy, but he’d be able to spot my problem. I’m not writing stuff, finishing stuff, and sending it out. I’m just sticking my toe in the baby pool of writerhood. I used to be doing backflips off the high dive and now I’ve got on the inflated swimmies and a nose clip and a flower patterned swim cap.

     I emailed a professor from grad school who directed my thesis and to whom I am still grateful for going to bat for the creative writers in a school where creative writing is the red-headed stepchild of the English department DESPITE the fact that the school includes on its faculty some of the finest authors in the country and I’m not just saying that.  I asked him if he knew of anybody who was looking for writing group members or a group to join. This is also how I found the Evil Dictator’s writing group, but surely my professor won’t send me astray again?

     On another note, today is election day in the US. Part of why I’ve been so distracted is the massive amounts of political talk I’ve been exposed to the last few weeks. I’m on overload! So I will say that I am going to vote today and I encourage you to do so if you have not already.

 

100 Words: Starting a Novel Saturday, May 10 2008 

100 words and writing , , , thewritingspider 12:35 pm

I’ve been bouncing an idea for a novel around for a while. I think I’m ready to start. EEP. Now I’ve said it so I have to do it, right? I’ve been kicking it around for more than a year and it wasn’t until the last couple of weeks that I’ve started to WANT to write it. I’ve heard many artists talk about how a story or a subject will haunt them until they paint/write/sing about it. I do find that characters will follow me around poking me in the back, asking me to write their story. That’s great, except then I have to develop a great plot to go with my character. I’m a character-driven writer, not a plot-driven one. 

Since I’m overly prepared for things, I’m going to write an outline, get to know the world I’m writing about, and develop my characters first. This week, I’ve looked around for how other people have written novels. I’ve been reading some stuff at hollylisle.com and hope to start some preliminary work this weekend since it’s too wet to work in the yard.

 I feel that now I’ve written it down, I’ve started the commitment to write this thing. We’ll see. I always said I’d never be a novelist – short stories are much less commitment. But I feel the story I want to tell will be much larger than a short story.