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Posts tagged ‘creative life’

Mar 20

Happy Spring 2016!

Neighborhood Flowers 16

 

Happy Spring!

I spent today submitting and thinking of my spring plans. My word count is behind, but the year isn’t over yet. Still plenty of time to get lots done.

Also, I’ve been slow on reading. I realized that I had been reading a mystery story for the last few months. I would read a few chapters, take a break, and start something else, only to come back to the first book again. That prompted me to skip to the end of this never ending book, find out who the killer is, and move on from the book.

It is something that I find myself doing more in my writing. It’s okay to change your mind about the story. Sometimes I need to just set the old draft away, pull up a new document, and start again. The novel that I’m writing now is a restart. Letting go of the old draft saved the story. Of that I am sure.

So my advice to everyone out there is this – It’s spring, a fresh start. If your work (or anything else) is stale. Go back the the blank page and begin anew.

Dec 18

Mid-December 2015 Update — The Challenge is Almost Done!

Well, my modem decided that this was the week to act up. After a long conversation with Verizon, I have a new modem and hopefully no more internet problems.

The year is winding down and I think this will be it for rejections. I have a lot of thoughts about this year that I will save for another post closer to the end of the month. But for now I will say that this challenge was one of the best I ever took on. Even though I got no where near 100 rejections, I pushed myself, submitted, and got work done. There were some other goals I had for this year that I also want to talk about, but again, later.

Here are the numbers so far (and these probably won’t change):
Submissions: 5
Acceptances: 1
Rejections: 36

As I move into 2016, I will continue to submit, but I don’t think I will keep recording my rejections. (Although when I hit 100, I will definitely note it.) While it is good to keep track and have work out in the world for publication, my production goals are way down. I need to find balance between submitting and writing. Do I take a month off and work on my longer works and let the stories pile up? Or do I spend more time submitting what I have and take longer to finish my new work? I know there is a happy medium and I have to find it. I’m thinking I just have to devote one day (maybe Sunday) as “business of writing day” and the other 6 days are “writing” days.

Then there are blog posts and keeping up with all the industry news. If you follow me on Twitter, you know I love to retweet interesting essays.

Yes, I that is work.

And yes, I love it.

But still, sometimes I feel like I read more about writing, than actually write. And while I do think it is important to keep up with literary news, I also got to get my word count.

Balance.

That’s going to be a big goal in 2016. When I was at JHU, I was totally concentrated on one thing – finishing the class. Now there is no finish line. There is just the end of the story and on to the next. It’s wonderful and daunting at the same time.

Wonderful because I love stories and can’t wait to see what my brain wants to explore.

Daunting because it is never ending. Just when I think I won’t have another idea, I get three more…

LOL. Writer problems.

I’m on vacation until January 4th (Yay!), so over the next week or so, I’ll be posting my final thoughts on this challenge, my reading list for the year (and reading goals for 2016), goals for 2016, and any other new stuff I think about. Until then…

Happy Holidays!

And if you’re not religious –

Enjoy your time off and Happy Reading & Writing!

Oct 20

Creativity, Publishing, and Turning My Hair Blue

A few weeks ago, I had a snafu with my hair. Every 4-6 weeks I color it to cover the white(I don’t go gray. I go white.) and this time I picked a shade that ended up turning my hair blue. I thought it would be that dark, inky black that had a blue sheen. But that only works if your hair is black to begin with. If you are looking to cover a lighter shade than black, well, it turns your hair blue. I realized about halfway through putting the color on, but what was I going to do? My hair turned out okay. And the color is not too obvious. Frankly, I kinda like it. It’s a nice change from my typical dark brown/soft black shade. It’s already growing out a little and in a few weeks it will get covered up with the new color.

So sometimes a big mistake can end up being a nice change of pace. Sometimes it’s good to shake up your routine. Try something different and learn something new. Lately I’ve been watching some Youtube videos on creativity and entrepreneurship. That’s the new thing now, being creative and having business smarts. I’ll admit that learning about the publishing business is a bit boring at times, but I find myself getting more comfortable to more I watch. There is a lot of good info out there and I am grateful to the people that give it away for free.

In grad school, this was almost never mentioned. Not until the my last class, and even then it was near impossible to touch on everything. And I get it, most of my time needed to be spent learning my craft. That is important. After all, if you can’t write publishable material, you don’t need to worry about the business.

But what happens after that point. Maybe that is why so many people quit writing a year or so after they graduate. The business is too overwhelming? Or maybe they just don’t want to deal with it.

I don’t know…

It helps that a know a few who graduated before me that are continuing to write, submit, and get published. It helps that I still want to write, submit, and get published. I don’t feel burnt out, nor do I feel overwhelmed by the business aspect of publishing. Plenty of people are doing it. I heard someone say that publishing is simple, but not easy. Very true.

What else? We had our first really cold night and that means it’s time to break out the winter teas! Yum! Fuel for the early morning (or late night) writing.

Mmmm...

Mmmm…

Oct 20

Books that Inspire Me #2

Borderlands Books 005

I found the first book in this anthology series in the UNM bookstore. Perusing the general fiction shelf, I saw it sitting in the corner. The cover was so black, I couldn’t make out the title. But when I turned it over and read the back blurb, it hooked me.

“No ghosts. No maniacal slashers. Nothing that goes bump in the night. Borderlands is a horror anthology series not concerned with traditional elements of horror fiction. Borderlands is about breaking the mold and pushing the genre and its finest writers to the edge. Hailed as the anthology series of the 90’s, Borderlands will remind you that horror can indeed be horrific. Discover a vampire of an altogether different sort… a man who sows the seeds of his doom in his lawn… a dutiful son whose last duty is his parent’s murder… and more.”

I spent a good part of my teenage years reading Stephen King and Anne Rice, but I wasn’t really familiar with the complete horror world. This was in the 90’s before the internet and you had to go the the bookstore to find a new author. The small bookstores in my area barely had a horror section. I tended to pick up whatever looked interesting or, if the person was famous, whatever seemed to be their latest tale.

This anthology opened me up to a whole new world of authors. Although the first one came out in 1991, I didn’t find it until that day in Albuquerque in 1998. It was the only copy on the shelf and I consider it a blessing that I found it.

That semester, Spring 1998, was a real turning point in my writing career. The previous semester, I had my first creative writing class… and it was a disaster. The professor acted more interested in writing his own work rather than teach us anything. I left that class dejected and thinking that I had no business being a writer. For the first time in my life I wanted to quit. I jetted off to New Mexico (I studied in Maryland for most of my degree.) on an exchange program and figured I would just enjoy my experience and not worry about writing. After all, I wasn’t a writer anymore.

In New Mexico, I took another creative writing class (It was too much of a hassle to drop the class.) and it opened my eyes. This was a real class, with assignments and homework and a professor who worked with the students. She was so kind and thoughtful that to this day, I think she pulled me back from the edge. Finding Borderlands became another stepping stone in my growth as a writer.

For the first time I read works by Harlan Ellison, Bentley Little, Elizabeth Massie, Poppey Z. Brite, etc. This anthology showed me what the horror genre could become. What a story could become. The stories weren’t scary, they were horrific in the old fashioned sense of the world. What truly horrifies us? A run of the mill serial killer? Or maybe a lady who buys a purse made of human skin and likes it? (That’s in volume 2.) None of these stories scared me, but they stuck with me. Even today, I think about some of them, turning them over in my mind at odd moments.

Borderlands Books 003

After I read the first book, I toted it back with me to Maryland. A few years later in 2000, I was living in Virginia and found Book 2 in a dusty corner of Borders (remember them?). A couple years later, I ordered Book 3 and 4 off the internet. As I said above, the first four came out in the early 90’s, but the last edition, From the Borderlands, came out in 2005. Unfortunately, I think most of them are out of print. But if you can get your hands on one or all of them, I would snatch them up. They have sat on my bookshelf for years and I do reread some of the stories from time to time. Answering the Call by Brian James Freeman (Book 5) is one of my favorite short stories of all time.

Borderlands Books 001

Once a year, I go over to Borderlands Press website to see if there are any forthcoming. Sadly, there haven’t been any more. Maybe one day, they will put together another collection. Still, I am happy there were these five. They made a difference in my writing life and I am grateful.

Oct 10

The Day I Sold My Childhood Violin

Sheet Music

 

Today, I put my childhood violin up for consignment. Since the early 00’s, I’ve been lugging it from apartment to apartment. Once in a while I would open the case to make sure it wasn’t broken. I didn’t play it, but it was a part of me. The feelings were the same as the ones I held for my old pointe shoes. Both were such a part of my childhood that getting rid of them seemed unthinkable. Why would I get rid of a part of my childhood?

Then a few weeks ago, I was digging through my cedar chest looking for a purse, when I realized that I still had my violin, hadn’t played it, and wouldn’t miss it if I got rid of it. Truthfully, I even felt a little guilty because it was a beautiful instrument, probably Japanese made, that was at least fifty years old. And it just sat in my storage chest, collecting dust. I thought the violin deserved to be with someone who would use it, enjoy it, as I had.

I started playing when I was ten. I remember asking my mom, if I could start lessons, and she encouraged me. She had played as a kid and so had her father. My dad wasn’t musically inclined, but he like the idea of his daughter playing the “fiddle”. So, for the next ten years I played.

In school, I didn’t work on the newspaper or hang out with the theater kids. I was a music girl. I played in orchestra and was a flag girl for the marching band. Violin, along with dance (mostly ballet), was my creative outlet. I did write stories, but that was in secret. My writing was a private affair. But music became a wonderful outlet too. I knew I would never be a famous concert violinist, but being a part of a creative community was very fulfilling. We would laugh and joke in class. I hummed classical music, along with the pop songs of the day. I can’t really explain it, but there was something magical about drawing my bow against the strings and hearing a wonderful melody of a song. It was fun and became an area that I could focus myself. (And yeah, it saddens me that music programs are being cut. They add so much to a school experience.)

As I got older, my interest in playing waned. I took a few classes in college, but once I got deeper in my English major, the violin went into storage and floundered there for the next 17 years. Until I took it to the shop today. The same shop my parents went to and bought it for me. The owner even had the original receipt, which he kindly photocopied so I could show my mother. As I filled out the paperwork to consign the violin, one of the shop workers teased me.

“Are you sure you want to sell?” Her voice was soft, like she was asking me if I wanted to end an intimate relationship.

“Yes,” I said firmly. “I want it to go to someone who will love it and play it.”

Perhaps one day, in another 17 years, I will want to play again. I still set aside one pre-programmed button in my car for the classical station. I flip over every now and then when I want to get my Beethoven on. I still love live concerts and wish I went to more of them. But for now, I am content to be a listener, not a player.

I didn’t feel any sadness leaving my violin in the store. If there is one emotion I could pinpoint, it would be nostalgia. I even took a drive by my childhood home, just because I was in the neighborhood. But there was no regret, no pang of wanting my instrument back. I had loved it and let it go. Now it was time for someone else to love this violin. Maybe they will find a group of odd misfits that love Mozart, or maybe it will be a senior citizen who played as a child and wants to rekindle that love. Who ever gets it will be lucky. I think the violin is filled with positive energy. I should know. It’s from me.

Jan 1

Swimming in the Sea of Literary Writers: Reflections about 2013

Happy New Year!

It’s my first post for 2014!  It’s also my last day of vacation. (BOO!)

Here are some of the highlights of 2013 for me:

1.  Made it half way through my master’s degree.  I need 9 classes and I have completed 5.
2.  Got Margaret Atwood to sign my book.
3.  Wrote more then I ever have in previous years.
4.  Finally went to the dentist and ended up getting a root canal. (Please note — Do not put off going to the dentist.  It is worth it to go regualarly.)
5.  Kept one of my previous resolutions and lost 27lbs.

There are a few other moments, but those are the best.  Even the root canal, which was expensive and painful, counts as a good one, because now I am pain free.  No more chewing on the other side of my mouth.

I would like to talk a bit about the first point.  Getting halfway to my master’s degree is exciting, but it is also draining too.  Quite a few people I came into the program with graduated this sememster.  They opted to take a faster track than myself and are now out the the wide world, master’s degree in hand.  A few are even published. (I’ll put links to some of their work at the end.)  I’m very happy for them and wish them well.

I wonder if they had any of the odd experiences I am having.

I’m speaking of those moments when you realize you are a speculative writer in a sea of literary writers.  There are a handful of others in the program, that I have run into, but mostly we are the strange ones that stand out in the class.  Not necessarily because we are the best writers, but usually because are stories aren’t like anyone elses.  I remember an interview I read about Stephen Graham Jones.  In it, he said that he wrote a story about a guy, who shot invisilble holes in the earth with his invisible gun.  When it came time to workshop it, none of his classmates said anything.  Finally the professor told the class they had to say something and one guy finally spoke up and said, “I don’t know man.  This story was just really weird.”

Yep.  That’s what it’s like.  I should know. 2013 was my year of workshops.  For three straight semesters, I submitted pieces and braved the criticism of my fellow students.  Reactions ranged from flattering, to tough, but fair, to funny, and even the random WTF?.  I am grateful to any thoughtful opinion, even if I didn’t feel it was right for the story.  But I feel self-conscious that my stories aren’t the same.  Sometimes it’s good.  They are memorable and designed to be read multiple times.  Other times, my stories feel like freaks.  They look like strange, ill-formed things that stand out in a sea of perfection.  Hear my inward grown when a really good fellow classmate signs up for the same critique day as me.  I could almost hear the sighs as they read their story first and then my story and mutter, “Why can’t she just write something simple?”

I know some of this is in my head.  In truth, I love my stories and accepted a long time ago that if I wanted to be a good writer I needed to look to Bradbury, Atwood, Bender, and Butler.  Philip Roth and Ernest Hemingway just weren’t going to cut it.  I suppose this is the price I pay.  On the one side, my literary tendencies can come forth and play in the specualtive world.  I get the criticism of those who read and write literary fiction and can analyze those moments.  But the other side is that few of writers read speculative fiction, so when I write about virtual reality, or aliens, the newness can take centerstage.  It helps that a few of us had that same class together and became used to my style, but still the oddness can be a hinderance.

I honestly don’t know if this is something that should change.  I am sure I am gulity of it too.  Since my workshop requirements are over, standard critiquing is over too.  What 2014 will offer in my writing education? I can’t see yet.  I’m sure it will be good, but now it is time for me to work on my own.  Classes might now focus more on analyzing other writers and applying the techniques to my own.  Hopefully this will deepen and improve my writing.
One of my resolutions for 2013 was to get published.  It didn’t happen, but I will keep trying and maybe 2014 will be the year.  I just have to keep submitting.

Here’s to 2014!  Hope your year is full of wonderful moments and interesting stories!

Here are a few of my classmate’s websites —

Like beer?  Like literature?  Head on over to Oliver Grey’s site.
Kelly Ann Jacobson will have not one, but two books out this year!  Check out her site to read excerpts and find links to her short stories and essays.
Want to read more about writer’s lives?  Check out Mike Chin’s blog.  He’s a born storyteller.

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