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Posts tagged ‘writing’

Nov 9

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Reasons to Write

This is just a quick note.  November is flying by.  I have started my novel for National Novel Writing Month, but I am seriously far behind.  I’m just happy I started, but this weekend will be a serious work push.  Not only am I writing this novel, but I have a few  short pieces to write and a book to read for class too.  We are reading Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand (the author of Seabiscuit).  I need to write up an analysis for it as soon as I finish.

Class is going well, but I feel a bit overwhelmed.  Yesterday we spent a lot of time talking about why someone chooses to write.  Why write when you could do something else creative like paint, or music?  Why is someone a writer instead of an actor?  Every answer I had just seems too superficial.  It may not be a question that I will ever answer.  I may spend the rest of my life asking myself this.  Can you imagine that? Some in the class said that they didn’t want to go too deeply into their answer.  I get that.  Over analyzation of oneself can sometimes crush creativity.  You don’t have to look a every single motive all the time.  Human being are irrational and do things that make no sense all the time.

But it bugs me that I never really thought about why I write. I don’t always enjoy it.  I don’t always have a burning passion for it.  But it is the one thing that I have stuck with my whole life.  I read a great column a few days ago, and basically the writer said that you shouldn’t do what you love.  You should love the work you have chosen.  I think that is a big part of why I write.  I am in love with writing.  Why else would I do it?  No money.  No fame.  It’s hard on realationships. People will think you are nuts for choosing something with (seemingly) little reward. It’s damn hard work and can drive you crazy…

*Sigh* I am in love.  There is no other explanation.

I will probably write more about this later.  For class, I have to write a vision statement about myself as a writer.  It is supposed to be something I revise for the rest of my life.  So a draft will make it onto this blog eventually.

Happy novel writing!  I need to get back to work.

 

Oct 5

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How My September Came and Went

It’s been a busy, sad, and thoughtful few weeks.  It’s now the end of the first week of October and I can’t believe how fast time goes by.  I’m deep into my class for JHU.  I’m still working away (and crossing my fingers for the business to do better) at my full time job.  I’m still on the hunt for great books, although I haven’t found anything good since the last post.

But last weekend was hard.  One of our cats (I say “our” because she was technically my parents, but I had been taking care of her for the past two years.) had to be put down.  She was a wonderful cat, but at fourteen, she just got very sick.  I cried when the vet told us, but I didn’t want her to suffer.  She will be missed.

Class is keeping me busy.  We just read and discussed A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan.  I liked it.  The structure, voice, and characters all made it for me.  My favorite chapter, “Ask Me If I Care”, just jumped off the pages.  I also love the flash forward moments too.  This seems to be a trend in literature today.  I’ve read a few other authors that practice this technique.  I haven’t tried this yet in my own fiction, but I am excited to try one day.

Speaking of writing, I’m suiting up for National Novel Writing Month.  Lately I’ve been feeling like I need more material.  I am a very slow writer, but now that I am in grad school, I feel like I need to have more material.  I just feel as if my body of work is too slim.  So I’m going to tackle something big next month.  I also have grand plans to finish a few other short stories I have started.   We will see how far I get.  Hopefully I will have something to show at the end of the year. *Crosses Fingers*

Aug 7

Good News!

The last few months have been so busy.  I ended up not moving, because my money situation is just not good.  Basically, the owner of my company is dealing with the uncertainty of the business climate.  So my 10% pay cut continues….

It is frustrating, because I want to get my own place again.  I miss having the privacy that I used to have.  But I guess I can be happy that I am saving money.  A one bedroom or studio would run me at least double what I am paying now.  And money will be even tighter now because….

I GOT INTO GRADUATE SCHOOL!

After being admitted as a provisional student into Johns Hopkins last fall, I am now an official master’s degree candidate.
I am so excited to start.  I can’t stop smiling.  I really wanted this and it is nice to be on this journey.  I know this is going to be a lot of hard work, but I am ready.  I kept going back and forth about going back to school, but I know that this is the best decision for me now.  I already have one class under my belt, so let’s get going on the next semester.  Before I know it, I’ll have my MA in Writing.

In other (not so exciting, but still good) news, I have expanded my book collection nicely in the past month.  For a little over a year I have become a serious book collector.  I primarily collect scifi, fantasy, and horror by minority writers, but I also have a good amount of speculative literature by other writers.  One of these days I’m going to up load my library to librarything.org.  But that is a big project and right now it is all about school.

My mom says I am the book whisperer.

But it is looking more and more, like I will have to let go of some of my books.  Like I said before, money is tight.  There are a few I am not dying to keep, so they will probably go up for sale on amazon.  When they do, I will be sure to announce it here.  My few, but still awesome, readers will be sure to hear about the scoop first.

Working on new material too.  To early to tell any details, but this summer, I started plotting out a new novel.  It is strange, I didn’t think I had any more novels in me.  I wanted to focus more on my short fiction. But I just can’t picture this story as a short fiction piece.  I guess that will teach me to predict my own ideas…

So far, August has been very good to me.

Apr 8

Out With the Old…

Yesterday, I finally got rid of my old computer.  It was sitting in my office, off in a corner getting dusty, when I realized it had to go.  I hadn’t used it in 4 years.  When I moved to my current place, I just dismantled it and never set it back up again.  Even in 2008, the computer was really old (10 yrs!).  I finally bit the bullet and bought a new machine.

But, I still held on to the old one.  I thought one day I might suddenly remember there was a file or something that I forgot to transfer.  But the only thing that was really important (my novel) was transferred to a flash drive before I moved.

And now it looks like I might move again.  So I have been paring down all of my things.  All my books that I have been saving for years that I will never read again, clothes that don’t fit, and old electronics that needed to be recycled, had to go.  I love decluttering, but man, I hang on to a lot of crap!  I found and old copy of Sweet Valley Twins in one of my book boxes.  I hadn’t read one of those in at least 20 years!  It has been exhausting, but I am at the point now where I see real progress.  Sometimes I think I just cart the same boxes from place to place and never open them.  Hopefully my next place, I can really settle in and unpack.

I still remember buying that old computer.  I worked in a HR office in Virginia Beach, VA for a summer for a whopping six dollars and hour.  I saved all summer and two weeks before I was about to go back to school for my senior year of college, I walked into Circuit City (Remember that store?) and bought my first PC.  I was so nervous driving home with it in the back seat, I went well below the speed limit.

I wrote my college final papers on that computer.  I composed a short story, Mr. Fear, that would set the tone for all of my future work.  My short lived life as a columnist about women in pro-wrestling (not kidding!), found its voice in that keyboard.  And of course I wrote my novel, my first as an adult, between February 2002 and June 2003 (Just the first draft.  Subsequent drafts took another year.).  So many important memories in my career were on that machine.  I wasn’t sad to see it go.  The work was important, not the machine.  The memories were good and they are enough.

 

Apr 1

Update!

It’s been almost a year since I’ve written.  I have neglected my blogging duties.  Not that many have noticed.  I am keenly aware that my traffic is a virtual zero.  Really, I’ve just been writing this for myself.  Originally, I was keeping this as a place to display my writing.  My family and friends were always asking to read some of my fiction, so I created this place to display it.

But I still haven’t put anything up.  I am a perfectionist, but I also think that I have been afraid.  Afraid to put myself out here.  My fiction is very much a part of myself and I haven’t had to will to share.

But since the last time I wrote, a few things have changed…

First, I mentioned last year that I wanted to go to graduate school.  Well lo and behold, I actually was admitted as a provisional student into the Master’s degree program at John’s Hopkins University.  I hadn’t been in a classroom in 12 years (I got my BA in 1999!).  It was fun and I loved every minute of it.  I hope to continue my studies (provisional means I need to be formally admitted before I can take anymore classes).  But school does keep you busy.  I had to get used to doing homework again! LOL!

It was also a change to have complete strangers read my fiction.  I was intimidated by some of my classmates.  Some had been published and seemed more accomplished than me.  But by the end of the semester, I had gotten over most of this fear.  Somewhere in the last few years, I forgot how much I loved the creation of a new story.  I forgot what it felt like to finish a new story.  In short, I think I managed to grab a hold of some of my old ambition again.

Second, I took up a new hobby/business venture.  Sometime in June, I had a serious anxiety attack.  It was brought on by my worries of money.  It just seemed like there was never enough.  I tend to read a few personal finance blogs and I realized that no matter where I cut, there came a point were I needed to earn more money.  So I decided to resell books on Amazon.  So far I have barely made anything, but it let me focus my energies away from my tiny bank account.  And my personal library is significantly diminished.  It felt good to get rid of the clutter.  I loved some of those books, but I was holding on to them for the wrong reasons.  I was never going to read them again, so why not pass them on to others to read and love?

This little venture also stirred me to become a serious collector.  I was in my local Friends of the Library store when I came across a copy of Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace.  Signed.  It was priced at six dollars!  I snatched it up and never looked back. (FYI, Margaret Atwood is my favorite author.)  I got the collecting bug, and I think it is a permanent condition.  For now I will only prowl thrift store and used book stores.  High end bookstores are not in the budget yet.

And finally, just a month ago my company experienced layoffs.  We are a small publishing company, so anyone leaving is noticeable.  For now, my job is safe…but I had to take a pay cut. It is not permanent (the pay cut), but no one can say when things will go back to normal.  I am, obviously, worried.  Hearing the company is in trouble is never fun to experience.  I am so glad I saved last year. I have a solid emergency fund, started my retirement savings, and have a good amount for grad school (so no loans).  Getting by on less is something I am used to, so I just reworked my budget for this year.

So that is all the latest news.  Cross fingers for 2012.  I think it is going to be an adventurous year.  And my birthday is on Thursday!  So wish me a happy B-Day!

Mar 20

I Don’t Read SCIFI. I Read Speculative Literature.

I Don’t Read SCIFI. I Read Speculative Literature.

(Or How to Recruit Others Into the Club.)

If you have ever experienced the disdainful, vaguely bored glance that follows when you mention you favorite science fiction or fantasy story, I have the ultimate recruiting pitch. No doubt, if you are reading this you are already a fan. Star Trek is a popular outlet for many fans of this mode of storytelling, but it is only a start. Any true fan knows that science fiction and fantasy contain all types of stories, whether it is the traditional stories of Middle Earth, or the tales of Bradbury’s Mars, or even the more obscure selections of Kelly Link. The genres (I use the plural, because we all know they are two SEPARATE genres that happen to be bunched together as a stupid marketing ploy which doesn’t really make sense when you think about it, but oh well that’s the way it was made…) have something for everyone. And yet, you still get the LOOK. Usually, it happens during a conversation like this:

“So, what kind of books do you like to read?”

“Oh, I like science fiction/fantasy/horror.”

Pause. (Insert LOOK.) “Oh, I never got into that stuff. I like more serious literature.”

Ouch! That was you personality they just slammed! What do you do?

Well, don’t call it science fiction/fantasy/horror. Call it speculative literature. It’s a fancy title for the same thing. I learned that (along with many others) from reading Margaret Atwood. When people called her book The Handmaiden’s Tale science fiction, she turned it around and called it “speculative literature.” It sounds classy and sophisticated. Best of all most people don’t really know what it means.

There are some who are now raising their fist at the computer screen and saying, “There is nothing wrong with calling my favorite stuff scifi! I like it just the way it is and if I met someone who doesn’t understand, then too bad. No one is going to change me.”

I guess I agree to a point. The term is ingrained into our vocabulary and I’m not suggesting we get rid of it completely. But if we don’t offer the olive branch, or at least an alternative that provokes interest (because it doesn’t have a gut reaction when heard), how will there ever be any tolerance? We can’t get rid of the LOOK until those who give it understand that scifi is not fluff.

I like the term speculative literature mainly because it covers a wide variety of styles of writing. So many people are writing in different aspects of scifi that we need a better term. There are tons of others like “new wave fabulist”, “new weird”, and my personal favorite “slipstream”. And while they all take up their own space, “speculative literature” seems to be the most inclusive. It’s any story where there is some sort of speculation involved, whether that is picturing a future (good or bad) of mankind, an alternate reality, or next door neighbors that happen to be vampires. It also includes a lot of stories that are not typical, like The Handmaid’s Tale, or 1984. It’s hard for someone to give the LOOK to Frankenstein.

And once people start to understand that, they’ve been recruited onto your side.

Maybe they will never read Robert J. Sawyer, rush out to see the next movie about Kirk and Spock, or know the storyline of the next graphic novel series, but there will be a little more respect. They’ll understand that there is a history, a tradition, that has been going on for a while. These genres are not just about slapping a sword and an elf together in a forest, or what Earthlings will be like in five hundred years.

It’s about the same things that drive all other stories. Our hopes and our fears create this stuff. They mold and shape stories that incorporates the fantastic or science into something so far ranging that it takes us out of reality. But it is sophisticated enough to leave clues as to how we can see ourselves.

I, for one, think more people should realize this and I’m a recruiting fool.

That’s why I read (and write) speculative literature.

**Originally written for and published by roddenberry.com in August 2007.**

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