Shame Has Its Place

 Why is it so hard? Because it's a white piece of paper. ~ Sam Seaborn

For the last month or so, despite what I may have told anyone, I haven't been writing. I haven't written anything since the last part of the Hannah Sketches, and I though I have started and stopped so many times, nothing has happened. Well, I can't even say that I've started and stopped. I've tried to start, and then I stopped trying. Yesterday was the last straw. Seriously, I can't take this crap anymore.

Yesterday I slept in since Elise was at her grandma's and I wasn't picking her up until the late afternoon. In that time, I skimmed through the entire novel that I wrote last year around this time, The Eternals, I've been calling it. It comes it at around 64,000 words (as if I can pretend I don't remember that it's actually 63,396 words and I'm just rounding up to make myself look better), proper novel length. It has a beginning, a middle, and a cliffhanger ending. It has characters that I sort of love, and some characters that I don't know probably as well as I should, but I think they are interesting enough to want to get to know. It has a plot that plods along like an old person on a Sunday morning, lazy and slow, and for a while you can't really tell which direction it's going in.

I wrote The Eternals in 46 days. Wait, you know what? Let me quote from my old writing blog about finishing the Eternals:

Writing a book, the entire act of writing and publishing one, whichever route you may choose, is fucking hard. Excuse my curse words, dear friends, but it's the truth. This is fucking hard, and I have an embarrassing little fact to reveal:

I never thought it would be this hard.

I finished writing the Eternals on May 29th, just ten short days ago, after a whirlwind of 46 days of pounding out the words and trying to make them resemble a book. It took seven days to realize what I had was NOT in fact a book, but just a pile of words printed on 232 pages of pristine white paper - paper that didn't necessarily deserve the punishment or the printing.

So there it is. 46 days to a completed novel. Technically completed. And you know what? It was fucking hard. But it was also exhilarating. I only wrote at night after Elise was in bed, and usually was armed with at least one can of Monster, and I stayed up until 3 or 4 in the morning regularly, on purpose. I wrote and wrote and wrote, and I had no outline. Just ideas flying around in my brain that came through my fingers and ended up in a document that was eventually printed and left to get dusted up on a shelf. 

After finishing it, I thought that I hated it. I thought it was total crap. I didn't look at it or think about it or touch it until November when I failed at my first NaNoWriMo attempt in three years and I picked up the Eternals where it left off, sort of as a consolation prize to myself, but that didn't work. I wasn't inspired, it fell flat, I didn't know where Leila's story was going. There was a whole bunch of other stuff going on this year - short stories, a couple of which I successfully published and got paid for, my zombie epic which has also gone stagnant, also because I don't know where it's going and I can't outline because outline kills my love of writing nearly instantly, and of course, there's been the Hannah Sketches. But none of it has really felt like enough for me. I'm busy all the time with projects that involve extensive writing, and I've been reading more than ever (and unfortunately not keeping up with my book list) but I haven't had a spark.

"They" say that you don't need to be inspired to write. You just do it. And I do, I do it, but I don't love it and I don't cherish it and it's not getting me toward my final destination. Well, everything is I guess, but this is not the time for prolific sentimentality. 

Yesterday, I re-read The Eternals, the whole shebang. And oh, it was crap. But in that pile of crap, I swear to god guys, there were some diamonds. There were bits that just frankly SHINE, and I'm not afraid to say so. Maybe you or you could read The Eternals and just dismiss it as crap, but I know I'm on to something here, I know it, and I'm not ready to give up on it - I'm ready to move on and I finally get why.

When I finished the Eternals last year, I felt like a rock star. Seriously, I felt on top of the world, I felt like I had slayed a motherfucking dragon. And now, almost exactly a year later, my self loathing has reached the tipping point. Funny, no? I finally hate myself enough for not writing to start writing again. I don't really have an excuse or an explanation for it, but it just works. Last night, I SHAMED myself into writing, and what came out of me was sort of miraculous. 

On another note, I haven't blogged much in a month. I suppose that's because I made the crazy decision to share my blog address with the world, which may or may not have been a good idea, but then today, after the blast I had last night, I say, FUCK IT!! I'm signing up for NaBloPoMo again. It can't do anything but good for me. 

I Offer Unsolicited Writing Advice!

On Thursday I will be submitting my latest piece to Indie Ink, a website that takes writing submissions based off  writing prompts that are matched with authors. I have submitted to Indie Ink in the past - nearly of my Hannah Sketches are based off of the Indie Ink challenge prompts, and this week I will add another, my first since the end of January.

I'm not sure what it is about writing prompts that make it so much easier for me to write a short story. Though I've been writing for years, what I write tends to swing between short blog posts and 60K+ word novels. I have never considered myself a master at the short story, and I am only starting to believe I have any talent in it at all based on the feedback I've gotten from Indie Ink. Hannah's story has become really important to me, though. I guess I am just musing that perhaps I am creatively blocked lately, and without a little push from a prompt or a friendly suggestion, I may not write anything at all. 

Working for Scope, it seems that it may be the same for a lot of other writers. I've heard a lot in the past few weeks, "I really want to write, but I just don't know what to write about!"  Could it be that we all work better under a little guidance and pressure? Can the expectation of others be what is really driving me to create?

At any rate, I am thrilled with the burst of creativity I've seen among my friends and peers lately. People are starting blogs left and right, submitting to Scope all sorts of great opinion articles, blogs, and amusements.. It feels really great to be at this place I am in right now, surrounded by like minded people who seem to actually get it, you know? 

We aren't all going to be published. We aren't all going to win awards for our writing, or be paid for it, or be recognized outside of our own little community.. but in my opinion, that isn't the point. Well, it's not the most important point. 

To be creating - to be putting oneself out there to be seen through words and pictures and ideas - it's awesome. And we should be proud. Because we are the brave ones. 

Writing, like all forms of artistic creation and expression, takes time, patience, and determination. To those who have tipped their hats to writing, you are my comrades. So, if you are struggling with self-doubt over silly things like talent, I give to you the best piece of writing advice I've ever encountered, from Brian K. Vaughan (who was a writer for LOST!)

WRITE MORE, DO OTHER STUFF LESS

That’s it. Everything else is meaningless. You can take all the classes in the world and read every book on the craft out there, but at the end of the day, writing is sorta like dieting. There are plenty of stupid fads out there and charlatans promising quick fixes, but if you want to lose weight, you have to exercise more and eat less. Period. Every writer has 10,000 pages of shit in them, and the only way your writing is going to be any good at all is to work hard and hit 10,001.

By my estimation, I've only purged about 2,999 pages of shit out of myself. I have a long way to go, but at least now I get to make this page shitting journey with friends.

Sway

She stared at him from across the bar, not blinking or moving her gaze away when people passed between them in the pulsing crowd of the nightclub. 

There was just something about him that she desired, something about the way his dark hair rested on his forehead, the way his blue eyes glinted brighter in the dark room than any other eyes. 

She wanted him.

She stood up, moving slowly through the crowd, pushing past those that were in her way with a stare and a frown. She parted crowds like the best of them, she never had to worry about anyone getting in her way.

Then she was before him, and she regarded his two women companions with disdain. 

“Leave us,” she said quietly. Her voice wasn’t loud enough to be heard over the din of the club music, but she didn’t need her mouth to carry her thoughts to the heads of women surrounding her prey, she could sway them with the simple and eternal power of her mind.

The women got up and left, blank expressions on their faces, and he stared up at her in shock and annoyance.

“What the hell? Who the hell are you?” he asked her, rising to stand and face him, and she put one slim white finger on his chest and pushed him back down into his seat. 

“It doesn’t matter who I am,” she said. “It only matters who you are, and tonight, you are mine.” 

---

This is my first piece for the Trifecta Writing Challenge, and this week's word was Sway. The way the challenge works is we are given a word, in this case, Sway, and we have to use the third dictionary definition as our writing prompt to write a story between 33 and 333 words.  

I have seen this challenge here and there and wanted to give it a shot, just as I am planning to do more challenges in the next couple of months. So far, I have really enjoyed every Indie Ink challenge that I have done, and I think that in the long run, doing these challenges is going to be great for my writing overall. 

I've been in this really weird place lately where I am excited about the long zombie story I've been working on for, well, ever, but at the same time I am really uncertain if that story is THE ONE. 

I'm really determined to make 2012 my year of BECOMING A WRITER, and no matter what path I have to take to get there, I know one thing for certain, and it's that the only way to get better at what I do is to do it all the time, to do it as much as possible, and to do it with all of the passion and energy I have in me to do it as well as I can. 

I Miss Brave

I finished crocheting a scarf that I am going to give my mom for Christmas. It only took two days to do, and so tonight, as I was watching Bag of Bones, I started a new one. I am not sure who I am going to give this one to yet, but hopefully they will like the light blues and greens and grays that make up the yarn. I also read a lot today, and I am almost through with the first Vampire Diaries book, the one that contains The Awakening and The Struggle. I am pretty sure that I read these books when I was younger, I was pretty sure that I had read everything that L.J. Smith ever wrote, but so far I am sorry to say that I like the show better than the books - that hardly ever happens. 

Why am I recounting all of these daily banal activities? Because I am still not writing. Today, I lay in bed with my laptop for hours, looking at (probably literally) hundreds of books on Amazon, trying to figure out how it is possible that so many people have already done what I want to do so badly, and to think furthermore that I could probably do it better than some, if not a lot of them. 

I guess, maybe, not finishing my NaNoWriMo story is hitting me harder than I had originally let on. I told so many people about it this year, I feel like I let so many people down, but really, I let myself down. Lately I've been all about doing and finishing things that I say I want to do, and this is one of the things that I totally bombed at, and it was one that was important to me. It's going to take some time, I think, for me to get my groove back. For me to get the confidence back to begin something new and not question myself too much about things.

I have to close my door. I have to close my door.

There's this author, Nova Ren Suma, who has a wonderful blog on writing, and last month she did a blog series on "What Inspires You" and a bunch of other writers share their thoughts on writing and inspiration, and on what keeps them going when they feel like giving up - all those things that "aspiring" writers like myself just eat the hell up. Veronica Roth, who wrote Divergent, one of the best books I've read this year HANDS DOWN, added her two cents, and she said something at the end of her post that I couldn't stop thinking about, so I just had to go and look it up again to share it here.

Writing isn’t everything—a life is much more than that. But for me it’s a little microcosm. It’s a safe place to try to make life better, to gather up my strength for the times when I step away from the computer. And sometimes, when I do, I’m a little braver than before.

She gets it. This is ME. I feel like people who are writers and bloggers live completely different lives than everyone else in the world. We make our own worlds, and additionally we are part of this other, bigger world of the blogosphere where people read our words and know our names and think of us as friends or aquaintances even though we've never met. People who don't have that - people who don't have Twitter followers that ask how we are and care about what we're doing - they don't get it, and it's hard explaining it. 

I feel like I have two lives, two completely separate lives - one of them I live in the world - I go to work, I have dinner with friends, I spend time with family.. And then, in the other life, I write, and I think, and I create, and I am constantly shocked and thrilled when I see that people actually give a shit about what I have to say. It's amazing, and it's something that is SO HARD to share with others, the way it makes me feel. 

But see, without writing, I am just this lost thing, that's how I feel right now. I'm just puttering about in my little virtual world without a ground to stand on, without characters to keep me company, without adventure to find. I need to start writing again, something big and significant and GOOD, to be able to be brave again, to be able to get out of bed in the morning with a smile on my face instead of weeping as my feet hit the floor.

You Win Some, You Lose Some

I am not going to finish NaNoWriMo this year. I knew it tonight before I even sat down to write, I think, because all I was doing as I popped my can of Monster at 11pm was dreading the task before me. I could barely bring myself to open the file that contains the second installment of The Eternals story that I began in April, the one that I thought might have the chance of someday seeing the light. And maybe it will, maybe. Maybe with a lot of close looks and fine tuning and all around hard work it might be able to be salvaged into something that someone might want to read someday. Maybe. But taking it on as my NaNo project after I had already abandoned my first (and completely laid out) idea, was just asinine. I guess I went into this with too much confidence and not enough determination to finish, to just write with no plot and no problem. Because, see, I have a plot, and a problem.

Months ago, I gave a stack of papers to Dan and asked him to read what I had been working on for almost two years. It was the story that I had started two NaNoWriMos ago, and technically I won that NaNo because the manuscript, though no where close to being finished, was over 50,000 words. Before giving it to Dan I had re-written a lot of it, fine tuned it and made it better, but the bare bones were there and it was something I was proud of.

Now, I don't know why I gave it to Dan. I guess because he is the first person in a long time who has ever seemed genuinely interested in reading something I have worked on, and not just because he wanted to read it, but because he could offer opinions and insight that went deeper than a casual reader. I had faith then, that in giving him the beginnings of that first draft, I would be given back a wealth of feedback that would do wonders for me. 

I don't know what I was thinking.

Dan understood that he wasn't, under any circumstances, allowed to talk to me about it until December. I didn't want to get distracted by thoughts of the story where my heart is and be led astray from NaNo, but that's just what happened anyway. When I was writing about the teenagers in the haunted house, and again when I was revisiting Leila and her band of Givers who'd escaped from the vampires that were exploiting them, my mind was with Nora on Spring Street the entire time. (I know this won't make sense to anyone now, but hopefully someday it will.) 

And then, a couple of days ago, I was literally struck dumb with fear. I was afraid that December would come, and Dan would start talking to me about Nora and Spring Street, and that his words would influence me in ways I couldn't control. I know for a fact that that is exactly what will happen. I know for a fact now that giving him that stack of papers was like giving him my heart and asking him to rip it to shreds, and now all I want to do is turn back time and snatch it away from him and take back my words. 

But I can't take it back. I can't make him un-read what he's already read and made notes on. The only thing I can do is tell him not to talk to me about it - and keep writing.

So that's what I did tonight, once I'd diagnosed the thing that had been keeping me from JUST WRITING for NaNoWriMo. I went back to Spring Street, and I had a fucking blast.

It's been probably two months since I've written about Nora, and picking up where I left off, at the edge of the cliff where I had left my heroine, felt literally like coming home to a warm house after being locked out in the cold. I don't think I have any choice now but to see this story through to its bitter end, writing challenges be damned. 

I'm not going to lie. I'm disappointed in myself, much more disappointed in myself than anyone else will be with me for not finishing NaNo this year when I was so psyched up and confident that I could do it again - that makes it two wins and two losses in a row. But really, is this a loss? I got almost 13,000 words into a brand new story that totally has potential, and over 10,000 words into a sequel that might not make it past Google Docs, but is certainly an indication that the Eternals have some life in them yet. That is not a total loss, not at all. But what have I gained? Well, let's see what I've learned so far this month:

• I am a pantser, not a plotter. Plotting the Brigham House story, though it seemed like a wonderful idea at the time, killed it before it was out of the gate. I was bored writing it, because I already knew what was going to happen - or rather, I wasn't letting myself find out what could happen when my fingers take over for my brain.
• There's a time and a place for everything. Eventually I WILL finish the Eternals series. Although the first book was utter crap, I was passionate about it while I was writing it, I had an absolute blast writing it, and I know that underneath all the crap there is the skeleton of a great story and even greater characters that just need a little more tender loving care to make mommy proud of them. But this wasn't the time to revisit them, not under pressure. I couldn't do Leila and the Givers justice during NaNo, and I'm pretty sorry that I tried.
• Write with the door closed. It's Stephen King's advice. I should know, I'm finishing up his memoir, On Writing, just tonight between writing breaks. Write with the door closed and edit with the door open, that's what he says, and it's what I DIDN'T do when I gave Dan the beginning of my manuscript. I was opening my door to him, when I know now I should have checked my ego on the right side of the closed door and kept the damn thing to myself until it was finished. Pride does me no good when things are left open ended. 
• You have to trust yourself, and then forgive yourself. I went into this November with way too much confidence. I 'trusted myself' to the point of being cocky, I see that now, but I had good intentions. Regardless of the message boards, the forums, the Facebook groups and the precious few friends who act as cheerleaders, writing is a lonely fucking business, and if you can't trust yourself and have faith in yourself that you aren't doing it all for nothing, well, I can't imagine where I would be. But then, you fail. You fail and you fail and keep failing, and then there is no choice but to forgive yourself, or else you might not go on. You might not pick up that pen again, or open up that document again. You might open the door and walk out and never look back. But I'm not that girl. 

NaNo '11 was a total bust for me, but I can't say I'm all THAT surprised or disappointed. You win some, you lose some, and then, with time's unflagging forward stride, November comes again. But look at this, where are we? Day 19??? I have eleven days left, and then I will have done something I've NEVER done before and always wanted to - I'll have blogged every day for a month. I never quite understood how I could write a novel in a month THREE TIMES and never manage to post once a day, but this.. not only do I think I can finish NaBloPoMo, I don't think I want to stop there. On my Mighty Life List, blogging every day for a year is #68. I'm already nineteen days in, it's the longest stretch I've ever had, so why stop now? 

What a Little Passion Will Do

Passion.. crazy.. is it all the same? 

Eleven days into NaNoWrimo 2011, and I started over yesterday night. I just couldn't hack it with the haunted house story anymore. It wasn't the story itself. I mean, it was sort of boring in the way that it was about two siblings who move into an old farmhouse with their family and it's haunted. I suppose my heart just wasn't in it to begin with, but as I wrote I realized I hated my characters, and it had always been more about the house than the people living in it to me, anyway.

So I started over, and not for nothing, this has taught me a lesson about myself that I will not be soon to forget:

I am a pantser, all the way.

It was outlining that killed my story, I know it was. It was plotting it out and having the entire story mapped out ahead of me - every turn and twist and surprise and conclusion, lined up like little proverbial ducks in a row. I thought to myself, my god, this is going to be so easy. All I have to do is fill in all the blanks and the details, and this story will be done. It will be a total breeze. But instead, it was a total bore. The only excitement I felt was passing my daily word goals. There was no excitement for the story itself, there was no passion. What it came down to was knowing that at the end of November I would have stuck this haunted house story into a folder on Google Docs and forgotten about it, but I don't want to spend all of my time writing things just to know that I am going to be throwing them away.

I understand that I have to write a lot of crap. I understand, and I have heard it said before that you have to write 10,000 pages of crap before you might finally hit your stride. 

I'm getting there. But I'm going to get there with a little heart involved.

Yesterday afternoon I pulled out the Eternals manuscript that's been hiding in a folder under my bedside table for the last five months. I ignored the fluff in the beginning, the awkward start that still doesn't make sense or work in the scheme of things, but that's okay. I read the last three chapters to myself and although I couldn't see the forest through the trees last spring, I suddenly saw exactly where the story needed to go and where my characters were going to take me - so I went with them.

Day two of NaNoWrimo 2011 Part DEUX! And I am at 7,936. So technically, I'm ahead of my new daily word goal by almost two days. I can do this. And when I DO do this? I'm not just going to have another novel, I'm going to be well on my way into a series that I swear to god will eventually, eventually, see the light of day.

I Won't Swim in Every Ocean

In case you weren't aware, or haven't clicked the link up there at the top of the page, I have a Tumblr blog.  I'm pretty much addicted to the internet and most of the things can be found here in the webosphere, so it works out well for me. I go through phases with my Tumblr though - sometimes I will go weeks without posting or reblogging a single thing, and sometimes I will post the crap out of everything I come across for days at a time. It's also QUITE obvious when I've been Tumbling under the influence, because that is when you will find x-amount of David Duchovny and/or Britney Spears posts in a row. You know, like this:

(He was drugged.) But I digress.

Every once in a while I come across something so beautifully brilliant and stunning, I have to keep sharing it - on my Facebook, to my coworkers, to my mom.. I just feel like everyone should get to see or read or experience it, and the other day I reblogged a poem that I haven't been able to get out of my head. I have read it and re-read it so many times I'm sure I will have it memorized sooner or later, and maybe you will get something out of it as well - I hope you do:

Catherine Pierce, "Because I'll Never Swim in Every Ocean"

Want is ten thousand blue feathers falling 
all around me, and me unable to stomach 
that I might catch five but never ten thousand. 
So I drop my hands to my sides and wait 
to be buried. I open a book and the words 
spring and taunt. Flashes—motel, lapidary, 
piranha—of every story, every poem I’ll never 
know well enough to conjure in sleep. 
What’s the point of words if I can’t
own them all? I toss book after book
into my imaginary trashcan fire. 
Or I think I’ll learn piano. At the first lesson, 
we’re clapping whole and half notes 
and this is childish, I’m better than this. 
I’d like to leave playing Ravel. I’d like
to give a concerto on Saturday. So I quit.
I have standards. Then on Saturday, 
I have a beer, watch a telethon. Or
we watch a documentary on Antarctica. 
The interviewees are from Belarus, Lima, Berlin. 
Everyone speaks English. Everyone names 
a philosopher, an ethos. One man carries a raft 
on his back at all times. I went to Nebraska once
and swore it was a great adventure. It was. 
I think of how I’ll never go to Antarctica, 
mainly because I don’t much want to. But 
I should want to. I should be the girl 
with a raft on her back. When I think 
of all the mountains and monuments 
and skyscapes I haven’t seen, all the trains 
I should take, all the camels and mopeds 
and ferries I should ride, all the scorching
hikes I should nearly die on, I press 
my body down, down into the vast green 
couch. If I step out the door, the infinity 
of what I’ve missed will zorro me across 
the face with a big L for Lazy. Sometimes 
I watch finches at the feeder, their wings small 
suns, and have to grab the sill to steady myself. 
Metaphorically, of course. I’m no loon. 
Look—even my awestruck is half-assed. 
But I’m so tired of the small steps—
the pentatonic scale, the frequent flyer
hoarding, the one exquisite sentence
in a forest of exquisite sentences. 
There is a globe welling up inside of me. 
Mountain ranges ridging my skin,
oceans filling my mouth. If I stay still
long enough, I could become my own world.

This. This poem was written for me, you know. Because fear of failure has always held me back from writing what I really want to write. Fear of exposure and rejection has always held me back from saying what I want to say and being who I want to be. But then, you have to remind yourself that there are only so many chances you are going to be allowed to take in life, before time steals away all the rest. You have to be brave while you are young and strong and still filled with hope. You have to be that person that you want to be, no matter what the consequences are.

And this is why I keep writing, in spite of the fact that even I reject myself on occasion.. It's because I have to. Because what is the point of words if I can't own them all? I mean OWN THEM - as mine, whether they are beautiful or ugly or flawed or misinformed.  

And let's face it: I won't swim in every ocean. So I have to do this.

***

Since I'll be posting every day this month, I figure I'll end (or start) every post by giving you my NaNoWriMo progress. 

I started at midnight yesterday - anxiously twiddling my fingers above the keyboard waiting for the clock to strike 12 so I could get going on it - and then I wrote furiously for 51 minutes and was left with 2212 words. I went to bed before one o'clock in the morning feeling rather accomplished, and when I got home from another rally and debate for Daryl last night, I wrote more, bringing the grand total for Nov. 1 to 4,022 words. I am on a roll. 

Unlike in previous years of participating in NaNoWriMo, this year I outlined beforehand, which already is proving to be a great help already. I'll tell you, the satisfaction of crossing things off of lists is getting to be somewhat like an addiction.