Talking about the actual content of my writing has something I’ve always sucked at–especially if the person I’m talking to has a background in the craft. So far, that’s made the independent study meetings a bit of a challenge for me. I never thought it’d be so hard for me to find a way to hammer these abstract ideas and plot points into words that would make the story make an ounce of sense. In the case of this, though, talking about it is necessary because it keeps me thinking and realistic about my goals.
I think I’ve mentioned on the blog before how much flak I give myself for my drafts. The thought of having to go back and edit something has always been a dreadful one. I mean, really, just getting the shit out can be such a pain sometimes. But at the same time, editing is a necessity, and as Erik and I discussed today, one of a writer’s strongest qualities is to be able to go back to square one and start the book over if it’s needed.
That’s really what my fear boils down to. With the original Hellion, I finished it, sorta-read it over (meaning, not at all), decided the entire thing was crap and started over. I knew in my heart of hearts that the story wasn’t one I could publish. The only high I had was finishing a manuscript for the first time, which fortunately carried me on to endevour on other stories. Yet what always stayed with me was that almost primal fear of failure–that I’d write something that was so terrible that I’d have to entirely rework it, or that I’d spend months slaving on something that I’d never use (My 2006 endevour, Salamander, comes readily to mind).
What I realized after talking to Erik is that in my patchwork “self-training,” I’d only considered the idea of writing a book a year. In all of the writers whose processes I’ve studied, each of them have been capable of turning out work in that amount of time, and while admirable, it really isn’t a realistic goal for me. My strength is in the concepts and the plot, and everything I’ve ever written that I feel has turned out well has required months of incubation and tweaking. Lanternfly is actually the product of about a summer’s worth of waking up early before my summer camp job, sitting in a Starbucks and dreaming on paper. Shadower, my other big one, is one that started as a 15 page, rambly, overwrought short story that I kicked out in a couple of evenings and evolved into a snowball of personal experiences. Both have been with me in their fundemental forms for several years now. In a way, I treat my ideas like new friends that I form bonds of trusts with. With that sort of process in mind, I’m realizing that not only is my aspiring process unrealistic, but probably unhealthy, too.
The sort of process that would work best for me is one where I write with an open mind, unafraid of changes, and creating incomplete characters, which pepper Lanternfly at this moment. It’s always been my ambition to write characters that aren’t swallowed by the fabric of my speculative worlds–one of my biggest problems with current fantasy–and I think writing without the fear of having to reset would be more conducive to that sort of mindset.
That’s one more lesson learned, and a rather troublesome monkey off the back. I hope to spend this weekend recouping, finishing off Huxley’s Brave New World, and making some notes on a short story for my advanced creative writing class. We’ll see how that goes. I’m quite psyched about the idea.
Off the writing front, it seems my boss at work has been throwing me opening shifts lately–three this week alone, including tomorrow. Opening for me involves waking up at 4AM and walking through the cold for about a mile and a half, up a hill and down another. To be perfectly honest, I love it, if only I could manage to wrangle together a satisfactory sleep cycle. There really isn’t much like walking through the darkness, Iron Maiden blaring on ones headphones, kicking around the frayed strands of incomplete plot. I have a tendency to relish my reclusive moments, even if they usually wind up in frostbite.
Also, I’ve been dragged gonads first (come forth, pornbots!) into the world of RSS feeds by a technosavvy Macophile (who–and this is more fodder for the pornbots–actually embodies the essencial root of “phile”) from my media class. I even found out this blog has one, which I’ll be using to its fullest extent (and so should you, even if you are a pornbot!). But for any of you guys who get off to technology–I’d highly recommend looking into Vienna. No, not the city in Europe–Vienna is a program with the sort of features that would give any RSSnerd a raging hard on with enough clout to smash diamonds. I’d consider giving it a whirl if you’ve got Mac OSX.
That’s all from me for now. By the way, if any of you guys like history, go watch FrostNixon. It is seriously a brilliantly constructed film.
Spinner Daily Blogging, IS 2009
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