2010 was a moribund year for me as far as writing went. I flamed out halfway through National Novel Writing Month, the writing group fell apart and my output slowed and then pretty much stopped for most of the year.
I’ve vowed to make 2011 the start of my writing renewal and part of that has been taking the writing group and exercises and moving them off a couple of scattered subforums and onto their own website, thenwrite.com. I’m hoping it will keep me and the other participants inspired and excited about putting words to page (and screen).
Just kidding! This blog post is entirely self-contained. Once you get to the end of it you will have complete closure and no need to read a follow-up post to find out how it all ends.
Sometimes I think I am the only person out there who prefers to read novels that begin and end in the same volume instead of being laid out over the course of 10 books and 10,000 pages, half of which are probably unnecessary. Maybe this is why I read so little fantasy. Or maybe I just hate elves. Or I’m simply jealous because Steven Erikson can write hundreds of pounds of books per year and I can only manage maybe half a pound at best.
September was a pretty lousy month, weather-wise, being one of the ten soggiest on record. More positively, the first day of October was sunny and summer-like. It’s partly cloudy today but I may yet get proper closure on summer before The Dark Times (ie. winter) arrive.
I also plan on writing more regularly this month as I gear up for National Novel Writing Month in November, so more inane blog posts shall be on their way. Hooray!
The last time I wrote poetry was when I was made to as part of a creative writing course I took in college back in 1989. This is a good thing because I’ve never been very good at writing poetry. I think this is for a couple of reasons. First, I see myself as a more meat and potatoes kind of writer and such a style does not lend itself to the carefully chosen wordplay of poems. Second, I’m too impatient to go through the process of carefully choosing individual words and weighing them in the context of a poem, which may also explain why I’m a meat and potatoes kind of writer to begin with.
I have looked over a few poems that I wrote back then and am putting them up here for public appraisal/mockery. I may rewrite them to show what I’d change if I was still writing poetry today.
Snake in the pond
Gently, go then
and swim in the
pond
Do not float or not move
There be snakes
in the pond
They are green
and yellow and black
and very pretty
You remember laughter
and scream
It’s in your trunks now
Gales of laughter
Swim with the colors
Slither and dive
You were so young then
You’ll never swim here
again
The Ride (number one)
The crowd waits in the rain
Umbrellas blossomed like black flowers
Gathered as if for a funeral
They wait for the familiar lights
He sees the lights and watches
as they resolve into the shape of the bus
Ritually, the umbrellas fold up
and the people move, not unlike
the poor and huddled masses, he thinks.
Everyone wants to be first
He is swept through the crush of bodies
into the smothering warmth
The smell of damp clothes and musty hair
mingled with an old woman’s odor
(two or three liters, perhaps)
is unavoidable as he inches down the aisle,
a cow in a cattlecar.
Clinging to a metal bar, umbrella soaking into
his side,
he gulps as a titanic shape approaches,
fold upon fold rippling through the trenchcoat
like waves on a rising ocean
He grimaces and is pressed
like luncheon meat as the
woman docks, staring out the window
with a pre-determined expression
He cannot see the window
It is too warm and the
fluorescent lights are
too harsh
The bus moves,
taking him on the most
exciting journey of his life.
Again.
After swearing I’d never do another time travel story, I went ahead and did one anyway for the May 2010 writing exercise. You can check out all the exercises in this thread. My submission is my third story featuring the superhero group Chicago 8, not to be confused with the Chicago 7 or Chicago’s 8th album (I think they got up to 47 or so).
I buy two magazines regularly: Runner’s World and Writer’s Digest. Maybe I just like magazines with apostrophes in the titles. I’ll admit having an incredibly hot guy on the cover of Runner’s World helped persuade me to take a look at the first issue I picked up but I’ve been buying it regularly since (the covers alternate male and female). It’s somewhat surprising how much can be written about an activity that consists entirely of just putting one foot ahead of the other and repeating.
Writer’s Digest is a magazine I’ve been buying on and off for many years but now that I’m writing more I can actually try employing some of their techniques and suggestions. Note: do not ever subscribe to their online newsletter. They spam your inbox like crazy trying to sell you seminars, books and probably Writer’s Digest widgets and toilet paper. I routinely archive without reading so I should probably unsubscribe at some point.
I will occasionally buy other writing or health magazines and the odd issue of Asimov’s of Fantasy & Science Fiction. What I don’t buy anymore are computer magazines (pretty much replaced by the web) and gaming magazines (also pretty much replaced by the web and most have died, besides). I lament several magazines I used to buy that went defunct a long time ago, notably The Twilight Zone magazine (which published excellent short fiction) and Marvel Illustrated, best described as “Heavy Metal without the breast obsession”. Okay, I sometimes also bought Heavy Metal because where else could you read stories where people rode astride giant penises like the sandworms of Arrakis? I also miss Omni. I wish there was still a good general interest science magazine around (no, Discover doesn’t quite do it). Mad magazine is one of the few I genuinely outgrew without even being conscious of it. They probably lost their gestalt when they began putting in real ads to pay the bills, anyway. That’s my cynical take and I’m stickin’ to tingit!
On Saturday, November 21st (last night as I write this) I finished my novel for National Novel Writing Month. The Ferry is now a 50,810 word novel and the first I’ve actually finished. On reflection I am a little amazed I actually wrote a novel from beginning to end in just three weeks. The second draft will probably take a good deal longer to finish but I am relieved and happy to have gone through the experience. Once I get the second draft down and have a few people take a look-see at it, I’ll tackle the other novel that’s been rattling around in my head for the last decade or so.
National Novel Writing Month is officially underway today. I am working on The Ferry, starting it over from scratch (it stalled out more than a decade ago with about 11,000 words written), retaining only the basic plot. The characters are new but carry a few similarities to the original ones. My progress is being tracked here. I’ve cracked the 2,000 word mark on my first day. Not bad.
That would be National Novel Writing Month. I’m signed up and ready to pound out my 50,000+ word masterpiece* over the next 30 days, starting Sunday (no day of rest here).
I intend to keep writing here on a daily basis as well. Perhaps my novel will be about a guy struggling to find work who finds himself trapped in his own blog. It could be called The Blog but in big scary wiggly letters and 3D and stuff. You know.
* my definition may differ than yours…or the dictionary’s
The first is based on this premise: A pair of friends have just finished a lovely meal at a favorite restaurant, but things take a turn when one notices that the waiter has scribbled an unexpected—and startling—message on their bill.
Every post has at least one category attached to it. The content of each category is as follows:
1. Dating There are no entries for this because I am writing about my dating experiences elsewhere, therefore this category should have been removed but I forgot. Oops.
2. Gaming In which I share my gaming experiences or write about games like roughly one billion other people on the web do. As I don’t game as much as before, these posts are becoming less frequent. If you are not a gamer there is probably only a 50% chance you will find my insights worth reading. I arrived at 50% by just making a number up, kind of like a review score!
3. General The inevitable catch-all category. Random nonsense about life, media and anything else that doesn’t fit into the other categories.
4. Health and Fitness Currently I lift dumbbells three times a week and jog three times a week and it is here where I chronicle my hi-jinks, ranging from pulled muscles to getting rocks thrown at me by ill-mannered children. I also chat a bit from time to time about diet and food choices. If these things don’t set your heart a-flutter, safely ignore!
5. Photos When I add images to my gallery I post about them under this heading. However, I am currently debating over how to add photos to the site and my current hodgepodge method means I’m not adding nearly as many as I could. On the one hand, entertainingly bad pictures from my youth are going unshared. On the other hand…well, the exact same thing.
6. Writing Here I talk occasionally about the process of writing and books I have read. Mainly I discuss my ongoing writing projects, whether they are exercises, short stories or one of my novels.
Now that you know more about each category you can better choose how to read through this rich tapestry I call my blog. Or just skip all this and skim for saucy words like “hooters” and “malfeasance”.