The Watchtower of Destruction: The Ferrett's Journal - It's Been Two Months Since You Looked At Me
[Recent Entries][Archive][Friends][User Info]
|
09:07 am
[Link] |
It's Been Two Months Since You Looked At Me
Two months ago, I was on a plane, feeling the ghost of California wrapped around my shoulders, smelling of eucalyptus and dorm room carpeting. My head was stuffed full of new writing, and I felt that first tug of loss in knowing that nearly all my Clarion friends were somewhere else. The only consolation was that Steffi, wonderfully filthy Steffi, was at the back of the plane, and we'd do one last lunch at the airport before going our separate ways.
("You just need to write," Neil said.)
At the time, my destiny as A Writer was clear; everyone from Our Class was going to be bull-strong, the next swingin' dick when it came to fiction, smashing out of the gates to prove that we were the best Clarion class ever. Every one of us a winner. Every one of us worthy.
I was a part of that. It felt good.
("You just need to write," Neil said at a separate time, on his final night out with us at the bar.)
Then I went home, and I wasn't really a writer; my whole life was watered down. Suddenly I was a husband, and a web programmer, and a guy who played Rock Band, and a guy who went out to lunch with friends, and a guy who almost sawed off his thumb, and all of them were satisfying but it wasn't the same as having everything in the whole world line up neatly to propel you towards your destiny. Being at Clarion was like sitting on the tricycle while your father, strong and wise, pushed you along; all you had to do was steer and watch the streamers twirl in the breeze.
In real life, you had to push the pedals. And that took new muscles.
("You just need to write," Neil said to me, hugging me goodbye before he left for his plane, and I wondered why he kept repeating that to me alone, like a mantra.)
So since returning from Clarion, I've tried. My production doesn't feel like much, but I made a vow to myself; I'd write a lot of short stories the first year, just to re-learn the craft. But since I'd called a mulligan on all my previous writings, I had nothing to send out. After a month, I felt like I was working in my basement, alone, writing stories to an empty room and making no progress.
By my second-month post-Clarion anniversary, I vowed, I would finish four good stories and send them out for submission, scary as that was. And so I buckled down, and revised, and wrote cleaner first drafts.... And I sent five:- "An Excuse To Buy String," the story of a woman who falls in love with a very strange man online;
- "Suicide Notes Written By An Alien Mind," about a hideous war between humanity and telepathic, mind-domineering aliens;
- "iTime," a tale of the first commercially-available time machine;
- "...At The End Of All Prophecy," which asks the question: "What happens if the Chosen One fails to save the world?";
- "Transparency," my best Clarion story, about a boy growing up in a videocamera-crazed world.
I don't know if any of them will get published. By inspired by my flashfictioneer Gra, I'm going to just keep sending them out; if Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine rejects "Transparency," then I'll turn it around within a day to send it out somewhere else, bouncing back out into the world like ping-pong balls until they sell....
...or that's the hope.
I've done two months now. I'm also feeling a little dry on ideas, not sure what to write about next (I also revised a Clarion short story of mine that still needs work, and spent two weeks working on a psychotic punk mind-swap story that swelled to 8,000 words and never quite panned out), so I'm taking the day off. And I'm a little scared, because I have to come up with an idea for tomorrow, and what do I want to write about? I don't know. Hell, I'm half-tempted to throw it open for suggestions from the crowd in the hopes that some suggestion might spark a greater idea (I hardly ever write to spec, I'm incapable).
Whatever happens tomorrow, I just need to write. Even when I don't know what to write about, even when I'm missing my Clarion friends so hard my skin aches for them, even when I'm pretty sure I'm stalled again and need another six-week class to shatter my writers' block and make progress.
I need to make my own destiny. And that happens one word at a time.
|
|
| |
| From: | (Anonymous) |
|---|
| Date: | October 9th, 2008 01:24 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
"An Excuse To Buy String," the story of a woman who falls in love with a very strange man online;
I'd like to read that one! Sounds intriguing.
Oops, that was me. I forgot to login.
*laughs* I'd just copied the title and such to say that exact same comment.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/70105302/609252) | | From: | ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) nex0s |
|---|
| Date: | October 9th, 2008 01:26 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
You are free to use any of my plots. I like coming up with ideas for stories, but less so for actually writing them! I think the first one on that list could be marvelous. My only thing is that if you write one, please send me a copy so I can read it! :) N.
Does Fantasy and SciFi Magazine accept horror?
Not that I know of. There are plenty of other magazines for those, though; try duotrope.com or ralan.com.
Not the kind of horror involving lots of guts & gore and serial killers. But they do publish stories with that creeping sense of "holy fuck" that I associate with good horror, and they like dark, twisted fantasy. So it might be worth a shot.
You miss your friends, you miss the structure that made them your friends,a nd the driving guiderails that neforced those goals.
That is a strong, clear, unmistakable feeling.
An awful lot of folks who are into sf & f know exactly what that kind of thing feels like. Like they're *aching*. They write fanfic about imaginary teams who are done with the task they got together to do, in imaginary terms, in various kinds of fandoms. They know that there's nothing quite like a team facing very demanding goals, and *meeting* them. Then it's done, and they have to go back to ordinary life, when maybe they are no longer just regular people.
You could take this sensation as a pump-primer perhaps, but that kind of overwhelming emotion, which makes you *cry* when you write it, is the kind of humanity that I think we need more of in the sf & f world.
It's human beings out there making the space science program *happen*. for instance. They have *feelings* about what they're doing.
You might, perhaps, have something to say in a completely fictional setting about that emotion and its repercussions and echoes.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/7448451/1366673) | | From: | anivair |
|---|
| Date: | October 9th, 2008 01:57 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
Note: I am not a writer the same way you are. More of a hobbiest.
However, when I'm dry on ideas I just start writing blind. I grab a character I like or even one I hate and put them someplace random and see what comes to me. Which sounds a lot like neil's advice, too, so I feel god about it. Because the important thing (according to Stephen King) is not that you write something good, but that you just write something.
I forget who said it, but someone said that everyone has a certain amount of bad crap in them and it's best to get it out as soon as you can.
After I gave up trying to break into comic books and before the opportunities to write for role playing games presented themselves to me, I tried my hand at exactly the same sort of ping-pong submissions you describe.
I took a Writer's Guide catalogue of magazines (I've forgotten the title) and went through it to find potential markets for my stories. I selected twenty for each of half a dozen short stories, and made Excel spreadsheets which I then printed out and put in a binder.
I printed the spreadsheet on a blank index tab. When I got rejections, I would log the date received and then the date the story was sent to the next magazine on the list. If the rejection came with comments, I would consider them and sometimes edit the story and send it back to them.
And, I found that the exercise of just sending my work out for review in this fashion helped focus me to writing more stories. Looking through the lists of magazines encouraged me to try writing different genres.
I guess what I'm getting at is just saying that I know a bit about what you speak, and that I want to share encouragement for you. My wife at the time used to get discouraged, looking at the number of rejection letters. But, I took encouragement from them by pointing out that before I got the idea to make a chart, I would have given up after two or three rejections.
And, I'm also saying that charts are sometimes good. :-)
Theno
Good luck... One step in front of the other...
Man all of those stories sound good. I'm sure something will come up. BTW did the teachers ever speak about the motivations for writing and what they should be? I know it sounds obvious but I'm curious about that.
Not really. We were all there, having taken six weeks off from work to fly out to write with strangers, so I think they assumed we were at least mostly motivated.
No I meant what should you be motivated by. Why are you writing? For yourself? For others? Etc.Etc. Knowing why you are doing something enables you to gauge how successful you are at something. IMO.
One of the things that used to really annoy an ex-boyfriend of mine was that I could sit down and just start typing whereas, when he sat down to write, he had to have an entire arc plotted out. What I don't think he ever really got was that, if you know your characters, they might ramble and meander a lot, but they'll eventually show you what is going on. So I sit down to write and I have no idea what is going to come out but I start with this name or a park bench with a person in a prom dress sitting on it or any other character that springs to mind. And I follow them and figure them out and something always happens.
Sometimes it is crap. It is okay to write crap. I can revise crap or toss it out but I've written something and gotten that engine started.
I think tomorrow, even if you don't think of an idea between then and now, you will sit down and be frustrated by the blank page but then something will occur to you and you will write about it. Because that is what writers do. The first step is that they just write.
That's the way some people write. Not me. I have to think things through sufficiently, because I have to have a solid first line, and an idea of where I'm going.
Clarion's taught me the value of the discovery draft, but generally, I need to have the things considered. Because what Clarion really taught me is that everyone has their own style.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/71720258/408860) | | From: | etain |
|---|
| Date: | October 9th, 2008 02:48 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
One of my favorite writers once told me, in so many words, that the ping-pong theory is what you need to do if you want to get published.
And now I'm pretty much interested in seeing them. The stories you mentioned. Slug phrases get me. You're good with them.
Which writer was that?
I'm great with ideas. My writing's frequently at fault, but my ideas? They're solid.
Ideas are everywhere. Cram your brain with information, observations, news stories, impressions of people -- go for a walk, read the news, browse a library, pick up random objects that catch your eye and really look at them. Take something to jot notes on or in -- after a while, something will gel in your head, and the ideas will come.
This. When you're running out of things to write about, go explore the world.
(By the way, Ferrett, thanks for that "survival during society collapse" essay you linked a few weeks back -- I read it and realized it was the information I needed to finish a story I started, um, four years ago? So I'm really geeked about it now.)
Woot! I'M HELPING!
Will read anything you write,
T.F>
It's going to be a weird story from me. In my head it's the lovechild of Kat's fiction and Dan's fiction.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/45705250/1050751) | | From: | norda |
|---|
| Date: | October 9th, 2008 03:34 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
"You just need to write" is the same mantra I use on Frank and on Jay and on Penda.
I am pleased to hear you've gotten things out to market.
There's always the Story Seeds they gave us the last day :-)
Also, dude, what got you into story-mode pre-Clarion? What got you into story-mode the last two weeks of Clarion, when we were all traumatized and overtired and Just Wanted To Go Home?
The last two weeks of Clarion were when I realized that for me, personally, the thing that gets me into story mode is reading a story and going "cool, I wanna do that!" And then I go off and do something completely other -- but the point is, I sit down and write because something in a story excites me and I want to grab it and use it to excite other people.
The other thing is emotion, for me -- really intense emotion that I have to give to a character other than me, because it is simply so overwhelming.
I don't know what your thing is, but I know you've got one, and I bet you know what it is. So find it, and wallow in it.
(And I know you mulliganed all your stories -- I did too, pretty much -- but you might still be able to use them as a starting point. If the idea's good and the writing's flawed, then take the idea and start from scratch, no?)
& if you need more Clarion love, I'ma be around on chat programs all day (though if I'm writing, you'll have to put up with long pauses and then me squeeing about my word count.)
Keep rocking that keyboard, my friend!
There are so many ideas for stories out there. If I had any to share that I wasn't going to use, I would send them along to you, in hopes you could twist them into your own special things, but currently all my ideas are waiting for further expansion from my tired brain (and one is waiting for a suitable artist to make it into a webcomic).
I generally find my characters before I find my plots, though. Very rarely do I have a plot idea and then go "well, who fits in here?" Sometimes it's useful for me to take a break and read a beloved book or play a good RPG before inspiration hits again.
I hope you find something that works. <3 And I hope you let us know if something does get published, so we can all rush out to buy it.
I remember an NPR interview with Paul Simon asking him about creativity and "dry" spells. Simon said that you used up your initial creative capital, and that you then started to need to work for your new material. I took that to mean the talent and ability were still there, you just needed to dig deeper and harder to use them well. I know it gets harder, but you tend to do better because you work at it harder. Remember to have fun!
I find it's a lot easier to keep from getting discouraged by rejection if I have at least a few other stories "out there." I may have gotten rejected by this one place with this one story... but I still have hope for the other ones! So then I'm inspired to get a couple more out before those come back....
I'm still mega-jealous of your Clarion time, so don't waste it. ;)
I'm telling you. Fuck John Updike. Write about the voice. Write your story, but make it genre. Write about a culture that demands identity be uniform. Write about the boy who can't perform his gender/culture/caste. Write about the classes he has to take to learn it. It would be a great story, and better, it would have the knotty heart of your own experience.
Sending stuff out = good. Give yourself props. Keep the spreadsheet of submissions and rejections and acceptances.
You don't need another 6-week class, you just need to write, as you said yourself. And you are writing. Thus you are a writer, which still being a hubby and webmaster and GH devotee and every other thing you do.
You are a writer. Be happy. No one can ever take that away from you, even when times come that you are a writer-who-is-currently-not-writing.
I can't wait to see you get pubbed, to buy a copy of whatever, and send it to you with return envelope and postage, to get yer autograph on it.
Wise words.
We just have to pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off, and utter a string of expletives, then soldier on!
Keep us informed of your progress. I'll want to crow about you, too, y'know! ^_^
"...At The End Of All Prophecy" Sounds really fun. It'd also make an outstanding (metal) song title. Even the summary sounds metal. Mind posting/sending/somethinging it?
Sorry; I have a strict "When I'm paid and published" no-preview policy in place.
If it's good enough to publish, it's good enough to show. And if not....
That's perfectly fine. I don't blame you at all. Make sure to let us know if it gets published, though!
I'm surprised it got this far down the comments before you had to say that.
All five one-line summaries are compelling.
Forget Chris Kimball. You are definitely a hero.
"Transparency" rocked my socks. And, as you are actually writing and finishing things, I'm sure that ideas will soon be stampeding toward your office and breaking down the door and smothering you in their eagerness to get out into the world. My ideas are grumpily poking me in the back and muttering about how _slow_ I am.
xx. Megan
| From: | (Anonymous) |
|---|
| Date: | October 12th, 2008 09:25 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
If you're feeling short on ideas, try writing a modern day metaphor for a classic story (Asop, Hemmingway, Shekespear). It's a good way to start something that can evolve later.
- Your daughter
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/20822450/6490) | | From: | nuala |
|---|
| Date: | October 16th, 2008 12:13 pm (UTC) |
|---|
| | | (Link) |
|
I felt that way when I got my diploma. 6 months on and I'm struggling. I'm so looking forward to being back in school in January. 2 more years of peer support and classroom-motivation. I keep thinking that selling just one script will be enough to plunge me into full time writing, but that's not the way it works, is it. |
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/openid-profile.gif){kind=small}