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There is something lately about Thursday blog posts, and their tendency to occur while my kitchen is filled with the scent of potatoes and beets. Perhaps it's a new pattern of eating (sort of) healthy? Perhaps I just happen to pick Thursdays as the day I attempt the more difficult culinary ventures.
Likewise, there is something about Thursdays that relates to creative endeavor switching from "trickle" to "pour"--for today, after a week of steady trickling, the faucet opened. I suspect seeing both The Dark Knight and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog this weekend (two very different takes on very similar genres, and both fantastic productions despite their totally antipodal budgets) may have done something jump-start my creativity, but here is an outline of my past four days.
Monday: I finished "The Boys of Summer" at around 16,000 words (?!), and had the sudden, shoulder-dragging, thought-icing realization that yes, it really was done, and it was too late for me to go out and get a drink to celebrate it. Ah well; it's "just" a novella, it's not as though I missed a major and intensive bout of revelry.
Tuesday: I didn't get any actual writing done that day, in the literal word-count, skill-honing sense; running on the story completion from the previous day, I traded word count for career momentum, and broke my two-week inertia by turning my attention to one of my short stories. Having finished nursing the piece back to health, I kicked it out of the nest for the fourth time in the hopes that perhaps now it will sprout wings. I don't want to jinx it by saying where I sent it, but if you're the finger-crossing or thumb-grabbing sort please do send a little of that my way. (The story thus maltreated is "The Marvellest Sight", for the edification of those kind editorial friends who have helped me give this one a ray of hope.)
Wednesday: This was intended to be one of my planned slacks, one of the two days each week where I do not have the promise of one thousand words hanging over my head. It was the birthday of one of my very best friends, and I figured that was a night I should be focused on the wholly non-fictional world. And that's just what the night was--until we got to the restaurant and were delayed, at which point my good, dear, kind and wonderful friend turned to me, and said "So there are two anthologies I'm planning on submitting to..." Naturally, my ears perked up. One of these anthologies is looking for stories about the Morrigan, which is not a subject I am generally that enthralled by, but I filed it away in my consciousness. But when he talked about the other anthology, I heard approximately this sentence: "there's this other publishing company that is looking for short stories about zombies that I was thinking about..."
To say I love zombies is to understate the matter. Last year my birthday presents were entirely zombie-themed and I was beyond pleased. For Christmas last year, I received Last Night on Earth, and was ecstatic. But stories--stories about zombies are nearly impossible. Where was I going to get ideas for a story about zombies?
Thursday: And here I again eat my own words. I had to stop reading on the train (two words you rarely hear together in my vocabulary: "stop reading") to pull out my notebook and start scrawling ideas for my story about the Morrigan. Discovering that I had not gotten the full instructions set me back only slightly. This one is sitting in the back of my mind and building up energy for a charge through the front of my skull. But the zombie story is due in August--where am I going to find an idea--
While standing at the office's kitchen sink filling up my water bottle, apparently. The first scene smacked full-force into my brain, followed by the inevitable despair that I only had an image, not anything to put into it--and then an old story idea dredged itself up out of my mind, something that I could absolutely rework to tell the tale of the years following the rise of the undead menace...
And now, it's Thursday night, and I have ideas caroming around my skull. I'd intended to give you something a little more poetic tonight, something scintillating, something...well, something more like an essay, to be perfectly honest. But the truth is, and you may have noticed this, last week's essay felt a bit sudden and forced, and much as I don't want to turn this into a surrogate LiveJournal, I also don't want to let this descend completely into pseudo-academic wankery. One of the cardinal rules of writing (I seem to have a lot of those) is not to mistake force for inspiration, and while I have the first lines or cute word-plays of about three or four more erudite posts, what I have today is the desire to write about roasted potatoes, and busy brains, and the future possibility of triple goddesses and zombies. And so, that is what I have. I hope you enjoy it--I mean, hey, at least I'm not copping out and doing a movie review.
Likewise, there is something about Thursdays that relates to creative endeavor switching from "trickle" to "pour"--for today, after a week of steady trickling, the faucet opened. I suspect seeing both The Dark Knight and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog this weekend (two very different takes on very similar genres, and both fantastic productions despite their totally antipodal budgets) may have done something jump-start my creativity, but here is an outline of my past four days.
Monday: I finished "The Boys of Summer" at around 16,000 words (?!), and had the sudden, shoulder-dragging, thought-icing realization that yes, it really was done, and it was too late for me to go out and get a drink to celebrate it. Ah well; it's "just" a novella, it's not as though I missed a major and intensive bout of revelry.
Tuesday: I didn't get any actual writing done that day, in the literal word-count, skill-honing sense; running on the story completion from the previous day, I traded word count for career momentum, and broke my two-week inertia by turning my attention to one of my short stories. Having finished nursing the piece back to health, I kicked it out of the nest for the fourth time in the hopes that perhaps now it will sprout wings. I don't want to jinx it by saying where I sent it, but if you're the finger-crossing or thumb-grabbing sort please do send a little of that my way. (The story thus maltreated is "The Marvellest Sight", for the edification of those kind editorial friends who have helped me give this one a ray of hope.)
Wednesday: This was intended to be one of my planned slacks, one of the two days each week where I do not have the promise of one thousand words hanging over my head. It was the birthday of one of my very best friends, and I figured that was a night I should be focused on the wholly non-fictional world. And that's just what the night was--until we got to the restaurant and were delayed, at which point my good, dear, kind and wonderful friend turned to me, and said "So there are two anthologies I'm planning on submitting to..." Naturally, my ears perked up. One of these anthologies is looking for stories about the Morrigan, which is not a subject I am generally that enthralled by, but I filed it away in my consciousness. But when he talked about the other anthology, I heard approximately this sentence: "there's this other publishing company that is looking for short stories about zombies that I was thinking about..."
To say I love zombies is to understate the matter. Last year my birthday presents were entirely zombie-themed and I was beyond pleased. For Christmas last year, I received Last Night on Earth, and was ecstatic. But stories--stories about zombies are nearly impossible. Where was I going to get ideas for a story about zombies?
Thursday: And here I again eat my own words. I had to stop reading on the train (two words you rarely hear together in my vocabulary: "stop reading") to pull out my notebook and start scrawling ideas for my story about the Morrigan. Discovering that I had not gotten the full instructions set me back only slightly. This one is sitting in the back of my mind and building up energy for a charge through the front of my skull. But the zombie story is due in August--where am I going to find an idea--
While standing at the office's kitchen sink filling up my water bottle, apparently. The first scene smacked full-force into my brain, followed by the inevitable despair that I only had an image, not anything to put into it--and then an old story idea dredged itself up out of my mind, something that I could absolutely rework to tell the tale of the years following the rise of the undead menace...
And now, it's Thursday night, and I have ideas caroming around my skull. I'd intended to give you something a little more poetic tonight, something scintillating, something...well, something more like an essay, to be perfectly honest. But the truth is, and you may have noticed this, last week's essay felt a bit sudden and forced, and much as I don't want to turn this into a surrogate LiveJournal, I also don't want to let this descend completely into pseudo-academic wankery. One of the cardinal rules of writing (I seem to have a lot of those) is not to mistake force for inspiration, and while I have the first lines or cute word-plays of about three or four more erudite posts, what I have today is the desire to write about roasted potatoes, and busy brains, and the future possibility of triple goddesses and zombies. And so, that is what I have. I hope you enjoy it--I mean, hey, at least I'm not copping out and doing a movie review.
Labels: writing process
posted by Tyler at
8:10 PM
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