Hiatus is a Cruel Word, but the Clarity is Palatable

To my small and loyal following, I'm sorry I have kept you hanging. I had to focus for a while on my other dream for a while, the one that at least in the short term allows me to eat well and pay rising tuition for a school/degree that will actually land me a job when I finish. This reminds me of the nagging conversation I had with myself the other day. Ever seen the show 'Lizzie McGuire'? Imagine something like that:

Cartoon Me: Wasn't this the semester you were going to take a break, work to pay for summer school, and reassess your life, change your major to business, and go work on a start up with your best friend?

Physical Me: Yes...?

Cartoon Me: Then why haven't you done so? Why have you instead worked a job you hated and resigned yourself to a course that keeps beating you down to within an inch of your sanity?

Physical Me: Chillax dude, I got this under control.

There is little in this world more devastating to my pride than the moment I discovered that the world was indeed very fair and that I just sucked. I didn't see it when my classmates would magically seem to understand things that I didn't, I just tried to push myself along doing course work until I was blue in the face and crying myself to sleep at night because I couldn't make any sense of it. I fell flat on my face doing this, spending Christmas as a classic wreck. I didn't sleep, I ate my  feelings, and I wanted to so desperately punch some anthropomorphic representation of the concepts that were keeping me down.

Luckily I got to work this spring, and now as I near the end not a step closer to my goal of becoming a famous author I can't help but feel... accomplished. I have had a chance to look back at myself and to finally breathe, allowing myself to look at the bigger picture and find a place to stand up. I've heard that it's not how many times you get punched in the face that matter, but how many times you get punched in the face and keep on hitting back.

It hurts, it stings like hell, and pain after all is the body's way of saying that something is wrong. But if you give yourself time to breathe and forget the panic of the moment, eventually you loose the ability to feel the punches. You just keep walking on the path you are on, not knowing if you are going home or walking off the edge of a cliff. And that's the fun part.

If nothing else, achieving a higher endurance will have been worth the semester off. Luckily for me this also allowed me to find parts of my day job I really enjoyed and to earn enough to fix what I broke. And maybe, just maybe, I will find something deep down that helps me write the next great American novel.

Need an Editor? I'm FREE!

I have begun to spend more of my spare time editing a friend's stories than writing my own, but it gives me a welcome break. I am not a professional editor, but if anyone reading this needs someone to look over their work and find spelling, grammar, and flow mistakes I would be happy to do so (for free :) ).

I am slowly but surely beginning to see themes and points that I can emphasize in my zombie story, and it's really neat to see how there are layers of meaning waiting to emerge after some good wood shaving and editing.

The Writing Room

The zombie novella is  complete, except for the all important process of editing. But I am still celebrating on the inside; I have finished my first piece. Not my first piece if you count the short stories I wrote for class or the short stories I wrote when I was 15. But hey, my first piece in a really long time is still something to get excited about.

I wrote the first half of my novella while still in a very math/science frame of mind, and it's been a tricky transition between the two different methods of writing. With technical writing you are expected to be as concise and accurate as possible. Metaphors, perfect diction, and character development are all considered to be fluff that is to be left out. This isn't anything shocking, stories are meant to entertain and technical writing is meant to convey information.

This summer I am going to be living in a small town in the southeastern US with one of my best friends from high school. We have kept in touch over the years and since she is going off to law school soon it seemed logical to fulfill our childhood fantasy of living in a writing house. We are going to be staying in a fixed up two bedroom country home surrounded by beautiful trees and acres of woods. This will be a nice break from my more technical occupation, a chance to really rediscover my creative side. The rent will be cheap, the company splendid, and hopefully an all together fulfilling experience.

I have not seen the house yet, as it is undergoing renovations. I have been told that the rooms may be painted and decorated to our tastes. I am trying to figure out how I want it decorated. I don't want anything extravagant, just a living area that is inspiring and contributes to the writing process in a positive way. I know I will grow restless after the initial awe of uninterrupted creative time has subsided, but the weight of hot, sticky, southern summers is bound to keep me in doors most of the day. Perhaps a blue room with a bed, a desk, and dressers in the closet to keep the area open. I could use sunlight from the windows to avoid the haze light bulbs give off if you have been inside too long. At night it cools off enough to sit on the back porch and enjoy the fireflies, as long as you can escape the bugs. Maybe plant a garden and enjoy home grown healthy foods, and learn how to cook without a microwave.

I might try to write as much as  can without my laptop. I would substitute my computer for a writing pad, a pen, and a picnic blanket under the mid morning sun, and then go in before it got too hot. That would be lovely.

What kind of space do you prefer to write in? Let me know in the comments below.

Write In and 750words.com

Ah, the joys of winter break. Today I am visiting my childhood friend Rhia and finally doing something we have planned for weeks: a write in. We settled down at a table in her office and sat in front of each other on our lap tops, writing and snacking and joking. There was hot apple cider with cinnamon sticks to stir in the flavor, and gingerbread cookies to hold us over until the homemade chicken soup finished simmering on the stove. I find this to be a very relaxing and fun way to keep each other accountable and quickly remedy writers' block, which has been a lot of trouble lately.

She told me about this site, 750words, where people can go and just write as a private exercise. Supposedly, 250 words is about what will fit onto one (I assume handwritten) page. Writing three pages of just whatever helps to get the blood going, so to speak, like a good stretch does after getting out of bed. Hopefully, this will help me power through today's goal.

Now, onward to finishing the first draft of my zombie novella!

I Wish I Could Dam Inspiration

After writing the bit in my last post about asking deeper questions in my zombie novella, I got flooded with ideas for the story. Some are awesome, some are just twisted, and I wish I had them all a week ago. Writers' block is a major foe of mine. I consider myself to be a lazy individual plagued by brilliance and stubbornness (as well as humility), which seem to lead me into a trap. A new idea will pop into my head, and a rush of inspiration and a few hours later when it is gone I have no idea where to go from there so I scrap the entire project.

I wish I could deposit these bursts of creative energy into a reservoir, like how we dam rivers so that we have dependable sources of water. I could save the ideas for later when I was out of ideas or ways to pull several wonderful concepts together. It would be much more efficient than the stop and go pace I am on. I guess this is something that the writing process teaches you to get over, and as a writer I haven't worked long enough to get past this lapse in skill. But I'm not going to let that stop me, as writing is to me one of the most elegantly beautiful forms of expression.

What do you do to keep the ideas flowing and to avoid prolonged bouts of writer's block? Are you a writer that either enjoys this blog or thinks that I would enjoy yours? Please share in the comments section below.

My Writing Life: Zombies and Love

I am one of those people who is always working on their first novel. I've gone through bursts of creative energy where I will be able to come up with a concept and a couple of chapters, but then the story dies. Last night I began the first story that I will actually complete, one which will probably become a novella about zombies. I am confident that I will finish because I promised it as a gift to my bibliophile boyfriend (aren't they the best kind?)

Why zombies? It's a matter of taste. I like books like John Green's Looking for Alaska where the manic pixie dream girl makes the lead character come alive and then dies. I don't know why, but whenever I come up with a concept for a story one of the main characters is going to die in the most dramatic way I can think of. My boyfriend likes stories about love and archetypical goodness, the kind that end up being made into Lifetime Original Movies. He also likes fantasy/sci-fi, but I had read so many of these kinds of stories by the time I graduated high school I felt I was reading the same story over and over again. So why zombies? I could make them (theoretically) hilarious.

The rules of writing zombie stories are simple and finite. Zombies are undead, they like brains, kill in mobs, and can only be (reliably) killed via head shot. The rest is up to me. I added some inside jokes by setting the story at our extremely rigorous college, ensuring that it wouldn't be like anything he had read before and I would not feel like I had stolen the story. Like John Nash, I seek to work on an "original idea."

The story began as some funny, scary, Zombieland-ish tale, but luckily I have found room to ask deeper questions. The lead character, George, is an overworked computer science student who has little care for what goes on outside his academic bubble. When he is saved from mugging by a lone wolf-like zombie, all he cares about is getting his homework back instead of for his safety from the murderous creature that lurks in his neighborhood. As the story progresses, I have openings to talk about the ethics of experimenting on people and weather or not George's inability to empathize with the victims (he goes on the hunt so he can get extra credit) makes him just as much of a monster as the zombies. I could also just keep it light and go 6th Sense by making everyone on campus a zombie in search of brains without them being aware of it.

Hopefully my boyfriend will enjoy this story and it will be the first of many that I actually finish.