When did I ever love this?

I don't know exactly when I wandered away from writing as a regular exercise, but for the last few years (decade?) I've employed it for the purely functional purpose of conveying dry technical details in my job.  I used to love writing.  As a kid I would forego doing my homework to create imaginary people and places and create situations for them to explore and crises to escape.  I didn't mind if what I wrote didn't come out quite right and I had to rework it over and over again, but now I do and it's frustrating as hell.

I've been working on the same "short story" for the last three or four days and I've only gotten to the second part of the outline.  I keep writing and rewriting only do discover that what I had written is too wordy for the tight, fast-paced mode of the short story or that I am putting the setback event in the wrong location or that I'm telling not showing.  I wondered last night, "When did I ever love this?"

But I find that I still do.

I've been playing at this all my life, but never having truly devoted myself to the art, I'm still an unpracticed amateur.  I have to keep going, keep working, keep writing so that everything in my head will come out right on paper.

Cool Water

Between driving my sister around town and helping her get her place ready for the delivery of a new bed, I spent a lot of time over the weekend working on a story called Cool Water.  It features Charlotte and a small cast of characters I had never worked with before.  The plot outline complete in ten parts and now I'm working on writing the story.  While I'm still not 100% satisfied with the entire plot I am going ahead with it as is and work on rewrites when the rough draft is complete.  I have to break the bad habit of getting mired down in the details before getting anything done.

The story revolves around a scheme by TranSolar Private Inquiries to lure Charlotte away from the relative safety of Cool Water, New Mexico under the pretext of acting as a wilderness guide for a government water diviner.  The town's greedy mayor, Gillingham, is bribed into facilitating an introduction.  Agents who have been pursuing Charlotte for many years without success are waiting in the desert to take her into custody and return her to the xeno-biology laboratory where she was created, but they themselves have been infiltrated by a darker force that has a greater motive to see Charlotte utterly destroyed.

Changing Tack

The net will tell you what you want to know (most of the time), but there is no guarantee it will be what you want to hear.  The same can be said of tarot readers and fortune cookies, but I put a bit more stock in the former.  This morning I searched for "sci-fi agents" and the net suggested a page from Robert J. Sawyer's website.  There was a brief line of advice there that depressed me a bit.

It's very hard to get a good literary agent to represent your first novel unless you have substantial short-fiction or other relevant credentials. And a bad agent can be worse than no agent at all. Most authors sell their first novel by submitting it to publishers (one at a time) themselves; once they've got an offer in hand, they call up an agent.

 "It's very hard to get a good literary agent to represent your first novel unless you have substantial short-fiction or other relevant credentials."  Not the kind of news a frustrated young(ish) man wants to hear.  It would seem I have been making all the wrong choices with my writing career lo these many years.  Instead of heeding that inner voice and establishing my name with short fiction I have been working in obscurity on the long fiction (or wasting my time perfecting my various character flaws).  It seems I need to switch gears and try to come up with some shorter stuff to sell.  In a hurry like.

A former co-worker of mine, long since gone, once suggested that I write short fiction based around the various major characters in the long fiction I want to publish.  That's not such a bad idea and I have some general concepts in mind.  If only those concepts would germinate and grow into some compelling ideas.  One such concept is to write a collection of stories about Charlotte Hudson, Colbrit Niemeier and Henny Rodale that tells their backstory. 

For a number of years I've had an image in my mind of Charlotte in her early twenties living in a post-apocalyptic city somewhere in the American Empire.  I've had it for a number of years, but I've never done anything with it, never tried to flesh it out, never asked the question "Why is she here?".  I had always assumed she was hiding, but from what?  From whom?  What did that time in the city teach her that she uses in her work for Praecognita?  What relationships did she foster?  What memories, good or bad, does she carry with her of that time?  What kind of time was it for her?  What kind of person did it make her?  Is there any part of that person left in her?

I could try to come up with some stories for Colbrit as a rookie cop.  I could also write about his relationship with his older brother and his father.  What about his mother?  This could go a long way to figuring out who Colbrit is as a man.  Same goes for Henny Rodale.

Late Night Snack

I started out the evening with the intention of doing some book keeping then work on my book (ha ha!), but it dawned on me that I am nearly out of make-ahead meals so I think I will have to put off writing for the time being and cook up some chilli.  I hope the neighbours don't mind the smell so late in the evening.  Tough.

I am trying to be more financially conscious and one of the ways I've been doing that is by not eating out any more (with the occasional exception for close friends if I can afford it).  When I look at all the money I used to blow on eating and drinking, it makes me mad at myself.  I'm at a point in my life where I really (really) need to turn things around and brown-bagging it is one of those life style changes I've made.  Aside from a few good chilli recipes, I also found a great magazine that has recipes for dinners that have only 3 main ingredients.  Cheap, easy, and good for me.  What more can a bachelor ask for?

A couple million dollars wouldn't hurt...

Cross-Roads

It's been far too long since I've written anything, let alone anything worth keeping.  Even now as I write this entry I feel like a ham-fisted amateur.  A few words come out, but I strike them down with the Backspace key.  A few more words emerge and grow into a couple lines, but they reek of hackery and I mow them down as well.  I'm better than this, I tell myself, but a nagging doubt persists.  Am I?  Then why, after all these years, am I still a fly swarming a flickering bulb?  Tonight is the first night in months, probably almost a year, that I will try to write something meaningful, something worth building on.

A Letter to Myself

Hey,
I know what you're thinking: "This is never going to end."  You're tired of treading water.  Your legs are cramping and your arms feel like they're made of lead.  You're terrified that you're going under and your lungs will fill with water and you'll slip without a sound beneath the dark and icy waves.  You're afraid there won't be a place for you in the future.

Don't be afraid.

You made a lot of colossal mistakes over the years, the long range kind, the variety that lurk in the background or that didn't seem all that pressing at the time as you blathered on through life.  Those mistakes have caught up with you and right now you're reaping the poison fruit, but it's not going to be all bad.  Like the man said, "This too shall pass."

You're aware of your mistakes and you've corrected them which is the first step in turning things around for yourself.  The next step is not wavering, not breaking, not giving in to the temptation to yield.  You've learned your lessons, every one.  The night will end.  You'll see the sun come up again in the east and you'll be ready for the day when you can live free, when you can live as you had always imagined. You will have dominion over your life.

So hang on and hold fast.  Don't be afraid.

Crein

Shirley's Bay

"No, it's not Sunder, but it is writing."  That's what I've had to tell myself these last few nights as I've sat down to write a novella about Colbrit Niemeier and Det. Amanda Garrett.  You may remember Garrett from a piece I put up a few months back (remember "rosie" written in breath on a cold window pane?).  I reread that piece a few times and decided there was something there, between the two of them, that I wanted to explore but I didn't have an idea for the longest time.

That is, until last week when an interesting little paragraph from the police beat section in the local paper caught my eye.  "Police are seeking help from the public in locating the occupant of a vehicle found unattended near the water in the Shirley’s Bay area.  Investigators say they can’t confirm the identity of the person who was driving and they have not been able to reach the owner."  My writer's ears pricked up and I took down some notes and let the idea percolate.  What I've come up with so far feels pretty good, despite being in raw, shit draft form.  I'm excited to see where it ultimately leads.  Maybe in a few weeks I'll have something to share.