My First* Submission

Confession: Less than fifteen minutes ago, I got the call that my 93-year-old grandmother had died last night. I had also just sat down to write. I'm going to try to keep writing anyway, but I'll forgive myself for stopping if it gets too hard.

Reading:

• Master of the Cauldron, by David Drake

Writing:

• "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse"

Today, I made my first real submission. Now let me explain some parts of that right away. I have written and submitted stories to contests in the past. Most recently I've competed in the 24 Hour Short Story contests run by Writers Weekly. Before that, I competed in a Read magazine contest back in high school, and got to take a trip to DC to read a selection from the story at the Library of Congress. My elementary school held a liberal arts fair, and I got my first (and to date, last) first prize on a short story in the contest held while I was in Kindergarten.

But as for actual magazine submissions, this was my first. I sent "Illuminated" to Realms of Fantasy magazine, not as part of a contest, but because I want them to read it, like it, and buy it.

I think it's a strong story. It's got a good shot. But this was a big step for me for a couple of reasons.

First, I had to get off my ass and actually submit. That meant an early morning trip to K-mart to buy envelopes, and more rigid editing than I usually subject myself to. It even meant going to the post office.

That was going to be my confession earlier... I have an irrational distaste for the post office. I think it's because it feels wrong to pay them and then give them both my purchase and something else I had with me. There have been several times I've tried to walk off with whatever I came to mail, and they had to call me back.

Second, I had to have enough confidence to send it out into the world. Like many writers, I tend to be apologetic when asking people to read something of mine. It's like I try to downplay their expectations from the beginning, so that if it sucks, well, they weren't expecting that much anyway.

When submitting for a contest, you see, the magazine (or whomever holds the contest) is asking for my submissions. If they don't like it, it's their fault. They asked for it. And anyway, I'm used to losing contests by this point. There's no real surprise in that.

But this time, Realms of Fantasy did nothing to attract my prose other than producing a good, entertaining magazine that I quite like to read. And I just swooped down out of the blue and sent them a 11,000 word story (with cover letter, thank you very much) that I expect them to pay me for. About $500, based on the calculations they helpfully provided in the guidelines.

I'd take $50 and three copies. Hell, I'd take one copy and a pat on the back just to get published in a mainstream publication. Don't tell them that.

I've had people tell me that my stories are good. The odd thing is, I believe them, at least in the sense that I believe they mean that. But are they good enough? Where is the dividing line between the gifted amateur who can impress his friends and relations, and the professional wordsmith who thrills the masses with his prose?

I'm starting to understand that there is no difference, not really. Sure, someone who has been successfully publishing for thirty years probably doesn't worry whether or not their next book will be published. But I bet they do worry about whether it will be well received, and if they don't, well, I probably wouldn't want to read it.

I think we become the establishment that others look up to accidentally, and so gradually we never notice. I remember when I was ballroom dancing back in college. Some background... I'm a clumsy, galumphing, 6'2" Irish/German goofball, whose last real physical activity had been a year of fencing about three years before. (I sucked.) But I didn't know anyone there and thought, what the hell, give it a try.

And I did. I got to know the other people, realized they were just as bad (if not worse), and got better. The next year, I moved up from the beginner class to the intermediate class, the only other class there was. That meant I was still bottom of the barrel, and that's how I thought of myself and my dancing. But during our group practices, I got to know that year's newcomers, and gave them a hand.

The next year, we started an advanced class for the first time, and I took both that and the intermediate class concurrently. Oh, and the beginner class was held in between, so I stayed to help out with that. And I also taught some of the social dance classes. Even so, it came as a surprise to me when I found out that some of the newcomers thought of me as one of the best dancers, who had obviously been doing it forever and knew what I was talking about.

I didn't feel like I knew any more. Sure, I had made progress since I started, but I was measuring my progress against those people who were great when I started. They had continued to make progress themselves, of course, so I didn't feel like I had really closed the gap.

And that's how it is with everything, at least for anyone who maintains a healthy level of humility. And the easiest way of doing that is my focusing on how much farther I have to go.

Of course, at this point I've only submitted one story, and it hasn't been accepted. Humility is rarely my problem. The other problem is confidence, and you handle that by focusing on how far you've come. Submitting was a big step, and it will take a lot of big steps to reach my goals. I hope that by this time next weekend, I'll have taken another step just as big.

The Fallacy of Fantasy

Confession: I love old Kung Fu movies, especially early Jackie Chan, back when he did all his own stunts, but none of the lines... at least, not in English.

Reading:

• Master of the Cauldron by David Drake

Writing:

• "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse"

I just finished my last few revisions on "Illuminated" today over my lunch hour at work. I've formatted it according to the guidelines posted on the Realms of Fantasy website, and tomorrow I submit it for publication, along with a long overdue car insurance bill.

That's got me thinking a lot about fantasy (the story, not the bill). In particular, this innate contradiction inherent in most fantasy settings.

Any world should be one that draws us in. Fantasy, in particular, succeeds because it presents a world of which we'd like to be a part. More than most other genres, fantasy invites us to live in a new and different place, one in which our values have meaning and the realities of normal existence can be countermanded with the wave of a wand. It's a world in which people can be Special (note the capital), and those people are us.

Yet in order to be believable, the story must ring true, in characterization and description and motivation and all the other pieces that make up a story. In order to compensate for the fantastical elements, everything else must be grounded in relentless realism.

Do you see the inherent contradiction? Most fantasy settings are medieval or even earlier. Master of the Cauldron, for example, is based around classical era technology (in the seafaring especially) and Sumerian culture. And yet the characters have the same point of view and standard of living as we do. If I were suddenly transported to this world, I might not have much more to complain about than itchy clothes and a long walk in the morning for a cold bath.

But is that really surprising? To make a world one that people would want to live in, it is necessary to gloss over some of the more unpalatable elements. Yet in doing so risks sacrificing the believability of the setting, which is so important in a fantasy story. So the author is left to walk a thin line between gritty realism and escapism.

Some stories choose to fall off the tightrope entirely and follow one path or the other. George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire goes 100% gritty. It is not a world in which I would ever choose to live, but I enjoy visiting it very much. Of course, very much the same story could be written in an historical novel, if a few of the fantasy elements were replaced with real world equivalents. I would submit that A Song of Ice and Fire is not a fantasy per se, but rather a story with fantastical elements.

On the other side of the spectrum, David Eddings' multi-volume saga consisting of The Belgariad and The Malloreon spring readily to mind. The world in which they are set is a pageant, not a real world. I'm not claiming it wasn't an enjoyable read, but it was by no means deep literature.

I'm not trying to impose a value judgment on one technique over the other, although my tastes tend more toward Martin than Eddings. And it would be a mistake to believe that all fantasy can be measured along that same spectrum, or that none can succeed in balancing the two. I believe that Charles de Lint's Newford books are stories are a great contender for the prize, blending vivid characters and troubling realism with a fantasy world I'd love to explore.

For my own writing, I think I'll want to decide from the very beginning whether I want to walk the line, or take the story in one direction or another. My worry is that I will try the balancing act, and I will fail, and the result will be more of the usual insipid fantasy prose.

Beginnings

Confession: I'm very fidgety, and I always have to be doing something with my hands. Even if I'm watching TV, I need to be doing something. That's how I learned to crochet and to solve a Rubik's Cube.

Reading:

• Master of the Cauldron, by David Drake
• Realms of Fantasy, June 2008

Writing:

• "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse"

The beginning of a story is often the trickiest part, because you're starting without context. The reader is a blank slate, and it's up to you to fill it. Unfortunately, you can't just present the information in the most efficient way possible, because that's boring. Your beginning has to serve (at least) two purposes. It must convey just enough information to get the reader started into your world, but also enough to hook them, to make them want to keep reading.

Of course, the beginning of a story is not the real "beginning" for that character. Even if you start with someone being born, that's not the real beginning, because you can always good deeper, to the character's parents, or their parents, and so on.

I would also say that as humans, we're not all that familiar with real beginnings. Sure, we can talk about our first day on a job, or the first day of school, but does the story really start there? We probably got interviewed for the job, and before that we applied for it. But why did we apply on the first place? Did we read the notice in a newspaper, or did a friend recommend it? What about that friend? And so on.

In most things in our life, we can't really point to a beginning. Even if you're one of the lucky people who can point to a memory and say, "that, that is my earliest memory," you probably don't think that's the first thing that ever happened to you. Our own beginnings are hidden from us.

What about when you're having a dream? No one ever says how their dream started, because we never remember the beginning of our dreams. We just suddenly become aware that they're happening around us, whether we know it's a dream or not. Often we have to figure out what's going on, and then it still might not make sense.

I think dreaming is the best analogue we have to storytelling. Sure, the story has a definite beginning. But the reader is entering your character's life bit by bit, finding him or herself in the middle of a story already in motion, and they have to pick up the details as they go.

It's our job as authors to give them the details that they need, and keep them interested in the new universe in which they've found themselves.

Starting a New Project

Confession: I'm deathly afraid of getting Alzheimer's, although there's no history of it in my family. Memory issues in general bother me. I hated Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and 50 First Dates was like a horror movie.

Reading:

• Master of the Cauldron, by David Drake
• Realms of Fantasy, June 2008

Writing:

• That's what this post will decide.

One thing this blog has done for me is to force me to keep a project going at all times. I've promised never to leave the "writing" heading up there blank. I can change it to "Revising," but that's it. And since I've revised "Illuminated" as much as I can get away with at this point, it's time to pick something new.

I have several projects outstanding. First, I could revise some more of my other stories, but I'm in a composing mood at the moment. Better to hit where the iron is hot, to modify slightly a cliche. Today will be for writing.

I could also start something new. The Accentuate Writers Board is sponsoring a contest with a June 30th due date, but I don't really want to start something entirely new right now, either. Again, I'm in the mood for composing, and starting a story from scratch means spending a while in the invention frame of mind. Not right now.

So instead, I'm going to work on an existing project. Here they are:

• Floorcraft - I italicize it because as I conceive it now, it is a novel. This is a series of eight connected short stories which tell the story of one year in the lives of eight members of a collegiate ballroom dance team. (I'm writing from life, here.) The problem is that my writing has changed a lot from the first story through the midpoint of the sixth, where I stopped. I want to go back and revise before continuing on. So strike Floorcraft for now.
• "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse" - I've started about three versions of this story, and never finished one. It's not because I don't like the idea, but because I'm not quite sure who this Ferian Fetlock fellow is, and what his motivations are. This story would take a bit of dipping into Ferian's head before I could start. I'll call it a maybe.
• "Motley" - Technically this is an expansion of a completed story, not a new story altogether. The part I've written is simply three scenes in the life of this character, but there's a lot more to tell.

Out of these, I think I'll go with Ferian. Once I understand him, I've got two more stories with the character planned, so that might be my best bet. All right, as of tomorrow, I'm writing "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse."

Revision Plans

Confession: I think I'm good enough to get published, and I often don't understand why I don't get immediate positive feedback from everything I submit. Then, when I look at the massive gaping flaws in what I submitted later, I wonder that I ever get positive feedback.

Reading:

• Master of the Cauldron, by David Drake
• Realms of Fantasy, June 2008

Revising:

• "Illuminated"

Just a quick post today. My new goal is to revise and submit one story per week until all of my stories are currently submitted. I'm going to keep a file on which stories have been sent to which magazines, and when, so that I'll know when to expect a response, and also know where to submit for maximum coverage.

I'm also going to research one or two new magazines per week, and keep a list of possible magazines for submission, along with their websites and other qualifications. I'm going to put together a "queue," so that when I get a response from one magazine, I can immediately send it off to the next.

However, I don't want these business aspects of writing to interfere with the actual fun part of writing, so I'm going to dedicate only one evening a week to this task. The rest of the time is all about the writing.

What story should I do next? I'm thinking that I should finish up the first Ferian Fetlock... I'd like to have one of those finally completed.

Rational versus Irrational Magic

Confession: I cried for the last 150 pages of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Almost nonstop.

Reading:

• Master of the Cauldron by David Drake

Revising:

• "Illuminated"

First of all, thanks to everyone on the Accentuate Writers Forum who helped with the revisions of "Illuminated." Super giant shout out!

In revising "Illuminated," I noticed that this is my first ever fantasy story, or even fantasy idea, with what I like to call "irrational" magic.

It all comes down to the type of magical system employed in the story. Some are almost scientific in their complexity, like the One Power in the Wheel of Time. There are some mysteries and inconsistencies, sure, but having read twelve books in that universe, I feel I could sit down and write a pretty good research paper on the way the power works. Moreover, I could make explicit what is and is not possible with the One Power. Magic, in that universe, is merely an extension of the laws of physics, not something that breaks those laws.

David Edding's The Belgariad (and The Malloreon which followed) is similar in a way, not with magic, but with prophecy. The ways that prophecy work in those books are very explicit. Much of the interest of the series derives from that overt view of prophecy as something that can be studied rationally.

And that's the keyword for me, rational. These are systems that make sense, within the context of the story in which they're written. The authors have made entirely explicit the causes and consequences of their magic systems, and we have the ability to predict how things will work in those words irrespective of whether the authors actually wrote about those scenarios or not!

That's why The Wheel of Time would make such a great role playing game. The rules of magic are so explicit that they could be easily encapsulated into a rule set. (The D20 RPG did an okay job, but it could be done better.)

You'd never get that level of explainability with, say King's The Dark Tower or Susanna Clarke's Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell. In both cases, magic is unpredictable and irrational, and the reader never knows what it may or may not be capable of.

That's not to say that there aren't rules, but in both cases, those rules come from what the characters themselves are capable of, not what the magic system can achieve. The vast majority of magic is hanging out there as a great unknown, and it remains a mystery what it can accomplish.

In the case of Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell, the irrationality of magic was actually a theme of the book. For centuries, English magicians had been trying to study it as if it were a rational system, but as the book proves, it is inherently irrational. One of the main characters concocts a potion that bestows temporary madness just so he can understand magic better. The end result is the assertion that the world of magic (in the book, that is) is more great and wonderful than the human mind can comprehend.

Given my background, I'm much more comfortable with the scientific approaches to magic. My longterm project, Dairhenien's Library, uses a very explicit and rational magical system itself.

"Illuminated" is my first attempt at an irrational system, although I don't think that was my purpose in starting out writing. I give no explanation as to why the four books exist, only that they do. And I establish rules... if Lasair had not resisted, he would have lived; if he hadn't broken the rules earlier on, he wouldn't have gained the forbidden knowledge that frightened him so and caused him to try to resist the final page. It was his choices that defined the outcome, not some undefined magic system. Yet, I hope, I left the reader with the idea that there were parts of nature that were great and terrible and beyond our comprehension.

Where you start, where you end up

Confession: I snapped at the barista at the Barnes and Noble cafe. She kept trying to get me to order larger drinks and food and snacks, and I just couldn't take it. My exact words: "For the love of God, please just give me the drink I ordered!" I apologized later, at least, and maybe they won't do that again. Of course, now I'm too embarrassed to order anything else!

Reading:

• Master of the Cauldron, by David Drake

Writing:

• "Illuminated"

It's interesting how sometimes a story will take a life of its own. I've often heard this said, and I'm never quite sure what it means for other people. For me, it's when a story goes in a direction I didn't plan.

In the case of "Illuminated," for example, I had originally planned for Lasair to die at the end as a result of what Tiarnach did to him. As I wrote, though, I realized that Lasair would be perfectly safe as long as he followed Tiarnach's instructions. Instead, he broke every single rule, and paid for it at the end.

The setting changed, too. The final scenes originally took place at the abbey, but as I'm writing it now, Lasair leaves the abbey after finishing the Book of Earth, and instead completes his task in a small cottage. This is the same cottage I had originally used in the opening scene, which I cut.

Tiarnach himself started as a druid and became, by the end, some sort of angel, I think. I left it intentionally vague, but in my mind, he's a servant of God on Earth, whatever you want to call that. He has enacted this scene over and over... searching out someone with sufficient talent and the right personality, giving them the commission, and watching as their humanity gradually overwhelms them. In the closing scene, we learn that Lasair did better than most, because at the end, he did not allow the power to consume him utterly.

In general, I think the story of temptation, succumbing to that temptation, and later resisting, is a stronger story than being forced into a fatal task by a stranger. Tiarnach never seemed evil to me--quite the opposite, and his motivations could only be explained in the terms laid out in the story.

I just realized that anyone reading this post would have no idea what I'm talking about without reading the completed story. If you'd like to, email me, and I'll send it along.

The 10% Rule

Confession: When I finish a draft, I think it's perfect. It usually takes 3 days of objectivity to convince me I was completely wrong.

Reading:

• Master of the Cauldron, by David Drake

Writing:

• "Illuminated"

Yesterday I did my big push to edit the first 24 pages of "Illuminated." I got through about 20, which was great, because I'm going to completely rework the last scene preparatory to the final passages. Doing the revision helped in several ways, because I was able to start to work in some thematic elements that I didn't even think of while initially composing.

I can thank Stephen King for that... praise for On Writing is justified, in my opinion. He also mentioned one other rule, the 10% rule. Essentially, the idea is to cut out about 10% of the volume of a draft.

I realize now that I've been doing that by necessity with the stories I submit to the 24 Hour Short Story Contest. The word count is always just a few hundred words less than my first draft, so I wind up going through sentence by sentence to rephrase, trim, snip, delete, edit, etc. In the most extreme cases, I have to lose entire passages. What's left is usually a much leaner story than I would normally write, and you know what? That's a good thing.

Not to imply that I have verbal diarrhea, but I'm all to prone to use a fifteen-word clause where a single adjective will do. I think that's because the composition, in my head, is being generated in a certain order, and my brain is converting those thoughts to language in the same order. So if I think of a woman, then think that she's beautiful, I'll probably write "the woman, whom he thought was very beautiful" instead of "he thought the woman was beautiful," or even "the beautiful woman...." (Hell, if it's from "his" POV, I don't need to specify that he's the one thinking that, right?)

Those are revisions that only become apparent when the brain is going through a completely different process. Composing is take thoughts and converting them to words. Revision is the process of making sure that the words can be reconverted into the proper thoughts. I don't think it's really possible to do both of those at once, which is why revision is so important. The 10% rule, then, becomes a rule of thumb that pinpoints one way to achieve that... using stronger language.

I guess by that I mean "content" language. Words like "of" and "that" and "it" lack content, so why not replace them with a word that will work for you?

Fantasy Title: Noun1 of the Noun2

Confession: I write most effectively at work, when I'm supposed to be doing something else.

Reading:

• Master of the Cauldron, by David Drake

Writing:

• "Illuminated"

I completed my study of On Writing today, and the one thing I noticed most was how much of a narrative thread it had, for a non-fiction book. I wouldn't exactly claim it had a plot, per se, but not far from it.

It wasn't an autobiography of King as much as it was the biography of his writing career. The first part of the story was how he got there, and the middle section ("On Writing") was where he was, what he had learned. What struck me was the last section, which detailed his infamous accident and his recovery afterwards. (I already knew the details, having read The Dark Tower series, in which the incident plays a prominent role.

His writing would have moved me to tears, had I not been in the middle of a pizza place at the time. (Shout out to Tony's Pizza, Montauk Hwy in Bayport just east of Sayville.) It perfectly encapsulated the power that writing has, not miraculous, but inspiring nonetheless.

No sooner had that book cooled than I started another, also in Tony's. It's David Drake's Master of the Cauldron, the sixth volume in Drake's Lord of the Isles series.

A little backstory: over two years ago, I went through my old books in my parents' attic and did something I had rarely done before--picked out books to get rid of. I'm one of nature's packrats, but when it comes to books, I have no self-control. In my one-bedroom apartment, I've counted more than one thousand, and those are just the ones that I couldn't bear to be parted from when I moved here. (That's not true, because I probably bought about 100 of those in the past year I've been here.) As you can imagine, no one likes to help me move.

Anyway, I sold them to a used bookstore and got all kinds of store credit. Among the new acquisitions was the first three books in Drake's Lord of the Isles series. I thought it was a trilogy, in fact, but imagine my surprise when I learned that I was just getting started? So much for cleaning out some of the bulk of books.

They're... okay. That's no insult to Drake, especially since (as I understand it) his true talent lies with the military sci-fi genre. But I was left with the feeling that I could do better, at least in the mechanical aspect.

What kept me reading was the story. Anyone who has read this series knows that, after the first book, they're all identical. Main characters get separated and sent to alternate worlds; they do good deeds and are coincidentally reunited at the same place and time in order to do final battle with the villain. It's a formula, pure and simple, and one that appears to work (sales wise) for Drake, but it sure does take a lot of the surprise out for the reader.

A note on a few of the characters--the nominal main character is Garric, shepherd turned prince. Turns out he's the direct descendant of the former King of the Isles, and Garric is tasked with following in his footsteps and uniting the realm. His plotline shows how his inherent goodness and kingliness always win the day.

Then there's Cashel, his best friend, who most closely resembles Perrin from Jordan's Wheel of Time series. The gentle giant, simple but trustworthy--his plots always entail how that simple trustworthiness, paired with an indestructible body and fighting ability, confound his enemies. Oh, and he's in love with Sharina.

That's Garric's sister, and the most interesting thing that happened to her was in the first book when her mentor died. Yeah. Now she babysits the elderly wizard lady Tenoctris.

The most interesting character is Ilna, Cashel's sister, who spent the whole first book possessed by Evil. (Hey, Drake uses the capital E, not me.) She got away and got some neat-o magical powers out of the deal, but is the only character who has ever been tempted to do anything wrong ever before in her life ever. I'm not sure if Drake quite knows what to do with her, though, because she's been spending most of her time lately going over the same emotional ground, book after book.

The prologue of Master of the Cauldron is the typical fantasy beginning, where the bad guys start their evil plot. If they'd been wearing signs that said, "This will become important by chapter four," it wouldn't have given anything away. No real hook, just a lot of magic words, and the unveiling of a new person who wants to become Lord of the Isles instead of Garric. (Other than the fact that Garric is the main character, the book thus far gives us no reason to prefer him to this other guy.)

I'm going to make a remarkable promise now. If I ever write a series of fantasy novels, not a single one will use the Noun1 of the Noun2 title format. Not one, dammit!

In the foreword, Drake stated that he wanted to make the book accessible to people who hadn't read the first five. His way of doing this is for chapter 1 to dabble in each of the four main characters' point of view for a few pages. Garric and Cashel's sections are embarassingly similar (fighting is bad, but I love my lady type person!). Ilna once again decides to be good instead of evil, and Sharina babysits Tenoctris. There ya go.

If you're reading this post, you might be saying to yourself, "All right, jackass, you thought you could do better, then fucking prove it!" Okay, then, I'll tell you what I'd do different.

First, I'd start the book in medias res. Do you want the reader to become acquainted, or at least reacquainted, with the characters? Fine, but first you have to get them interested, or at least reinterested, with the characters. Long expository passages, even from a POV, aren't the best way of doing that. Give me some action, some interaction, some substantive dialogue. I want tension! Maybe address one character in the first chapter, and branch out to the other POVs in the subsequent chapter. That way it sounds less like a book report, and more like the beginning of an enthralling new novel. Hell, I'm 23 pages in, and all I've had is a boat docking and a spell of uncertain effect. Give me more!

As for the prologue, we've got a pair of magic types casting spells. We don't know what the spells are doing, and we don't get a lot of description of even what casting them is like, other than some nonsense words. If you want to establish that these are bad guys, get them doing something evil! Give us a cruel twist at the end of the prologue, so just before we see the good guys for the first time, we're thinking, "Shit, how are they gonna get out of this one?"

It's not my story, so it's not my job to rewrite it. I just hope that with my own fiction, I have the stone cold balls to look and see what's wrong, and the tools to fix it afterwards.

The Search for the Ideal Reader

Confession: I once owned three New Kids on the Block albums. Their Christmas album was my favorite, and I could still sing along to "Funky Funky Christmas."

Reading:

• On Writing, by Stephen King

Writing:

• "Illuminated"

One concept that King talks about in On Writing is the Ideal Reader--that is, the target audience boiled down to a single individual. He states that for most writers, the Ideal Reader is someone real in their lives, the first person to be given a manuscript when a draft is finished.

I'm not sure what it says about me that I don't have an Ideal Reader, at least not one that's capitalized like that. My parents often read my stories first, just because they're kind enough to drop what they're doing and print it out whenever I send one. I have a handful of friends who will also read my output, but not regularly. I'm also part of a writing group

So who is my Ideal Reader? Maybe it's me, in one respect. I try to write the kind of story I would enjoy reading, certainly. But I don't think it works like that. Writing is communication, and since I always know what I mean, communicating with myself just doesn't fit the bill.

I think the issue is that I do not have a peer who shares my interests and bends over backwards to support my nascent writing career. And when I put it like that, it sounds like it would be difficult to find such a person. Am I that much of a loner?

Part of the issue might be that I only moved here a year ago. Only a few people from my past live nearby, and they're all in the city, too far for more than weekend excursions. And the sort of relationship that would cause someone to drop everything they're doing to critique a story takes time to develop. The quest for the Ideal Reader, then, becomes the more familiar challenge of meeting people in an unfamiliar region, when most of my favorite activities are solo ones.

In the mean time, who am I writing for? Perhaps not an Ideal Reader, but my idealization of the Ideal Reader. Maybe I'm writing for a person I haven't even met yet.

Quest for the Comfy Chair

Confession: I really do think I'm smarter than almost everyone around me; not better, just smarter. I don't know whether that makes me an arrogant SOB, and that worries me.

Reading

• On Writing, by Stephen King

Writing

• "Illuminated"

With no television tonight, I started thinking on the way home from work about how I would fill my evening. More On Writing, for one thing, and perhaps a bit of writing myself. But first things first, I have to clean up this pigsty of an apartment.

You don't want the details, and I don't want to type them. It got me thinking, however, of what my idea writing space would be. I'd have a recliner and a lamp, first of all, with a little table beside the chair. That would be my reading area. A few feet away I'd have my desk, with a comfortable office-style chair poised in front of it. There would be two computer screens, one for research, and one for composition. There might be music, or there might not, depending on my mood. The shades would be closed, the light bright but not harsh. If I'm getting very particular, the room would be wood paneled, and furnished in deep burgundy, dark green, and navy blue.

The shame of it is, I already have so much of that. My recliner is so close to the wall it won't recline, and it currently covered with four books, an audiobook that needs to go back to the library, a pillow, and afghan, a stuffed horse wearing Mardi Gras beads (don't ask) and a Chinese menu. The little table is in the living room behind my bike, the lamp shoved behind the sofa.

The computer is much as I described, albeit with a less comfy chair desk chair, made a bit more palatable by Bed, Bath, and Beyond's least expensive cushion. The shades are closed.

What detracts is the clutter. I'm not slovenly, just all too likely to let an article of clothing lay where it falls, next to letters, bills, and mementos of bygone eras, scattered on the floor like leaves. This cannot stand! I shouldn't have to tiptoe like Shaggy sneaking up on the 10,000 Volt Ghost just to make it to the bathroom.

So that ends tonight, or at least begins to end. I'm even going to do some rearranging so that I can actually use that recliner as God intended, although I can't for the life of me figure out how exactly. And when I'm done, I'm getting a comfy-ass office chair, dammit.

Finishing a Cooled-Off Story

Confession: I've tried to start blogs before, and they never lasted more than a few months. This is the first one not called "Radioactive Duck."

Reading:

• On Writing, by Stephen King

Writing:

• "Illuminated"

I don't know if it's fair to say that I'm writing "Illuminated" right now. It's a project I definitely want to finish, but I've cooled on it a lot from that first rush, nearly six weeks ago now. And it's a shame, because the first draft is so close to being done, and I know exactly where the story is going.

Maybe that's the problem--most of what is left is the work, not the invention. I know some of the earlier parts need work, and it feels wrong to finish with those parts still there.

So here's a question: Do I revised the first part and use that momentum to propel me through the end, or would that tactic get me bogged down in editing before I ever finish a draft?

Personally, I'd like to have a clear direction to begin with before I try to write an ending, so I think I'll try the revised and continue approach. We'll see how it works.

The First Fifteen Minutes

Confession: The name of the blog was going to be "Ten Minutes," but all the relevant domains were taken.

Reading:

• On Writing, by Stephen King

Writing:

• "Illuminated"

I unplugged my television today. I debated about whether or not to start the post that way, but I decided that trite, overused, clichéd declarations of the resolution to write (goddammit!) get that way for a reason. And besides, Stephen King told me to, and you don't want to fuck with him.

When enough people tell you something is good, you start to listen. (This is a lie, because I still don't watch American Idol.) And just before my birthday, someone once again recommended that I read Stephen King's On Writing. I mention my birthday because I got a Borders gift card from my parents as a present, which provide the means for my purchase. (And, to be fair, because I just turned thirty, a fact of which I am perversely proud.)

One hundred years ago, people kept diaries, which they didn't want anyone to read. Now they keep blogs, which they want everyone to read. Our culture is a funny thing.

It took a few weeks to get through the autobiographical bits at the beginning to the meat of the book, big chunks of wisdom masquerading as common sense. I was interested to see how much parts of it described me, and how much didn't. I've always been a voracious reader, and I love getting caught up in the joy of creation. I've also felt the cooling of emotion when I've gotten bogged down in a story. But lately I've been held back by my own habits, which most consist of television viewing, dinner, and sleep.

I chose to give up, for a week, the easiest of those three. (Why not more than a week? Because the season finale of LOST is next Thursday, and I'm not made of fucking granite!) Instead, I'm going to fall in love with reading and writing all over again. That's my fifteen minutes a day. (Spelled 5i5teen out of necessity.)

I'm going to lay down the ground rules, so I'll know what to break later:

• No finished product. This is a place to work on composition, not a showcase for shiny new stories.
  
• No revision. Once it's posted, it's posted. End of story. (Huh, interesting choice of words.) Not even for spelling. Shine it up on your own time.
  
• No lies. No lying to myself, or my currently non-existent readership.
• No copy and paste. I've got to write it here, in the wysiwyg window, or at the very least in an email window. No fair copying a swath of story and claiming it's new.
• No slacking. This is for every day. Every single goddamn day. What, you can't get to a keyboard to say you're sick? Pussy. Just not feeling it? Lazy fuck. In a Tibetan monastery? Bring your cell phone and text that bitch.
• No restrictions. Not on language, or topic, or anything.

(Better switch on the "adult" filter, so I can say "fuck" without hurting the minds of schoolchildren, who are more accustomed to hearing the word than seeing it in print.)

So that's the plan. Enjoy the peek inside my head.