Process versus Product

Confession: I'm going to miss my Employee of the Month parking spot.

Reading:

• "Balto" by T.C. Boyle
  
• The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
  

Writing:

• "Ferian Fetlock Catches a Cold"
  

Revising:

• "Cora and the Sea"

Future Projects:

• Dairhenien's Library - Development
  
• Floorcraft - First rewrite of 1-5, first draft of 6-8
• Ferian Fetlock - "Ferian Fetlock Takes a Wife."
  
• "Motley" - Expansion
• "Fireworks and Earthworks" - 5% into first draft
  
• Untitled School Mistress Story

Unpublished Stories/Status (in chronological order of completion of first draft)

• "Pictures of the Old Port" - 5th Draft, Unsubmitted
• "What Price Stamps" - 3rd Draft, Submitted to The American Drivel Review, July 30th, 2008
  
• "The Frost Fugling" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "Black Pudding" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "Cora and the Sea" - 3rd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "Motley" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "Leaves and Sunsets" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "A Happy Ending" - 1st Draft, Unsubmitted
• "The Revenant" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "Illuminated" - 3rd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "A Cup of Coffee" / "Morning Tea" - 2nd Draft, Submitted to Tea: A Magazine, July 29th, 2008
• "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "Hattie Donnelly's Favorite Doll" - 2nd Draft, Submitted to 24 Hour Short Story Contest, July 27th, 2008

Over on the Chicken Fried Radio forums, I made this post, which I wanted to reproduce here:

I agree with what you're saying... "writer" is something that you are, not something that you do. But there's aspects of writing that go beyond sitting in front of a computer and banging away. Do you read? Me too. that's part of being a writer. Call it research. Doesn't mean you can't do that research at the beach or the park or the corner coffee shop.

I took a long walk last night and thought about my next story. That was "work." I also enjoyed the hell out of it, and listened to some TMBG along the way.

At work (i.e., my day job), if I come up with an idea, I write it down and stick it somewhere. (Nothing anal.) Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not. Once at work, I wrote down three titles: "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse," "Ferian Fetlock Catches a Cold," and "Ferian Fetlock Takes a Wife." That was in 2006. Now I've written the first of these, and the series of stories is developing into a full blown novel.

You can't do it for the money. If you get money, great, but that can't be the point. Personally, I stagnated as a writer when I was only writing for myself. I discovered a few months ago, though, that I had an audience I never realized. My friends have been very supportive, and they've been passing my stories along so that I've got a network of bunches of people that read and comment on my stuff. And that's very energizing.

Remember what writing is--you're recording thought, essentially. You can do that for yourself, sure, but memory is another way of recording thought that affects you more viscerally than prose. But to communicate your thoughts to others, there's speech and writing, and writing isn't perishable.

The point of fiction writing is the audience. You're creating a world and inviting people to step in and watch the cool stuff that happens there. But it's not for you. It's like a play, where the director is watching from the wings. He isn't just watching the story, but also the nuts and bolts of of the scenery and costumes. And when he sees the actors, he isn't just seeing what they're doing on the night, but everything it took to get them there. He doesn't see the illusion, only the framework.

I can't read my own stories and get the same thing out of them as my readers, because I see the process, and they see the product. When you're writing for yourself, the process is paramount; when you're writing for others, the product is.

Okay, that went on longer than I expected. But it saves me from having to draft a new blog entry today!

This really got me thinking about the difference between the process of writing and the finished story. I think I've said before that the product of writing is just a snapshot of the process. It kind of reminds me of ballroom dancing: there's so much that goes on that the person watching the dance isn't supposed to see. You can't make it look like you're trying. The moment you can see the effort, the illusion is shattered.

I think it works the same way with writing. The mechanics of it need to be transparent to the average reader.

So there we go, I didn't just copy and paste what I had written. That would be against the rules, even if I did just write it all ten minutes ago.

Publication Status:

• Submitted: 5
  
• Accepted: 1
• Rejected: 1
• Pending: 3
  

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.