I Finished My Book. Kind of.

Well. Yesterday I finished the first full draft of my book. And by full I mean like 160 pages, which technically isn't a book as much as a novella. But I'm not done with it. I'm putting it "a drawer" or just hiding it in a folder on my desktop for six weeks (via Steven King's advice) then I'm going to pull it back out and fix it.

And by fix it I mean expand it and make it so it doesn't suck anymore.

Not that the whole thing sucks, if it did I don't know why I would have kept working on it. But I am aware there are parts that need complete or partial makeovers.

It feels weird. I can't believe it's true. I don't believe it's true and maybe that's why I'm not excited about it. Because it's not really done.

Though I am excited to work on other things for awhile. To write some weird shit that doesn't make any sense, that doesn't follow a plot or a linear line, stuff that may not even be considered sentences.

I think I'm going to write a chapbook full of that sort of stuff, because I can. And I might as well.

Onward and upward and forward we shall go.

Writer, You are Not Alone. But You Knew That Already, Didn't You?

I am not having a good day and it continues as I eat the most disgusting apple I have ever had in my life. How can trees (and/or people) mess up organic apples? It tastes like it was dipped in poison and then thrown in the sewer. Organic, ha! It's about as organic as my pink hair.

So I know I've written a few negative-esque blogs recently and I would love to snap out of it, but it's going to take a day or two. I went and heard a literary agent speak at the Boulder Book Store today and besides it being filled with the overwhelming smell of Avon body powder (as there were older women everywhere), it was depressing.

Last year the agent received a total of 36,000 query letters, from that 36,000 she read about 2,000 30-page samples, from there she read 98 entire manuscripts. Nine were selected for representation. Five were sold.

Five.

Five out of 36,000.

Okay, so I don't write sci-fi, or romance, or teen lit; but I'm guessing that the numbers aren't that different in any other genre.

Obviously if one goes to a bookstore it's apparent that more than 5 books get published a year, but still, so many people in the world are trying. I don't want this to be a "hobby," if I wanted it to be a hobby I never would have gotten a degree in it. Yet I feel it would be beneficial for me to go back and get the degree all over again. Or maybe I should just add another one from a different field to the pile since I can't get a job anyway. Ha!

I wish I wouldn't have went to the talk at all. It really didn't help me like I thought it might. Also seeing all those old people there was not inspiring--it made me realize how long it could actually take, ah!

Now I have to read Bird by Bird again just to become re-inspired.

Also must find fruit that doesn't taste like it was used as toilet paper.

Promise to be more positive tomorrow. :) (see I'm already starting with that smiley face)

A Rabbling on Wasted Time and the Writing Life.

I could scream I am so unfocused. Why do I do this to myself? Why is clicking so addicting? It is a serious waste of time. My friend is right, I should break down and order “Freedom” or “Liberty” or “Stay the F Off Line” or whatever the program is called. I thought I had the will-power. I thought I could stay dedicated to the task of writing, but I’ve been on here since 9:30 and have since wrote an email (a long email nonetheless) and created a FB event. Other than that I’ve just been click-happy, checking out what’s going on in cyber world. WTF? Why am I doing that? I don’t really care do I?

This disturbs me.

The other problem is the writing itself. Every day I write somewhere between 1000 and 4000 words but none of it connects. I can’t seem to continue working on something I had worked on the day before. I lose momentum or excitement or desire to continue on that project. I seriously have like 10 to 15 different stories half-finished.

Perhaps it would be better to just accept it. Until I can learn to focus maybe it’s best to just write like this and then a few months from now I can re-read all my work and find the best story to continue on with. Everyone has their own style of creating, why do I have to feel so guilty that I’m doing it my own particular way? I’m not Annie Dillard. I’m not Stephen King. My "writing life" is in a different time. I never wrote on a type writer. I never wrote without the internet (for the most part). We writers have to learn to adjust to this. It’s not my fault I was born into this transitional period.

It is my fault that I can’t complete anything. Well anything of any length. Anything that must be worked on the following day.

AHHHH!

Sometimes a nice scream is all one needs.

Book after book on writing discusses this idea that the writer’s life is like solitary confinement—that may have been true prior to FB but it is not true now. Unless I turn off my connection I can talk to any one of my 473 friends who happen to be online at the time. Not that I do. But I could.

This is all a major mental battle for me. I know I have discussed similar issues in the past but I somehow find this the biggest challenge of them all. Balance. Clicking the red X and really meaning it.

Or believing that the work I’m doing is meaningful enough to work on a second day. That it’s not just ramblings (like this) but that someone somewhere could really take something from it, that with great care and tremendous work ethic my words could mean sometime more. . . and maybe that’s what I’m most afraid of: not doing it well enough so I trick myself into not doing it at all. Or doing it in fragmented pieces that won’t come together until I’m 53 and finally have confidence.

That would be nice. A mere, “this is my voice, like it or not.”

Maybe if I meditate with that mantra . . .

Purging Out the Bad Stuff.

I woke up today thinking about how unhappy I am with my writing from yesterday. I don't like the negativity, I am in fact, trying to move beyond that and steer myself away from that type of mentality...yet at the same time I am aware that I will have bouts of it, that it will not fade away as quickly as I'd like.

Today, I don't feel the need for nihilism at all. Perhaps, I'm a manic-depressed person, perhaps writing about it purged it from my system.

Earlier this morning I woke up to deer hanging out in my backyard. If I lived in the country this wouldn't be so odd, but I live right in town, right by one of the busiest streets. And they just hung out there for hours. People entered and left parking lots. Cars rushed by. Sirens went off. And they just sat there munching grass (or whatever they were eating).

(Checking out the neighborhood)

It reminded me of a war movie I just watched, The Thin Red Line, the director counters all the brutality and killing by mixing in shots of the native animals and plants. Even within all this human conflict other species are around us, chilling, living their lives. Not really giving a flying monkey's tail what anyone else is doing, as long as the "doing" isn't interfering with them.

I'd like to be more like that.

I read this article today on elephant journal, by the amazing Ben Ralston, and in the article there is a video, and in the video the spiritual master Tony Samara says,

"Don't be an addict to your misery, or your seriousness, or to society's expectations."

Of course, in the video, he said it slower and dreamier, but it really hit me. I was like, duh. This is what I've been trying to do for years now. (And though it's easy to say, it's difficult to actually manage.)

I recently have been given the most amazing opportunity to work on a book. And of course, I've been feeling the pressure and the stress of doing something everyone wants to do, but very few people ever actually accomplish (and even fewer people actually succeed at it).

This quote helped me in three ways.

1) I know I won't be able to write a successful book if I think about what other people are going to think of it.

2) I know that if I sit around complaining about how I can't write, well then I won't be able to write.

3) I know if I worry about the book having meaning, or transforming people, and being super serious about making that happen, then no one will be interested...it will come out cheesy and cliche'.

So I just have to do like the animals do and munch on the grass while the world goes on around me.

I just need to sit here and do my thing.

And when my thing is done, then I can worry about whether or not anyone is going to like it.

But for now, it's just for me.

Where Have All the Typewriters Gone...ohwa?

Writers with typewriters had it so much easier.

Sure they had to change the paper. But that paper was valued. It couldn’t just go on continuously. So everything they wrote had to mean something. They couldn’t just go efngknvk rdkgnogklvnsnk esgkngldk vsd, on their keyboard like I seem to like to do when I’m writing on mine.

Yes. Writers with typewriters had it so much better.

All they had was a typewriter. All that it did was type letters. That was it’s only function. The typewriter had no connection to anything else. Whereas I can simple minimize my Word document and viola’ access to all of my friends and family via facebook and gmail.

Annie Dillard’s writing life was easy compared to this torture. A click a way I have access to complete and total distraction.

If I had a typewriter the only distraction I’d have is what’s happening outside my window. Or the dirty dishes in the sink. Or an empty stomach that needed fed. But I have all of those distractions, PLUS the distractions of the world wide web. Of photobooth, of garage band, of solitaire. Oh solitaire how you remind me of my lonely existence as a writer.

Oh but wait. I’ll just click on this other window where I can talk to any number of friends who are available to chat at any time. And thus, solitaire, you no longer represent me.

Writers with typewriters had much more fulfilling lives, because when they needed a bit of information they’d have to go to the library, or call someone. But thanks to Wikipedia I can have all the facts in the world without ever really having to learn anything.

The writing life is so much different these days. So many people are doing it. Blogs galore. Which in a way is great, but in a way it makes it harder to find what’s good or what’s valuable or even valid. I guess all of that depends on the reader anyway. And at least there are still people reading.

But alas I wouldn't really want a typewriter because they're loud and messy and big and I'd have to use a lot (literally, probably an entire lot) of white-out because I can't spell very well. And now I have spell check. So there's that.

I just wish I could use my computer as if it were a typewriter. I just want to quit opening other windows. Because there is nothing worse then sitting down to write and window shopping instead. Who knows if I'll ever get anything of any longish length written.

As they say in AA, one day at a time.

Or in my case, a better motto would be, one window at a time.