Living Dead - Post Card Fiction

For my last semester of school ever (hopefully I can finally get a post-secondary degree, good god), I decided to take a class I thought would be easy credits, so I signed up for a creative writing course. Little did I know, that this class would awaken the thesis-created demon of anger and violence that would manifest itself in interesting ways.

I'm generally a mellow person. My writing is generally optimistic, because I like to escape in my writing, and I have a hard time being optimistic about the real world. So in my fictional worlds, I like things to have a bright light at the end of their tunnels. This has not been so true as of late. I really came to realise this with my latest assignments, most notably our flash fiction, or "post card" fiction assignment.

We had to develop a story in under 500 characters. This is what I came up with.


Pain.

All I feel is overbearing pain. It starts in my stomach, blossoming out, following the trails of ruby red blood, dripping from within. Droplets hit the gravelly pavement intermittently, sounding loudly in the heavy silence, a sepulchral symphony cutting through the deafening quiet.

The cold begins to creep. It starts in the fingers and crawls slowly up the arms. The same happens in the toes, dragging itself slowly, lovingly, caressing its way up the legs. The cold will soon reach its mark. Life blood will stop flowing, heart will stop beating, lungs will stop breathing, and cold will set in. Cold always sets in.

It’s happening now. A final ragged breath and all is gone. All is darkness. All is empty. I open my eyes and the sight assaults me. Blood. Ruby droplets coat the pavement, coat my hands. I let out a breath, breathing for myself, hating every second. The emptiness is back. There is never an escape. I turn away from the alley. There is no life for me here now. All is cold. All is empty.

Death is emptiness. Emptiness is death. I am death. Without death I cannot live.

Now, I'm actually rather proud of this. I like it. It might even mean I'm finally growing up. Who knows? All I know is, I've noticed quite a change in my writer's disposition.

Change is good. I like change now. It's a sign of new things to come. 

Crunch that time

Ever wanted to write in your busiest time of the year? Ever been frustrated when you were never able to find the time to do as much as you wanted to do? I'm here to tell you that it's perfectly okay to feel that way. Jeez, if you didn't feel that way at least once, I'd say you're doing it wrong. Writing is a very consuming thing. It's something that takes quite a great deal of time and focus, and sometimes, that's not something that's available to you.

Juggling time is hard, but a must.

Not having the luxury of free hours to just sit and while your time away in front of a computer or pen and paper can be frustrating. As exam times and a need for employment to pay rent approach, I'm feeling that frustration now. It isn't easy, but I am finding the time for a little bit of writing every day. Doing NaNoWriMo is providing quite a bit of incentive, but I really do want to better  myself at the craft at the same time. 

This is where time management and prioritizing have become invaluable talents. Work searching is, of course, a priority. Money apparently makes the world go around, and you can't go without it for too long in this world. School comes in at a close second, since completion of my degree will allow me to get better jobs and better pay, another important thing in this world. That means writing gets shunted to the bottom of the priorities list just above TV and my other fandom obsessions. But this does not mean that I've forgotten about writing. It's always somewhere in my mind, but it's all about when and where I can bring it to the forefront. Lately, it's been fewer and fewer times as I need to crunch my time. 

Sometimes I stray from my priorities and my ideas jostle their way up to the forefront of my mind. It's important to get them down, but not too much time can be dedicated to them until such a time as I've finished with my other duties. These are the things you must learn to juggle with your writing. When do you, your life and writing will seem so much easier. 

When to know you need a break

Sometimes, you just need to step back and take a break. You’re too close to your project and it’s getting hard to keep scrutinizing every aspect of it; and that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with admitting you’ve have enough of a project for a while; it’s probably even healthy. There is a limit to how much attention you can devote to any one thing at a time. It’s only a matter of time before you get sick of your project and never want to see it again; you might want to take a break from it before you reach that point. You don’t want to be shoving your hard work into a corner and never looking at it again. That’d be the last thing any of us wants for something you cared about enough to work on it like that.

Take some time to work on something else. Maybe you’ve had a short story on the back burner. Maybe you’ve always wanted to make a poetry anthology. Maybe you want to write a comprehensive look on why Rick Deckard would have been better off as an Android (don’t take that, it’s mine). Whatever it is, go ahead and take the time to do it. If you’re at all like me, you’ve probably got 80 other projects calling you that you enjoy working on from time to time; give them some attention, they could be your next triumph.

It could be that you want nothing to do with writing for a while. That’s okay too. Read a good book. Catch up on that TV show you’ve been putting off for a while. Go to the movies. (If you’re in school, I guess like, do homework or something, whatever, I don’t do that stuff, don’t be like me, kids.) Do something to give your brain a little time to recharge and get over the starry-eyed wonder of beating your personal literary demon into submission. You’ll need a fresh mind to come back to your work.

And that’s the important part. You need to come back to your work. Don’t get sucked into the comfort of having a finished product and then not doing anything with it. Even if you ultimately decide that you never want it to see the light of day, you’ve got to give it a decent chance. I mean, you put so much time and effort into something, you can’t just leave it hidden away forever; it deserves a bit more of your attention, if only to be deemed unusable.

Because that could very well happen. I can’t tell you the number to half-finished works I’ve come back to only to find that it looked to be written by a ten-year-old (accurate, but still) and just tossed it. The characters were poorly thought-out, the story was baseless and had plot holes bigger than me, and the dialogue was simply atrocious. It’s a hard thing to accept that your work wasn’t always awesome (well, it was for me, because I’m always awesome). But sometimes, it’s the only way to grow out of your bad habits and grow as a writer. You are your hardest critic, and sometimes you’re exactly what you need. Sometimes, you need to just sit down with your work and give it your harshest revue. Because that is the only thing that can really help you get anywhere as a writer. If you can’t criticise yourself, you’ll never get anywhere.

You also need to be willing to take others’ advice on your work. If you can’t take criticism, you have no business trying to be an author. Criticism is at least half of your work. You’ll not only have editors to contend with, but also the general populace who’ll be reading your work. You’ve got to get prepared for that, and the only way to do that is to dive headfirst and ask someone to read it and give you feedback. Who knows? You could have written something amazing. You will probably have a lot of work to do, but you’ll be much better off than those people who won’t let anyone touch their work for fear of hearing criticisms. And that’s an amazing thing.

Basically, it’s good to take a break before getting to the dirty work of editing. But make damn sure you do get back to it. Do it and get awesome. Godspeed. 

Wrapping up with more enthusiasm than an elf at Christmas

It's done. I've written the final sentence of the final chapter, and I can finally say that I've finished a novelling project. I'm talking full on beginning, middle, and end. There is a resolution to the conflict, and my main character has his ending that he deserves. It's a thing of pure beauty.

That doesn't mean it doesn't need a shitload of work. The story may be done, but this thing is far from finished if I ever want anyone other than my hard drive seeing it. It's got a long way to go still, but damn am I ever happy to even be thinking about the editing process with a finished product to actually edit. If you've never felt this feeling of absolute pride before, please don't ask me to describe it, because it's just plain indescribable. It's like I'm basking in the glow of the sunlight filtered in through the radiant back hairs of a flying unicorn. It's beautiful.

Now, I'm not just telling you all this to brag. Although, I'm fucking bragging. I'm proud as shit of myself right now, and I probably will continue to be ball-slappingly proud of myself for quite some time. This is something I've always dreamed of doing, I've always told myself I would one day do, and here I am, having just finished doing it. But more than that, I'm telling you all this because I want you to know that if you have dreams like I do (you totally do, don't lie) you can totally achieve them. Reach for those lofty goals full force and go for it. My dream of just finishing something, not making it big, or writing a best-selling series, or anything like that, but for anyone that knows me, it's clear that that goal was barely attainable. I'm a lazy slob, even things I like to do can become tiresome to me so I just go to bed and sleep it off and forget about it. If I can do it, you definitely can. Get out there and do that shit. Finish something and make it beautiful, you beautiful people.

This is a major thanks to Camp NaNoWriMo
for giving me a reason to actually strive to finish.
Without it, I'd still be languishing with 50 unfinished
works. Now I'm celebrating with 49 unfinished and one
finished one. It's like magic. 

Keeping the camp fire going

So, I finished Camp NaNoWriMo this past July. This is the first time I've successfully navigated through and completed a Camp challenge. I simply don't have much time in the spring and summer, since they're my busiest work and school seasons, but this year, I pushed a lot aside and just gave myself time to get wrapped up in my writing. (Plus, I was able to write while doing sopme of my duties at work, shh, don't tell anyone.)

Besides being proud of having written over 50,000 words in a month's time, I can be proud of something else: I'm still going. Usually I fizzle out after I complete the NaNoWriMo requisite of 50,000 words and never really bring the story to a close. But this year, I'm determined.

I love my story. It's got a bunch of my favourite elements in it: science fiction, mystery, action, violence, romance, and even a little hint at cyberpunk. But mostly, I love my characters. I love my main character, a hard-hitting Robocop-esque agent named Alexander Yestin. He's smart, he's sexy, and he's a good guy; there isn't much not to love about him. There's a character I had originally intended to have as a villain that I love as well. I'm no stranger to loving villains, so that wasn't a problem, but as I wrote on, it became clear to me that she was destined for a different role in the story. And that's the beauty of writing. Sometimes, you aren't in control of everything. Sometimes, it becomes clear that the world you're creating becomes a world of its own, and sometimes things happen that you aren't expecting. But as the writer, it is your duty to follow through with these unexpected things. They make everything so much fun.

But the real reason I love this story is because of one character. He wasn't meant for anything big. I had originally intended for him to be a chapter's worth of comedic relief, never to be heard from again. But as I wrote him out, he became a fascinating character with depth and backstory. He's a real human being with real problems and real feelings. And of course, he's hilarious. I gave him more time in my novel, letting him develop relationships and friendships. That's the sort of beauty I love about writing: you're creating lives and helping them to flourish. It's magical.

That magic is helping me keep my fire lit this summer. I'm determined to see this story through to its end, and I'm almost there. The moment I have a finished manuscript in my hands will be the proudest moment in my rather pathetic life. I can't wait to get there. Here's hoping you can get there too!

Good luck, fair writers, travel on.

To plan, or to pants? The magical question.

Anyone who frequents NaNoWriMo, Camp NaNoWriMo, or who had the chance to participate in the late Script Frenzy, will recognize the title I chose as a common NaNo adage. Do you plan out what you're writing, or do you simply fly by the set of your fiery, explosive pants and write whatever comes to mind? That's a question I hear asked often when people are tasked when writing just about anything. It's a question I get asked often, even though I'm no real authority in the matter. I'm an older beacon of knowledge for all the kiddies passing by me, I suppose. I'll do my best to impart my aging wisdom.

The answer I always give to the variations of that question I get asked is another question: What do you feel comfortable with? I know this sounds kind of obvious, but it seems to get ignored when people are seeking advice, but everyone is different. We're all special little snowflakes in the homogeneous snowstorm of life, so it's pretty obvious that not everyone will approach a task in the same way. That's the first thing I try to get people to understand when they ask me what they should do. People aren't all gifted bullshitters like I am; I've perfected the art of sounding like I know what I'm talking about after years of institutionalized higher education. I've learned how to take a little information and spin it into a yarn of a tale with very little notice and very little planning. But I understand that not everyone has had all the practice I have. Some people need to plan things out before they do them.

I'm not exactly a fan of spontaneity. I don't like being dragged off my sofa at a minute's notice to go on a whacky road trip. That's not something I'm into by a long shot. I like trips and days out to be planned in advance to avoid as many surprises as possible. My delicate introvert psyche can only handle so much; I like to be prepared. But when it comes to writing, the same cannot be said for me. I'm a lazy procrastinator. I leave everything to the last minute if I can even remotely classify it as work. Essays and other assignments get put off until hours before they're due, at which point I take the required reading material, pore over the index for a few minutes, string together some disjointed information and put it all together. I'm not particularly proud of my half-assed habits, per se, but I'm damn proud that I'm able to do it with such convincing eloquence. So, in the case of things like essays and the like, I'm a sorta-proud pants-er. But I understand that not everyone can bullshit as convincingly as I can. This is why I always tell people to do what they're comfortable with. My basic rule to know what that is is this: If you're questioning whether or not you're able to go forward without a plan, you're probably not ready to go forth with no plan.

At least make a basic plan for yourself; it doesn't have to be extensive or all-inclusive. It can be a list with three bullet points on it. It doesn't need to be constraining, either. You can add or remove whatever you want as you write along. It's your work; you can do with it as you please. But you should at least know where it is you're going or where you plan to go, whether it be in your head or on paper. Make a plan and go with it until your plan no longer suits you; then you can make another plan to better help you.

It's obvious that I didn't really plan this post out. I mean, look at me, I'm rambling like a fucking idiot, going all over the place with no set goal in sight here. But it'll all come together at some point, hopefully. But sometimes, I sit my rather large ass down and I plan a project out so extensively that it's pretty much almost done and all I need are a few joining words like "and", "the", and "fuck that shit, I'm hungry".

I'll have my characters so extensively planned out that I could convince people that they're a real person with all the information I've got thought-out. I've got physical descriptions, preferences, voices, mannerisms, everything thought-out and planned. I've got settings plotted out down to the blades of grass and individual cobblestones. I've got backstories planned, sometimes even written, out. I've got the major plot points arranged in chronological order. I might even have some dialogue planned. And it really is helpful. It's pretty smooth sailing for the most part.

But sometimes you get lost. Sometimes you get stuck in a perpetual Dichotomy Paradox. You're trying to get from Point A to Point B, but you can never seem to reach Point B in any sort of way that makes sense. That's the point where I throw it all in a hidden folder in the depths of my hard drive and give up on it. I've got about thirty novels so close to being finished, but I hit a block somewhere in the process of finishing up and just left it there to be forgotten about because I didn't plan it out right.

That's why I started getting things to help me out. I started doing NaNoWriMo, and finally hit a milestone: I wrote 50,000 words in a matter of 30 days. I didn't finish the story, but I broke 50k words. I had never written something so long before and I was fucking proud. But of course, at that time, I was still a teenager. What I wrote was complete and utter bullshit. I hate it when I read it. So I decided to try re-writing it to a point where I stopped wanting to set fire to it. Wound up giving up on that one halfway through too. I'm looking at it one more time. I'm determined to try and make something of it. I love my characters. I want to see them come to a resolution. That's my goal.

In college, I took a film class and took an interest in screenplays. That's when I thought about trying ScriptFrenzy, which, sadly, is no longer a thing, but has instead been replaced by a Camp NaNoWriMo session in April. I made it 14 pages into a script before realizing that I wasn't ready for scripts. I might never be ready for script writing. And that's perfectly okay. You might very well come across a medium you suck at. You might come across something you hate doing. What's my advice for that? Just don't fucking do it. If it's becoming a chore instead of a hobby, stop. Sure there's stuff we all have to do that we don't like doing. I've never met anyone who enjoys paying bills, and if I do, well I got a van full of doctors with a pretty white buckle-filled jacket to come talk to them. It's something we need to do thought, no matter how much we hate it. The same can't be said for hobbies like writing, or drawing, or anything. If it becomes to laborious that you can't imagine enjoying continuing, there's no shame in putting the pencil down and trying something new. Take up knitting. Go read a book. Watch a movie. Take up football. Do anything that makes you happy instead of trudging through something you don't want to do. I know it seems kind of obvious, I mean you're probably going "is this bitch stupid? She's spouting common sense like she's the fucking Dalai Lama." But the thing is, a lot of people don't think they can just quit without being any less accomplished. They think if they quit they've failed. In a way, you have failed in creating a finished product, yes, but you'd be failing yourself if you forced yourself  into doing something that made you feel like you were being held at gunpoint in a bank. It's hard, you don't want to do it, and you'd give anything to be just about anywhere else. So just go somewhere else. Try something new. If you get the urge, come back to it. Bring your little labour of love to fruition. Be a better person for it, not because you finished, but because you wanted to and enjoyed doing it.

So basically, after all my nonsensical rambling, my advice to you, if you're looking to write a novel, would be to at least plan something out. Be it a character, a place, a single line, something needs to inspire you to take this story somewhere. You can't just create something wonderful out of absolutely nothing. You need something to get you started. And there are plenty of things to help you do so. This book, available through NaNoWriMo's store, is chock full of stuff to help you on your way to novelling. They have all sorts of resources to help you. (Plus, the proceeds go to helping keep the event afloat, and to help fuel young writers' programs. Win-win situation right there.) I'm sure there are different things all over the internet too. If ever I find some, I'll post them for you guys.

That all said, if you hate planning and you love jumping headfirst into the unknown, who the fuck am I to tell you to do otherwise? Throw caution to the wind and run on into that project headfirst.

That's sort of an unsatisfactory answer, isn't it? But fuck that noise, it's what I'm sticking with. You want to know if you should plan or not? Ask yourself, not anyone else. They aren't you. They don't know what you're comfortable doing. It's all about what you want to do and how you want to do it. No one else. Just you. So quit listening to lazy bloggers and pseudo-philosophers trying to give you life advice and get out there and write up a storm. Find your pace and settle into it; it's going to be a long haul.

Hitting the ground running

I'm not new to writing blog posts, it's something I like doing because it gives me a place to shout in more than 140 characters, and apparently there are people who listen to me shout things, as shown to me through page views and retweets. Well damn,would you look at that.

I'm in no means a professional author. I wouldn't be here shouting aimlessly into the depths of the internet if I was, I'd be out partying like Rick Castle, fucking bitches and drinking the finest bourbon. But that's just it. I'm not trying to talk to accomplished authors, I mean, they've already done what they set out to do: write something people will read and enjoy. I'm not writing to them, I'm writing to people like me, the lazy fucks who're sitting on unfinished works with no direction in life, wondering what to do next.

I'm a foul-mouthed, lazy slob who runs back to mommy every time life gets a little too tough, and it gets tough a lot. I've got a two-year community college degree five years in the making. I'm the last person you could say "Yeah, she's got her shit together" about. But it's because of this that I really want to get this message out to people: don't be me. Don't be the fat, lazy, drunken sailor-swearing moron who can't even sit down long enough to finish one project. Be the opposite. Be the one who wants to succeed and actually believes they can succeed. There's a big gap between wanting and believing... it's not really something I've been able to leap over yet, but I'm working on it. That's what this blog is about.

I want to really break free from myself. I want to believe in my own capabilities and my own talent. I've been told my many people, friends and teachers, that I'm a good writer and that I could go far. I've also had teachers tell me to get my head out of the clouds and get a real job and stop chasing the stupid child's dream I've had for as long as I could write. I want to be able to tell them to go fuck themselves, but to do that, I'd have to succeed at something first. Otherwise, they'd just be right and I'd be shouting aimlessly into a void again. But this time, the people listening wouldn't be so receptive.

But the naysayers aren't my biggest obstacle. I'm a large lady, I've been chubby longer than I can remember, and blew up like a balloon on the tail end of high school. I've faced judgement. I've learned to largely ignore the negative. Until it comes from someone I can't walk away from: myself.

They say a person is their biggest, harshest critic. I'm pretty damn sure it's true. I'll be writing something I love, getting really into the story and the characters and then take a moment to re-read what I've done so far. That's when shit starts to go downhill. Fast.

I'll find problems with everything. From the choice of using one word over another to an entire paragraph I deem unworthy of my idea, I start to scrap sections and sections of my labours of love, and near the end, I'm stuck with mere skeletons of the things I've made.

I'm sure there are many authors who've gone through this. They probably shook themselves off and filled in the gaps, making masterpieces of prose so beautiful it makes us masses weep in their presence. They might have written the next Gatsby or the next Moby Dick. I'll probably never reach that point if I continue like I am now.

I can't get past the skeleton stage. I'm left sitting there, dumbstruck, that I could ruin an idea I loved so much with my poor wordsmithing and utter destruction of what could have been salvageable. This is usually the time I just leave it, never to return. I've got binders and binders, boxes and boxes full of half-filled notebooks (from before the computer era, GASP) I never wound up finishing because I became disenchanted, not with my ideas (although, some of them were shit, I'll admit), but with myself and what I deem to be my many many flaws. (There are many that are obvious to everyone. I should probably focus on those, honestly.) I've got folders and folders all over harddrives, Google drives, flash drives, any drives I can find, honestly, full of half-baked stories, ideas and outlines I never intended to finish from the beginning. I'm plenty full of ideas to write about, but I lack the belief that I can write about them in any successful or meaningful way.

That's what I'm setting out to change. One step at a time, I hope to overcome my personal demons to actually finish something for once. I'm not talking short stories or lewd fanfictions, I've written plenty. I'm talking a full-blown, bonafide, respectable novel to show for all my slaving away over all these years. I want to show those pessimists that I can do it. I want to show myself.

I've got to hit the ground running, and there's no day like today.