Pep Talks to Myself

Lately I've had a hard time writing or getting into anything, really. I've been struggling with being stagnant after graduation. Where do I go from here? Why can't I seem to find a better job? If I go back to school, what should I get my masters in? What does it matter if I write or not?

Well, I gave myself a pep talk the other night that seemed to snap me back to reality, or at least writing. I told myself, J, you can either sit back and stay in this life you hate, or you can fight for a better future. I told myself, you are a fighter and you are going to fight like hell to keep doing the things you love. That means overcoming stagnation, fighting for a position, fighting against your deteriorating health. And it actually worked. I've decided to fight.

Part of that means returning to hope, returning to wishes, returning to dreaming up a better future. What this is means is that I inspire myself to write by thinking about the endgame, what happens after I'm published. I imagine what fans will like or not like, what they will argue with each other about, how they will react. My favorite past-time has always been imagining giving book talks or being interviewed about my books.

If you follow me on tumblr, you've probably noticed I've been in a bit of a tag vomit mood this week. A few of those entries were related to this kind of dreaming, where I imagine how future students looking at my work will imagine me and/or will interpret my books. This comes largely out of the fact that sometimes English majors over-analyze a book and find more meaning in it than the writer originally intended. Anyway, here are the tags, and links to their respective posts.

Part 1: A Response to Leonardo Da Vinci's hand studies
someday if my books are ever published students will study me and my weird (and somewhat macabre) obsession with hands and they will write papers about how I feared nothing but losing them. They will write that I was most fascinated by hands, how they mean losing everything and yet they were the key to creating everything. my hands are my everything. Just kidding. They will write papers about me saying she wrote a lot about hands and potatoes and we're really not sure why. Maybe she secretly wanted to be a farmer

Part 2: A Response to Seamus Heaney's "Digging"
 this is the post all the students who will study my works in the future will cite on their essays saying look Teacher she is obsessed with potatoes just like we said. this poem represents how she wanted to be a farmer just like all the generations of her family before her. both sets of grandparents and her uncle had a farm you know. but she didn't work on a farm so she decided to dig with her pen like Heaney did. as you can see I've done my research and I can find you more evidence of why Layman writes so much about hands and potatoes. She was kind of a weird writer but I guess all writers are weird. except this one didn't drink or take opium or anything. she was just obsessed with potatoes and hands I guess.

TL;DR: dreaming about being famous in the future helps me write my novels, because I feel like I have something to work towards. If you're having trouble, maybe this will help you too. Maybe I'm just delusional.

NaNo Countdown: 3 hours

NaNoWriMo '10 is about to start and has already started for some of you. Exciting, right? More like terrifying. I just had my first case of Writer's Doubt and Panic and November hasn't even started yet. I'm not entirely sure where my story is going or if I even have an actual plot. Yes, I posted that bit about Caroline, but I don't think it's strong enough to carry the whole story. I've toyed with other ideas, both to improve this story and to pursue other options.

Panic is common, doubt even more so. Getting past that and getting words on the page is what makes you a writer.

There are No Vacations from Being a Writer

On Wednesday night I completed my edits/rewrite of Zenith, packaged it up pretty & sent it off to be printed. What I didn't know is that CreateSpace, the website I had a free code for, requires 1-2 days processing, so it looks like I'll be paying for my copy after all. It only costs about $5, so I don't mind, I suppose. After all that work, I plan on rewarding myself with a copy.

Additionally, because I finished my edits, I also sent off a PDF of my novel to seven willing volunteers for beta-reading. I haven't received anything definite from anyone yet––it's only been two days––but so far the feedback has been good. However, none of them have reached the completely sucky last few chapters, so I'm not holding my breath.

Yesterday I could have relaxed from writing (and probably should have, considering I work a 12 hour split shift), but I couldn't. I've mentioned it before, but writing is not a job you drive to, clock in, do your work, clock out, go home, & forget about until the next morning; writing is a whole life process. Even as I drove to work yesterday, my mind was already trying to choose which project to begin on next. I wanted to do something with time travel that reflects my personal beliefs about the way time travel should be; I wanted a character with a particularly nice moustache; I wanted to try romance, since I've never successfully pulled that off. Before bed I ended up writing a 500 word drabble about two characters for a friend, just so I could write something (a need I rarely have when a deadline approaches, sadly). There are just no vacation time available for a writer.

This morning I woke up from a strange dream that ended up being the inspiration for my next project and immediately I began brainstorming and researching, picking out names. I need an androgynous name that can be mistaken as a male name, but is also not uncommon for females, but cannot be a diminutive of a different name. Currently I am leaning towards Sky with Cameron as my backup. This idea differs entirely from anything I've ever written and I am so excited about it.

Which brings me to my last topic of the day: all writers are lunatics. I've told you all this before and it's the title of my blog, so this really shouldn't be much of a surprise. After I created my list of possible character names I asked twitter & some friends which androgynous names they could think of, to gauge the connotations of each name. I received a lot of responses, for which I am thankful, but no one asked what the names were for. Even after I started hinting that I had a new story, no one asked what it was about. Like the lunatic writer I am, I went into this whiny state of Nobody Loves Me before finally texting Secret Agent Casye my idea. I could have just told everybody, I know, but I'm a lunatic, remember?

[Next up, research! I'm heading to the library later today to pick up some books, including Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness.]