A seven mile hike at Lake Minnewaska followed by homemade chicken quesadillas with mango salsa. That’ll do, that’ll do.
It hasn’t been a bad day (or week) for writing either. I’m some 5,000 words into a short story, probably the best I’ve written in a year, not that there’s any proof of quality there. I’m a motivated slogger. I expect to get another few thousands words put down this weekend, maybe finish a draft next week. Exciting times, I know.
I’d like to give credit for my new-found inspiration to a handful of writing books that I purchased last week. I could drag up the names, but I don’t credit the books themselves. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Periodically, I find myself lost and muddled when it comes to any sort of genuine writing. Sure, I’ve been tossing assorted blog entires out for years and I keep something of a weekly journal as well, but that’s not really writing. The quality is suspect and there’s no editing. No editing means no writing. That’s just how it works.
Disappointed and thoroughly disgusted with my more intentional output, I start to think that maybe I just don’t know what I’m doing. I’m untrained, untested, amateurish. I need a mentor, a trainer, something to push me over the hump. In a pique of desperation, I buy a book (or 5) on the craft of writing. I get excited that I’ll finish it and find myself newly remade into the next Hemingway.
As I’ve already let on, that’s not exactly how things have turned out. I’ve read 4 of the 5 books. They were decent in a way, but there’s only so much that can really be said about writing. There are the usual platitudes: show don’t tell, start with the action, write what you know (really write what you care about). There’s also some helpful market acumen tossed in (that 40,000 word fantasy epic novellete is never going to be published).
And then there are the suggestions. A good half the suggestions are really just tricks to encourage writers to write. I’ve honestly never found that to be an especially big problem. I write when I can. I can’t as often as I should like and I do get distracted easily, but no one can accuse me of ignoring my hobby. I really don’t need parlor trick psychology to get me to a keyboard.
The second half of these suggestions are different ways to come up with ideas, different methods of arranging stories to be exciting. Again, is this really the difficulty writers are having? Perhaps, but I’ve always felt quite deeply that the idea, the story, the urge to arrange a beautiful world is the motivation for writing in the first place,. I’m not interesting in writing because I like to sit on my ass at a keyboard for hours at a time staring at blank office programs and giving myself medically novel forms of carpal-tunnel. I write because I’ve got a thousand and one ideas and stories to get down. My problem is that I get them down…and they suck. Different problem and not one that books seem to be able to fix.
In a weird and sadistic way, this is encouraging. I’m not suffering from a lack of ideas or a lack of motivation (in which case why would I even want to write?). I just suffer from inexperience. I’m newly inspired because the book fundamentals were old hat. I know my tenses, I know my viewpoints, I know why you start with the action, and I know why passive tense is no good…mostly. I’ve got my spelling down and dialog locked in. I can conjure a decent story and bring it to completion. I just don’t have a strong enough voice. I’m new. As birthdays, anniversaries, and local historical societies like to periodically remind me, new doesn’t last that long. Someday I will cease to be new and won’t that make some exciting blog posts? That’s today’s inspirational tale for the masses.
I will say, the two books on editing were decent. I’ve never read The Elements of Style and I was dumb not to. It’s fantastic.
The book Line by Line, put out by the MLA, is a hideous looking book, a little yellow cookbookish thing like an 1980s guide to television repair, but it’s oddly inspired. Editing is just so damn hard and there’s enough examples strewn throughout the book that it’s hard not to find something useful.
I also read Fear and Loathing, Hunter S. Thompson’s drug-inspired classic, an utterly hilarious little gem that I’ve never come to before. Again, it’s a plotless book, although not nearly as plotless as Naked Lunch. Gonzo journalism at least makes an honest effort at a complete story, something Naked Lunch seemed to intentionally avoid. I always feel sort of strange reviewing a well-known classic, so I’m not going to, but this is my blog and I’ll make it a poorly annotated reading list if I want to.
Since I’m falling into a list, (although the premier form of internet writing) I’ve come to the end to this week’s entry. My xbox bit the bucket so I’m not able to play Splinter Cell Conviction. I haven’t had any new short-story rejections so for once I’ve got nothing to really whine about. That pretty much leaves writing and quesadillas as entertainment. That’ll do. That’ll do.
