Monday, March 29, 2010

Male Writer, Female Character

Two things occurred to me as I was walking back to my car today after class: I had a really good idea for a blog post and it had also been a shamefully long couple of weeks since I'd bothered to write a blog post. Ergo, my presence here tonight. Tonight's also a little bit unique in that usually, I novel-write before I blog, which means that this is all happening out of sequence. I think I'm okay with that, though; the sequence has been a little bit messed up, as of late.

So, anyway, as I was walking, I started thinking about male writers and female protagonists in stories, and in particular, my own story which centers around a female main character and is told from the first person perspective. When I first started thinking about the story several months back, it never occurred to me to ask why I always thought of my character as a "she," it just felt like part of my sense of the character's identity. And, indeed, as a character takes shape in the mind, there comes a point in which you really can't just arbitrarily change these things, because by then, the character feels like a real person in your mind, and you don't just... you don't just change that. Not without possibly losing whatever sense of personality you might have had.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

The Importance of Good Cover Art

Every so often, I find myself thinking about things like how the position of my desk influences my work ethic. Mostly because I don't want to think about other mundane things, like the fact that there are still unpacked boxes in my room from the move, even though we're well past the point of time where unpacked boxes are acceptable. It's one thing to have unpacked boxes a few days, or even a week after you move. But it's been, what, three weeks now?

Okay, so I just checked my calender and it's really only been two weeks. But still. I should finish unpacking them. Plus, I still have pictures to hang. It's one of my life's little neurotic quirks that I can't stand bare walls. There's just something about them that annoy me, which is why if there's a wall in my space that could fit a good picture of poster, well, damn it, there should be something there!

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Putting It All Out There

Something came up during my novel writing session tonight and I wanted to explore it a little more fully, outside of the context of the story writing itself. Specifically, I found myself working on a scene that really, really struck close to home after some personal events that took place this past weekend. And, well, I started thinking: should I let those feelings, those thoughts influence the scene? Should I write something different, due to the fact that I can't separate myself from the situation in question?

If all this sounds horribly vague, well, that's intentional; I don't really want to talk about the specifics due to one of those curious little blog quirks that I seem to have: privacy. I mean, on the one hand, I routinely bare my soul here and talk about all the fucked up shit that's going on in my convoluted and often chaotic brain, which is a picture far more honest and intimate (I think) than what you're likely to encounter if you were to, I dunno, talk to me directly.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Blocked

I'm stuck on a story.

It's not my novel. It's a short story, for my writing class. You know, the thing that I do for my major, basically, the entirety of my academic focus. It's not that I didn't have an idea; I did have one. And I kicked it around in my head for a while, thought it had some legs, and finally sat down to try to write it...

Nothing. It's a horrible idea. Because it was just that. It was an idea. I didn't have a character for it. Didn't have a story to tell. Just had this weird thing that happened to me one day, that I thought might have been interesting. But there's nothing to say about it.

I'm kicking myself in the ass for volunteering to go first. Because this is my one shot, you know, my one chance to impress, to show that I've got the chops. I volunteered to go first because I was confident that I had this good idea, that I could nail this piece and everything would be awesome. What's driving me crazy right now, after my idea fell apart, is that I have to have something ready in two days, while my peers are going to have weeks... in some cases, even months to get their stories ready.

Why is it so hard right now? I've been sitting here for almost an hour, thinking, trying, focusing, unfocusing, all to no avail. Is it because I'm up against a deadline? Is it because I know that I have to get this thing right, and I need to have it in two days? Is it because I want it to be perfect so very, very badly, and the reality is that the perfect is the enemy of the good? That the fact that I want this so badly means I'm going to second guess myself and prevent my brain from ever taking the risks to make mistakes, even though those risks are necessary to tell any story?

Part of me wonders if some of my difficulty is because I allowed myself to slide on my writing schedule for the past... what, two weeks? I mean, sure, there was the PTQ two weeks ago, and then there was all the time that next week spent worrying about my grandmother and staying at her bedside, and then there was the move, and then there was that godawful paper I had to do, and now there's this... is that an adequate list to excuse myself from not living up to "Write Every Day?" It seemed to me, then, that it was, but now I'm not so sure. Maybe if I'd just chosen to power through the tough parts and written my goal anyway, I'd have the focus now to get through this tough spot. Maybe I made the wrong choice, after all.

And then I wonder if it's more to do with the fact that starting a new story is always the hardest part, at least for me. It's so much easier to continue writing a work that you've been doing for a few days, a few weeks, a few months... you may get stuck wondering where to go next, but you never have to deal with that first crippling uncertainty: what do I write? What story do I tell? Where do I begin?

Sometimes in the past, doing a blog entry like this when my thoughts are in chaos and my mind is swirling has helped me focus, helped me clear through some of the stuff that's driving me crazy. But I have to admit, right now, I don't feel refreshed, don't feel any more focused. All I feel is that I've got a deadline coming up in two days and I have no idea what I should be writing. All I feel is stress and frustration, both at myself and at my stupid decision to volunteer, to volunteer to go first. Why did I do that? I never do that.

Because if I hadn't have chosen to go first, you know, hadn't basically said that these past two weeks were going to be my specific crunch time, well, then I wouldn't be trying to write through a move, a family crisis, and one of the most frustrating and awful papers I've ever had to do. I could have actually sat and focused and tried to work through this story.

I wish an idea would come to me.