Writing Again

Sometimes it's easy.

Sometimes it feels like the story is writing itself, like it's all already there and you just have to record it.  Every word it perfect, every plot twist just the way it has to be, the characters developing in new and exciting directions so fast you can barely keep up.  It's like something is burning inside you, just under the ribcage.  It's like being horny; that maddening need to be with the story, to let it consume you.

Other times it's hard.  So hard, you don't want to face it.  You look at what you've written, and you wonder "How did I come up with that shit?" and it doesn't seem worth it to fix any of the millions and millions of problems with the text.  The characters are flat, the whole concept is unoriginal.  Your story is boring.  Your initial creative rush has died to a trickle of foul sludge.  New, exciting ideas hover at the edge of your mind, and you want to leave this one behind and chase them, even though you know it will all end the same, and that you won't be able to commit until you finish this one, and maybe, just maybe, a part of you still believes in that boring old story.

It is this that separates the writers from the dreamers.  Even when you don't want to face the story, you do it anyway, and stare at the document for hours, forcing out a sentence every few minutes.  Then it feels like the story is there again, but trapped behind a glass wall, and it can't get out.  Still, you plow on ahead.

Even when your mother walks into your room and asks "Oh, what are you doing?  Are you writing?"  "Yes."  "Is it for your blog?"  "No."  "Oh, do you have some sort of project, a story?"  "I don't really want to talk about it."  "Well, you could just say a manuscript," as she goes off in an offended huff, because even though we usually get along great, if there is a problem with our relationship then it's always my fault, and she never bothers to ask me if maybe I'm being belligerant because I'm upset about something, and what might that be?  Not unless I have a complete emotional breakdown and burst into tears, and even then it's hard to get her to actually listen.  Note to self:  When you start seeing a counselor in the fall, make sure to bring up your crapsaccharine relationship with your mother.

And then you're all frazzled and can't concentrate, and feel oddly violated and raw, so you maybe force out another sentence or at least finish the one you were on, then close down and let the story recover.  But it is still there, that nagging, unfinished business that you cannot quite leave behind you.  And you're going to have to go through it all over again tomorrow.

This is what separates the writers from the dreamers.

Writing

I'm not even insomniac right now.  A symptom of summer vacation.

So anyway, there's this.

For those too lazy to click on the link, it's a gay writing contest.  I could be published.  Seriously.

And so, in a major counting chickens way, I am going to go pretentious writer on you and talk about my writing process.

It starts, naturally, with ideas.  I looked at the contest guidelines, and all it gave me was a fictional (check) unpublished (check) short story about "being queer."  That should be easy, I thought.  Everything I touch turns to gay.  Honestly.  Even dragons (though really it's more like they're third-gendered...hey, they're my dragons, I can give them whatever biology I want!).

Then I dug up the short pieces I currently have in the works (a very generous way of saying a couple paragraphs saved in a word document), and realized that they somehow all featured heterosexual relationships.  No cheating on this one; I would have to start from scratch.

It was obvious to me that there would have to be some sort of fantastical or supernatural element to the story.  Because it's me.  So in a sense this story would be a double subversion, both of a typical fantasy story and of the typical gay story.  No gay angst or bully-story (I hate bully stories, with utmost apologies to anyone who has ever been bullied).  And absolutely NO.  LESBIAN.  PARENTS.  I will save my rants on the gay-lit genre for other posts; suffice to say that, as my last post hints at, a major part of my inspiration for writing comes from being annoyed at how stories are all written this way, when I would much rather someone tried writing it that way.

Essentially, that is how I decided on a recently-outed lesbian high-schooler with a vampire brother.

Sometimes, writing it easy.  The story is just there, burning like an overly poetic flame, and you have to dash to capture it all on paper before it burns out.  Yes, I really do mean paper.  I feel like I think better with paper.  This feeling rarely lasts for more than a week, which is one of the reasons I have trouble with longer works.

The first draft is insane.  You just write.  It doesn't matter if it makes sense; what matters is that it is right.  Censorship is not your friend.

Then, after a rest to ease my cramped wrist, I type it up as the second draft.  My first draft of the vamp story was 30 pages written, a bit over the 5k word limit, so some things had to be cut.  Some scenes had to be cut anyway, because they had nothing to do with the plot; or, at the very least, incorporated into other scenes that were relevant. 

After that comes what is more of a draft number 2.5 than a third draft.  Read through what you typed, fix typing errors, delete pointless sentences, clean up the prose a bit.  Make it presentable.  Because that's the next step.  Presenting it. 

You can look at my old posts to see how bad this is for me.  It really is just pure cowardice on my part, though.

You see, if no one ever sees anything I have written, I can congratulate myself on being an unrecognized genius, and indulge in all sorts of fantasies of what being a famous genius author would be like.  I disgust myself, sometimes, I really do.

If, on the other hand, I do show it to some select, trusted, friends, and they tell me "Yeah, it's good, but you need to elaborate on that plot point and add some description, I only know what one character looks like, and where are they anyway?" and I take their good suggestions and finish up the story, and send it off to the publisher...I get fifty bucks and a published work.  I gain a foothold in the publishing world, so that all this writing I do might mean something someday (stories don't mean anything if you got no one to tell them to, and all that).  At the very least, I get my first rejection note and attain my first milestone on the way to being a published author.  That seems the more likely scenario, because you just know that some 14-year-old girl is going to submit a poem about wanting to kill herself, which trumps vampire junkies by a college student.  With apologies to anyone who has ever written poetry about wanting to kill themself. 

The point of the last paragraph was to say that a real rejection letter is better than dreams of grandeur.  Right?

Then again, I suppose the point of having dreams is to follow them, and no one ever said that would be easy.

Was it all a dream?

I just spent five months in Germany.

In a few short hours, my family is going to come pick me up, we're going to do some touristing and meet up with relatives, and then it's back home for the summer.  Three long lazy months later, back to college.  Good old normal college life, with friends and fun classes and things happening.

The past semester is a blur.  I feel like I just got here, and just started figuring things out and feeling comfortable with the language and meeting people and just getting myself organized.  It feels like only a week or so ago that our jetlagged group was dragged down to the city center to register.  We were all so confused and tired and had so much paperwork thron at us, while starting our class of people who all already knew each other.  Not to mention buying food, cooking food, buying cooking implements, laundry detergent, etc., etc. 

And now it's over.  Just like that.  Like a dream.  A break from reality that does not quite make sense, but you simply accept it.  That seems to go on forever until suddenly it is over.  And once it is over, it is relegated to some dusy corner of memory with all the other odd but useless bits.  Because none of it ever actually happened. 

I could wake up in my bed at home and find that the whole past year never happened, that I need to get ready for fall semester of sophomore year, and that there is still time to do things differently.  How, I am not sure.  Switch my program, make it a full year in Austria.  Spend less time with certain people.  Or maybe more time - maybe if I had been more careful, none of it would have happened (I have not posted anything here about the shitstorm of last semester.  Just think Rent without the AIDS.  Well, metaphorical AIDS.  And no musical numbers either.)

Only time doesn't work like that.  In the words of Die Aertzte "Du hast nur dies eine Leben/Wenn's vorbei ist, ist's vorbei."  You just have this one life, and when it's passed, then it is past.  Memories stack up on each other, and there is no way to go back and change them. Everything is forever.

Yes, I did have sort of a mental crisis here.  A few of them actually.

But I got better.

That's another funny thing.  I got better just as I am about to leave, even though I don't know why.  Probably just positive attitude change from the prospect of seeing my family again.  After all, this place and time caused me so many problems, it's not like it would turn around and fix any for me, would it?

It is a dream because I don't feel any different upon waking.  Real life changes you.  Dreams don't. 

Getting a bit wishy-washy here, so I'll post again when I figure out what I'm actually trying to say.