Friday, April 29, 2011

Feeling Like a Writer

There comes a point when you write and stop thinking you can't do it. Because you are doing it and whether the audience is large or small, the words come forth and you let them and give in to the compelling need to get them out. I've gotten to that point recently. It becomes about the writing itself and not the outcome. Not that readership is unimportant. I do believe readers will come, too. I just allow myself to write without consequence and worry less about the other stuff -- am I good enough? will this sell? am I building a strong platform? am I reading the right books? is my feedback valid? I'll continue to worry, but I'm allowing myself the freedom to enjoy the part that gives me the greatest satisfaction, which is exactly what I'm doing right now. Ink and bytes and lead.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Reading Moby Dick

A copy of Moby Dick is warming beneath my computer as I type. How does one begin an epic? I'm four pages in, and so far, I'm not intimidated. But frankly, I never wanted to read Moby Dick until recently.

I've started a new novel project, and it's not a romance. Far, far from it. Although it was a great experience to write my first MS (website), I've moved on to wider pastures. Green as before but much wider. More on the new project in a future post.

I am admittedly not well read. I read slower than average (likely) because I don't skimp. I want to understand the meaning of every passage and word. If I don't know a word, I look it up. If I don't understand a passage, I reread it until I do (am not 100% hard-headed). I generally don't write in margins of books, but I dog-ear. I like rereading the good parts. All that slows me down.

Moby Dick, obviously, brings up a lot of connotations. I'm ignoring the negative to read it with an open mind. Heck, the forward, etymology and extracts prior to Chapter 1 were enough to keep me interested as I launched into this endeavor. It'll take me a while. Settle in. Dickens next.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Why I Write...

... the same reason I get out of bed. I feel compelled. It's not an obsession (we'll revisit that). It's not an unnatural act. I write because it is a joy and feeds a yearning to discover. I feel both joy and discovery when I wake and when I write.

Fiction writing is very new to me. I never wrote a piece of fiction until August 2009, unless you count in 2nd grade when my parents went out on "date night," and I scribbled a story on loose-leaf titled "The Girl with Blue Fingernails." Awful. But I wish I still had it. What was I a really trying to say? (that's a joke)

I "discover" by pulling my imagination in sometimes obscure and always interesting directions from experiences still available in my brain. I'm more of a pantser (someone who writes by the seat of their pants) than a plotter, in that respect. I like to see what bubbles up. I plot but in a loose sort of way.

One of my favorite lines from a children's book, The Hello Goodbye Window, is delivered by a grandfather, who, upon the day's start, rises and declares: "Hello world. What have you got for me today!" That pretty much sums up my philosophy for waking and writing.