Mini-Excerpt

The tunnels empty into a cave. I run, shards of glittering volcanic rock shivering and shattering around me, lacerating my face and hands. A torch is pressed into my hands, an urgent whispered “go” in my ear, arms enfold me quick and fierce, then release in a swirl of fire-lit blonde hair rushing into shadow. The ground tilts and I stumble, hands pierced by black razor shards as I catch myself. The torch rolls away and I clamor to my feet, grabbing the torch and running I know not where. The torch in my hand feels gritty-slick. I can find no hint of direction, no distant light of escape. Blood stings my eyes and I’m racing blind as deafening cracks warn the ceiling caving in. I trip, the torch flies and all is plunged into rumbling abyss. I pull myself to my feet, search frantically for direction as ceiling shards shatter all around, a cold sliver pierces through my skull and all is brilliant searing frigid light.

On admitting I'm not a ballerina

April's Camp Nanowrimo starts next week, and I'm beginning to geek out about it, already dreaming of chocolate chai lattes and airship pirates and the degradation of the temporal structure.

Meanwhile, I've finished and submitted my Amtrak Writer's Residency application, and have been dutifully managing my "significant social media contacts." I tweet now. I tumbl. I'm also working on a fiction piece for Ploughshares, though the process feels overly forced. I ride the steampunk novel like a wave, but this literary piece is a road-side root canal.

For instance: yesterday, I spent the great majority of my day writing a paragraph or two of uninspired literary goo, erasing it, and starting over. I finally relented and started working on the steampunk novel instead. Three pages later, I reluctantly surfaced because I had to leave work. I see no purpose in needless suffering in the writer's process. Writers are like dancers. Some are ballerinas. Some jump, jive, and wail. Give me Sing, Sing, Sing over Swan Lake any day.

So, maybe no Ploughshares.

If you'll excuse me, I have to find my sleeping bag and Coleman lantern...

Start

It's hard. Starting. Taking first steps, or even a leap of faith, it's hard. Surrendering to a desire that contradicts every rational impulse, acknowledging that persistent whisper you've tried to muffle for years. Your whole life? There are no guarantees, no safety net. No regular paychecks. Just...the desire.

I've ignored it, locked it away somewhere, an oubliette of the mind. Except I could hear it, whispering, singing. Mournful songs of abandonment. And I longed to release it, but reason forbids. Reason always forbids, with terms of penury, and inadequacy, and frustration. Visions of a terminally blank page, a cursor blinking in accusation. And a familiar voice warning me that artists, writers, musicians, unless they are lucky or brilliant, never make a living for themselves.

I'm not particularly lucky; neither am I brilliant. The stone-forged practical side chose to examine literature rather than create it. What better way to remain close to your first love than to teach it? Write about it? Immerse yourself in pools of others' creation? Become an acolyte of words.

But no. Enraptured as I was by the words of others, always I longed for my own expression. I feared that my words would be insufficient, lacking brilliance. And fear has clogged my veins for years. Fear of failure. Always, always, that fear. And reason. It's...not very logical, living by your art. Not safe at all.

Except I don't belong out there, among people with the talent for efficiency. I am not detail-oriented, task-driven, a team-player.

I belong here, infused with words, hijacked by stories.

But I need a deadline. One that I can't change or ignore. Otherwise, I allow fear and insecurity to dominate, frustration to choke me, despair to stay my hand. I surrender.

I've decided. A submission before May, a story written and perfected. A step, a leap of faith. To live by words.

Hyperfocus

I took some time off from writing over the holidays, as the pressure of an enormous story without end got too intense. I also needed some time to work through a rather nasty bout of jealousy, as some of my friends and family have been published and I'm still trapped in this enormous fictional world. Every time I sat down to write, I would feel this barb of jealousy work itself in deeper, and all my desire to write would drown in the pity puddle. I had to work through that before I could even consider getting back into my novel. And then I heard a little (though irritated) voice tell me to Quit Bitching about it and let it go.

(snarl) Fine.

So now, after the holidays and Spring Break-like Pity Kegger, I dropped the jealousy. And I've injected myself back into that fictional world.

But not the novel. Not just yet.

One of the issues I had post Nanowrimo was that, even after the 50,000 word goal had been reached, the story was still disjointed, disembodied, a complete and overwhelming mystery. I still couldn't see it, couldn't feel it, couldn't live in it. I would get in and immediately begin to hyperventilate because I had no idea what this world was really like. I had glimpses, I had some genre-specific environmental tropes that could guide me, but instead of seeing the world and the events and recording them, I was attempting to imagine them in situ, making everything up as I went along. Fun, but also overwhelming when considering an entire plot/theme arch.

Solution: start small. In this case, a short story. I picked one of the lesser characters and figured out his history. I'm working on this right now, actually, letting the character monologue, then going back and imagining my way through the events to draw out details. Still haven't decided if the story will be first or third person, but right now, that doesn't matter. It's all about his story at this point. Not only do I focus on one event and one character, but I limit my focus to one location, which for me is important, as this location demonstrates one variation of the Steampunk world. I only have to think about this one place, this one type of Steampunk, and the events occurring therein. SO much easier than worrying about a huge plot arch. But it fits into the novel and enriches the story as a whole. It also helps me develop the character. And I've already found a way of incorporating one of the themes from the novel.

Besides, a short story is easier to finish and submit for publication than a novel. Not to mention that it gets my name out there as a foundation for the publication of the complete novel.

Let's see how hyperfocus works.