I have just returned from Pikes Peak Writer's Conference 2015 in Colorado Springs. It was a chaotic, amazing three days with some incredible people, and I am physically exhausted.
This Convention marks the three year anniversary since I started this blog, and thus, the documentation of my journey to become a published fiction author. In that period I have not published a book, or hired an editor, or an agent. I haven't even finished a manuscript. In three years I have completed two chapters and edited the others, so now I have five. Five incredible chapters.
Though I haven't achieved any of the goals most aspiring authors set up for themselves, and precious few that I made for myself three years ago, the time has not been entirely wasted. I did get into Mizzou, and I did graduate with a BA in English (emphasis on Creative Fiction). While there, my raw talent as a writer was confirmed and I was given instruction and practice to develop that talent into skill. I learned that I can trust myself on the quality of my own work. Now there are only two things that separate me from finishing First Monday Park, and they are time and discipline.
Family comes first, and toddlers make writing difficult. A simple adult conversation can be an ordeal with the munchkins clamoring for snacks and entertainment while actively spreading said snacks onto the floor and dismantling the furniture for said entertainment. Writing fiction is, for me, a more difficult prospect than talking, which might explain why I am not the greatest conversationalist. However, there are gaps in the day, brief flashes of time between staving off starvation and medicating boo boos with kisses, that I can exploit for the advantage of literary art. I just have to keep the word processor open and the next sentence or two ready. I have no idea how long this should take, but I'm setting a goal for a finished first draft in twelve months. In order to help, I'm going to either find or create a critique group by the end of July.
Don't wish me luck, I don't need it. Wish me an artificially high threshold for distraction as it affects my emotional composure, because I will need a lot of that.
Monday, April 27, 2015
Sunday, April 12, 2015
Create Art
I don't create art any more. I do things, useful things. I meal plan, grocery shop, and cook. I wash, dry, fold, and put away clothes. I take kids potty and help sort out their problems, and I clean a lot, but I don't create art. Heck, I don't even blog anymore.
My peak period of art creation was in college, where I had requirements and deadlines. Even then I didn't finish anything publishable. Now my creative production is on hiatus for an undetermined period of time while I raise kids from the newborn to toddler stage. I plan on coming back, and I plan on finishing something. I plan on it being amazing, and I will feel proud of myself for bringing something beautiful and perhaps insightful into existence. While I wait for the day when I may create once more, I am restricted to consuming art.
I don't mean to complain. I like to consume art. I can't legitimately claim to be good at it; I like art/narrative to be entertaining and edifying in some way, and true aficionados seem to gravitate toward boring, yet angsty narratives in which protagonists psychologically implode around their own bad decisions. I also like the ability to comprehend the deeper message embedded in the narrative without having previously read every single thing the author has read in order to get their umpteen obscure references. Yes, I am aware that this sometimes IS the deeper message; with our own unique experiences and lenses of understanding, we are given to differing interpretations of the same exposures and are thus isolated from our fellow man and all of that. I get it. I even agree with it. I still don't think you are justified in exacerbating the problem by intentionally participating in the miscommunication, which apparently means that I really don't get it, so I am bad at consuming narrative. That's ok, you don't have to be good at something to enjoy doing it.
Honestly, I could get away without producing literature ever again. Every time I go to the library, every single time, my head spins a little at the sight of all those books. Gargantuan rooms stuffed with shelves stuffed with hundreds of thousands of books, so many that I could not read half of them even if I tried. What is this arrogance suggesting that I need to add my own voice to the tumult? Some of those are not great books, granted. Some of them are pretty terrible, so let's not even talk about those. Let's just consider the books that a lot of other people have already read and agree are pretty great. Let's start with Homer, Euripides, and Virgil, then move through Dante, Chaucer, and let's not forget the Green Knight Poet and whatever bard it was that penned Beowulf, which reminds me of THE Bard. We'd have to include Dumas, Byron, Keats, Dickens, Bronte, Carroll, Austen, Twain, Stoker, Shelley, Melville, Conrad, and Hugo, and of course the Russians Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Gogol, to name a few. Crap, I forgot Wells, Verne, and Stevenson, and we haven't even gotten into the 20th century which includes Tolkien, Lewis, Lee, Wolf, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Burgess, Joyce, Salinger, Carver, Adams, and Orwell, and then there are the authors who are still living, such as Rowling, Rushdie, Lee, Niffenegger, Greene, Oates, Prolix, Collins, King, and I think I've made my point. There are too many good books for a single person to read in one lifetime, not with reasonable expectations, anyway. By writing a book, I am asking people to read my work instead of Poe, or White, or Golding. I'm saying I'm a better use of time. It seems like unmitigated selfishness and hubris to presume to even attempt at inserting myself into the literary riot.
But I want to try.
But I'm scarred to try.
It's not only the good literature that is already in the wind. It's my own deteriorating skills. I used to be pretty good at writing fiction. Exactly how good is impossible to know, but I was good enough to excite my instructors. Good enough to sink my readers into what John Gardner described as "the dream," good enough to get my admittedly captive audience to listen to my point of view and ask for more. That was when I was practicing, when I had an experienced, trained instructor and a few inexperienced peers combing through my work, looking for flaws, looking for weaknesses. That was before my kids were toddlers, when I could afford a little time to daydream about orcs and fairies and portals that let me slip into new worlds unexplored by Lindgren, or Barrie, or anyone else. Now I'm too busy to get lost in the frivolous musings that fueled my ambition. I wouldn't change my life right now, even if I knew for certain that it were the death of my literary opportunities, but I hope that it isn't. I hope I get my own shot at immortality, and I hope that when that time comes, I can make the most of it.
EDIT
I don't want to give the impression that I hate my life, or imply that the obstacles preventing me from writing are someone's fault. I fully expect this to be a simple life stage where I am too busy to write the way I want to write. If I wanted it enough I would do it, but for the moment there are things that I want more.
My peak period of art creation was in college, where I had requirements and deadlines. Even then I didn't finish anything publishable. Now my creative production is on hiatus for an undetermined period of time while I raise kids from the newborn to toddler stage. I plan on coming back, and I plan on finishing something. I plan on it being amazing, and I will feel proud of myself for bringing something beautiful and perhaps insightful into existence. While I wait for the day when I may create once more, I am restricted to consuming art.
I don't mean to complain. I like to consume art. I can't legitimately claim to be good at it; I like art/narrative to be entertaining and edifying in some way, and true aficionados seem to gravitate toward boring, yet angsty narratives in which protagonists psychologically implode around their own bad decisions. I also like the ability to comprehend the deeper message embedded in the narrative without having previously read every single thing the author has read in order to get their umpteen obscure references. Yes, I am aware that this sometimes IS the deeper message; with our own unique experiences and lenses of understanding, we are given to differing interpretations of the same exposures and are thus isolated from our fellow man and all of that. I get it. I even agree with it. I still don't think you are justified in exacerbating the problem by intentionally participating in the miscommunication, which apparently means that I really don't get it, so I am bad at consuming narrative. That's ok, you don't have to be good at something to enjoy doing it.
Honestly, I could get away without producing literature ever again. Every time I go to the library, every single time, my head spins a little at the sight of all those books. Gargantuan rooms stuffed with shelves stuffed with hundreds of thousands of books, so many that I could not read half of them even if I tried. What is this arrogance suggesting that I need to add my own voice to the tumult? Some of those are not great books, granted. Some of them are pretty terrible, so let's not even talk about those. Let's just consider the books that a lot of other people have already read and agree are pretty great. Let's start with Homer, Euripides, and Virgil, then move through Dante, Chaucer, and let's not forget the Green Knight Poet and whatever bard it was that penned Beowulf, which reminds me of THE Bard. We'd have to include Dumas, Byron, Keats, Dickens, Bronte, Carroll, Austen, Twain, Stoker, Shelley, Melville, Conrad, and Hugo, and of course the Russians Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and Gogol, to name a few. Crap, I forgot Wells, Verne, and Stevenson, and we haven't even gotten into the 20th century which includes Tolkien, Lewis, Lee, Wolf, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck, Burgess, Joyce, Salinger, Carver, Adams, and Orwell, and then there are the authors who are still living, such as Rowling, Rushdie, Lee, Niffenegger, Greene, Oates, Prolix, Collins, King, and I think I've made my point. There are too many good books for a single person to read in one lifetime, not with reasonable expectations, anyway. By writing a book, I am asking people to read my work instead of Poe, or White, or Golding. I'm saying I'm a better use of time. It seems like unmitigated selfishness and hubris to presume to even attempt at inserting myself into the literary riot.
But I want to try.
But I'm scarred to try.
It's not only the good literature that is already in the wind. It's my own deteriorating skills. I used to be pretty good at writing fiction. Exactly how good is impossible to know, but I was good enough to excite my instructors. Good enough to sink my readers into what John Gardner described as "the dream," good enough to get my admittedly captive audience to listen to my point of view and ask for more. That was when I was practicing, when I had an experienced, trained instructor and a few inexperienced peers combing through my work, looking for flaws, looking for weaknesses. That was before my kids were toddlers, when I could afford a little time to daydream about orcs and fairies and portals that let me slip into new worlds unexplored by Lindgren, or Barrie, or anyone else. Now I'm too busy to get lost in the frivolous musings that fueled my ambition. I wouldn't change my life right now, even if I knew for certain that it were the death of my literary opportunities, but I hope that it isn't. I hope I get my own shot at immortality, and I hope that when that time comes, I can make the most of it.
EDIT
I don't want to give the impression that I hate my life, or imply that the obstacles preventing me from writing are someone's fault. I fully expect this to be a simple life stage where I am too busy to write the way I want to write. If I wanted it enough I would do it, but for the moment there are things that I want more.
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