The story’s moral, of course, ought to be “Never live somewhere where wolves are running around loose”
Lemony Snicket
Draft Zero of Wolf Children story (with wolves and children) is now finished.
I put my wolves back in my wolf children story.
Me: Breakthrough! My Wolf Children story shouldn’t have wolves in it.
Geoff: You already said it didn’t have wolves in it.
Me: Yes. But now there won’t be wolves in it.
Geoff: But it’ll still be called Wolf Children?
Me:: Of course it’s still going to be called Wolf Children.
Geoff: (long sighhhhhhhh).
I finished a new short story today. All typed. All proof-read. I need to be excited to start sending it out, but I just don’t know where to go with it. The longer I am from leaving church, the more stories I write about religion. Maybe that’s odd. Maybe I need to start writing those Amish romances that facebook was always advertising to me until I put up an ad blocker.
In any case, my new story is called This I Know, a line stolen from this hymn, which is one of the hymns I’ve always really liked. Now off to find it a home.
What would I do if I stopped writing?
I didn’t write last week. I was on vacation. I read three books I had to review. I watched some television. But I didn’t write and I didn’t feel bad about not writing. I didn’t feel the compulsion to write something down. I didn’t even open my dollar store notebook because I had an idea. I had no ideas, other than who the point-of-view should be for the last chapter of Wolf Children (You’re not actually going to call it that? Geoff says when it comes up in conversation, but I worry we’re past the point of calling it anything else.)
What if I stop writing? Is that really such a bad thing?
Who will I be then?
It is no secret that I have been feeling down about writing. Down to the extent of thinking maybe I should go retrain for something new. Because three degrees and a college diploma obviously isn’t enough for me. I need more degrees and diplomas after my name.
Writing is all uphill now. The only way to get better is hard work and I don’t know if I have any hard work left in me. I just want to be a good writer without having the slog to get there. Because it’s hard. It’s hard work and there are days when I’d rather have a nap. Every day. Every day I want to have a nap.
But even with hard work and trying to write every day, I don’t feel like I’m getting better. I feel like I’m treading water, just at that level of almost-good-enough. What do I do to get better?
Do I even want to try and get better?
All my filled up dollar store notebooks of stories once I’ve typed up anything of value in them? What do other writers do with theirs? Because I tossed all my old ones in the trash today but now I’m feeling like maybe there was a writers’ seminar where all the other writers were told what they’re supposed to do with used notebooks and I don’t know what I’m really supposed to do with mine.
Except for the fact that I’m now pretty sure I don’t know what to do with this, I put one of my Wolf Children characters in quarantine because she was annoying me. Or the story was annoying me. Or life was annoying me. Whatever.
Don’t really know what the point of my doing that was, story-wise, because now I’ve either got to backtrack and not put her in quarantine, or who knows. Stupid Wolf Children story. I keep trying to abandon it, but then I feel like I should at least finish one draft so I’ll stop having to think about it.
- Full, in depth editing of Book One of faerie story, currently scheduled for the week of July 19th. That week is faerie week. Monday, Tuesday will be reading out loud and correcting in pencil, Wednesday finishing up day, then Thursday, Friday making corrections in the computer file. Bleeding into the next week will be plotting Book Two.
- Wolf Children: Chapter One is, well, it exists. I have plans for Chapters Two, Three, and Four. Two is digging (in the first person). Three is stolen from The Dancer Upstairs (in the third person). Chapter Four is bad mothering (in the second person). Chapter Five is somehow tied back in to Chapter One in a way that does not exist even in abstract yet. Sigh.
- I think lists that only have two things are sort of pathetic. I mean, why make a list if there are only two things. Even only having one thing, one can view that as like a meta-deconstruction of a list, but two things in a list, just seems lazy. So this is my third point, to have three.
Hopefully, also, much reading.