Month: January 2007

Storytime

Nova Ren Suma2 Comments

I had some storytime early this morning—and by that I mean time to play around with the short story I’m writing before I had to go to work. Sure, I was sitting between two nosy newspaper readers who kept glancing at my screen, sure, it was cold and my ears about froze off on the walk there, and sure there’s a lot of work to be done on the story, but still. Sometimes a tiny taste is enough.

Thing is, I’m not sure if working on only stories is enough. I know at the beginning of 2007 I said I had no real resolutions for what I’d set out to accomplish this year, but that’s pretty much impossible for me. I’m a girl of gradiose dreams, always have been, and in order to crawl closer to the dream I make little markers for myself to hit. It seems more attainable that way, even if it’s more attainable by the smallest smidge of a smidge. Always secretly hopeful, you know? So… for the first half of the year my plan has been to focus on the short-story collection. Write a story a month, that kind of thing. But there’s an itch—I feel it now—an itch to write something longer—a novel. Either a new one or the one I have from before. What is holding me back? Oh, that’s right: Fear. Fear of rejection (again). Fear of complete and utter failure. I really wish I could get past this.

But back to stories. Let’s just talk about stories because they’re smaller, and quicker, and when I’m working on a story I can see to the end. Also, you don’t need a literary agent to publish them. I like that a lot.

So speaking of stories, it’s been exciting—and fun—and just plain weird—to have people read my story I mentioned in the post below. Before going to bed last night I posted about it on Myspace and now some people I never expected to have any interest in a story published in a literary journal have read it and messaged me. It’s cool. Mostly. Also it’s like being exposed. I guess this is what those published authors feel when they’re up on the stage staring at an audience of people who’ve read their book—a million trillion times more, yes—but it is a bit like someone seeing your underwear and then feeling free to tell you what they think about the color, now isn’t it?

The Spammers Are So Prolific

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Wow, the spammers have been writing a lot lately. I envy their productivity. Overnight I’ve been getting hundreds of spam comments, and if I let 5 minutes go by I get 15 more. They are not only about Viagra, Nigeria, and other medicinal or foreign locales, some have become quite complimentary: “Great job!” “Nice writing!” “Good point!” they say. I’m overwhelmed. I only wish I could produce so much.

Unforgettable

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All this talk of stories and wishing on workshops (perhaps it’s just chatter in my head?) has got me lamenting the cold shoulder I’ve given one of my stories-in-progress. It really wants to be finished, and yet I had to put it aside for these recent deadlines.

I spent all weekend on a freelance copyediting project—I clocked in over 20 hours and now my neck burns. So the story didn’t get touched. Tomorrow is Monday and back to my day job—so the story won’t get touched. I have to write that spec chapter—and the little story, knowing no one, of such small significance I am writing this post instead of it . . . well, it won’t get touched.

I feel bad. I don’t want it to die on me while I’m out gallivanting around trying to pay the bills. So, until I can do something else, I am trying to find a way to keep the story alive and kicking. Maybe I could:

1. Print out what I have of the story so far and carry it around with me everywhere I go, even to (especially to) staff meetings.

2. Rest my head on it while I watch TV*.

3. Talk out loud to it when I’m on the elevator, or walking down stairs, or through the streets. If I’m lucky, it might answer.

4. Write the name of the story in my notebook like in junior high: Nova + Story Forever. Nova & Story. Story & Nova. Story Story Story Story Story Story all small and decorated with little stars and kissy lips and mascaraed eyeballs deep and twisting into the margin.

5. Repeat a line from the story in my mind until it becomes like an iconic song lyric that keeps replaying until I just can’t forget it and so MUST write it down in order to move ahead with my life.

6. Picture the main character sitting next to me, just hanging out until I have time for her, like a very persistent imaginary friend.

7. Keep the sentence where I left off on a sticky note and post it wherever I may be—like on my computer monitor or keyboard at work—or even in my pocket, against my hip, so I carry it everywhere, and rub it raw, and I forget I even have it… which might not help too much at all.

So, other busy-busy people, how do you do it? There must be some other more practical ways to keep an idea alive.

*Yes, I am busy, but I am very tired and sometimes I just want to watch TV.

Are you going to say that’s another reason I’m not writing the story?

Fine. How about…

8. Tomorrow, when I get home from work, maybe try not to turn on the TV.

Catching Up

Nova Ren Suma10 Comments

That crash writing project left me reeling—I am very, very behind in posting here and reading all my favorite blogs. But what happened, you may wonder. Did I finish? I did. I did! So, yes, I would now like a lollipop.

In the past week, a scattering of things happened.

* A story of mine in a lit mag I admire!
One of my short stories appears in the latest issue of Small Spiral Notebook—an e-book of the issue is now available online until the printed copies are rescued. More info from the editor here. I hope you’ll consider supporting this incredible magazine. (And I’m not just saying that because they were nice enough to take my story, I swear!)

* More details on the crash:
So, somehow, with little sleep, many vitamin-C fizzy drinks, and intense drive, I made my deadline. The next night I had some extras to add in, and a few edits, and I made that, too. I would have expected to crash, literally, at this point—sleeping with abandon even through the alarm clock—but it was weird: I had caught a second (or third? or twenty-third?) wind. I wasn’t even tired anymore, just a little loopy. So I caught up on free episodes of Ugly Betty online, gazed intensely at the walls, fantasized a life near the Pacific Ocean, and went to bed as if it were any other day. Huh. I guess crash-writing isn’t so stressful after all. Good thing, because…

* Need a ghostwriter? I’m back.
I took a break, but after the crash project—same day as turning in the last little bits, in fact—I got asked to sample for another project. I have the spec assignment here, which involves watching some shows and reading some scripts to see if I can get the voice and then diving in for a sample chapter or two. I do hope it works out because I really like working with this editor. I’m also supposed to be sampling for something else; I might get the spec assignment next week. And why would I be doing this, after all I said about wanting to stay focused? 1) It pays. 2) It pays more—much more, when you add up the hours—than freelance copyediting. 3) There is something so incredibly fulfilling about seeing a book you wrote in print, even when your real name appears nowhere on it. I can’t explain that feeling. I mean, okay, the feeling is thousands of times better when it comes to the story in Small Spiral Notebook—nothing can compare to that. But since no book publishers are banging down my door begging to publish my real novel, I’ve got to do the next best thing. The challenge will just be finding a way to balance it with the writing that actually has my name on it. And I know it will be a challenge.

* A box of books on the floor of my kitchen.
Speaking of ghostwriting, two days ago I received a carton of novels I wrote, packed in a warped box filled with little styrofoam bits that smelled like someone’s cat. I picked up one of the books and sneezed. Still, I’m psyched to have them. Even if I have no one to show them to—except for my mother.

* And something to do this summer?
Also in the mail was an acceptance letter to a writers conference. I’m with W on this one–dying to go, but I can’t afford it—so I’m keeping my fingers crossed for any kind of scholarship they can offer. (This isn’t the one in Italy, though. Congrats, W!)

* Now back to the grind.
Just because I finished one deadline doesn’t mean I don’t have another. A copyediting project that was delayed for many months surprised me by arriving in my inbox, so here I am, two days to deadline, Webster’s 11th at my side, needing to stop this blog-updating and FOCUS. I won’t do a play-by-play on the editing, though. No “I’ve added a serial comma!” or “Typo #33!” I swear.

So all that was to say, this week was pretty decent. Now how are you?

Overboard!

Nova Ren Suma4 Comments

Feedback from samples of what I wrote over the weekend came back with this response: Too long. Waaaaaaaay tooooooo looooooong. Have I ever mentioned how I can’t shut up? Like when I write posts here and I can’t stop whining and I drive everyone away? Like right now?

Oh, yes, I knew the manuscript was too long, and I’m chopping, clipping, reshaping now. I could say much more about this process. I could talk about how, when I was a girl, I was too shy to talk out loud in a roomful of people—espcially a classroom—and the only way I was ever able to communicate anything worth saying was to write it down. I could say I held in so many things for so long and that’s why now I can’t shut up. I could say that all I wanted was for someone to read what I write, and when something is actually being published, when someday soon people will pick up the book I’ve written and read it—even if, especially if, these people are twelve-year-old kids—I just get so excited I can’t stop myself. Ask me for a story and I’ll write you a novel. Go on, ask me. Or maybe you shouldn’t. I could say much more about this, but I won’t. I am stopping

right

about

now.

It takes great restraint.

Crash Writing (*Now in Real Time!)

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A few days ago I agreed to write a crash freelance project. It is due next week, ideally Monday, but I asked for Wednesday to give myself a cushion in case I completely fall apart and start writing in tongues. The book will be 48 pages, but it will have photos, and it is an adaptation of something that already exists, so it’s not as bad as all that. This is possible. This is what freelance writers do, especially when they need cash for a new apartment. I am not crazy for saying yes. I am not going to mess up. I can do this this, I want this, I’m talking out loud to myself now, oh great. Really, I can do this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah—I hope so.

…

Those ellipses above are me taking a pause between writing that introductary freak-out paragraph and this one. In that time—shown by the three little dots—I wrote 1 page. Huzzah, a page! Oh, and also I am getting a cold and sneezed appoximately 12 times. So, with this pace in mind, and with sheer devotion and breaks only to eat and sleep, I can finish this in, um, 45 hours and 540 sneezes. Wait. That doesn’t sound right.

UPDATE: About 4 o’clock, only on page 13, but tissues in good supply. How long do you think that line for coffee is, hmm?

4:51 pm: Page 14, head swimming, will make my way through the wind & ice home, try to write on the couch. Plus E is making soup!

And later: Stalled for the night; will reconvene tomorrow morning.

And the next morning: On page 18. So that’s, what?, just 30 more pages to go?

12:30 pm, Sunday: Just now hit page 22. Slowly, slowly it’s coming… Will someone bring me lunch?

Little bit later: Page 26. Just remembered protein bar in backpack. Think it’s two o’clock. Thoughts come only in staccato.

3:20 pm: Stuck on a sentence. I’m just sitting here, in the middle of the sentence, looking at it, knowing I have to shove some words in there. It’s an odd in-between place, the gaping middle of an unfinished sentence. I mean, where do I go from here? Oh yeah, I’m on page 27, but if I finish this sentence I can be on page 28.

3:23 pm: Did it. It took like 7 words. God, I’m pathetic.

3:43 pm: I just want to interrupt myself to say that I’m amazed at how long this takes—writing. Sometimes it floors me how many hours I’m at it and I look at the clock and I’ve only gotten this far? I AM ONLY ON PAGE 29, for real? I could bake a cake faster. I mean I can’t even really cook, but if I followed the recipe the thing would be half-eaten by now and I’d have crumbs all over my face.

3:44 pm: If you haven’t noticed, I think about food quite often.

4:39 pm: Talking about time moving quickly, a whole hour has passed. Now I’m on page 30. But in that time I wasn’t entirely working on page 29. Oh, I had page 29 open and I was making little spurts of attempts to work on it, but I got to playing around on Wikipedia, too, and I read all about Jonestown because there was a documentary about it on the History Channel last night—and I should say that this project is in no way related to Jonestown—and I look up at the clock and it says 4:39. Perfect example of how wasteful I am when it comes to time. In addition, as an aside, my fingers are very cold and that’s not helping with the typing.

5:02 pm: You know when you’re done but you can’t be done so you keep going? That’s where I am right now.

5:39 pm: I’m cheating. I’m a big fat cheater. I’ve moved ahead into the empty pages past page 30, just trying to note the events in order, plan out what I’ve got to do. Soon I will walk home. On my mind is the ticking of the clock and—if you must know—a great desire for homemade macaroni and cheese.

6:01 pm: Must. Leave. Building. I cannot sit in this chair any longer. I’ll find a new chair, at home, and sit in that. I haven’t given up for the night just yet!

7:09 pm: I am home. I am not writing. I am TALKING about writing. I am PRETENDING that I am going to write by putting the pages I am using for reference beside me and gazing at them absently. Soon I will pick up the pen (the keyboard) and start on the next page. Either that or I will eat dinner, which is tofu and broccoli in apple-sauce sauce over that good fluffy white rice, which I’m sure has a more technical name, but E’s the one cooking so he would know.

Early, early Monday morning: I’m back… still going…

9:30 am: Gotta head to work. On page 39… It’s going to be a long night tonight.

The Mailbox

Nova Ren Suma4 Comments

I had been home a half hour when E asked me if I had picked up the mail from the box downstairs. I bolted upright on the couch. The mail? I had no memory of getting the mail when I passed the mailbox, but how could I have passed the mailbox without getting the mail?!

I am obsessed with mail. In the mail could be (1) an acceptance letter, (2) a rejection letter, or—more likely—(3) a pile of credit-card offers and bills. Every writer must know that feeling upon approaching the mailbox… good news could be in there, metered and stamped and buried at the bottom, just waiting to be torn open. It’s not like me to forget to check the mail.

E wasn’t concerned. He said we could just get the mail tomorrow.

But how could I leave the mail sitting there all night! I know myself: I’d dwell on it while eating dinner, I’d imagine SASEs while watching the movie we rented, I’d long for the mailbox, unable to focus on anything else. At night I’d wake every hour on the hour, itching to sneak down the stairs in my pajamas, I’d see little white envelopes in my dreams.

I couldn’t take it. “I have to go get it,” I said.

“You’re crazy,” he said.

“I know,” I said.

So I got re-dressed, found my keys, and climbed down the four flights of stairs to the mailbox in the lobby to find…

…one envelope containing tax forms.

Ah well. At least now I’ll be able to sleep.