…And then I looked at my word processor screen and realized to my horror that I had already written all of this before!  A repeat! It’s a story/character/theme/technique/whatever that I’ve written before!
Oh Christ. I’m a hack. All I’m ever going to write is the same dripping crapsicles I have written before and I might as well commit ritual seppiku with my laptop. (Don’t think it can be done? Me either but I bet there’s someone on youtube who’s tried.)

So here’s my reality check.

I’m not the first one to do this. I won’t be the last, either. Writing is a thing of development. Everyday we’re developing better habits, better skills, and better methods. But that isn’t the only thing we’re always developing. We’re developing characters and ideas and settings and all of those other things that make up the stories we create.

Go ahead, look back into the history of say, Phillip Marlowe. He didn’t spring fully formed from the pen of Chandler as he appeared in The Big Sleep. Actually, Marlowe had appeared in a number of short stories with a few other names before he hit his stride in the first novel. Some of that was editorial decisions, but I think a lot of it was Chandler trying to feel out the character before he devoted a whole book to the guy. I’m glad he did. The level of character knowledge and detail Chandler had on Marlowe made him feel real. (That will explain my crush on the boyscout, you understand. It’s the quality of the character design, not because I’m a gooey woman.)

Am I saying you should write the same thing over and over? No, obviously that’s bad writing, or at least, dull writing. What I’m saying is don’t be afraid to practice a scene before you implement it. I’m saying try the same setting a few times to see what characters really ought to live there. I’m saying let your heroine go through a short story or two to be sure you really want her to be a punk rock werewolf hunter before you start writing the whole novel. Maybe in writing her, you’ll discover she’s more exciting as a tax accountant. (Okay, I dare someone to write a tax accountant/werewolf hunter.)

The greats have done it, you’ll do it anyway, might as well pretend like you were planning to do it all along.

[For more on recycling, try this!]

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One day I watched my almost-eight month old defy death. Nothing tragic really, she just decided to crawl off of the edge of the bed and plummet head first to the ground.

I was watching, mind you, and got my hands on her fat little trunk before she got all the way over the edge, but it was clear her intent. Yes, she wanted to crawl off the bed. No, she didn’t know it would hurt her. She hasn’t any concept of ‘I could get hurt,’ or ‘that might be scary.”

In fact, she really has no real sense of fear. Now, don’t get me wrong, she’ll get afraid after the fact. Also the dark. But things that she can see and reach for, things she can touch or taste, or somehow experience, no, she hasn’t any fear. She just reaches and pushes and explores with little concern for the consequences.

Sometimes, she’ll storm her way across the couch at a full crawling clip towards the desk where my husbands computer sits. The purpose for this? Apparently, her only desire is to grab on to the printer/scanner monstrosity on his desk and hang from it. There’s no where else she could go on the desk. She just wants to hang and climb and challenge herself, and gravity be damned! My husband thinks her suicidal need to hang from the printer/scanner has something to do with scanning her butt like those drunk secretaries do at company Christmas parties.

I’ve even found her attempting to climb my book shelf. Maybe to get at my books, or maybe, more likely, just to climb -something.-

I remember shortly after she was born. She would roll onto her stomach and cry and cry, mostly we figured, in frustration that she couldn’t move. She couldn’t go. It was so sad to watch her little head bob up and down, and her little feet kick no where to get her somewhere. The moment when she first got to her knees and really honestly crawled for the first time, she literally squealed with joy. Joy at being able to move and be in control. The dangers and perils that come of being in charge of your own movements just don’t matter. Moving matters.

Willy Shakespeare says ‘Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.’

What does this have to do with creating, with writing? To be honest, I didn’t know at first, I just watched my daughter and her fearlessness and kept being nagged by a sense that there was something I ought to learn in it. I realized it was trait in her that I respected, and envied it a little. Which is when it occurred to me, of course, I’m a dummy. I’m afraid. I’m afraid of putting my out there that it’s going to be rejected. That after all this time I’m going to find out I was never a ‘real writer’ after all. Whatever that means. I was afraid to take a risk just because there might be a consequence.

In that silly little moment of realization, I put together what my daughter was trying to teach me, unknowingly perhaps, when she tried to crawl off the edge of the bed.

I’ve decided to shrug off fear and doubt, and dive head first into the thing I’m the most afraid of. (You know, other than motherhood, ’cause that’s one I was gleefully thrown into, rather than dove.) So I’m putting my writing out there, out everywhere. I’m biting back my fear and taking a chance, because, like my daughter, I don’t know if I’m absolutely going to fall if I climb up on the scanner, and so what if I do? I’ve got plenty of people who love me and will catch me.

So anyway, thank you Tina, for being fearless, and reminding me how. /gooey mom time.

Also: Updates on the Anthology I was included in, you can download a sneak preview.

Three of my White Wolf titles are out, buy them at your local Dork Store. Immortals, Ancient Mysteries, Ancient Bloodlines.

And, my article for Pyramid Magazine is now out, here.

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Somehow, my husband has convinced me that going back and finishing my two year degree is cheaper for us right now than paying back some outstanding student loans. He’s probably right, and I guess I ‘need’ the education since I only seem to be getting so far with in my personal growth.

So, I start school again tomorrow and I am feeling very very mixed about it. Most of it’s just online classes to satisfy some random person’s idea of what a degree should look like. I am taking a creative writing class on campus in person with, I’m sure, a bunch of 18 year olds hoping for an easy A. 

It might be awesome, and I probably shouldn’t let my general hatred for the education system get in the way of my good time, but the feeling remains and I’m having a hell of a time shaking it.

In other news, I have a few things out to a couple of compainies, and I’m trying not to dismiss them just because it’s taking longer to hear back than I want. I have no outstanding work and that’s making me buggy. I can find my own work, of course, and I will, but contract work is just so much nicer. 

I have a head full of romantic stories. I don’t usually, and so it’s strange to me. Maybe I’m in heat.

On that note, 

TTYL

Current Mood:  anxious

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