Book Season, writing process, links aplenty

[bodlon]

Sam Starbuck, a friend in Chicago I keep meaning to visit before the year is out but keep being foiled by things like money and college, has a new book out called Charitable Getting.

If you’re unfamiliar, Sam works in extribula, or works that have spent a significant part of their life cycle in digital format before going into print. Charitable Getting is the second novel that he’s serialized online in rough draft format, where it’s basically workshopped by readers, and then revised and put into print. Check it out!

(Unconvinced? There’s a free download available too.)

~*~

So it’s November, and the frantic NaNoveling has begun. It’s strange, working on what is probably the sixth beginning of a novel I tried to start in the early months of this year. 2010, vaunted book year, has been a series of lessons about my writing.

One of the hardest to swallow has been the realization that I can make words all day, but they don’t always work. Lots of times, actually, they’re the wrong ones. I’ve thrown hundreds of thousands of words away this year, and I flinch at the thought of losing every single one.

Then there are the ones I keep but aren’t any good, or at the very least need More Cowbell to really be worth somebody’s time. These wrench like a crowbar in the guts, especially when I read something else fantastic. It’s this peculiar mix of jealousy and awareness that I know — KNOW — that I could raise my game somehow.

It’s especially terrible when I send something in that needs more polish. It keeps me up nights thinking about editors who are going to see these scratch and dent children and think, “did he phone this in or what?”

Some of this, obviously, is me being overly self-critical. Not all of it, though. There’s definitely a portion of it that’s coming from that place that asks, “How much of this is manufactured? How much of this is magic?” Some days the ratio is not what I’d like it to be.

November has had a lot of magic in it so far, though. That’s good.

Another hard lesson has been about just how much I need to let my process be my process. My first drafts are ridiculously delicate while they’re in progress, and I am terrible about wrecking them by engaging in irrational pleasing behaviors, or trying to work in tandem with people whose needs are different. My best stuff happens when I put out the soil and and water and my first draft is allowed to do what it does instead of pruning it and adding a bunch of stakes and spikes and landscaping.

After that, I can accommodate an army. Editors? Welcome guests. I just have to get past that fragile stage.

I think I also need to get into a habit of working with a critique group again, but I’m not quite sure where/how to start rebuilding that, or how to balance it when I haven’t got a finished draft on hand. Hm.

~*~

After reading “Drag Queen Astronaut” I kind of want to be Sandra McDonald when I grow up. Well, except that I want to be me when I grow up. You get the idea.

An article from the ACLU Blog of Rights about why the death penalty is scary. Hint: I do not mean as a deterrent for crime.

Also scary: the law in Wisconsin pertaining to marriages not legal in the state.

Megachurches are not, as a rule, something I’m a fan of. However, I do have to tip my hat to Jim Swilley. It’s people like him who are, I hope, going to change the sorts of conversations we’re having about LGBTQ people in this country.

Oh man. I really, really need to make a trip to Kansas. Shakespeare! Linguistics! It makes me feel all tingly.

Apex Magazine’s Muslim & Arab issue is live/available.

I really want to read this book.

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com

Comments

[copperbadge]

Awww, thank you for the bloggin'! :D