Write Club

Write Club

PETERMBALL Works in Progress

We held the second write club of the year today, and I’ve discovered the seemingly terrifying power that comes with combining a walk across the magic, story-inducing Kurilpa bridge in the morning with a two-hour block of writing alongside Angela Slatter at the State Library. And the net result is a day where I’ve produced 3,500 new words I’m more or less happy with, most of which make up the first chapter of a new Aster novella. About two thirds of this was done at write club, which is now partially time-limited due to the fact that we’re borrowing space from the State Library, and the rest has been done after I got home later in the day and had a nap.

Turns out I rather like this writing thing. I think I’ll do more of it once this blog is done.

I’ve been pretty stringent about not applying deadlines to my year, either externally-imposed or self-imposed, but I think there’s a faint plan starting to coalesce in terms of what I’d like to do and when I’d like to have it done. It’s been ages since I had a plan I wanted to pursue, rather than one that I needed to pursue ’cause there were things that needed doing. It makes me feel all tingly and eager when I think about it.

 

A grumpy, crabby kind of blog post

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Yesterday…

Well, yesterday I did not run away and join the circus, but it was probably one of those days where I would have if I had viable circus-type skills and access to a travelling circus to run away with. I did not turn into the Incredible Hulk and smash things in a frenzy of anger. I did not resign from my dayjob to take up a position that would be more useful to the world at large, such as hunting werewolves or wrangling wild unicorns or, you know, going into politics.

But, oh,  I was sorely tempted.

Especially by the werewolf thing, which, really, goes to show how much I disliked certain aspects of yesterday, because I’m actually quite fond of werewolves.

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We actually had a full cohort at write-club last night, which is the first time all four write-clubbers have been in the same place since other people started joining the inimitable Angela Slatter and I on a regular basis.

As predicted, I did the sensible thing and started working on the next installment of Flotsam. We all gathered and ate and ate chocolate, and 2,311 words later, I was still starting on the next installment of Flotsam, largely because it was one of those days with there irritations of the dayjob had carried through to writing.

Finally write-club was over and everyone went home, and I was again afflicted with the not-sleeping which has become so common of late, so I dragged out a pad and a pencil and took another crack at the story, and it’s possible I came out with something that may actually be a beginning.

Then I lay in bed, still not-sleeping, and pondered how much can be considered enough to satisfy the guilt of not-writing-enough, and I still have no satisfactory answers.

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There is, most likely, another potential buyer walking through my flat this morning. I can’t be entirely sure, because the real estate agent no longer sends the appropriate documents. I just get cheerful text messages asking if there’s any chance of having a quick pop-around in the morning, which I’m not entirely sure means we’re coming and there’s nothing you can do about it or say no if you want, and we’ll respect it.

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So, yes, it’s a grumpy and crabby kind of bloggery from me today, because it’s been a grumpy and crabby kind of week.

Ordinarily, when this happens, I tell people to pat me on the head and go write until whatever isn’t working turns around and actually starts working, and for the most part they do and the grumpy goes away and I start sleeping normally again. It may take days or weeks or, in one instance, months, but eventually it works.

And, really, I guess that’s what I should probably go do.

International Women’s Day and A Writer’s Woe

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Today is International Women’s Day, which is one of those days that ought to be celebrated. I’m tempted to post more, but everything I come up with always sounds a little “yay for women” and/or overly patronizing, which isn’t really what I’m aiming for on a day that’s all about women’s causes and their achievements.

So, instead, I’m going to go find a worthy and appropriate cause to donate money to in celebration of the day. And later, possibly, I will attempt to write something doesn’t make me feel like a misogynist arse every time I touch the keyboard.

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I sent off the third story in the Flotsam series yesterday, after which I collapsed into bed and tried to sleep and eventually gave up and read all of The Hunger Games in one fell swoop because it was there and I was too lazy to climb out of bed and get something else to read and it was obvious that sleep wasn’t on the agenda. Then I just lay in bed and pondered things, like monthly deadlines and how slow I write and whether I ever really stand any chance of writing all the things I want to write before I run out of time to write them, especially when you consider the things I’ve already written which somehow didn’t quite work out the way I expected them too, and so I still want to write something to fill that raw spot that wants a specific thing written.

I mean, I want to write story that captures exactly what it is that I like about wrestling, which is kinda what the next installment of Flotsam is about, except I couldn’t really fit that idea into a short story. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s a novella, at the very least, and so I still have big story about the grandeur and spectacle of wrestling on the to-do list. I want to write a story that splices the premise of Buck Rogers with vampire lore, because the whole Buck Rogers’ series makes much more sense if he’s a vampire, and because I think a series of short books with lurid pulp titles like The Fangs of Jupiter and Bloody, Bloody Mars could keep me entertained for months. Hell, I’m not even done with unicorns or dragons yet, and lord knows I keep hitting those tropes. None of these are on the things I’m doing next list, they’re not even things I plan on getting to in the next ten years, but they’re sitting there on my to-do list because I don’t have the heart to take them off or I think I’ll want to do them one day, or I want to have them handy in case I do finally break down and start epublishing novels and things like whether or not someone else will publish the damn things become secondary considerations.

And I always sit around thinking, if I just wrote a bit faster I could get through them all, or perhaps, if I just quit the dayjob and had more time to work on things, but neither of these things address the fundamental problem. I got marginally more done while unemployed than I do now, and if I wrote faster it’s entirely possible I’d just add more ideas to the to-do list.

And there are still the things at the top of the list, the ideas still kludging together because they demanded novel-type shapes instead of the stories and novellas I’m more familiar with. Black Candy and the Great Swashbuclky Lovecraftian Ghoul Wahoo novel and Gothic: A Love Story (which will, eventually, probably come around to a new name that references Oubliettes, because I keep tacking more stories onto that world after the first one) and the occult western I’ve been making notes on and Claw and the book that I convinced Ben to co-write with me that I’ve been summarily ignoring since worldcon and…and…and…

The truth is, there isn’t enough time. Ever. I can’t really foresee a point where I look at the list and everything’s done. Some days I’m utterly bewildered as to how I’ll even manage to finish one novel, let alone the twenty-eight currently sitting on my list. We don’t even speak of the short stories. The last time I poked the draft of The Unicorns of Suggragette Three a dozen or so other stories started making noise about being finished.

It’s noisy, sometimes, inside my head. I always want to doing the next thing, or the thing that comes after that.

And tonight there is write club, where I will quite sensibly work on the fourth Flotsam story until I’m far enough ahead of the deadline to think about what’s next.

Black Candy, most likely, or Claw. ‘Cause the only way I’m getting through the list is one thing at a time.

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And now I go clean, for it is three hours to write-club and my house needs a good scrubbing.