Tag: life

Here’s to the Silent Void

October 10th, 2020

Here’s to the silent void we send all our stories into.

Here’s to the hope they come out well.

Here’s to the waiting, the listening the watching, the wondering if it was real.

Here’s to the dark nights we all spend alone over black keys, crying into nothing about people we’ve never seen.

Here’s to the caffeine, the deadlines, the “making-ends-meet” that all fade away as if they never were the moment the words come.

Here’s to the voices in our heads. The ones that tell us write, even when it seems mad. The ones that never shut up, even when we tell them to.

Here’s to the unpublished, the rebels who dare to believe that the beautiful is possible even when the most miserable, depressing, and practical reality spits in our face.

Here’s to those of us who haven’t got a shred of proof that everything’s going to come out alright in the end, and here’s to those of us who don’t care to have it. Those who don’t dream, but plan, and plot, and whisper the possibilities in each other’s ears like revolution.

Here’s to dancing in the rain. To telling lies just because they fall a certain way from your tongue. To forgetting. To singing to the sky. Here’s to the swords we fight with, just to keep one single silver moment alive.

Here’s to never paying the slightest attention to “what can’t be done.” Because we believe in the promise we made that one day, it will.

Here’s to building the world of fairy stars and colored smoke. The one we believe in. The one we love.

Here’s to making it more than lifeless ink.

Here’s to writing the one word that lives inside them all–

Alive.

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Reading Update: May 18th, 2020

May 18th, 2020

Writing Status: …

Just finished another fantasy short story. I was a smidge worried about the reception since I’d written the better half of it during final exams…and, well, that’s not a good idea at the best of times.

I massacred an entire city of people in a NaNoWriMo project for the sake of backstory and didn’t even realize until I was reworking the story a couple of months ago. Then there was the inevitable

“Wait, I did what now?”

This short story had nightmares coming to life and a super spiteful/violent main character…I was aware of these features while writing it, so I gave my alpha readers a big warning: yes, I’m fine, no, I don’t need therapy, please prepare yourselves because this might get weird and I’m not sure what else slipped in at 2 a.m. when I wasn’t looking.

To be fair, I love the main character in all her deadly glory and think the monster sequences were fairly mild…but my opinion doesn’t matter. I wrote the thing.

The result?

Alpha Reader no. 1: Ships two main characters that were not meant to be shipped, is my most finicky reader and had no problem with the violence, thinks this is one of my best stories…

*screams in agony at having characters “shipped” when there is no romantic attraction again.*

Frankly, most of my stories have a romantic thread to them. A very slim romantic thread. Understated. Subtle. This one did not. I waited to see what my other readers would say before considering a massive rewrite.

Alpha Reader no. 2: ships none of the characters, generally likes monster stories, entertained by my careful dodging of tropes.

It’s actually a lot easier to dodge tropes than you think if you don’t know them. Or at least that seems to be the case with me. No. 2 is far more widely read in horror than I ever will be.

Anyway.

Alpha Reader no. 3: ships none of the characters, is reminded of acquaintances and happenstance from his youth, grumbles about having to go back to work after reading on lunch break. May have been holding dangerous thoughts toward me for creating inopportune suspense.

I love it when they say that. There are few things better than having all three readers arguing at full volume over the story while I can sit back and let the speculation grow rampant.

No. 3 described the possible romantic inclination as just a teenage boy having a crush–casually brushing it off and letting me breathe again. Boys fall in love at the drop of a hat at that age, he said, and of course why wouldn’t he when the girl was as awesome a monster-killer as that?

So I may change nothing, and just send the story to Writers of the Future as-is at the end of next month. Or maybe I’ll have a lightning strike of brilliance and write something entirely new.

Finishing a story though, usually means I have a little bit of an emotional slump. Modern life is so boring when there aren’t dragons and little needle-toothed monsters waiting to tackle you around every corner.

I had a nasty case of writer’s block. I was typing, but everything felt like gaggingly mawkish fluff.

Solution? Read a book. Not any book. A good book. Which leads us to:

Reading Update: Rooftoppers, by Katherine Rundell!

Yes. Very much yes. If you love heights and music and middle-grade fiction, this is a book for you.

I swallowed it whole in less than 24 hours.

I think I’ve been a little book-deprived.

I feel very much better. Like I could write something good again. Thieves and odd Victorian ladies living in the jungle, perhaps. Something whimsical and heart-wrenching.

Won’t say much more since I plan to make a full review…but still, it’s a wonder how I always seem to forget how good a book can make life feel.

Happy reading, all.
Writing Update: March 3, 2020

March 3rd, 2020

Writing Status: Unblocked, but at the most inconvenient times.

Why is it we have our most brilliant ideas when we have no pens? Or paper? Or are trying to study/work/are being observed by the more sane non-writerly portion of the population (is “more sane” even the right term for that)?

I shouldn’t have dazzling ideas during midterms.

Blah.

Last week was also the deadline for Pitchapalooza through NaNoWriMo. In short, I scribbled up a half-intelligible explanation of my (not at all polished) rough draft of the 60,000-odd word novel from last November, made myself sound like the New York Times Bestselling Author I am most certainly not, and hoped it got to be one of the 20 random book pitches chosen for review in two weeks.

The site can explain the logistics far better than I could.

But since the top 20 are chosen randomly, my odd, too-academic snobbery-sounding collection of short stories might have a chance.

Pasted it. Hit send.

That done, I stumbled across a random book called The Shadow of the Bear, read the shortest snippet, and caught wind of an idea.

Plunged back into my fictional version of wizardly New York, typed like a twenty-fingered madwoman for several hours while listening to the same fantasy song on repeat.

New character. New gaps in the ever-tangling timeline. New magical theories. Two deserted buildings. One quarter cup of pyrotechnics. Handful of existential theories of literature and philology folded into the batter. Stirred just until consistency is smooth.

Remembered I have a midterm exam in two days. Studied…

…and went back to writing.

This does not constitute advice.

If I sound distracted and breathless…it’s probably because I am. I tend to hit the ground running these days and hope somewhere along the way I’ll sprout wings.

But if writing is flying,

then I am already the happiest of Never-birds.
Remarkable

February 25th, 2020

Tell me.

I’ve started to wonder.

Someone said two words to me today. “Just another,” they were.

The words sank down inside my head and stayed there, refusing to come out. Just another. One more, like all the rest. Just another one. Add it to the stack.

It’s true. Lots of times, it’s true. We’re not all beautiful or clever or brilliant or dazzling. We’re not all princes or wizards. We’re not all shining stars or burning fires. We get up in the morning and rush off to work and blink blearily at a gray world wondering–and sometimes not wondering at all. Just being, ordinary.

We’re ourselves.

But I wonder. I wonder if anyone in the world can tell me what that means.

You aren’t what you come from. You aren’t where you’ve been. You aren’t where you’re going, if you’ll even get there still. You aren’t what people think you are. You aren’t what you do. You aren’t what you don’t.

Everything.

I wonder.

Maybe some people are just what they pretend to be. Maybe they are ordinary. Maybe they are exceptional, but in a forgettable way. Perhaps the world will never shine more brightly or feel its shadows because you are there.

I wonder.

And then I don’t.

You’re something. Everyone is. Even if that something never has a chance to bloom. Everyone has a beautiful story, locked away inside your chest.

I want to hear it, that story. The sound it makes there, beating its wings so you sing as if you could fly when no one else is listening. Who are you underneath, where no one sees you. The laughter you forgot. Are you brave? Are you beautiful? When you close your eyes, do you hear the sound of your soul breathing like a sweet golden melody?

I don’t care if some stories never come true. I don’t care if they should. I don’t care if they’re lofty as the moon or simple as sticking bare toes in summer mud.

Somewhere, there’s a glimmer of remarkable. Hiding just around every corner in this world. And I want to see it, bright as Rumpelstiltskin’s gold and Rapunzel’s braid.

So come tell me your stories, your dreams–true, false, and make-believe. It doesn’t matter which to me. Tell me who you really are–a hero, a rogue, world-traveler, genius. It doesn’t even matter if you have a name.

Tell me.

I promise I’ll listen.

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Tag: life

Here’s to the Silent Void

Reading Update: May 18th, 2020

Writing Status: …

Alpha Reader no. 1: Ships two main characters that were not meant to be shipped, is my most finicky reader and had no problem with the violence, thinks this is one of my best stories…

Alpha Reader no. 2: ships none of the characters, generally likes monster stories, entertained by my careful dodging of tropes.

Alpha Reader no. 3: ships none of the characters, is reminded of acquaintances and happenstance from his youth, grumbles about having to go back to work after reading on lunch break. May have been holding dangerous thoughts toward me for creating inopportune suspense.

Reading Update: Rooftoppers, by Katherine Rundell!

Writing Update: March 3, 2020

Writing Status: Unblocked, but at the most inconvenient times.

Remarkable