In Which a Vigorous Action Is Proposed

August 28

First, many congrats to Heather for her writing-related good news! An on-spec assignment and an anthology invite! Woo and hoo! She's awesome, y'all.

So... on to my issues and situations...

That little thing in my head, the anxiety buzz-button, that tells me I need to write write write?

It's just not going off this week.

Weird, huh?

I need to write a non-fiction piece for the Brianbox antho. I know what it's going to say-- I even know a few of the actual sentence-level words-- but I haven't put keystroke to phosphor dot yet. Odd. I haven't been doing poetry, I haven't been doing fiction, and I haven't been writing much in the way of journal entries, as you may've noticed.

I'm reading a good bit... Lansdale, Hopkinson, Cole, bits of stuff about fairy lore. I read the new issue of A Certain Magazine today (it'll be hitting your newstands and mailboxes soon)-- the first one I worked on. Kind of a thrill, even though at this point all I can say is "I did the layout on this page" and "I scanned that picture!" Not exactly vast and creative contributions... but I helped. And it's right there.

So I'm thinking about this not-writing thing, and I don't much like it. I also don't like that it's not especially bothering me (though I'm writing this whole entry about it, so it must be bothering me a bit). My writing has often been cyclical-- several months of fiction production, a couple months of mostly poetry-- but this is pretty much unprecedented, this dead spell. It's not like I'm blocked... there's just other stuff I'd rather do. Read. Make the sweet love. Watch the good television. Think about lizards. Draw bad pictures. Play Diablo (level 13 is a stone bitch, yo). Read slush.

I'm thinking a lot... I feel like I'm in some weird hypersensitive information-gathering mental space. I'm not actively researching (I'm pretty good on Rangergirl research, except for some gaps in my working knowledge of underground comics, but there are plans afoot to fix that), just sort of mentally grazing, taking stuff in... I don't know. I feel like my work is poised, sort of. Like I'm going to tip over an edge soon, go to a new level... like I'm a pupa about to metamorphose. Rangergirl... it's more than I've ever done before. It's still got all the fun stuff I love-- larger than life villains, heroism, bits of melodrama, twisting of tropes, cool shit-- but it's also more about relationships, more mature, more ambiguous. It'll be a strong book, I think. My strongest. And a turning point in my work as a whole.

So why am I not working on it?

I like to think I'm saving up... at any rate, I'm going to do a mad writing binge this weekend, barring the unforeseen (such as a recurrence of my illness). I've thought long and hard about whether or not to do the 3-Day novel competition (the one run by a Canadian publisher-- winner gets published, runner up gets $500, third place gets $250 in bookstore credit). The idea of a full-out run like that appeals to me... but there's a $25 entry fee, and I'm 99.9999% certain they wouldn't buy my short novel. For one thing, the books that win are extremely li-fi, and my short novel idea is a straight up fantasy. I still want to write that story, though it'll be a bitch to get published (anyone want a 30,000 word contemporary fantasy (of the "contained nightmare" sub-genre) that shades at times toward horror? Yeah. I figured not). But I doubt it'd win the competition, so why spend the money? And if I'm not trying to finish a complete work for a competition, why work on a side project?

The new plan: Binge like crazy this weekend on writing Rangergirl. I'm talking an old-school writing rampage, y'all. A caffeine-fueled frenzy. Sitting at the computer in my robe, eating popcorn, blasting the Old 97's, talking to myself, losing myself. Committing. Diving in.

And then, come September, I'm doing Mike's 1/24/30 Dare (writing one hour a day, every day, for the month of September-- and, one hopes, beyond)-- that should take me nicely through the rest of the novel.

I'm excited. We're gonna have Aaron Burr's doppelganger, we're gonna have Winchester rifles with steel-shod butts, we're gonna have leather pants, spent shells, sex, elemental forces, sardonic humor, irony, and fine madness. Starting this weekend.

And I'll be sure to let y'all know how it goes.

This'll bust me out of my malaise, or I'll pop a blood vessel trying.