Why do I write (imaginative fiction)?

I read a post today, oh boy.

(Sorry, Beatles. I couldn’t think of how else to open this.)

Anyway, the post in question was a thoughtful and inspiring piece called “Why I Want to Write” by Maggie, one of my favorite bloggers, who ruminates on the questions of “what motivates your writing?” and “what do you want to achieve by writing?” (You should really check it out.) It made me start thinking.

Thinking deep, deep thoughts . . . did I eat Wendy’s twice yesterday?

My Writing Journey

Even at a very young age, I loved to write. To tell stories. To imagine worlds. I wrote short stories, poems, novellas– even made a few attempts at a full-length novel. I attended the Young Writer’s Workshop, I was a part of Vision 21 (a cocurricular learning group for gifted students), I joined writing groups in middle and high school. Then I went to college, and things changed. I was busy, I was adjusting to a new phase of life, and my writing stopped.

I went through a good five or six years where I wrote virtually nothing creative. I still thought of myself as a writer, though, and talked about it with my friends and family. And then it was finally pointed out to me that, if I keep identifying as a writer, shouldn’t I actually write? So in the summer of 2010 I sat down and wrote a novel manuscript, titled “Candlelight.” I queried it for about a year; it didn’t go anywhere. But the important thing was that process of actually proving to myself that I could finish a project of that length has motivated me to keep going. Since then I’ve written:

-6 short stories
-1 novella (and half of another)
-Roughly half of a second manuscript, “The End”
-45 blog posts, which includes 18 entries in The Chain

Now, when compared to a lot of other writers, that doesn’t sound like much. I will never regularly crank out 2,000 words a day. Heck, I’m happy if I can meet my goals for  500 for 5. But I’m making progress. My first novel manuscript was, in retrospect, not very good. The short stories and novella after it were better, and those that followed better still. My current novel is probably the best work I’ve done so far, and the short stories I’m writing now are pretty darn good.

The point is not to brag, but simply to demonstrate that, the more I write, the better I’m getting. So is that why I write? To become better at my craft? In other words . . .

Why do I write at all?

Part of it is about becoming a better writer. I love learning (as evidenced by my pursuit of a Ph. D.), so learning how to write better is a motivator. I like sharing my stories with others, and hearing what they think, how they felt. I also have fun writing. It engages my brain and makes me feel a sense of accomplishment. But that’s not all of it.

I want to be published.

I know, I know. Wanting to be published is passé. Self-publishing is the way of the future. I’ve read the arguments in favor of self-publishing, some of my favorite blogs are those of self-published authors, and some of my favorite stories are found in webcomic format, which is, almost without exception, self-published. I have thought about compiling some of those short stories/novellas I’m writing/have written into an anthology, which I will probably self-publish.

But still. I wanna be a producer.

Wait, sorry, that’s wrong. I want to be published. But why?

Money? Yes, it would be nice to make some money, but most authors don’t make that much. Recognition? I could get that by self-publishing. Fame? I’ve always wanted to become a famous writer, but that’s more of a daydream than a real goal. Marketing? That is more compelling. While budgets aren’t what they used to be, large publishers have more resources to commit to backing a project than I do, as well as more experience. I’m not particularly good at self-marketing, first because I have no experience, and second because it’s somewhat counter to my inclinations as an introvert.

This is incredibly anticlimactic, but this leads me to conclude that my desire to be published may simply be a confluence of pragmatism and an irrational id-type voice screaming: “I want!”

All this explanation, however, still doesn’t get at the question of my choice in subjects. So:

Why do I write imaginative fiction?

The short answer: I’m a geek.

If you were to combine everyone in this picture, I would probably still be a bigger geek.

What? Is my short answer not good enough for you? Oh, fine. The long answer:

I enjoy stories of a lot of different kinds, but the ones that excite me the most are those that are the fantastic, the wildly imaginative. I’ve always had a vivid imagination, and nothing stimulated it quite like science fiction and fantasy, which remain my favorite genres to this day. So it’s no surprise that when I sit down to generate story ideas, they tend to be fairly, well, geeky.

When I write, I don’t like constraints. I like to be able to say “What if . . .” without having to stop and ask whether something is realistic. I write, in short, not thinking of what my audience would like to read, but what would be fun for me to write. Maybe that’s the wrong way to do it. Maybe that will keep me from being published. But as long as I’m enjoying myself while I write, I don’t see the need to change.

Juggling Stories

I’ve written before, and mentioned in some comments, that I try to keep multiple projects going simultaneously in order to maximize my productivity. The primary reason is that when I hit a writer’s block on one project, I can easily jump to another one without missing a beat.

That’s the idea.

To put it in Pokémon terms: BEN used JUGGLE PROJECTS! It’s not very effective . . .

Part of the problem is that I have difficulty letting things go. I think of a neat idea, I put it in my writing projects folder. But then I keep working on it periodically.

This wouldn’t be a problem if, y’know, I didn’t keep working on EVERY IDEA I’VE EVER HAD.

I’m exaggerating a little, but not much. The whole “juggling projects” thing becomes more difficult when you’re dealing with not just different characters, but totally different story universes. A story multiverse, if you will.

(See what I did there? See? What I did was–OK. You get it.)

To give you a rough idea of the mess I’ve gotten myself into:

-THE END: A contemporary fantasy novel about the end of the world.

-THE CHAIN: A paranormal serialized story about . . . well, you’ll have to see, won’t you?

-HEAVEN ON EARTH: A series of stories set in a sci-fi dystopia where advanced technology is deployed as the “miracles” of an AI-run theocracy.

-ELYSIAN FIELDS: A novel interlaced with a series of short stories, all set in a universe where displaced supernatural beings have to make ends meet in the mortal world, featuring (among others) a cynical Cupid, a mermaid who can’t swim, and a stressed-out Sasquatch.

-HEARTBREAK SISTERS: A series of novellas set in a far distant future of intergalactic exploration, following two thieving sisters as they try to pay off their debts to a vast criminal organization.

-RE/SET: A novel where individuals with the power to shape reality compete to see who will be able to design the next universe.

-THORN: A short story about a filmmaker who stumbles on a terrifying secret hidden in the deep forests of Germany.

-BEHIND THE CURTAIN: A short story about a crime fiction author who, when interviewing a serial killer, gets more than he bargained for.

-HERO MACHINE: A short story that asks the question: what do you do if you need not one hero, but a thousand?

-WHAT MAKEST THOU?: A novella set in an alternate-history version of WWII, where a brilliant scientist is forced to design deadly robots for the Nazis.

-POSTMORTEM: A novel set in a world where police investigation regularly continues into the afterlife.

Suffice it to say, I need to control myself. These are just the ones for which I have (tentative) titles and a plot summary. What about you? How many projects do you like to work on concurrently? Or are you the kind of person who likes to focus on one at a time? What works best for you and why?

Get in the zone– Author Zone

I am not one to “toot my own horn,” so to speak.

Indeed, were a casual observer to inspect the shelf upon which said horn rests, that person would note the presence of a substantial layer of dust nearly obscuring the horn from view.

But I’m going to pull it off the shelf and let loose one brassy blat of blaring bluster: I am in the zone.

Allow me to illustrate:

The Zone has eluded me for some time now, but at last I have returned to its warm, zoney embrace. That’s right, spellcheck, “zoney.” It’s a word. Look it up.

OK, so it’s not. The squiggly red line beneath the erroneous word is evidence enough, but I forge on regardless.

Back to the whole “being in the Zone” thing. I’ve been somewhat distracted lately, and by “distracted,” I mean, “drooling slack-jawed at the unbelievable beauty of the computer I assembled.”

You heard me. Some assembly was required, and I assembled. What did I tell you? ZONE.

Granted, entering the zone for that moment resulted in by subsequent departure from the zone while I enjoyed being able to see what games were supposed to look like all this time.

(Oh! That’s a person, not a malformed blob of brown-and-grey goo! Now I understand why she falls in love with him!)

But the Zone beckoned once more, and I returned to it, and now I find myself a veritable whirlwind of productivity. Forms to get my dissertation approved? Done. Daily writing goals? Met. Trash? Taken out. Cat? Petted. Recordings for Read Me Free winners? Getting done. Hey, the Zone can only do so much.

(I’m really sorry for the delay, folks. I’m in the middle of a big re-recording blitz right now, as I got a new microphone for Christmas, and I’m going through a backlog of stuff, but you should find narrated segments of your book in your inboxes hopefully by the end of this weekend. That sounded redundant. Zone fading. NO! COME BACK, ZONE! Awesome, back in the zone.)

Most importantly for me, though, is that I finally got around to working on some of the most difficult scenes in The End, the crucial confrontations that determine (almost) everything. I’d been putting them off, writing other parts, until finally it came to the point where it was impossible to write much more without knowing exactly how these scenes would play out. So far, they’re going pretty darn well.

Alright, consider the horn tooting officially over for some time. I will return it to the shelf.

In all seriousness, what does it take to get you into the Zone? What do you do to try to stay in it as long as possible? Is the Zone overrated?

500 for 5

In previous posts, I bounced around the idea of writing 500 words a day, 5 days a week as a year-round writing goal now that NaNoWriMo is complete. I’d like to take that up again.

I will attempt to meet this goal starting this week, and I would like to see if anyone else is also interested in trying it with me.

Here are the guidelines:

1. Before you begin, pick a few (1-3) ongoing projects that you want to finish. Only words that you write on these projects will count toward your goal. That way, not only are you writing, you will be steadily progressing over time.

2. Your project can be anything, as long as it’s substantive enough to last you a while. A novel, novella, a series, your blog, all of those count. Even short stories are fine, but when you finish one you have to pick a new project to replace it.

3. No frontloading. I know it is tempting to try to get all your writing for the week done out of the way early, but the point of 500 for 5 is not to write 2500 words each week, it’s to write for 5 days. Hopefully after a while, it will become easier and easier to find time each day to write.

4. Revising and editing, while really important, do not count toward the 500. Why? Sort of like NaNo, the objective of 500 for 5 is to encourage consistent production.

5. It’s up to you which five days you choose, although it might help if you try to establish a consistent schedule. Obviously, if your work hours change on a weekly basis this is more difficult, but working some regular writing time into your schedule from week to week will ultimately pay off in the long run.

I’m going to give this a try. I’ve done it before, but haven’t been able to sustain it for a full year at a time. But if I want to be a writer (and I do) I need to establish good habits, and I think 500 for 5 is a good place to start.

Who’s with me?