this love affair

I was a toddler when I became addicted to books. There was this book at the grocery store, and I wanted it desperately but my Mother was not the kind of woman who bought something for her child every time she went to the store. So after numerous trips to the store and me still wanting the book, guess what showed up in my Easter basket? There's a picture of me, diapered butt up in the air (my "ladylike" ways were strong, even then) as I bent over this book, kissing it with joy.

This particular book is also the source of my sibling rivalry. Thomas ripped that very same book when he was a young boy. I stopped thinking my little brother was so great after that. Don't worry, we've come back full circle and he's more than so great these days. In fact, one year he tracked down an old copy of that same book and gave it to me for Christmas.

When the family got the news we'd be trading the hills of Onondaga County in Upstate New York, I was told I had to get rid of books. I remember sitting on the floor of the house, crying. I don't think it was just about the books, but that was definitely a Big Deal.

I read a lot of fables, mythology and fairy tales - the real ones mind you, the ones collected by the Brothers Grimm, those written by Hans Christian Anderson, and the ones where things weren't always so happily ever after. I devoured books and stories until one day I had the idea to start writing on my own. Fast forward a couple of years here and there, and here we are. I'm reading less but writing more (only so many hours in the day) and it occurred to me that it might be interesting to compile a list of my "go to" books, the ones that I've read and re-read and fall in love with over and over again. They are in no particular order, because I have a very hard time ranking things like that.

Dune - Frank Herbert
Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll
The Hobbit - J R R Tolkien
Neverwhere - Neil Gaiman
Watership Down - Richard Adams
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Til We Have Faces - C S Lewis
On Writing - Stephen King

I know I'm forgetting some, but I'm trying not to spend all night writing a blog post as I procrastinate writing (I'm at a hard part). The above books I've read numerous times; so often I've lost track. Below is a list of books that have been pretty influential in my reading career, in case anyone is looking for something to try. Some of them are very obvious, but not everyone is as nerdy as me.

The Dark Tower Series - Stephen King
Harry Potter - J K Rowling
Lord of the Rings - J R R Tolkien
Song of Fire and Ice - George R R  Martin
The Lightbringer Series - Brent Weeks
Widdershins and The Onion Girl - Charles de Lint
The Looking Glass Wars - Frank Beddor
Stardust - Neil Gaiman
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
Good Omens - Terry Pratchett & Neil Gaiman
A Wrinkle in Time - Madeleine L'Engle
Chronicles of Narnia - C S Lewis
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess

And did we say nerdy? How about a short list of comic books...

Batman: The Killing Joke - Alan Moore
Batman: Hush - Jeph Loeb
Y The Last Man - Brian K Vaughn & Pia Guerra


Happy reading...

I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with.
Plato

the struggle

I've been struggling to keep my writing pace lately. I had hit a few issues with plot that I wasn't sure how to resolve and had to take a break from writing until I could get things back on track

Having just crested the 43,000 word mark, I'm feeling fairly committed to The Novel, the story that's unfolding and the characters that are in precarious or uncomfortable situations and are relying on me to provide an end. It can be grueling some days, when I slog through what feels like hundreds of words and I feel certain that I've nearly met the daily goal only to discover I've accumulated 200 words.

Lately I'm trying to make sure that I'm not straying too far from the first chapter and the struggle that it conveyed. There are a few scenes I'm building toward, weaving character interactions together and revealing more and more backstory. The good news is, I find it pretty interesting and hopefully that's a good sign.

Shutting the door and shutting out the world to write can be a challenge, and stringing word after word after word together is sometimes numbing. But writing brought me back, and despite the frustrations and the annoyances, I return to it again and again.

George Orwell said, "Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand."

I have a large drawer full of notebooks and loose pages of notes and drafts and ideas. Some of them are the first incarnation of what I now call The Novel and they present a very different story. Some of the elements have remained the same as I've refined the idea, edited out things I knew weren't right (murdering those darlings) and kept some of the basic ideas. This story has gone through more incarnations that I can count, but it's always been brewing in the back of my mind. And when another idea struck, I saw the two combine - and that's when the current story began to emerge. It's taken years for this story to come forward and some days it's like pulling teeth to get it on the page; others I can't write fast enough.

Writing the First Draft is a lonely process. I have to be tight lipped about the story and work to get it on the page instead of letting it slip away. I think I'm coming up on being near halfway through (if I follow something like a Three Act story model) but I'm going by feel more than word count on that point. This does mean that the book itself might end up being about 86,000 words at its First Draft.

I should probably get back to working on that.

The first draft of anything is shit.
Ernest Hemingway