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Finished.
1 min read
The rough draft of Cemefaerie is complete. It took me about eleven months, and a lot of no-show clients at work, to finish. It will be available for a short time at Wattpad before I lock it up for further refinement. If you have the time to contribute to said refinement, you can find it here: www.wattpad.com/story/25625459…
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Fireside chat.
3 min read
For the longest time, I committed a cardinal sin of writing: I listened to other writers.
These writers advised a series of schools of thought, ranging from write what you know vs. write what you don't know, to just write for yourself, because if you don't like it, well by golly who's gonna? The latter of these two statements has always been my security blanket against the lack of immeasurable success every writer (shut up, yes you do) dreams of. By god, I wrote it, I liked it when it was done, and it's effing me, take it or leave it. And when the story doesn't catch as much air and flight as I'd hoped, who's to blame? Probably the pool of readers, right? Wrong demographic. Wrong genre, it's not popular anymore. Too avant-garde. Too wordy/dense. No one writes literature anymore, they write movie scripts, blah, blah...
All of that may even be true. But the insidious agent which undermines finding a way to transcend the blocks before us? The Good Sunday Preacher on his podium waving his book and telling you that, damn it, you're just not having enough faith? Hope.
The thing about hope is that it's going to burn out, scratch out the 'if' and place your wagers on the 'when'. It doesn't matter if that flame is built on a bed of dry birch and jet fuel or a damp piece of shit; its days are numbered from the first notion of ignition. If you're going to do this hope business, then you damn well better be ready and able to feed it. And guess what hope laps up? Pragmatics. Realism. Concrete information. You can't simply wave its own smoke back into the fire and expect that to keep your project toasty and viable.
This, on my part, has required acceptance. This was an acceptance that I was maladaptively groomed in my early stages as a writer to write literature. But I was right earlier, you see. Literature is dead. I'm calling it. No, now we have the terse, to-the-point verbage of a Hunger Games--'young adult fiction,' as it's been called (and I feel needs to be renamed). Reflective of the multi-tasking, attention-sensitive (sounds diplomatic, right?) culture we live in? As a therapist, I gotta say yeah.
So what does an old hand do? You do what all the great competitors do: you change your game. All of this is to say that Cemefaerie is where I chose to do that. Did it work? I don't know. I'll be looking for demo readers soon, and we'll see.
Stir those embers a tad for me there, if you would.
These writers advised a series of schools of thought, ranging from write what you know vs. write what you don't know, to just write for yourself, because if you don't like it, well by golly who's gonna? The latter of these two statements has always been my security blanket against the lack of immeasurable success every writer (shut up, yes you do) dreams of. By god, I wrote it, I liked it when it was done, and it's effing me, take it or leave it. And when the story doesn't catch as much air and flight as I'd hoped, who's to blame? Probably the pool of readers, right? Wrong demographic. Wrong genre, it's not popular anymore. Too avant-garde. Too wordy/dense. No one writes literature anymore, they write movie scripts, blah, blah...
All of that may even be true. But the insidious agent which undermines finding a way to transcend the blocks before us? The Good Sunday Preacher on his podium waving his book and telling you that, damn it, you're just not having enough faith? Hope.
The thing about hope is that it's going to burn out, scratch out the 'if' and place your wagers on the 'when'. It doesn't matter if that flame is built on a bed of dry birch and jet fuel or a damp piece of shit; its days are numbered from the first notion of ignition. If you're going to do this hope business, then you damn well better be ready and able to feed it. And guess what hope laps up? Pragmatics. Realism. Concrete information. You can't simply wave its own smoke back into the fire and expect that to keep your project toasty and viable.
This, on my part, has required acceptance. This was an acceptance that I was maladaptively groomed in my early stages as a writer to write literature. But I was right earlier, you see. Literature is dead. I'm calling it. No, now we have the terse, to-the-point verbage of a Hunger Games--'young adult fiction,' as it's been called (and I feel needs to be renamed). Reflective of the multi-tasking, attention-sensitive (sounds diplomatic, right?) culture we live in? As a therapist, I gotta say yeah.
So what does an old hand do? You do what all the great competitors do: you change your game. All of this is to say that Cemefaerie is where I chose to do that. Did it work? I don't know. I'll be looking for demo readers soon, and we'll see.
Stir those embers a tad for me there, if you would.
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Letters.
2 min read
I haven't written a physical letter in fourteen years. That sounds both improbable and perfectly illustrative of the many aspects of emotional personalization that we've readily sacrificed in the name of expediency. (This coming from a man who selects coffee shops based on the presence of a drive-thru.) Of course, when I say 'letter', I reference the pen-pal kind, not the stilted 'here's why you should hire me'/bragging robot resume cover letter kind.
I want to write a letter. I don't even have the slightest idea what I'd say, though. Perhaps I'd muse over something my son said or did. Maybe it would be rampant with politics, with big, bold letters and underlines and scraggy, angrily-scrawled words aplenty. I could etch a tiny picture of a cat in the corner. Would you like that? A cat? Who the fuck wouldn't?
We're not real anymore, I suppose is the actual cultural development I find troublesome. Smoke and mirrors and handkerchiefs, as I've mentioned to someone else appreciative of the sentiment in conversation. We were always moving towards this, but in the days of putting pen to paper, the magic tricks were at least more impressive. They required more effort. More time. Something less sterile, something messy and wily like a piece of soul. Imperfection in the raw.
But even I am starting to succumb to autocorrect.
I want to write a letter. I don't even have the slightest idea what I'd say, though. Perhaps I'd muse over something my son said or did. Maybe it would be rampant with politics, with big, bold letters and underlines and scraggy, angrily-scrawled words aplenty. I could etch a tiny picture of a cat in the corner. Would you like that? A cat? Who the fuck wouldn't?
We're not real anymore, I suppose is the actual cultural development I find troublesome. Smoke and mirrors and handkerchiefs, as I've mentioned to someone else appreciative of the sentiment in conversation. We were always moving towards this, but in the days of putting pen to paper, the magic tricks were at least more impressive. They required more effort. More time. Something less sterile, something messy and wily like a piece of soul. Imperfection in the raw.
But even I am starting to succumb to autocorrect.
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I've been writing the serial Cemefaerie for six weeks or so, and it's about to hit its Part 1 finale. Chapter 9 just went live last night. If you want a dark fantasy set in gothic trappings trimmed with romance and mystery, I advise you to cross over now! Right this way, dear...
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Cemefaerie
1 min read
The Cemefaerie series has officially gone live--follow it here: www.wattpad.com/story/25625459…
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