Control Ain't Just a Janet Jackson Song

The Girl Scout story got workshopped yesterday. It was a confusing, difficult workshop. There was no consensus; everyone had something different to say about what they wanted it to do and be. Usually when that happens, it means the story needs pitching, not rewriting, but I'm certain that is not the case here. So I don't really know where to go with it, aside from just trusting in what I wrote, which is an extremely arrogant thing to do. I think I'll submit it a few places and then look at it again in six months or thereabouts.

The most worrisome comment was from the professor, who told me that I needed to "let go of intent" to give my work "a more organic feel". This is more or less the same thing that my workshop professor from last semester told me. She gave me feedback that has haunted me insanely since I got it: that my control over the writing was too tight, that the story was constructed too meticulously and that I needed to let go and write with more freedom. I have no idea what this means or how to improve it (particularly with the story I workshopped that led to this feedback, which required strong control, dammit), but hearing an echo of it in another professor, who has no idea what the prior one said, makes me want to wail and rend my garments.

Organic?...

(She also said the Girl Scout story was "nearly flawless" in its surface aspects. Which is a nice adjective, one I'm happy to take away with me.)

Aside from that, something else happened since last we spoke. Over the weekend, I had a fit that is seemingly becoming a part of my ritual for beginning a big project. I drew you a highly professional diagram for this process.

So this weekend I kicked and screamed and yelled and whined about the wikibook, because no fooling, you guys, I am genuinely scared out of my skull about writing this thing. But I can't keep pretending that I can put it off until next year, or next century. I have to begin. So I had the tantrum, and now I can buckle down.

I have no idea how this project is going to go. Not a clue. Generally it takes me something like a quarter of a year to write a novel (which, please, writers who are reading: don't use that as an example for your own work or a way to shame me about the shoddiness of my effort), but the nature of this book means I could be working on it for much longer. Years, maybe. I hope I won't be, but I'm not eliminating it as a possibility.

Matt advised me to set a deadline for review on it. That is, he said I should work for a certain number of months and then make a mandatory stop to reevaluate the project, see if I should keep going or stop or set other deadlines or what. I thought this was fucking amazing advice, and I plan to implement it.

I don't know how to organize my work on it around my other responsibilities, which have changed dramatically since the last time I worked on a novel. But I hope to get going before the end of October. Now that I've punched pillows and moaned sufficiently, work can really start.

It's work that needs tight control, so I guess my professor's feedback is well-timed. Either that or I'm not ready to write this book at all and it's going to be a big disaster. I guess, in the coming months, we'll see.

Avoiding the Challenge I Can Do

After school was over last week I gulped four books, one after another, in the space of five days. Like a seal eating herring. As if that was my only responsibility, to read until my head hurt. Golly, did it make me happy. And now the apartment is a total mess and there's no food in the fridge. C'est la vie [du livre].

I learned piles of good stuff this semester. My two classes were so different but equally useful and fascinating. The experimental lit class, for which we read a book per week in the first half of the semester, was technically a workshop class, and among its many virtues, it helped to prepare me directly for one of the major projects on my plate in the next two years. One of the things our professor repeated again and again was that we had to write the thing we didn't know how to write. I know that sounds either contradictory or like one of those semi-platitudes that writers and pop Buddhists tend to spread around (i.e. "To move forward, you must take the first step" - they're pretty easy to invent, actually, you just phrase tautologies so they sound metaphorical and profound).

But this one's actually true. If you write the thing you don't know how to write - the thing you're not sure you can write - you develop your skills as you're writing it, and this means that you grow far faster. If you just do donuts writing the stuff you already know how to write, it's like paying a prostitute. It's a sure thing, and it doesn't satisfy, and it doesn't have any meaning.

I don't know, but I suspect, that this is part of the reason I've been balking like an unbroke horse at writing the next short story I have to write. For a while I was all blocked up with how to build the characters and the climax and whatnot, but now I've got that sorted out thanks to a very helpful friend, and there's no reason not to get started. But I haven't. I have no excuses. Except possibly that it feels like it might be less of a challenge than the last two stories I finished. Like Lisa Simpson, I prefer challenges I can do, but I'm concerned that since it doesn't look like much of a challenge, it's not going to be much of a story, either.

Well, crap

There are more significant writing challenges on my list, but I want to get this particular story out of my head. After that I think I'll finally be ready to do Highbinder revisions. Gack.

In other news, I got tired of fucking around with the bread story and sent it out to a scary, intimidating market. I'm planning to do the same thing with the journalist story (different market, same scary/intimidation level), hopefully this week, after some more revisions and if I can think up a frigging title for it. A market that accepted a story of mine last fall, with a promised pub date of December '13, has gone pretty much AWOL, so I think I'm going to withdraw that story come June 1st and look for a new market for it. Actually, that happened with two of my acceptances last year, but the other piece is short, and isn't really of use in any other way, so I might record it and put it on my SoundCloud.

And I bought a ukulele from eBay. I haven't played an instrument since I was like 14, and that was for school rather than for the joy of it, so I thought this might be fun. If you have ukulele tips, please send them along.