Tag Archives: life

I have had many story ideas in my life

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Hi, I’m a writer. I thought it was prudent to state the obvious at this time.

Not too long ago, but long enough that I don’t remember when it was, I decided that it would be a good idea to keep a list of all my story ideas in a word document. It’s in google docs so that I can access it from any computer or my smartphone. (I know, I’m a genius). I started doing this because I know that if I don’t write down an idea, whether it’s good, bad, interesting, weird, conventional, or whatever else, I’m quite likely to forget it. We have to many things clamoring for attention. I’ve forgotten enough story ideas to know that this is a real thing that happens. It may not be the most pressing problem, but for a writer it is frustrating.

I currently have:

  • 17 novel concepts
  • 5 short story concepts
  • one note to just write microfiction pieces as I come up with the ideas

Then, there’s a different file, containing:

  • 9 plot summaries for modern fairy tales

… making a total of 31 story ideas. This does not include a whole bunch of partially-written stories and first drafts that still need work before they can be allowed to have contact with readers.

I’m sure I have forgotten countless other ideas and will continue to think up, write down, and forget many more.

This should be my most important to-do list. I suppose it is. But it should also be the most urgent, and it is not, because attempting to be a responsible adult takes that spot.

When You Can’t Write

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Lately one of my many story ideas has been fighting for prominence in my thoughts. I don’t remember exactly when I first had this idea. Sometime in the past six months or so. I liked it a lot then, but for whatever reason I don’t often start new stories unless I can see the entire basic outline of the plot–for novels, anyway. Short stories I don’t mind just diving into. But I like to be able to see a full novel before I begin, fully expecting many of the details to change, of course. So I haven’t written any of this story yet, even though I did a basic outline. Now, it’s like the thing’s knocking on my door. (Brain-door?) “Hi. Remember me? I get that you have a lot going on, but you said we’d hang out. Just give me a little time, please?”

And what can I do? My “responsible” side (that I’m currently hating) keeps telling me that I have to take care of my obligatory work first, so that I can pay bills and afford to eat and stuff like that. I have a tendency to listen to that side because I’ve always been pretty responsible. But now my creative side is getting angry at being neglected. She will not stand for it any more. I have a feeling she’s just going to keep bothering me until I give in.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t want to. There are two reasons. One: I cling to that silly notion that I need to be in a better financial place before I can really give my attention to writing. Maybe this means I’m not a “true artist.” Maybe it means I live in a ridiculous economy and like everyone else I have to pay for things. I even have to buy my own health and dental insurance. Two: Even though I want to write, right now, more than anything, and I can honestly say very few things would make me feel as good as writing this story that’s jumping up and down, waving its arms at me, when I think about actually sitting down to write it there’s a certain resistance. I’m not sure where that comes from, exactly. I’ve been trying to pinpoint what that feeling is. Maybe it’s the knowledge that I still sometimes rely too much on cliches. Maybe it’s being kind of out of practice in fiction writing, and wondering if I still have any talent and imagination or if the real world sucked it all away.

Or it could be the certainty I have, when I look back at the last seven years or so, that I’ve already wasted so much time I could have spent pursuing things I wanted to learn, do, feel, experience. Some of you reading this (people who know how old I am) will I’m sure say that this is ridiculous, but I feel very old these days. It seemed ok to be adrift and uncertain when I was 24. I was young, just starting to live on my own (sort of). Few people actually have anything figured out at 24. Not anymore. As I get older, more and more people my age are actually finding full-time, stable jobs or starting businesses or families. This tells me that it’s my fault I’m still in such an unpleasant, uncertain life situation. They say you shouldn’t compare yourself to others, but I bet “they” do it too…

So anyway, this story is about love. A fair bit of it takes place in dreams, and it will sort of explore and/or blur the line between dreams and waking. I’ve actually had a lot of story ideas that involve that aspect. I also like the idea because I can include a lot of fantastical elements even though the story is not in the fantasy genre. I’m hoping that I can push through all my doubts and obstacles and start writing it. I hate asking this but please, click “like” or comment if you think this story sounds interesting.

Losing Summer

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It is now the first day of fall. I noticed how perfect the weather was today when I went out to get my groceries. The sun shone brightly but the air was cool. A few of the trees on my street have already started to change. THIS is the best of weather.

The turn of August to September saw a flare-up of oppressive heat, but that seems to be the last surge of summer. It’s cooling off again; it seems the season is ready to accept defeat. As usual I had that moment of regret for all the days I didn’t spend at the beach, and having only sat outside at a restaurant with friends or family a few times, despite walking by such patios constantly. I barely wore sandals and I spent far too many days inside.

Every year now, I find a moment to complain about how summer is not very exciting as an adult. When you’re a kid you get the time off from school, and depending on your circumstances, your parents will take you somewhere for a vacation (even if it’s just a two hour drive to a town in the same state). For the rest of the summer you read, you spend time with friends, you hang out in someone’s pool (I always knew someone with a pool). You eat a lot of ice cream, go to barbecues, and don’t have to wake up early.

Then you start to get older. For most people, summer jobs start somewhere in the mid to late teens. Some start much earlier and a few won’t have jobs until after they graduate from college–but those will probably spend the summers volunteering or studying. (This story does not include those people who never have to work. I have no frame of reference to talk about them.) Suddenly, you don’t have all these days off anymore. Teenagers’ jobs are often part-time, so although they sacrifice some of their free days, they still have quite a lot of time to eat ice cream and hang out in their friends’ pools.

But then you enter the “real” world. You have a full time job, or two or three part time jobs, and you don’t have the time to enjoy the beach or spend a day wandering around town with your friends. You have responsibilities instead. If you do have the time to do these things whenever you want, chances are you don’t have the money. Much of your summer free-time goes to waste lamenting that you’ll barely be able to pay your bills this month, so instead of going to the beach, you scour Craigslist for a new job. Gone are the days of being free to enjoy the summertime. Just like they said it would, adulthood sucked away all the fun (I don’t know who “they” are exactly).

As summer becomes just another part of the year with the same schedule, the same stress, and the same lack of time, we long for the time when summer actually meant something more than just wondering what the hell you can wear that won’t cause you to die of heatstroke on the way to/in the office.

 

When you think about it, though, what exactly are we losing? Think back to being a kid during the summer. Really think. My memories of youthful summers are getting a little vague and fragmented at this point, but I’m fairly certain that I ended up bored and ready for summer to be over somewhere around the beginning of August. If I could go back and talk to my ten-year-old self, I’d say “Find something to do and be grateful for your lack of stress.” But unfortunately, hindsight never benefits us. I was always pretty eager to go back to school, even excited.

Of course, I got sick of being back at school after two weeks, instead of two months. I think I just liked the change, the feeling that things were moving forward. New teacher, classroom, notebooks, clothes. Sometimes new friends.

Leisurely summers feel like a story someone told me, rather than anything that really happened. Maybe I block them out because they make me feel guilty for not doing more with my free time when I had so much of it. Of course, I was a kid then, and kids don’t need to be responsible for “getting things done.” I think the problem is that now I know what I would do if I could spend my time how I chose without having to worry about adult things. I’ve felt like there could be so much art, music, friendship, love, etc. in my life, if only I had enough time.

Summer Heat–Sometimes

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I think I’ve been conditioned by air conditioning. This is strange because I don’t have air conditioning, and I hate how cold I always get when sitting in air-conditioned spaces. I usually only want it on the hottest of days. Yesterday I found the heat death-like. I thought I might catch on fire. I luckily managed to do some work, but not as much as I had wanted, because I could barely think, I was so hot. I had to get dressed for an errand, but as soon as I got home I changed quickly into something breezy that I would never be willing to wear out of the house. I tried to drink a lot of water with a lot of ice in it. Nothing really worked.

When it got dark the air finally started to cool. I was relieved, but not enough. It still felt too hot. The air in my bedroom rarely moves no matter how wide I open the windows. I probably need a better fan. So I lay there trying to will myself to move, and went to bed much earlier than usual because there was just no way to get anything else done.

As I wandered back and forth that day, spending a few minutes reading, a few minutes watching videos, working, etc., over and over, I looked out the window and wondered when it would rain. “Why isn’t it raining?” I whined to myself. That would have really helped.

That didn’t last long. I thought, it will rain when it rains. I’m not going to make it happen by wishing. Despite what I might want, I have no control over the weather. Soon enough the heat will go away, and then later it will come back…

It was around that time I went to bed.

My Problem with Speed-Reading

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A while ago I read (or, more accurately, skimmed) an article about an app that could train you to read a novel in 90 minutes. On the one hand I thought, “Wow, that’s impressive.” (I’m sure it’s not, to some people.) On the other hand, it made me feel … disappointed is the best word I can come up with. Disappointed that this is how people view reading, as something that should be done as quickly as possible, or else it’s a waste of time.

I understand the appeal of reading a book that quickly, as there are so many books out there I want to read, and I know there will be more, that it would be beneficial in that sense to be able to get through a book in 90 minutes. I could greatly increase my number of total books read, broaden my reading experience, etc.

But both as a reader and as a writer, this emphasis on speed-reading bothers me.

There have been times, particularly in college, when reading a little faster was necessary. I’m not arguing that you should never read quickly just to finish a book, if it’s required for your school or work to do so. But other than that, if you’re reading for pleasure, why would you be in such a hurry to be finished? If I choose to read a book, not for any assignment but because I think I will find it interesting or enjoyable, I like to spend time with it. A book is a great place to be, better, sometimes, than the real world. Particularly in very engaging books, I don’t want to rush through that world. But if I start speed-reading, then slower reading would be hard to go back to.

Then, of course, I consider speed-reading from the point of view of a writer–more specifically, a writer who intends to publish novels. Any serious writer will spend a lot of time and effort creating the content you’re reading, wanting to craft something readers will find worth their time. If I spend a year on a book (drafting, revising, etc.), I don’t want someone to pick it up only to toss it aside in an hour or two. Although real writers write for themselves, they also write for readers, and the thought that something created with care is worth only the smallest fraction of someone’s time is discouraging. There would likely be many writers who understandably reason that they should not put so much effort into their work if the people enjoying the final product are not going to appreciate it properly.

I am against this notion that a “solution” is needed to read novels faster. Internet articles? Yes, read them as fast as you can, particularly the ones that seem like they were written in ten minutes. Or even this one, which should certainly not take you longer than that to read… you’ll get the idea. But a story that someone has taken the care to craft so that they can be proud of it? Spend a little time with it. Don’t be so scared of books.

…but really.

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Do me a favor. Look through the last five or so posts before this one. That spans, what, two or three months? And how many times in those posts did I say that I was planning to post more often and try to get a writing schedule happening?

Not that it was a promise or anything like that, but I have not been true to my word.

I can’t honestly say I know why. It’s one of those spiraling lacks of productivity wherein you’ve climbed down into a hole of Netflix and have to force yourself to get any real work done. There are many reasons why I haven’t been writing very much, and yet there is no reason at all. The truth is, the last time I was regularly writing was probably ten or so years ago. To explain why I’ve neglected the one thing I would say I NEED to do with my life, I would have to take you on a long and winding journey and I can’t guarantee we would get to the end. Perhaps, later, I will try to give the full explanation. For now, I’ll simplify:

Life.

I suppose I was not actually prepared to handle how hard life actually is. And, maybe, how hard writing actually is. Continue reading →

Me, of Late

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Well… picture me heaving a huge sigh. I would say “throwing my hands up in resignation,” but that’s such a cliched phrase, and also I don’t actually do that. But I do sigh a lot.

Instead of being productive and getting all that stuff done that I would love to do if I felt motivated, I’ve mostly been:

drinking too much coffee;

sleeping in an extra hour or two;

watching too much Netflix, youtube, etc.;

spending too much on food;

crying;

making messes.

I’ve been reading, but not writing, and, more than anything else, wondering when I’ll have enough time and/or energy to start doing the things I really want to do in life. Like learning guitar and studying languages. Applying for writers’ residencies (they have them for unpublished writers, right?). Figuring out how all the features of my camera work. It’s not even a fancy camera, it’s just a basic digital one, but for some reason it’s not functioning as it claimed it would.

I know I should start with the “spring cleaning” purge of all the stuff that’s collected over the past year or so that I have been intending to throw away or give away or sell. I want to sell some things because I need money, but I think that might be more trouble than it’s worth, since I don’t really own anything valuable.

I wrote a poem last night, but it’s rather private and I don’t want to share it. But at least I did write something. Better than nothing at all. Or… that’s what they say, although really it’s almost as if I wrote nothing at all.

Do you ever wonder why you love the thing you love but then you never feel like doing it?

Is There A Pill for This? Or an App?

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So what have I been doing? Nothing.

My bedroom is a mess. So is my mind. And probably every other part of me.

I’m sure I’ve done something wrong in my life to get here. I don’t believe in fate, but it doesn’t feel like I am where I’m supposed to be. I can’t go into more detail, because I really don’t know how to explain it.

~~~

 

I come up with anywhere from one to five blog post topics a day, split between this site and The No-Recipe Life, my lifestyle/food/everything else platform. I’m sure some of them are not really worth the time, but I’ve never said I wanted either blog to be perfect, and anyway, that would be a fruitless endeavor. Other posts seem like excellent ideas and I feel that I have thoughts in that area that are worth sharing. If only one other person appreciates my words–or even if no one but me appreciates them–it’s enough to be worth my time.

Lately, I have sat down and typed out none of these ideas. I’m sure many of them are now gone forever. I will never have that idea again. Out of all the possible posts that might have happened, only a few would have really contributed anything notable. But now they never will, and that should make the world just the slightest bit sad.

I’ve been really busy lately. Ok, not really busy. Really stressed. Blogging fell by the wayside, as they say (they being people who use cliches a lot, and me, apparently), because my creative impulses were very low for a while. I can barely feel them even now, but there are times when you have to decide to do something regardless. I have a lot of things to get in order before I can come back to blogging with any regularity, and I’m only starting to make a plan to get things figured out. Not that I ever expect to figure things out… but at least I can attempt to bring some organization to my life.

 

Even though I’m not feeling optimistic about anything, I still have to try. It’s definitely not ideal. It makes motivation very hard to find, for anything.

Wow, I wish this post didn’t sound so depressing. If I’m lucky this will purge some of these feelings from my mind and I will start to do better…

Working Through: Foreword

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I must have been wandering obliviously for a while to get here, not realizing how far beyond any signposts or streetlights I’d traveled until it was too late. Now, I feel completely stuck and hopelessly adrift at the same time. I’m treading deep water in the dead of night, went up in a hot air balloon alone and the mechanism to get back down is broken. All the things I want in life are crowding for prominence in my mind, but not giving any clues as to how to reach them. And they’re all angry that I haven’t figured it out by now. Meanwhile I’m paralyzed with uncertainty. I don’t know what to try to do first, and there are no indications of what steps to take even when I do pick something. My best solution is to go back in time and take advantage of opportunities I let slip by me (like studying music on a more serious level in college), but that is not a possibility in any of the alternate universes of my life, since all of them are subject to laws of physics.

Are you feeling confused at all, wondering what I’m talking about? I’m with you. If you think I make sense, you’re probably not reading it right. I have lost my ability to really convey my thoughts on the page (or screen). The desire to do so is hiding, on account of feeling incredibly stupid every time I try to open up and share very personal thoughts or feelings.

This simply will not do.

I think that in order to get anywhere, to take any steps toward happiness, contentment, or …I should just stop now… etc., I have to go back and sort through all the thoughts that are holding my back or weighing me down. I need to de-clutter my inner world, so that I can step back and see a real picture, rather than an overwhelming heap of to-dos and wishes. Thus, I have decided to create this series of posts. Some of them will be very serious and possibly depressing. Others might be more fun or even hopeful. We’ll see–once I can distinguish any one picture from another.

This is not a writing project. This is a human project, expressed in writing. But I think it belongs on this blog anyway.

 

Thank you for reading.

Five Things Friday: January 17, 2014

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Three creative things I want to do RIGHT NOW. But seriously, literally right now.

1. Write for a really large block of time and finish at least one short story (that’s been in the works for a pretty long time now). In addition, make some progress on the novel I was writing that I was going to work on a bit in December, and then didn’t because I’m just too lazy to ever be productive.

2. Get paints and brushes and DIY the cardboard boxes I use as storage bins so that my room can be pretty and not just a complete mess.

3. Totally reorganize my room. It doesn’t sound like a “creative” thing, but it would have to be to figure out how to make everything fit nicely in my room.

Two reasons I’m sure I won’t do these things.

1. Chores and errands and adult things like that. It’s often tempting to forego responsibility for awesomeness, but at some point the concept was ingrained in me that if you do that you end up with a mess that’s harder to deal with later. So I try. Sort of. But I also waste a lot of time watching tv shows, so what’s the real problem here?

2. Currently editing the longest manuscript ever.  EVER. Aside from, like, encyclopedias or whatever. And because of time and deadlines and stuff, I’m going to have to work quite a bit this weekend, because otherwise we might have problems.

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It’s 2014! When you have fewer life changes, it feels like time is just passing you by and making you older. I HATE it. I feel so stuck right now. Not fun. What’s my goal? Where’s my end point? I need these things in order to actually function.

First five things Friday of the year–and the first one for a few weeks. I remember my original intention to do this every week, somehow missing the fact that Friday nights are usually spent hanging out with friends and way too tired out from the week to have clever, coherent thoughts… I am the tiredest.

I’m having major life issues right now–mostly, realizing that I don’t think the skills from my current job are really transferable to any other jobs, which is something that’s probably going to work against me in the future. Unfortunately,  further details can’t really be given on the internet, so I guess I’ll just have to be vague.

My birthday is approaching. I’m about to be 27. It’s both still young and too old. You know what? I blame the internet. If I didn’t hear so many stories about people who are super successful in their 20s, I’d probably be much more ok with where I am in life. (Or at least marginally more ok with it…)

I think that I sound awfully boring right now. It’s so bad that I almost want to delete this whole post and not blog at all right now, but, well, why not.