Category: Uncategorized

Is it necessary to be tortured to write?

I hate Edgar Allan Poe.

Don’t get me wrong, I love his short stories. I tolerate his poems, preferring The Cannibal Flea (I cannot find the author) to Poe’s version.

It’s just that Poe, among other writers, gives the rest of us writers a reputation it’s impossible for us to live down to.

Edgar Allan Poe: an unstable alcoholic who married his 13-year-old cousin and was found dying in a gutter. History attributes his death as resulting from everything from alcoholism to syphilis to rabies.

Virginia Woolf: diagnosed with bipolar disorder, showed antisemitism in several of her written communications despite being married to a Jew, fought against the medical establishment’s treatment of her disorder, committed suicide.

Tennessee Williams: prone to severe vegetative depressions, struggled with drug use, including the amphetamines and Seconal his doctor prescribed, mourned his younger days and loss of sexual attractiveness, died of choking on the cap of some nasal spray.

Dorothy Parker: escaped an abusive childhood, plagued with alcohol problems and self-doubt,  put on the Hollywood blacklist for being a suspected Communist.

Even Stephen King had a substance abuse problem — just about every substance, from what I can tell — until he quit in the early 1980’s.

One of my thoughts here, as I read over these synopses, is that all of us, if dissected so thoroughly, would have many of the same issues. Alcohol abuse isn’t the sole province of classic writers, nor is mental illness. My biography would have some of the same elements if I were one of the great classic writers (without the alcohol and drug use, as I like to live life unhindered), but I’m not even published yet, much less classic.

I also wonder if the public documents writers’ demons simply because we expect writers to have demons in order to be able to create. We still suffer from the belief that bipolar and depression create more creativity (the jury’s still out on that; I’m only able to create when the edge is taken off my mood swings).

So, this is our takeway: Everyone has demons, and the demons aren’t what qualify us to write.

I didn’t write yesterday.

I didn’t write yesterday.

I guess sometimes I need a break. Although I spent a few hours doing the following searches:

permaculture greenhouses
permaculture greenhouse plants
honey bees
honey bees Elko NV
Africanized honeybees
honey bees greenhouse
lizards eastern NV
venomous reptiles eastern NV

And I’m still looking. I have six greenhouses to fill with herbs, greens, and the like — well, five, because one dome is a production greenhouse for seedlings and the like.

Wish me luck today — I’d like to get 2000 words in!

Playing with the Dark Side

The dark side of our imaginations exist to remind us that many of our fantasies should not be fulfilled.

I left a tantalizing remark about the dark side of my imagination at the end of last night’s post, the type that begs for a response: “What about the dark side of your imagination?”
To be honest, the dark side of my imagination doesn’t like talking about the dark side of my imagination, because it envisions someone taking these notes and applying them to the dark side of seduction, something obsessive and manipulative and successful in a way that, in real life, I would call the police on.
In writing, the dark side of my imagination gets released. It imagines a dying world of lethal competition for scarce commodities like clean water (Voyageurs); a cold, vicious being crushing an unsuccessful henchman so badly that DNA analysis is the only way to identify him (Gaia’s Hands); a near-immortal being bidding his protege and lover to hold his heart in its pericardial sac (Mythos); a crazed militia leader aiming at a courageous old lady with dispassionate media crews filming without interceding (Apocalypse). 
The darkness in these moments comes from the conflict of emotions and actions — we aren’t supposed to rejoice in having a hole punched in our chest or kill others with cold satisfaction or watch a murder with our only reaction professional pride at having captured the story. Writers feel their own conflicts — in real life we would reject the possessive girlfriend, abhor the poisoner and his method, get grossed out at the righteous punishment of the rapist by crushing his testicles (or as an old friend once put it, castration by “a brick, an anvil, and some duct tape.” My friend had a very dark side.)
We don’t want to witness any of these things in real life. But we writers put them in books to exorcize the demons from our minds, to get justice in the end for the executors of these deeds, and to allow us to go back to our happier fantasies of sitting in the perfect bookshop.

Nurturing Spaces

Somewhere, there exists a perfect coffeehouse. The light is soothing, nothing like this coffeehouse I currently sit in. It is paneled in warm wood, nothing like this coffeehouse I currently sit in. It has local art on the walls, nothing like this coffeehouse I currently sit in. The espresso is rich with thick crema and a twist of lemon, and a piece of dark chocolate on the side, NOTHING like this coffeehouse I currently sit in. In the perfect coffeehouse, I can crawl in bleary-eyed after a day of writing and feel like I’m home, nothing like this coffeehouse I currently sit in. 

I think I’ve made myself clear about the coffeehouse I currently sit in.
One of the great things about being a writer is that I can create nurturing spaces that I can’t find in real life, spaces that literally make me weepy-eyed. A kitten pile on a warm wood floor, a cottage in a place called Heaven, a coffeehouse where I can be completely unselfconscious, a toy shop where a young Kris Kringle builds wooden toys. A rainy alley where two people kiss for the first time, an attic where the sun shines in through a window, an auditorium with perfect acoustics.
If I encountered my imagination in real life, I would wonder if I was in heaven, which means I’d wonder if I was dead, and whether the afterlife would be a place where I literally walked through my imagination. That wouldn’t be bad as long as I didn’t indulge the darker parts of my imagination.

Thank you, Google!

A joke among writers these days is “I hope nobody looks at my search history”. This is an excerpt of my Internet search history for this novel:

Sindarin language
Tengwar alphabet
Gold bullion
Pickle Lake ON
Grand Marais MN
Duluth MN
rat finish automobile
petroleum fractionator
biodiesel
jatropha biodiesel
castor oil biodiesel
sewage biodiesel
transesterification biodiesel
Pickle Lake, ON to Chicago
Milwaukee Avenue subway station Chicago
Adair, IA I-80 rest stop
Bull Mastiff
How dogs kill
Wagonhound, WY rest stop
Pine Bluffs WY
smallpox
underground desert housing
Owyhee Desert
desert sheep breeds
Navajo Churro sheep
Mammoth Jacks
desert goat breeds
guanacos
Great Pyrenees
off-road motorcycle
Nubian goats
goat milk
mare’s milk
dry land farming
water reclamation
how to build a generator
borax mine Nevada
working knife wood handle
natural black dyes
pumice mine Nevada
flora Elko County Nevada
mines Elko County Nevada
ricin poisoning symptoms
how easy is it to synthesize ricin

(Note: I did not search “HOW to synthesize ricin”, because I really don’t want to know.)

This is only a partial search. When I write, I envision subject matter experts leaning over my shoulder saying, “No way can you put straight castor oil in that car!” and the like. Remember also that I’m not great at visualizing things, even if I’ve seen them before like the Milwaukee Avenue subway station in Chicago or the Adair, IA rest stop.

I could use a “fantasy version” of my post-United States, I guess, but I want people to feel the discomfort of seeing familiar places turned to rubble. So I need to work with earth rules — except for the Archetypes, of course …

Thanks again for reading.

Wow. I don’t know what to write today. I think all my brain cells dedicated to writing are all tied up with this novel. Which is a good thing, I guess — I think some of my posts have been suffering in quality because of my latest writing obsession.

I suppose I could take a break from the blog while writing, but — I can’t —

Because I love the attention.

I’m not really an accomplished Facebook writer, because I don’t know how to be one of the cool kids. Honestly. I’m in my own little world sometimes, and someone asks, “How are you?” and I say, “Kitty! Look at the kitty!”

I love that you’re visiting me. I hope I’m not babbling every day, I hope you care about what you read, I hope that I’m giving you an idea about what the mind of a writer, and in this case a cute, cuddly writer who writes about apocalyptic futures (appearances can be deceiving, can’t they?) and cats.

Yes, I will be the first to admit that I can be a little dramatic, especially when talking about finding an agent, editing, and My Mission to Save the World through My Novels. (Capitalized for embarassing self-importance).

But I see you come visit — not by name, but by place: US (the majority of visitors), Portugal, Poland, Ukraine, Germany, Peru, Russia, Costa Rica (I think I know who you are!), France, Canada, United Kingdom (I DO know who you are!), Hong Kong and India (Haven’t seen you folks in a while!) and maybe a couple I’ve forgot.

Thank you for reading. Thank you for putting up with my ups and downs. Thank you for being the anonymous people who make my day.

Satisfaction

My seven-year-old honorary niece, Marcie, asked me if she could teach you about satisfaction, so here goes:

“Satisfaction, Aunt Laurie says, is a type of happy. I like the word ‘happy’ better. There are different types of happy, and they make you feel different ways. There’s big wow happies, there’s little fluffy happies, and there’s the ‘I’m so happy the tiger didn’t eat me’ happies.

“The thing is, how you get the happy makes a difference in how you feel the happy.  If you want to do something like write a book, and you finish the book, you’re like ‘Wow! Big happy!’. But the next morning you’re like ‘ho hum, time to find something else big to do.’ It’s like eating ice cream — you want real food a couple hours later after you weren’t hungry for dinner. But if you have something you want to get good at, and you do it all the time and get better and better, you feel this little warm glow and it lasts a long time. So getting better at something isn’t as yummy but it keeps you full longer, like oatmeal with raisins and honey — not as sweet, but it lasts longer in your tummy.

“Aunt Laurie just typed 50,000 words — that’s a lot of words! — and so she won something she calls NaNo. But this morning she woke up and said, ‘Now what? I met my goal!’ Then she looked at her computer and said, ‘I still need to learn how to write better, so I’m going to keep practicing and maybe someday I’ll get published!’

“The End!”

50,000 is just a beginning

I’ve met my NaNo goal in half a month.
Phew!
But this novel writing is just beginning…

There’s about 40,000-50,000 words left to write, and then there’s editing, editing, and more editing. There’s letting other people read it for reactions. There’s marketing it to an agent.

But that’s okay.

Phew!

An excerpt — and the home stretch.

I am in the home stretch with 4000 words left. I might hit the goal today; I might not. I will keep writing till at least the end of the month; it’s possible if I keep this rate up I’ll be close to the end of the book. I doubt I will, however — I’m traveling for a writers’ retreat over (American) Thanksgiving.

Here’s an excerpt from yesterday (really rough). Our protagonist, Annie Smith,  has accepted an invitation to the intentional community Hearts are Mountains, built in northern Nevada in the Owyhee Desert, for fuel and water. There are a few mysteries that Annie doesn’t quite register:

I realized, as we went down another circular stairwell, that the underground building was a cylinder longer than it was wide. This being the central cylinder, the rooms appeared to be for collective use. Doors led to, I presumed, the other cylinders below the greenhouses. The layer below the great room served as a craft production room, and below that a root cellar and food storage area, with a full quarter of the area used for — 

“Water reclamation?” I asked, spying the tall cylindrical powered unit.

“Got it in one,” Daniel nodded. “We run the unit on skinky — generated outside, of course — supplemented with jatropha, which we grow in one of the domes, and castor, which we grow on the opposite side of the animals so they don’t eat the beans and die.” He indicated the large unit again. “One of the biggest hazards of living in underground units is the humidity level — too much humidity, believe it or not, makes underground living very unpleasant.”

“This is a pretty sophisticated setup,” I remarked, looking at concrete and metal. “Pardon me for asking, but doesn’t this setup require a lot of money?”

Daniel paused for a long moment. I wondered if I had broken a taboo among these people by mentioning money. “I’m sorry — “ I blurted out.

“No, really, it’s fine. It’s hard to explain our funding for this, however. We built this with seed money and sweat equity. Although the cement habitats are prefab, we installed them ourselves. This one goes about seventy feet into the ground, while the others — living spaces — go down about sixty. As you can tell, almost all our living spaces are underground; we had to do some deep digging, and I don’t know if the site has fully recovered after twenty years.”

We walked up three flights of circular stairs past the root cellar and the peaceful crafts room, where a man sat, spinning fiber — 

“Derek,” Daniel called out, “say hi to Annie. She’s having dinner with us.”

Derek, a pale man with incredibly long, pale hair, gave us a puzzled look and then smiled. “Hi, Annie,” he said and turned back to his work.

“Is he Kirsten’s brother?”

“Twins. They’re extremely rare among …” he let his voice trail off, and I wondered how the sentence would have ended.

“You don’t get visitors here often, do you?” I queried in what I suspected was a grave understatement.

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“Not too many people are into rock climbing these days,” Daniel shrugged.