Forgive me, I'm going to be all over the place in this post. This has been an interesting writing week. Too many thoughts and no interest in writing several posts.
1. I'm beginning to think this going to an MFA program and spending a significant time thinking about story structure, has ruined reading for me. Or maybe it's just that I am becoming a more discerning reader? My friend M. and I had this conversation in the parking lot of a corporate bookstore after we went to Red Lobster (In Iowa, this passes as seafood. And who am I kidding, cheddar bay biscuits rock). M said (I'm paraphrasing, she'll correct me if I'm wrong) that if a story is good enough, she doesn't think about craft issues. Happy All the Time is the last book I read that made me feel that way. I'm always thinking things like "Would Ethan say the POV was deep enough?" "Did the author take a real risk here? Or is this ending a bit of a cop out?"
These are the questions I ask myself when I edit and maybe I should train myself to stop applying them to the books I read. Or maybe I should just read better books. Maybe I should just finish my book...
2. I just finished an edit of a old story. Finally. I've been working on it for three weeks and while I am certain I still have more to do to it, I'm going to send it out into the world anyway.
3. I've been thinking about books on craft. Are they useful or not? I've found that every time I sit down to read one of the many I have (Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott, This Is The Year You Write Your Novel, Walter Mosley, The Art of Fiction, John Gardner) I usually just want to write instead of reading about writing. Bret Anthony Johnston's "Naming the World" is very useful and always with me when I write.
4. I went to the gym last night and went to town on the cardio machines. 55 minutes I was a sweaty, gross mess. But I felt so good!!!
And finally...
5. Yesterday I wanted to kill off the main character in my novel. I mean kill him before he even hit the page kill him. I woke up yesterday thinking about the dream I had in which my main character, a 17 year old boy, was reading his opening chapter out loud....I shouldn't really call him the main character. I'm not writing a novel, novel. It a novel in stories. I guess. Anyway, as a character he can, at time, dominate. This time, he was trying to dominate me. What he wanted was for me to somehow turn all those pages I have into a first person narrative that was all about him, him, him.
My initial reaction was to tell him to fuck off. But now I can't get that idea out of my head. I have a writing date today, and because my writing dates are mostly about coffee, vegan cupcakes*, and gossip, I don't mind turning this one over to him I'll give him 1,000 words.
*I do not condone vegan treats on a regular basis, I like butter and eggs (perhaps too much). However, there happens to be a lovely cafe in Iowa City that is perfect for writing and they just so happen to cater to the non-dairy sorts.
Okay, one more.
6. I'm going to have a homemade latte to go along with my German breakfast (salami, cheese and crusty wheat bread) while I listen to the Milli Vanilli channel on Pandora and edit my Statement of Educational Philosophy.
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