Monthly Archives: September 2011

More and more, lately, I find myself not finishing the novels I start.

The latest was Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin. It had gorgeous writing and complex characters – I just got tired of waiting for the plot to show up. Before that was Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, which had much the same problem, as I’ve mentioned before. Before that was Clive Barker’s Weaveworld, which actually had the opposite problem: the plot hummed along fine, I just couldn’t take the clunky writing. Heck, the only reason I finished China Mieville’s Kraken was that I was tired of giving up on books – I would’ve put it down otherwise.

What’s the cause of this trend? I’m not sure. Maybe I’m getting all ADD “ooh, shiny” – but I don’t think so. I’ve finished five books in the last three months, it’s just that none of them were novels. Maybe I’m just getting pickier about what I read, but then all the books above came highly recommended. Or maybe it’s only a coincidence, and I’m merely finding a lot of books I don’t like lately.

What about you? Do you usually finish what you start?

With apologies to Mr. Foxworthy:

If you’ve ever accused a dictionary of lying to you…you might be an author.

If you’ve ever name-dropped Michael Chabon at a cocktail party…you might be an author.

If you’ve ever denied someone a second date because they said “ATM machine” during the first…you might be an author.

If you twitched at “they” in the previous sentence…you might be an author.

If you’ve ever informed a bill collector that “Money always flows toward the author”…you might be an author.

If you’ve ever revised a text message for clarity…you might be an author.

If you’ve ever used word count as a measurement of time (i.e. “I’ll be ready for dinner in another hundred words”)…you might be an author.

If you’ve ever demanded a mulligan on the Battle of Hastings…you might be an author.

If you’ve ever mailed a box of Godivas to an acquisitions editor…you might be an author.

If you’ve ever referred to health insurance as “speculative fiction”…you might be an author.

If you’ve ever filled out a restaurant comment card in iambic pentameter…you might be an author.

If any part of your body has been signed by Neil Gaiman…you might be an author.

If passive voice bothered you in the previous sentence…you might be an author.

If you believe the line “O death, where is thy sting?” contains an apostrophe…you might be an author.

If you’ve ever read a Dean Koontz novel for research purposes…you might be an author.

If you’ve ever written a letter that began “Dear CMOS,”…you might be an author.

If you’ve ever gone to Bingo Night expecting to play Scrabble…you might be an author.

If you’ve ever referred to an exclamation point as “gratuitous”…you might be an author.

If you’ve ever cited “quantity of books” as a reason not to move to a new house…you might be an author.

If you’ve ever accused your spouse’s grocery list of employing an unreliable narrator…you might be an author.

If you’ve ever informed a Trekkie that Chekhov’s gun is not a phaser…you might be an author.

If you’ve ever done something just so you could put it in your autobiography…you might be an author.

If you’ve ever referred to your children as “sequels”…you might be an author.

If you’ve ever sent a query letter to the Central Intelligence Agency…you might be an author.

If the word “steampunk” appears anywhere in your resume…you might be an author.

If “writer’s block” is something you throw at people who say “fiction novel”…you might be an author.

If you’ve ever accused your spouse of promoting descriptivist grammar…you might be an author.

If you find yourself reading books with shorter titles because they’re easier to tweet about…you might be an author.

If you’ve ever referred to a Jane Austen novel as “mainstream”…you might be an author.

If you’ve ever deducted Bailey’s and coffee on a tax form…you might be an author.

If you’ve ever had to clarify the phrase “murder your darlings” to an officer of the law…you might be an author.

If you’ve ever misspelled something longhand and reached for Ctrl+Z…you might be an author.

If you’ve ever reread a book you hated to see if it was the translator’s fault…you might be an author.

If you’re happily married and still have a fear of rejection…you might be an author.

If you think New York is exciting “because that’s where the agents are”…you might be an author.

If you have any idea what the hell I’m rambling on about…you might be an author.

Got more? Add ’em in the comments!

I’m taking the day off, as I hope most of you are, too. And if you happen to have stopped by my corner of the Internet (as I can only surmise you have), here’s a poem to tide you over till tomorrow:

Lines Composed in a Wood on a Windy Day
Anne Brontë

My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring
And carried aloft on the wings of the breeze;
For above and around me the wild wind is roaring,
Arousing to rapture the earth and the seas.

The long withered grass in the sunshine is glancing,
The bare trees are tossing their branches on high;
The dead leaves beneath them are merrily dancing,
The white clouds are scudding across the blue sky.

I wish I could see how the ocean is lashing
The foam of its billows to whirlwinds of spray;
I wish I could see how its proud waves are dashing,
And hear the wild roar of their thunder to-day!

Someone asked me this question recently, and it’s stuck in my brain. The answer isn’t obvious.

There’s no question I love writing. It gives me purpose. When I write – a novel, a story, a poem, a blog post – I get that feeling of yes, this is what I’m supposed to do with my life. It’s that overriding passion that gets me through the hard parts.

Because, as we well know, there are a lot of hard parts. If there’s one thing writers love to do (myself included), it’s whine about how hard it is. It’s hard to take a great idea, throw it at the page, and discover after two or three false starts that it’s not a great idea after all. It’s even harder to throw a great idea at the page and discover that you haven’t (or can’t) do it justice. It’s harder yet to spend months of revision wondering whether it’s “haven’t” or “can’t.” And when you finally finish, the choice between traditional and self-publishing sometimes feels like the choice between rejection and indifference.

Yes, I know, writing is the easiest thing in the world: you sit in a chair and type words. Doesn’t make it any less hard. I’ve talked about this easy/hard duality before.

I like having succeeded, of course. When you finish something that people really enjoy, when you know in your heart you’ve created something beautiful, of course it’s fun to look back at the gauntlet you ran and say “Yeah, I got through all that.”

But you can’t live in the end state, and I wouldn’t if I could. You live in the process.

Do I actually enjoy writing? Like, while I’m doing it?

The answer is yes, but it’s hard to explain.

Certainly I don’t like it all the time. Every step of the process (first draft, revision, submission) is by turns dull, frustrating, and disappointing. I guess I’ve said that already.

But beneath all that, the driving, underlying love sort of…bubbles up through, into “like.”

I like the idea phase, when everything is possible and everything is new. I like the happy surprises, when you lay down a sentence or a scene and think “Huh, that actually turned out pretty good.” I like watching my story take shape in the fires of revision. I even like the excitement of sending out query letters, when the big dark voice of “This will probably get rejected” can’t drown out the bright little voice of “But maybe it won’t.”

All those things, and more, I like.

And the rest? That’s what the love is for.

You tell me – do you actually enjoy writing?