IT LIVES!!... Part 2 (or The Mysterious Case of the Vanishing Writer of A-Street)

...Just who is this strange creature, this Swamp Thing that has emerged from the primordial goop of an infernally long blogging hiatus? Could it be...? 

It is -- Look at that: it's the dork who promised "more regular postings" as of the middle of last summer... and then proceeded to vanish in the wake of the nonsense of other obligations/obstacles/assorted-whatnot-of-ridiculousness.

Well, hi there!

What can I say? If you're reading this, then I hope you can forgive this ridiculous person for apparently jumping ship for almost 8 months. 

...Of course, if you've never read any of my stuff before now, you probably truly don't care how long this random writer/blogger person has apparently been away. In which case, I'll just say to you, "Welcome to my humble abode! Stick around a while, and put your feet up - I've spent months stewing in an overload of brain muck, and am back the more determined for it, with plenty of new material and a regular posting schedule to come. Pinky swear."

At any rate, I am happy to report several bright points of news, aside from gearing up to get back to both my "Writing Tips" and "A to Z Book Diary" threads, among other upcoming projects.

First: one month to go on my university degree - HUZZAH!!! I mean... ahem. I'm looking forward to being finished. Just a little.

Second: after I finish my degree, I'm moving back to my hometown and using all I've learned from school and my unpaid work as head of a literary journal in my current city to start up a literary journal with my big sister - so stay tuned for updates as we get things underway and open shop for submissions!

And third: I've recently passed the 55,000 word mark for my novel! One plus side, it seems, for having spent 8 months losing my mind a bit - immense stress and periodic insomnia made me more productive than I've ever been as a cheap way to cheer myself up in my free time :)

So, all my news aside, I want to pass along a mountain of gratitude for the folks that have sent along bits of encouragement along the way these past months, and to the people that have shown interest in this blog in the past, and interest in seeing it continue in the future. I'll be back to lurking around a few of the writers groups around here as well, so I look forward to reconnecting, and I'll leave you with a blurb I came across recently that left me grinning:

"I'm a writer. If I'm staring at you, I'm not being rude. I'm trying to decide if you need to go in a book. If you're a snot, I may be trying to decide how to kill you."

-(someecards: user card)-

IT LIVES!!

Four months since my last post on here, huh?... Yikes. 

Right, so about that: I have a good reason, I swear! There are, in fact, several good reasons. And if you're here reading this, I'm going to go ahead and assume you're at least vaguely curious as to what those are. So.

Reasons!

Most of them can be summed up as the following: blah-blah-blah accelerated university course load, blah-blah-blah time consuming (though awesome) unpaid job, blah-blah-blah life being its usual (*cough*) charming self. Nothing original there, but four especially interesting months of voluntary psychosis ensued. 

But! The other (and best) reason! Writing awesomeness! Progress at last! So much solid progress that I can't seem to stop using exclamation points! This is a genuine concern!

Anyway, the progress: yesterday I surpassed my personal record of 17,300-ish words as the most I've ever written of an entirely original work of fiction (a distinction important to make, since I have in the past written a few rather lengthier pieces for fun on fanfiction.net - great place to practice technique by the way, for any that haven't given it a go). I'm now nearing 20,000 words after putting the finishing touches on chapter three of my budding (*knock on wood*) debut novel yesterday night.

Obviously, still a long way off from 

Image courtesy of Prakairoj/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

but FINALLY away from starting to, in some ways, switch out a chunk of the usual excitement for writing with something more along the lines of

Image courtesy of StuartMiles/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

which is pretty frickin' lovely. Especially since my renter's insurance really doesn't cover spontaneous-human-combustion damage. I don't think...

Also, in other recent news, a book review I wrote has been published in the journal of arts and literature I work for, so eureka! Publication number two! It may just be a review, but I'll take my victories where I can get 'em :)

And now that I've resurrected this little-blog-that-could, I'll get back to more regular postings, along with including a regular ongoing word count of my YA novel endeavor - partly wanting to get publicly dorkily excited over the fact that HOLY CRAP, I ACTUALLY AM GETTING SOMEWHERE (...did I mention it's been years since I've reached the end of a chapter 3 of anything?? - sad, but true, so... WOO-HOOOOOO!), but also hopefully as an incentive to keep on keeping on with my current writing roll.

So, current word count as of this afternoon: 19,675.

Mua-ha :D

And now back to work.

You Said It, Lewis

'Writing'. What a wonderfully ambiguous and mysterious profession. I remember reading my first real novel as a child and thinking, "This is it - this is what I want to do. I want to spend my life putting great words to paper and making stories out of them." At the time, it seemed that was all I needed: to decide that that was the direction I was heading in and, like an aspiring policeman or dentist or teacher or accountant, go off to get whatever prescribed training I needed before launching myself into a career.

Image courtesy of thaikrit/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

As it turns out, it's not quite as simple as that. Instead, following that absolute certainty of purpose, my road to my dream job thus far has been filled with years of writing stalemates, dead-in-the-water short and long stories, hair-pulling plot frustrations, and plugging away at a degree towards a day-job that'll hopefully pay the bills and put food in the fridge. And after all this, here I am at 23 years old, practically living off of mac 'n cheese, sporting 1.5 post-secondary degrees and until recently, still without a  glimmer of any sort of publishing credit to my name. To say the least, not at all what I used to imagine whenever I'd drift off on an idealist's daydreams, imagining life as a Lee Harper or a Mark Twain or a Jules Verne (discounting, of course, the mac 'n cheese, which remains delicious in any circumstance).

Do I wish then that the whole process would speed the heck up, and stop being so unbelievably frustrating and drawn-out and full of false-starts?... Not for a second.

Uh-oh. I feel a paradox coming on.

Strange indeed, but true. If this mess were easy, I get the impression this would feel more like a rainy-day hobby than a life's dream... though I might also have dodged getting my first few premature grey hairs. But that's besides the point.

Today, I received my very first acceptance letter for a short piece of creative non-fiction, which informed me of its impending publication in the online January 2014 issue of TWJ Magazine. And in the middle of feeling so light that I half expect to lift out of my desk chair and float away at any moment, I'm reminded of a quote by C.S Lewis:

"With the possible exception of the equator, everything begins somewhere." 

So here's to that beginning, which I've decided to salute with this blog - a place to rant about and happily plow through the endlessly torturous and fantastically rewarding mess known as the creative process. Here goes nothing - let's see where we end up.

 

Image courtesy of amenic181/FreeDigitalPhotos.net