Novel Progress and Archery

          Work is starting up, and the goal for this summer amidst work is finishing my book. It's not something like a chore, but it's more of a push as to what will result in the end. Something will come out of the rough draft, and something different will be made in the revision. Beta-readers will look at this for what they see and each find something different. The process is going strong, but I hope that along the way my patience doesn't shrink thin.
          A year ago, I started a novel project that had touched my imagination: what would someone do if they were being called by the dead and supposedly dying via his radio, in the middle of nowhere? EVP, or Electric Voice Phenomena, happens quite a bit in the paranormal community, with individuals finding clear voices telling them ghostly messages.
          But this novel isn't about EVP, at least in my eye. I've worked with the novel for a year, and the focus has changed from a simple question to a character trying to relive a past that he never had through his son.
          The result, as of right now, is a character lying, cheating, and even killing to get home and away from these demonic voices coming from technology. I've written over 48,000 words, and the end is coming sooner than expected, which is honestly more terrifying to me than what I'm writing about. It just can't end yet.
           I've taken time away and back to the novel to help postpone the process. Some ideas come to me easily or feel they come out of the characters themselves, but in other case, pushing through has become a nuisance of what's crap and what's not (Shitty first drafts, Anne Lammott states).  To get away from these thoughts, I've taken up archery, and I've learned that I'm okay at it. I hit the center several times this past Friday, one round being entirely of bullseyes.
          Also, the sport relaxes me. For an hour, I can shoot arrows at a wall, sweating my shirt off in a building with no air-conditioning, yet I leave feeling great, maybe even energized.It's something I look forward to each week.
          I miss the days when my novel really surprised and pushed me, much like archery is doing now.  Things felt easier. I felt more accomplished after a good session, while now I feel accomplished but drained in some form. Is it the work load of my writing(1000 words)? Is it the time of day (Evenings before, afternoons now)? I'll have to take each day in front of the laptop and word processor as a new day, and if I don't get myself going on it, hope or not, no one will.
          
         
         

Learning through Experiencing, Helping

     I finished Stephen King's Cujo a week ago, which pushed me to start The Dead Zone, another novel written in his glory days before his freak accident, being hit while walking along a road. Another novel on my upcoming list is John Grisham's The Firm, which I am very excited to read. This past year has included the most novels that I have ever read, but it's all for good purpose.
     Today, another author asked me to read a shorter piece of his. It was something different, an adult romance, and I gave it a good two hours of me commenting on it and making note of where conflict and scene goals are missing, something I myself have been missing through drafting and creating in revision.
     And that's today's focus. Reading keeps the mind loose, the muse churning even when a writer closes up shop for the night. Like artists, we writers duplicate what we like from genres and writers we love. We throw out what he don't love, and that's that. Is this necessary for one to be a writer?
     In a word: yes. Reading is just as important to writers as being bothersome is to a cuddling cat. The words we peel through in a novel, poem, or short work are what reload our own craft. Think of it like driving a car running purely on electricity, as cars these days tend to do.
     You wouldn't fuel an electric car with water. Student writers try to do this by putting a piece off until the night before it's due. You wouldn't stare at the car and say you were driving it, yet young writers say they write when they actually only think of writing. Who does that?
     A few friends and I had a good laugh, when one learned that a person he knew wrote in a genre he had never read.
     Plain as the sun beating down on Death Valley, writers learn, grow, and feed in their craft by reading, writing, and assisting others through the process. Of course, meeting others and discussing writing can and should be a part of the work. Writing is solely not an activity for introverts. But the meat of what we do, repeated throughout the course of every writing reference you'll pick up, is gained by being a writer and reader.
     Go and find yourself a good book, and start learning.
    

Traveling in the Mind and on the Page

     The map of California stands in front of me. I drew it, so half of the state looks bent, and crackles of marker roads lead from one blob, San Francisco, to an X, Los Angeles. I stare at the marker trail and hum to myself.
     At the end of the room sits the professor and one student. She's asking for help on her essay, and while privacy is asked, I hear muffles of thoughts over from the white board in the center of the room. In front me, scribbles of thoughts, ideas and musings create noise in my brain.
      I've driven the road, Frisco to LA, many times. On my trips up north, I enjoy the desolation such a drive creates. There's nothing for miles; then highways become loops and drops. After thirty minutes, it's back to driving on a plain for hours it seems. I call it living-in-limbo.
     In a work-in-progess novel I have, one character is driving from the bay to southern California, and the landmarks are just as important as the scenarios the character faces. He's taking the Grapevine, a road that leads up and down slopes steeper than most get to drive in their lives. Half of the time, the Grapevine is closed. Weather conditions are so adverse that travelers must listen to the radio and news just to know what will happen.
     My eyes follow the trail I've scribbled, and I think of the small curio stores, the repetitive McDonald's and diner locations. My family's stopped at most, so I try to smell the grease hanging in the air, the sun beating down on our necks. At night, the hubbles are the only source of light for miles.
     Traveling is something that I love, for it gives me a chance to see new worlds, even if they're only an hour or more away. Family vacations have turned into horrifying, lonely settings for my characters, and desolate locations themselves have turned into themes of hope, promise.
     Americans, I argue, don't do it enough. Vacations are spent at Disneyland, New York, or somewhere so tourist filled one can taste the churros or street hotdogs. But real, American road trips have fallen out of peoples' repertoire.
     I wipe my hand over the scribbled road and destroy half of California. It's ten. I walk to my professor and pass him what I have. We talk, and we leave the room to head downstairs, where his dog and wife wait. We leave, and I'm back on a lamp-lit road, heading home.

Speedbumps: A Writer's Nightmare

          The last thing I remember was the plastic mask slipping over my face and the slipping of what felt like a scorpion's tail in my arm. They had asked me to sign one last waiver, and in the reclined chair, one arm hooked to a machine measuring my heart rate, everything went black as they pulled the clipboard away.
          When I woke up, I was sitting in the passenger seat of my mother's Honda Fit, holding a strawberry shake from In n Out with the lid and straw missing, blood on the cup's lip. My head throbbed. Even worse, my cheeks felt punched by the same IV that had been stapled to my arm. I felt happy. I leaned to my driver and told her thanks, that I loved her, and that In n Out was the shit.
         For the next few days, I stayed in bed with pain medicine and antibiotics at the ready. Books were thrown on the floor. I had no interest in Watership Down outside of wanting to hold a rabbit and squeeze it between jaw spasms. My mind was entirely on sleeping off the pain and medicating myself back to sleep. I still wonder if I need a slip of pills just to fall asleep.
          Everything I've worked on until this point has stopped. I have one piece moving around with my beta-readers, but it's due for submission before March. My novel hit 30,000 words a week ago. I posted on Facebook in joy, for it's an achievement I've never thought I would ever reach. Now, it feels like a past vacation that had too many good memories.
          Wisdom teeth or not, there are many reasons why writers pull away from their workload. For me, I can't handle the mix of pain and creation. Creation is birth, and while some argue that birth is pain, this birth is not. For others, the loss of a home or loved one might draw him out of his creative world. It really depends on the person; however, it's not something we surely want to explore.
          My jaws feel tender, but I can sit in a chair and read, now. The words pepper into my mind better than before. I know I should have my glasses on. The steam of a bowl of soup keeps me focused, because my mind is keeping me working for the next spoonful of noodles.
          Work will return next week, and writing will fall back into my life on weekends, days off from homework or studies, maybe. It's hard to say when those days are, but I plan to let them come, and when they do, I'll feel healthy once again.
         

A Hobbit and Several Spiders

          The bathroom is one of the only places in my home where I can escape to read another chapter or sentence without being disturbed. I pick the parent's bathroom, because there's a heater, and even if I've never felt a mid-western freeze, a cold seat is a cold seat with jeans or without. Sometimes, I get through a couple chapters. It really depends on the book.
          Reading allows me to escape. Like many, I find that some books pull stress away better than others. Just recently, I finished J. R. R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. This was one book I actually was able to finish in bed. It wasn't because of my family, however.
          Above the toilet in my parent's restroom looms a web that stretches from the window to the towel racks, and changing his place every visit, the spider is a bulb with matchsticks for legs. Flies hang, and dust weighs the web down further.
          In The Hobbit, Bilbo handles giant, menacing spiders with the power of his one ring (which we all know without even having to read the damn thing). The spiders have his friends hang from cocoons, and their noses and toes poke out, letting Bilbo know who's who.
         I didn't even realize this bug of mine was watching me until something fell and rolled down my bare-back one morning. I jumped from the seat, clothed (no, I wasn't doing anything, just reading). Standing, I hit the web. More touches me. Thankfully, the only person awake was my father, and he spends his time in the back, so he didn't hear me yelp like a wounded Old Yeller.
        In comparison, the spiders in Tolkien's novel aren't that scary. They talk and plan, something we don't see from spiders. To me, this humanizes them and makes them no more scarier than the hairy guy in the Big Bird suit on TV. Real spiders, things, terrorize us because we as readers or viewers don't see the mind behind the creature, demon, or spirit. In literature, we see the effect it brings on the protagonists or unlucky side characters, but not once are we told why something does what it does. Worst of all, if our characters are weak or injured, our hearts begin to pound at these things.
       My spider is still hanging over the toilet, but I duck my head as to not disturb him. He's gained some new trophies, and had I caught them, I wouldn't want someone to knock them into a bowl. It turns out this is a new spider, with even thinner legs and larger eyes. My spider, who I knocked and hollered at during those early morning hours, hangs in one corner, bundled up into a sack.

Nanowrimo and the Invasion of the Body Snatchers

          On November 1st, precisely at twelve A.M. when everyone is to be asleep, select individuals are wiped clean of their existence. They are not the same person anymore; their name is a vague look back to the previous person who used to control the body. When they wake up, several hours later, they will get up, wash, and be changed forever.
          It sounds like a thrilling Science Fiction film, but it's Nanowrimo, the latest craze to hit the literary world since hardcover books. Nanowrimo is an annual event where writers promise to finish fifty-thousand words of a working novel draft within a month, and each day is a contest to complete the much needed word count goal. It illustrates the ongoing challenges authors go through while expressing that anyone can write if they sit down, silence everything, and write.
           But writing this much in a day is inhuman, alien even. Students, hobbyist, parents, and others take this challenge and become someone new. Their minds become driven to find the next plot point, the next story direction. Their fingers wriggle out in a flurry of typing. Even when away from a keyboard, the victim cannot control his or her hands as they wait to cling to a writing device. The host becomes, dare I say it, an author.
          Nanowrimo is great because it sets a goal for these new authors. Its no weaker than a manuscript deadline an editor might give, nor is it weaker than one an author would put on himself alone. Individuals can finish fifteen-hundred words in an afternoon and say, hey, I'm really doing this.
           Being an author is very difficult. While society might dictate that writing is simply play, it's not. We are paid little money, with little hope, to play the lottery with ourselves. Will this turn out as great as I thought? Who knows. Will I make it big? Why is this even a question? We writers write because we enjoy it, love it even. The rush of words coming from what feels like nowhere is cathartic, and we have to constantly fight ourselves for free time, something that is a luxury.
          That's what Nanowrimo gives us: a helping hand. You must get through your first draft without looking back, you must write this within thirty days, and you must enjoy yourself. That's it. It will not make you an award-winning author, nor will it make you the next Stephenie Meyers. However, it will change you, make you into a new being that's determined, creative, inspired, and perhaps even a future author.
          If you start talking about a spaceship or next big invasion, however, you're on your own.

Writing from the Prompt

     In college, one of the most important things when it comes to writing is being able to follow directions correctly by understanding what's asked. If a professor states they want a four page minimum and several sources prevalent throughout the piece, then it's best to give them what they ask for; however, essays and summaries are not the only forms of writing that can be prompted.
     I visited the classroom of John Brantingham after work to visit the Creative-Writing Club, a group of writers I haven't worked with before. He wasn't there, taking some time off to recover, but the club was hosted by the president and other coordinators. Walking in late, I slipped into the back, but I found myself added to the activities of introducing ones self and, of course, writing under a timed, prompt restrained setting. We were asked to write creatively, though: fiction and poetry was up for grabs, and I decided on doing the fiction. For the short-story, we had a few restraints written on the board:

•      The Protagonist's name was Amy.
•      Amy worked in a clown store.
•      She was deeply in love with a giraffe handler.
•      Amy had an evil clown stalker.
•      We must use the word "Buck-fumbling" within the literature.

     Once noted, we were asked to write what we could, where we would finish and present our works to the class if we chose to. Pasted below is what I came up with. Buck-fumbling, in the tense I used, is underlined within.

     "Can you tell me why he's following you?" David wiped the sweat off his brow, staring out the bungalow's front window.
     Amy held herself from an unseen breeze. "I'm not sure, but he's everywhere."
     "He can't be everywhere."
     "Yes, he can," she said.
     David turned. The golden giraffe pin, something only given to experienced handlers throughout the year--from what he said--glinted in the young woman's eyes, burning her. It illuminated her split ends into hanging embers of ash.
     "Listen, Amy, you're just tired. You've been working too much."
     She sighed. "And what are you saying?"
     "No one's chasing you out there, is what I mean; no one's hunting you."
     "You don't know. You don't know what I've been through," she said. "The freak watches me sleep. And that makeup."
     David turned to the window once more, palm on the glass with the other hand up.
     "His makeup looks like he buck-fumbled through it."
     "Does it frighten you?" he asked.
     Amy opened her lips, glancing at the handler. She wanted to tell him yes. She wanted to say how she wished David would hold her, letting her cry in his arms, taking away the weeks of hiding in the restroom and tidying a knife beneath her pillow. But, when he turned, her eyes clenched at the reflection of his dulled, misshapen clown nose.

     It isn't much, but it gave me a chance to just let a story come out, and allow the characters to breathe and become their own entities. Working with this novel, The Neptune, has pulled me from that very idea; I feel as though I need to plot so heavily, when I should let the work write itself instead.
     For Mt. Sac students, the club is on Thursdays, 2:30 to 4:00 P.M. and is hosted in 3411 of 26A. I'm personally looking forward to returning. Stop by if you want to give writing a chance!

A New Chapter

     With the last chapter written, I'm happy to say that my work-in-progress horror novel, The Neptune, has its first "book" completed. Yes, this is just the drafting stage, but it's a benchmark for me that I've never felt would ever come.

      One year ago, I had just came out of a dark, dark place in my life, and was working towards recovery in any way I could. School was a part of my life and I couldn't give that up, so I took extra classes to try and stay focused on something physical, rather than worry on something mental. I met an amazing professor who showed me I did have something to add to this world, and she allowed me to meet another professor, a great man who has become my mentor in creative writing.

      Now, that's not to say I'm completely recovered; I still have times where depression kicks in, or I get lonely and afraid. But those are only bumps in the road in comparison to what I've been through; those are only pebbles in comparison to what I have in store for me.

      I have a great job that keeps me on my feet, working hard, and while it can be stressful and draining, I love it so much and wouldn't trade it for anything. I have a plan to get my A.A. and transfer out of my school to CSUSB for their MFA and English program, and I--as of currently--want to become an editor; though, each and every day I find myself interested in becoming a professor at the community college level. And my writing craft keeps me going and knowing that I have a purpose, and I have a voice; I have a way to show the world I can add to it, rather than take, even if it bugs the heck out of me at occasional times.

      The Neptune is at just a slice of the full pie, and I'm planning to add another sixty-five thousand words to it before I get into the revision process. With luck, it'll progress into a great first novel, something I can be really proud of.

      Everything's been a roller-coaster the past two years, but I want to thank each and every one of you that have stood by me, guided me, assisted me, and been there for me when I need them. If this all works out, I dedicate The Neptune to you guys. Just, you know, please don't be turned off that it's a space infection horror story.