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Nov. 24th, 2005 12:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittydesadeI am definitely going to scrap the pulp detective novel I was working on. Not the concept of it, but the draft I was working on. After NaNo, 'cause there are some good scenes in it. But it's getting scrapped and I'm starting again, 'cause now I'm reading Mickey Spillane and Raymond Chandler and the rest of it when it gets here off Ebay, and I'm working up a formula. A Choose Your Own Detective Novel formula. Hopefully it'll work. I've got the style down, I just need the sequence of events.
I'm liking Raymond Chandler. The language is a bit funny in spots 'cause of it being over fifty years old, but he's got a way with words.
Writing the first novel I ever outlined and plotted is bringing back memories. I may send my Mom some stories to give to my English teachers from long long ago, the one who oversaw my Senior Project, my first novel, if I can manage it. It's strange. I think that's when it first occurred to me I could write something with a semblance of organization to it, something that looked and felt and tasted like the wonderful things I found on bookstore shelves.
Which in a roundabout way brings me to what I'm thankful for. As much as a pain in the ass as it's been to me lately, I'm thankful for my mind. My hands are useful, but with the dictation program I can pretty much write hands free. You could chop off my hands (not that I'd want you to) and I could still write. Hell, if they invent those brain wave readers in another ten years I could be a parapalegic and still write. Again, not that I'd want to.
I have this wacky, incredible, amazing, far too active mind. And it keeps spinning out stories like a spider spins out thread. Like a shark swims. If my mind stops running around and taking me to places I know nothing of, I'll be dead. I know it. I'll just keel over, boom. And I'm grateful for that. It lets me be alive in ways that people wish they were, could only dream of. That's why they buy Stephen King and Anne Rice and Harlequin novels. And Raymond Chandler. They wish they had these ideas, these dreams. They wish they were a part of them as much as I am.
And I'm grateful for the flip side of that. For my readers, for the people who want these dreams like starvation. For the fact that I can take this restless imagination and turn it into something I can live off of. Not that I have yet, but I'm working on it. Slowly but surely. The idea's there, it's been planted, and it's taken route. I've got plans. I've got ideas. I haven't yet run into anything except probability that says no, you can't do this. Fuck probability. If I can write for a living, it'll be the most amazing thing. Because I won't be working for a living anymore. I'll be playing in my world and this one simultaneously. I'll be frolicking through my fields of blood-colored daisies (because as we all know in my world there's benign but there's also some really sick and twisted things) and I'll be living because of it. Both emotionally, mentally, and also financially, physically. I won't have a nine to five job I hate sucking the life out of me. Not that nine to fives are bad. Some people enjoy that. I'm not one of them. But if I can do this, if I can do what I live to do for a living... even I don't have words to express how cool that would be. And I'm grateful that I can.
I'm liking Raymond Chandler. The language is a bit funny in spots 'cause of it being over fifty years old, but he's got a way with words.
Writing the first novel I ever outlined and plotted is bringing back memories. I may send my Mom some stories to give to my English teachers from long long ago, the one who oversaw my Senior Project, my first novel, if I can manage it. It's strange. I think that's when it first occurred to me I could write something with a semblance of organization to it, something that looked and felt and tasted like the wonderful things I found on bookstore shelves.
Which in a roundabout way brings me to what I'm thankful for. As much as a pain in the ass as it's been to me lately, I'm thankful for my mind. My hands are useful, but with the dictation program I can pretty much write hands free. You could chop off my hands (not that I'd want you to) and I could still write. Hell, if they invent those brain wave readers in another ten years I could be a parapalegic and still write. Again, not that I'd want to.
I have this wacky, incredible, amazing, far too active mind. And it keeps spinning out stories like a spider spins out thread. Like a shark swims. If my mind stops running around and taking me to places I know nothing of, I'll be dead. I know it. I'll just keel over, boom. And I'm grateful for that. It lets me be alive in ways that people wish they were, could only dream of. That's why they buy Stephen King and Anne Rice and Harlequin novels. And Raymond Chandler. They wish they had these ideas, these dreams. They wish they were a part of them as much as I am.
And I'm grateful for the flip side of that. For my readers, for the people who want these dreams like starvation. For the fact that I can take this restless imagination and turn it into something I can live off of. Not that I have yet, but I'm working on it. Slowly but surely. The idea's there, it's been planted, and it's taken route. I've got plans. I've got ideas. I haven't yet run into anything except probability that says no, you can't do this. Fuck probability. If I can write for a living, it'll be the most amazing thing. Because I won't be working for a living anymore. I'll be playing in my world and this one simultaneously. I'll be frolicking through my fields of blood-colored daisies (because as we all know in my world there's benign but there's also some really sick and twisted things) and I'll be living because of it. Both emotionally, mentally, and also financially, physically. I won't have a nine to five job I hate sucking the life out of me. Not that nine to fives are bad. Some people enjoy that. I'm not one of them. But if I can do this, if I can do what I live to do for a living... even I don't have words to express how cool that would be. And I'm grateful that I can.