My main reason for writing a blog came out of wanting to discuss MGS2 in a defensive, vindicating light. Really, that was all. I can't really see a reason for writing anything else, what with much more interesting things out there, and since I can't write anymore (at least, that's what it feels like), it seems foolish to even try--particularly in a forum of instantly published potential embarrassment like the Internet manages to provide so readily.
But here I am anyway, pretending to write, pretending to be profound.
My class is really cool. I have 21 kids, which is just right for me. I have their names memorized, I know whom I'm worried about, and we're finishing up Beowulf on Thursday next. The school is fun, small, and I have a job satisfaction level that I've never felt before. I finally feel like a contributing member of society, rather than a warm body cog that is adept at mediocrity.
One of the saddest, most frustrating parts about me, though, is that I want it all. By 'all' I don't mean riches and fame (though a less constricted bank account would be a nice perk), nor do I mean a hybrid car, the hope of more than 4 days of fall this autumn (in Utah, it's unlikely that I'll get many more of that season), or someone less morally ambiguous than Obama in the running, or less abjectly lost as McCain seems to be. No, I mean that there are a few very small components of my life, and I don't think I've ever had a time when all of those cylinders were firing simultaneously, save a brief two or three week period last summer.
My components are simple: Great relationship with the wife (check); baby out of the hospital and away from surgeries for the foreseeable future (check...until next summer); job that I'm more than satisfied with, and--cliched though it may be--genuinely look forward to going to each day (check); video game that I'm willing to get lost in (check--huzzah for my 3rd trip through MGS4!); good book that I'm reading (check...I always have a good book, it seems); my muse is singing and the stories that torment me until I release them through words are finding their places on my laptop's hard drive (NOT checked).
See, the component list is pretty straightforward, and I have almost all of it checked off. It's that last one that seems to burn me.
I spent a little less than a year writing my latest book, Words of the Silenced. I thought it was cool; so did just about everyone who took the time to read it. I know it's far from perfect, but I thought it was at least in a publishable condition.
Apparently not.
I sent the manuscript (a good $30 investment) off to Daw Publishers in New York, hoping to get a nibble. It only took a couple of weeks before I got the very businesslike form letter letting me know that my writing was not memorable enough, original enough, or (in short) good enough to be considered.
At least the guy signed his name in ink...at least, it kinda looks like a guy's name. It has a couple of mountains and valleys and that's about it.
So my confidence is, once again, broken. This has happened to me before: I took a science fiction class during my first year of college. The prof was a lady who loved to read and write (as most English profs do), but, thinking back, she was a little....snobby about what she read and liked. Oh, and she's also an antistratfordian, which is almost anathema for me. (Not that it mattered back then, but I can't help but look back through the lens of my experience and say 'grr' at her.)
Anyway, I enjoyed her class. I was much more into sci-fi at the time, though now I'm decidedly in the postmodern and fantasy camps now. Still, I got a lot out of the class, including a cool anthology that looks wonderful on my bookshelf and has been thumbed through at least twice since I took the course (pretty good for most textbooks, I'd say). One of the things that I got out of her class, indirectly, was Impetus.
The impetus for Impetus was this: She shot down and gave me a B (or a B+...or a B-, I can't remember...it wasn't an A, that's for sure) on our final creative work for the course. It was a short story, and it was a little slow, I'll admit. Remember, however, this was my first class...like, ever, I think. I was fresh from high school with a creative writing teacher who probably thought that the back of a box of Cheerios had some pretty talented writing on it. That isn't to say anything bad about her: She had to substitute one day in the class where I was student teaching. She brought a book to read, assuming that I would handle the class and she wouldn't have to worry about anything. Instead, she just listened to my lecture for all three periods--she said it was because it was so interesting. That made me feel good.
Tangent done. So I was in this sci-fi class because I loved the genre and felt as if I was a pretty good burgeoning writer. But my professor didn't agree.
Now, it's fine to be honest when grading; you have to, frankly. But some things need to be observed in my defense of disliking the grade I got:
1) I was new to her class, new to the school, and new to the institution. I had no schema at all for what was desired, looked for, or appreciated. I was a freshman in lots of different ways.
2) Our peer review groups liked the story well enough, thought it unique, and enjoyed it on the whole.
3) The professor didn't understand the phrase 'she hid behind her knees' when talking about a girl cowering. Okay, if you're trying to be fresh in your writing, you have to branch out. Sometimes you'll be misunderstood. But what part of 'hid behind her knees' is so esoteric that my well-read prof couldn't understand that?
Essentially, number three was (and still is) what frustrates me the most. I'm new; fine, whatever. Give me the right grade. The group liked me; whatever, they're classmates. Their opinion shouldn't give me a better grade. But giving me a low grade (it was low to me) because she didn't understand something that still feels pretty obvious? That's lame.
Oh, and she's a Bardolator who's antistratfordian. I'm still trying to get over that.
At any rate, that grade haunted me. HAUNTED, my friends. My mind hiccuped and couldn't get its breath back. Every time I tried to pen something, type something, express myself...I came up with nothing.
I created a file on the 'old computer' at home; I called it TIPs...my Thoughts In Progress. By this point, I wanted to create an epic fantasy, to emulate Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series (which is still my favorite, though some of it bothers me, now that I'm older). I opened up a new WordPerfect document and stared at the screen. I typed a few words, got a sentence down. Then a paragraph. I stopped.
It wasn't working.
I saved the paragraph anyway and opened a new document. I tried again, only getting a sentence or so before saving it (just in case) and opening a new blank document. This one got a few words down, maybe two paragraphs, before I gave it the digital equivalent of ripping the page out of the pad and filing it away in a cabinet, never to be looked at again.
Thus it continued for nine documents. It was on the ninth or tenth one when I finally started typing things that about a character that I liked. Why was he deaf? Why was he in a dungeon? How did he get so strong and smart?
Well, one of the best things that sci-fi professor taught me was the value of having a notebook around. I prefer typing; I don't get to write much, and I type much faster than I hand write, so I prefer to just put my writing time down digitally. Still, having a notebook (long before I could afford a laptop) proved to be useful to me.
I would sit at the back of a large lecture class on American history next to my girlfriend (future wife), munching on my lunch and adding notes for this world. Scenes started to come to mind, characters started getting biographies and sketches (both drawings and with words). As the professor who looked like Brigham Young but sounded like Jerry Lewis would talk about the Constitution, I would envision this new world of mine.
Finally, a scene where a small town called Tiller was burned with silent flame came out, and that truly began the story that eventually turned into Impetus.
I went on my mission to Florida soon thereafter, and every day, in the shower, I would stew over new things for the Book. (It was still untitled at that point.) Each funny thought or weird experience I would try to twist into something for the Book.
I came home in the summer of 2004. Gayle and I were affianced by this point, and I got a few chapters done ere the marriage. I didn't finish the brute until a year or two later, and though I have had a number of people read it, I haven't given the book another draft.
So now I come to this most recent blow to my writing ego. I wrote Words of the Silenced as a response to a horrible job that I took for 3 days after I graduated. But that's another story.
The main point is that last time I was so frustrated at a writing rejection, it ended up being wonderful for me. It gave me a 500+ page novel, experience at writing something large, and generally helping me in the long run.
With Daw's rejection still smarting, though, I wonder how long it'll be before I write creative fiction again...can I overcome this hurdle, too?
But here I am anyway, pretending to write, pretending to be profound.
My class is really cool. I have 21 kids, which is just right for me. I have their names memorized, I know whom I'm worried about, and we're finishing up Beowulf on Thursday next. The school is fun, small, and I have a job satisfaction level that I've never felt before. I finally feel like a contributing member of society, rather than a warm body cog that is adept at mediocrity.
One of the saddest, most frustrating parts about me, though, is that I want it all. By 'all' I don't mean riches and fame (though a less constricted bank account would be a nice perk), nor do I mean a hybrid car, the hope of more than 4 days of fall this autumn (in Utah, it's unlikely that I'll get many more of that season), or someone less morally ambiguous than Obama in the running, or less abjectly lost as McCain seems to be. No, I mean that there are a few very small components of my life, and I don't think I've ever had a time when all of those cylinders were firing simultaneously, save a brief two or three week period last summer.
My components are simple: Great relationship with the wife (check); baby out of the hospital and away from surgeries for the foreseeable future (check...until next summer); job that I'm more than satisfied with, and--cliched though it may be--genuinely look forward to going to each day (check); video game that I'm willing to get lost in (check--huzzah for my 3rd trip through MGS4!); good book that I'm reading (check...I always have a good book, it seems); my muse is singing and the stories that torment me until I release them through words are finding their places on my laptop's hard drive (NOT checked).
See, the component list is pretty straightforward, and I have almost all of it checked off. It's that last one that seems to burn me.
I spent a little less than a year writing my latest book, Words of the Silenced. I thought it was cool; so did just about everyone who took the time to read it. I know it's far from perfect, but I thought it was at least in a publishable condition.
Apparently not.
I sent the manuscript (a good $30 investment) off to Daw Publishers in New York, hoping to get a nibble. It only took a couple of weeks before I got the very businesslike form letter letting me know that my writing was not memorable enough, original enough, or (in short) good enough to be considered.
At least the guy signed his name in ink...at least, it kinda looks like a guy's name. It has a couple of mountains and valleys and that's about it.
So my confidence is, once again, broken. This has happened to me before: I took a science fiction class during my first year of college. The prof was a lady who loved to read and write (as most English profs do), but, thinking back, she was a little....snobby about what she read and liked. Oh, and she's also an antistratfordian, which is almost anathema for me. (Not that it mattered back then, but I can't help but look back through the lens of my experience and say 'grr' at her.)
Anyway, I enjoyed her class. I was much more into sci-fi at the time, though now I'm decidedly in the postmodern and fantasy camps now. Still, I got a lot out of the class, including a cool anthology that looks wonderful on my bookshelf and has been thumbed through at least twice since I took the course (pretty good for most textbooks, I'd say). One of the things that I got out of her class, indirectly, was Impetus.
The impetus for Impetus was this: She shot down and gave me a B (or a B+...or a B-, I can't remember...it wasn't an A, that's for sure) on our final creative work for the course. It was a short story, and it was a little slow, I'll admit. Remember, however, this was my first class...like, ever, I think. I was fresh from high school with a creative writing teacher who probably thought that the back of a box of Cheerios had some pretty talented writing on it. That isn't to say anything bad about her: She had to substitute one day in the class where I was student teaching. She brought a book to read, assuming that I would handle the class and she wouldn't have to worry about anything. Instead, she just listened to my lecture for all three periods--she said it was because it was so interesting. That made me feel good.
Tangent done. So I was in this sci-fi class because I loved the genre and felt as if I was a pretty good burgeoning writer. But my professor didn't agree.
Now, it's fine to be honest when grading; you have to, frankly. But some things need to be observed in my defense of disliking the grade I got:
1) I was new to her class, new to the school, and new to the institution. I had no schema at all for what was desired, looked for, or appreciated. I was a freshman in lots of different ways.
2) Our peer review groups liked the story well enough, thought it unique, and enjoyed it on the whole.
3) The professor didn't understand the phrase 'she hid behind her knees' when talking about a girl cowering. Okay, if you're trying to be fresh in your writing, you have to branch out. Sometimes you'll be misunderstood. But what part of 'hid behind her knees' is so esoteric that my well-read prof couldn't understand that?
Essentially, number three was (and still is) what frustrates me the most. I'm new; fine, whatever. Give me the right grade. The group liked me; whatever, they're classmates. Their opinion shouldn't give me a better grade. But giving me a low grade (it was low to me) because she didn't understand something that still feels pretty obvious? That's lame.
Oh, and she's a Bardolator who's antistratfordian. I'm still trying to get over that.
At any rate, that grade haunted me. HAUNTED, my friends. My mind hiccuped and couldn't get its breath back. Every time I tried to pen something, type something, express myself...I came up with nothing.
I created a file on the 'old computer' at home; I called it TIPs...my Thoughts In Progress. By this point, I wanted to create an epic fantasy, to emulate Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series (which is still my favorite, though some of it bothers me, now that I'm older). I opened up a new WordPerfect document and stared at the screen. I typed a few words, got a sentence down. Then a paragraph. I stopped.
It wasn't working.
I saved the paragraph anyway and opened a new document. I tried again, only getting a sentence or so before saving it (just in case) and opening a new blank document. This one got a few words down, maybe two paragraphs, before I gave it the digital equivalent of ripping the page out of the pad and filing it away in a cabinet, never to be looked at again.
Thus it continued for nine documents. It was on the ninth or tenth one when I finally started typing things that about a character that I liked. Why was he deaf? Why was he in a dungeon? How did he get so strong and smart?
Well, one of the best things that sci-fi professor taught me was the value of having a notebook around. I prefer typing; I don't get to write much, and I type much faster than I hand write, so I prefer to just put my writing time down digitally. Still, having a notebook (long before I could afford a laptop) proved to be useful to me.
I would sit at the back of a large lecture class on American history next to my girlfriend (future wife), munching on my lunch and adding notes for this world. Scenes started to come to mind, characters started getting biographies and sketches (both drawings and with words). As the professor who looked like Brigham Young but sounded like Jerry Lewis would talk about the Constitution, I would envision this new world of mine.
Finally, a scene where a small town called Tiller was burned with silent flame came out, and that truly began the story that eventually turned into Impetus.
I went on my mission to Florida soon thereafter, and every day, in the shower, I would stew over new things for the Book. (It was still untitled at that point.) Each funny thought or weird experience I would try to twist into something for the Book.
I came home in the summer of 2004. Gayle and I were affianced by this point, and I got a few chapters done ere the marriage. I didn't finish the brute until a year or two later, and though I have had a number of people read it, I haven't given the book another draft.
So now I come to this most recent blow to my writing ego. I wrote Words of the Silenced as a response to a horrible job that I took for 3 days after I graduated. But that's another story.
The main point is that last time I was so frustrated at a writing rejection, it ended up being wonderful for me. It gave me a 500+ page novel, experience at writing something large, and generally helping me in the long run.
With Daw's rejection still smarting, though, I wonder how long it'll be before I write creative fiction again...can I overcome this hurdle, too?
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