Temple in the Stars – Part 10
Okay. This post began last night as an excuse to have me whining about how hard life is. Boo hoo, poor me. It’s rough to try and kiln a career as a writer when I’m driving three hours a day and have a family and a house to care for. Waah. You know who actually have it rough? Single mothers, trying to cling to sanity as they give everything that is available for them to give and then some caring for their families. The man or woman who works eighty hours a week to put bread on the table. The teachers, firemen, and peace officers who give of their lives, and sometimes make the greatest sacrifice possible, making sure all of us are raised in peace and knowledge. Those people have it rough. I spend eight hours a day looking at pictures of two million dollar plus houses, and occasionally I get to talk to celebrities. I’m acting like I’m neck deep in a torture pond, body covered in leeches. Sure, my situation is difficult, but it’s not that difficult. It’s not actual torture. It’s not privation, or bondage, or any number of other real life situations that it could be if I didn’t live in America. Seriously Justin. Knock it off. You’re working on a career telling amusing lies to everyone who sits still long enough to read them. Get over yourself.
That having been said, I am supremely grateful for my desire to push through the first draft of the ‘actual’ start to my career as a novelist. Novellaist. Short storyist. Whatever the appropriate term is for a guy who writes short stories for a living. That’s what I am working on, and I can tell you right now that my abrupt and ill-thought out decision to release Board Queen without an edit, without a cover, and without assistance on structure and pacing was dumb. Seriously, embarrassingly dumb. BUT! Learning moments. Teaching opportunities, as my wife would call them. Baby steps people, baby steps. However, I have secured the assistance of a very experienced editing hand (@karynstecyk people, she’s great), I have an artist that I admire greatly and who is willing to work with me on the cover (@skirtzzz), and generally speaking I have an actual plan this time around. I’ve been willing to forgo some arbitrary ‘time table’ which has no bearing on my reality. I am not yet a successful author. I work in Insurance, for the sake of Pete. That doesn’t mean I won’t one day become a successful author. That doesn’t mean that I’m not a real author, because being an author simply boils down to the dedication to write consistently and with purpose. I have that covered, with a vengeance. So I have to stop thinking in terms of deadlines, release schedules, and posting on my website which gets maybe forty views on a good day anymore. No, what I need to do more than anything else is produce something that is worth reading.
Never underestimate the power of that singular thought. Yes, writing is simply the stubborn refusal to listen to the voice in your head telling you over and over that you’ve got nothing good to write. But good writing is not found in the first draft which breaks through writers block. Good writing is in the re-writing. As I sat down to work on the first eight thousand word entry in the Temple in the Stars serial that I am using as my flagship product, I am absolutely stunned at just how much of what I wrote is unusable garbage. It is the literary equivalent of Donald Trump’s diaper each evening: highly toxic and surely illegal somewhere. What I have found is that writing is a lot like making pottery. The act of writing with purpose is what gives you the block of clay, but you can’t just throw that in the oven and expect it to be a masterpiece. All it will be is an unformed block of baked clay. For those keeping track at home, that makes it a brick, with all the negative connotations therein. Sure, there was some potential for something truly unique in there, but whomever put it in there like that (Me, obviously) couldn’t be bothered to actually try and shape it into anything. I have to be willing to mold, form, and in some cases discard, parts of the block of clay to make something both useful and beautiful. That doesn’t mean the block of clay was ‘bad’, and that shaping it was punishment for it ‘not being good enough’. All the first draft really does is give me a defined block of clay to work with. It sets the initial parameters, and it’s up to me to get in there, get my hands dirty, and actually pull something of value out of the mess I’ve made. That, my friends, is the difference between a good writer and a great one.
Without further half-baked analogy,
Temple in the Stars – Part 10
Eventually, petulantly, Ashley came to realize that she was no longer lying prone due to any real necessity. Now she was just sulking. Ruefully gathering herself, she sat up resolutely, if a tad slower than she normally would’ve. She ached in places she hadn’t even realized were places you could ache, but everything moved like it was supposed to. She took of her helmet and set it down beside her. The vista before her made her feel at peace with everything, at once washing away any sense of anxiety. She had never seen this view, never dreamed of the tableau she now found herself in, yet it felt like home. It wasn’t any one thing, nor was it a blinding flash of insight which filled her with the knowledge, but somehow Ashley knew that this place had been waiting for her to arrive. Not just anyone, but her alone. Ashley <insert last name> had been drawn here by some mystical gravity, no doubt about it. If only I knew why I had been brought here. And if only I had a way to get back out!
Reality was creeping in on her dreamy serenity, letting her know that she had no realistic way to get back to her slapdash, and even if she did, she couldn’t open the airlock even if she did find some way to hurdle herself upwards fifty feet. Talk about out of the frying pan into the fire! Ashley thought with a smile as she looked back at the snow-globe she had found in deep space. As surreal as her situation may be, she didn’t really have options. The only structure inside was the enormous majesty of the Tree building, and once more Ashley was struck by the raw and emotional beauty that even looking at it caused her to experience. That feeling was a physical thing, as real and tangible as her own fingers.
