Well, that was fast. Clyde King is done. I deliberately tried to make it short and short it was. After the first writing, it came in at just over two thousand words but I really enjoy it for what it is. Clyde is the opposite of Ark, there isn't a city in sight, and nobody has any super vampire powers. It's lovely.
This raises a new question for me obviously: Now what the hell am I supposed to do? I'm going to rip through these twenty-or-so ideas that are written down in no time if I don't turn one into another book. I'd really like to move forward in getting things in print so maybe that will eat up some time eventually. Employment will probably cut into my writing time in the near future as well (hopefully).
On a side note, I finished Stephen King's On Writing last night and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The first half is about his childhood and the steps he took to becoming the nutjob that he is today. I wish I had started seriously doing this sooner like he did. He sold his stories to classmates in middle school, sent in short stories for publication during high school and had his first novel published before he was my age. I know that it's stupid to compare my experiences with one of today's most prolific writers, but it's hard not to when everything in your life is one big regret anyway. I'll just staple "not trying hard enough to write" to the bottom of the list.
As I admitted to someone during my time reading, I'm a little scared by what he wrote. Mere minutes after having written the post And Now For Something Completely Different, I read a suggestion from the book as to what to do once you complete a your writing. Let's see if I can find it. Ah, here it is:
"My advice is... go to work on something else. Something shorter, preferably, and something that's a complete change of direction and pace from your newly finished book."
You don't say? There's also a piece in there where he mentions that when he writes he comes up with an idea, sits at a word processor, and then writes down what he sees happen in the movie projector in his mind. Sometimes it goes where he anticipated and sometimes it doesn't, much like being at the movies. It creeps me out because I think I may have described this word for word to a significant other of mine at one point. months or years ago. Maybe it's normal for writers to work that; I almost hope so. I'm not sure I want to have the same issues going on in my head that King has. Sure he's successful, but I think he'd be the first to admit he's a little crazy.
No comments:
Post a Comment