Storytelling
Currently reading:
Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang
Out There by Kate Folk
Match by Christine Marshall
Books finished this week: 2
★★★☆☆
Where this book came from: Warwick’s in La Jolla!
Why this book: I’m still working on building out my poetry collection, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that Percival Everett had published a book of poems.
Thoughts: Listen. I’m not a musician and I’m not a poet, and since the premise of the book is that the sonnets follow a piece of music with which I’m unfamiliar, a lot of this might have been lost on me. But I also just didn’t feel that the poetry really . . . did anything? It didn’t seem particularly complex, and I wasn’t moved by it.
★★☆☆☆
Where this book came from: The Center for Fiction a few Sundays ago.
Why this book: This sounded like a cool, updated, ’90s-set version of one of my favorite shows, Carnivàle. (Bring back Carnivàle!!)
Thoughts: Reading this felt like the author had some unique ideas, but then got caught up in proving how ~weird~ and ~quirky~ all the Freakslaw characters were. I could have overlooked that——if there had been more plot to hold up those tangents, and if I’d felt drawn to any of the characters. I liked Ruth——who is, I guess, the protagonist——well enough, but eventually, every character’s voice started to sound the same, and it felt like all the promise of magic and revenge went out the window. The short, choppy chapters, jumping between characters and storylines, killed any momentum that managed to build up, and I don’t feel that the story really built to anything. I mean, there’s definitely a climax——and a lot going on before that——but for all the witchcraft and dramatic monologues about revenge and fate, it seemed like a lot of things just kind of happened. And then the book ended.
Library updates:
I had a double therapy day this past week and talked in both sessions about how I feel like I’ve finally succeeded in building a writing habit that works for me, a habit I’ll be able to keep up even when I eventually get a new job. (Oh, god, someone please hire me to acquire and edit genre fiction!!)
Ahem.
I wrote nearly 6000 words on Saturday. Not all in one sitting, but all for one story. At the start of this year, one of my goals/resolutions was to write two stories a month and to try submitting at least one to some literary magazine, journal, website, or contest. That fell to the wayside, between personal hardship and focus on my thesis, but now that I’ve graduated, I’ve recommitted to trying to write one new short story——no matter how short, no matter how terrible——every month and submitting one somewhere. It can be a resubmission of something that got rejected too. That’s the beauty of writing: just because one place doesn’t want a story doesn’t mean it’s no good to anyone. You just keep trying until you find where the story belongs.
Anyway, I wrote all those words on Saturday because I belatedly found out about a speculative fiction contest that closes on Monday (yes, tomorrow) and the story I was already working on fits the bill. One of my other new goals is to write more speculative fiction/superhero-related short stories, so I can get my foot in that particular door. I love my short horror and random little ideas, but if I want to publish a superhero mystery novel, I should at least try to build some kind of superhero brand.
Writing short stories has always been tough for me. In undergrad, whenever I had to write things for workshop, I panicked. It never felt like I had a good enough idea, or I felt like my ideas were more of a scene or vignette, rather than an actual story. And when I did come up with something with a strong story arc, it ended up being too long, or I didn’t feel I’d done the character’s journey justice. When I attempt short stories, I can suddenly only write in cliches, and I’m telling you everything——how characters feel, why they’re doing what they do——instead of showing it to you in some clever way.
But I want to get better at short stories (and I want to start sharing them, so I can see my name in print, even if that print is digital), so here we are. To bolster my writing of short stories, I also decided to make sure to read at least one short story every day. I collected all the short story collections I own into a stack that currently lives on my kitchen table, as inspiration. You learn by doing——and by seeing how other people do it.
I want to continue generating words and stories. I want to continue refining my craft. I want to continue getting better. And the way to do that is to just keep writing.
Closing thoughts:
You’re no good to anyone worn out. Take a break when you need one. (Like, say, when you’re trying to draft a coherent blog post after spending just so many hours staring at your computer, typing almost 6000 words.)
Total books read from the Moratorium Library: 156
(Total books added to the Moratorium Library: 310)
Finally ordered this beauty from B&N, weeks after a professor mentioned it in my thesis conference.
