Ideas (NaNoWriMo Part II)

Ideas are easy to come by. They’re out there in the world, laying about, waiting to be picked up by an enterprising mind.

You can find them everywhere you look, if you’re paying attention.

All you need to do is see the world as it is, wonder “what if it was other?” and proceed.

It’s exactly that simple.

No, I have no sympathy for people who can’t come up with ideas. Ideas are commonplace, if you’re not having ideas you’re not thinking.

It’s translating those ideas into words.

Words are harder.

Words take discipline.

And that’s where the problems arise...

Publish or Perish

Last December I joined a Facebook group for aspiring writers.

Publish or Perish.

The group was fairly self-explanatory. I pledged to take my writing more seriously, to finish the projects I started and to actually edit and submit my work for publication upon it’s completion. In exchange, the group offered a forum in which to communicate with other writers in the same position, a place to vent, moral support and a clearly defined goal.

Publish one story, just one, in a major print magazine over the course of calendar 2011. How hard could it possibly be? I had a whole year in which to do it!

I figured the group would give me the kick in the pants I needed to get some pages written and it honestly has. I’ve gotten more work done this year than I ever have, and I credit the group with a large part of the motivation that took. I’ve kept up my friday flash stories week after week, expanded them from drabbles to stories of 500 to 3000 words, and even have my first novel outlined and ready to begin drafting come November. I’ve placed stories on a number of online magazines and podcasts, including appearances on some of my favorite audio fiction ‘casts. Hearing my work performed makes me prouder than I can say.

But I still haven’t placed a story in a major print magazine.

I’m doing my best not to worry about it, but sometimes I can’t help it. The twelve month deadline the group imposed seemed like forever when I joined up, but now it’s nearly November and, while I’ve accomplished a lot, the one hard, fast goal they established continues to elude me. I’ve even started having stress dreams about the deadline, now only two months away.

Which I understand is dumb. Stressing out never helped accomplish anything. But I can’t help it.

After all, they made it perfectly clear what was expected of me. Publish one story, just one, in a major print magazine over the course of calendar 2011. And they made the consequences of failure equally clear. I mean, it was right in the name of the group, and I did join of my own free will…

I do still have two months. I’m still writing, and improving every day. I’m still editing and submitting, and it’s certainly not too late.

But, in the meanwhile, I’ve bought a gun.

Just in case.

The Last Day of the Author's Retreat

It wasn’t until my last night at the author’s workshop that I heard them. Until that moment, I was certain they were just a rumour spread by the returning members to the newbies, a cheap, laughable attempt to take advantage of our overactive imaginations as we tried to get to sleep after long days spent workshopping our stories. In fact, after seven days of networking and frenzied, unbridled creativity, I’d nearly forgotten entirely the strange tales I’d been told my first night at the retreat.

But I remember those stories now. Oh yes. A fire twenty two years ago, and a dozen authors trapped inside the retreat’s cabin by the collapsing roof, praying for rescue that would never arrive. They rebuilt the cabin, of course, but still the dead authors visit the site on the accident’s anniversary each year. Yes, I remember those stories now. I doubt they’ll ever be far from my mind…

Nor will the deafening sound of their ghastly typewriters, like thunderclaps crashing one room over, or the chilling laughter of the dead. I knew I’d not sleep that night as I lay, covers pulled up over my head, waves of terror creeping up and down my spine, listening to their spectral conversations as they bounced ideas off one another in haunting tones about what to do with the Star Trek tie ins they’d been assigned to write.

They’d never been writers of note, those apparitions, even before their death. Simply women and men doing work for hire to fund their dreams, who didn’t know even after their grizzly demise that, for them and their dreams both it was far, far too late…

And the next morning I went home, sleep deprived and terrified, my own project long forgotten, replaying the harrowing experience over and over again in my mind.

And as the shuttlebus pulled away, taking me back to the airport, all I could think back to was that song we’d sang my first night there, seven days previous, in more innocent spirits.

Yippy-kai-yo.

Yippy-kai-yay.

Ghostwriters in the sky.