NaNoWriMo: What Participating Has Done For Me.

"I have never felt like I was creating anything. For me, writing is like walking through a desert and all at once, poking up through the hardpan, I see the top of a chimney. I know there's a house under there, and I'm pretty sure that I can dig it up if I want. That's how I feel. It's like the stories are already there. What they pay me for is the leap of faith that say's: 'If I sit down and do this, everything will come out OK.'"

-----Stephen King (Quoted in Writer's Digest Jan.2010 issue)

I am seeing the material produced during NaNoWriMo this year as Mr. Kings chimney tops.  Or perhaps misshapen bits of clay in need of deep cuts and rounded corners before it becomes the fully realized work I see in my imaginings.  I do know using NaNo to work out one of my WIP this year has allowed me to see said story a bit clearer.  I should .  I've sure as hell done enough digging.

Happy NaNoWriMo folks.  I hope all your writing goals are met this fine season.

Drive Even When It's in the Wrong Direction

I sit at my old fold top with a million and one varied and drastically tangled thoughts, wrapped not so neat in plethora of to-do lists. And this little bouquet of nasty seems to have created a traffic jam in my head.  A pile up, really.  A bash up where the realities of a young family and a old house and my creative aspirations have collided. Where my muse has left the scene, my fingers are at a stand still (except right now) and my imagination is on a bus to the ER.

GrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRR!

Okay, I will say this.  Maybe I'm not getting the word count I've been aiming for lately, but I'm still getting the NaNoWriMo word meter to climb.  And  maybe I didn't have a plan for my blog today, but I did choose to write something instead of skip out. And look, I came up with some sort of point...I think.

My point is just do it!  Pick something out the pile up in your brain, shake it off and begin it.  It's okay to feel overwhelmed.  It's normal to get bogged down and not feel at your best.  And maybe whatever you choose to begin turns out to be rubbish in the end.  But at least your further outside the pile up in your head and closer to.....something.   And never NEVER!!!!! sit and do nothing.  It's how muscles atrophy and it's how dreams die.

So I leave you with a quote I know I have quoted before on these pages.  A fitting quote from Alice in Wonderland... 

Alice: Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?

The Cat: That depends a good deal on where you want to get to

Alice: I don't much care where.

The Cat: Then it doesn't much matter which way you go.

Alice: …so long as I get somewhere.

The Cat: Oh, you're sure to do that, if only you walk long enough.

Gooooo NaNoWriMo!!!!!

So true, Mr. King.  That lingering moment before you commit that first word to page and begin your writing journey is the scariest.  Our big ole human brain over thinks the process and leaves time for insecurities and fears to creep into the process. 

 

Think of your favorite literary hero's in this moment.  Think of YOUR hero or heroine.  Be brave for them for you are the only one who can bring their world to life and make them immortal.  Yes, you are that powerful once you pick up the writing gauntlet.

 

And so NaNoWriMo begins folks, giving us another chance to create new worlds.  So be brave.  Sit down.  Start!  And good luck.

Some Zombie Fun this Halloween

I would say if scary was fashion (sorta is), Zombies are whats in.  The LBD of sci fi and horror these days.  So in honor of Halloween I dug up a little Zombie Flash Fiction I did for a fest a couple of years ago.  It was my first Zombie fic and presently only.  By far one of the sickest bits of fiction for me.  But it was fun to try something new.

So Happy Halloween all! And FYI, NaNoWriMo is underway tomorrow. Writers start your engines!!!!!!!

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Illustration from 'Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark' by Alvin Shzwartz (A favorite!)

What Lonely Wanted

She was special. She was special before the world went into the shitter. Back in the day, any guy would have given their left nut to be with Missy McQueen and now… Well, Chaz Dooley was going to give a lot more.

Chaz leaned his shotgun against the steel gate forgotten, then tossed his jacket up on the fence never to be worn again. Stepping into the corral, a deep guttural groan greeted him from the far end of the paddock. Chaz smiled wistfully.

They had been together before; she was his second living dead girl. Hell, there were more living dead girls than the ones with heart beats these days, so a guy had to take his chances “dating”. Chances being cornering, roping and then gagging the date so extremities weren’t eaten. The rest was the “dating” part.

“Missy, I’m back. I told ya I would be back.”

Dark ruby eyes glowered from the shadows, sending a groin tightening chill up Chaz’s spine. Stepping closer he could see that she was nearly free from the bonds he had left her in earlier this week. Her long flaxen hair hung in clotted dreads and dirt. The last outfit she wore before her change torn asunder by her months questing for flesh and brains and Chaz and her ‘lovemaking’.

Chaz took in an adoring sigh and came up to his captive/loves gagged maw. “I missed you and now I’m going to join you my beautiful girl.”

This last month, life in Tulsa had taken to a whole new level of living dead apocalypse hell. Besides Chaz, only a handful of humanity was left within the city limits and with no contact from the rest of the world abroad it was looking pretty bleak. All of his friends, family, even most of his enemies were now dead or living dead. Just this morning his Mom wobbled by the house and he threw her a rat for breakfast.

Chaz was lonely and people like Chaz made lonely an obsession. He ached to be a part of something because the living crowd he was presently a part of was dwindling down to dust.

And when he ran into Missy or ran from Missy a month ago while looking for canned goods down 5th street, he knew he had found that something—that someone he was needing.

Missy had begun to thrash and gurgle. The gag in her mouth was now bit through in anticipation and the ropes anchoring her to the barn fence threatened to give. It’s what Chaz wanted. He wanted her to free herself and come to him—embrace him in her fierce primeval grip and claim him.

“Take me Missy.” Chaz raised his arms up and out, welcoming his becoming. “Take me—make me one of you so I’m not alone…”
And she did.

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Some would say Chaz Dooley was a fairly sick SOB for loving a Zombie like he did. Others would say he was just crazy lonely in a world gone mad. I’d say Chaz found Zombie luv