behindtheax

writing

I finished my Vampire story yesterday but I still can’t come up with a title. It is funny how things work out – I happen to have a Billy Talent song on my Ipod, Prisoners of Today, from Erin’s CD. She is a fan of Billy Talent; I am not that big of a fan but this song started playing when I was jogging yesterday. The lyrics jumped out at me, along with the teenage angst that accompanies his songs and I started figuring that this was the tone/feeling I wanted for my story. So, when I got home I listened to the whole cd and finished writing the rest of the story and I wrote close to 1300 words. Its total word count is almost 7500 words but I’m hoping to whittle it down over the next couple of weeks. I always feel good when I finish a story.
I came up out of the basement and made cookies after that –

Sunday and we had a friend over for supper and we got into a conversation about writing and other creative outlets and it was pretty interesting. We all agreed that – talent aside – to be successful in anything it just comes down to plain hard work. Which was funny because I was reading the writer’s almanac the other day about Michael Crichton. How he wrote 10,000 words/day while he was studying to become a doctor. How is that humanly possible? I don’t know if I would of wanted to be a patient on his watch? These people must not sleep.

But that being said I also realize that a little here, a little there is not going to get me anywhere and if this is something I want for myself I need to churn out five thousand words a week – and I have to submit more regardless how much it hurts.

I think I sent off stories to four or five places in the last three months, all rejected with a form note except for one which said, although he thought the writing was fine, I left too many questions unanswered. – Which is progress for me.

I think today I’ll try to write a chapter “In a beggar’s pocket” and then clean the house.

posted by mary j. @ 9:52 AM