Lilith Saintcrow

I’m not going to make it in NaNoWriMo. I can tell. Not because I’m not writing–the Valentine book has taken off and I’m noodling with other stuff. I do turn out a few thousand words a day, between six and eight if all is going well, two or three if it’s a busy day and I’m not constantly at the keyboard. But that’s neither here nor there.

I’m not going to make it in NaNo because the creative act, for me, rarely goes in a straight line. It dips, swerves, goes in spirals, comes back, wanders away to check out what the cows are doing, and comes home swinging its milk bucket with a dreamy look on its face.

Creativity has never been a straight line for me. Way leads on to way, and even when I plot (I did do a bit of outlining on Devil in Love while stuck) the story takes off in another direction (like how it’s not two demons fighting, now it’s Danny and another demon, and the Knife that cuts demonflesh between them…) and surprises me. Hence my nervousness sometimes. Writing is often like be-bopping along a forest path and having a story whirlwind out of the forest like the Tasmanian Devil.

Urbbblgggrrrrrtttt! Vorpel blade goes snicker-snack, and if you’re not dead you have a story to tell.

The Selkie pointed out to me the other day that I know I can produce that kind of word count. The trouble is, my Muse wants to work on two or three things at a time. She’s not satisfied with settling into the traces and finishing one story, oh no. The wench has ADD. And if a story’s not moving, she’s not budging until she has the next few bits of it mapped out.

This is why “filling the well” is so bloody important. The higher the water in the well is (i.e., the more bits and pieces of pretty shiny stuff) the better the Muse can digest for a snackie to fuel the next twist in the road. I told someone the other day that writing is a numbers game in more ways than one. You don’t just use the numbers theory* in submitting. You use it in creation too. I don’t “finish” more things than other writers. I just work in volume.

Speaking of filling the well, I’ve been reading like crazy, finishing about a book a day. Some of these I’ve been working on for a while, but others I just pick up and gulp down. if this keeps up my TBR pile may look less like Everest and more like a ravaged village after the Goths.

One can always hope, can’t one? In any case, I suspect tomorrow will be review day. Huzzah.

Stay warm, Readers. There is a thin scrim of snow out here, but it’s not even enough to cover the grass. Still, it’s cold. My toesies are chilled. Perhaps I should consider socks or other warm footwear, but I hate wearing stuff on my feet in the house. If I can’t be barefoot here, where CAN I be barefoot?

* The numbers theory of submissions is this: keep submitting different things and sooner or later, someone will want to buy something. The more work you have out, the more odds are on your side. This presupposes, of course, that you keep writing and (the big thing) improving your craft, not just flogging one dead horse you wrote back in high school.

No related posts.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 at 11:15 am and is filed under Deep Thoughts, Real Life, Writing (About). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.