I Am Apparently the World’s Least Organized Writer Ever
One of the many cool side effects of coming into contact with a whole slew of authors, indie and otherwise, is being able to hear about the writing process from other perspectives. It’s fascinating (to me) to hear about how people go through the creative process and what they do to keep on track and plot and plan and gather information and organize themselves and all the work that goes into the long painful birthing process. I’ve read about the outlines people put together. I’ve seen in-depth analysis (with pictures!) about the creation of character cards that detail each person’s description, personality, traits, and their connection to the other major and minor figures in the novel all charted on a huge whiteboard. Notebooks, scribblings, collages, all part of an organized approach to writing a novel.
I see this stuff, and all I can think of is: Holy shit, I am the least organized writer of all time. Read the rest of this entry
The Horror of the Mundane
Much horror fiction involves some sort of supernatural agency visiting despair, terror, and suffering on the living. Most of the rest features depraved mortals whose love of torture and sadism borders on the fantastic. It’s cathartic for the reader and writer both, letting the fear and worry and stress that builds up during the course of everyday humdrum human existence relieve the pressure. Stephen King’s Danse Macabre does an excellent job exploring horror in this light – if you like horror at all, you should read it; it’s fun, funny, and informative – and talks about some of the everyday anxiety that ends up being expressed through popular movies and books. For example, he posits that the reason The Amityville Horror was such a success when it was first released is that it hit a nerve among people going through the financial instability of the inflation-crazy 1970’s (what if your house was haunted and you couldn’t sell it? The horror!). He also talks about the 1950’s era of giant bug movies (fear of living in the Nuclear Age) and alien invasions (fear of the Soviet Union). Basically, it forms a road map of national anxiety as expressed in horror films and books up to the early 1980’s. The book came to mind after this morning. Read the rest of this entry
Homages – Friends as Novel Characters
The impetus that finally pushed me to write a novel consisted of a combination of two things. The first was the incredibly vivid Zombie Dreams I’ve had over the years. These dreams are full Technicolor and Stereoscope dreams, with jump cuts and multiple camera angles, where I might be a spectator, actor, or disembodied witness, but always vaguely aware that I’m watching a dream and ready to fill my role as either zombie killer or victim or hard-running candyass. I love these dreams, and have never thought it right to call them nightmares – I may get creeped out, but I don’t necessarily want to wake up from them.
The Zombie Dreams laid the foundation. The second push came from a daydream I had, where my friends and family were villagers in a medieval town that was overrun by zombies and eaten in a very gory and glorious fashion.
I’m a swell friend, eh? Read the rest of this entry
Winter in Derenemyn 