The furry white muse

I could say something clever about my absence after my last post, but quite frankly I have no clever words.
We all have the things and people in our lives that inspire us, or provide us with great companionship as we go through life. One of my longtime companions, and indeed my first writing buddy, was a feisty little white dog, who fetched stuffed caterpillars, loved to chase falling leaves, and was my walking companion during those many evenings when I restlessly circled my neighborhood, searching for inspiration.
Minnie was 17 years old in June. She passed away today after a long, well-traveled, and happy life.

I am heartbroken.

7/19/2011 1 hour exercise: portion of WIP

 This is my progress for my 1 hour stint on 7/19. It was just shy of a full hour, as I got derailed towards the end. Disappointing, but better than nothing.

The Wrecker was crouched below her on a piece of asphalt jutting out of the ice. It was soaked through, its ragged garment clinging to its gaunt frame, blue-white with cold, like a second skin. It was trembling violently, and Amy could faintly hear it talking to itself, its voice surprisingly steady and hard despite its convulsions.

            "--and you will shut up shut up shut UP or I will kill them, yes, kill every last one of them and paint our hands in their blood, yes, unless you SHUT UP." To make its point, the Wrecker dunked its head in the freezing water, holding it there until Amy was sure it would drown, only to jerk up again like it had been dragged, gasping and vomiting up lake water. It looked down at its hands as if seeing them for the first time, and to Amy’s astonishment, its lip curled in a decidedly human gesture of disgust. Then it looked up sharply, meeting Amy’s eyes, and the eerie smile slid back across its pallid features. Amy gaped at it for a moment, and then finally shook her head. Iris would have made some comment, some remark to the effect of you are weird and more than a little creepy. But Amy wasn’t Iris and, if she was perfectly honest with herself, the Wrecker looked enough like Iris to completely unnerve Amy every time she looked at it.

            “So,” she called down instead. “The Weaver. Are we going to find her, or are you just going to bide your time on this giant ice cube?” That was not much better, you idiot, she thought wearily. Her mouth was going to get her killed.

            The Wrecker scuttled up the ice like a squirrel, toes and fingers digging into crevices Amy could not see as it propelled itself over the lip of the ice. It straightened slowly--it looked even taller out in the open, Amy mused--and looked out over the vast expanse of lake between them and the shoreline.

            "Weaver," it murmured thoughtfully, before turning to look at Amy again. It's face contorted, and a low moan escaped it. It doubled over, clutching its head, clawing at the long stringy hair that was quickly freezing into stalks from its dunk in the water. Amy backed up a few steps and crouched down to observe. The Wrecker was whimpering now, like a whipped puppy, its bony palms pressed hard against its eyes. It rocked back and forth, keening as if it were in pain.

            Amy sat back on her heels, her mind spinning. She tried to recall anything Iris had told her about her dratted story, anything that could give her a clue to this bizarre creature in front of her. The Wrecker had no form, Iris had told her on more than one occasion, and that was her biggest problem with it--she had no idea what it looked like, how it operated, what its weaknesses were. All she knew was that it was wantonly destructive, and had something to do with the disappearance of her protagonist's sister. Maralee, her memory supplied. Maralee was the protagonist.

            "Is Maralee here?" She asked tentatively. The Wrecker abruptly stopped rocking, but did not lift its head. Amy pressed on.

            "Did Maralee come here when you did? Maybe she's the Weaver you're looking for?"

            Too late, she realized the Wrecker was hissing.

            It leaped at her, all limbs and teeth, and the force of it hitting Amy was enough to knock the air out of her. They tumbled to the ice, the Wrecker clawing furiously at Amy's face and throat, mercifully protected by her coat's high collar, and Amy shoved back as hard as she could, catching one of the Wrecker's wrists and desperately trying to yank it away. It snapped its teeth at her, missing her ear by mere centimeters, and Amy rolled back over her shoulder, flipping them so that she pinned the Wrecker against the snow with her forearm pressed against its throat. Still it tried to fight back, yanking Amy's hair as hard as it could, and clawing red ribbons into her arms. Amy pressed down on the creature's windpipe.

            "Stop it!" She shouted furiously, pinning one of its flailing hands with her free one. It twisted under her like an enraged animal, its eyes flashing blue-black-blue-black, its teeth bared at her even as its lips started to turn an even uglier shade of blue.

             "Stop it, or I'll kill you! Do you understand me? I'LL KILL YOU!"

            It swung at her again with its free hand, and very clearly, Amy heard it grate back, "do it."

            What? Amy started, the pressure on the Wrecker's throat wavered, and it wrestled one long leg between them and kicked Amy straight back. She landed on her back and sat up quickly. The Wrecker was still lying on the ice, staring up at the gray sky. Slowly, it sat up, its face blank. For a moment, they simply stared at one another.

            It told me to kill it, Amy thought, bewildered. It was talking to itself, and now it wants me to kill it? She watched the Wrecker, completely still except for the occasional, violent tremor that wracked its skinny frame. If it's human, or anything remotely close to one, it should be shaking uncontrollably with cold. It should be doing something, anything but sit there.

            But it did do something, she realized slowly, watching the Wrecker watch her. It had been doing something since Amy first woke up. It was talking to itself, fighting with itself.

            "What's your name?" She asked it for what felt like the millionth time. The Wrecker gazed at her stonily, but its eyes continued to flicker black, blue, black, blue, back to black again. Then, wordlessly, it rose and, grabbing Amy by the elbow, returned to the Tower. The ground beneath Amy's feet shifted and the ice groaned, the sound almost swallowed by a swell of chattering and clicking--the little beasts were moving again. She felt rather than saw the island begin to change course, kicking up great plumes of crystalline snow and shards of ice as it rotated in the water and began to float back towards the shore. Amy glanced at the Wrecker out of the corner of her eye. Was it just her, or did something like satisfaction flicker across its blank face?

            Amy wracked her memory as she watched the frightening creature, trying to hold onto the bits and pieces of the story her sister had let slip over the years. There was a clue to this whole mess standing in front of her, embodied in the monster with Iris's face and the changing eyes. If only I knew what that clue actually was.

Matters of Motivation and other things

I have not written a word in more than a month.
Actually, that's not entirely true. I've written a couple of articles for the university paper. I've been writing in my journal with a bit more regularity, though not as much as I would like, and I wrote many, many thank-you notes. I've even written a paragraph or two for one of my WIP's.
But actually WRITE? As in, sit down for a segment of time devoted solely to furthering one of my stories? Nope. Not even a little bit.
To say I am frustrated is kind of like saying Hurricane Katrina was a nasty storm--vast, enormous understatement. I've tried a number of times to sit down and get to work, but something--sometimes incredibly stupid somethings--always gets in the way. Or I am out of energy. Or the cat is annoying. Or, most worryingly, I simply can't think of anything.
I asked my husband yesterday if he thought it was possible for someone's imagination to die from lack of use. I certainly feel that way lately--my brain doesn't seem to generate stories anymore. I don't dream anymore ,except when I have nightmares and those, to be honest, are very boring and repetitive. I can't even create original nightmares anymore! What is happening to my brain?!
He said, very simply, "no, but it's like playing soccer--the longer you let it go un-practiced, the harder it is to get back into it."
This both makes me feel better and more concerned. I've bemoaned several times with writer friends about how much EASIER it was for me to write when I was younger, and how the ideas flowed faster and more freely back then. What I seem to have forgotten til now is that when I was writing back then, I was not only writing faster and more freely, but I was writing All. The. Time. And I do mean all: at night after I had been told to go to sleep, in class when I should have been taking notes, on family vacations, in the dentist's office, literally every-bleeding-where. And that is probably the biggest difference between my writing then and my writing now. I am not writing nearly as much quantity as I did then. And it's starving my imagination.
This time last year, I had just started my job at Borders, and I was trying to galvanize my foundering imagination. I brought a notebook with me everywhere so that I could write at any time. And I made progress. Not the same speed-of-light-and-excellence progress I made when I was younger, but progress all the same. Now? The notebook is still in my bag, but that's all it is doing, is just sitting there. I need to find a way to get out of this slump, to start writing again, either on the computer or in my notebooks, anything to just get WORDS MOVING AGAIN GAH.
okay, end the complaining portion of this post. Moving on to the strategy part.
When we were on our honeymoon, Dennis suggested that I devote at least 1 hour each day to writing, absolutely no excuses. I thought this was a fabulous idea but (naturally) once we got back to the real world, with our real jobs and our real responsibilities, that ephemeral piece of an idea was immediately relegated to the bottom of the heap. It is time to bring it back up and see what can be done with it. 1 hour a day of writing--any kind of writing, be it blogging here, free-writing something on the computer or in my notebook, working on any sort of story, or hell even writing "I'm stuck I'm stuck I'm stuck" ten billion times. And to hold me to this strategy, I am going to post my hour's worth of writing on here, starting today.
Fingers crossed that this works.

~Katherine

DePaul 2011 Summer Writing Conference

This is not my usual type of post and I generally do not like to plug, but as I am a volunteer for this event and I'm in charge of contacting other bloggers, I feel its only appropriate that I use my own blog for the same purpose.

So, without further ado, the DePaul 2011 Summer Writing Conference!

Polish your prose or poetry at DePaul’s third annual Summer Writing Conference, July 15-17

DePaul’s third annual Summer Writing Conference begins July 15 with a keynote address by journalist and best-selling author Alex Kotlowitz.

Kotlowitz, author of the best-seller There Are No Children Here and other books, will describe his experiences as a non-fiction storyteller during his address from noon to 1 p.m.  in the Pritzker Auditorium of the Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State St.

The three-day conference’s closing speaker will be Miles Harvey, an assistant professor of English at DePaul and an award-winning fiction writer. His presentation will also take place in the Pritzker Auditorium, July 17. Classes and panel discussions will be in the DePaul Center, and readings will take place at Blackie’s restaurant, 755 S. Clark St.

The conference will feature other DePaul faculty and nationally distinguished writers of poetry, non-fiction and fiction. Experts on writing for children and teens and those with expertise in publishing and mixed media will also be featured at the conference that is designed for writers of all experience levels.

DePaul’s Continuing and Professional Education , the Department of English and The Chicago Public Library are the sponsors. 

Tuition is $300 or $125 for any single day. Please email Chris Green cgreen1@depaul.edu with any questions.

Registration is required.  For more information and to register visit cpe.depaul.edu/writingconference

Tell your friends, your enemies, your pets. Feel free to re-post this to your own blog (I'm looking at you, Gia ) Tweet it, Facebook it, whatever. Just get the word out--it's going to be a blast!

In Which I Complain About Getting Old

I sleep, on average, 4-6 hours a night.

I have always been a light sleeper, a weird combination of night owl and early bird which enabled me to stay up for hours after my bedtime as a child (usually hunkered over by my nightlight, reading way into the night) only to pop out of bed first thing in the morning, cheery and wide awake for school. One summer when I worked for a cafe chain, the managers of all the stores in my town loved me because I would work split shifts, waking up at 4 in the morning to open at one store, then staying up til almost 11 at night closing at another, only to do the whole thing again the next day. My ability to not need sleep made me relatively unique (and, that summer anyway, very rich) among my peers, who could not seem to drag themselves out of bed before noon without a very very good reason.

Now, though, I notice that things are changing. I still stay up late and get up early. I still sleep like my cat, ears quivering, awake at the slightest provacation. Now, though, I start to feel it after a few days.

I am REALLY feeling it this week.

My new job is affording me lots of hours. This is good, as hours=pay=financial stability=good. My classes, though, also take up quite a lot of time, not just in the classroom, but in terms of homework as well. I also cover outside projects for our school paper, which adds to my workload.

The hilarious thing is, I spend SO MUCH TIME writing--I've written thousands of words in the past week alone--and yet almost none of it is the kind of writing I really want to do. I am still working on my WIP (still has momentum--yay!) but my writing time has been relegated to my half hour train commute to and from work/class, and on my lunch breaks. Hardly a solid writing session, it must be confessed!

I know priorities must be kept aligned. At this point, much of my ability to write hinges on first having the money=financial stability=good equation completely hammered out. Which requires a degree. Which itself requires money. Which requires the job which helps pay for the degree so I can get more money so that ONE DAY I can spend all the time I currently spend on homework and articles on MY WRITING.

/end rant.

This is what happens when you only average 4-ish hours of sleep a night. I need to sleep, for real.

Until next time, keep writing! (regardless of topic! :D)

~Katherine

And lo! There Was A New Post

First, an enormous thank-you to the estimable Gia for her help getting this blog layout a little closer to how I want it. I love electric blue as  much as the next person, but it was a bit hard on the eyes.

So, blogworld. It has been a while. A great many things have transpired since the last time I word-vomited in this space, some of them great, some of them not-so-great. But since I spend enough time ranting and whining to people in real life about the not-so-great things, here we shall mention only the good!

Perhaps most important at the moment: I have a new job! Or rather, I have the same job, but with a different company. The up side of this is that my workplace is on the same block as my school. On the down side, both school and work are a million miles from my home, which requires a million-hour commute. BUT, I am employed. Celebrate.

Second, but no less important (to me, anyway) is that after what felt like an endless hiatus, I seem to be writing again! And not just writing, but writing and NOT HATING EVERY WORD. The biggest deterrent for me while I was working on both Five and Holly was every time I finished a paragraph, I wrinkled my nose and muttered "this is absolute shit. I wrote better stuff when I was TWELVE." This time, though, I am cruising (mostly) along, perhaps not writing the next Great American Novel, but writing a story I am enjoying with characters who are fun to write.

I am trying not to talk about it too much, for fear of it falling victim to my vicious inner editor (who, I can only assume, is too preoccupied with violently editing my schoolwork to notice I am working on a story) so I will just say that I have made pretty good progress *knock on wood, knock on everything* and should continue to do so!

And so, until next time. Hopefully it'll be a quicker update than this one was!

~Katherine

Why Yes, I did Fall Off the Face of the Earth

I suppose I should apologize for disappearing right when things were starting to get exciting in Nanowrimo, huh?
I do apologize blogworld. I will say, though, that the last week of Nanowrimo, while successful, was a struggle, and one about which I did not really wish to write. Too much moaning. Too much head-keyboard contact. Too much caffeine.
Then, with the blog-daily habit broken, I kind of fell out of it as other things swarmed in. Things like graduate school, which I started just after the New Year--I got my acceptance letter on the 30th, the same day I finished Nano (but the story is nowhere near finished. In fact, it's still on chapter 7. Yes, I know that is pathetic). Things like my fiance finally (finally) moving here permanently, and wedding planning taking off at about five million miles an hour (I don't see how people can get married multiple times. Just arranging my own single wedding has turned me off event planning FOREVER. And I'm not even doing much of it!) Things like that, which kept me from blogging. The 'real' world needed my attention desperately, and so my stories, once again, were put on the back burner.

Today, however, the real world reminded me that despite the amount of attention I give it, its sometimes not enough to keep things running smoothly. Today, I lost my job.

Now, that is not to say I was fired (I wasn't) or that something terrible has happened that requires medical leave (it hasn't). No, the company for which I work has fallen prey to our sucky economy, and today they announced they were closing stores in an effort to restructure and become more competitive. My store was one of those stores.

We'll have a few weeks, I think, while we try to sell all our merchandise. At least one more paycheck, though hopefully two. Then, it'll be just school, and the quarter is ending soon, so I'll have at least a week of absolutely nothing to do, unless I find a new job double stat.

obviously, I am looking. I was looking before this even became a reality because, honestly, most of us knew SOMETHING like this was going to happen. Now that it has, I really need to put the drive on now.

But there's a small part of me that is kind of looking forward to one less 'real world' responsibility and a little more free time. Maybe, just maybe, I can climb back in the saddle (for the forty-sixth BILLION time) and approach my poor stories with a little more dedication, a little more inspiration. I think about them constantly, especially Five, but when I sit down to actually write, nothing happens.

I need to hold myself more accountable for my writing. You can have all the talent in the world, but if you don't have the discipline to hone that talent and commit to it, you might as well have no talent at all. I have a tiny smidge of talent--I need to nurture it and help it get stronger, not ignore it until I can't write worth a damn anymore.

So here's to new beginnings. I won't promise more consistent posting (yet) because I'm not sure I can deliver. But I fully intend to use this turn of events in a positive way, and I intend to use this space to hold myself accountable to that plan.

Good luck to me. God knows I need it.

~Katherine