Fast Writing > A Writing Fast and Appendix/spleen/kidneys

Like I said, I've been on a writing fast. A cleanse. Like one of those crash diets where you drink nothing but juice for three days and feel really lightheaded and grumpy for a couple days until you get real food in your stomach. In case you missed it, writing is the food of this analogy. Forget that. You can go without writing for way more than seven days. You don't exactly die from not writing. It's a close thing, though.

When you stop writing, you feel diminished. You feel like someone, probably you, and probably not sober, has scooped out your appendix/spleen/kidney and put it in a jar, on a shelf in your office cubicle. You insist that writerness is still a part of your identity, and make up story ideas to go nowhere. Or maybe you insist it isn't, and curse the day you ever set pen to paper, or words to Word. In any case, you can technically live without that pile of organs, because what good do they do anyway? You can see them there on your shelf, just chillin next to your motivational cat-on-a-branch picture. Even if you poke them once in a while, they starts to get kind of rotty looking and smell of vague discontent.

Half the books on writing tell you -- if you can do something else, if you can live without writing, do that thing. Have a real career path that won't make you miserable with the innumerable rejections and conniptions and contortions and exasperations, etc. But sometimes that's too hard. You may not realize it immediately, but it will drag you down, the slow certainty that something is wrong, that someone is wrong, and they're not even on the internet. Someone is wrong, and they're inside your head. So you realize, slowly, that you gotta do that writing thing anyway, because, let's face it, if you're going to be reading vitriolic spleen, you want it to be your spleen.*

You pick up the old jar and look at it dubiously. It's a dangerous surgery, stuffing that appendix/spleen/kidney back in place. Your writing organs may or may not have atrophied. Picked up unwanted influences. Infected you with the T-virus or worse, something sparkling. You aren't even sure you can remember to stitch them into the right places. But hey, you know you have to try.

Remember to take some time to recover from the surgery. It's a lifestyle you gotta train for. Go slow and establish habits. At least in the beginning, take it easy. If you run too fast and the stitches will burst open and it'll be awkward when your organs fall out and you find yourself throwing them back in the desk-jar in frustration.

Writing is hard. Not writing is harder.

Go write me a story.



*Context maybe? Ursula K. LeGuin was accused of raging with some "notorious bloodthirsty manhating feminist spleen." -A Fisherman of the Inland Sea (her book, not the accuser).

Excerpt: A Tiger in Zebra's Clothing

Due to the changing site-traffic patterns, this week's thing of the week is an excerpt from a very fine Work In Progress: 

A Tiger in Zebra's Clothing

Kira felt herself coming into awareness, and she knew she didn't want to open her eyes. Her head throbbed like three hundred pounds of katzenjammer, and her mouth tasted like vodka and something worse. She drank too much again; she could tell that much at least. It was Tanya's fault. And Ben's. They hadn't listened to her excuses that she had to study and besides it was too gross out with that drizzle. But it was Clue Week. They had to drink whatever with Tanya's Little and celebrate something. No, she hadn't wanted to go, she was sure of that. But Tanya insisted. Kira had put on her cute zebra-striped rainboots and let them drag her out to the bar anyway.

She still didn't open her eyes. That was scary. She didn't know where she was, and she really, really hoped it was in a strange man's bed. She shifted, and a brick dug into her back. Then she realized she was buck-naked and shivering. Her fingers felt tacky and half-stuck together.  

Nope. No beds. So the night had gone the other way. Fuck.

Kira didn't need to open her eyes to know she desperately wanted to keep them closed. But she cracked her eyelids anyway, and looked around the strange alley. She nearly blinded herself looking into the early morning rays. Eventually her eyes cleared enough to see the delicate way the sunlight dappled across the fresh pool of blood. She jerked herself to her feet, and almost slipped. She started backing away, but made herself look at the dismembered limbs in front of her. She stopped counting at three arms, and decided it was time to go. She found a barrel of rainwater and tried to get the blood off her hands and face. 

She spotted a long coat caught on a fence, with only half a sleeve torn off. Wrapping the coat tightly around her, she trudged out of the alleyway, pretty sure her hair was a mess. 

She was getting really tired of this walk of shame.

If you are reading this, I assume you were looking for a tiger.

I could apologize for skipping internet-town for a year, but I've been living in an area with a really terrible internet infrastructure. It's not even first world problems at this point. It's mainly just problems.

And I've been busy. My job is very top secret eyes only history brain overload. I can't say much more than it involves some founding fathers and the things they got in the mail. True Fact: Jefferson was sent more hate mail than grizzly bears. Factual no matter how you parse that garden path. Mhm. Anyway, I really can't go into more detail, because it's all very hush hush wobble wobble. 

I've been working hard and singlemindedly at this job, because that's the only way I can work on anything. With a certain OCD exclusion of all else. And that exclusion has included some very important things that I should be doing. Like writing. Well, the first step is admitting you have a problem. 

So today I'm home with a cold and hopped up on cold medication to try to combat the deep fog between my ears and fever and chills and abject misery! And in this miserable state I went to check my email. What do I find in my inbox? Alerts that I am getting spam messages on my blog! Huzzah! I instantly realize two things:

1. Spam? Blogger, what the hell? This is why I couldn't handle Wordpress!
2. Wait, I have a blog!?

So here I am, headache out the ears and smacked in the face with the realization that I would totally get a dishonorable discharge for cowardice and abandoning my post in blogging. 

I locked eyes with my blog and decided that this is going to change. 

First stage of reclaiming my blog space: I decided to look into what my blog had been doing without my presence, and I discovered that the blog traffic patterns had changed dramatically. How do people get here? It used to be people searching things like "Kat Zantow" or "A Face all Planes and Angles" or "Villains by Necessity." Now? Anyone who's everyone gets here searching "white tiger." You can find that one picture with a Google image search, and that's the way it happens. That's cool, but it hardly seems relevant to anything I do...unless...I think it's time for...

THE OBVIOUS CONCLUSION: Retool the site into a furry erotica blog!

Step 1. They come for the tigers.  

Step 2. They stay for the tigers. 

Step 3. They come for the tigers.

Step 4. Profit!

It's the only way to synthesize content and site traffic. Maybe I can start light with some paranormal romance fiction, but I don't know if it will be enough...

Looking at the world through disdain glass windows

Always judging like a contemptress.


Judging is easy, contempt is easy, bitching is easy. Creating things, now that's hard.

In June, look for a new story.

Lions and Tigers and Zombies, oh My!

Not too long ago I read an Amanda Hocking book, and found myself suitably entertained.  Check out the blog post title. Yeah. It was kind of like that.

In case you missed it, I reviewed it over at The Canary Review.

In Hollowland by Amanda Hocking, hardcore teenager chic Remy travels with a Canadian, a rock-star, and a fashionista teenybopper through a post-apocalyptic, zombie-ravaged landscape on a quest to find the military quarantine holding her brother. Romantic subplots are plentiful, but for a post-apocalyptic tale of horror and adventure, there aren’t enough zombies to fertilize a garden. The true monsters the companions encounter are their fellow man (in the form of polygamous cults, armies of psychopaths, and military law). But while these subplots are tense and suspenseful, it was a downer that the slow-moving zombies never made me fear for the character’s lives or health. In part, this was because they had a lion in their car.

Wait, what? Is that a typo?

Nope. It’s a lion. Lioness, to be precise.

Read the full article

On fairy tales

Godmother told Cindy to show up in a pumpkin.
Or did she get the schedule mixed up?

Recently I've been working on re-imagining a fairytale. I hear this genre/trend/mental exercise is hot lately, though sometimes the weakest point of a good story. (Unfortunately I haven't kept up with any of the new fairytale television cutesies. I saw the first episode of Grim, and my brain threw up.)

To be fair, anything that calls itself Grim has a lot to live up to. I grew up listening to the real Grimm tales, and they were really damn grim. As I recall, Cinderella's step mother ended up dancing on red hot iron shoes. It was great. I think it formed me into the cheery person I am today.

But I don't know that I am completely behind the Brothers Grimm interpretations either. The young girls still seemed too innocent. 

The way I see it, there's no reason to lock a girl up in an impenetrable tower to keep her isolated. Not unless she's done something to require this maximum security dragon-guarded prison. And signs do point to criminal behavior. Clearly, Goldilocks could be convicted of breaking and entering. Snow White seemed to have some slave driving mining operation going on. And Rapunzel? She carries a garrote with her everywhere. Don't get me started on Cinderella. 

The powers that be put princesses in towers not as a cruelty, but to try to stem the tide of destruction. But then the much put-upon girls lean their pretty little heads on their hands and sigh out the windows until a prince rides up. One look and the prince can't keep his sword in his pants.

Just one look, and that maximum security prison crumbles. He sweeps her off her feet so her pretty little shoes won't get dragon's blood on them. The poor prince is smitten. He wants to keep her safe. But can he keep his land safe from her? 

An historic lack of updates?

Dear Internet,

You know, a lack of updates is a good thing. It means I'm doing something more interesting with my life than staring at my computer.

Oh wait, all I've been doing is staring at my computer.

No, don't get excited. I don't mean fiction. I've been proofreading (despite the raging success of Henchman, I got tired of being a starving artist) the letters of the founding fathers. It's, like, historical. Too bad I'm not writing historical fiction. I'm getting a good sense of early America. All anyone cared about back then was who got a Brevet. (Pretty much an honor/pay bump/temporary booster rank).

And believe you me that some noteworthy presidents have really awful cursive. Also, I have found, however, that six commas to a sentence is not uncommon.

What I'm trying to tell you is that I'll get more free time in about a month. I'll get time to photo/scan in pictures, to enter more stories in contests, and release a sequel, at the very least.

honorably and respectfully,
Yr. obed. sert.

ZZ.