Let Me Out!

Martin Creasey

I’ve been nervous lately. My writing seems stale. So many writers have personality drenched blogs and I wonder how to break the cage I’ve built around my own creative self. It seems like something that must be done from the outside. The tiny screeching beastie flying around inside can’t seem to get out on her own. I’ve been trying to free her by indulging in the things that made her happy, back in the days when she was free. I’ve been listening to music more, looking at more artwork, taking pictures, singing, writing. Every now and then, we can hold hands through the bars, but I can’t seem to get the fucking door open. I’m feeling desperate. Like if I can’t free her now, she’s doomed. She’s fading away, her little wings fraying, her glittery skin turning sallow, her eyes becoming sunken. Once in a while, she grabs the bars and shakes them furiously, screaming her frustration and I weep on the outside, knowing I have the key…somewhere.  But WHERE?!

I’ve been pouring over the internet searching for inspiration.  For a while, I found it here at S&S. I spent enormous amounts of time and had a blast building the blog, my twitter presence and even a facebook page. I’ve been delving deeper into the internet and the rabbit hole sucked me in. Eventually, my eyes lost the ability to focus in the real world, I had something like sun-blindness every time I turned away from the computer; and my brain, my poor brain, it started to hum, then rattle and finally it shuddered to a halt. I’d lost the spark. The artwork, the music, the other fantastic bloggers, didn’t get me in the mood for writing anymore. I almost shut down the computer. But like an addict, I kept at it, a burnout with glassy eyes and twitching fingers.  

I hit on a horoscope widget site. I don’t even remember how I got there, but it reminded me of how much fun I used to have with astrology and tarot cards, I even have my own tarot deck (where IS that?). I kept randomly surfing the net, like a rat foraging for food in the landfill. I ended up on Pinterest and saw an image of a beautiful “Moon” tarot card, and I thought, what if I tried to break through this malaise by writing flash fiction inspired by this card? What if I did this for all the cards? Hmn, that would be really hard. But maybe this is the key…but what if it takes away from working on my novel? But I haven’t been writing my novel...maybe this will help me create a habit of writing. Maybe this will help me break that damn cage. 

I really hope so, dead fairies make me sad.

PS: This is the long-winded introduction to my new page: Tarot Inspired Flash Fiction.
UPDATE: Sorry, guys, I've disabled the Flash Fiction page: to see the tarot inspired poetry I've written check out my wattpad page, it's all there. Thanks! 

Ah, the Internet

I spent most of the weekend online researching place names for my book. It was exhausting but totally gratifying. I stumbled across a Haida-English dictionary from the 1800's (how accurate it is may be questionable, but still a really cool read, and what a beautiful language) and I got so jazzed reading through it that I developed an entire creation myth for my story world. And, from that, came the ultimate resolution of my plot! I was so excited I wrote the whole thing down in one sitting; it is so perfect that the end is a direct result of the very beginning, events that happened even before my story starts! (My poor son will probably develop carpel tunnel syndrome from spending too much time playing video games as a result of my distraction, hopefully he'll forgive me when he grows up obese and socially inept.) 

So it just goes to show, that if you're feeling lost and don't know what to do next, pull yourself out of your own head and look around, inspiration will strike, if you give it a place to aim!

Cheers!

A.J.

Please Bear with Me

So, way back in the spring of 2009 I was feeding my toddler and staring out of our glass doors watching a bunch of crows dive bombing something in the back alley. They were utterly silent which is what caught my attention, it seemed so unusual. I wondered what it would be like to be them, flying around the trees; no worries about a stalled career, or gaining weight, or being a bare-minimum mom and less-than-bare-minimum spouse. Not for them any worries about addictions, mis-managed money, or dilapidated transmissions. 

I wanted to be a crow.

This is how my book was born.

It's almost three years later, and I'm totally stoked because last night I finished writing chapter two.

When I was 8 years old, I read the Little House on the Prairie series. It wasn't until after I'd finished it that I learned that the author, Laura Ingalls Wilder, was dead. Long dead. I was gobsmacked. HOW could a person who was DEAD make my laugh, make me cry? It's some kind of magic. Then I realized that I could write words that people a hundred years from today could read! (Insert angels singing here.) That was it, I was going to be a writer when I grew up. Unfortunately, something happened along the way, or rather, nothing happened. I stopped writing in my late teens. And I never picked it up again; until that afternoon sitting at my dining table trying not to watch my son paint his highchair tabletop with spaghetti sauce while digging chewed up noodles out of his eyelashes.

What happened that derailed my going-to-be-a-famous-writer train? Well....doesn't matter. It got derailed, like, right off the tracks. So now, I'm on a whole new train, it's an old steam engine (slow) with a lot of cars (can you say, 'baggage'?), but I'm the engineer and I'm knocking down all the bloated cows and fallen trees that get in my way.

Let my keystrokes be true, my plotting be timely, and my voice be worth reading.

Cheers,

A.J.