Some Whole Wheat Words

I almost succumbed to another “process” entry. That’s not part of the plan. The plan, in fact, forbids it. No more posting of unfinished work, or of scenes with no narrative that go nowhere. This summer is for short stories and for developing a backbone, skills beyond slavishly cataloging items in imaginary rooms and describing the imaginary facial expressions of imaginary people.

I’m in magazine now, and many of my friends, including some who read this blog, have been left behind. What a stupid system. They’re changing it to something that makes sense now, after we’ve already had to deal with moronic, hopeslaying bureaucracy. It’s like high-school– the new cafeteria, the clean locker rooms, the shiny computers, all installed just after you leave.

I’ve got a job in a bookstore, which has turned me into a stationary target for frustrated teenagers who want to talk about Dragonlance. Tolkienesque offal is better than meth. Maybe.

It’s sort of sad, actually. Any “real” writer of serious fiction can get away with a sci-fi novel; look at Oprah’s new darling, Cormac McCarthy. The Road doesn’t strike me as much of an Oprah book, considering that Mr. McCarthy is famous for brutal, nihilistic violence and despair (try saying the phrase “baby tree” to anyone who’s read Blood Meridian), but that’s neither here nor there. The point is that McCarthy can pen a fantastic book set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland and win the Pulitzer. Fantasy, on the other hand, gets no love at all. Name a respected writer who wouldn’t be laughed at for attempting a book about dwarves and elves and dragons. Ursula LeGuin doesn’t count.

Dwarves and elves and dragons are as boring as fuck. The variations from book to book within the fantasy scene are very, very minute compared to other genres. Fantasy is like Drum n’ Bass. It’s stagnant. I’m going to write a fantasy story.

It will likely use too many sentences like this, sentences that don’t make immediate grammatical sense, break off into strange cases, use commas too much. There will be some use of the F-Word, and both a boy and girl. I’m sure that there’ll be lots of dialog and people will tell me to write a screenplay and I’ll worry about the path I’ve tried to choose for myself.

All of my writing sounds the same. Stagnant. Clipped, shallow, and uninteresting. The scenes are unconnected to anything, the ends are abrupt and unsatisfying. You’re bored, my readers, I know. I am too. Imagine: I have to live this. It belongs to me. I’d rather it did not.

I worked very, very hard last year to develop a style of my own. This was a resoundingly terrible idea. Looking back, I can see myself experimenting with voices. I know that the bits of writing that I tossed off in twenty minutes back then are fifty times as good as things I labour over to create now. I sacrificed my development to force out lifeless, repetitive, directionless prose stillborn. These are the stagnant days. I hope that something interesting will finally emerge from them. Right now I feel like a bit of a process entry.