There’s always going to be someone that, for some crazy reason, doesn’t want you to succeed.
The first time it happened to me, unsurprisingly, was because I wanted to write. No big crime, right?
You’d be surprised…
Target, the summer of 1998. I was working in the stock room as a sorter- sorting carts so the other employees could stock in the morning. 7-4:30, five days a week. Easy work for what it was. One particular day, I was talking with an older co-worker in his late thirties or so- let’s call him Carl.
“What are you doing to major in?”
“English.” My simple answer baffled him.
“English? English? Why would you want to do that?”
“Because I want to write.”
Carl began to sputter. “You can’t- you can’t make any money doing that. Why don’t you major in computers or something?”
“Because that’s not what I want to do.” My simple, firm answer proceeded to confuse Carl even further.
“There’s no money in that.”
I didn’t want to remind him that we were both working at Target for seven some odd dollars an hour, so we both weren’t making any decent money at the time. I said something about it not being his problem and continued loading up bottles of laundry detergent into a tub for someone to put on a shelf later in the day.
I also put that conversation in my back pocket and carry it around with me every day. I think about it a lot, just the fact that someone decided to question what I wanted to do with my life, as if to say that my personal choice wasn’t “good” enough for the world around me.
Newsflash-I have to do what’s right for me… in all aspects.
Speaking of which…
NANOWRIMO IS COMING- DO YOU HAVE ANY CAFFEINE?
I am excited. I am very, very excited. There’s a lot out there in the digital thoughtspace (I just made that term up! Someone else probably made it up before me! Blargh!) about the pros and cons of all things Nano and blah blah bliddy blah, and all I’m going to say is this:
Don’t think about the “goal”- i.e. those fifty thousand words you write that’ll get you a novel because it says so in the rules.
Nope!
Dropkick that idea right out of your head!
Think about the story you want to tell, and for a month, be selfish and tell that story. Tell the shit out of it. Go nuts, go bonkers, go ballistic, do everything in your power to tell your story.
Do what you want.
Who’s going to stop you?
THE PREVIOUS WORDS WERE A PEP TALK FROM ME TO YOU… OR FROM ME TO ME. PICK ONE, AND LET’S MOVE ON!
Fifty thousand words in ten days… I must be crazy.
Onward!
WHAT’S IN A BOOK COVER?
HANDS! IT’S GOT TO HAVE LOTS OF HANDS GRABBING AT THINGS NO MATTER WHA-
Sorry. I just had a Borders flashback when I lorded over the genre section, and every goddamn book from Leisure had a set of hands on the cover for no reason. Grabby, uninvited hands! Hands coming through doors, manhole covers, slats, windows, other places… hands everywhere!
DAMN YOU, HANDS!
I… have an issue in my brain.
Anyway, what do you look for in a book cover? I think the Hard Case Crime line has awesome pieces for covers, but I’m a sucker for that old school stuff. I think covers need to give an overall sense of what’s lurking inside, and being abstract isn’t a bad thing. Having the reader be a couple of hundred pages into a book only to go, “so THAT’S what that meant on the cover!” is always a plus.
Yes, I am… plotting.
I just need to figure out what’s coming out first… and go insane in the process.
DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNN
Until next time…
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