The words are starting to form...

I know when a story's getting close when the words start coming, the ideas start solidifying, and I can feel the shape of it.

Writing, at least for me, isn't just about having an idea and an interest in writing.  Writing is a complex art.  Everything has to come together.  Finding the voice of the story, which isn't always the voice of a main character, is like finding the story itself.  It's perhaps easiest to see what I mean in movies.  You know when a movie has a voice.  Usually it's a style, but sometimes it's the distinct shape of the story, or the given instincts of a director, or following an actor's lead (or letting the actor lead, which some critics don't seem to understand).  Stories are the same way.  What frustrates me most when reading budding writers is when they clearly don't grasp this, and resist all attempts to explain the absolute necessity of it.  I mean, there are given genres for a reason, to give even the common writer somewhere to hang their story.

Anyway, the story I'm working on now is Kiss Me Quick. At this point it's sort of what I wanted to do with Montague (Or, In the Leviathan) (as I've since stylized it; check label records for details), but in a more contemporary fashion.  What sort of spurred me on was coming across The Sun Is Also A Star in the employee breakroom.  This was one of those young adult novels that became a movie recently, although the trailer didn't make it look like a young adult story at all.  Anyway, I hadn't seen the movie, hadn't even considered reading the book, and then I had a look inside, and I started to read a little, and realized this was a style I could handle.  I mean, it's what I've been doing anyway.  All I needed was a story.

And I already had it.  So the impetus began, and percolated.

I already had an opening few lines I thought were good, but then today came up with some new ones.  Some of what's inspired me lately is a scholarly book about the writing of The Great Gatsby (Careless People by Sarah Churchwell), which has reminded me all over again of discovering the work of Hemingway for myself, which I've been doing in recent years, which was the result of Corey Stoll's brilliant portrayal in Midnight in Paris. 

And Churchwell brings up how Gatsby is roughly 50,000 words, which is a target goal I hit many times over the past decade or so, with ease, but have never really considered as a potential end point for a longer story.  Seems as good a time as any.

I'll keep you posted.

I swear I'm going to write something soon...

Earlier this year (you'll recall I yammered on and on about it) I completed a fairly lengthy writing project.  It always seems after I've finished something like that it takes a while to start another one.  I've got plenty of stuff I want to write, which is certainly not the issue.  I just haven't gotten around to start writing any of it.  The likeliest suspect is the annual family Christmas poem (which isn't really a long project), for when I finally start up again.  And hopefully I can bother to actually submit stuff, too, which is a horrible thing for a writer to admit. 

So that's sort of what's happening, when there isn't really...anything actually happening.

And maybe when I am writing something again, I'll start yammering about it here again.  Because that was kind of fun, and it certainly kept things lively.

Oh!  Here's something:  Last weekend I went to the Tampa Comic Con, for the second year in a row, with a satchel full of my books, in case I was brave enough to actually do something with them.  Last year: nothing.  This year?  I gave a book away!  Yeah!  I also met Peter David, who was a big element of my '90s reading life (even though I sort of hated him for the next decade or so), and bought a book from him.  But I gave a book away!  (Sapo Saga, for the record, which went over so well in the virtual book tour earlier this year.) 

I hope at some point to have a publisher who'll set me up at a table at things like this, in the future.  It'd be fun.  I would vow not to spend all my time staring at a phone while my assistant does all the work.  And I would probably succeed at that.  Maybe for the first few such appearances.  Maybe it's the best way to pass the time.  But Peter David was pretty lively, which is doubly good because he had a terrible healthscare a few years back.  So I resolve to be more like Peter David!