The Universe is trying to tell me something...

Just kidding; I don't believe in a higher power that tries to tell anybody anything. But I do have an amusing anecdote for you, if you still read this blog.

With Mitt Romney maintaining a baffling hold on the competition (such as it is) for the Republican candidacy, and with the well-deserved success of the Broadway musical The Book of Mormon, and with the internet being positively bombarded with those obnoxious "I'm A Mormon!" banner ads, the stars all seem perfectly aligned to assist me in selling Baptism the moment it's finished. (Not that I'll be surprised if it fails to sell anyway. I've been at this novel-selling game for almost three years now, and I am a hardened cynic with regards to the publishing industry. It's almost enough to make me drink whiskey and write poems about drinking whiskey, Bukowski-like.) I know the timing is as good as it will ever be for this novel, so I've been wringing every drop of writing energy out of myself through my fog of depression.

(I am happy to report that I did finally find a job -- a permanent, full-time job with benefits, which is something I haven't had in nearly six years -- and as I've adjusted to the working life once more my writey feeling has increased daily. I think I will soon be back on a regular schedule of writing, and Baptism will come together quickly once I am. Hooray!)

Anyway, along with Mormons being everywhere in the zeitgeist just now, a funny coincidence happened a few days ago that has zapped me in the butt like a cattle prod and has made me leap back toward this book with renewed focus.

I got a call from my ex-husband the other day. "The Mormons came looking for you," he said.

"Oh?"

"Yeah, two guys knocked on the door and asked for Melissa Ricks." Melissa Ricks was my legal name back when I was a member of the Church -- I have since legally changed both my first and last names, but not to evade the Mormons. "I told them you don't live here anymore and asked them what they wanted with you. They said, 'We're from her church.' I said, 'She doesn't have a church.' And they said, 'Well, she's in our records.'"

We had a good laugh over it, and I told him it must be God trying to tell me to hurry up and finish Baptism for the Dead because He's not going to keep the circumstances favorable for my publication and the birth of my career for much longer.

I truly don't believe in signs, or "things happening for a reason," or anything vaguely mystical or "cosmic" in the hippie sense of the word. It's all just confirmation bias, which is a fascinating enough psychological phenomenon on its own that I think it's rather insulting to our magnificent brains to assign some kind of winking, nodding, knowing significance to everyday coincidence. But I have to admit to being entertained by this particular coincidence -- the Mormons haven't sought me out for twelve years. Why now, when I'm working on a novel that explores Mormon culture?

It gave me a good laugh, and it's stoked the fire under my ass, and that's all I can ask from the universe.

So yes, I am still working on Baptism, and I am feeling extremely cheerful about its potential. Thank you, Elders, for showing up at my ex-husband's door!

Still making some progress

I wrote another scene tonight in Baptism for the Dead and revised an existing scene. I think it's coming along nicely. the book is at almost 37,000 words and I've got a complete first draft of Part 4. (Parts 1 - 3 are on, oh, probably a third draft by now.) There are two more parts to go in the book. I'm not sure exactly how long each one will be, but my best guess is that this book will finish at a little over 50,000 words. That is a short-ass novel. I hope this won't be a problem in selling it.

I would be lying if I told you that my writing is just that concise. My writing is anything but concise. I am the wordiest motherfucker you'll ever meet -- I am prone to overadjectivizing like angry dads in the 1960s were prone to oversalting their food. I never let too many paragraphs go by without writing one paragraph that's actually just one really long sentence. I never miss an opportunity to add in some really weird, memorable sensory images. I do not write tight.

I could go in and "pad," but I don't like the idea of padding for padding's sake. This is just not a long story. It takes place over the course of maybe a couple of months, and a lot of the characters' time is spent traveling by car -- time that can be summed up in a paragraph or two of pretty scenic description before moving back to relevant stuff.

I am taking some comfort in the fact that it's a literary novel, clearly and undisputedly, and short novels that aren't quite short enough to be novellas are not that uncommon in literary fiction. So hopefully it won't be a deal-breaker that my book is shorter than your average YA novel.

We'll see, I guess. No sense worrying about all that until I've finished the damn thing anyway.

HEY-O!

Just worked on Baptism for the Dead for five straight hours. Most of it was revision, so I could re-acquaint myself with the existing 35,000 words, but I was really pleased to note that after a long absence from it, I think this book is fucking kickass. Like, more kickass than I suspected it was.

Feeling very motivated to put in at least five more hours tomorrow, probably a lot more. I guess that's the nice thing about not having a job.

The self-published book is going fairly well, too. I'm spending a little time expanding my network of historical fiction readers and writers on Goodreads. I am really starting to believe that Goodreads is a powerful tool for authors to promote, and plus, it's just fun. I have sold something like 50 copies at last count, and reviews are starting to creep in, all of them positive so far. I have a feeling I just need to make some kind of breakthrough somewhere...getting an online book club interested in reading it, getting a review from a very popular reader on Goodreads, etc. -- and then it should start to take off. As much as a self-published book can be expected to take off.

OH HI THERE, blog.

Hey, I still have a blog! And yes, I am still alive and kicking. I know it's been a couple of months. I've been busy.

Here's the short version: extensive travels throughout most of September (badly needed; brain needed to recharge), moved, threatening and preparing lawsuit against former landlord, settling out of court, getting appliances and furniture for new place, frantically searching for real jobs because writing doesn't pay crap. Yet, anyway.

Every literary writer needs to read this web comic.

Assuming I ever finish another novel and then attempt to get another agent, I'm going to make myself a nice little web site. Nothing fancy; just a place with information about me, how to contact me, a decent photo of myself, and a prominent link to this blog. You know the kind of site I'm talking about.

I've already considered what I'd like to say about myself on such a site, and the most important thing I think I can say about my writing -- my style and what I hope to achieve -- is to list my major influences. We all have influences, and I think it's important for a writer to understand how and why each of hers affects her writing. Right alongside my usual rogue's gallery of literary influences (Nabokov, Fitzgerald, Oates, Atwood, Martin, etc.) I intend to place a name you've never heard before, but you should have heard it, because Chris Onstad is one of the best writers of literary fiction living and working today.

You've never heard of him because he doesn't write novels or short stories. He writes a web comic.

A long poem.

Here's something I wrote for my last weekly writers' group meeting. It's a long poem, and it was my first attempt with poetry to not just capture a moment or a feeling or an idea, but to relate a separate, unaffiliated aspect of my life to an internal aspect of my life. I think in that sense it was successful. It's not my best piece of writing ever, but I'm proud of it because I set a goal and achieved it, and because it's long, and I haven't written this many useful words in months.

My writers' group is great. We're a small crowd and I'm the only one in it who has aspirations to be published someday (although not the only one who has the skills to be published!) but the critiques are fantastic. And they're good friends, too. I think everybody needs a good writers' group.

Wow!

Freedom! The divorce was finalized yesterday. After all the time it's taken and the many disappointments along the way, I was not expecting it to be rubber-stamped and John-Hancocked as (relatively) quickly and smoothly as it was.

I hope this takes some of the strain off me so I'm able to write again. My writing has been almost non-existent for months due to all this stress. When it has been existent, it's been abysmal. Really terrible. I haven't written anything useful or that I could even consider keeping since April. This is very frustrating for me. Over the past several months I've basically given up any hope for having a writing career. I'm not sure why I was trying in the first place, to be honest. My writing has been just total shit for months, and I believe maybe it always was. There is still a tiny fragment of my brain that still thinks I can write and that still wants to have a career; the majority of my brain is just sluggish, all dead weight and fuzz, and I have no idea why I ever thought I could write in the first place.

In nine days things should be looking up for me considerably. I'll be very busy, so I may lack the time to write for several weeks, but I have a very small hope that this doubting of my capabilities and my future are just depression, and will lift once my life picks up a little once more, once all my free time and energy is no longer occupied by the divorce, by dealing with my ex's drama, and by frantically trying to come up with a little extra money every month to make ends meet. I have been under an extreme amount of stress, and that's probably what's making me feel so negative and listless. It's probably not really true that I suck at writing and should give up now. But it's hard to remember that sometimes.

Anyway, in September I'll be on a much-needed road trip. I am looking forward to a change of scenery and some serious mental stimulation...two things I desperately need for all aspects of my mental health, not just for my writing.

I will also be quitting my job next week, and while it sucks to face joblessness again, I think this job has been a big part of the no-writing problem for me. It provides me with no creative stimulation at all. I really need some interaction with people in order to write. I need an environment that changes...whether I'm actually going places, or working outside with changing weather, working with animals with their changing behavior, or even seeing different customers and co-workers every day, as in my retail jobs...I just need some variety in my life in order to be optimally productive...or productive at all. The job I've been working at since April has allowed me to pay the bills, and that's been important, of course. But I am ready for a job that gives me more than just a reliable paycheck. I need a job that doesn't crush my self-esteem by making me feel like I've wasted my entire life thinking that I can write at all. So I don't really care what job I take next, although I hope it's another job in zoo keeping, and if it's not, I hope it's got some creative elements in it. I have a few ideas, and hopefully they'll pan out.

Anyway, the important thing for now is that the biggest problem in my life has been largely solved, at long, LONG last. I am feeling cautiously optimistic. I even randomly composed a few nice sentences in my head the other day, something I realized as I did it that I haven't actually done for months. Maybe that's a sign that my writing will return to me. Maybe it's not. I don't know; I'm not even sure I can write anymore. But it's a change, and I'm taking any changes right now to be good things.