Little Bit of Love

I'm pretty sure that if I met someone who would build me a tree house so wonderful I'd want to live in it, I'd marry them. Seriously. Building someone a tree house is like an epic expression of love. It takes time and money and possibly broken fingers. And for someone to put that kind of effort into a project for a twenty-two year old, well, it would be pretty damn awesome. A box of chocolate just can't compare. And I'd take a tree house over a diamond engagement ring any day. What better way to prove you can provide for someone than to build them a house?

I was thinking about my characters and they're relationships in the shower today. I've really put them through a lot. People who could never love before, learn to trust, and people who finally have it all suddenly die. Ridiculous. But if you think about it, real life relationships are kind of ridiculous. I don't know of anyone that's been on more than four dates and not had at least one horror story. People who have been married for decades should be sainted. So, I really shouldn't feel bad when I make someone wait twenty years for the love of their life, right?

At the same time, I sort of feel like I'm writing a Greek tragedy. Sometimes I get to the point that if one more thing goes wrong, I might as well go all out and kill everyone Romeo and Juliet style. I don't mean I'm going Oedipus or anything, but there certainly is a lot of drama.

I guess there's no real way to know if you're doing it right. At least, that's the impression I get. You think it, you write it, and pray to whatever higher being you recognize that you don't have to offer it up as a sacrificial lamb later on. Sometimes it works. And sometimes the cops pick you up for talking to the toothpaste in Walmart.

Everything in life has risks, eh?



-Liz

Hurts So Good

Writing is for masochists. Normally, my mind would go straight to sadist instead, especially given the horrible, horrible things I've done to my characters in the last decade, but no. Masochists. And why are writers masochists? Because we're crazy enough to want to do this for a living.

Writing is evil. Rewrites are inhumane. And editing, oh editing. There's a special place in hell for editing. And an even darker place for professional editors. We could bathe a nation in the blood, sweat, and tears cast forth from editing. You know, except for the fact that it would be really disgusting. And an excellent way to torture one's characters.

I'm sort of writing, by sort of editing. I'm hoping that eventually I'll be really writing and then really editing. But for the moment, I'm still set apart from the whole thing. I haven't hit my stride. I'm not feeling that cannibalistic craze that hits somewhere between your first great paragraph and three chapters without stopping. It's a feeling that makes you want to devour your own work, regurgitate it, share it with the world, and devour it again. Like cows. Although, I'm pretty sure cows don't think of cud that way.

Right now, I'm really loving my work. I look at paragraphs or lines of dialogue and laugh. It's the best thing I've written in years. I want everyone else to read it. I fall asleep plotting future chapters in my head. But I'm not quite to the point of writing it down for real. Soon, though.

Then I'll be fierce.

Like the cows.


-Liz