Gravel in Our Voices

Bird Snoozing in the Sun — “Even angels have their wicked schemes, and you take that to new extremes.” –Skylar Grey

I promise that some day these titles and quotes will correlate to the actual post. They don’t most of the time, but whatever. This be my journal. You fools are just snooping through it without my permission.

The voices have returned. They left me a while ago, giving me peace while I took on my new role in life. Now, however, they’re coming back with a raging violence that I cannot withstand. Funny that they’d chose November to do so, but I’m anti-NaNoWriMo because I find it silly and pointless – “Better to have a crappy first draft than nothing.” Sadly, I don’t agree with that school of thought because a crappy first draft sometimes becomes a crappier second draft and gets self-published, or worse – actually published.

The voices, though. They’re back. I question if they ever left me. Before you start wondering what I’m talking about, every story I’ve ever written started with a voice in my head. A character that I gave birthed to in a moment of insanity, I suppose. They tell me stories. Or I create one for them. Old voices are resurfacing, bitching that I never finished their tales. Well, buddy, take a number.

This isn’t a relatively new thing, I’m just more open about it these days. The voices started when I was a kid and my only source for entertainment was a stick and a rope in the backyard. Imagination, ladies and gents, is a wonderful thing and maybe it’s time you turned off that television your spawn in plopped in front of so they can have a fighting chance.

One thing that probably started this whole mess of things is the old lady who’s been using the Children’s Department books to learn how to read English. There’s something chillingly familiar about her. That said, I’m beginning to grow nostalgic about my maternal grandmother, who died this month fifteen years ago. This week, actually, if my memory serves me right.

There was a point to this post, I swear. It’s somewhere over the seas, heading towards Timbuktu. Man, I really did fuck the toaster because of this, didn’t I? I promise I’ll write a more coherent post later. I gotta go to bed now.

One thought on “Gravel in Our Voices”

My omission and apologies, James. I did follow the first with another -also to my surprise completed in 90 days -and it is indeed the second one on which I am concentrating for the very reasons you touch on. I write mainly for fun so my time constraints are not the same as one who intends to write for a living. I sort of agrre with this, and sort of don’t. If you’ve read many novels, you know how a novel should be written. The craft is waht has to be learned, but you still write the best you possibly can through each draft, including the first. This is what improves craft. And when it takes years to polish a novel, something is definitely and seriously wrong. It often means there isn’t anything there that can be polished. My guess is you would have had a much better novel, and would have had it much faster, if you would have started a second novel after the first, even if you had also written it in ninety days. Taking a first novel from start to finsih is usually teh best learning experience there is, if you try as hard as possible to write it well. But first novels are often beyond repair, and it’s the second or third novel where craft catches up with what you’re trying to do. The craft of rewriting and polishing is not the same craft as writing the first draft. Your novel may turn out to be wonderful, but there are many writers out there who spend years trying to get a first novel in shape when the smartest thing to do would be to toss it and start another using the new skills writing that first novel gave them.

So I’m pretty sure that this is a spam comment, but on the off chance that I’m wrong, umm…I have no idea what you’re talking about, buddy, but I’ve deleted your link because you’re fishy.