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It's raining like the dickens at my house. I know what you're wondering: "Is it raining like Charles Dickens [morose and oppressive] or like country music legend Little Jimmy Dickens [small, but kinda fun]?" We'll go with a Jimmy rain. Random Unprovoked Song Lyrics Break: "She's my kinda rain/Like love from a drunken sky/Confetti fallin' down all night/She's my kinda rain." I kick myself every single day for not writing that song. I've never heard a more interesting collection of similes in such an accessible form in my brief life. Anyway, I was out with a friend tonight talking about the future, and I admitted to myself and to her that I want to write. It makes me happy. I know that more discipline is required if I am to make a life of it; I also know that I'm too pleased with what I create; Like Pilate, I say, "What I have written, I have written." Hey Anne, if you happen to read this, all the parts of "The Woods" can be found here. I don't think it's a particularly good story, but it's mine, and it's going somewhere. I heard it called "preachy," and I think that's true. But to me, I don't view that negatively. This particular vision has as its truth directness, and I have to keep that at the heart always. If that runs the risk of being simplistic or maudlin, that's a tension you walk in knowing your humble author. Am I sounding defensive here? You'll know my intentions are to make you like most of the characters. I want you to find yourself in them. On the one hand, often we resonate with deeply flawed characters and the things that fell them; on the other, we triumph in them, too. I'm hoping by the end of the ten or more parts, you'll feel like you just climbed a mountain of emotion and humanity.
Also, I really want to try my hand at a story set in the Star Trek universe after this; I live in this world often in my imagination. I love it deeply, and want to join that fraternity of its caretakers, even if it ends up "non-canonical." Wish me luck. [Aren't you writing the Catholic-Reformed "dialogue" book right now?--ed.] Yes. "St." Justin should know that the chapter involving him is nearly done. Anyway, Star Trek. One of the still-underrated cultural frames in history, and I want in.
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Anne said…
Hey, look, for the first time ever I have the ability to comment on your blog.

Every aspiring, seriously aspiring, writer these days reads Anne Lamott. I commend 'Bird By Bird' to you.

Thanks for the link to your fiction, I'll have to start over from the beginning :)
8:13 AM
Jason said…
Anne,

Thanks for stopping by. Noted, as I like to say. I hope reading other people's books doesn't foul me up.
10:24 AM
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