Editing Emeralds from Excrement
I dove head first into fiction this week.
I haven’t been very active here recently. I’ve clapped and commented for certain writers, read bits and pieces from plenty more- but I’ve also been spread damn thin.
If you’ve been following my work then you know my world is changing.
I’m going through a civil but difficult breakup, a move, and building this steaming pile of alphabet soup-to-be. For the cherry on top- my dreams are adding to this magnificent crap-stew most every night. Stress heaped upon stress and nothing but more on the horizon.
It’s good life’s rails don’t run in reverse or I might be pulling that lever by now.
In the past, I had a bad habit of pounding ‘abort’ when things got hard. I’m doing everything I can to remedy that failing in the now.
Small tasks done one at a time.
Realistic expectations based on real world numbers.
Accepting that anything worth doing is worth doing badly.
Admitting that natural talent is a shit excuse for time invested.
I may well stumble and fall a time or twelve. I might just starve a bit and rely on family again. Shit happens, and it’ll happen to me. I’m ready to walk out the other side of that gauntlet. As long as I do it on my own two feet.
I said I haven’t been very active, but that doesn’t mean I’ve been resting on laurels. I waded head first back into fiction- my own fiction.
Bone arms and armor haunted by the dead, deities maneuvering civilizations against each other, dragons and ancients playing out their own plans and vendettas, and the ignorant little fools just trying to survive it all.
Sometimes I wax melodic and sometimes it’s the mad ramblings of a meth addled squirrel on Ritalin. I’m smearing crap on page after page either way. I’m ok with that.
You see, novels are not houses. We don’t build them with bricks and beams or even pages and paragraphs. We crawl inside a huge pile of fetid crap instead. We cut away the dross until they’re done. Then we polish ‘till they glow.
Novelists move mountains, then cut them into gems. It’s a bitch of a job. But the art must eat.
Unfortunately, so must I.
I’ll just have to feed us both.
