Words, Come Back!

My words have gone away.

Some people would call it writer's block, but that's not really what it is.  My brain is buzzing with story ideas.  I've got old ideas that are begging me to write them down, new ideas waiting to be born, stories that I drafted ages ago hoping that I'll dust them off and breath some new life into them.

But the words aren't there.

I spent an hour in my drafts file, tweaking a phrase here, a sentence there.  Nothing struck me as ready to be sent out into the world, but I couldn't manage to work up any enthusiasm for improving them.

I spent another thirty minutes staring at a blank document, typing out a few lines and then deleting them, starting and aborting new stories before they could ever make it to revision phase.  Nothing I wrote sounded right, felt right.  Nothing was up to what I consider my usual caliber. 

Of course, at this rate, my usual caliber is getting to be... nothing.  I haven't written anything new in ages.  Even this blog is gathering a pathetic layer of cyber-dust.

I don't know where my words go, in these long spaces between productive writing periods.  I don't know how to get them back.  I've read the advice, most of which boils down to "muscle through it."  Write something, even if it's garbage.  Write anything, just to keep the inner gears cranking.  Write from a prompt, keep a journal, compose reams of bad poetry.  Just write. 

There was a time when I was an avid writer of fan fiction, which served nicely to get me over the dry spells. but lately even that has deserted me; my fandoms are dead, and I haven't found the passion for any new ones.

I don't even have a writer's circle to call upon, to help me through these desolation periods.  No other members of the SCBWI live near me, and the one group I tried to join up with met at a most inconvenient time for someone who needs to hold down a day job.  I didn't stay long enough to form any lasting friendships, and so far I haven't mustered the courage to form a group of my own... that would put me in a position of quasi-authority, and I don't want to be the leader.

And so I sit, and I stew, and I send out a plea into the ether... Words, come back!  Come home!  So much of my self-image, my idea of who I am, is tied up in my identity as a writer that I don't really know who I am without my words.

Sigh.

Words, come back!  I miss you!

Book Rankings

Amazon.com can be addictive for writers.  Not just in the sense that it's a never-ending carousel of wonders for things to read and tools to write with, either.  No, the real addiction is when your book is on their virtual shelves and you discover that thing called Amazon Best Sellers Rank.  (Cue brassy fanfare here.)

With Amazon Best Sellers Rank, you can tell in a glance exactly where your book falls in the lineup of books that sell the most copies.  On the one hand, this is wonderful... your book, just off the presses, is already 134th  in of all  Books > Children's Books > Literature & Fiction > Religious Fiction > Christian > Animals!

On the other hand, you don't know exactly how many books are in that subcategory of fiction... so for all you know, 134 is dead last.  Which still isn't bad, considering that it was just published - after all, even J.K. Rowling had to start from somewhere, right?

By clicking on that last subcategory, you can launch yourself into the list of books that your book is shelved among... who's number one?  Easy enough to check.  (For me, the Berenstain Bears are tops in Holidays and Celebrations, while Pete the Cat rules over children's books featuring cats.)  This is handy for market research, since at a glance you can see what's selling in any particular category.

It can also be profoundly depressing, if you find your precious published baby lagging behind books you personally think aren't as good as yours.

And then there's the fact that the rankings change by the hour.  My husband e-mailed me the other day to cheer that The Stable Cat's Christmas had broken the 50 top books mark... but by the time I got on, it had dropped to 74.  Ah, the fleeting fickleness of popularity!

Still, it's a handy tool for an author to know about, if you don't let the details drive you crazy.  

The True Confessions of a Plus-Sized Super Girl

This is the opening chapter of a project I've been working on... the heroine, Sandy, really spoke to me when she popped into existence.  Unfortunately, she's been a bit more close-mouthed since I got this part written down.  I'm hoping she'll become a bit more talkative if I give her some breathing space.

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The absolute suckiest thing that can happen to a fat girl is to suddenly discover that you can’t fly.

I mean, you know it’s coming.  In our town, everyone stops flying somewhere around ten years old.  That’s when your permanent abilities begin to manifest, and the ones that kept you safe when you were a little kid start to fade out - so most people stop flying (much) on or around their tenth birthday.  Oh, there are the occasional kids who hang on to flight well into their teens, but there aren’t many of them.  And the ones who turn into grown-ups who can fly?  Pff.  Practically none.  So you know it’s coming.  You’d have to be stupid to ignore it, right?

But when you’re a fat girl, flying is pretty much the best thing in your entire world.  

It’s like swimming, which is as close anyone who CAN’T fly can get to really being free from the World of Heavy.  When you jump into a pool or a lake, it’s amazing - that sudden sensation of weighing almost nothing, feeling the gentle hug of the water holding you up and floating you along on all sides, and you can spin and flip and feel graceful, like a dolphin or an otter, instead of big and clunky and all pushed into the ground, like a hippo.  Come to think of it, that’s probably why hippos spend so much time in the water.  

Now imagine that feeling, but only MORE so, because there’s no water pushing back on you, and you’re not wearing some skimpy little swimsuit.  It’s just you, the wind, and the sky.

That’s flying.

But that day, I wasn’t flying.  I was… well, PLUMMETING.  Dropping like the proverbial brick.  No warning, no car-like putta-putta-cough of an engine getting set to die.  Just… uh oh.  Gravity works.  

Wind suddenly rushing the wrong way.  Cars and houses getting bigger. Clouds and birds getting further away instead of closer.  My shadow getting bigger.  Tree branches getting more detailed and looking way sharper than they do from a hundred feet higher up.  

I didn’t scream.  

Honestly, I didn’t.  The sound I made was more like the sound a puppy makes when you step on it by accident, and it got stuck in my throat before it really got out.  Which, to be honest, REALLY sucked, because in our town, screaming can save your life.

So I’m dropping out of the sky, arms and legs windmilling like one of those old cartoon characters flapping to try to regain altitude, and I can’t scream because I can’t breath, and all I can think is, Great.  You can’t even SCREAM right, you idiot.  And now, you’re gonna die.  SPLAT.

Mom is gonna be SO pissed.

That’s when my arm connects with something warm and solid, and Aki goes, “OOF!  Knock it OFF, Sandy!  That hurt!”

And suddenly, I’m not plummeting anymore.  I’m doing a Buzz Lightyear “falling with style”… a long, slow, curving swoop, and I’m so busy trying to drink in all those last sights and sounds and feels of flying that I’m only half listening to the angry voice in my ear.  

The whole way down, Aki is flipping between Japanese and English at the top of his lungs.  I don’t speak much Japanese, but I know that I’m getting told off in both languages, and also that if Aki’s mom was listening in, he’d probably get his mouth washed out with soap.

“... I mean, you’re not a TOTAL FREAKING STUPID IDIOT!” he’s shouting as he dumps me on his roof and drops down beside me.  “You KNOW how it works!  Dammit, Sandy, WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING?”

I could have come up with a dozen smart remarks.  I’ve known Aki since… well, forever.  I’ve mashed his face into the grass when we wrestled, had him whip me solid in a knock-down no-holds-barred pillow fight, kicked his butt in mancala just to watch him throw a tantrum, and gotten up in the face of the third grade class bully who was teasing him because of how short he is.  Was.  Whatever.  

So I could have just flipped him off and climbed down from the roof, making like it doesn’t matter, no biggie, quit acting all high and mighty… but noooooo, I couldn’t even do THAT right.  

Because right then, staring at Mister I-Can-Still-Fly Aki, I suddenly realized I could feel how hard my feet were pressing into the ground.  Could feel every bit of my body tugging down, down, like gravity was trying to remind me that it was my boss, and would be forever.  My nose got that prickly-warm-pincushion feeling, my eyes flooded over, and I started bawling.  Right out in the open and everything.

Happy stupid twelfth birthday to me.