#;greywrites

[greywrites]

So, I just delisted my book from its online platforms, and I feel...pretty great.

I think I’ve been writing this one project, Vein Bound, for so long that I kept wanting it to be finished and I kept pushing it and telling myself ‘Okay, this is it. THIS is the book I’ve been meaning to write.’ (I have literally wrote that at least three times, to anyone paying attention to newsletters and blogs of mine).

Here is the part where I’m eating my own words.

As this tumblr takes off and I’m beginning anew, I find that I don’t mind that. I think the best thing we can do for ourselves as writers and creators is to admit when something isn’t working. 

I’m starting over in more ways than one.

I haven’t set any dates yet for any more releases or anything. I have a few other things going on in my life outside of the internet that I’m focusing on but I’ve redirected other energies right here. Into this blog, into reviving my online presence. Loosely, I’m planning on renaming the book and trying to shop it around to agents once I’ve rewritten a large portion of it.

Right now, that is the extent of my plans. I think I’m afraid of committing too much of my current goals to this blog in case it doesn’t pan out again. I want this time to be different. I don’t want this to feel like just another false start. It feels different in many ways right now but I don’t want to spook it.

For now, there is a general feeling. Of progress.

[greywrites]

I am sitting in the computer lab at my University for what will likely be the last time, unless I decide to come back to study for finals.

I sit here on average, 7 or 8 hours a week, spread out over 2 or 3 days. It’s raining outside, and, those are always my favorite days. The ones that are grey and cloudy, and at any moment more drops could fall. It seems counter-intuitive maybe, but the atmosphere makes me feel as though I’m in a dream world.

This is my ending semester of my Undergraduate degree. It was a long road and I had to take some detours along the way. I’ve felt lost, and depressed, and altogether uncertain during my time here before. 

People tend to get sentimental about endings, and I know I’m not immune to that. I will miss this place. The campus has always been beautiful to me - even within the tiny orbit I have inhabited in my time here. The small collection of buildings centered in the same area of the boulevard where my education has taken place.

I’m happy to say that I went to a four year University, and I used most of the amenities afforded me. There have still been times where I’ve been too stressed for words, pushed balls to the wall for a deadline, and have questioned what I am even doing in college.

Yet, I’ve met some wonderful people, and done some worthwhile things. I know that this period in life will be an unforgettable one, and I’ll look back on it with pride later on after it has long ago ended.

I look forward to an ambiguous future. The job market is not great for English majors of any variety, but I’m imagining this is also true for those of the Creative Writing strain. Listen to me. I make us sound like a bacterium. But honestly, we’re a unique bunch.

As I meet this future, I look back on how I arrived here. I chose this major because I felt as though it was the only one I could choose. Because this is who I am and what I want to do. Because if I am not a writer I don’t know what I am, and I likely never will.

I was just sitting in my last Psychology of the Personality course. We covered Carl Rogers of the Humanistic approach. He said that we were all on the path to become the best and most authentic versions of ourselves we could be. The only thing standing in our way is the expectations those in the world have placed on us. If we have just one person in our lives which will give us ‘unconditional positive regard’ we can make it to our authentic selves.

Sounds like a bunch of self-help jargon, doesn’t it? But I think it’s true. Maybe, though, that person isn’t someone in your family or friends, or acquaintances. Maybe that person can be you, too. Maybe you sometimes need to be the one to let yourself know that you can do this. You’ve got this. You’re worth something and so is what you want to do with your life.

I’ve embarked on writing what I call a serialized novella which I’ll be posting the first installment of on here sometime soon (read: when I stop stressing out over finals and finish this 15 page paper I have to write) and I think it speaks to some level of the uncertainty we face as young adults. That’s the heart of the message.

I chose to write it because the oft given writing advice is to write what you know. I think it’s important to also write what’s relevant. And to write what others can relate to and empathize with. People remember most the things that they see or read or hear that resonate inside of them. That’s the kind of author I want to be.

I think my experiences here have helped shape me for that purpose. To embark on what will be the rest of my life. They say that when you leave college, you enter the ‘real world.’ I could never get behind that saying, because I never perceived myself as being imaginary whilst in school. But I will say this. Things are changing.

That’s the stuff that life is made of. Change. Some may look at this time with dread, and I can tell you’ve I’m doing my fair share of being scared. But I am also choosing to embrace this change, because, I’ll let you in on a little secret. Life, the future? It’s always uncertain. There’s never a guarantee it’s going to be the same as it was yesterday, or exactly as you pictured it. And you have to be okay with that.

Me? I’m looking at it like this. Anything can happen. That’s the adventure.

[greywrites]

So the manuscript I’m working on now doesn’t pass the Bechdel test, but that’s for a reason. I’m wanting to evolve the characters to the point where they realize the important things, their agency and power, their lives don’t revolve around a man.

The Bechdel test, for reference, is a piece of fiction that features at least two women who converse with each other about something other than a man. I think this is really important, but I just hope those reading the book later understand what I was trying to do.

I’m about to sit down to write again, and I was reading what I already wrote. It’s now the second book in the series and there’s a moment where two women begin to argue because a boy/romance is brought up at what might usually be an inappropriate time.

[greywrites]

I think that success is a habit, and an attitude. I think you can make all kinds of excuses as to why you can’t do something. “Oh I’m tired,” or “Oh I’m busy.” But when it comes down to it, the ones that are successful are the ones that say, “I may have this to do, but I’m going to add it to my list. I’m going to get it done before bed, and when I wake up, I’m going to be working before my feet hit the floor.”

I do think that when you’re trying to establish yourself, you have to be hungry and committed. You have to want it so badly that whatever you’re doing is simply an inevitability because of your relentless tenacity.

Putting it off until tomorrow never won any races. I’ve got to remember that.

[greywrites]

Today is day one of my post project. I am somehow motivating myself into believing that the more I write, the more volume I produce, the more I’ll get into the habit of making myself write, even when I don’t think I really actually want to. This is an every day struggle for me, because I’m in the habit of writing only when insanely inspired. Which is somewhat fine, but a writer by profession will not always be insanely inspired.

Some days, I know, you have to muck up that inspiration. You have to get it from the little things. You have to write even when you have nothing to write about. The thing is, there’s always something to write about; you just haven’t looked at it long enough.

I always talk about writing and then it feels like I never actually do it. Today my writing topic is doing writing instead of talking about. You see how that works?

I’m on the road towards self-publishing. It’s been a long road. It’s been a road where, like the tortoise and the hare, I’ve started the project, took long naps along the way, and haven’t quite reached the finish line. I know the finish line is near. But not as near as I thought.

I just read a post by thewritingcafe, and it talked about when to self-publish. It’s not that I don’t think my book could make it through traditional publishing, it’s that I don’t want to send query after query, after query, in order to wait more months and revise a story I put my blood and guts into so it’ll fit what they want to make it. Yes, they want to make it something else for a reason, but I want to keep it the way it is for reasons too. Which should matter more?

I want to get my writing out there, and I think in order to reach the kind of audience that my debut book is worth (after all the work I’ve put into that) I’m going to have to do some small-time publishing first. What I mean by this, is publishing materials so totally unrelated to what I’ve already written, and get some recognition from it.

I’m thinking of writing a small handbook on tumblr roleplaying, if only because that is a hobby I have that I know a bit about, that I think I could write something on and not put a price on it. I don’t know exactly what intricacies would go into it. It’d probably be really super short, but that’s not the point.

There’s this whole consequence of establishing oneself that needs to occur before I’ll ever get anywhere with my bigger goal of publishing my novel-length manuscript.

More to come.

-Grey

[greywrites]

Since I can’t tweet this, I’ll just say it here:

It’s my personal belief that no one knows anything about how to be a “good” writer, and therefore all of the writers tips and advice blogs aren’t awfully necessary. What I really mean to say is this: we all already have everything we need inside of us to create. Sure, we may need tips on formatting or submission guidelines for the industry...but as writers, we do the writing. We do the imagining and creating and thinking. We don’t need other people to tell us how to write. We should just do it.

[greywrites]

I haven’t used my authorship social media in so long, all kinds of crazy flags are apparently going up in my associated email and twitter accounts.

Welcome back, Grey.