Storytellersunplugged

Where Words Meet

A Year In Review

At the very beginning of the year, I sat down to post a rant on my web site. Why I felt the need to do this is still something of a mystery. For my part, I’d much rather engage in polite, if energetic conversation, but no, no – the rant now appears to be one of the three main forms of acceptable communication between a writer and his or her audience via web site.

(The other two, incidentally, are the “announcement”, in which the author mentions either a new project that is going to be for sale shortly or an appearance at which you can buy said project, and the “excuse”, wherein the author explains why it’s been nine months, fourteen days, six hours and seven minutes since the last web site update. But I digress.)

In any case, at that point I sat down to write the rant, and realized that I was in trouble, in large part due to the fact that I wasn’t feeling particularly cranky about anything, at least nothing that would be an appropriate topic for a post on my site. The pounding hangover may also have had something to do with it, but I prefer to think of its role as secondary, since at no point during the process of composition did anyone actually drive an icepick sideways into my temple.

What I ended up coming up with, then, was that dreaded New Year’s staple, the list of resolutions. It would make perfect sense to plot out a list of my ten or so writing resolutions for the next year, and, by placing them someplace reasonably public where they might be observed by witnesses, force myself to live up to them. Also, writing a “rant” in list format would save me from the necessity of writing anything actually coherent or lengthy, and would positively discourage me from trying to string together a point that required more than three sentences to make. Believe me, in my compositional condition, this was a major plus.

The short version, then, is simple: I wrote it, people read it, some of them actually liked it, and about a month later I felt compelled to write another rant that kicked the list into the “archive” section of my site. There was much more important stuff to rant about, or at least a vague sensation of needing to provide new content every once in a while, so off it went, to serve as a lonely reminder of what I wanted to get done over the seemingly endless span of twelve months.

As they say, oops. Those months seem to be going by faster these days. Now, in the dying days of the year, it strikes me as a good idea to pull the list again, to see how much I did or left undone, and to look towards what might need doing or not doing over the next year. You know, the one that’s tapping its foot impatiently, waiting for the old guy with the hourglass to kick off.

So without further ado, here’s the list, and my note of commentary as to whether I managed to pull it off. I’m surprised at how many I actually accomplished, disappointed in the ones I didn’t, and deeply disturbed that I felt the need to actually put some of these in print.

1-To show my respect for H.P. Lovecraft and his achievements, I will not write any more Cthulhu Mythos stories. I will, however, take every opportunity to remind people that there is a raging and long-standing debate within the Lovecraft academic community as to whether or not the so-called Cthulhu Mythos in fact exists.

Kept, albeit on a technicality, as I did put extensive time into reworking a piece of this ilk at editorial behest. Much credit goes to the editor in question, James Lowder, for guiding me to a much-improved place with that story, and I solemnly swear in keeping with this resolution, it will not have any near brothers or sisters.

At least, not this year.

2-I will write and attempt to sell a vampire cockroach story, just because I can.

Half-kept. Write, yes. Attempt to sell? I’m not brave enough even to try.

3-I will banish Civil War Generals II from my computer, and if you don’t think this is a writing resolution, believe me, it’s more closely related to my word count productivity than just about anything else this side of breathing.

Kept. Civil War Generals II has indeed been vanquished. So have many of its brethren. And when I’m writing, I keep my office door shut and the music turned up, just so I can’t hear the new Wii calling me. At least, not often.

(And if anyone out there has seen my install disk for CWG2, please, let me know.)

4-I will write at least one more Bigfoot story. In theory, I will do this because I acquired an insane amount of research material in order to write “The Road Best Not Taken” and probably ought to use it for something other than office insulation. In reality, it’s because I downloaded some sound files that are supposed to be “sasquatch calls”, and whatever they are, they give me four or five stories’ worth of the heebie-jeebies.

Kept, in large part because I got into a conversation that included the words “Faulknerian Sasquatch”. You really can’t back away from something like that. At least, I can’t.

The sad truth, of course, is that I do find the material fascinating. Edgar Pangborn’s “Longtooth” was one of the first stories I read that truly terrified me, something that serial killers and demonic possession and tentacled beasties never could do. That fear is something I can tap into and transmit when writing, and I have a feeling I’ll be returning to this subject matter again.

5-I will write another Bubbas story, and it will not include France.

Kept, and with nary a mention of France.

6-I will finish, in no particular order, Thunderhead Road, Black Water and Crimson, and at least one other long-standing project. It’s time all the long-standing projects got to sit down, as their legs are probably pretty tired by now.

Not kept, for which I can blame no one but myself. The good news is that the current project is teetering on the edge of that insane slalom run to the finish, a consummation to be devoutly wished.

7-I will never write a rant for the web site in list format ever again.

Hmm. Well, this isn’t my website, so I can claim it doesn’t count. Can we get a ruling from the Russian judge?

8-I will not write about writers, failed writers, blocked writers, writers who had one hit and who are now being pressured to come up with a followup, writers who have moved back to the ancestral manse in East Earbuckle, New Hampshire to discover the unspeakable evil lurking in the long-abandoned dumbwaiter in the servant’s quarters, writers hunting down old friends with mysterious tales in order to uncover the even more mysterious truth, and writers who find when researching their next book that they’ve stumbled into ancient evil which may be unspeakable but certainly can be written about at great length and hopefully with a gratuitous sex scene tossed in for the precocious fourteen year olds who’ve bought this at the local B&N because the nearby Gamestop finally got wise to the underage kids trying to buy copies of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.

Does it count if I actually sold the story in question? In any case, this one’s passé; I now write about game designers instead. It’s an entirely different sort of thing.

9-As atmospheric as writing by candlelight may be, I will endeavor to find a form of scribblers’ ambience that is less likely to set off the shrieking horror of a smoke alarm at 3 AM.

*coughs softly into his hand* Well, I’m using fewer candles these days. Does that count?

10-I will murder my darlings, relentlessly and without pity or remorse. I will, however, keep a cut file. You know, just in case.

All joking aside, this one I kept, and I am pleased to have done so. I’m painfully aware that I’m still – what’s the right word? Growing? Evolving? Molting? – into a professional writer of fiction, whatever that may be, and I find myself keeping painful track of the steps along the way.

One of them, I suppose, is growing past the need to write lists. But that can be next year’s resolution, or at least one of them. I’d score this year at 6.5 or so kept out of 10, passing but with room for improvement. A resolution to improve doesn’t need to wait for the end of the year, or the company of a list. It just needs to be kept, this year and next year and for as long as people are willing to read what I come up with.

That being said, I’ll still try to keep the vampire Sasquatch stories to a minimum, just on general principle.

Happy New Year.

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