I’m fairly obsessed with new and useful language to my lexicon. I stumble into words and realize how delightful they sound on the tongue and decide, “I want this in something I write.” I am no poet, but this does feel fairly poetic. As a rule the way a piece looks and sounds is important to me. It ought (there is another word I’ve become very locked in on) to have a feel to it that makes the reader recognizable, whether heard or read. King does that. Leiber did that. Gibson does that. Those are three of my largest inspirations on the subject.
I’ve been thinking about ideations and inspirations, both as words that roll off the tongue and as a form of understanding my relationships with the writing world. I have wanted to be a writer as long as I can remember. As long as I can remember I always thought I was a writer. I have, on occasion, been disabused of the notion by those either in possession of significant authority or power.. or both, actually. This is part of the force that led to my first published novel, Imposter. That bit of catharsis led to a second novel which, through force of revision, became an evolution in both my process and understanding of the separations between genre, understanding, free will, fandom, and patience. All of these are part of being a ‘real’ writer. You are writing for an audience and you have to, to a certain extent, meet the expectations of the audience. I hold this truth to be less than evident outside of the publishing hierarchy and the genre houses. In college and grad school they keep asking you what you have to say. At the publisher level they tell you what the audience is looking for. I think this is part of why so may writers turn to lit, self publishing, or more often, fan-fic.
Some Thoughts:
- Out of time… little more to say today, but I’ll get to it tomorrow…