I busied myself to think of a story

So maybe you know this story. Maybe you don’t. I’m putting it here to start myself on a journey I still have yet to map… but there is really no use in standing still if you want to go somewhere. It doesn’t help guide direction one little bit.

Last November I was not in a good place. I was possessed with a melancholy I didn’t ask for. I tried to escape it, but mostly sought relief in idle moments in front of my computer with a glass of wine. I was running to make up for the long hours of sitting. But at the end of the day my brain wasn’t working enough.

So I picked up a book on a whim. I have quite a number of friends who read vampire novels. I liked Anne Rice when that movie came out. But I never pursued her novels with any great fever. I found myself sucked into the HBO series that came on last fall. It was a pleasing distraction to my pouting. There was a love story that delighted my fancy. But then it was done. So I read the insanely popular book.

I liked it enough to not put it down. There were a lot of things I didn’t like. But mostly what I didn’t like was myself for being so catty. The cause of my hurt last fall was that people criticized me without logic. I felt the cruelty of words said against me so sharply. I promised myself after that experience that I would think twice before I opened my mouth to criticize anyone ever again – especially if that criticism is just an attempt to deflect my own angst of insecurity. That’s a pretty tough vow, let me tell you. Especially when I’m reading a book and the neglected writer in me is turning her nose up at syntax and story structure… and just jealous that someone else made a daring attempt and thrived.

So… before I let myself mouth another criticism, I decided to reprimand myself. I’ve never written a vampire novel. What the hell do I know about what makes it good? Or not good? So I shut up and stopped complaining.

Then it was Thanksgiving weekend. I was on my way home from a cozy weekend in front of a fire and lots of gluttonous food with my sister and friends. The radio was playing endless 80’s and 90’s songs as an homage to reunion weekend. I don’t know exactly where or how it entered my mind, but at the end of that drive home I was thinking about all these high school vampire stories and wondered… what if someone knew a vampire as a teenager… but like most teenagers… was too dense to know it? What if that didn’t become obvious until the high school reunion?

It was very much a self-centered speculation. In fact, I was trying to figure out exactly what it is about vampires that has been so attractive this year. Why was I drawn into these stories like so many others in the herd? What was it about my life that made sensual bloodsuckers so appealing a distraction? Was there anything in my life represented in these stories about teenagers or blonde telepaths? I have no desire to be a vampire. Wouldn’t it be really complicated to date one?

I started writing that week. The story bled from my fingers with unexpected ease. I wrote and wrote until a first draft was completed some time in January. I didn’t know where to go from there. So I went back to reading the series and liked the second book better. Liked my own writing less. I felt the fuel to my fire and went back to a second draft, which became a novel and not just some thrown together scenes. Almost immediately, I went back to the third round because as satisfied as I was at that point, I wasn’t going to let anyone read what I wrote. That was completed in June, when I started telling people that’s what I’d done. That’s why I disappeared to an anti-social cocoon for half a year. That is where all my creative energy went.

One more draft and I started to get serious about publication inquiries. Then I realized my random thoughts on the way home from Thanksgiving brought me to two books, not one. There are some necessary cuts – but I think too much would sacrifice the layers of my interpretation.

I’m still fine tuning. I’m still separating the books. But… if by some chance you are a reader of this… and not a reader of my fiction, here’s a taste: http://everfixed.blogspot.com/2009/08/first-ten-pages.html

If you like, I’ll give you more…