The Confabulator Cafe

Author: ljenkins

  • Escaping to Write

    I don’t make time to write. I make time to run . . . away.

    Lately that’s the only way I can get anything done.

    Like most of my still-waiting-to-become-career-novelist friends, every day is a balancing act between competing responsibilities. I work from home, I’m the primary care giver for my two children, and I really want to make this literary thing happen. Each of these areas has its own agenda, and rarely do they work in concert.

    In the past, I’ve done a decent job of compartmentalizing things. When the kids were home, I’d focus on their needs. But when the munchkins were at school, I’d divide my time between writing fiction, writing for work, and chores around the house. Lately, though, things have kind of fallen apart.

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  • Stories Are A Luxury

    My writer friends may take exception with this, but I don’t think the world needs stories.

    Stories are a luxury.

    This idea that stories (and any other form of art) are somehow a necessity is false. It’s a notion that we artistic types often perpetuate because we’re trying to assuage our own insecurity about the career path we want to pursue. It’s as if we still need to be convinced that being an artist is legit and worthwhile.

    Here’s the stone cold truth, people: Art is not a required staple. It is not food nor is it shelter. The world will continue to spin even without the stories we tell.

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  • Boring But Necessary: My Nonfiction Life

    I’ve already got a whole lot of nonfiction in my life, but none of it’s the fun kind.

    I am a freelance technical writer by trade, and depending on whether I’m in the feast or famine portion of my employment cycle, I spend large portions of my days working on behalf of companies that build cell phone towers. It involves a lot of research and letter writing and watching the calendar to see if anyone has gone beyond their FCC-mandated response times.

    Roughly 90 days after I’ve been assigned a project, I get to cobble together a report that either says “Go for it. No one cares if you build it there” or “Run, don’t walk, from this location. Do it! Do it now!”

    Whoever coined the phrase “thrill a minute” obviously had this very specific profession in mind.

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  • Clowning Around (Flash Fiction)

    Sometimes, when it’s quiet, I can remember what my life was like before the circus came to town.

    Don’t get me wrong. It sucked then too, but nobody had died yet, so there were advantages.

    Now I know you’re probably thinking, “Oh, God. Not another spooky carnival story.”

    Well it’s not. So shut up.

    I’m sick of that crap too. If this was one of those tales, I would’ve rolled over and died already rather than face the idea that I might have to write about it one day.

    I promise you, no carnivals.

    This is more of a creeper clown kind of thing.

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  • Tales of a Genre Orphan

    Okay, here’s the thing about genre: I don’t know where I fit.

    The first novel I ever wrote . . . (well, let’s be honest, it was the first novel I tried to write) was a terrible science fiction story about a civil war between the Earth and the moon. It was amazingly awful and it clocked in at just over 50,000 words.

    I’d written it for a class and my professor gave me a kind and much understated critique:  “It needs work.”

    Boy did it ever. I think there was only a single scene in the entire novel where she’d penned “This is good.” Everything else was a blood bath of editing marks and suggestions.

    Still, though, I was undeterred. I had the overconfidence of youth and I was sure that my genius would eventually be recognized. (Did I mention that during the writing of that novel I had decided that dialogue was overrated and that the reader would spend most of their time in the characters’ minds and the majority of my novel would be told through story action? I don’t think I can accurately describe what a train wreck this was.)

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  • Confidence: It’s a Friend Thing

    I’m a guy who’s never been good at making friends.

    It’s not that I’m a hermit, though my family has speculated as much. And I honestly enjoy the company of others. In the past year, I’ve discovered that I’m actually quite fond of people. Who knew?

    But what has always tripped me up in the past is some deep-seated insecurity that has set up shop in the darker corners of my brain. Whenever I would start to hang out with people on a regular basis, I would inevitably begin to question their motives.

    In my mind, new-found friends were always humoring me. When they would invite me to do things, I was sure it was only out of a sense of obligation or pity. After a particularly enjoyable conversation, I’d go home and dissect the exchange, highlighting all the areas where I’d either sounded like a fool or come across as an arrogant ass. Whenever I would get a compliment, I would immediately deflect it and chalk it up to false, albeit well-meaning, kindness.

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  • Let Me Play and I’m a Happy Man

    I’m not usually a guy who engages in literary exercises. If I’m writing, I want the words I produce to count toward something.

    Now I understand there is value in learning, and no word written in pursuit of craft is ever wasted. I get that. But I also know myself well enough to realize that I get impatient when words on the page aren’t leading me toward completing a work in progress.

    It’s not a great trait, but we all work with what we’ve got. (I also don’t like to read books about writing, though I love to buy them and have a bookcase full, but that is a blog post for another day.)

    So after laying this groundwork, you’ll understand why I was less than enthusiastic when October rolled around and one of our assignments was to interview a character for our upcoming NaNoWriMo novel. I admit that I had an advantage over some of the other Café contributors because I’d planned to use the month of November to complete a novel I was already writing. But that didn’t stop me from doing a whole lot of internal bitching about the task.

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  • My Wife Still Believes (in Humanity)

    In my house, my wife is the Christmas lady. Everything this holiday entails: music, lights, decorations, presents. She’s all in, every year, and she loves it.

    I’m more of a Halloween man, myself. Give me rolling fog on a spooky night while you’re holed up in a creepy old house and I’m a happy camper. That probably makes me the darker half of our marriage, but for whatever reason it seems to work.

    That being said, I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that my wife’s enthusiasm always manages to rub off on me. I may start December in full-on Grinch mode, but by the end of the second week, I’m playing Christmas music and asking about this year’s family ornament.

    I think what makes my wife’s holiday spirit so infectious is the sheer joy she gets from shopping for others. She’s one of those weird people who spend more time thinking about the receiver of the gift than the gift itself.

    I don’t possess this trait. Nor do I fully understand it.

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  • Poor Gift Advice and Other Tangents

    I am a terrible gift giver. I like to believe that I’m good at thinking about other people, but as I wrestled with this post, I was faced with the possibility that I might, in fact, be a very selfish bastard.

    When it comes to buying something for other people, I often have no idea what to get.

    I love connecting with individuals and genuinely care about the lives of others, but I can’t think of a single adult, outside of those related by blood or marriage, for whom I am buying a gift this season. I can’t decide whether or not this says anything about me as a person, but I thought I’d put it out there before I get to the advice-dispensing portion of this post.

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  • Rhythm, Routine, and Ass in the Chair

    I didn’t finish.

    Let’s get that out at the start. I didn’t reach 50K. But truth be told, I’m kind of ambivalent about it. I really wanted to reach that goal, but all things considered, this was a great NaNo experience.

    As one of my fellow Café contributors, R.L. Naquin, likes to say, it was about learning to write every day. In the past, that’s been a difficult routine for me to maintain, but I feel like I finally discovered the value of it this year. If you put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, every day, it starts to add up. Even the slow days count for something.

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