The Confabulator Cafe

Author: slundberg

  • Writers are Clay, Life is the Mold

    I believe that every experience a writer has shapes his or her writing. Everything we do informs and influences who we are, and therefore what we write. Some of the things are minor. If I read a really good book, maybe my writing sounds like that style for awhile. If I find something incredibly unjust, I get up on my soapbox and include that theme in a story. Writers are like sponges, soaking up what is all around them, and then wringing it out onto a page. We mimic real life so that it feels real when it’s being read, and the best way to do that is take what happens in our lives and re-purpose it for our writing (although this isn’t always a conscious process).

    Then there are profound life events that can forever change the way we think and feel, which can drastically alter our writing. Marriage. Children. Divorce. Death. These experiences dig deep trenches within us which fill with pools of emotion. From these pools we have an even greater depth to pull from when we write.

    When my Mom died after struggling with breast cancer on and off for almost a decade, I was profoundly changed as a person. My mom was the most important person in my life. There really are no words to describe what it was like to watch her die for years, and then lose her before I was even 30 years old. I wrote an entire novel for National Novel Writing Month in November trying to find the words, and they still seem inadequate.

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  • Break-up/Make-up Cycle

    I’m not sure what it says about my dedication to writing, but I give up quite often. At least once a year. Usually after National Novel Writing Month in November.

    When I write really intensively for long periods of time, I tend to burn myself out. I need time to recuperate and recover afterward. Sometimes that time is longer than I think it should be, so I get frustrated, and begin to doubt myself and my ability so much that I feel like it’s the end of my writing career.

    But it’s not. I’ve found that I can’t force myself to write during one of my breaks. If I do, the break ends up being even longer. So I find it healthy for my writing to quit for awhile sometimes.

    Not all of being a writer is about writing. We have to absorb a lot of the world in order to write, so I go into Input mode where I read and watch shows and spend time with friends and family and go on adventures to recharge my batteries and compile material.

    Then there is the more analytical side of being a writer. The editing. The submission process. My creative side of the writer psyche is ill-equipped to deal with those things because they take a detachment and a rational mind. The creative side has to take a vacation when those things are going on.

    So even when I quit writing, I am still working on being a writer. And even when I think I might never write again, I always come back. It’s too much a part of me not to. It’s in me. The only time I really feel like myself is when I write regularly. I miss it when it’s gone.

    It’s like a bad relationship, I suppose. We’ve broken up and gotten back together so many times. My life is incomplete without it, but sometimes I just can’t live with it. Sometimes I need a break.

    But my writing group never lets me actually give up. Their support and encouragement always brings me back around. And the fact that I understand this cycle now helps, as well. I am slowly starting to accept that I am a writer, even if sometimes I’m not actually writing. I’m pretty sure writing is my soul-mate, so we will always get back together in the end.

  • Bloody Wine

    Wine Cellar — 1855

    There was no way anyone would actually confuse blood for wine, or wine for blood. Not in real life. Not if they really knew anything about either.

    Wine rarely dried the crusty rust red that blood did. He’d seen a deep ruby red wine dried on a cork before, as if it had been stamped into a puddle of wet blood, but once blood was dry, it no longer looked like that.

    Besides, it was too thin.

    He held up his wine glass and admired the burgundy color of his port. It did seem to ignite bloodlust, however. The deep, liquid red. The biting flavor. The way it stained clothing. It was very much like blood in many ways.

    He had sometimes been accused of having wine in his veins instead of blood. His wine ratings were respected near and far. He was rarely seen without a bulbous wine glass clutched in his fist in those days.

    He took in a deep breath, savoring the scent of the wine, but also the scent of freshly dug earth. They said a wine connoisseur had finely honed senses of smell, not just for smelling wine. Every scent was more potent and more distinct when you made your living by your nose.

    The wine cellar, his pride and joy, was newly dug and furnished. Centuries worth of wine lay nestled in wooden racks, tilted at just the right angles to keep the corks moist but not oversaturated and just the right temperature so the flavor would be perfect when poured.

    Not everyone understood his obsession, however. His wife tended to be resentful of how much time he spent drinking, or drinking and spitting, or drinking and talking with his fellow wine connoisseurs.

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  • I Write So My Head Doesn’t Explode

    The simple answer is that I write because I have to. I have too many thoughts in my head, so I have to frequently siphon them off by writing. If I didn’t, my head would fill to the bursting point, and probably explode.

    I write because I have this compulsion to remember everything. My memory has lots of holes, so if I don’t write something down, I forget it.

    I write because there are so many stories inside of me: characters and worlds and great adventures I want to explore.

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  • Just Write

    It’s hard to narrow down best and worst writing advice, because I seek out so much of it (I need all the help I can get, people). I adopt what works for me and discard what doesn’t, so I don’t always remember what came from where. I’ve gotten advice from websites, books, fellow writers, and people who know nothing about writing, and I’ve received both good and bad advice from all of those sources.

    I think possibly the best and worst advice is the old adage to write what you know. While it is true, to an extent – it’s hard to write convincingly about something you know nothing about – it is also misleading. I don’t know everything. Hell, I hardly know anything, really. But I learn. If I want to incorporate something in a story, I will do research until I know enough to write it. If I wrote solely based on my own experiences, my writing would be pretty boring.

    I do agree, though, that writing what you know is important. However, I use it more to imbue reality into the fiction and fantasy I write. I’ll use emotions evoked from other situations to give a character more depth, or add a detail that I ran across in my own life to make my imaginary world more realistic.

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  • A story isn’t just vanquishing foes and saving the world

    Subplots are crucial to any story. Everyone loves a good “ordinary Joe discovers only he can save the world so he fights against the Evil and then lives happily ever after” tale (or maybe not necessarily happily ever after, but you know what I mean).

    The trouble is, if that’s all that was happening in the story, you’d be bored, right? All Joe would ever talk about is saving the world and vanquishing the Evil. Every scene. Every conversation. And the story would be over in a few chapters.

    The thing is, Joe had a life before he had to save the world, and his life didn’t suddenly cease the moment his quest was laid upon him. His Mom is still dying from a rare disease that only the hermit in the mountains knows how to cure, and his best friend since childhood has just recently revealed she has feelings for him. (more…)

  • The Semantics of Writer’s Block

    I’m sure even non-writers are familiar with the phrase “writer’s block” and understand it to mean a point where a writer finds it absolutely impossible to finish writing whatever he or she is currently working on.

    I know that a lot of people, many writers included, would argue that writer’s block is just a myth.

    Let me tell you, folks, that regardless of what my fellow Confabulators might say this week – all of their explaining away of the phrase – writer’s block is, in fact, a real thing.

    I do need to qualify that statement, however. Some writers are lazy, or pretend to be too busy, or just can’t be bothered with the actual act of writing. Even some serious writers (myself included) will use writer’s block as an excuse to avoid working on a project that needs attention because we don’t want to work.

    That is not writer’s block. That’s something else. (more…)

  • The Fools on the Hill (Flash Fiction)

    Alan positioned the flashlight directly in front of his mouth and made eerie ghost sounds. The light, tainted red from shining through his flesh, made disconcerting shadows on the sides of the tent.

    “Bre-e-e-tt, are you afraid of the da-a-a-a-rk?” Alan asked in the same ghost-mimicking voice.

    “No, of course not,” Brett replied, all the while thinking Yes, yes, oh dear God, yes I’m afraid of the dark. But they were safe in the tent they had pitched in Alan’s backyard, Brett chided himself.

    “We should tell ghost stories.”

    Even in the dim light, Brett could see the wicked gleam in his friend’s eye.

    “I don’t know any,” Brett muttered.

    “Have you ever heard about the house on the hill?”

    Brett shook his head.

    “They call it the Fool on the Hill, like that Beatles song.”

    “What’s so scary about a fool on some hill?” Brett asked skeptically, and then wished he hadn’t asked because he knew that now Alan was going to tell the story whether he wanted him to or not.

    “Some crazy guy used to live there. Just a regular dude, worked at the factory, and then one day he just snapped and killed his wife and kids and boarded himself up inside of his house up there. Nobody has seen him since, and now it’s haunted by his restless spirit.”

    The flashlight was back to illuminating Alan’s mouth, and Brett watched, mesmerized.

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  • What Rhymes with Poetry?

    I’m too literal for poetry. I have a cautious appreciation for those who enjoy it and can do it well, but I tend to like more story-like poems like Christina Rossetti’s “Goblin Market” or my personal favorite, the book Zombie Haiku by Ryan Mecum.

    I respect writers of poetry, even if I don’t understand half of what they’re saying. I appreciate a well-crafted sentence as much as the next writer, but when I’m writing, I focus less on the art of the words and focus more on the art of the storytelling.

    That’s not to say I haven’t written an unfortunate poem from time to time. I have taken a couple of poetry classes and produced some clever stanzas in my day, but I’ve also written a fair amount of emotional drivel.

    My best experience with poetry was probably when we were studying Shakespeare’s sonnets in my Shakespeare class in college. I found myself strangely moved by his iambic pentameter. Moved enough that I composed my own sonnet. I had thought at the time I’d write a whole series of them, and number them like he did, but I never got past that first one.

    Still, I think it’s an impressive piece of work and I had fun doing it. Not to mention, it’s about the only time I haven’t minded poetry that rhymes. I feel that rhymed poetry sounds too much like a nursery rhyme or children’s song.

    Most of my poetry is really just prose that most people would consider literature. Which is fun to do now and then, but I rarely share it when I write it. It leaves me feeling a bit exposed, for some reason.

    For me, prose is a much better medium. When I tell a story, I don’t want my words to get in the way. I want my writing to be perfectly clear so that by the time readers finish reading my story, they haven’t thought about my words once.

  • I’ve never gone “all the way”

    I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I am a submission virgin.

    Wait…that doesn’t sound quite right. Sounds…naughty.

    I haven’t ever submitted my work. There, that’s better. I haven’t ever sent out my writing. Not exactly. Well. I guess I sort of have. But that explanation comes later.

    What it comes down to is that I haven’t ever sent out something I’ve written to query a publisher or agent.

    I’ve thought about it. This year I even thought seriously about it.

    But I still haven’t.

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