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Setting the Tone

In preparation for the start of NaNoWriMo, I have listening to the audiobook of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, to set the tone of my own story.

I listen to it while I commute to and from work. The first couple of days of listening to the story were rainy, cold and gloomy – just like in the story. Lemme tell ya, that really sets a tone in itself. It’s also not a great mindset to take to work in the morning, but a large cup of coffee usually helps with that.

This is one of the most emotionally heavy stories I’ve come across. The story gives you such a sense of hopelessness. You think, “What’s the use? What is the purpose?”

Stephen King’s The Stand is a unicorn and rainbow filled fairy tale of joy and happiness in comparison.

Of course The Road won a Pulitzer and another literary award. The literary community just loves stories about the hopelessness of life.

After I finish this – I was thinking of renting the movie Ironweed (another Pulitzer winner) to watch on a rainy afternoon. Then I think I’ll jump out of a basement window…

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Worse Than Writer’s Block

As stated in the last post, I participated in the Gotham Writer’s Fiction Workshop. It was a good course and there was a good group of people with which to interact.

I was really into it and enjoying myself. I stretched my writing muscle quite a bit and got a lot of great feedback. Of the critiques, they were very constructive and in a positive tone – a style which I appreciated and reciprocated.

Somewhere around Week 8 of the 10 Week course, I suddenly lost all interest. Not just in the class, but with fiction writing altogether. I had no idea why, but I completely and utterly lost all passion for writing stories.

I was still writing plenty of non-fiction blog articles, but there was no passion for the writing of fiction at all. It left a culpable hole, no a void where my love of writing stories once resided.

I have had plenty of periods in the past where I did not want to write creatively for a while, but I always knew that when I stepped away from it for a while that urge would awaken and I’d be back at it. This time was different – the urge was gone. It had left me or died. I had never felt this way before.
 
I was shocked by this development of going from always having an interest in writing from the time I was 8, to not wanting to have anything to do with it at all. Even worse, I was beginning to accept it and be okay with it. It got to the point where I was going to donate my extensive books on writing to our library.  

I have no idea why it happened, but now that I no longer had that passion for writing a part of me felt dead inside. The thing is I didn’t want to lose it and wanted to understand what went wrong.

For weeks I could not brink myself to even look at a writing magazine, book or blog – let alone open one up and read it. I still read some fiction, but mostly non-fiction.

 

I recently remembered that back in 2000, I read Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. I remember thinking while reading that book, ‘Man, I didn’t know you were allowed to write like this’. It was brilliant.

I went to the library and checked it out to see if I could remember why I felt that way about it. I still think it’s a great piece of writing, but there wasn’t that “Aha!” moment I had hoped for.

As October rolled around, it dawned on me that the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) in November was fast approaching. I felt melancholy that I was not going to be a part of NaNoWriMo. I always had fun with it. It would have been my 9^th year.

I perused the NaNoWriMo forums as I always had, and decided to post in the NaNoWriMo Ate My Soul forum. I posted my woes and bid farewell to NaNoWriMo and left it at that.

Over a week later, this Monday, something prompted me to go back to the forums and see if anybody left any remarks about my situation. I was surprised to see 17 responses. As I read each one there was good advice, encouragement and support. I took each piece of advice and response to heart and before I knew it ideas were beginning to flow.

One great idea came to me fully formed. I would fictionalize an event I experienced during a paranormal investigation I went on. It has haunted my thoughts ever since.

The passion for writing fiction isn’t as intense as it once was, but the interest is there. It’s like resurrecting a clinically dead person with a defibrillator – shocking them back to life. The pulse is weak but it’s there.

I have my story idea, I know what I want to do with it and the current working title is The Death Walker