Maisy's Many Souls

My latest story, Maisy's Many Souls (number 75 of The One-Thousand) is available in GUD magazine's issue #6! You can score yourself a copy here: http://www.gudmagazine.com/vault/6

So you know, It's not one of my happy/funny/pleasant stories which Mango fans might expect.

I often like to do the story behind the story, which I'll do here and now. You can come back and read this after you've read the story if you want, there are some minor spoilers here.

The story behind Maisy's Many Souls

I come up with story ideas in a lot of ways, one way being to write a bunch of silly sounding phrases down and see if they inspire something. This time, one of the things I wrote was, "Maisy had jars," and I looked at that and wondered what Maisy had in those jars. I decided she had souls in those jars and then I decided they were on circuit boards.

I wanted a little conflict so I created a human rights guy (that's the technical term) who wants to protect those souls and he's got a partner. Maybe they're a different sort of partners. Then I wanted to throw one more element in to make things interesting. His partner makes sculptures out of light. And that was it. I was off to the races with four or five sentences. If you've read the story, you'll know there's one more rather major idea, but that wouldn't come to me until later.

I wrote a huge chunk of this story on my AlphaSmart 3000 while waiting around at my job while off the clock because I had ordered my iPod and had it sent there to avoid shenanigans. So one of the things I did while waiting for FedEx was to hole myself up in an office and write. This worked marvelously because there were no distractions and no internet and I wrote some great stuff. I was in a flow which was mostly dialogue. Once I get into conflict, it's usually all dialogue in the first draft and then I fill in other stuff later. I realized something was happening in this story, I had risen above the plateau I'd been on for quite some time. Something new and interesting was coming out of me and the characters were coming alive.

I realized something else. I was onto some dark shit. It wasn't horror, but I was getting inside these people and not liking what was there. The whole story made me uncomfortable and when I reread it two weeks ago, not having read it for fifteen months, it still made me feel uncomfortable. I showed it around and got some really positive reactions but everyone agreed that one of the characters made a decision near the end that just wasn't believable.

My thanks to friend and writing compadre Grant Stone who gave me the solution. I immediately forgot it, tried a couple of things and finally hit on something that worked. It was only after I went back to Grant's e-mail that I found I had done exactly what he told me.

Thanks to Colleen Leong who liked the story so much she made me believe it was really good.

Thanks to the gang at GUD magazine, a very nice bunch of people with whom I hope I can work in the future.

Finally, thanks to Mike Ramshaw who passed away earlier this year. Mike was a co-worker (Like Colleen) and a dear friend and I loved him. I wish I could have given him a big hug before he died. Mike was a great writer who never got around to sending his work out to publishers. He was the best first reader any writer could ask for. He questioned everything from the use of a particular semi-colon to the major themes of a story and everything in between. And he wasn't afraid to tell you when something was awful. His extensive notes and our ensuing discussion helped flesh out lots of little details in Maisy. Maisy's kitchen came alive because of Mike and the Kiss-Me-Quick T shirt was all his.

Thanks, Mike.

GUD News, Everyone!

Yesterday I signed the contract, so I feel on fairly solid ground when I say this, but it's in my nature not to take too much for granted. Greatest Uncommon Denominator, otherwise known as GUD magazine, is going to publish my story, Maisy's Many Souls in issue number 6 next spring. GUD is a great mag that's absolutely packed with fiction, something like 200 pages an issue. You can buy print copies through their site or get a great deal on the .pdf versions of each issue. Check them out, love them up. I'll let you know when issue 6 comes out.

Maisy's Many Souls was a sort of a turning point for me. As I was writing it, I knew that I had somehow jumped to another level in my work. I think this is common among creative people, though I can't speak for everyone. I shall indeed speak for myself. I get to a certain level of quality in my work and I think I'm becoming incredible, and "Hey, this time I've really got it!" and then I don't get any better for like, two or three years. Then I lose all hope (But I don't stop, that's the key). Eventually, I suddenly leap forward again. Damn, two adverbs in that last sentence! And you call yourself a writer, Matt? So the evolution of my skill includes punctuated equilibrium, that's all I'm sayin'. Anyway ANYWAY, I enjoyed Maisy's even as I found something disturbing underlying it. I hope you enjoy it and find something disturbing there as well. The characters became real people, saying real things, and they steered me more than I steered them. It was wonderful. Just hold onto that curiosity for another six months, will ya?

Episoide 16 of Beware the Hairy Mango is up! And out! And through! The Fall of the Soy Milkers! Go listen! And Episode 17 should be done later today! Exclamations!!!

Today, I'm including everything in my word count. That includes whatever work I get done on the novel, whatever I add to today's Hairy Mango story, this blog post and even my damned e-mails! Hell, why not Twitter too? I'm in that kind of mood.

Something New

Well, back to work tomorrow. The writing week started off gangbusters, but there must have been a leak, because the pressure dropped as the week went on. I wondered why my house was so steamy. Ah, well. Onward and upward.

I've been working on too much mundane stuff lately, Maisy's Many Souls, Process Five, TIWOTAM, and Fiction Crawler. I want to loosen up a bit and write some crazy stuff. I got very close to what I wanted last year with a short thing called Dritty Does. I like it a lot, I liked the writing, but I did want more story underneath it. The writing for something like that gets far out and the problem has been that the more I try to bring it down to something that appears to be a story, the more pedestrian the writing gets. I want both. I want acid-laced lunatic beat prose with a real conflict-laden story beneath it and I want some length to it as well. Dritty was only about twelve-hundred words. I want something in the neighborhood of four-thousand. Anyway that's what I want to do next. I'll let you guys know how it turns out.

I saw Watchmen. You guys can hear what I thought about it on the next StarShipSofa. I won't be recommending it to people who aren't comics fans. I don't think they'll care for it at all. But hardcore geeks will wet themselves.

Do any of you guys do songza? I abandoned it for a while because it didn't seem to play nice with my Mac, but things seem to be better now. The thing I like about it that I can't get from Pandora or Jango is that I can listen to the song I want when I want to. Anyway, see if you like it.

I figured out what was wrong with this blog. Not enough Nerf Herder. Although the lyrics don't address my particular feelings about Van Halen, I love the song.

Writey Write Write

I'm happy today. The house is a mess, I have a pile of things still to do and I stink like a fish, but I'm happy. That's because I wrote seven pages today. Some pros might think, "Seven pages? Big deal," but seven is a lot for me. I may be onto something good. I got worked up by this month's posts on Dean Wesley Smith(no relation)'s blog: http://deanwesleysmith.com/. He's been posting about writing goals all this month. If you're a writer, I strongly encourage you to check out everything on there from December of 2008. You'll want to read them in chronological order since each day builds upon the last.

Yesterday's post in particular kicked me into gear, because I was really able to throw down the numbers for what I want to do and figure out what I need to do to meet those numbers. About six and a half pages a day will get me where I want to go. That should seem like a lot to me and to be honest it often has in the past. But today I looked at it, and thought, "We're talking one and a half to two hours a day here. In the big scheme of my life, that's doable." Hell, I often waste that much time screwing around online. Today was easy, because I had a day off. Tomorrow might be harder. I want to get the writing out of the way as early as possible so it's done and I can get on with the business of real life like cleaning the toilet. Today, once I made my goals, I wrote before doing anything else and that equals happy. Tomorrow, I'd have to get up at 2:30 in the morning to get the writing out of the way and that probably isn't happening, so we'll see what I can do later in the day. But at the moment I'm optimistic.

Another thing I've found is how to get the writing done. You may recall the wonderful AlphaSmart I blogged about here:
http://theonethousand.blogspot.com/2006/09/finally-he-gets-to-review_04.html
It's a magnificent little machine, but I put it aside once I got my MacBook. It sat unwanted in its corner, looking pathetic for a year and a half. A few months ago I picked it back up and discovered that it rocks out for first drafts. Why? No goddamned Internet! No e-mail. No distractions. Just writing. I got huge chunks of my story, Maisy's Many Souls (75), done on the AlphaSmart and I picked it up again a few days ago. It's awesome. Alphasmart for first drafts, MacBook for editing. By the way, the AlphaSmart is still running strong on the three AA batteries I put in there Christmas day 2005! Battery strength is still a little over 50%! Did I mention it rocks?

So there you go. Everything's coming up roses. For today at least. We'll see what tomorrow brings but I'm going into it aware of the hump I'll have to overcome and I am so fore-armed. Cheers until the morrow good friends! What ho!

Where the hell did that come from?

75

Wow. I added four stories to The One-Thousand in July and none in the last month and a half! That's bad. But I just sent out number 75 about forty-five minutes ago (At a 24 hour self-serve part of the post office). 75 is called Maisy's Many Souls. I don't even know if it's a good story, but I do know that I achieved something that I haven't achieved before. I've small steps improving conflict and characterization. I think that it's a story that a reader would want to keep reading because there's enough going on there. We'll see what happens.

Actually I've got a little poem all done and ready to go, but I can't give it a number until it goes out. I want to send it to a particular magazine but that mag currently has one of my stories, so I have to wait until they make a decision on that before I can send the poem to them. So there you go.