About a month ago, I asked over on GoodReads if anyone
would be interested about me blogging about anything in particular. Katyna
asked, “When are you going to write another book?” – here is the answer!
Rather peskily, a few months after I published Know Not Why, I started grad school.
Since the fall of 2012, therefore, I have been getting my
academia on pretty endlessly. My life is basically teaching multiple classes,
taking multiple classes, harboring a hearty terror of linguistics, and
constructing an elaborate silly secret history about the American
Transcendentalists with my grad cohort besties. (Hint about them
Transcendentalists: sex piratry, the future ghost of Barbara Cartland, and a particular
haberdashery are involved. Possibly a sea shanty about the ribald exploits of
Octavius Brooks Frothingham has been composed. I like to think that one day our
writings on the subject will become available to the public sphere.)
That’s all my long rambly way of saying that I haven’t
had as much time to write as I wish I did!
I’ve still been working pretty regularly – this past
summer, I finished an early draft of a rather odd, macabre fairytale-tinged
Gothic novella about a damsel in distress who gets tired of waiting for rescue
(and a little violent). I’m still not sure if that one would find an audience;
my writing tends to fluctuate between Merry Happy Silly RomCom and Anguished,
Fraught, Let’s-See-How-Many-Allusions-to-Keats-We-Can-Fit-In-This-Sucker
Weirdness. Usually, the Brontes and
Florence Welch are to blame for the latter category.
Right now, I’m in the middle of a comedic variation on
the same general idea: I’m about halfway through a draft of a fairytale
romantic comedy about a princess whose prince is more interested in raging
against the machine than rescuing princesses. (He’s big into playing protest
songs on the lute.) Instead, he gets the court sorceress to do the rescuing for
him. The sorceress and the princess hate each other first, but in that fun
romcom way where they pay too much attention to each other’s beautiful eyes
while they’re snapping at each other and stuff. They are on their way to
falling in love now (40,000 words in means the besottedness level is high),
with many a fairytale shenanigan to help and hinder them.
I’m hoping to finish this one up properly as soon as I
have some free time. Alas, I am currently in my last semester of school, which
means thesis-writing, so my writing allegiance is first and foremost to that
daunting task. (Sidenote: aaaaah!)
After that one, I have another contemporary romantic
comedy I’d like to finish up, which is kind of The Nanny meets The Proposal and
hopefully a nonstop festival of romcom fun and shenanigans. Basically, my Books
I Need To Write! queue is even longer than my Netflix queue, which is no small
feat.
I also have a few already-finished or very nearly
finished novels that need finishing touches ... including a 250,000-word (and
counting) behemoth of a contemporary romcom that I co-wrote with a dear friend.
It is one of my most cherished writing projects ever, and I think fans of Know Not Why would really enjoy the tone
of it. My friend/co-author and I have both been so busy with school, life, etc.
over the past few years that this story has gone into hibernation, but we often
talk about finishing it up and dividing it into a series. As soon as we figure
out how to coordinate our schedules, that will become a light on the horizon!
In short: I am still trying to figure out how to balance
writing with all that other life stuff, and I genuinely hope to succeed at this
soon. Especially with my grad school career reaching its end (aaah!), and no
concrete future plans in sight (aaaaaah!),
I yearn to find some way to make a life with my long time true love, fiction.
Yes, I just said “yearn,” which is pretty melodramatic
word choice – but I tend to operate on a very Anne Shirley level, as a general
rule. And not Anne Shirley when she grows up and becomes a functional human
being, either. Nope. I’m depths of
despair!, Slate of Vengeance twelve year old Anne Shirley all the way.
Anyway: I know that I’m at my happiest and my best and, I
think, my most valuable when I’m storytelling and entertaining people in some
way. I just hope, in the near future, for the strength, skill, and perseverance
to figure out how to make a life out of that. To quote my aforementioned soul
sister Anne:
“I’d like to add
some beauty to life,” said Anne dreamily. “I don’t exactly want to make people
KNOW more… though I know that IS the noblest ambition… but I’d love to make
them have a pleasanter time because of me… to have some little joy or happy
thought that would never have existed if I hadn’t been born.”
Thank you so much to all of you, my first readers; you
have helped me so much to start on that grand and daunting journey. :)
And now that I’ve rambled for 800 words, I guess the
short answer is: when I’m done with grad school in a few months, I will get
back to really devoting my attention to writing!
