the hazards of love (for writing)

So I figure the easiest way to keep up with this whole blogging thing is to stop giving so much of a f**k about whether a post is 'perfect' or not. I can guarantee that this will be much more difficult at my horror blog, as I really want those posts to be pretty thoughtful and researched. But this one is all about my personal rantings, right? Those can be contradictory and weird. Why not?

I got a bunch of letters and postcards today in the mail. It was wonderful! I'll never get away from actual mail being so much of a thrill than a like or random comment online. For some reason, this mail made me immediately want to listen to 'The Hazards of Love' by The Decemberists as a full auditory performance. The night I went to see The Decemberists open their 'Hazards of Love' tour in Los Angeles was strange. Very emotionally confusing. Thankfully, what I remember best was how happy and tearful I became whenever the colorful spotlights set in the stage pulsed upwards and silhouetted Colin Meloy every time he sang "And the wanting comes in waves." That remains a top concert moment of mine. I almost wonder if anything before and since has topped it.

I haven't quite given up on Nanowrimo. I've probably given up on the actual writing portion, which is fine as I had intended it to be more about a month dedicated to revision than creating something brand new. I'm still mainlining the feel of Nanowrimo, and that's much more invaluable to me. Tonight (only five days into the month: alright!) I'm getting to sit down for a few significant hours of writing. So that's pretty awesome.

And the wanting comes in waves!

Time kicking me down the road

So I guess I really did set up my own personal blog, way back when, and I really did completely forget about it ever since. I feel like I created it just as I was in the midst of my 'Grad School or Bust!' ennui and I feel fairly certain if I had gone 'Bust' I would have kept it up. Probably over daily tuna melt sandwiches at Stell while I tried to pursue the whole writing thing. But I got into the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, and this blog got left behind.

But look at that Earth. Look at that The Prisoner font. I can't just let this guy fester, unseen. Time for a resurrection!

I plan to begin a horror review blog this week so then I'll have two blogs I feel angsty about consistently updating. I also feel like this will be excellent stress on my system, forcing me to produce actual finished content instead of just scribbling endlessly in blank books. Though my scribbled thoughts are actually pretty cool. You can't see those, though. I did just send a few of my better horror fiction ideas to a close friend (who just sold her first book: congrats!) so that too is making me feel better about putting my work out there. It's so silly how keeping everything contained seems like the best idea, but then you see your basic 'brilliant' ideas used in books or movies or television and the initial thought is not "Hey, I could have sold that idea if I was on-the-ball" but instead "Man I'll never get anything published or made." How's that for being born under a bad sign?

Anyway, I still love my main novel idea, which comprised my final creative manuscript at Naropa and continues to exist in various revisions littering my computer's desktop. But since I was a young child, reading Stephen King and Dean Koontz way before I was ready for it (my parents were cool with all my reading and my grandma to this day stocks an awesome horror library), I've wanted to write horror and so that's what I'm going to do. "Naropa University doesn't produce horror writers," my favorite Redlands professor told me as I sat in her office and we talked about my future. Well, thanks to accepting me as of 2010, they sure as hell do now.