The Internet Shoulf Be Treated Like a Controlled Substance

I have the unique ability to find the most bizarre crap on the internet. Sure, it sucks up hours of my time and distracts me from important things like pulling the cookies out of the over BEFORE the smoke alarms go off. However, the efforts of one night on eBay yielded a turn of the century wax head that looked identical to my friend’s fiancée. For my own good, ban me from eBay. Please. I don’t need any more trocars. But I could use a 19^th century bone saw… and the other volumes of Anatomy and Histology for Embalmers (1935, 1^st Edition)…

In between heckling my own television and writing the first blog of the night, I’ve been sucked into Pinterest. Lists of things with pictures! I’ve found some useful tips and a ton of ideas. I like the fact that I’m able to categorize my ADD easily. I don’t know what real use this has, but so far I’m happier than a Goth in a graveyard.

While I have lost hours to “Pinning,” it is nothing compared to the hours I’ve spent searching for Lit Contests or requests for submittals. Every now and then I need a good swift kick in the ass. I’ll fight it claw and fang, but things get done.  Same applies to my writing. I suffer from chronic writers block. Despite the fact that I always said I never knew what to blog about, I am now finding myself readily supplied with ideas for Arscenic, Spite and Old Scars. It’s my short stories that stump me. 

These contests give me a two fold kick: an idea and a deadline. Having decided to let Memento Mori simmer for a little longer and instead focus on Requiem for Alice, time for shorts is limited. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try. Probably only one entry. Something that will give me time to polish. I’m looking forward to weeding through the options until I find the ONE. I’ll keep you posted.

Bring it on, Alice

As you know, I’m incapable of meeting my own deadlines. Like happens, ADD takes over, and my writing pays the price. I try to keep my goals simple. Sometimes listing them requires an act of God. However, when I do make lists, they’re epic novels on scraps of paper. Keeping track of them is hell on Earth and they always seem to end up in the damnest places.  I can’t tell you how many times I had to retrieve them from the slobbery maws of my giant beast.

The summer’s dragging on and I find myself checking the forecast with a sick glee. One should not have this giddiness about potential natural disasters.  I have no right to it. But, I prepare nonetheless. I have my neatly organized zombie and World War Three kits, not to mention my hurricane gear. Hurricane season continues until the fall, so it only seems wise have a stockpile.

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina caught millions of people off guard (even though there had been weather advisories and reports for days leading up to landfall.) In addition to basically the whole of the Gulf Coast, Katrina nearly wiped out the vampire Mecaa, New Orleans, LA.  At landfall, it was a category 5. It left roughly 1800 people dead. The governmental missteps were nothing short of astonishing and the recovery has been sluggish. 

Fast forward to 2008. My creative writing professor asked us to tell her a story based on a poem. I wish I could remember the name and poet, but the gist is the narrator talking about the beauty of the grain in a silo. And then there’s the hard left and the narrator begins talking about a boy drowning in the grain and then it was back to the beauty of the yellow grain. Leah told us to tell her a story like that. So I did.

The secrets in the telling, and I’m not.  Two years ago, I brought this piece to a meeting of the Proud Failures Group. They saw what I didn’t. They pointed out the allegory, that, after reading it again was glaringly obvious. I went chasing Walt down the rabbit hole and came out with Alice. This makes not a lick of sense to any of you reading this, but to the six Failures that were there, you know. 

Here’s the goal: Requiem for Alice will be done (SFD) by August 28^th, the day Katrina made landfall. I don’t know how the hell I’m going to do it. There’s an app downloaded onto the tablet so I can write while at work. I’ve found a few quiet places (which in a dental lab was no small fete, let me tell you.) The beginning and ending are solid, it’s that tricky middle part I’m fighting. Research to ensue. If I manage to reach this goal, there will be a party. A large one. 

So, kick me in the ass. Send me inspiring clips about New Orleans, Tom Waits and Alice in Wonderland. Seriously, anything will help. I guess we’ll see what happens.

Deadlines and How I continue to Shirk them

Good Evening my little bacon dumplings!

Due to technical difficulties, my intended posts have not been uploading. I believe that the problem exists between chair and computer rather than a technical conspiracy. I'm already afraid of my computer, so I will not be exploring that idea further. Seriously. I don't trust machines that think. Were my haunted typewriter more convenient, and not haunted, I'd use it. There's something reliable and comforting about pounding on the rigid keys, slinging the shuttle back and forth. I digress.

Ask any of my professors and they will tell you that all of my projects were handed in at the eleventh hour. Deadlines act like a mental block, erasing all thought that may have been in place before I was told when it had to be done. My mind goes blank and what I do write seems  juvenile.  Since I was a child learning the rules of grammar, arguably so I could ignore them later, I have constructed complex and interesting sentences. See Spot Run is not in my repertoire.  My life would be easier if it was, but I'm not really a dog person anyway.

When I kickstarted this blog, it was my intention to post something pithy/thoughtful each day. During my day, I make notes and start to pull apart my opinions. Each day, I come home with new scraps of paper tucked into my tiny composition notebook. I open a new Word doc, and then... nothing.

Tonight, I find myself at home with just the cats and a whole world at my fingertips. I'm having a field day. So Far, I've filled one mini notebook with comments about things I've found in the weird recesses of the interwebs. For once, I didn't stumble on a single kitten. Shocking. Seeing how neglected this project has become has been the nudge I needed to get back on track. Once I wrap up this update, it's straight to working on Memento Mori. Very excited.

The desk arrives Saturday morning and I'm so excited I could spit. My inability to keep to a deadline is very connected to my lack of discipline. I bought myself a Queen Anne desk in lovely shape and am looking forward to hours parked at it. I am hoping that once I'm working everyday I'll learn to meet deadlines. The characters won't stop screaming at me. The only way to shut them up is to write... It's all very connected.

So, for tonight, I leave you with this: How does one sit at a desk without a chair? If you figure it out, let me know. I got nothin'.

How many notebooks does one writer actually need?

Being precocious is like a butterfly knife. It gets me out of a lot of trouble at the office, but the inherent potential for disaster sometimes leaves me wounded. Or needing an alibi.  There are limits as to what I can get away with, and today I was afraid I was going to find them. I made a tactical retreat at my lunch hour, somehow managing to find myself doing mundane errands that damn near lead to my doom.

Hi, my name's Tatum and I like office supplies.  As a kid, I struggled in school for a variety of reasons; boredom, brain damage, little things like that. I disliked the plain covers of the notebooks Mum got. I wanted the acid trip Lisa Frank junk all the other girls had. We didn't have tons of money for school supplies, but we made do. Now that I'm grown, I find myself purchasing armloads of those cheap notebooks every year. It's benign hoarding. I have it under control. Mostly.

I needed a pen today, but I forgot that at this time of the year, you can't get anything less than a gross at a time. Because I was stuck at the Saltmine, I couldn't bust into the stockpile at the Lair. Sure I could have driven home and gotten the damn thing, but I didn't want to bring such a thing of beauty to work. (Antique fountain, kept in a wooden casket made by my uncle for my college graduation.)  Long story short, I spent an hour skipping through the back to school aisle humming to myself, tossing things I could definitely live without into the carriage.

Everything has a purpose. The mini-notebooks have gone into each bag I drag around, with pen attached. I use index cards as a sort of file-o-fax of ideas, not whole outlines mind you, but words or images. Post-its were the big winner today. I use them to flag things in books (when I have that rare moment to read), make notes, characterizations, etc. There isn't enough wall space in the Lair to have corkboards all over the place, so I'm making due with huge pieces of newsprint. I have crayon road maps all over them, connecting characters in one piece to another. My editor has already warned me, again, about sending her drafts written entirely in crayon. Good thing she's my best friend.

Visually mapping unexpectedly pulled a new idea for Memento Mori seemingly out of thin air. Memento is forthcoming. I promise. Please hound me about it. I'm wrapping up this blog so I can begin working in Ed the Archivist. (I don't like him either.) This piece takes new steps over the line every time I work on it, and I'm curious to see where that line actually is. Wherever it is, I know it won't be safe for work.

Welcome to Arscenic, Spite and Old Scars

Blogs are deceptively hard to write. Trust me. I’ve re-written the same introduction at least a half dozen times, traumatized my pets on as many occasions, and gone through a pot of tea.  With that said, welcome to the preliminary post of Arsenic, Spite and Old Scars.

Writing introductions to new readers is a lot like introductions at support groups. Hi, I’m Tatum and I’m a writer. There are days when saying that feels like I’m admitting that I’ve done or said something awful. Given enough time and motivation I probably have. Filters are few and far between in my world and all my stories start in the middle.

I seldom take my own advice, even when I know the results will be socially off-putting. Pretty girls shouldn’t write the things I do, but I’m like Vivienne Leigh without the consumption.  Jury’s still out on the insanity part. 

I write the sort of things that make normal people want to shower after reading. I don’t mean to, but I do. There’s a beauty in the grotesque that only some of us can see. It’s not that I’m rejecting literary concepts like love or sunshine and puppies. In fact, the sun always shines on the graves in my work, the puppies are werewolves, and love- well, I tackled that one with a grief stricken mortician giving her lover one hell of a send off. Yes, this is the infamous necrophilia piece and I am its author. 

Just like those awkward moments at support meetings, I’m going to tell you something else I don’t tend to share. As a writer, I’m afraid of myself. Speculative fiction allows me to take risks and experiment, but I always hold myself back just a little. It’s in my horror/romance lovechild that I let myself go bananas and create with reckless abandoned. As a result, when playing submittal roulette, I tend to receive rejection letters asking, “What the hell is wrong with you?” This was actually asked of me. I framed it.

There are times when I wish I could be the hearts and flowers kind of writer, but then I finish sharpening my machete and remember that I’m the kind of writer that frequently takes a hard left at reality and just keeps going. What’s to stop me? The question of could versus should doesn’t trouble me. Much. When it does, I drown it with more coffee. Always more coffee. Let me give you another example and maybe then you’ll truly understand why I tell people I’m one cat shy of being ‘Willard.’ 

Sure there are consequences to what I do, but learning to accept them is like living with your demons and loving them nonetheless. Mine even have names and they come out to play often. I wouldn’t be who I am or write what I do without them. In your personal life the trick is to find someone that loves your scars because theirs match. When it comes to writing, you find the world is lonelier. Letting people in makes it better and reminds me that there are in fact still people that find things like cannibalism charming. (Remember to pass the Chianti.)

So, please enjoy the ride. Lord knows I will.