Stubbed: A Writer's Plight

I’d like to start by saying “Ouch!” The rest of the four letter expletives I will leave to your own imaginations. (By all means, be colorful. I certainly was.)

If I come out the other side of writing the Six Brothers with a single toe not in a cast, splint or a body bag I will indeed count myself lucky.

Yesterday, I once again stubbed the heck out of my literary big toe. Put pen to paper and fell flat on my face.

“Splat!” went Chloe on the carpet.

It was quite ugly. (My dog got a lot of enjoyment out of it however.)

Uglier still was the next five hours in which I wiggled around on the floor, coughing up the occasional sentence until my word count reached 103.

Yes, 103.

Instead of snapping my stupid literary big toe off and ramming said appendage down the garbage disposal, I hobbled out to that dark little corner in my yard and planted me some mondo grass. (See “Tackling That Corner” post a few days ago for details. This really does make good sense, trust me.)

Four little clumps of dark green grass I nestled tenderly into the earth. (This, of course, was after I hacked the weeds to death and yanked their spiny little corpses out of the ground… I enjoyed this part most of all. I can’t imagine why.)

After hosing my mulchy self down and limping back to the couch, I somehow managed to eke out another 450 words on the Six Brothers.

So, in short, my 558 word accomplishment was not only painful, it was dirty and itchy.

And you still want to be a writer?

*considers, then winces*

Yeah, ok, so do I. Now, shut up and leave me to my stupid big toe.

Until tomorrow…

Chloe

The Pie Chest

Writing this blog can be terribly confusing.

What you poor, loyal-to-a-fault people must go through actually reading it is beyond me… I feel like I should bake you all a pie or something.

The point is that no matter what I choose to write about on a given day, I feel like I’m betraying/letting down/neglecting a certain wedge of my audience (Think pie chart, here… *chuckles*… Apparently “Pie” is the theme for today. I really don’t plan these things. They just sneak up on me like spot-on ninjas. Kind of frightening, actually.)

My brilliant cache of followers is very diverse, as I’m sure you can well imagine.

Some of you come for Chloe the Author.

Some of you stop by for Chloe the Odd.

Still another slice of you drop in for Chloe, Panic’s Whore.

Each readership is dear to me, and I try to keep everyone well entertained, informed and bolstered as best as I can. But choosing which blogging host to be that day can be, like I said, confusing.

Usually, I roll out of bed and grab the first hat my sleep-dumb mind can manage that day.

Sometimes, I choose poorly.

Sorry about that.

Sorry that you have no idea what’s going to be served up to you until you sit yourself down at my blogging table that day. Kind of unfair of me, I know.

But just like a Pumpkin, Cherry, Chocolate Pie would never, ever work, a blog addressing all of my followers would really be quite foul… And with “Author, Odd One and Panic’s Whore” already front and center on my business card, I really don’t have room to add “Careless Purveyor of Botulism” to my record.

What was the point of this post, you wonder?

I wonder too.

Until tomorrow…

Chloe

Tackling That Corner

There’s a corner in my tiny backyard which is always dark and always damp.

Nothing but weeds will grow there.

Grass disdains even the notion of venturing into the dampish shadows. And after a valiant attempt, even a beautiful little magnolia tree lost its life in the dank outpost. (My gardening skills were beyond naïve at that horticultural low point of my life.  Thankfully, I’ve learned much since then.)

So, over the years I have essentially ignored the little spot, concentrating my efforts on the beautifully sun-bleached vistas of my tee-tiny plot…

Not anymore.

My trusty, four-legged sidekick and I are going in.  

Armed with a hoe, a trowel, a humongous bag of mulch and four clumps of dwarf mondo grass, me and my dog are taking back our troublesome little corner!

While this daily author’s blog may seem like a terribly odd place to note this journey/rescue mission, I trust with a little extrapolation all you authors out there can see the correlation.

Every writer has such an abandoned corner in their literary skills. A certain “thing” that we try our darnedest to ignore. Even if this avoidance is not intentional I’m sure if you look hard enough you will find that it is there.

It’s probably something little, something corny, something that you feel doesn’t even really bear mentioning. But it is a part of your whole.

There’s no doubt I could have a beautiful backyard despite that dark little corner. I could simply work around it, hide it behind prettier, easier things…

But I’d be missing an opportunity.

My backyard is tiny enough, hacking off a corner of it simply because I’m afraid to f**k it up is really kind of stupid.

So, grab your tools, your muse and some dwarf mondo grass and tackle the forgotten!

And so here today’s very weird “Go and get ‘em!” speech.

*chuckles at the blatant silliness/poorly-worded-wisdom of it all*

Until tomorrow…

Chloe and her mondo

The Confidence Game

I can write.

This is no longer a question, a hope, a “teetering on the brink of despair” plea to the literary muses.

It is a statement, complete with a period and an end of paragraph swipe of the return key.

*haughty stature deflates just a bit as the truth nags and nags and…*

Alright. I admit that the period at the end of the declarative sentence is a little lax in enthusiasm.

The period may in fact be a little pale and still unsure of itself.

The pounding of the return key possibly could have been an accident (but I didn’t correct it so that’s got to count for something in the confidence game, right?... Right?)

Jeez, I’m trying here folks. Give me some credit, huh?

*sighs*

Yesterday, after days of Not Writing, Barely Writing and “Look at me, I made a sentence!” Writing, I was actually able to slap some really good stuff down on the Six Brothers project. The kind of “really good stuff” you read back over and throw a triumphant fist into the air. Yep, I’m talking that rare vintage of the “really good stuff.”

So, I thought it quite honest of me to start this post off by stating that “I can write.”

It was a little iffy there for a while, the grammatical ground a little shaky but…

That sweet (though admittedly still shy) period is back! Yippee!!

*clears throat, regains composure, chuckles at the foolishness of it all*

Just thought I’d share.

Have a great Saturday, everyone!

Until tomorrow…

Chloe

A Stated Quandary

I need a committee.

A small group of highly trained professionals and forward thinkers whose sole purpose is to answer this single question… “Just how romance-y should I make the Six Brothers be?”

Ignoring the fact that romance-y is not a word, I think it is a reasonable question for the great minds of literature, publishing and entrepreneurial spirit to address.

As I continue to climb back into the proverbial writing saddle after my abrupt buck-off the other day, I find myself still struggling with how, well, “gooey” to make the romantic sweetness of my 100k novel-to-be?

Should I hold back some on the tried-but-true “Hello. I’m a romance novel” clichés? Or should I employ them to boost sellability (another not-real word) to publishing houses?

Is the fact that for the first time I will be having a literary agent interfacing on my behalf during the “Please, please, buy me!” stages a safety net I should count on? Or is it simply a trap, luring me into a pitfall of “I know better than the other thousands of successful romance writers already out there?”

Yep, I need a committee.

Maybe a think tank.

Applications now being accepted.

Until tomorrow…

Chloe

Skittish, Spooked, but Present

Baby steps were taken in the writing of Six Brothers yesterday.

I was a bit skittish, I will admit.

Having been thrown flailing from the creative mount the day before, I was a little nervous crawling back onto the equine’s back. I blame this apprehension entirely on the said-flailing.

It was… *winces sourly*… ungainly.

Perhaps if I had managed to do it with a graceful swan dive or a head-held-high “Excuse me, while I depart from this beast,” the reclaiming of the saddle wouldn’t have been done so warily.  

I was spooked.

Being spooked is a terrible place for a writer to be… unless of course you’re writing a Stephen King-esque piece in which being scared crap-less is all part of the fun.

I eked out maybe 100 words in yesterday’s return. Yeah, I know. Pretty miserable performance there.

But…

There was indeed a performance.

There was indeed a rider on that wiggling mount.

That’s what is important.

*deep breath, deep breath, deep breath*

At least that’s what I’m telling myself as I force myself back up onto that dang saddle again today.

Until tomorrow…

Chloe

The Physical Cajole

After seven hours of taking a melon baller to my highly-trained and regularly effusive imagination and scraping out not a single word (let me repeat here, NOT A SINGLE WORD) toward the Six Brothers, I called my mother, confessed to being a waste of her DNA, grabbed a hoe and hacked to death a gang of weeds in my flower garden.

That was my Tuesday.

How was yours?

*chuckles grimly*

Yesterday I sucked so bad at being a writer it was absurd.

At one point I was literally clawing at my head, trying to pull, yank, physically cajole my freaking imagination into giving me something. Anything. Heck, I would have taken a “Jack ran up Bunker Hill” at that point.

But, nope. I got nothing.

I tried all my writing tricks that usually drag at least a 100 words of useable fluff-smut from my head.

Again, I came up dry.

The frustration, I feared, was going to be interminable, scarring, a bloody mess to clean up…

So I called my mommy and turned to the hoe.

Absurdity, thy name is Chloe Stowe.

Until tomorrow…

Chloe