Death Rituals

I've had this one line that I wrote a long long time ago that I love. It's been the first line of at least 2 works that never got finished (for a myriad of reasons) and I really really really want to use that line. I'm thinking maybe now, with April's Camp NaNo coming up, I'll use it for a project featuring that line, and something revolving around death rituals. One of my favorite stories is that of Antigone. When a person dies, there are just things to do and things you don't do - which varies from culture to culture.

I remember, for my grandfather, my mother and grandmother insisted on a traditional Chinese ritual where we work white and tied cloth to our hair. During any instances of procession, everyone was lined from eldest to youngest. As we passed the casket in the viewing, we'd place ceremonial money and bow three times with incense. He was cremated and his remains were held in an ancestral alter until my grandmother passed, then his remains and portrait were buried with her.

For my grandmother, in addition to the ceremonial money, incense, and bowing, we did a very western thing. At her grave site, each person took a handful of earth and tossed it into the grave after the casket was lowered.

I was recently reading this article about a young girl who has complications during surgery and bled too much. She's been pronounced brain dead and multiple doctors have said that she would not live without the aid of breathing and feeding tubes. The girl's parents insist that the child is still alive due to a heartbeat and used the courts to keep the hospital from removing life support and they were able to get her moved to a facility that would keep the girl on life support indefinitely. Currently, the mother is attending the child - painting her fingernails, brushing her hair, while hospital staff work with the body in a measure of physical therapy. The parents cling to the hope that their child will wake up.

It just made me wonder, what happens to the souls who are in that in-between space of life/death due to things like life support?

Writing as a social exercise

For the most part, writing is a fairly solitary exercise. But maybe, sometimes, I doesn't need to be. Or, sometimes, it shouldn't be.

This past Nano, it feels like I failed miserably because I couldn't devote the same time or energy as I did for NaNo 2013. I did it once, I can do it again. One of the hardest things about NaNo were the social bits - parties, standing RPG gatherings, and of course, the holidays. I found it harder to seclude myself away from friends and family for the month. I manage to eek out a measly 13K. 

This April, I'm going to give Camp NaNo another try. My goal - 25, 000 words. It's half the goal of classic NaNo, but considering my work situation, commute, the holidays and out of town friends coming to town, I think the 25K will be plenty. I'm also going to try to write a little differently. Being in a crowded public space to write does no appeal to me, but I do find value in the social aspect of the write-ins that NaNo's Municipal Liaisons host. So, I've decided to make the writing process for April a little more social by convincing a few of my writer friends to participate in Camp NaNo and host a weekly write-in for our little group. Let's see if getting social with the writing will help me stay on track. 

On Identifying as a Writer - when does it count?

One of my friends wrote a blog entry about writing and identifying as a writer.  It got me thinking, when does a writer takes ownership of being a writer? When she finally publishes a novel? When one makes a lucrative career by writing like JK Rowling, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, or Stephanie Meyer? Or are REAL writers the literary authors like Twain, Hemingway, Lovecraft, Joyce, or Tan?

Sometimes, when I call myself a "writer," it feels a little fraudulent. I mean, am I really a writer? Do I have enough writing cred to call myself a writer, having nothing significant published under my own name?

When I was working on my creative writing chops in college, I had years of indoctrination on the idea that one was not a real writer unless one wrote literary works. Bullshit.

As for making a living writing? It's way harder, and way less money than people assume.

When I was in high school, I wrote for the school paper, got my poetry published in the school's lit mag, and wrote more short stories than I can remember. During my college years, I'd contributed as a writer for an anthology published by Harper Collins.  Since someone else, someone who didn't personally know me, liked my writing enough to publish it, it validates me as a writer, right? Does it not count because I was so young? Does it matter now, as I re-read my published work, that I think it's horribly written?

Or maybe I'm a writer because that's just what I do. At work, writing is something that is part of the development process, where I'm creating content for our e-learning platform, technical manuals, tip-sheets. Or when I'm writing up lesson plans or creating practical application exercises. "Writer" is not part of my job title, nor is it explicitly something that's written in my job description, but it's a big part of what I do. 

I do NaNoWriMo because it pushes and focuses me to not over think the process and just do it. Writing a 50k word "novel" in 30 days is daunting, but exhilarating. I did it once. Now, I just need to push myself to do it again. And to revise it to the point where I'm OK with sending it out for strangers to read. 

Some of the best advice I've heard to date - If you want to be something, then be it. If you want to be a writer, then you should be writing. Not tomorrow, today.



So... do I consider myself a writer? Only on the days I write.

Making Money with Writing.

A few years ago, I took on a freelance job writing for Demand Media Studios, a supplier of original articles for knowledge bank type websites like eHow.com and Ask.com,  (and thus contributing to the rest of the travel, etiquette and advice drivel that's on the internet.) I'm even embarrassed to say that I wrote those pieces because it's far from quality writing and haven't done a thing to share my work, but here's a picture of an article title and my by-line:

Want to know why most of these types of link-bait, how-to articles sound the same? Because all of the writers use the internet for research. And the pay kinda sucked at $7.50 - $15 per article accepted by the editors (and published). If you were really good, really fast at typing, and never had any revisions that were needed, then you may eek out $15/hr to earn $30K for the year. But a more realistic average is somewhere around $10/hr.  The 3-5 hours a day that I was spending stressing about my articles wasn't worth the check at the end of the week. Instead, I pushed for a promotion at work - and got it. Now, I make enough that it's hard to justify taking on the small writing gigs, writing stuff I just didn't enjoy writing.

And here's a big reality - sometimes, a writer will spend years writing (and revising, and re-writing) for no pay. And when one does get published and paid, it's going to be very very little at first. That's why most writers when they were starting out, had day jobs to pay the bills.