Who here writes/is a writer?

[Artyczar]

And what do you write? Novels? Short stories? Poetry? Novellas? Nonfiction? Memoirs? Prose? Something else I haven't said?

I think I write all of the above, although I have not yet finished a novel. I am working on one now, but I don't know if it's going to turn out to be a novella or a novelette. Maybe it will be long enough to be a short novel.

I've written a memoir and published it, and I also had a small book of poems published with illustrations. Other than that, there's my Artist's books, some of which have writing in them, but that's not what I really mean here.

I have written a number of short stories and I'm also working on a collection of those, but only half of them are really ready to publish.

 

[La_]

used to do poetry, but I think I've purged all I've got to say in that genre.
working through combining 1st and 2nd drafts of a novel now, it's a freaking challenge, to say the least.

la

 

[Artyczar]

Every part of it is challenging, but congratulations on finishing the first draft! That's a major milestone, I mean, if the 1st is all there and you felt a sense of accomplishment. I remember feeling finished with the first draft of the memoir, and it was like I came up from being underwater for a number of years. Then I got to the first "working" draft, then the "first pass," and so on. It feels like it should get easier, but to be honest, every next step can be sort of grueling. But that's why we do it--to torture ourselves.

 

[La_]

haha, I think my eyebrows are maybe above water - neither draft is what I'd call complete, but between the two it's closer to becoming cohesive, I hope.
It's all way more torture than any painting I've done, but yeah, seems I have a masochistic side.

la

 

[Birdhs]

I write everyday. I send out a Randumb Rambulling text to 50 folks, individually (I detest group tests) concerning my life and events. It is "recovery based", but I occasionally veer off into just rambulling.
I also like to create prose about images of art I see. I rescued most of them from WC before it changed over. One novel in final-ish form, but it may never be published due to controversial content. More like a semi-autobiographical tome with names changed to protect the guilty..

 

[Artyczar]

I like "controversial" content. In my memoir, I changed some names, but only when names were repeated (more than one person named "Mike," for instance, " or someone that was named for committing actual crimes. And only first names, of course. Otherwise it's 100% truth.

The one I'm working on now is about gender and sexuality issues, but it's all fictionalized. I has an autobiographical feel, as it's written in first person, also it's in present tense. It gets really graphic and I may not publish it in my real name just so no one confuses it with nonfiction or memoir.

 

[Birdhs]

My novel began with a story I heard from a very rural Southern young man and what had happened to him. A MILLION LITTLE PIECES type story, but it involves the main character's life from early teens up to 35. It is woven with stories heard and imagined and reworked and lived. Murders, drug deals, prostitution, porn, rehabs, ER visits, overdoses, love, lust, rapes, and exploration. But mostly stories of hope and survival through recovery and friendships. Been writing it for 10 years, almost finished the "final rewrite".
Once the rewrite is done, I'll start adding original art images.

 

[Artyczar]

Birdhs,

That sounds like something I'd love to read. I also worked on mine for 10 years.

Unfortunately, I published it as a memoir, and that was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life so far. I was originally going to publish it as a novel, but I didn. For many reasons. First of all, I was in a cult that needed to be exposed and I didn't want to be chickenshit about hiding who they were by veiling them in fiction. The other reason is, it is now the time of #metoo, and I didn't want to hide behind fictionalizing that whole thing either. I felt I had to "come out of the closet" about both experiences if just to save one other person from making the same mistakes I did. I was vulnerable between the ages of little kid to 30-something too.

But it is definitely a story of mass survival. It has a lot of similar thing your book seems to have: child abuse, rape, drugs, mental illness, family dysfunction, mind control, loss, and lots of art and music. I have raw sketches in it throughout.

Now I'm working on an entirely different book about gender issues and sexuality, but it's nothing as disturbing as the memoir, but probably has the same sense of dark humor. I may not release it with my name on it though.

 

[xie-kitchin]

I've written a little bit of everything, but fiction is my main focus. I've written some short stories, but most of my ideas are more long form, novels and novellas. Written a fair amount of poetry, focused on it a lot in college, but gave up taking it seriously over 15 years ago.

I'm working on the second draft of a novel right now. Pretty much anything I write is speculative/futuristic, but I've repeatedly been told it has a definite literary slant.

 

[Artyczar]

Hi Xie. Does your novel have a title, or a working title?

 

[xie-kitchin]

"Burning Vessel" is the working title, but who knows if I will stick with it...

 

[musket]

I write letters, a lost art.

 

[Artyczar]

I write letters, a lost art.

Excellent letters.

 

[musket]

Thank you, Arty. I've also written what I guess could be called some brief memoirs of my experiences as a gentleman and a lover (brownie points for getting the pop culture reference... hint: "Free? Ya gotta pay, Frank, ya gotta pay").

 

[musket]

The reference is to David Carradine as Cole Younger, talking about his planned book to Stacey Keach as Frank James, in The Long Riders, a great overlooked Western directed by Walter Hill.

The real Cole actually did write such a book after he got out of prison in 1918. There's a very effective gimmick in the film-- all the actors in the James-Younger gang are played by actual brothers. David, Keith and Bob Carradine as the Youngers, Stacey and James Keach as the Jameses, Randy and Dennis Quaid as the Millers, and Christopher and Nicholas Guest as the Fords. James Keach is the best Jesse ever, he resembles the real one and has the same cold, expressionless eyes. Like a shark's.

Music by Ry Cooder.

 

[WFMartin]

I've written a few poems, but unpopular as it may seem to be by today's trend,.......I make mine rhyme!
I also have written a few, short, "items", the likes of which may grace an art, or lit. section of a newspaper.

Here's a bit of my prose, that I wrote about 11 years ago, when my granddaughters were very young:


Pick Up, and Hug Your Kid


This is something that only a grandpa would think of, I believe--or possibly another artist. Certainly, it takes an older person who is less involved with the daily work force to entertain such a thought as that of mine, which follows.

We babysit our two youngest granddaughters for my son and his wife about three days each week. When my daughter-in-law's van rolls into the driveway, I am almost always the first out of the door to greet my grandchildren. One little girl is now four, and the other about a year and a half. The little 4-year-old raises her arms to have me pick her up, and I pick her up while her mom unloads the car, (and the other little girl), and I hug her, while she snuggles her head on my shoulder. She is not a "morning person," and she usually likes to cuddle, pretending that morning is not really happening, I suppose.

The thought I had, today, while holding her was that kids grow up, and much too soon, of course. But, somewhere between her age right now, and, let's say 18 years old, there must be a specific moment in both our lives at which she is too heavy and big, and I'm too old to lift her up, any more.

I got to thinking how profoundly sad that really is. I realize that at some moment in both our lives, I am going to cease picking her up any more. The day before, I may have picked her up, but perhaps today I won't. That one day of picking her up and giving her a big hug when I did, may come to an abrupt end, without either of us having ever realized it. And, THAT is the really sad part.

It will have been the very last time that I picked her up, never to do so again, and that fleeting moment will be lost in the history of our lives, never to have been appropriately celebrated, or even acknowledged by either of us.

Personally, at 72 years of age, I plan to pick up, and hold my granddaughters as often as I possibly can, while they are both small and light enough for me to do it. I want there to never be a time when I won't do that, although I know for sure that time will eventually arrive.

And, when that saddest of sad times arrives, and passes.....neither of us will have noticed. Well, perhaps I will have; I'll be the one with a tear running down my cheek.

Pick up, and hug your kids/grandkids. You'll never get another opportunity.

Bill



zI

 

[Artyczar]

I wanted to give this a sad face and a thumbs up at the same time. Good stuff.

 

[Maybenartist]

I love to write and yet I'm not the most grammatically endowed, although at times, I do feel the inclination.
My sister in law who is an author wanted to write the story of my, what could be described as a fairytale kind of relationship with my late wife.
My friends tell me I should write the story of my early life and my daughter says I should write the story of my whole life, which to a degree reads like a novel anyway and few who do not know me personally would believe all the things as truth, but they are and I sometimes wonder myself if I lived or dreamed it all.

 

[OliveOyl]

I’m not a writer and never had any desire to do it other than the mundane ways I already do it. It’s weird, but I’m able to easily express myself when I “write out my thoughts.” It’s like a direct (and natural) beeline from thought to expression. But if somebody else said, “write a story about this particular thing,” my mind would go totally blank. That’s a type of pressure that makes my brain turn off, melt down, or fizzle away. Not sure WHY that is, but there it is.

I think about this often, because I talk to myself all day long. But when I’m talking out loud and in person to another person, thoughts don’t flow as easily outta my mouth. Especially, if I’m tired or distracted in any way, it takes great effort to communicate and make sense. It’s like I’ve gone too far inward to come outward with any sort of smoothness or grace. It’s when I feel most like an Italian Cave Woman...sort of grunting out words and stumbling through words and using my hands to pull the imaginary words out of the “talking system.”

I think that’s why I like painting so much.
It’s nonverbal.

And now...I’m tired of talking.
And you...are tired of listening.

Grunt.
Scratch.

 

[snoball]

I am not a writer at all, except for playing around with some little short poems and like Bill, mine have to rhyme.