The reason why its gotta be in 1,000 words or less? One word: newborn. I’m lucky enough to have scored a work-from-home gig, but still. Newborn. I understood that a baby would be a time vampire, but what I didn’t expect were the hormones.
And no. I’m not tired. I’ve always had two or more jobs. This is just the first time that one of those jobs has been feeding off of my deflated, screaming body. It’s for sure the first time a job brought its own set of fuck-all hormones with it that make me walk around my house in a circle, only to settle in a nest of blankets and books.
Here’s the thing, though. If there’s something Lisa and I have discovered on our podcast journey, it’s that every single writer/editor/podcaster we’ve had the pleasure of speaking with all have this one thing in common. They never gave up. No one ever said, “Oh, well I had a baby/got a job/got sick/life stuff/so I stopped everything.”
That’s the key, you see. You don’t stop. You don’t make excuses. But yeah, some things do get their edges cut. That’s what I’m learning, anyway. In this case, it’s words. Words will be emphatically cut. No survivors.
And frankly, I’d always wondered why an entire long-winded essay was required when I could sum up my point in a sentence.
As my mother would say: use your faster feet. That was her G-rated way of telling five-year-old me to hurry the fuck up, child.
I’ve been excited for this, though. Craft was maybe my very second favorite thing about graduate school. I loved finding out the how behind certain writer tricks. I miss finding the details. So, that’s what I mean to do. I’m going back to close readings and I’ll be posting my findings here. Hopefully some of what I find is helpful to you. I mean for this to be a viable source. I hope it makes you purchase some of these books so you may learn, too, because I’ll be talking about specific pages and instances of certain craft elements. Should be fun.
So—my new tiny human is beginning to stir, which means we gotta be quick. Trigger warning: there will be swearing, I will be talking about my child, and I will be merciless. No writer is safe. I don’t mean for that to sound scary. I’m just attempting (poorly) to say that I intend to offer you insights, from anyone and everyone. That’s really what I want to do for you, you see. I want to come to your virtual door and leave you a tool you’d been looking for to fix that one thing. Here’s hoping I can do that for you, in 1,000 words or less.
Hurry. Before Jackson wakes up.