Justin Achilli - Justin Achilli -- Blog

Entries in craft (3)

Monday

25Jan2010

The Joyous Toil

January 25, 2010

I'm back at earnest work on another full-length work of fiction (having not learned my lesson with Demimonde). Over the past several days, I've been gathering the scraps I had previously scribbled in various forms — longhand in Moleskines, pinned unceremoniously into ill-named Google Docs, two stubborn Scrivener binders — and assembling the thing from the morgue has been a great deal of fun. After having been at impasses with the idea for intermittent spells, it all just clicked for me the other day, and the rocky parts came together with the newfound glue of having a good time with it.

That's the shame of it. Too often, I find myself laboring under the effort of making it all work that I lose the ability to step back and just let it work. Because it will. Fiction writes itself, and the writer is just the conduit. As Steven King says in his wonderful On Writing, "Stories are relics, part of an undiscovered, pre-existing world. The writer's job is to use the tools in his or her toolbox to get as much of each one out of the ground intact as possible." I enjoyed On Writing more than any of King's fiction, in fact, and I'll sing the praises of its message to high heaven.

So as I sit here, stitching together the unearthed fragments of conversation between Misters Finch and Thrush, the bravado of the American Arthur Armiger, the bittersweet resolve of Rachael, the hubris of Prince Geoffrey of Avalonia, and the honest evil of Dr. Cross, I get excited to see what will come out of the ground next. I promised myself two thousand words tonight, and while I'm not quite there yet, I look forward to going back to the dig.

Justin Achilli |

Where To Write?

September 15, 2009

In Stephen King's On Writing -- a great memoir, and my favorite book by King -- the author poses a problem. He places a vast desk in the middle of a room he has declared to be his office, puts the typewriter on the desk, and pronounces his studio ready for action. Thereafter, he quickly realizes that he doesn't like writing at his giant desk in his new office, and sets up shop at his old familiar, a card table just outside the laundry room.

I have Stephen King's problem. I have this great room at the front of the house with a lot of natural light. My bookcases are there. The closet is full of my belongings.

I don't like writing in that room, though.

Ain't that a kick in the pants? Having a dedicated office was one of the things I really looked forward to when we were shopping for houses and closing on the one we bought. Then we moved ourselves in and... eh.

The floor in front of the desk is a little uneven, so I have to hold myself in place while I'm sitting at the desk. The office is a bit isolated from the rest of the house, which I thought would be part of its appeal when I staked my claim there, but instead it makes me feel detached and distracted. I haven't even really finished unpacking it, and a few of the bookshelves are piled with loose junk, wires, etc.

Well, that stinks.

Undaunted, I've ordered a netbook, in the hopes of moving around and keeping the creative juices flowing. Of late, I've been working a lot in my longhand Moleskine, and I've been especially prolific with notes hastily scribbled into the margins. Hastily scribbled notes don't make for drafts or finished manuscripts, though, so I'm trying to remain flexible.

I chose the netbook specifically because I want bare bones. I got the solid-state hard drive, which is really small, because I don't want to be dragging around a ton of music. I didn't want a full notebook because I don't want full-scale computing. I don't want games. I don't even want the Office suite. I just want browsing, e-mail, and something I can use to draft from the couch or the reading room.

It's a shame about the office. But maybe my wife can put it to some clever use.

Justin Achilli |

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Monday

17Nov2008

I Can't Hear You

November 17, 2008

Eddy and I were talking the other day about writing habits and we decided that we were at opposites as to environments. He likes quiet.

I like racket. The more, the better. I wrote much of Demimonde at a bar, with a piano player banging away and the bar’s patrons staggering around all over the place. Their activity made me comfortable and energized, even though I wasn’t really paying attention to what they were doing. With the writing to focus on, I didn’t mind any of their shenanigans, I just let their ambient noise provide the fuel for the fire.

The opposite applies when it comes to music, however. I love to listen to music while I write, but it can’t have any lyrics. (So, yeah, I spent a lot of time singing along with that damn piano player instead of writing like I should have.) When I’m listening to songs as opposed to music, I either sing along or I work with the music in the background, but then when I think about it, I get distracted by the parts of the song I’m not hearing. That is, I occasionally remind myself that there’s an actual song going on, with somebody singing about something, and I get frustrated because I’m missing part of the song. So I’ll listen really hard to the song, which sends productivity to about zero.

It doesn’t make a lot of sense, sure, but that’s how it is. I work well with ambient noise. It’s not exactly reassuring like, say, the sound of the ocean when I’m trying to fall asleep. It’s more light having a fight go on nearby, but it’s okay because it’s not me having my ass kicked. I wonder if it’s the opposite — if the sound of activity surrounding me makes me comfortable knowing that the very sorts of things I’m writing about are happening around me on all sides.

Justin Achilli |