V. H. King's Ink

I do some of my best writing when I’m in the car.  I grew up on road trips—big and small, long and short, winter and summer.  Travelling is a year-round thing, and there’s always an adventure attached.  There’s always something. 

As July approaches, I’m excited to dive headfirst into an idea prompted by an Instagram post I saw a few weeks ago.  I usually don’t write vampires or werewolves—it has never caught my attention because it’s such a highly saturated genre.  Same thing with zombies.  It’s just not my thing.  But the post inspired me to think about vampires in a new way—and every time I’ve described the gist of my idea to someone, the response is nothing but positive. 

That’s going to be so good.

That’s FUCKING rad.

That’s going to be so powerful. 

I just felt something, when you said all that.

I don’t have much in the way of plot yet, but that’s what Camp NaNo is for.  My goal is to write 25,000 words and see where the story takes me.  Assuming this goes somewhere—which I think it will—I hope to focus on it again in November to add another 50,000 words.

As excited as I am about this new project, it triggers another round of worry.  What if this doesn’t go anywhere?  (Unlikely.)  What if I get stuck?  (It’s okay if I do.)  What am I going to update my blog with, if I’m hip-deep in another full-length project?  (I have an entire arsenal of short stories to draw from, and just last night I had an idea for the collection I plan to put out next year.) 

I’m always writing.  Even if I’m not at my computer, scribbling in a notebook, or tapping away on my phone—I’m always writing.  It’s like absorbing everything around me and letting it simmer for hours on end.  When it’s just right, it comes spilling onto the page, pouring out of me like a long exhale.  Like pulling a thread until it unravels. 

I often have to wait for that missing link, that critical insight, to make itself known so I can dive back into the story.  This past weekend, driving a few hours home after celebrating June holidays with my family, I wasn’t struck by parallels between character arcs or a sudden idea for world-building.  Instead, the insight was more about the writing itself. 

Put everything you have, pour everything that you’re feeling, into your writing. 

That’s not to say that I don’t always write with feeling.  For me, writing is feeling.  But sometimes I get hung up on technique.  My focus shifts to I have to make this story make sense, rather than accepting that the story has its own sense to make.  I‘m just here to put it on paper.  I have revisited projects and found myself surprised by the anger in my characters.  I find myself in awe of their determination, their integrity, their searching. 

When I write, it’s less about fashioning characters in a certain way and more about letting them be who they are, making room for them to grow into who they need to be.  And they’ll let me know all of this, each in their unique ways—but I have to listen to them.  By listening to my characters, I’m also listening to myself. 

I’m honoring all that I’ve absorbed: reading in parks on summer afternoons, watching rain slide across the windows while weaving through Chicago traffic, shivering with joy at snow flurries at the Indiana/Michigan border, leaning back in a kitchen chair after too much barbecue and macaroni and cheese and green beans and red velvet cake.  At every moment, there’s an element of story whispering to me.  As I launch myself into new projects and dare to fulfill my dreams, I have to listen to that whisper and trust the stories will be told.

While messaging a friend this weekend, I heard something else that both gave me pause and strengthened my resolve.  We both feel we’re late bloomers.  There’s always that sense of thinking that we should have figured things out by now, or that we would have a clearer direction, projection, of how our lives should go.  We reflect a lot, on the experiences that have led us to where we are, and the characteristics we’ve developed or discovered along the way. 

A lot of this is inevitable, but how we respond to it matters.

Wading and working through who we are is the way my friend and I are wired.  But how we respond to what we find, the decisions we make moving forward—that part matters.  What they said resonated fiercely with me, because it spoke to everything that I’ve been grappling with lately.  I feel like I’m scrambling to do the story justice.  I’m trying to figure out how to remain brave on this adventure instead of shying away from my dreams.  This is nothing new. 

The events of the outside world—because I don’t live in a vacuum, and these things affect me—have me wondering how to speak what needs to be spoken.  And while there is still that lingering fear of not saying the right thing, or saying the right thing but not saying it right, there’s something else for me to keep in mind.  Starting this blog, making a commitment to my writing on this scale, was in many ways a response to the times. 

Illness and death are inevitable.  Racism and the systems that maintain, perpetuate, and uphold racism are far too complex to be completely dismantled in my lifetime.  Wrestling with, defending myself against, and challenging these things are inevitable.  I’m going to have to deal with it.  I don’t write fiction specifically as social commentary, but–and–I am aware of the contextual space I occupy, the myriad perspectives I hold.

How I respond matters, and I‘ve decided to live. 

A global pandemic can put certain things in perspective—like why not invest in what I care most about sharing with others?  And as I start new project and continue to refine old ones, why not process my own experiences along with my characters?  Why not give myself room to be what I am, and grow into who I need to be?  Why not live fully, boldly, leaning into what I love and letting go of the preconceived notion of what I thought adult life was supposed to look like?