Metaphor or Hyperbole?

Here's an engineering term applied in a less convential way (I like to call that "original"):

In those moments after he first saw her he was overwhelmed by her beauty. His heart ran faster and faster until it began to cavitate. He was in love.

Is it a metaphor to apply a pumping term to what is in fact, a pump? Since hearts don't generally cavitate due to their ingenious design and the ample suction head available, I guess it's hyperbole.

Free Enough to Deam

I’ve stopped writing fiction for about a year now. I want to start again; I am starting again. I’ve been thinking why I stopped and I what I want from the process.

Fundamentally, I got disillusioned by the publication rejection process. Who doesn’t, sometimes? There was one major turning point on this road. I’d felt I’d really nailed a particular story. It wasn’t accepted. I learned then that the force of rejection is proportional to the square of how great you think your story is. It’s about that gap between how good you think it is, and what the response is.

I’ve heard it said many time that you need to write fiction primarily for yourself, the writer. That’s never made a lot of sense to me, because I try to write for the audience. Now it does make sense. Writing for yourself is about why you write, not how. The how is about using words to communicate with your audience. After some time of focussing on the how, it becomes the why. What I mean is this: the response of your audience becomes your reason for writing, and that’s a very dangerous place to be.

So now the why is for me, the how is for you.

As I’ve started to write fiction again, I’m finding that the ideas don’t come as easily as they once did. Putting ideas into words still works well, because I never really stopped writing. In my work I’m always distilling my thoughts, arguments and concepts into reports, e-mails and graphs. But it’s always about something that’s happened, not something I’ve imagined. I know ideas are cheap, and they will come again.

I just need my imagination to feel free enough to dream again.

The Artist's Secret

In his recent blog post Comic FAIL, Dilbert creator Scott Adams describes why he thinks a recent Dilbert strip flopped with his audience. Why? Because he ignored "The Artist's Secret":

The Artist's Secret is that all art comes from abnormal brains. So if you create art that satisfies your own tastes, you have created for a market of exactly one abnormal person. If you're lucky, a handful of other freaks get some joy from your creations too. But it won't be enough to pay your bills. It's not a career until you learn to create products that normal people like.

As a writer with an abnormal brain, I think I have a lot to learn from this. I like to think other writers and people with abnormal brains read this blog sometimes, so that's why I'm sharing this with you.

How embarrassing!

At the end of December, I shared my excitement about my short story People Need to Know moving from the Slush Pile to In Process at Every Day Fiction.

Well, today I got my long awaited reply. They like the piece, and want me to make some minor rewrites. Their comments were very positive, and I think the changes they suggested are spot-on. I fell over myself sending them an e-mail that they could expect my rewrite in a day or two.

For reasons that must have seemed good at the time, I edited the original version of this story in my computer's temporary directory before sending it off. I remember now that I thought I'd just make a change here and there; but I actually re-wrote, re-shuffled and revised the entire story. Time away from a piece really helps you look objectively at it during the editing process.

Every Day Fiction has an online submission system, so I just copied and pasted the text in there, and that was it. Except of course that I'm very dillegent in cleaning out my temporary directories.

I don't have a copy of what I sent them.

What to do? Well, I ate humble pie and sent this little "PS" e-mail to them:

PS:
Is it possible for you to e-mail me a copy of the submission that I made? It appears that I stored the file in a temporary directory, and it has been deleted. I'm sorry to ask this; however, I know that I made a lot of changes since the last version of this story I still have. It wouldn't be appropriate for me to work again from that version.

Again, I'm really sorry about his mistake - I've broken one of the golden rules of submitting works for publication.

I'm hoping to get an e-mail with my story soon, and a note that says, "No worries, mate, these things happen."

Has anything like this every happened to you? Do you think I did the (w)rite thing?

Simon's Novel

I just posted a six-sentence story called Simon's Novel here.

Simon was desperate to write his novel, but was caught in a creative paradox. He wrote best when his life was turbulent: when wife, kids and work demanded his time and his mind and his inner strength. This was when he really felt and understood life; themes and plots and words flowed like water amidst the chaos, hastily recorded on a notepad, or on the computer – when he could get the kids away from it. Occasionally a moment of respite came, when children were on camp, or with grandparents, and his wife was just wanted to read a book or visit friends.

"Go, write your book," she would say, "and enjoy the quiet; take advantage of it."

And so Simon would site behind the computer, trying to remember the emotions and words of the hectic times; watching the cursor flash and writing nothing.