Carrie Callahan

Finishing NaNoWriMo is always a great feeling! Each time I manage to cross that finish line, I feel like a "real writer"--whatever that means. This year, though, I may have finished the month, but I have yet to finish the novel. The manuscript I'm working on is called Blood Tramp Blues , and it follows a hitchhiker who is suddenly confronted with the cosmic indifference of the universe when she's saved from a lovecraftian monster by a woman with powers via blood sacrifice--the eponymous Blood Tramp. And it's 54,000 words in with four fat chapters to go (they might have to be split into more--we'll see). I'm trying to explore what we do when faced with cosmic indifference. Most people assume that facing your own insignificance leads inevitably to destructive nihilism, but I disagree. I ascribe more to the optimistic nihilist 's perspective: so what if there's no meaning? That gives me ultimate control over what I decide has meaning in my life....

It's that time of year again:  NaNoWriMo season! I have a novel draft I needed to get out, and just in time, too! For the uninitiated. NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month, which is November of every year. People from all around the world set a goal to write a 50,000 word draft of a novel by the end of the month, which roughly translates to around 1,667 words a day. The idea is that finishing a first draft--finally getting that novel you've been dreaming of writing--out of your head and on paper is incredibly encouraging. It empowers writers to really believe they can do it--they can write a whole book! I totally get that NaNoWriMo isn't for everyone, but I've had repeated success getting out first drafts under the pressure of the daily writing goal. Some people work well with deadlines, and I happen to be one of them! I don't do NaNo every year, because I don't have an idea every year. Or an outline. Or a set amount of time I can ...

I've been struggling these last few weeks to reconcile the two goals I have for my social media accounts, so I'm splitting them. On one hand, I want to express myself specifically to my friends and family members. I want to write about silly adventures and my publishing successes. I want to post anecdotes and philosophies and other things I find interesting. On the other hand, I also want to write for writers. I want to be able to contribute to writing communities by reviewing resources, offering writing advice (whatever good my advice would do), and encouragement. Instead of doing either of those things, I've been trying to write to some middle ground on this blog. As I've kicked up my social media habits in the last few weeks, my Instagram account has come to look positively schizophrenic. I'm alternating selfies with writing prompts, pictures of my dog with blog posts about writer's block. Who even is that person? So, to maintain my sanity (as much ...

I've written on being blocked before , but coming fresh out of a bout of block makes me want to revisit the subject. Also, it's been a while. In the last four years, I've experienced a few bouts of writer's block and each time it's horrific. I've been depressed before, and for me writer's block doesn't feel far off. I can't focus on the story; everything I write seems bland, paltry, or cliche; and I'm obsessed with the likelihood of my own failure. I start to wonder what the point is on an existential scale. Like, why am I writing about space cowboys when it's unlikely I'll ever live to see Andromeda? The universe cares nothing for me, and less for the stories I haven't written. But, of course, eventually I work my way through it; usually, as I wrote way back in 2011, through conversation. Explaining the story to someone else gets me out of the trap of my own judgment. I no longer focus on what I hate about the story, but on...

Every now and then I need an ego check. Sometimes this comes from just a little bit of people watching. I recently attended Imaginarium , a local convention for all sorts of SF creators--writers, film makers, game designers, and cosplay enthusiasts. It was a lot of fun and I met a lot of really great authors there, but there was one fellow that sticks in my mind as a good example of how not to behave. Let's call him Fred. To be fair, I haven't been to a ton of conventions and I don't consider myself any kind of expert judge of social skills. That said, I do try and keep an eye out when I think I can learn, and just like with writing, being able to articulate what it is that affects me about someone else's behavior can help me calibrate my own. Fred was one such a calibration point. Fred became part of the conversation I was having with an author at their table, and soon came to be the center of said conversation. While we were talking, Fred asked the author if h...

Impostor syndrome has held me back so much more than I have admitted. For the last five years, I've had an idea percolating in my brain. It's had about six different false starts, followed by very real stalls and failures. That idea is About Write --a YouTube show teaching creative writing through a slightly academic lens. After graduating, I wanted to continue my education on my own, but all I could find were how-to books and expensive webinars. I didn't want to get further into debt to learn craft--I just wanted to keep practicing! So I thought that to spare others the price tag, maybe I could make my own free web series on the topic. I made a list of episodes, and wrote out scripts. I referenced some of the texts from my degree and even bought a DSLR camera! But what happened? A rotten question crept into my head: why would anyone listen to me? Sure, I had the education, but so what? I wasn't an "expert." I wasn't even published! I was an impost...