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....

"You have to finish -- that's what you learn from, you learn by finishing things." -Neil Gaiman That quote is sitting on my desktop right now, staring at me. I have two finished first drafts. One of them was in the midst of a rewrite when I was hit with a sudden and intense desire to do something else. Anything else. I couldn't concentrate on the writing. Maybe it was creative fatigue, or maybe it was guilt for spending so much time on something I like doing. It's ridiculous, but I grew up with the concept (largely from the Florida public school system) that if it doesn't hurt, it isn't work. And if it isn't work, than it isn't worth doing. No matter what the cause, I have yet to finish the rewrite. I thought focusing on some short stories would help. I thought that having something short published would push away the guilt with a little dose of commercial viability. There were two main problems with this plan: Short story markets a...