Friday, January 7, 2011

Why am I a word-whore?

Because I'm insatiable.

Or more to the point, my muse is. If I'm not writing, I'm absorbing. Sucking down information and learning. Thus the photo of Mata Hari. While I don't aspire to end my days in front of a firing squad like she did, her ability to entice secrets from those charged to keep them is an inspiration.

Other lives, other worlds, other realities - they're addictive. Creating them, for me, is a drug I can't live without. Who among you, when you were children, when asked what you wanted to be when you grew up, answered "A word-whore"? Me, either. Yet, how often did your answer to that question change as you aged? My answer was never the same twice. So I looked stuff up - what it meant to be a teacher, or a veterinarian, or an astronaut, or a gardner, or any number of things. There's all this data floating around in my brain - information useless in any sort of real life application, but in fiction! Ah. In fiction, I can be anyone or anything and I'm no longer limited by the peculiarities of the human body.

When it comes down to it, I'm a word-whore because I can't do anything else. I've tried. There was the acting school thing, where the instructors said repeatedly, "If you can do anything in the world other than act, you should." Then came the large software company after I discovered I didn't like poverty and lo, I could do something other than act. I masqueraded as a responsible citizen for a few years, but like Mata Hari's spying stint, the disguise couldn't last.

Writing in secret had gotten me through the deaths of friends and family, through every anger, boredom, joy and pain in life, but it was a hobby. I could quit anytime I wanted. Really. Except I discovered I couldn't. I'm addicted to the rush of sanity that followed a well turned phrase or a cathartic, big battle.  That left only one thing to do.

I gave up all pretense of respectability and became a full time word-whore. The profession has been kind. My first book came out in November of 2010. The second book comes out in May of 2011. But I am insatiable. I want more. Much more. I hope you do, too.

13 comments:

  1. Oh, Marcella, I got "Enemy Within" for Christmas! ~rubbing hands with glee~

    Now, to go lounge on my piles of pillows ala Mata Hari and read...

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think I tried writing my first story when I was 7. I would continue to write through the years, stopping and starting and stopping again, but in the end it became a basic need.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I read Enemy Within on my Kindle right after it came out. It rocks! Might have to get a paper copy so the Viking can read it too.

    Marcella - you've talked about one of my favorite things about writing fiction. You can live anywhere, at anytime, as anybody you choose to be. Mmmm. Makes me want to go get back into my story.

    ReplyDelete
  4. "Other lives, other worlds, other realities - they're addictive. Creating them, for me, is a drug I can't live without."

    YESSSS!!! Absolutely! I don't watch soap operas because my imagination is more satisfying to me and in my world I can make people do things more interesting to me, more deadly to them (mwahahahah)AND I can add in the elements that fascinate me most. Magic. Vamps. Werewolves.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I, however, did once say I wanted to be a Playboy Bunny. When I was about seven. *ahem*

    ReplyDelete
  6. @Jeffe - I always knew you were pervy. Look how young you started! LOL.

    And I agree on the other worlds thing entirely. I have zero interest in writing anything in a contemporary world (unless it's UF and I can mix it up.) The whole point of writing for me is to write what I want to read/experience/be. I probably wouldn't last long if I were stuck writing about the normal day-to-day stuff - but give me a chance to write epic stories with dragons? I'm totally there. :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Jeffe - really? And what was the reaction of the parental unit?

    Allison - I like writing 'real' worlds okay IF I can do magical realism. Maybe it's me trying to recreate the world the way I think it should be. Except, I don't imagine that I honestly want a dragon in my front yard. Or back yard either for that matter.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Um, it might have even been at a dinner party in front of all their friends...

    ReplyDelete
  9. I want more!
    Enemy Within was a great read and it even got me into reading more SciFi romance, so keep the books coming.

    ReplyDelete
  10. @Sullivan Yes! ENEMY WITHIN rocks!

    @Kerry & @Allison...I like magical realism. There's something very creepy about a world that's almost identical to our own with that ONE THING off. Makes one stop to think if it really was possible...

    @Jeffe You were a very precocious seven year old. At seven, I would have thought that meant dressing up as the Easter Bunny.

    ReplyDelete
  11. "Precocious" is a nice word for it!

    ReplyDelete
  12. @Sullivan your wish is my command! @Jeffe - the 7 yo playboy bunny story cries out to be written up on your blog. Just saying. It sounds like a howler. And I can already see the faces of all of the adults and hear that several seconds of pin-drop silence while they all decided you hadn't really said what you said. :D

    I'm with y'all on the magical realism. I don't think it's in my nature to write straight reality. I live here. If that's what I wanted, I could watch the news. And that's bad for my mental health.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Maybe I can tell it here - though the first weekly topic I could wedge it into would likely be "Exposure" - and that's not until the end of June. Hmm.

    ReplyDelete