Last Chance
May. 11th, 2002 12:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pegkerrI saw Spiderman tonight. Yes, hmm, well, dum dee dum, I don't think I want to talk about that right now. Yet.
Before I went to the movie, I dropped in on Lois McMaster Bujold's book signing for the release of her new novel Diplomatic Immunity. (Click on the link that says Next at the top of the page to read some sample chapters.) I was one of the people she had critiquing the manuscript, so I got to read it about eight months ahead of everyone else. I'll be glad to read it again.
As I watched her sign books and answer questions, graciously as always, I thought about a little embroidered sign I'd seen that she has hanging on the wall of her bedroom. It reads "Last Chance for Marion Housewife." If I remember correctly, her good friend Lillian Stewart Carl made it for her.
Here's the story behind that wall hanging: Back when Lois first started writing, she was living in Marion, Ohio, an area so economically depressed that she couldn't even sell her house to move away, and she couldn't get a job that would pay enough to cover day care. So she wrote. She didn't sell her first book, Shards of Honor, right away, and so her first three books all got published pretty close together. She made quite a splash with them, and she was a nominee for the John W. Campbell Best New Writer Award. New writers have two years of eligibility for this award from the date of their first publication.
She was nominated for it both years after her first publication. And when she came up for the second time, the local Marion, Ohio newspaper did a little feature on it, which they rather baldly titled "Last Chance for Marion Housewife."
And it was true, she laughs when she tells this story. She laughs, but there's pain there too, and that's why she has those words mounted and hung on her wall, both as a joke and an ironic reminder. It's her story to tell, not mine, so I won't say exactly what it was she left behind in Marion, Ohio. The point is, however, that writing was what got her out of there. Writing saved her, she says.
There are people all over the world who care deeply about their writing; there are people who put their lives on the line for what they write. There are people who are only alive because of their writing.
If what you wrote next was your last chance--whatever that means to you--what would you write?
Put another way: if the next thing you wrote was the last thing you wrote--what would you write?
Hmm. I've been thinking about what![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alexmalfoy said about the story I'm working on, that I should work on it "as long as it's fun." I read earlier this week that "no one learns from what simply amuses them." (Do you believe that? I'm not sure I do.) And is the point of writing learning something? It can one possible purpose, I suppose. I wrote once that I write about what haunts me. Is it possible to write something that's both funny and deeply moving? I think so. Lois can do it, and many of the fanfiction writers I've been reading the last few years can do it, too.
What would I write if what I wrote next was my last chance? (What does that mean to me? Last chance to make a statement? Last chance for immortality? Last chance to sink down into someone's heart and move it deeply? What is my last chance?)
I'm not sure it would be the story I'm working on.
Hmm. Must think more about this.
Cheers,
Peg
Before I went to the movie, I dropped in on Lois McMaster Bujold's book signing for the release of her new novel Diplomatic Immunity. (Click on the link that says Next at the top of the page to read some sample chapters.) I was one of the people she had critiquing the manuscript, so I got to read it about eight months ahead of everyone else. I'll be glad to read it again.
As I watched her sign books and answer questions, graciously as always, I thought about a little embroidered sign I'd seen that she has hanging on the wall of her bedroom. It reads "Last Chance for Marion Housewife." If I remember correctly, her good friend Lillian Stewart Carl made it for her.
Here's the story behind that wall hanging: Back when Lois first started writing, she was living in Marion, Ohio, an area so economically depressed that she couldn't even sell her house to move away, and she couldn't get a job that would pay enough to cover day care. So she wrote. She didn't sell her first book, Shards of Honor, right away, and so her first three books all got published pretty close together. She made quite a splash with them, and she was a nominee for the John W. Campbell Best New Writer Award. New writers have two years of eligibility for this award from the date of their first publication.
She was nominated for it both years after her first publication. And when she came up for the second time, the local Marion, Ohio newspaper did a little feature on it, which they rather baldly titled "Last Chance for Marion Housewife."
And it was true, she laughs when she tells this story. She laughs, but there's pain there too, and that's why she has those words mounted and hung on her wall, both as a joke and an ironic reminder. It's her story to tell, not mine, so I won't say exactly what it was she left behind in Marion, Ohio. The point is, however, that writing was what got her out of there. Writing saved her, she says.
There are people all over the world who care deeply about their writing; there are people who put their lives on the line for what they write. There are people who are only alive because of their writing.
If what you wrote next was your last chance--whatever that means to you--what would you write?
Put another way: if the next thing you wrote was the last thing you wrote--what would you write?
Hmm. I've been thinking about what
alexmalfoy said about the story I'm working on, that I should work on it "as long as it's fun." I read earlier this week that "no one learns from what simply amuses them." (Do you believe that? I'm not sure I do.) And is the point of writing learning something? It can one possible purpose, I suppose. I wrote once that I write about what haunts me. Is it possible to write something that's both funny and deeply moving? I think so. Lois can do it, and many of the fanfiction writers I've been reading the last few years can do it, too.What would I write if what I wrote next was my last chance? (What does that mean to me? Last chance to make a statement? Last chance for immortality? Last chance to sink down into someone's heart and move it deeply? What is my last chance?)
I'm not sure it would be the story I'm working on.
Hmm. Must think more about this.
Cheers,
Peg