Brittany Maresh

writer

I’ve been going to karaoke with my friends on Thursdays, and I’ve discovered two things:
Most of my friends sing well and the music I listen to is not karaoke music. Neither of these things are startling revelations, to be honest. I get all my music from my four weird siblings, and my friends are the sort of people who, y’know, go to karaoke.

My current “top five” are all a little different, but they work for what I’ve been writing lately. I was going to make some argument about it not really being representative of the novel I’m currently working on, because the novel itself is weird, but I think that would probably be a lie no matter when I was saying it.

I re-set my song plays every so often, because for whatever reason the top played song get played more frequently. Here are my current top five played songs, with 15 plays in the past two weeks:

• Help Me by Alkaline Trio
• Who I Am Hates Who I’ve Been by Reliant K
• Secrets by One Republic
• Spaceman by The Killers
• Certain Tragedy by Saves the Day

Take from that what you will, because just looking at that list, I have to wonder what sort of monster I’m currently writing. Yikes.
-Bri Maresh

Dear World,

Lately, I have been working on a secret project. I haven’t discussed it with anyone. Not my family, not my friends, not either of my fantastic critique groups, nobody on Absolute Write, not even my own journals.
I have felt really out of touch with writers, lately, too. Isolated, like there was nobody to talk to about plot problems or character issues. It’s been very weird flying solo on this project after so many years of working with fantastic critique groups. I’ve had to think things through on my own, to rely on my judgment in ways I’ve been avoiding by using my critique group like an easy crutch.
I think, also, that it has been good for me. The writing is rough. The project is rough. The ideas are rough. But for the first time in three years or so, they’re also all mine. I can look at it and assess it as my own. The mistakes are mine, the good parts are mine. It’s all mine.
Still, I hope I finish this project soon.
I am starting to miss hanging out and talking to other writers.

Sincerely,

Brittany Maresh

Working hard on my current novel the night before a writing group meeting, I had the sudden thought that writing groups were as much a guilt-driven motivation as they are a support-driven motivation.

In this particular case, I have fifteen good chapters in a novel and have for months.  I also have another seventeen not so good ones.  I’ve needed to edit those last seventeen for a while, and until it hit me that my writing group is waiting for them, I had no reason to work on them.

Actually, I’ve kind of been avoiding thinking about them, because they are frighteningly messy.

NaNoWriMo was my excuse not to, but honestly? I think a factor of fear is there.  I’m afraid to fix these chapters, because I’m not sure I can fix them.  And if I don’t fix them, I have to rewrite them.  And if I have to rewrite them, maybe I will make them better, maybe I won’t.

And the idea of not being able to close this story, just leaving it hanging for the rest of my life?  That about terrifies me.

So I’m glad I have writing groups.  Three of them, now, I think.  If I didn’t have them, maybe I’d never work up the courage to make myself finish this.

Then again, sometimes fear can create as much courage as peer pressure.

I don’t know which is more of a motivator, right now, but I’ve started working on it again.  Seventeen chapters.   Circa 40,000 words.  And I’m not going to let them beat me.

-Brittany Maresh