If My Novel Was A Manga!

I've had a twisted novel plot haunting me for years, and at times I revisit its dark and perverted world.  The plot is pretty simple:

In a totalitarian society controlled by government, where a person's life is worth nothing and basic human rights are nonexistent, an unremarkable government worker gets arrested on false charges of political crime.  His wife is summoned to the secret police service and is given a choice - if she performs "certain duties" willingly with the commandant, who is secretly obsessed with her, he will let her husband go.  She keeps refusing, her husband's interrogation and torture escalates in monstrosity and  cruelty in order to break her spirit and force her into the arms of the devilishly handsome but corrupted and twisted commandant.   In this sick and perverted story, the rules of right and wrong are challenged and discarded with each passing page, leaving the reader increasingly aghast and disgusted, but unable to turn away.

And then, I started reading a shojo manga called "Black Bird", which is as twisted, sick, and sexually perverted as shojo manga can be.  Anything goes - handsome villains, sexually insatiable vampires, killer demons, as long as a teenage girl is involved in the middle of all the blood and gore and sexual tension.  


So I thought, "What if my novel were a shojo manga?"  How free would that be!  Here I am, trying to rationalize the setting, the politics, the characters' reasoning, mentally fighting with the future critics who will try to find fault with any weakness in the plot.  Now, if my novel were a manga, everything would magically fall into place! 


 Wife - a damsel in distress.
Commandant - a handsome, cruel villain.
Husband - a useless, but cute and pitiful good guy.
Setting - a fantasy totalitarian world in an undetermined country and future.
Sexual tension - escalating exponentially.
Blood/torture - elaborate and lurid.

If only I could draw! >_<

The Trick Is To Keep Breathing

Am I a true writer?  Laypeople think that only if you are published, you can be considered a REAL writer.  Others, the more knowledgeable about the agonizing process of writing, say that you MUST WRITE to be a writer.  And still others, the envious and vicious type, a.k.a. my ex-boyfriend, think that you are ONLY a writer if you GET PAID for what you write.

These days, I am doing neither, struggling with trying to find motivation to write every day, and being completely overwhelmed and disgusted by even starting to think about the whole tedious writing process.

Having finished two online writing courses, that something possessed me to take at the same time, I feel wrung out.  All my words have been washed out of me, strung out to flap in the wind on the clothesline, like forgotten laundry.  All my motivation for writing, cleaning, having fun, and simply living is gone with the trickle of sand in an hourglass.  All that is left is silence and the residue of self-criticism.  Empty time, filled with incessant useless ruminations about my own futility.

Am I a writer?

Instead of writing, I read about writing, I subscribed to the Writer magazine, I have found a living, breathing writer's group in Buffalo, I started taking notes on a novel that has been haunting me for years, I have jotted down a few passing thoughts in poetic form, I even squeezed out a few freewriting pages out of my tired and stressed out brain, but I still do not feel like I am WRITING, or that I am a WRITER.

What would it take for me to acknowledge, to truly believe that I AM?

Natalie Goldberg, the guru of creative writing, says that we have to be prepared for some of the worst writing to come out of ourselves in our writing lives.  I think that's what I am producing right now.  And I hope that this drought will pass, and there will be the Great Flood of Inspiration in future.  I will keep criticizing myself and overcoming my self-flagellation every single day, just trudging on, and producing some of the worst writing in the history of the Universe, and then, I may have a single gem of brilliance under all this pile of rubbish and rumble.

"The trick is to keep breathing...."


***********

When are you going to rise to the challenge?
Always looking at others' success 


So you think you can?


From the grime of the soul's sorrow
A poem blooms