April 2012 – Page 3 – sniderwriter

A Morning Person? Me??

April 10, 2012Stefanie Snider

Hah, bet that got your attention.

Seriously, though, I’m still trying to get into some sort of steady writing routine. My work schedule is kind of all over the place, so it’s been hard with this job to find a constant. I was finding that I’d come home from a long day at DayJob, and sit in front of the internet until it was time for bed. I’d write, sure, but I wasn’t getting either the quality or the volume I wanted.

I’ve always enjoyed staying up late, and I’ve always slept in. I decided to get up earlier and knock out a couple hours’ writing every morning before work. I used to think I could only be creative at night, but looking back that was a flawed assumption. Of course it seemed like I could only do stuff at night; I was sleeping in until the last possible moment before work.

I decided on this new morning plan a couple of weeks ago. Today was the first day it went according to plan.

The results? I grabbed a coffee and some breakfast, chowed while I caught up on time-wasters, and by the time I had finished breakfast I was ready to go.

I met my word-count goal for the entire day within an hour of waking.

Not only that, but already having accomplished my self-imposed goal for the day put me in a much better headspace for DayJob. I felt great.

My God, I think I’m becoming one of…those people.

Take That, Boogeyman!

April 9, 2012Stefanie Snider

No, we’re not expecting. But I know what my next niece or nephew is getting…

(via Oddity Central.)

The Most Prolific Author You’ve Never Heard Of

April 8, 2012April 8, 2012Stefanie Snider

Henry Darger. Ever heard of him? I hadn’t either. I was browsing online and stumbled across his story. Immediately, I was in awe at the sheer dedication he showed as an author.

But you’ll never see his work in bookstores.

You’ll never see it, because his most famous epic, The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion is 15,145 single-spaced pages long. Not only did this unassuming man (a janitor by day) manage to pen more words in one epic than many will during their entire lives, he also painted hundreds of pictures to accompany it, which went on in turn to influence other artists.

Oh, by the way…he then went on to write a sequel that exceeded 10,000 pages.

And then a semi-fictional autobiography topping out at 4878 pages.

A documentary about the man and his work, In the Realms of the Unreal, was released in 2004.

What have you done lately?

What I’m Writing These Days

April 7, 2012Stefanie Snider

So, if you’ve followed the blog for any length, you may have noticed that I haven’t posted a new story in a while. (And by “a while”, it’s really not been that long, but I’m the type who has to be producing constantly so this is driving me nuts and oh my this is quite a run-on sentence.)

Anyway. You might not see any new shorts here for a bit. Why? Because I’m working on a new project, one that will hopefully straddle the line between short and novel length work. I’ve got this idea for shorts with a uniting theme that will go together to make a proper book-length…book.

Yeah. I promise it’ll be better written than this blog post.

Love Comics? Love Horror? Brace Yourself…

April 6, 2012Stefanie Snider

Did you have plans for this long weekend?

Yeah, those might be about to change.

Enter The Horrors of it All. This is easily one of my favourite blogs, and has been for years. It’s probably the best source of Pre-Code horror comic scans.

What does Pre-Code mean?
“Horror comics of the 1940s and early 1950s are often called ‘pre-Code’ horror in reference to the Comics Code Authority, a censoring board that was created in response to Dr. Fredric Wertham’s book Seduction of the Innocent and the subsequent public outcry against crime and horror comics. Since violent, gory and lurid content were what made pre-Code horror comics great, the stifling effect of censorship resulted in bland comics that didn’t sell. The horror comic market was dead, killed by the Code.” (from samuelsdesign.com)

Pre-Code is the good stuff. Monsters, murderers and the macabre await you in these pages. And The Horrors of it All actually provides full-page, full-story panels in all their delicious retro glory.

If you’re anything like me, you hated the chipper wholesomeness of Archie and gang, and thrived on comic blood and guts instead. This impeccably-maintained blog is worth a visit.

Happy Easter Slash Long Weekend

April 5, 2012Stefanie Snider

Emphasis on the slash.

Has anyone seen this?

Three Words: Wasp. Horror. Eyeball.

April 4, 2012Stefanie Snider

What the fuck. This is pretty fantastic, in a creepy mind-bendy kind of way.

Write the Words and Solve the Puzzle

April 3, 2012Stefanie Snider

I don’t plot my stories. Not in any real sense; I find if I have the whole thing written down and planned from A to B to C, the story is robbed of its magic and it’s no longer fun.

Instead, I have a very vague idea of what I want the story to be about, some spark that’s going to serve to set it off. “Murder”. “Sociopath”. That kind of thing. Then I’ll decide what big event I want to have happen in the story (hint: people often die). Then I get to sit back and write the thing.

It’s an adventure, not knowing exactly where the story will go. I’ve heard it said by other writers and I can vouch for it myself: half the time I’m just as surprised as (I hope) the reader is. Things will turn at the last moment and suddenly it’s a whole new story. (For example, What’s Inside was going to be about a terrible little boy mutilating animals in his backyard. Then I thought, don’t many kids who torture animals grow up to be murderers? I skipped a step and BAM Cody kills his teacher. I had no idea that was going to happen when I sat down to write.)

The reason I’m talking about this today is that I’m stuck again. It doesn’t have the sense of frustration that often accompanies being stuck; instead I have a couple pieces that I like and I need to solve the puzzle of how they tie in to one another. It’s fun instead of frustrating, because once those pieces click I’ll be off in an exciting new direction.

So I’ll sit back and wait. I’ll trust in my brain, my Muse, wherever the hell these ideas come from, and know that the puzzle will fit together at some point.

If you happen to catch me smiling to myself today, that’s a pretty good sign I’ve figured it out.