What "Casually Homicidal" Means to Me | Olivia J

"Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of their life, every quality of their mind, is written large in their work," - Virginia Woolf

Sometimes, my writing is a bit too personal. 

Exhibit A: A Cactus In the Valley

(Let's be real, no further exhibits needed.)

Casually Homicidal is no exception. Even though the pitch is quite outlandish - a road trip with a wannabe serial killer - the themes and the character arcs speak to me. They are me.

Just like with A Cactus In the Valley, I seem to have divided myself - more aptly, my inner struggles - and incorporated them into my current writing project. 

I've always wanted to write a road trip, but I never really knew why, other than the fact that road trips are fun. However, Arden and Hendrix want and need to get away. They need to break away from their hometown in order to grow. But in doing so, they realize they miss it more than they thought they would. Which, for lack of a more eloquent phrase, is a Big Mood. 

They're both 18 - on the cusp of having to decide what they want to do with their lives. Arden wants to hit pause, and Hendrix is relatively aimless, except for that one thing, of course. Being 18 myself, that whole concept is #relatable. I wish I could stop time like Arden, and, even though I know what I want, I don't know how to get there. Like Hendrix, I have a one-track mind.

As like many young adult novels, it's a lot about finding yourself. Except identities change and grow. Sometimes, we think we know who we are, and then something comes along and that all falls apart. It's about taking control of our identity, and not letting the past define who we are. I've been having this crisis lately, where I think I know who I am, but then something comes along and makes me rethink all of that. That you don't just find who you are and then it's all over, then you've hit your zenith and you can move on. Life is a constant journey of self-discovery.  

While I believe that humans often try to do good, we are also extraordinarily selfish. I also believe that we are all capable of doing awful things under the right conditions. Psychology says so. I wanted to explore how mental illness and environmental factors lead to violence. What if Jeffrey Dahmer had dealt with his repressed sexual desires in a healthy way? What if Aileen Wuornos hadn't been abused and neglected?  Would they still have done the things they did?

Don't fear - I'm not going to do any of those things, and I'm not really drawing from my own experiences here. But I wanted to explore how we all have that darkness inside of us, and what it would take to draw it out. 

But really, Casually Homicidal is my heart and soul. It's a fictionalization of who I am right now, and the struggles that have plagued the past year or so of my life. It is one of a shifting identity, of deciding what kind of person I'm going to be. It is one of nostalgia and childhood. It is one of pain, and how we learn to live after it. It is one of the future, of how bright it is that we almost don't want to look at it, for fear it's not all that it's cracked up to be. 

Casually Homicidal is my heart and soul. The inspiration has come from the people in my life, big and small. The inspiration has come from my love of Americana and all things vintage. It has come from me. I'm giving you another piece of my soul, dear readers. 

I hope you love it. 

~The WordShaker

Abandon Word Counts: Unpopular Opinion about NaNoWriMo

"There are three rules to writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are," - W. Somerset Maugham

Happy National Novel Writing Month, fellow writers! We've got a couple of days under our belt, maybe you're doing great, maybe you hate yourself a little bit. Regardless, I'm here to drop some truth on why word counts are toxic for me and why it's worth considering to move away from word counts. 

November 2014 was my first NaNo experience - I was still working on A Cactus In the Valley in my freshman year of high school. I went at it for about a week, and then petered out. 

Every day, I felt like a failure for not meeting my word count goal, despite having written some good content during that first week of NaNo. And then my quality started to decline. I thought - why do this if I'm just going to emotionally drain myself and write garbage? Keeping track of my word counts makes me feel like a failure, no matter what the actual quality of what I wrote was. 

Ever since then, I've been super strict about not keeping abreast to what my word count of a particular project was. For me, it puts a quantifier on something that can't really be quantified. 

NaNoWriMo also judges success on word count, instead of quality. And maybe that's the point for newer writers who need to just let loose. 

However, I judge my writing - and my writing sessions - not on length or word count, but by quality and how far I progressed. Did I finish a chapter? Did I finish a couple of scenes? Then I surely had a successful writing night, no matter how many words I wrote. 

However, sometimes, I'll still feel the nag to constantly check my word count or judge how short something is in comparison to something else. And honestly, I feel like the writing community is partially to blame for this mentality, and the almost religious adherence to word counts. 

But are you ready for this: word count doesn't matter. At least not when it comes to the quality of your story/your writing. Sure, word count matters when you're submitting something or when you're cutting or fleshing out to adhere to genre conventions for novel length. However, when writing - just write. Don't try and slap a number on your success or failure. 

Now, don't get me wrong and say that I'm trying to convert you who swear by word counts. If you have found success through NaNoWriMo, then more power to you. 

What I am trying to do is help you see it in a new light, from another perspective, from someone who has failed at NaNoWriMo every single year, but still manages to write award-winning stories - both long and short. Find your own creative process that works for you. Don't feel like you have to measure your success on arbitrary word counts.

Success in writing comes not from quantity - not even from quality sometimes - but in a story that is creatively satisfying to you. One that changes you. Don't let believing that you have to write X-amount of words in order to achieve success stop you from actually persevering and writing that story. 

So, hence, screw word counts. I don't use them. They stress me out. I only use them when I'm completely done with a story. 

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk. 

~The WordShaker