Story day! Listen to my story “The Librarian” at Cast of Wonders

My story “The Librarian” is now available for your listening pleasure at Cast of Wonders. It’s part of CoW‘s “Banned Books Week”, just like my story “The Wayfinder & His Sister” was last year. (As you might be able to tell, I love Banned Books Week, and I LOVE Cast of Wonders.)

Listen to “The Librarian”

“The Librarian” is beautifully narrated by Katherine Inskip. The episode is hosted by Melaine Huyck-Aufdermar, a real life librarian!, and the audio producer is Jeremy Carter. I am so grateful to CoW for accepting this story. One of the best highs I’ve ever experienced as a writer, is hearing my stories read perfectly by other people. I usually have a hard time reading my own work once it’s finished and published, but listening to it when it’s read by someone like Inskip makes it possible for even me to enjoy it.

I wrote a bit about how this story came to be over on Twitter a while ago, and here is that thread:

I have a new story coming out at @CastOfWonders for Banned Books Week, it's called The Librarian, and while writing it, I learned (again) that whatever rules I set for myself when writing don't always apply.

So, here's a thread about giving up.

— Maria Haskins (@MariaHaskins) September 21, 2018

And… it just was not happening. A big thing for me has always been "finish what you start". When I was younger, I would start a million stories and never finish them. These days, I usually power through the low spots and come out the other side with a story (crap or not).

— Maria Haskins (@MariaHaskins) September 21, 2018

Finally, I gave up. I tossed the entire story I'd written in the bin. (Maybe I'll get back to it some day.) And instead, I picked up a story fragment I'd written down in one of those random .doc files on my computer and that story, the new story, just flowed as soon as I started.

— Maria Haskins (@MariaHaskins) September 21, 2018

But sometimes, the words are just dead wood, and nothing you do can ignite them. I felt like a total failure giving up on that first story, but it lacked *something*. It felt mechanical, like putting together pieces of lego rather than making something really happen on the page.

— Maria Haskins (@MariaHaskins) September 21, 2018

Anyway, moral of this story: some rules were made to be broken, even if you made the rules up yourself, and even if the rules worked great before. Every now and then, the rule that worked fine in all previous cases will. not. work. And that's OK too. pic.twitter.com/d7JObY4U8g

— Maria Haskins (@MariaHaskins) September 21, 2018