visit and exchange: ignore the cold

Just some random writing I did on a whim. No real story here, no deeper meaning. So ... y'know. Fair warning.

"Now, when we go in here, you need to be cool, you got it?"

We were jammed in together on the landing of narrow stairs that spiralled down a half dozen floors below us. The hallway, dimly lit and poorly kept, meandered down to corridors that made me uneasy to have hovering at my periphery. But we would go no further into this labyrinth. We had arrived.

"Yeah, man, I'm cool. C'mon, when have you known me not to be cool?"

My friend Ross shook his head at me from underneath his hoody, the only part of him that moved. It didn't make me feel any better. "Look, Quills, the last time I took you to a place where a guy lit up a joint you danced around like you expected to have the door kicked in all night."

"Well, we were in a public place!"

"And at my Christmas party when that girl showed up with the keg."

"She was seventeen," I answered, knowing full well that I'd get the same speech I got before we left. I just hung my head and tried to look regretful that I had ever been so lame and let him talk.

"So what, man? Half the people there were seventeen. Nobody cares. Just like nobody cares that we're going to walk in now and talk to a guy who has something I want and I'm going to buy it. You understand? And you said you were going to be cool but I'm going to tell you, this guy smells uncool like you had a dead cat down your pants and he is not going to be cool with you being uncool."

"Right. Be cool and all will be cool."

"Exactly," Ross said, clapping me on the shoulder. "You're learning, you prissy bastard. You're learning."

Ross knocked twice on the door and we were lead in. The apartment was as dim as the hallway, perhaps even dimmer. We were in some sort of foyer, with a woman greeting us and offering us a drink if we wanted it. I heard Ross answer no for both of us as I tried to see my way ahead.

Ross walked into the room beyond and I followed. It was obviously once a living room, but it had been converted into some sort of meeting place, with chairs and couches and large pillows everywhere. There would be room for three dozen people if they didn't mind getting close.

Tonight, however, it was just a man sitting in a large, worn down armchair near the open window. In February the open window let in a blast of cold air, cutting through the stuffy smells of cooking and living that we left behind in the hallway. It was like breathing alertness, though I was already cold in my jacket.

The man in the chair was tall and thin and obviously unbothered by the cold despite wearing only a white dress shirt and a hat struck at a jaunty corner on his head. He was reading by city glow and moonlight, a cigarette in one hand and a book in the other, shafts of light brushing by the smoke heading out the window.

"Hey man," Ross said, stepping forward. He reached out his hand and the man in the chair stuck his cigarette between his lips to shake Ross' hand. "It's been a while."

"I'm here anytime," the other man said. He glanced over at me and even in the gloom I could see he was a good looking guy, maybe not even thirty, though he certainly looked more intense than anyone I had ever seen Ross hanging around.

"Oh, yeah, this is Quills. Quills, this is my man Justin. Quills is green to all this, so don't go too hard on him, a'ight?"

Justin leaned forward and extended his hand. I shook it, though it was as cold as the winter air coming in from the window. I didn't know how he wasn't shivering sitting there like that. "It's nice to meet you," I said, returning the handshake even though his grip and the cold combined into the splash of pain in extreme temperatures where your mind is still trying to sort out if you've been burnt or frozen.

"Quills, that's an interesting name."

"Ah, just a nickname," I said, suddenly self conscious. His eyes danced across a shadowed face like they were picking up the moonlight, though with it framing him I wrote it off as a trick of my nerves. Trying to be cool was so hard.

"I see. Well, Quills, why don't you have a seat wherever you like and let me and Ross get down to business. You seem a bit uncomfortable."

"No, I'm fine," I said a little too quickly and a little too loudly. I laughed nervously. Ross just rolled his eyes at me, which only made me feel more panicked. I didn't want to mess this up. I had begged Ross to bring me along, to prove that I could live his lifestyle without any trouble.

Justin laughed. "If you say so. You sure you won't have a drink? I'm sure Cheryl will be happy to get you whatever you want."

"Um, some ... water? Or coffee, if you have it." I realized even as I said it that that wasn't the drinks a place like this would offer, but what was said was said and I could only stand there looking dumb, mouth agape, trying to think of a drink that would immediately show that I wasn't as terrible at this as Ross assumed I was.

"Let's split the difference, then," he said. "Cheryl!" His voice was loud and resonant in the empty room and the woman came from behind the door. "Get this poor boy an Americano before he runs out of here screaming."

Cheryl looked over at me with a smile that normally would make me nervous for a whole other set of reasons. But in a place like this, it was the normal smile of a pretty girl and it was real and relatable and I felt instantly calmer. As she retreated into the kitchen I found myself settling into the nearest seat, the middle of a long low couch that stretched across most of one wall.

“Anyway,” Ross started, “I know I haven’t been by in a while but things have been pretty crazy. I hope there aren’t any hard feelings about that?”

“Of course not,” Justin answered, taking a long drag on the cigarette that had been idling between his lips. It flared back to life, the one spot of warmth in the room. “I understand how it is. Times are tough all around. You don’t exactly see this place as lively as it used to be.”

“Yeah, I hear you keep it going on from time to time.”

“What can I say, I like having friends over,” Justin said with a smile. Ross handed him an envelope which he barely bothered to look at. I knew Ross was saving up to buy something from him, drugs of some kind, but I didn’t know and I really didn’t want to ask. Ross was a friend but sometimes it was good to know the boundaries. I couldn’t try to be cool for everything.

Justin set the envelope beside him in the chair and then gestured for Ross to take a seat. When Cheryl came out, it was with a large, steaming mug of coffee for me. I wrapped my hands around it, glad to have some warmth flowing through my otherwise icy fingers. It was soothing. I couldn’t imagine staying in here for any length of time comfortably, especially if all I was doing was reading. The idle thought crossed my mind that Justin was some kind of vampire. I laughed quietly to myself over the coffee.

“Something funny?”

I shot a look at Ross but he just shrugged so I answered Justin, telling him about the cold between careful sips of the drink in my hands. It was like heaven, a warm blanket wrapping around me from the inside.

Justin laughed in return, louder than mine. “Vampire? Man, you kids these days and your vampires. No, no, I’m perfectly normal, more or less. I don’t really feel cold.” He handed Cheryl the envelope, and she disappeared into the room she came from.

Ross chimed in. “It’s true, we all thought it was just some macho bullshit until we dared him one time to do that polar bear challenge thing where guys go swimming in ice water? And he totally did it. There were these guys who had been there for decades who said he was unreal.”

“They wanted to take me to a doctor and see if there was something wrong with me,” Justin said. “I refused, of course. I’ve lived this long with it, haven’t died of hypothermia yet, why start worrying about it now? But I’ll admit sometimes it makes guests uncomfortable. Tonight I’m not entertaining so I just let the air in. I find it refreshing. Reminds me of the mountains.”

Cheryl walked back out and handed Ross a small envelope. I glanced at it curiously but didn’t ask. It seemed small if it was drugs, smaller than the envelope he handed over would have justified. Cheryl turned to me. “If it’s too cold out here, you can come into the kitchen, keep me company. I’ve got a heater in there and everything.”

Justin shook his head. “Don’t go throwing out the welcome wagon just yet. He’s green and likely to startle.”

I shook my head. “I’m not startled. Some warmth sounds nice,” I said up to her, going to stand up.

“Be careful, tiger, she’s a man-eater,” Justin said with a grin.

I looked up at Cheryl, who just shrugged. “You can’t believe everything you hear.”

Ross laughed. “Yeah, but that works both ways. C’mon, you can work your charms if he gets up the nerve to come back. We have a party to go to, thanks to you.” He tipped the envelope against his forehead in a salute, which Justin returned with a tug of the brim of his hat.

I looked down at my warm coffee, and up at Cheryl looking suddenly put out at being shut down by both men. Now that we were here without incident, and I was warming up, and there was the offer of an even warmer place and a friendly face, I found my earlier nervousness dissolving in the smoke and the moonlight.

“Aw, c’mon Russ, do we have to?”

“Quills, you try me.”

“What are friends for?”

Keep on Keepin' On

So I know I've been a big ol' bastard when it comes to updating this blog. I know it, you know it. It's the elephant in the room and I just want to say that it's probably here to stay. At least for a little while. I know you don't want to hear that, but that's the way it is. Trust me, the elephant ain't no fan of it either. The couch barely seats two normal folk, much less a giant malevolent pachyderm.

Through a whole mess of reasons, including illness, apathy, depression, and being busy with other stuff, this blog's totally fallen by the wayside. In part that's by design. I went out and got myself a nice movie blog I write stuff in with the always-fabulous Elizabeth Ditty. If you're interested in hearing mostly about movies then you can find it here.

But other than that, I've been struggling through a novel, and that doesn't engender itself to a whole lot of other writing, especially anything that isn't so heavy with ennui and self-pity that I wouldn't be mortified to post it. How long that'll be the case is anyone's guess. So until then, as always I tweet too much but that's where I always am if you really want to hear me talk about the inane stuff. And I'll be back when I have a finished book, or I get in a mood to write a short story, or any other of a hundred other possibilities.

It's really quite exciting, when you think about it.

long way down the holiday road

Further away than the most fuel efficient car could drive on a single tank of gas, out where the world and the sky met each other in a secret communion few human eyes had ever seen, a jeep trundled through the dirt. No roads out here, in this forsaken expanse of land. A country of 300 million people and even in all of that teeming life there were places like this, raw places that felt as though they were cast out of time.

Not that I appreciate that enough to keep it unspoiled, Palmer thought to himself as the jeep bounced over a few rocks and then coasting evenly over the hard packed dirt. He wasn’t all that comfortable being off road still, but it was his turn to drive. Still, he didn’t believe in cars existing off of roads. That’s what they were there for. If a train skipped its tracks it was derailed and it was a disaster. Why should a car be so different?

The body in the other seat shifted slightly, making a small noise from inside the comfort of her blanket. It was still early morning, the sun barely rising, and the air was cold. The blanket slipped from her as she turned and stretched and yawned. One hand came up to sleepily rub at her eyes. 

“Good morning, sleepy head.”

“How long was I out?” Lucy asked, looking over at the horizon, a thin orange fingernail slowly creeping up above the faint line of hills far distant.

“Oh, maybe seven hours or so. Not too long.”  Palmer reached up and turned on the music. This far out, they weren’t getting anything for radio. But they had come prepared with dozens of CDs.

Lucy groaned as the first track came on and fell back against her seat. “This again? C’mon, Palmer, you have to be kidding me. We can’t be doing this every morning.”

“It’s not my fault you have no taste in music.”  Palmer didn’t take his eyes too far off the ground ahead of him. There had been too many boulders coming out of the darkness last night. That would be the last time he’d offer to drive through the night. They could stop and camp next time.

“I bought like … twenty CDs neither of us have ever heard before. And yet you’ve gotta go and put in the one you’ve listened to a thousand times. How long has it been since Marton Syan broke up anyway? Like … five years?”

“Three years,” Palmer said, trying not to get too annoyed with her. This was part of the morning ritual, after all. 

“Let it go, superfan.” She hit the eject button on the CD player and the first track stopped no more than two minutes in. Each morning she let it play a little shorter. Soon it’d be out of the CD player entirely. Palmer felt like he was being weaned off of cigarettes. Thank god she hadn’t actually tried that. He might leave her out here to be eaten by vultures. 

She slid in another CD and then twisted around to pull out a water bottle from the back seat.  “You all right driving for a little while? I’d like to have breakfast before I take over.” 

“Be my guest,” Palmer said. “I’m fine. Never mind the seven hours of driving, all of it in the complete dark, with starlight and a nearly new moon and some piddly little headlights to light my way.”

“Aw, poor Palmy,” Lucy said, leaning up against him and hugging his arm.  “I appreciate all the driving you did to get us out here, though. That’s gotta count for something, right?” 

Palmer rolled his eyes.  “Sure does, it counts as one you owe me next time I want to take a ridiculous vacation and you try to back out of it.”

“Oh, c’mon, this hasn’t been all bad. Besides, it’s not as if you had anything better to do.” 

Palmer didn’t answer her, his jaw clenching as he continued to drive out out further than the middle of nowhere. He wasn’t going to get mad, wasn’t going to start a fight. Not here, where they could argue and fight and shout and still had to sit in the same jeep, endless miles ahead and behind and long hours that would have to be passed in stony silence. That was too much like his dim memories of childhood trips with his own parents.

“Anyway, we’re almost there, thanks to you,” Lucy said as she tore open an energy bar and began to pick it apart.  “We’ll be there by afternoon, set up the tent, cook some dinner, and kick back. You’ll feel a lot better with a hot meal in you.” 

“I’d feel a lot better with a long shower,” Palmer said.  “Maybe your dirty hippy Asian skin is immune to kind of hard travel, but I feel gross.”

“Don’t act like such a bourgeoisie. We’re going primal. Out here in the land where our great great great and so on ancestors lived.  And all you can think about is getting back to your big city and running water and decadent American excesses.” She fell into giggles and leaned against him. Palmer looked down at her, her dark hair pulled back into a messy ponytail and her eyes bright as she ate her breakfast.

Palmer’s jaw loosened though he tried not to smile to himself. If she was going to try so hard to get under his skin, he wasn’t going to give her the pleasure of an easy reaction. He drove on in silence. With the sun up, the path ahead was much clearer, and he pressed the accelerometer down, the jeep creeping up to 50 … 60 …

“Hey, lead foot, where’s the fire?” Lucy was sitting up, a bit nervous as the speedometer crept forward. Palmer knew that after a day in a half of him complaining about not being comfortable driving on this kind of terrain, she wasn’t about to trust him pushing it. Which was all the more reason to speed up.

“C’mon, Palmer, this isn’t safe.”

“What?  Safe? I thought you wanted tribal. Animal instincts, y’know, to go as hard and fast as I can. Cutting loose.” The needle slipped past 70. The jeep was really shaking now, tearing across the flat land ahead of them. Palmer was intent, watching for anything that was coming. Not that it would matter, there was no time to dodge it if it did.

“No, no, stop.” Lucy was sitting up, one hand tentatively resting on the dash like a bird about to take flight. Palmer grinned, not taking his eyes off the road.

“Come on, Lucy. Where’s your sense of adventure? Let go, live a little!”

“You bastard! Stop this fucking jeep right now or so help me I’ll rip your throat out when you finally do.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Palmer said. The needle rose up to 80, hovering. He was flooring it, but on the ground this was about as good as their heavily loaded jeep was going to get. Still, at this speed it was terrifying, ripping across the landscape with lunatic haste.

“Palmer, c’mon, stop it! Stop it!”  She was freaking out, sitting there clutching the dashboard for dear life.

Palmer kept going, but turned to look at her.  “You going to let me listen to my music, just a little bit, in the mornings? And stop teasing me for growing up in a civilized place with lights and buildings and fancy stuff like that?” 

“Fine,” she said. “Just stop!”

Palmer knew better than to slam on the breaks, slowing down carefully. The needle began to fall, then fall faster, down to 50 and 40 and then all the way down as Palmer brought the jeep to a full stop and put it into park.

“You’re an asshole!” Lucy started the moment they had stopped, her fear turning quickly into anger. Palmer remembered her how she used to be, younger and angry and a constant foil to him. It was pleasing to see her like this. The anger put red high up on her cheeks and brought a shocking clarity to her eyes.

“I know, I know,” Palmer said, keeping his hands resting on the wheel. “And yet who was the one who dragged me out here when I have a deadline just two weeks away and a whole stack of things to do beforehand?”

Lucy balled her hands into fists, still glaring at him.  “You agreed to it!”

“I was coerced,” Palmer said. “I was promised beautiful vistas and you ravaging me under the wide open sky. Also, that I could drive your new jeep.”

“I’ll let the coyote’s ravage you,” Lucy said.

“I’m the one in the driver’s seat.”

“I’ll move you.”

“Try it," Palmer answered with an indifferent shrug. 

She reached forward to shove him, but Palmer was ready for her. He grabbed her hands by the wrists and tugged her forward, so that she was set off balanced and leaned forward into him. He let go of her wrists and lifted her head and leaned down and kissed her. It was slow and sweet and he could feel her initial surprise melt as she leaned further into him.

When he pulled away, she glared at him. “You know you’re not out of the dog house yet, right?”

Palmer smiled. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re beautiful when you’re angry?”

“You, every time you make me angry. But I don’t believe it.” 

“Why not?”

“Because if it was true, you wouldn’t work so effectively to immediately diffuse it.”  She punched him in the shoulder and pushed off of him, settling back into the seat. “Now hurry up. You’re wasting daylight.”

“Yes ma’am,” Palmer said. He put the car back into drive and pulled forward. He was going a much more measured rate of speed, now. 

He glanced over at her. She was looking at him, a reluctant smile tugging at her lips. Palmer responded with a bigger grin of his own. She wrinkled her nose up at him. Palmer burst into laughter.

“Yeah, yeah. Just wait. When I’m driving I’ll flip us and make sure your stupid face gets crushed by rocks.”

“I love you, too,” Palmer said. He turned up the radio, and the two of them continued their long drive away from absolutely everything but the place where the land met the sky and they would be alone together.

How We Came to This -- a ramble on editing

Hello out there in internet land! I'm actually making a blog post that isn't just me regurgitating opinions on the latest and greatest in film. No, no, instead of inflicting my massive ego on you by proclaiming my thoughts every week, today you're going to get me talking about myself! Great change, huh?

Whoa, whoa, don't click CLOSE on that tab yet. Come on back. I promise I'll do my best to make this interesting. How so? Well, y'see, this blog is gonna be about writing. You know, that thing I claim I do but never talk about? Today we're going to talk about it.

I've been kind of not writing since early in the year. After NaNo, I burnt out on the whole writing thing for a while. I toiled slowly towards the finish line of the NaNo 2008 novel, and then set the whole thing aside. It had been somewhere between not-great and aggressively shitty, so a respite was in order.

That respite has lasted until three weeks ago.

One might ask how a little break can turn into 7 months of dicking around, but really, it's pretty easy. I have a lot of interests, movies and video games and hanging out with friends and just existing on the internet. That takes up gobs of time. I spend more time refreshing twitterfox each day than I do in my entire morning routine. Not reading twitter, just physically refreshing twitterfox.

The internet is the world's second best waster of time, behind the incredible power of Man to ignore his own agenda in favor of anything else.

But now that's not what's happening. Somewhere between hearing one of the writers I follow was getting represented by an agent (congrats again Kristin!) and feeling the days starting to drift into the long hot bulk of summer, I realized that it was nearing time for NaNo again and I had accomplished fuck all in the interim.

Me! The guy who's always been so sure of what he wanted to do with his life, puttering around without purpose for months!

There's an excuse for taking a break, but the break had become a habit of neglect. And somewhere along the line I kind of snapped a little. Not the guns-blazing-soon-to-be-a-made-for-TV-movie snapping, but the quiet kind where I feel something shift inside of me and suddenly you resolve to things with the kind of conviction that surprises me, because normally I'm a pretty mellow (or, y'know, slothful) guy when it comes to responsibility.

But I'm editing now. I decided to take a crack at my NaNo 2007 novel, Way's to Commit Suicide When You're Bored (shortened to WTC here and elsewhere), the third novel I've ever written and quite possibly the most personal of the books. It was written at a pretty dark period in my life, when I was just starting to wrap my head this whole 'being a writer' thing.

Going back to it has been a conflicted experience. On the one hand, I'm feeling really engaged with the writing process again in a way I haven't felt in almost a year. That alone has made the whole endeavor worthwhile. But at the same time, undertaking editing this is easily the most complicated, difficult thing I've ever done. I'm not a great editor, and this book is big and complex and parts of it are in really rough shape.

So I've been working on the edit for the past few weeks, and so far it's going okay, though a bit slow. I have a hard time getting started, though once I do it all seems to go pretty good. I might take a week or so off in September and just cut myself off and do a lot of work, see how that goes. So far I've just been managing about 1000 words a day, sometimes more and sometimes less. I'm still readjusting to making my writing into a part of my daily life. Hopefully in the next fortnight it'll become a habit and then the start up process will go faster and I can get more done.

Of course, aside from the basic mechanics of doing a full draft/rewrite of a novel, there's the emotional factor. A novel is a huge project, and when one is particularly personal it becomes a reflection of the person who wrote it. This novel, WTC, is imbued with the spirit of who I was in late 2007. Where my head was at, who I was as a person and how I related to the world, all these things are dripping from every paragraph.

The problem is, I'm no longer the person I was in 2007. And that makes approaching this book like opening up a time capsule. There are things that I can still relate to, but even after only two years, it's like looking in on someone else's life. The world view of the author is different than the world view of the editor. But at the same time, I feel so connected to it by the tethers of my memories, that separating the experiences of writing it then, working on it now, and seeing it for what it can be becomes an intricate knot of priorities that ... well, frankly, the editing tends to make me exhausted.

I'm not yet at a pace where this book's going to be edited by the time NaNo 2009 rolls around, but I'm starting to get ideas for that and I'm really excited to come off of this and write a new novel. So here's hoping that I finish the edit before then, or I'll be juggling an edit and a first draft at the same time, which sounds about as close to writing hell as I ever want to get.

And that's really all I have to say about the editing job. Maybe I'll have more later, but I really just wanted to write out where my headspace was at when it comes to the work, lately. I'm not exactly the most communcative when it comes to my writing, and this was originally supposed to be a blog about a writer talking about writing. Unfortunately, writing novels doesn't leave a lot of energy to write extra and isn't so dynamic and fast-paced that I regularly have things to say.

I still might check in now and again. This editing experience is new for me. I've never done a project quite like this, and it's a learning experience (and will continue to be so). So ... thanks for following along so far, and hopefully for listening in again in the future.

Oh, and as a parting shot, I'll put up a rough synopsis for Ways to Commit Suicide When You're Bored here at the end so you can see what it is in abstract. I might talk more about it later, in more specifics, but for now this'll have to suffice.

Max has hit an interesting time in his life—he’s dropped out of college, stuck in a dead-end job in the middle of Nebraska, and longs to have someone, anyone, pull him out of the mire that is his existence. It's become so bad that he's started retreating into his own dark imagination for respite. But when an old friend shows up at his door, he leaps at the possibility of winning her heart and escaping from his dark corner of the world.

The problem? She's knocked up, wanting his help in getting rid of the baby.

Now he's left trying to help her while struggling with his ideal of their relationship. But his mental world is starting to take over his life, manifesting in the real world and blurring the lines of what happens in his head and what happens in real life. What starts out as a complicated situation becomes a struggle to deal with his demons and confront the ghosts of his own mind, before he becomes a prisoner of his own mind forever.

Broken Extended Metaphors and Mental Explosions

So I finally started working on ITMeat again today. It's been a long time, since the end of November. I don't regret taking the time off, and I'm not sure how 'back' I am, but it's interesting getting back into the book writing thing.

Writing books is a snowball process. You start with the seed of an idea and you push it along and gather words and ideas and characters. It's a katamari of narrative. And like a katamari, as you push it up a hill, and it grows and grows, you keep having to push to maintain even a modicum of momentum.

Modicum, I say!

So, I stopped. And payed attention to doing something else very intently for a few months. I've been catching up on the crapton (this is 'as many as I have room for, plus four') of games I have lying about, and while I'm still doing that ( and will continue to do so for the forseeable future ) I also want to incorporate writing back into my life in a pretty significant way.

As an aside, I think that all+4 is a good way of signifying crapton. I think all+5 would probably be a fuckton and all+>5 would be a metric fuckton. I think these should be the universal standards. That way we all know. Metric fuckton. All that you can have + more than five. Just so you know. This is the official memo.

But yeah, so I decided today on a whim to keep pushing the katamari. And let me tell you, moving the fuggin thing after so long doing something else is just ridiculous. It's like trying to get scotch out of a bird. And let me tell you, birds have shitty taste in alcohol.

So yeah, I couldn't move the thing for the longest time. I've been analyzing my approach to building the katamari, and I realized that there were far too many cows and telephone poles. So I had to go around and knock them all off. So now I'm working with a book that's 16000 words lighter. But that bastard is rolling again.

So ... yeah. I'm writing again. It's interesting. I've been bashing my head against this one for months, so... let's see if I can't get my shit together finally.

Okay, done with this. Two blog posts in as many days is ridiculous.

In Where Matt Unloads About NaNo and Not Writing

So I finished NaNo. This was despite blowing out my hands (I have chronic hand/wrist problems) by week two and running out of steam. I crossed a joyless, difficult 50k that made me question my choice of artistic endeavor. It was the worst of times, it was the worster of times.

But I did finish, and this year saw a pretty impressively high failure rate. I'm frustrated that I was so far from my own goal, but my own goal was obviously well beyond my abilities. But at the same time, I suppose I have to put up with it and be happy that I actually succeeded in writing 50k in a month. That is, of course, no small feat.

So I have a novel that's half finished. And thanksgiving break thankfully allowed me the down time necessary to become physically capable of typing properly again.

One of the major themes of my novel is my main character dealing with the mortality of her father. Which just came as a natural extension of the story, not due to me being particularly enamored by that particular aspect.

On Sunday, either through twisted serendipity or karmic irony, my father had what appears (at this time) to be a mini-stroke. He's mostly okay, it seems, though he sometimes have trouble speaking. I'm not quite sure the extent of the damage yet. We'll find out later this week.

So ... I don't know. It hit rather close to home, and sapped all of my enthusiasm for the project. I'm dealing with similar things in real life, and they're taking up most of my time and energy with concern and trying to coordinate everything. When my creative life and my real life overlap so strongly, I just can't muster the energy to throw myself at the problem at an entertaining way.

So I'm not writing. And right now I have no intentions of writing. Not on my novel, anyway. And maybe not on much of anything. I'm mentally stretched very thin, and by the time I get everything squared away each day all I'm concerned with is sitting there until I get sleepy with a minimum of fuss.

That said, I'll try to focus on the blog. I have two-ish weeks of Movie Roundup to do, a few features I have to write, a short story I promised Sarah for her birthday (which was a few weeks ago) and the one year anniversary of the blog to celebrate (don't get excited, it passed last week without notice).

So we'll see. I'll try, but no promises. Which is the best I can do until everything settles down a bit. Unfortunately, the real victim here is ITMeat, which might end up being shelved for a few months until it doesn't make me more than a little unsettled to even think about it.

First things first, though. Lunch!

A Unified World ( I promise, it's about writing )

Today we're going to talk about writing. My writing, to be specific, because I'm not an expert on anyone else's writing. And this blog is supposed to be about me and my writing, in the end. An author sharing himself with people. Or something noble like that. It hasn't turned out that way, but then that's par for the course.

Writers (fiction writers) are concerned with telling stories. But stories aren't the only consideration. The story is a stand alone project, to be sure, but as with all art, the frame is nearly as important as what's on the canvas. And so, a writer has to look at not just the story they're telling, but the frame in which their story is presented.

A story can be self-contained, but it still takes place in a world. A fantasy book has the plus of being able to define its own world. A more realistic piece of fiction has the plus of pulling on a world that we all know and love. But what about a world in between the two? A world that's recognizably ours but seen slightly askew? A world that's not just in service to the story, but is representative of how the author sees the world around him?

That's the kind of thought that created what I call my Unified World Theory. The idea of Unified World (UW, for now) is that all of the books (or most of them, anyway) take place within a world that's consistent and coherent. That unrelated stories are all taking place on solidly similar ground, a similar setting with a similar history.

For example. The heroine of my NaNo 2008 novel (Mandy, who you'll hear more about next week) originally showed up travelling through the country in NaNo 2007, Ways To Commit Suicide When You're Bored. She wasn't the main character, just a side character. She interacted with the main plot, then drifted out of it. And time passes, and her life gets interesting again, and I write another story that takes place in her life. It's not a sequel, it's not a spin-off. It's just another story that takes place in that world.

I don't like the idea of each story being isolated. Characters exist, they grow, they end their tale and ride off into the sunset. But what happens before that? What happens after? What effects are felt by actions, great and small, that echo throughout the world that they inhabit?

The only way of making such aspects of life known is to join all the books together. In doing so, I create a world that's close to ours, but different enough that I can meddle within the bounds of believability. Change how aspects work. Alter facts to fit stories just so and make it work. I can create cities to rival the greatest American cities, or use pre-existing ones, and it's all equally valid, so long as the universe the world takes place in makes sense.

So that's what I've done. And the arguement could be made that I'm counting my chickens before they hatch, planning sequels and characters that reappear in books that I haven't sold yet. But at the same time, if I'm going to do it, it would be best to do it from the start, so that the entirety of my work rests upon a consistent foundation. So that should it work out and I successfully sell books, I rest well knowing that the frames are set up. That there is a world I have created that will serve the body of my work well.

Now, here's the part where I admit an ulterior motive. There are plenty of authors who also do a unified world in their work. Three offhand are Stephen King, Kurt Vonnegut, and Elmore Leonard. All of them have recurring characters, actions that have repercussions throughout other novels, all the things that are hallmarks of linking some or all of an author's pieces together.

What this amounts to is a world that rewards further study. You read a book, and read another, and when they are linked together in some way there is a feeling that the author is making sure that the reader will get more out of the author's works the more they read them. I know that it's kind of ... clinical and business-like, but I'd like to think that as an author I'm looking out for my eventual readers.

Of course, this borders on the verge of either pretention or fan-service. If I do it without people enjoying it, I suppose that's pretention, thinking that all my works are so important that they deserve to be considered together. That's a high-demand thing on my readers, to expect them to explore all of my world and books. But at the same time, if I continually write about the favorite characters, and continually create connected works that people love, that totters close to fan-service.

The trick, of course, is to walk in the middle. To allow for stories to begin and end, to both provide for expectations that characters will return and fulfill unanswered questions and continue to provide new characters for first-time readers to cut their teeth with. To expand the universe so that ground isn't retread.

I personally find that authors who take this kind of time and thought to construct these compounded dividends are ones that tend to build strong, dedicated fanbases. That it keeps the back catalogue relevant, and once it's caught on that it's the practice of the author, keeps the expectation of the next story high. You never know who's going to show up or how they'll react. And that, of course, means that you're always looking towards the next story to provide those answers.

It's a business decision, sure, but it's also an artistic one. Part of my statement, of my message, is that all life is interconnected and what we do has repercussions that echo through time and space, affecting many we will never meet or understand. That life isn't just about the individual, but about the tapestry, each individual interweaving with others to add to the whole of human experience.

Unified world isn't just a writing technique, but it's a philosophy. And it's a frame for it's own philosophy. I being both an example and a vehicle for other examples, it's coherent in how the world works. It's a way to be both the lattice on which the rest of my stories and themes are hung, and as a theme and story in itself.

And I suppose, that's the point. In the end, it's what I always wanted to do when I decided to become a writer. The idea of stand alone stories doesn't appeal to me. I write a few, I suppose, but it's not something I'd want to make a career on. Anything that could take place in 'the real world' is typically folded into the unified world that represents my work. Maybe some day I'll have to be pickier about what I throw in there, but for now ...

For now it's fair game. And I'll keep connecting threads even as I expand into new territory.

A world-builder can do no less.

Writer's Theme Song

This one comes from Sarah, who grabbed it from someone else (as usual, I can't be bothered to trace that line back to it's source, play link tag if you must).

The goal is as follows:

Find a song that sums up what you think it means to be a writer and post the lyrics on your blog and why you've chosen it. NB: It doesn't have to be your favourite song, it just has to express how you feel about writing and/or being a writer. It can be literal, metaphorical, about a particular form or aspect of writing - whatever you want. Then tag 5 others to do the same (reprint these instructions).

I'm a big believer in songs tied to projects. In fact, I have dozens of songs that evoke the memories of each of my books. But one about writing in general? I wasn't sure if I knew of any piece of music that was up to the task.

Then I remembered that I did and do. And that it's a pretty good one. I think that why I chose it doesn't require explanation, so I'll simply segue right into the song (because that's what you truly care about, I hope). Unfortunately, this is a radio edit of sorts, but I happen to greatly adore the video.



And the lyrics:

Sing
by The Dresden Dolls

There is this thing that's like touching except you don't touch
Back in the day it just went without saying at all
All the world's history gradually dying of shock
There is this thing it's like talking except you don't talk
You sing
You sing

Sing for the bartender sing for the janitor sing
Sing for the cameras sing for the animals sing
Sing for the children shooting the children sing
Sing for the teachers who told you that you couldn't sing
Just sing

There is thing thing keeping everyone's lungs and lips locked
It is called fear and it's seeing a great renaissance
After the show you can not sing wherever you want
But for now let's just pretend we're all gonna get bombed
So sing

Sing cause its obvious sing for the astronauts sing
Sing for the president sing for the terrorists sing
Sing for the soccer team sing for the janjuweed sing
Sing for the kid with the phone who refuses to sing
Just sing

Life is no cabaret
We don't care what you say
We're inviting you anyway
You motherfuckers you'll sing someday...
You motherfuckers you'll sing someday...
You motherfuckers you'll sing someday...

Unsurprisingly, the Dresden Dolls also provided the soundtrack for the first draft of WTC, and contributed what is undoubtedly the theme song of my 2008 NaNo novel.

I won't tag anyone, because I rarely do that, but if you want to do this (and if you're a writer who reads this that I don't talk to, you really should drop me a line and say hello!) feel free to do so. Just lemme know so I can take a peek at what you chose.

It's nearly that time again -- NaNo 2008!

Hello there, ladies and gents. I know I've been quiet on the blogging front lately, but with good reason. I have a novel that I have to finish. And my time is swiftly running out.

Why is it running out, you ask? Because we've crossed the void from summer into fall and that means it's time to begin prepping for National Novel Writing Month (that's NaNo to all and sundry) and I'm here to try to spread the good word and hopefully get you--yes, YOU!--to sign aboard and make the journey with me.

I know what you're going to say to me. "You're the writer here, you write books. I don't write." Well, guess what? Just because you don't doesn't mean you can't. In fact, having not written, you're in the singular place of getting the most out of NaNo. NaNo isn't for writers, to be quite honest. Not the kind of working writer I try to be, anyway.

No, NaNo is for you. For the person who's probably never even thought about writing a novel before. Or the person who's thought about it but never thought they could actually do it. If you've said 'I could write a story, but...' lemme tell you that NaNo is the perfect excuse to disregard the but and turn the 'could' into a 'will'.

In NaNo, the goal is to write 50,000 words. This is a small novel. In order to make this easy for you, you even have a time frame to work in--November 1 to November 30. In that month, should you choose to, you and over a hundred thousand other people will all take the adventure into storytelling.

Now, those of you who know anything about writing will say '50000 words in a month? MADNESS!' I'm not here to misquote 300 at you, so I'll simply agree. Yes, it's madness, but all creation is madness and people need a little madness in their lives.

NaNo is an opportunity to do something you would never normally do. No human would normally write a novel in a month. But for a month (just a month!) you can tell people that you're writing a novel, and mean it. You aren't puttering around, you aren't thinking about writing a novel. You're racing to the 50k mark each and every day. Laying down pages and characters and stories. Living in a world that you create.

Of course, the next question (probably more of a skeptical statement) is undoubtedly 'but a novel written that fast can't be good.' And while your pessimism isn't helpful, you bring up a good point. A novel written that fast won't be good. But guess what? No novel is ever good when it's first written.

It's a well-kept secret in writing that whatever book you pick up was once a really terrible first draft. Whether that person took 30 days or 30 years to write the first draft, it's going to be awful (well, maybe not 30 years, perhaps, but if it was 30 months, certainly). First drafts by definition are bad. You're hammering out a story that keeps moving and changing on you. You're finding what works, what doesn't. You're exploring the vast expanses of your mind and the page.

Trust me, every first draft is shit. And they're all worth the effort, even the worst author.

NaNo isn't for fame or fortune. But it is a chance to do something few people ever do. It's a chance to take a chance and try something new. It's the singular opportunity for a few autumn weeks to stay up late and drink lots of coffee and imagine things that you'd never think about because they might give you material. It's glorious. It's empowering. It's silly and fun.

I highly recommend it to all of you.

Give the NaNo website a glance, would you? For me, I ask you. Chris Baty, the founder, explains what it's all about far better than I ever could. And think, seriously think, about signing up. Even if you don't succeed fully, you'll have made the attempt. And everything is worth doing once.

I know you can do it. Every one of you. We all have at least one story in us, probably far more than that. Maybe it's time to try to pry one of the bastards loose and make him stand there so we can look at him.

Here's the mission statement, such as it is.

And here's the FAQ, for you inquisitive types.

If you have any further questions, feel free to drop me a line ( bandaidwriter@gmail.com if you didn't know ). I'm more than willing to try to encourage every single person who reads this blog to join NaNo. Sign-ups are open, people are gathering, and we're waiting for the show to begin in another month.

Viva la novellista!

Jesus Christ, he's still alive!

Not Jesus, mind you. He's dead. Has been for ... oh, 1975 years.

Nah, I'm talking about me. Not a savior, not even a good guy, I can turn wine into vinegar and try to stay away from water because I don't like swimming. But I am alive, and I am here to once again make an entry. A good one? Ha, not hardly. I don't have enough to say to make a good post, but I'm sure I'll fill this with enough inane errata and meaningless life updates to make people glad I'm not filling my blog with this shit on a regular basis.

So lately (other than being sick [yeah, I know, I'm sick a lot] and just in the past few days feeling 100%) I've fallen back into my gaming habit. It comes and goes, and right now it's here. Hardcore. Obsession of choice these days? Blue Dragon. I've dropped an embarassing amount of time into it in the past week and a half. Thankfully, I'm almost done, so I can move on to more sane activities. But it's been a crazy week and a half. It reminds me of junior high, when I spent all summer gaming. Those were the days, those carefree lazy days, when all I needed was a spikey-haired protagonist with a big sword repeatedly killing waves of enemies for minimal gains to make me happy.

Not anymore. No way, Jose (unrelated to Jesus). No, now I demand ... well, no, it's the same shit, different disk. But now it has achievements. That's gotta count for something, right? Certainly it's motivated me to drop ridiculous amounts of time into the damn thing.

In other news, I think I might have mentioned I have a netflix account. Because I'm a movie person, I'm serious about my netflix. And I'd like friends. So if you read this, have netflix, and aren't my friend on there yet, feel free to add me. I'll mostly just judge you based on your ratings and queue, not tell you that I think I'm better than you, and look over what you've seen to find stuff I've seen to rate because I'm too lazy to try to remember and rate them individually.

Good times

Speaking of films--good god (related to Jesus, if you believe those Christian folk) it's been a crazy movie season, hasn't it? One weekend after another, stuff I needed to see. I might as well go ahead with the obligitory "What I watched and what I thought of it" but instead of listing everything I'll just point out the three I enjoyed the most and maybe a bit of why

1. Speed Racer

The fact that nobody saw this film is, quite frankly, fucking embarassing. It's still the best thing I saw all year (so far). It's absolutely fantastic. What should have been a train wreck turned into a thing of beauty. It's very experimental, at times edging towards impressionism and abstraction. And it works. I don't know how, I just sit down and enjoy the damn thing. But it's worth it

So when it comes out on DVD, put it on your netflix queue and watch it (or better yet buy it so the Wachowski's can stop crying) so I'll respect you again.

2. Wanted

It's stupid. Yes, I'll admit, it's very stupid.

It's also very, very stylish. And I'm the kind of guy who appreciates a film that doesn't mess around when it comes to being cool

I have nothing else to say here. Watch the trailer. If you don't think it looks cool ... well, then I can't talk to you any more. And guess what? The best stuff isn't even in the trailer.

3. Wall-E

Lots has been said about this one lately, because those right-wing crazies are calling it leftist propaganda. You wanna know why? Because they'd be happy to have us all floating in chairs all day, oblivious to the world around us.

Wall-E is probably going to turn out to be Pixar's dark horse film. It's not really for kids. They know they have an adult demographic, and I really think they played to that this time. There are some surprising subtexts here, and plenty of the typical Pixar touches that add up to make the film something special.

If you have the attention span of a newt, you might find it a slow-starter. It's certainly a lot less funny and a lot more competant as a film than some of their films. But it is, without a doubt, worth seeing.

Today is the day Hellboy 2: The Golden Army comes out. I have to tell you, I'm crazy excited for this one. Hellboy was great. This one almost HAS to be better in probably every way. That's just how it goes

Though, needless to say, my excitement is somewhat overshadowed by something coming out next week. Hehe.

(Lies. I'm really hoping for earth-shatteringly influential, but again ... modesty is a virtue and I need all the help I can get.)

Um ... let's see. Anything else?

Oh yes. My friend Sarah writes really good movies but nobody reads her scripts for her. I think we should all give a collective 'aww' and if you have free time annoy her to do something with her scripts so we can have movie versions in our theatres before we're all collecting social security.

And maybe, if you have free time, see if you can't pry her screenplay draft out of her greedy fingers. I'm totally not running this by her, so she could say no to total strangers, but the thought would likely flatter her and I do what I can. Not to mention you'll get to see her squirm as she fights warring impulses to show her work to people and to be protective of where it goes, all the while trying to turn you down gently in her overly-nice way.

Speaking of readers, Kris got around to reading MS this past weekend, making my failure rate on people I can rely on somewhat less embarassing. Too bad she already had a free pass, since my books aren't anywhere close to her typical reading habits. Especially a novel as full of navel-gazing art-house sensibility as MS.

That said, her opinions were solid, even if she maybe wasn't super keen on the book. Which is fine. She suffers for having known the author longer than is healthy for anyone.

Speaking of, my vacation to see said Kris is coming up, so I'll be going on hiatus from August 6th to the 10th to soak up the rays (more like the rain, since it's monsoon season there) in hot and desert-like Tucson. Should be a gas. Or something.

Expect me to get wasted, wander off into the desert, and be eaten by scorpions. Or something similarly grisly.

Of course, given how often I update this blog, nobody would have noticed my absence anyway. But ... I figure advance notice is a good idea, regardless.

And I'm done. Now let's see how long it takes me to give a shit and do this again. Bets? Winner gets a free drink of their choice*!

*Drink of choice limited to one beverage purchased under $10 by me at a time convenient by me at a location of my choosing. Offer not valid for those living out of the United States, unless they come back here to claim their prize. One play per customer, one winner will be chosen, not all who play will win (unless only one lucky bastard plays). Prize can not be redeemed for cash. In the event of a tie, I'll pick whoever catches my fancy at that moment.

Writing that Works, and a Long-Awaited Entry

So lately I've been working on writing. Not much. I'm aiming for 1000 words a day on CDE right now, which isn't much but it's enough to get the ball rolling without being too much to expect considering all the time that's passed since I seriously wrote.

Not to mention 1000 words can go really fast, so if I focus I can pound it out in 20-30 minutes without any problem. It doesn't entirely suck, either, which is a plus.

I think the goal for NaNo this year is going to be 100k words. I know it's early (November's some ways off, still) but I want to aim bigger. I probably won't hit 100k, but I'd like to at least try.

I also started working on the Hiroki Sugai blog, which is the serial detective stories that I'll be putting up. I'll likely work on them during the morning here at work. The first one, should be you interested, is right here behind this generic link. You'll get a first-hand look at just how rough fiction is when it comes straight from my head onto the page, as I struggle to figure out where I'm going daily. Expect some huge plot holes down the road. =D

Dialogue with Doubt

A dark room with a harsh cone of light coming from the one exposed bulb hanging from the ceiling. There's the two of us there, me nursing a cup of coffee and the man on the other side of the table smoking what must be his third cigarette in the ten minutes we've sat in silence.

How I've ended up here is anyone's guess. Certainly when I was out in the bright world of colors and subtlety I didn't think it would lead me here. When I fell from the daylight into this dank musty-smelling box of a room all I could do was look behind me and think why?

I don't get a chance to think too long about it. The fellow on the other side, him with the long face and the fierce eyes, puts out his cigarette in the small metal ashtray already half full and leans forward, speaking around the lungfull of smoke that pours from his mouth.

"So tell me, Matt, how have you ended up falling this far?"

I take another drink of my cup, staring down into the depths of the liquid in the cup. It's black, the harsh ligthing removes any tone of brown from it and I'm left drinking something that looks like night and tar. It's easier to look into that void than into his eyes.

"Couldn't tell you. One thing lead to another, and here I am in this room ... wherever this room is."

"This room ... well, better to not say anything yet."

"Don't tell me," I say. "I've hit bottom."

He laughs. It's hard and barking and makes my head throb. "This isn't the bottom yet. Trust me, you have a long way to fall yet. I wouldn't be nearly so nice if you were on the bottom."

"So what is this?"

"A safety net, maybe? In here think of me as the cop. You're in trouble, mister." An affected stern face, like a painted mask.

"All bad cop here, then," I say as I look up at him.

"Eh, I am what I am, as the sailors say. But look at it this way, in here I can't rough you up. You go any further, and our little roleplay ends and I can get down to business." This grin is predatory, all teeth too big and too sharp to be normal. I recoil from it and return to the coffee.

"So what do you want?"

"I'm supposed to scare you straight, eh? So talk."

"About?"

"About how you got here, you idiot. What do you think?"

"I was just going along, minding my own business, heading through life and ..."

"Whoa, whoa. Back up. Going along, heading through life. What the hell does that mean, anyway?"

"What it always does. I was just living."

"Just ... living?"

"Yeah."

"Explain."

"I'd get up, go to work, come home, try to write, talk to friends, go to bed, rinse and repeat."

"I see..."

"What?"

"Tell me about your friends."

"Good bunch. Nothing wrong with them. Don't question there."

"Touchy?" That cannibal grin again.

"No," I say, not looking away this time. "I just don't want to waste time with something that helps. They've been actively helping me. I just haven't been listening."

"Why not?"

"Isn't that your job?"

"Oo, got some fight in us, do we, book boy? Fine. Tell me about your job."

"It's fine. I got hired on full time."

"Good, yeah?"

"I like it."

He picks up another cigarette and lights it, smoking as he thinks. "Raise?"

"Slightly."

"Comfortable?"

"I never had any complaints."

"I see." The cigarette burns down quickly. He taps the ash in, and the ashtray fills more.

"I don't see what this has to do with anything, I mean obvi-"

"Shut up." He snaps as he put outs the cigarette.

"Excuse me?" I'm naive enough to be shocked into silence.

"You heard me. I'll tell you what matters here. I'm in charge. Not you. So answer my questions, but otherwise keep your damn mouth shut." He pulls out another cigarette and lights it. A long drag. Then a tight-lipped smile.

"Your friends are good, yeah?"

I nod.

"Your work is good, yeah?"

I nod.

"How about your home life?"

"It's nice, finally. Settled. Best choice I ever made, y'know?"

He nods and exhales and is obscured in a rising curtain of smoke. All that's left is cloudy features and his piercing eyes.

"No problems?"

"Except for the writing, no."

He smiles knowingly. "I see."

A long pause. He smokes and I drink and we pass the time together. It's cozy in a sick way. Old friends with guns trained on each other.

His cigarette is burned down, and he puts it out. He reaches for the pack. "Only room for one more in the ashtray. You better talk well, because when I'm out of space I'm leaving to go finish the pack and you're not coming along."

"What do you want me to tell you?"

He puts the cigarette to his lips. "Why can't you write?"

"I don't know! That's why you're here."

"Wrong." He lifts the lighter, and flicks the wheel. The flame leaps out, the cigarette is lit, and he inhales once.

"Then what?"

"You're the rock star, figure it out."

"I can't. Don't you think I've tried?" I sink into the chair, defeated.

"Now how is that attitude going to change the world?" Another inhale. He's burning quickly through the cigarette, but I can't think of anything to say. He's right, of course. I've been beaten. There's nothing I can do. For all my efforts, I just didn't have it in me. I've petered out at the starting line.

"Maybe I can't."

He grunts. "Coward."

"Then what?"

"What's the first rule of doing this forever?" He leans forward, all his spiteful mirth gone and instead a deadly earnestness in his manner. I sit up. The answer is automatically dragged out of me.

"Never make a Plan B."

"So tell me ... how's your life?"

I scramble to find an answer. "It's fine! There's nothing wrong with it. Work, friends, family ... it's all good."

"You said that before."

"It's still true!"

"What's Plan B, dummy?"

"What does this have to do with-"

"Answer the question!" He blows out a heavy puff of smoke when he shouts. The cigarette's almost burnt down. I'm running out of time.

"I ... it's ... getting comfortable with how things are."

"What do you have to be uncomfortable about now?"

I scramble to think. "Well, there's my feelings for--"

"You got over those, remember? Wrote a hell of a book, too, though nobody will ever know."

"How about my problems with--"

"You moved out, remember? I believe your words were 'best choice I ever made'."

"But ... I want to be paid to do what I love."

"You enjoy your job, right? You make good money, and it'll get even better, eh?"

"But ... but..."

"Face it, buddy," he says as he inhales the cigarette. It's burning down to the filter now. He taps some of the last ash into the tray. It threatens to overflow. "You just," he inhales deeply, the ember burning all the way down and out, "don't have the fire anymore. You lost the desperation."

"So now what?"

"You need a reason. And fast. Fear and panic won't work anymore. But if you don't hurry, it'll all be gone. You'll be just like everyone else. All those dreams, like a puff of smoke." He grins, and then exhales, and smoke pours from his mouth, and towards me. I lean back to avoid it, but it's no use. It's as if he's on fire, smoke billowing from his mouth and nose. And then I can't see him anymore as my eyes water.

When I reach up and rub them, and wave away the smoke, I'm alone in the room. I reach down to drink my coffee, but it's gone cold. I leave it on the table untouched.

Where Ideas Come From

So, me and Sarah both agreed to tackle the same subject--namely, where we get our ideas for writing and how they're developed. I'm not sure what she's doing yet, but the idea was to approach this from our own individualistic ways. An exercise of sorts, I guess. So I suppose this is my shot.

My ideas, basically, come from nowhere and everywhere. I never sit down and think "So, I need an idea" because honestly anyone who can sit down and come up with something good like that is probably a genius. Or, in other words, it doesn't work for me.

My ideas tend to pop up like soap bubbles that materialize out of thin air. One minute, I'm going along, and the next minute things just gel together and my ideas are there. These are initial ideas, of course. An image here, a theme here, a character here. These are not cohesive stories.

To tell you the truth, I have a very extended visual metaphor to explain this. So bear with me, and we'll journey into how I perceive my ideas to work.

Imagine a small cottage workshop. Something not dissimilar to a fairy tale. A two-story thatched roof stone & mortar job situated on the outskirts of the village. The second story would probably just be living quarters, but the main floor would be the workshop. You could see the workbench, the tools hung on the wall (or more likely strewn about the room) and the cheerfully sardonic fellow who makes it all work.

What you wouldn't see is that door in the floor covered by the tasteful but easy-to-move rug that leads into the basement. And down in the basement there is the owner's roommates. These roommates showed up one day and demanded somewhere to stay, and the basement had always been empty (when it wasn't holding the odd cask of wine or bag of potatoes), so that's where they went. They were helpful enough fellows. They were small and dexterous and a little like elves or dwarves. And they offered, in exchange for room (they refused the board, for reason's unknown) to help the shopkeeper in his work, whatever it might be.

The shopkeeper agreed, explaining that he had high aspirations but he wasn't any good at coming up with the specifics. He could throw random things together but finding the things to mix into a completed work was beyond him. He just couldn't do the initial work to form the starting materials.

And so the guys in the basement agreed to help, and went to work. Soon they converted the basement into their own small workshop, piecing together things in their own unique way.

Initially, the shopkeeper was excited and offered to help oversee the work. He was led downstairs and watches as they worked. Yet, when he had ideas, or wanted to change things, he was too exuberant and put his hands on the work. The men in the basement, being much smaller than the shopkeeper, worked with delicate materials. This big fellow putting his fingers into their work was too much--he was tearing apart all of their work, ruining days of their careful skill in seconds.

Thus, he was kicked out and told not to come down anymore without an invitation. They would do the work, like he asked, and they would do it better than he obviously could. All he'd have to do is take the results of their work and put them together into the final product.

This he could do.

And so the shopkeeper and the men in the basement lived in harmony. They would develop what was needed, and whenever the shopkeeper asked for materials he was not wanting. They would provide odd pieces that he would try to separate and fit together, with the extras going in bins to be used when needed. Sometimes, rarely, they offered whole kits of complete materials, and all he had to do was follow the directions. Other times there would be the odd piece he could barely identify, and he would struggle to figure out what it was and where it went, and would just have to leave it until something else came along that made it make sense.

Inefficient? Perhaps. But the fact that the guys in the basement worked much better than the shopkeeper was not lost on him. While he would have preferred they offer everything up in little kits, he had to admit that their chaotic releases were still of higher quality than he could match, and that he was best working the final pieces without much input into their construction. And, secretly, he rather enjoyed the mystery when odd pieces he couldn't identify showed up on his rug in the morning.

So where do ideas come from? I'm not sure, to be honest. You'd have to ask the guys downstairs. I just put them together when I see them. Because, to be honest, I might not be all that imaginative, but I can string together good ideas into a solid story like nobody's business.

When responsible writers go bad.

I figure that considering I've been gone for weeks and weeks and this is supposed to be a blog about my experiences with writing, I might as well make a post about writing. And considering I'm an advocate of writing every day, keeping the eyes on the prize, and remaining dedicated, I figure that an explanation of me slipping from my own advice would be perfect fodder for a post.

I finished editing Marton Syan March 2nd. In that time, I've written the first thirty pages of one novel, and the first 15 of another. I wrote a script that's now collecting dust. I've taken multiple breaks, where I did little but read lots, or watch lots of movies, or nothing in particular but sit around and be lazy.

Why? A couple of reasons. The most important one was that for the first time since I started my writing adventure, I was tired. I had written two novels and edited another in six months. That kind of output isn't easy and I worked hard to achieve it. Once it was done and I let the dust settle a bit I realized I was horribly fatigued. I didn't just need a break from working on novels, I didn't want to do any writing.

So I let the blog lapse. I let me initial readers work on Marton Syan. I planned and got distracted by my screenwriting adventure for a bit and I've taken more time to goof off and go out and have fun. These are not bad things, really.

Another important factor was real life. In that time since March, I've moved twice and been dealing with changing my life situation. It's not really something worth getting into, but lord knows it contributed.

The final reason is much more ethereal. Things have changed in my writing between now and this time last year. It's grown much more serious, which is to be expected. But as my own skill level increases I realize that this is soon going to stop becoming an amateur thing and will begin to make the transition into a (hopefully) professional gig and ... to be honest, that's a little daunting.

Many writers are afraid of failure. But those that work past it realize that the only thing more terrifying of failure is the paralyzing realization of just what it takes to move from hobby novelist to professional writer. The gap is as wide as forever and as sudden as an instant. And the fissure between the two sides is enough to swallow you whole to where nobody will ever find you.

At this point, I have to try to bridge the gap. I've finished a couple of novels, and I have one that's edited and has been read and supported and is ready for another edit before it goes out into the world. The impending agent-to-publication process is going to take up most of next year, I'm sure, and it's intimidating.

So, to be honest, I got cold feet. I just needed to check out and get a little perspective on it.

Does that mean I've worked through it? Not in the least. But I'm tired of not working and I need to go back to doing something. So I'm gearing back up in my books. I'm restarting the posting in the blog. And we'll see how well the slightly more grizzled, slightly wiser Literary Rock Star fares going into the second half of the year when it's all editing and preparing for the up and coming joys of querrying and rejection.

Should be a ride. Until then, I'm out of here.

A long-expected update!

So, I’ve been more than a little negligent lately. Not just about this blog, but about everything in general. Moving twice in a month I think drained me mentally more than I care to admit. And, also, the three weeks between those two moves threw me out of my writing habit.

So lately I’ve been trying to get back into it. Tango was a bit of a lost cause—returning to a novel after three weeks away is a terribly hard thing to do, especially when you went cold turkey with your writing like I did.

I decided instead to focus on my Script Frenzy script I’m writing with Tony. It’s light, it’s fairly straightforward, and it’s serving as a good way to ease back into my previous writing habits. It’s not quite NaNo, but it’ll hopefully bring me back up to something resembling speed.

Which is going well. It’s noiry (that’s a word!) as hell, but mostly a positive experience. I don’t know what I’m going to do with it once it’s done, since I’m not trying to be a screenwriter. Tony can gussy it up if he wants, or else I’ll just sit on it and publish it on a website someday as miscellanea.

After that I’m completely unsure. Two of the nine or ten readers I’ve sent MS to have finished it (the rest of you, two weeks left until shame on you) and that’s gone very well. So I can approach editing a third draft of that. There’s also a desire to give a second draft to WTC.

Of course, there’s also Tango. Oh Tango.

I’m suffering from an embarrassment of riches, here. Too many irons, many of them hot enough to strike.

But it’ll work out. As for the blog? I’ll see what I can do. Getting back into the writing swing of things might mean I get more inspiration. It might not. It’s really hard to say, honestly. My focus is all over the place. Pointing it in a constructive direction is little more than guesswork these days.

Collateral Damage

You know, there's something to be said for the mindset of a working writer, and I'm here to say it. I normally don't soapbox so vehemently, but things have transpired to the point where I need to do something.

I'm a writer. Not your plucking around, lazy ass down and out angst-more-than-work One Day Writer. I was one, once. Not too long ago, even. But I'm done with that. That went out with 2007 and a bunch of other stuff that was on my back. I threw the baby out with the bathwater.

Good thing, too. It was a vicious little thumbsucker.

Now I'm a working writer. As the Luchadors are known to say, We don't fuck around here, señor.

That means this is my job. It's what I do, it's who I am. Someone asks me what I do, I tell them I'm a writer. No shame, no hesitation. You know why? Because that's what I am. It's what I do.

Right now it's shitty, the hours suck and the pay is nonexistant. I do pro bono book writing for nothing more than the hope of the future and the emotional and mental satisfaction. It's nice--finishing a novel is the equivalent of a three day orgy without the hangover, the eventual failed drug tests, and the possibility of the clap. But it's what I do. I work a bill-paying job, and then I come home and work this job for free because I believe in it and myself and everything that comes along with it. I don't make excuses for it, I don't feel bad about it.

But it is a job. And like all jobs, I make sacrifices for it. As I should. Because I'm a writer. I'm not sitting here indulging in angsty "I hate my writing I'm going to burn it all" crap, though I do so from time to time (usually at the same time that I'm blazing through words and pages in another window). I work through it, like I need to.

I do this every day, if I can. I try very hard to. As far as I'm concerned, a day without writing is like an unpaid working day. Rack up too many and you find yourself suffering. Instead of hitting me in the paycheck, it hits me in the spirit. Trust me, I'd rather have an empty wallet than an empty soul any day of the week. It wears better, anyway, in the pocket of my pants, the thinner my wallet is. As far as I'm concerned, this is the most important thing in my life. Priority Number One is BE A WRITER. Everything else bends around it, falls under its sway. As it should. This is a high-demand job, and I'll pay all the way down the lonely road if I have to.
I try to balance other things in my life. I have hobbies--I adore reading (I know, only a half hobby, but still), I sometimes sit down and game, I love movies. I even go out from time to time. But these are things that have to be worked into a 40-hour work week and typically a 20-hour writing week. I sleep, too, in there, though you'd never know it.

Guess what that means? I'm busy. I know, I know, I chose this life for myself, knowing full well in advance what it meant to be a writer, and did it anyway. And that's why I rarely bitch about how long I spend writing and how little time I have for other things. I might complain about the process or the result, but I almost never complain about the fact. Writing is me, to deny it would be the worst kind of self-destruction.

And while I try to work in everything else, it doesn't always work. It can't always work. I try to prioritize and whatnot, but sometimes things just get dropped. Between writing and wage-slaving and sleeping, there are cracks where things get dropped.

I'm not bitter about that, so long as the people who are in my life understand that this is how things are.

I am who I am, and it's not going to change. In fact, I imagine it'll get a hell of a lot worse before it gets better. Before too long I'll be juggling finding an agent and continuing to work. My book-reading habits have risen to near-hurculean proportions.

All I ask of the people who are in my life is that they understand this. I am a writer. It's serious. As in, don't you dare fuck around with it. Because when push comes to shove, the writing > anyone else in my life.

This, painful as it is to admit, is as it should be.

Look, I'm not trying to be heartless, but I take my work seriously. And if you respect me as a working writer, you'll appreciate that I do. I make sacrifices for it, more than anyone who isn't in the position would appreciate. I'm not asking you to understand every aspect of it.

But I do ask you to respect me and my decisions to it.

Which means, when I mention my time crush, or when I talk about having to make decisions between options, or when I talk about taking some much needed time off to recoup and relax and recharge a little, the *last* thing I need is someone saying "Gee, you don't really do much now."

To all of those people: Fuck off and die.

I'm not joking anymore. Yeah, I'm a loner. Yeah, I'm introverted. Yeah, I don't have nearly as much of a social life as I want. But I'm living the dream, and paying the price, and if you're going to be a part of my life and interact with me on any meaningful level, you're going to have to understand that.

I'm not going to bend for you. Like I said, the writing comes first. Sorry, it's cruel, but this is a cruel world and we writers are selfish, cruel people. Gotta be. A writer doesn't get a company to back him up. There are no benefits, no guidelines, and nobody in the world is willing to give us the time if we don't take it for ourselves. The world doesn't make writers, people have to become them.

But I've had one too many times where people seem to disregard my efforts as if it was just so much jetsam to be left on the wayside. I'm not going to play that game anymore. I'm done with it. I'm not asking for concessions, I'm not asking for understanding, but if you don't get it keep your mouth shut.

The next person who belittles my efforts is getting a one way ticket out of my life. Post-haste, effective immediately, no refunds or exchanges or transfers on this flight.