Checking in

Been a minute.

I all but finished a pretty long piece...some 40-50 pages. I quit because I hated it. That has pretty much been the end of my effort since the semester started.

Revision ideas have been occurring to me lately, as have new methods for accomplishing better first drafts (outlining and ways to that have been prominent).

Don't know if it will amount to much. School is getting pretty heavy and I don't know if I'm going to have the time to commit to the dream for awhile. We'll see.

Houdini escapes again!

Yesterday I took our pet rat Houdini to see the kids in China. She'd been sick for some weeks and it was obvious she wasn't going to get better. So she got to meet the youth in Asia. Sad face.

Haven't been by here in a while. Between the bursts of productivity and the crippling writer's block that follows those blissful days, I haven't felt much like commenting on my efforts.

I don't feel like a beginner anymore, I'll tell you that. Rather, I feel like I've started practicing with a superpower I've always known I possessed, but been too afraid to use (understandably: when I make mistakes, terrible things happen). Still, experimentation has yielded a great deal of practical knowledge about what I'm doing.

My biggest success is my steady implementation of stream of conscious flow during the first draft phase. Letting go of the need to have perfect sentences in perfect paragraphs has greatly increased my word count. On the downside, I'm probably spending too much space on needless exploration, but hey: fuck it. That's what revision is for.

I figure I'll kill this blog soon. It was created to help me understand the beginning stages, to keep me motivated, and to remind me of the goal (getting published). That goal is approaching rapidly. Within the next two to three weeks, I hope to have The Holographic Moon available on Kindle and Nook. I plan to release it for free and beg every community, internet and analog, to give it a look and review if enjoyed. Hopefully I can start building a readership while I work on the other parts of the book (Working title: Small Comforts...probably will be changed). I've contacted an artist friend who is a fiend with oils, and he has agreed to paint me a cover for royalties.

I'd like to say I'm excited about all this, but optimism has given way to the realism. But you know what? That's probably for the better, because optimism and hope are fragile things. In an previous blog, I wrote about the concept of faith. It seems to me that faith is superior to optimism and hope because faith takes into account hardship, whereas the other two gloss over trials and tribulations while only considering success and reward.

Faith is a great tool for a realist, I think. Granted, we usually group faith in with people with religious delusions, but if we remove it from that context and discuss it as a willingness to engage in the unknown with courage and excitment, with a degree of certainty in the rightness of ones actions tempered by awareness of inevitable confusion and setback, you might agree that such an approach could have great benefit.

Of course, maybe I'm not really being a realist here. Maybe I'm just being a cynical optimist. Whatever. Long rambling entry. Apologies. Again, this blog might be on its last legs. Its been useful, and I appreciate you anonymous readers, but I figure it might be a source of embarrasement one of these days. Whatever hill I started climbing when I began it is nearly crested, and my legs have gotten stronger. Soon, I think, I'll be ready for mountains.

R.I.P Houdini: I'm glad we made your life better for a time, and that we could help you escape when the chains got too heavy and tight.

starts and stops

Over the last few months, I've gotten into three stories, and driven each to near completion. Each are missing crucial portions, but all together I've got about 50 pages or so of manuscript, with about 35 of those being pretty usable for a book I'm planning. Its the most output I've ever achieved in pursuit of this dream.


 That's the good news.


 The bad news is that I'm doing it in little fits. Following these little creative bursts are stretches of inactivity marked by total uncertainty and fear of continuing. I make plans and break them constantly, and frustration just gathers and pools. Cue the negative feedback loop, where my own feelings of inadaquacy damage my proclivity toward creative acts, which in turn creates more frustration.


When I was a teenager, I went through a spell of intense commitment to a particular denomination of Protestant Christianity. Around this time was an era of lots of trips to the river, and lots of jumping off cliffs. I remembered both of these little factoids when I was thinking that every act of writing is like jumping off a cliff: its scary as hell to make the leap, but once I start I just have to let gravity do the rest. The last time I tried to jump off a big ciff was probably a few years ago. Unlike my teen cliff jumps, this attempt wasn't effective; I chickened out and had to climb down to a safer height. By the by, this was during an era of my life when I'd pretty much lost faith in everything (friends, family, country, religion, etc...). 


Faith is a funny thing to talk about. The greatest proponents of it are typically idiots using religion in ways that make other people uncomfortable. And, as something of a neo-gnostic, it doesn't make sense for me to discuss faith in a religious sense. Still, jumping off cliffs requires some sort of faith, even if its just simple faith in the water being there and being as deep as it looks. Faith that things will work out, that harm won't come from an attempt. And you know what? Faith might be misplaced, and the rock just out of sight beneath the water might just bash the shit out of you when hit it. Still, good luck finding the gumption to jump without it (unless you happen to be one of those lucky assholes who just do things for the pleasure and the thrill...I've never felt that way about writing). 


 Anyway, I'm trying to hold to some sense of faith in myself. I know I have potential, that my understanding of the English language in the written form is pretty solid, that my vocabulary is wide, and--most importantly--I have an awful lot of creative concepts that would not only be fun for a reader to partake in, but also enriching. Also, there are thriving markets out there for short fiction, and fantastic opportunities in the realm of e-publishing. Its all there: everything a person could need to begin a successful career in the arts. 


 Faith, faith, faith. I have to start having it in myself. Its the only way to take this obsession and turn it into a compulsion. How many people wish for OCD I wonder? Well, I sure as shit do. I want it bad. Because, see, the problem is that I have the obsession already, but its paired with repulsion rather than compulsion. The OCD individual suffers painful anxiety until the obsession (be it counting buttons on all the clothes in the closet or washing their hands four times an hour) is completed. I have that god awful anxiety, but the thing I need to feel satisfied is often terrifying and disgusting to me. Isn't that sick? 


 Those negative feelings are the result of comparing my actual self to my ideal self: in my head I'm getting interviewed and giving speaches as a bestselling author (embarrasing, but most of us do it about something I think...), but when I look at what I wrote last, all I can see are my mistakes. Those mistakes will be fixed after a revision or so, I know that, but the errors I'm seeing don't jive with the paragon of literary awesomeness I imagine myself to be at the times I'm most excited about writing. 


 Random note: early cliffjumps were typically painful as well. It took water shooting into my sinuses and back out through my mouth before I learned to make damn sure my nose was held; I wacked the hell out of my balls a few times before I learned to cup them before impact. There's a lesson there, eh? So maybe I'm still learning to protect myself from the hurtful components of throwing myself into chair and into the worlds I'm trying to create. But before I can refine my defensive technique, I have to jump. And that, me amigos, takes faith. 


 Thanks for reading. Leave a comment. I could use some encouragement.

Checking in

Hey folks!

Still here. Working hard. Haven't felt like talking about writing.

Logged 8 hours on a story over the last two days. There is a contest entry due on the 6th of June I'm hoping to hit. Going slowly, but going well.

Anyway, back to it.

:-)

A kingdom for worms

My wife is playing video game right behind me, and a character just used the phrase "A kingdom of worms." I liked it.

Work is moving along. I've recently been introduced to a couple of neat writer's market websites. Kind of excited to find out there are as many outlets as there are for what I'm trying to put together.

My senior paper for my major is coming up due in 5 days, so its getting my attention right now. Looking forward to having it done.

Insights continue to flow on what writing is and isn't; more than that, I'm starting to have actual fun and not treating my time in the chair as a giant effort. Bringing something into the world requires labor, and labor is often painful and messy, but satisfying too. Maybe I'm getting more comfortable in the midwife role, learning to maintain the proper attitude to the work...

I guess I'm adapting to the crueler aspects of writing that I've cringed from in the past. Those awful minutes that tick by with nothing new or good on the page aren't the hope-killers they used to be. Rather, they seem to be the story's way of letting me know I've wandered from the path it needs to take.

New methods are starting to show up. I really want to finish the two I'm knee deep into right now so I can  try new techniques when beginning fresh projects. Actually, that's dumb: I can use these techniques now to help me finish the two I'm on.

Cool then: insight. I guess I'm going to go put an hour or so into my paper, and then maybe fool around with some fiction.

Optimistic.

Something to be said...

Surely there is something to be said, right?

Haven't been working much lately, despite the excellent opportunity I have to write at this time. Over the last few weeks, I've been King-ing a bit: reread Carrie, Salem's Lot, and On Writing. Also, I've been interacting with writing communities, both online and in town. Trying to ground my efforts a bit more, and find a good comparison point as well.

Its time to start it back up though. I'm feeling sort of sick with inaction, and its a bad feeling. I'm scared again. My inactivity frightens me, and so does the weight I feel pulling me toward this stuff all of the time. I'm courting obsession, but it seems to be without compulsion. Dangerous combination: it breeds deep dissatisfaction.

Still, the cards keep falling. Their arrangement is promising, but I can't figure out what the promise is....

lesson

A wonderful thing happened today.

This morning, around 5, I had a dream that woke me up. I laid there for a bit, and then I saw how it could be a story.

I've been rereading that wonderful Stephen King classic On Writing, and I have been mulling over his suggestion to let fly on the first draft and not edit at all. Deciding to take this to heart, I grabbed my iPad, keyboard, and lap desk (all next to the bed) and let fly. Rather than look at what I was writing, I turned my screen away from me and focused on the story I was telling rather than the words. A whole damn draft came out of me before I quit. Beginning to end.

Then a terrible thing happened.

My keyboard hadn't been turned on. No words on screen. Sad face. Actually, really pissed off face.

Still, the lesson is there: writing finished draft and telling a story are two different things. You don't bring a baby into the world as an adult; you don't bring a piece of writing complete into the world either.  It takes time and learning what the thing is and what it needs to reach potential. But first it needs to come out.

Anyway, I guess I'm going to be experimenting with this further.

Also: I'm still here.

:-)

admission

A few entries back there is a ramble on my realization that I needed to use anger as a tool in my writing. Channeling that emotion is going to be very helpful, I think, because when it hits I typically need to act on it. Trying  to rationalize my way through it never does the trick, you see: the disturbance just increases in its shaking until I have to act on it in some way. When I do that, I typically take it right back to the perceived source. Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't (even when it does work, it doesn't work well, creating future problems down the road even while solving those in temporal proximity). Putting it into the words I'm writing will most likely provide the outlet I need to manage those feelings; I've experimented with it in the past and it worked pretty well. 

When I am angry its incredibly empowering. Its like holding a lightening bolt that has to be thrown before it vibrates me to pieces. And, for better or worse, anywhere I end up chunking the furious thing always creates a nice, big reaction, just like any good catalyst ought to wrought.  Its satisfying, often, but also sloppy, with damage to things I would prefer remain intact. 

So, again, the intention is to harness that power, putting that energy into proper channels, routing it into circuits so it will push the process along in more beneficial ways. Then, I think, great success will ensue.

Here's the problem: I'm really not that angry all the time. When I am, good god I am; when I'm not, I'm lots of other things. I suspect that most people who know me would be surprised that I place such emphasis on anger as a dominant emotion in me, as I usually come off as pretty jovial. A jovial attribution is fair, because by and large I'm in a pretty fine mood most of the time. What I mean when I describe anger as being a dominate emotion in me is, when its been poked and prodded enough to raise its head and gnash its teeth, it immediately comes to the forefront of my conscious experience with no small amount of force. But most of the time (thank goodness), its other emotions being triggered by my environment. 

Sadly, fear has been a big one lately, along with frustration and uncertainty. These are springing from my employment situation...even with a bunch of opportunities on the line and savings to see me through, I'm really uncomfortable not having a work schedule to anchor my days. The hope is to take advantage of this transitional period and write a whole bunch, but how do I do that without the burning bright anger to fuel my fingers? Fear and uncertainty are oily and damp feelings, and frustration is only a little fire with little hope of blazing when surrounded by them. I think of writing, and I become afraid of failing at it. I become frustrated with what I've done. I debate endlessly whether or not its worth the effort. 

Here is the admission for which this particular entry is titled: I was correct in recognizing that anger is an emotion that can and will have to be used, but that recognition was way too limited. It was a natural deduction in that anger demands an outlet, and creative endeavors are a fine, obvious safe place to let anger stomp around until it tires out enough to be turned into something more productive (determination, say). What I didn't recognize was that, if I'm going to make this work, I have to figure out how to use every other emotion at my disposal, even those that don't obviously lend themselves to inspiration.

huh-rumph

Grumble, grumble, grumble....

Mars retrograde

Man, I picked a poor phase in my life to start this current effort. It began in a mercury retrograde and as soon as that ended, mars retrograde started up. I'm feeling it too: my part time job has fallen apart, forcing me to stop typing and start job hunting. I'm sort of thrilled at the notion of getting out of the library coffee shop, though. Don't get me wrong, its been a great job for me for the last couple of school years, and it met my financial needs for a long time. Much more importantly than the money, I have met some incredible people who have impacted me in ways that I suspect will take years to recognize. Still, I suppose with all of my birthing/ caterpillar metaphors on this blog over the last few weeks, its rather apropos that I'd be getting squeezed out into a new world.

Its messing up the writing, though, and I look forward to the establishment of a new stability to continue working in. Not that I'm ceasing (I'm about to rough out some stuff I've been thinking about) but only that I'm distracted.

That's what mars retrograde is all about, though: the recognition and destruction of faulty drives and efforts, as well as the laying of new foundations. With that in mind, I can look back on the last few weeks and recognize that, for all my recent efforts in writing, I've really been learning what doesn't work for me rather than what does.

Still, there are those occasional moments when I tap the right space in my head, when the words start flowing and a feeling of disconnection with my body sets in, and I think to myself, "If it could feel like this more often, I don't know if I'd be able to stop."

To be really honest, I'm really scared right now, but I can't say of what. The closest I can get is the enormity of what I'm trying to do is starting to dawn on me, and what's at stake as well. Its too big right now (it like Mt. Everest decided to go for  stroll in the fog), but I get little slivers of clarity.

I suppose I ought to get to work.

Something I might need to recall from time.

Since I was a kid, my favorite band has been Tool. They took anger and directed it into something that was powerful not for its own sake (for anger is power; if you don't believe me than recall the Incredible Hulk, and then recall that comics are one of our meanest myth platforms running). Tool took their anger and targeted the place that inspired it, be it inside themselves or outside, and made beautiful weapons out of the things that could have made them weak.

I am an angry person. There are lots of other emotions running around in the ol' noggin, but anger has directed so many of my choices through my life. Frankly, I've been its victim too many times, with my decisions being often more destructive to myself than to the situations that created them.

Maybe its time to stop that. Maybe the feeling I'm afraid of, the reason I'm afraid of writing, is that it means tapping that boiling place in the bottom of my guts and bringing it up. That is a stupid thing to be afraid of (I am angry at that fear): by bringing it up with care and love it will turn to passion. Destructive passion, certainly, but directed into sick things in my life and in the world around me that need burning to the ground.

Anger might lead to the dark side (and can we really trust George Lucas's creativity at this point?) but one hand plays the white keys and black keys. The black notes are labeled "minor." This is a bad joke; they are the most moving and powerful notes when played properly. Their power makes them frightening, though, so we limit them in title and regard their emotional expressions as poisonous.

I'm angry about that too.

Let's take the anger out, then. Let's look at it honestly and break the black off and pull out the diamonds that are hiding inside.

Roar.

reversal of fortune

I left Holographic Moon today and went back to Mirror Box.

That was a good idea. That story stalled out on me when I realized that I'd filled up most of the space that is reasonable for a short story (I was over 5000 words on it, with the end a ways away), with material that didn't do at all what the concept needed. Going back today, I moved nearly half what I had into a slush file and restarted at the last point I felt some degree of confidence in. The new stuff is much more effective and exciting for me to look back at.

There is a funny feeling that is starting to happen. A weird sort resignation to the material. There is little doubt anymore that writing these stories is going to be hard on me--the vulnerability that is called for, the willingness to try and fail and accept it and try again, other things--but I feel increasingly called to sit for longer amounts of time. Its a matter of immersion, and of pushing myself into the mind states of the characters. More than that, pushing myself into the very language the concepts require. Its like dancing, but more exhausting. And yet I feel compelled...

Part of it is the increasing of synchronicities all around me. Some of these are related to my material, and seeing direct relations between concepts and characters corresponding to things in the world around me. Those could be chalked up to my material being near the top of my recent memory, causing my mind to pattern my experiences onto the stories I'm fooling with. But its more than simple things and chance meetings; the whole world around me seems to be changing, and me with it.

I can't help thinking of butterflies cramping in cocoons, pushing out into a world they'd witnessed before in another form but now equipped to move and interact with it in a whole new way.

It might behoove me to speak with Artemis again soon...

Two daughters and a beautiful wife

Greg technically only has one daughter, but its still apt...

Good morning folks! The writing is going well as of late, and damn if that ain't fine. It's sort of funny: I'd been kicking Holographic Moon around in my head for years now, saying That's the one, I just gotta write that one and then I'll be on my way. I had the whole thing worked out in my head, from characters to setting to dialog. But the damn thing would never work when I sat down. Now, after tearing the whole thing down to its barest conceptual levels, I'm practically sprinting through this story (I just jinxed myself I'm willing to bet you anything).

I guess what I'm learning is that, when centering a story around a concept rather than a neat character or a striking scene, its important to be sensitive to what the concept needs to express itself.  The story I had built in my head was drawn from my own experience with the visual component of the concept. This makes sense: it seems perfectly likely that when my executive function told my creative structures to come up with imagery (which is what a story often is until it gets filtered through words), it would pull from the most immediate images in relation to the conceptual catalyst (i.e. the night Cheryl and I went for a walk and saw the moon's image broken into billions of copies and reassembled in a thin sheet of ice floating in the atmosphere).  Unfortunately, the immediate images weren't particularly interesting, nor was much else in the story. To put it bluntly, if every character in my first concept was killed horrifically, I think any reader would have said 'good.' The women were bitches and the men were wusses (and my inner Jungian just squirmed a bit).

The new version will be more effective, I think...

Anyway, early morning writing is so-so: the sun is blaring in my face pretty viciously. Still, there's a symbolic component there I sort of like...maybe I should stock up on sun screen?  :-)

I owe myself at least an hour today, and I'm thinking it might happen in the hammock with pen and paper, scotch and cigar. First though, I have errands to run.

edit! lAteR

Sat down for my hour today and was at a loss for what to do. Edited pre-existing stuff.

Spent time in the hammock with scotch and cigar, figured out what happens next.

Cool.

Once more, into the breach!

Well party people, here we go again.

In my last entry I told you that I'd given up on a story I'd been thinking about for years. The central concept, however, I still believe in. I spent yesterday brainstorming a bit, and I've come up with a much better story to couch that central concept in.

Further developments: the need for a solid schedule is becoming more apparent to me. From now on, 7 days a week, I'm going to devote a solid hour a day to these efforts. That's not too much time, and I probably waste that much dicking around on Facebook anyway. Less Facebook, more creativity equals good. Morning or night? Not sure yet. It will be fluid for the time being, and we'll see what hour I find most productive. I'm not limiting myself to only an hour, but that will be the minimal expected from myself from now on.

An opening ritual is going to need to be created as well. Steve King said that certain passes are required for him to enter the writer space, and I see the value in that. I'll discuss this more as I develop it.

Other than that, so far so good. I'm producing very little solid work at the moment, but I'm learning quickly what does and doesn't work for me. More than that, I'm showing more commitment to this process than I ever have, and that is really gratifying. Anyway, I'll try and stop by in a bit with a 'later' edit and tell you how the new story is working so far.

Listen to this song, if you like. It relates to "The Holographic Moon" in a round about way. Very sad and terrible, to be honest...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rs6rgjWZXyQ



edit: later

Went very well.

Very pleasing experience. An hour is a fair amount of time to ask of myself. The new story is going to take my central concept to much more interesting places; actually, I think it would be fair to say that now the story is going to be better than the central concept (assuming I can do it justice, of course).

One of these days I'm going to tell you folks about the reality bending powers of writing, and about the very real magic at work behind any act of creativity. Not now though.

I'm bushed. Time to play some video games.

In Utero

Having a bit of a crisis of faith as of late.

I've picked my material apart little too much. Too much thinking has weakened my focus and resolve, as well as my confidence in the stories themselves.

A friend of mine was pregnant a few years ago, and on her Facebook she was begging the baby to come out of her in the last few weeks of carrying. I imagine that feeling of wanting something out of herself, to see the culmination of the process manifested and the thing brought into the world....I think that would be very much like what I'm feeling.

The last two weeks, as good as they've been at times, were false labor. The real deal hasn't started yet, and I don't know how to induce the muse. And, lord God, am I scared of miscarrying this thing. I'm so invested in it that I don't know what I'd do.

Of the more than four thousand words I have managed to write on the current project, I'd estimate fully a thousand or more are going to have to be trashed. That's a big portion of what I've produced, and it sucks that I put that much work into something that I don't like and doesn't represent what I was trying to show at all. Its just not good, compelling, or true to the concept. But at least I know that.

A friend of mine is a painter. He works with oil paints and he is very good with them (good enough that a single piece of his work sells for more money than I currently make in a year). One day we ran into one another and I asked him how the work was going that day. He told me it had been a very frustrating day because the light on some flowers he had been painting was not correct and that he was going to have to scrap all of the work and redo the flowers. He said he could tell it really wasn't working for awhile but that he'd kept on pushing through until he realized what was wrong. It was very impressive to me that he could spend hours working on something as small as some flowers; it was more impressive that he would erase hours worth of work because he'd realized he wasn't doing something correctly.

The lighting was off in my story, too. I wasn't representing the events accurately, and now I have to tear what I made down and rework it. But at least I wrote something; I plowed on with the words even when I didn't have clear sense of where I was going. I might have to backtrack a bit, but now I am more sure of what I'm doing.

Hey, you know what? I feel better. Thanks blog! This is exactly why I started you.


Edit:

Later

Well, its been nearly five hours since I published this entry, and I've spent most of that time in my chair trying to start a piece that's been on my mind for years. Turns out it is crap. Another false labor.

But I've kept my butt in the chair, and I've given it my damnedest. There's that. There's also the realization that my central concept isn't bad. I'm going to try something different with it. I might do more tonight, or it might be tomorrow before I tackle this again.

I'm frustrated. No doubt about it. But I'm here, and I'm trying. Failing is much better than not trying and regretting it. That's cliche, but its true.

Still here...

School work has intruded on my dreams. Test on Thursday, spring break starts Friday...we'll see what this ol' boy can do with a free week.

gurg

Important lesson: hangover + impending tests + work stress = a brain not well suited to writing.

I'm too me today. There's too much of Jeremy and his issues, and its making it difficult to disconnect and do the work I want.

To feel and see the characters and the environment, and then use language in potent ways to communicate the things I'm seeing so someone else can see and feel them as well: doesn't that sound great?

Can't seem to pull it off though.  Maybe I should go study my French and look for a new job. Maybe I need to take care of Jeremy's concerns so he can relax and get out of the way a little bit.

I think I'm going to go buy a new chair.

Most good

Its been good today.

I plowed through a section on the computer, and then switched things up and took a notebook and pencil out to the hammock. Killed it in the hammock.

Hand writing might become my go-to method for the rough draft, assuming I'll be able to read a damn thing I wrote later...

;-)

Not bad. Not great.

Sums it up. There was new material added today, and I understand the characters in this one better as a result. Another 1500 words and I might be done with the rough draft.

Still, I didn't get as much done as I'd hoped. Maybe I shouldn't have started this on a Mercury retrograde...

WHEEL.
OF.
FORTUNE!

Here. Watch this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdNbocU6wKc

Rainy today, with heavy cloud cover that makes things so wonderfully dreary. I couldn't stand this weather all the time, but I really enjoy it once in a while.

The work is going well today. Really well actually: I'm surprised at how coherent the narrative function is managing to be. I'm taking a moment away to tell myself that these moments do happen, because I'm certain to forget soon when the slogging starts.

On his website, Neil Gaiman recently wrote in his blog that sometimes writing is like driving on a crystal clear day where you can see exactly where you are going, and on other days its like driving in fog, and you just have to push through and hope your destination becomes apparent. I like that an awful lot.

For me, writing is often like walking in flat, delta farmlands. Enormous flat expanses stretching on and on,  making a mockery of any sense of progress and, when the going gets muddy, a mockery of even a sense of movement.

There is a transition to be made, I think, from the cotton and bean fields where I spent my early childhood to the hills and mountains of my teens...

I fear I could labor this metaphor until it gave birth to some really bad material. I think I'll go back to the story I was working on. I'll check in later...

I lied: I didn't come back yesterday with further information. Sadly, the only writing I did was in that blog entry.

This is disappointing but not really surprising. A pattern is in place for me to draw upon here, and it has been in a fairly steady format for more than a few years. My current behavior is falls very much within it, and that is fine. I understood there would be a need for observation and adaptation.

But I'm here, now. I'm talking about it and I care. I'm ashamed of myself for my failure, but I'm unashamed of admitting I am ashamed. A superior place to be than merely ashamed, I should think.

Anyway, less school and work tomorrow. Hopefully I can spill some words out of me, and hopefully the accidental pattern they make on the page will be pleasing to at least some degree. If not, I'll still try and swing through to bitch about my inadequacy, or try to rationalize it.

Testing...Testing 1,2...


And so, from nothing but a gauzy and insubstantial notion combined with the neural-network that is the  interwebz, another blog is born. As a statement of intent, I'd like this blog to be a running journal on my attempts at being a serious fiction writer. I'm really embarrassed to admit that I'm attempting that, but there it is.

Its something I've wanted for myself for a long time, but haven't been able to cook up the right combination of gumption, talent, and discipline into a stew that would sustain the process of bringing a single decent piece to completion. There have been an awful lot of half-finished stories over the last eight years or so, and a lot of frustration and swearing off of the urge to sit in front of a blank page or computer screen and tell a story. Not a lot to show for it either. A published excerpt in a small magazine is really the best I've got to brag about, and thats sort of like bragging that your band opened for a band that opened for Motley Crue.

Whatever. I'm still going to give it another shot. A really serious one this time.

None of my efforts will be popping up here, though. I'm going to use this blog as a venue to talk about writing. The magic of writing; the work of writing; the joys and pains of writing. Hopefully it will help keep me motivated and on task, though there is a distinct possibility that there will be a handful of further additions before I give up this effort and decided to take up dance as a new hobby and passion. I hope that doesn't happen though.

I'll be back later today. We'll see how me and the page are getting along...