August 2007

Am I repeating myself?

A worry that I might be starting to repeat myself has crept into my head. And you might be thinking this is a little nuts. I’ve gone from a hit-man held-over from the Cold War to twenty somethings drinking in New York to I’m not sure that world Epp and Matthew exist in to a story that is (apparently) taking place in a laundromat with anthropomorphic clothes running wild. But if you strip away the bells and whistles I feel like I’m starting to repeat myself. I can see a pattern forming between all the stories. I guess this is perfectly natural. Someone wiser than me once said that there are only seven basic stories: Love, Hate, Revenge, Journey…um…I can’t remember them all…I think one involves some sort of hostage situation in a theme park. At any rate, it’s probably pretty hard not to get this feeling every now and then when one is making up stories as often as I am right now. I guess it really depends on my mood. For example, someone once gave me everything I’ve ever written summed up in one sentence. And depending on my mood this either strikes me as an interesting insight into my work or it feels like pigeonholing. The sentence, if you’re wondering, was as follows: “You write deeply flawed characters who at the end of the day find themselves hoping for nothing more than a shot at redemption.” Some days that strikes me as nice, some days I think maybe I should try writing something that doesn’t fit that statement. And who knows, maybe you disagree with that and have a completely different sentence in mind. Which brings me back to the whole, “I don’t enjoy telling my readers what they’re supposed to be seeing,” concept. I’d much rather you occasoinally floor me with a sentence like that which I don’t see coming.

Where was I? Oh. Right. A talking pair of pants. Yeah I’m still nowhere with this story.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Okay, time to roll up the ol’ sleeves.

I was looking over the posts from last story and I guess I’m not completely screwed yet. Apparently things didn’t coalesce for Second Choice until the Thursday before it was due, giving me a week to put it together. But I think I’ve got even less to start with here, plus my weekend is filling up so I’ve got less time to work with, plus it was a tight-wire act keeping that last story under control (reception has been good but I was convinced it had gotten away from me and spiralled off into a train wreck), plus…well plus quite frankly I’d like to not be hard up against my deadline for once on this project.

Basically, this is what I’ve got. Here’s my whimsical idea. I’ve got it into my head to somehow write about a laundromat where the various types of clothes come into conflict. You know, you’ve got the Lights and the Darks and the Delicates and…I don’t know. All I know is it’s pretty out there and it’s pretty hard not to sound like a racist talking about Lights versus Darks. I guess it worked for George Lucas. At any rate, I think it’s time to fall back with faith upon my creative process (a paraphrasing of sorts from my inspiration/guy-who-got-me-into-this-mess, Jonathan Coulton) and just start writing some things. That will help solidify it, I hope, so my head can get around it and maybe come up with a decent storyline, cause all I’ve got right now is a gimmick. Most likely I’ll just kick around characters tonight, I’ve mentioned before how making choices for them can help guide you into a story sometimes. Anyway, here goes.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Fourth time going to the well.

It’s strange, but I was in exactly the same place two weeks ago. I had the tiniest bit of something in my head. So tiny you could barely say it was more than nothing. I had a guy, and I thought he wore glasses, and he was at a wedding. And I got my story done. I met that last deadline, but right now I can’t in any way keep that information in my head. All I can think is that with a deadline in ten days there’s no way I can take this little itty bitty next to nothing in my head and turn it into something. And I’m pretty sure that no matter how many times I do this, the same fear and bafflement at what I have to do will be with me. No matter how many times that tiny nothing turns into a whole story, it’s still basically impossible to have faith that it will happen again. It’s just so hard to ever believe that the well isn’t going to run dry and to actually accept that the creative process might materialize yet again.

Anyway, ten days out and only two details rattling around in my head. It really isn’t a choice any more, those two details have to blossom into a story. And you all are in for a treat.

Popularity: 2% [?]

This is getting interesting.

There are always ideas floating around in the back of my head for stories. Truthfully I think that these are just slightly modified versions of the stuff everybody has floating around in the back of their heads. Most people wonder if they remembered to pay the electric bill or what have you and it just sits there, but for some reason when I’m thinking about whether or not I remembered to pay the electric bill it sometimes solidifies into characters and dialogue which, if I continue to think about them, work with them, toy with them, can get fleshed out into stories. This happens on a daily basis; while I’m, say, walking down the sidewalk there will be a little tug and I’ll get a glimpse of someone doing or saying something and then it’ll be gone. Every once and awhile I’ll get the tug it will seeem interesting enough to, as I mentioned, play with a bit and maybe see if there’s a story behind it. What I’m learning for this project, though, is that I in no way have the luxury of rejecting the few ideas that solidify outright. I’ve got to make myself play with anything that clicks in my head to see if I can work a story out of it. Anything. Which is just the long way around of saying, unless lightning strikes inside my head over the weekend, we’re in for one rather strange story two Thursdays from now.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Second Choice now titled.

I really don’t know what this story is. All I know is that my head hurts and I can’t read this thing one more time. And I’m not crazy about the title but I’m out of time so…tada! There’s the title. It’ll post at one tomorrow.

Popularity: 3% [?]

This is insane.

10,000 words. Yeah. You heard me. 10,000 words and I don’t have an ending yet. That’s not to say this is a long rambling boring thing with no point. I’m just saying I’m at the end but I can’t figure out which scene to finish with. It’s like I’ve written an entire song and I’m down to the last three notes, just the little twirl at the end, but I know that if I put them one way then the song works, and if I put them another way than it’s okay but it’s not quite the same. And I can’t figure out which note should be last.

Also I have no title. I’ve got about eight billion possible titles, but nothing really is jumping out at me. It could be that there isn’t any real great title but I’ll continue to think on this tomorrow and maybe something will come to me. With my luck it’ll pop into my head as I’m walking down the sidewalk and I’ll laugh out-loud and start talking to myself and everyone will look at me funny. Believe me, that happens. If you write you know what I’m talking about.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Far be it from me to actually write a short story.

When I started this project I somehow managed to block out of my head the fact that I can’t keep my damned mouth shut when my fingers are touching a keyboard. This story is 8,000 words already and still growing. Hopefully I’ll be able to trim some of this, but I feel like it’s the bare bones as it is. I should be done with three stories by this point, but no, I’m still rattling on with this one. And it’s horrifying because I managed to pull a rather interesting idea out of nowhere last Thursday, but with the limited time I have left I’m not sure I’ll be able to do it justice. Believe me, that’s a painful thought. You should never fall in love with your ideas, just have them and execute them and move on. Especially when your idea requires you to practically invent a new world in three days.

Plus, I don’t have a title yet.

This is not going well and I am so very tired.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Tip of the iceberg.

What’s baffling me with this story is the preposterous amount of information I have to hash out and lock down just to write a couple of lines of dialogue. Really it’s….well it’s completely crazy. But some stories are like that. Thus far I’ve researched lightning bugs, probability curves, Greek philosophy, The Port Authority Bus Terminal, the concept of currency, fashion and various labels of scotch…to name just a few.

I should mention that I’m currently thinking of calling it “Second Choice” but I’m not sure I like that. I think I can do better, plus those words appear a fair amount, I don’t like having the title repeated so many times within the story. Hopefully I can think of something better.

Also I’ve been listening to The Pogues almost nonstop. I don’t know. You sort it all out.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Thank you for smoking.

I quit smoking exactly one year, two months and five days ago. Not that I’m counting. I mention this because it’s becoming apparent to me with the formation of each new story that smoking wants to keep popping up in some form or another. Frankly it was rather important in one of these stories. At any rate, I’m just going to say that I know it’s happening, and I’m more than happy to let it happen. I quit smoking for none of the reasons that you might think, I despise the Truth ad campaign and I hate every movement that seeks to remove smoking from the arts. I’m tempted to make sure that every story I write contains smoking of some sort, but then I’m overreacting in the opposite direction and, well, that just seems silly. So you might start to notice that smoking pops up a lot in these stories and I’m just saying…I quit smoking exactly one year, two months and five days ago, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to quit smoking in my imagination.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Well…the full moon was on Monday so it couldn’t be that.

I’m not sure what was going on tonight. Some nights it feels like everyone in the city of New York is looking at me when I walk past them on the street. Yeah, I know. That’s about a half-step away from me telling you that the mailboxes are laughing at me, but I swear sometimes it’s true. Granted, people watching is a huge past time here, and it’s pretty natural to just sort of look around at everything. Maybe it’s just that the times I’m looking out I happen to catch everyone else who’s in the same mood. I don’t know. All I know is I was hunting for some characters and it felt like everywhere I looked, someone was staring right back at me. That, plus reading Harry Potter, plus waiting about forty-five minutes for a Big Mac (I swear that the people who work at my McDonald’s speak some other language so that when I say, “I’d like a Number 1 Meal, please,” what they hear is, “I’d love to stand here forever watching you people lose my food”), plus it just being that kind of night…I guess what I’m saying is I’ve got my story for next week and when it came to me my mind was in a slightly different place. To say the least.

I don’t know. Sometimes you just have to put Stevie Wonder’s “Superstitious” on and crank it to eleven. Then you write.

Popularity: 2% [?]

« Previous Page — Next Page »