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I’ve got precious little going on inside my head right now, so I’ll just touch briefly on what I thought this story was going to be. The original idea was simple: I would write a fairy tale-ish story, and set it in some far away time, and then plow ahead without doing a single bit of research or all that much thinking as far as the setting went. In retrospect, I was shooting for something very, “The Princess Bride,” like.

Let this be a lesson to you…and me. Just because a book has a bright, airy, chatty feel, does not mean that said book was easy to write. Not that I wasn’t impressed by William Goldman before, but my respect has waxed anew. Yes, I had a fever all weekend, and yes I couldn’t get a grip on my story, and yes I have all sorts of other excuses, but in the end I think that I just stupidly mistook “silly” for “easy.” Not the smartest move.

Also, I’m coming to learn that I’m far better off carving a story out of a character rather than an idea. “The Rags,” was the same crap. I get an interesting idea for how I could write a story, and then I get into it and I realize much too late that I have no mojo whatsoever. The idea alone isn’t enough to sustain me. I can’t sit down and say, “Okay, be silly,” or, “Be dramatic,” or, “Be interesting.” It just doesn’t work. I’m much better off toying with a character, then slowly inserting them into a situation and seeing how they react, how the situation reacts, how things play out, backing up if need be, coming in from a different perspective if need be, and building a story out of that. If it turns out silly, great. If it turns out sad, great. If it turns out romantic or scary or a mix of all of them, great. But I don’t get to decide that at the outset.

Boy do I ever not get to decide that at the outset.

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I still have nothing for next week’s story, and now that it’s Thursday night the situation has passed over into the land of quite worrisome for me.

Nothing.

I thought I had something a few days ago about a fairytale land and a romance between some peasant dude and a girl of some sort, but that didn’t exactly materialize.  If you couldn’t tell.  Also I haven’t had a smart-ass character in awhile, so I was thinking of working one of those in, but that isn’t exactly a story, it’s just me wanting to write a smart-ass character.

It’s going to be difficult this weekend to figure out whether I should get out and try to find some inspiration in the city, or stay at home and sweat out a paragraph or two to build on as the weekend progresses.   Both options suck.  Going out is fun and can produce great results, but then you’ve got that much less time to get through your work when you finally sit down, while staying in and chaining yourself to your desk sucks for more obvious reasons.

Anyway, don’t be surprised if there’s some sort of smart-ass peasant-type romance thing coming your way next week.

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They’re filming something of some sort on the street below mine.  This is a common occurance here in Manhattan.  Your street gets taken over by trailers and food tables and lengths of cable and people with hurried looks on their faces and multiple communication devices strapped to their belts.  After the first few times you see it you sort of lose interest.  Whatever movie or ad or show is being shot is probably filming inside a building nearby or the shot they’re doing is going to take thirty seconds and look remarkably like someone pointing a camera at some people doing something that makes zero sense to you.  Granted, if there was a big actor or something nearby, that’d be fun, but that’s pretty rare.  Usually I just see the trailers set up as portable dressing rooms and the table of coffee and sandwiches.  Except for two times.

Once, maybe five years ago, I stepped out of my apartment and into a parade.  This wasn’t too surprising, the apartment I was in at the time had a lot of parades go by.  But then the parade stopped, everyone went back to the beginning of the block, and it started all over again.  The second time the parade went by I noticed that everything with a date on it was telling me that it was the early nineties.  I finally figured out they were filming a parade scene for Law and Order.

The second time I was walking home and was four blocks from my street.  It was winter and very cold, dark and windy, but it was perfectly clear out.  Then I was three blocks from my street.  Then two.  Then it was snowing.  Then I was at my street and it was clear again.  Freakhog bizarre. They made it snow on the street south of mine.  I probably walked back and forth a dozen times that night just to experience that, “Now it’s snowing, now it’s not,” feeling over and over.   Then, naturally, that night it snowed like crazy as one of those wonderful New York blizzards blew through causing the movie that was filming to have to postpone everything as their film and cameras and lights were geared up to shoot fake snow…the real snow was useless to them.

Also there was one time when it was snowing and I was drunk and I ran into every convienance store on my way home and shouted out the title of this post before running on.

I’m nowhere with next week’s story.

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It’s time for my periodic request for free advertising that I told myself I’d do after every story but quite often forget about. Yes, that’s right, M.P.R.F.F.A.T.I.T.M.I.D.A.E.S.B.Q.O.F.A. is upon us again. Oh, it seems like just yesterday that the last one was here.

If you like what you’re reading, if you dig free content, if you enjoy my stories, please go tell a friend. It’s that easy. Surely we’ve got something here that somebody you know will like. We’ve got mad scientists, true love, sarcastic computers, sympathetic hit-men, dancing t-shirts, angry blobs, touching loss, the New York of my twenties, and some other stuff. Not to mention the ever engaging world of Matthew and Epp.

So go. E-mail away the links to your favorite stories. You won’t be missing anything. I’m not going to do a thing but sit here and play solitaire while your gone. Honest.

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