New toys, new techniques

One of the most interesting things about changes in technology is how those changes inspire us to change the very ways that we use technology. This is obviously the case with big, sweeping changes in technology. No one can argue that things like the telephone (in its day) and the Internet (during the last decade) had a massive impact on the way we communicate with each other.

But smaller changes in technology can also change the way approach our day-to-day lives.

When I first got my blackberry a couple of years ago, it was nothing but a cell phone with a bunch of kind-of interesting features attached to it. But after playing with it for a few months, I started to wrap my head around those other features, and I began to modify -- in small ways -- the way in which I used technology. I started scheduling things instead of actually depending on my memory. I stopped checking my email on my computer, and started to get it on the blackberry. More and more of my life began to find its way into that little device.

Mind you, this level of dependence has caused more than a little panic on the one or two occasions that I was convinced that I had lost the damn thing somewhere, but that's not really the point I'm trying to make.

The point is that in order to really progress in the 21st century, you can't pigeonhole new technology into the old ways of doing things. You have to invent new ways to capitalize on what new technology offers you.

In the last week, I've started to play around a bit with Google's "Docs and Spreadsheets" and "Notes" -- both web-based applications, and both incredibly cool, if you are able to look at them in new ways.

There's a new project currently under development at the newspaper I'm working at, and I'm currently trying to find ways that these online tools can be used to make this project more efficient. The ability to open both your word processing documents and your notes to collaborators means that processes like story editing and project planning can be more easily performed by multiple people.

I'm sure I have yet to maximize the possibilities provided by these two Google services, and I may never get around to doing that. But already their existence is inspiring me to rethink the way I do some of the most integral parts of my job. And, assuming those changes lead to improvements, that can only be a good thing.

Stick Figure Surprise

A few weeks later, but as promised, the Stick Figure Drama season four web gallery is live, current as of the edition of the Cariboo Advisor that hits the streets tomorrow. Because season four includes the crossover event with SAFEHOUSE -- another regular strip that appears in the Cariboo Advisor -- I will be including SAFEHOUSE strips in the web gallery, for as long as the crossover lasts. Which means twice the comic strip action! Or, I guess, 1.5 times, because SAFEHOUSE only runs every two weeks.

The links is on the right, under STICKAGE, but for those too lazy to scroll, you can just click here.

While I'm on the topic of the crossover, let me just say a few things about this whole idea, which was essentialy my brain child, and which, I was sure, would turn out to be a miserable failure. For no other reason than the fact that, for the most part, I don't play well with others.

Let's not mince words. When it comes to the creative world, I'm a power-hungry psychopath. I have a vision, and I will fight to bring that vision to life, and anyone that gets in my way is just going to end up road kill.

So, of course, teaming up creatively with someone else is just a really, really stupid idea. It's been a stupid idea when I've tried it in the past, so surely it's going to be a stupid idea this time around.

Except...it hasn't been like that.

Thus far, Jazmyn's been a dream to work with. Ever idea I've had has been something she's been willing to work with, and every idea she's had, instead of something I need to fight against, has actually proven to either be an idea that improves one of my own, or is flat-out better than one I already had. The ideas I had going into this have been, and continue to be, shaped and modified and ultimately improved by her involvement, which I must say is as big a delight as it is a surprise.

Which isn't to say that I've rethought my stance on playing with others. I still think I don't do a very good job at it. But, at the very least, it's interesting to learn that I'm not necessarily going to stab someone in the throat just because they've stepped into my sandbox.

I am such a geek.

And, as such, I have fondness for certain geeky things. Video games, for one. Now that's not terribly uncommon, there are plenty of people around the world with a geeky fascination for video games, so nothing worth mentioning there, really.

I also have a fondness for newspaper style guides. I have a copy of the CP Stylebook at home, on my bookshelf. Sometimes I browse through it for fun. I really do.

Well, would you get a load of this.

Someone (well, technically three someones) has put together a newspaper style guide for video games. It's like peanut butter and chocolate for someone like me -- two great tastes that taste great together.

The best part is that they're giving away a *free* copy of the e-book version for any working writer. So I have, of course, sent off my request. Not because I spend a whole lot of time writing about video games -- I don't, much to my occasional surprise -- but because, like the CP stylebook, I'll actually read this silly little thing for fun. More than once, I'm sure.

Another 17 down. 300-something more to go.

I dusted off the editing work last night, pushing my way through another 17 pages on the novel, bringing me to page 67 and nearly the end of chapter two. During a break in the editing, I hit the computer to print chapter three, which runs from page 67 to 97, and approximately one quarter of the novel.

Looking ahead at future editing work on the first half of the book, there's one lengthy section in the first chapter that needs a from-scratch rewrite that I haven't sat down to do yet, and another entire chapter near the end that needs to be created from scratch (when I was originally working on the book, I leapt ahead to the second half, as the first half was beginning to depress the hell out of me).

All of this work followed a dish-washing binge. Because, for reasons I could only begin to guess, I was in a super-productive mode last night.

While doing the editing work, I was listening to what I sort of consider the spiritual soundtrack to the novel, Leonard Cohen's "The Future." It's from that album that I yanked the quotes that open the first part, the second part, and the epilogue of the novel. But while editing, with the songs I had quoted drifting into my head in the background, a further idea occurred to me.

I realized that, instead of *just* using quotations from the songs, it would actually be appropriate to retitle those section based on sections from the quotations.

I rolled the idea around in my head for a bit, and found that I liked these section titles far, far better than what I had originally planned to use, so I made the official change to the manuscript.

And so, the section titles are broken down as such:

Part One: The Awful Truth
Part Two: The Miracle
Epilogue: The Light Gets In

These titles replace the originals, which were:

Part One: Faith
Part Two: Truth
Epilogue: Happily Ever After

And this is why I generally don't title things until I'm finished them. Because it isn't until I'm finished that I really know what it is I'm writing.

It's also nice to know that these sorts of random, sudden, overwhelming moments of inspiration are still able to make an appearance, even after 95% of the creation work is done, and I'm the middle of the more clinical editing stage.

Here's hoping that there's still a little bit of that inspiration left for when it comes time to do those few bits of from-scratch writing. I'm beginning to *feel* the narrator's voice again, just from reading it, so it shouldn't be too hard to sit down and find my way back into his head for those few sections. But it'd be an added bonus if those new sections were particularly inspired. Of course.

Oh, and over the course of last night's editing, I actually came across a section that seemed solid enough to post here. Taken from a scene at a funeral...

And then, I did need to be beside her, and hold her, and let her cry onto my shoulder as I cried into hers, pressing ourselves together, unaware of anything outside of us except the other, closing our eyes to the world around us, and the universe beyond that, making a new universe that would exist only of she and I, where no one died and love was eternal and just wanting something bad enough was all it took to make it happen.

And then dirt was being thrown, and the sobs came a little more loudly while the droning holy man quieted, and people started milling around, moving to comfort those they knew and cared about, because it was all over now except the mourning.

That's all for now. Cheerio.

This makes me sad.

I came across some statistics, while engaged in my usual, daily web-browsing habits, that sort of made me a little bit sad. Here are the particulars that caught my eye:

1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
57 percent of new books are not read to completion.
70 percent of books published do not earn back their advance.
70 percent of the books published do not make a profit.
(Source: Jerold Jenkins, www.JenkinsGroupInc.com)

To think that 80% of U.S. family didn't buy or read a book in the last year is just indescribably sad. Even more absurd, the article indicates that other research (which doesn't actually seem to be cited in the article, strangely enough) shows that 80% of the people in the U.S. would like to write a book one day.

Those numbers are just psychotic.

80% of people want to write a book.

80% of families haven't read a book in the last year.

Obviously those aren't the same 80%, but come on, there's gotta be some overlap between them. There's gotta be some *huge* overlap between them. So, why are there so many people who'd like to write a book that don't even bother reading them?

This makes my head hurt. It also makes me sad.

And, of course, I'm a little sad about the notion that 70% of published books do not make a profit and do not make back their advance, particularly at this point in my life, as I begin official editing work on my own novel, the first step towards what I hope will be eventual publication. Publication and, it would seem, eventual failure, if these statistics are to be believed.

Editing is hard.

Which is, I suspect, why I traditionally do so little of it.

But I formally decided a couple of nights ago that, not only would I allow myself to consider editing work as part of the "write every day" resolution, I would start off my editing work on the big one -- the novel that I finished in the summer of 2005, "Waiting for a Miracle."

I made this decision for a few reasons.

First, I really do want to keep up with the resolution, but it's not even the end of January and I've already done a horrible job of it. Lately, with two plays on the go, the last thing I want to do when I get home is crawl up to the computer and spend an hour at my desk. I want to just drop into the sofa, turn on some music, and relax. Editing is writing work that I can do on the sofa, if I've got some pages waiting for me.

The second reason is that, for the most part, I hate editing. When I'm finished writing something, the last thing I want to do is look at it again. I want to move onto something fresh and new and exciting. By allowing myself to include editing work as part of the resolution, it gives me a reason to do something I don't much enjoy, when I'm too lazy to do the actual writing work.

And the third reason evolved out of a conversation I had after the play on Friday night.

I asked a few people to help me choose a new career. The question came out, partly as a joke on the current trend that most people have four or five different careers in their lifetime, unlike people in the past who would generally stick with one career through their entire working life. And it came out partly as a result of a certain degree of employment dissatisfaction I've been feeling lately.

Among the many suggestions that were tossed at me (some good, some odd, and some downright dreadful), someone said, "Write a good book."

Which got me thinking. Maybe I should.

Which got me thinking, hey, wait a minute, I almost have. I've got a book that's pretty darn good, and probably just needs some cleaning up before it's of publishable quality. And all I really need to get it there is to, you know, actually work on it.

So I printed out the first two chapters of the novel tonight, double-spaced for easier editing. That amounted to about seventy-five printed pages (which is actually quite a lot, leading me to consider splitting some of these earlier chapters into smaller chunks), and promptly started work on editing a novel for the first time in just about ever.

And holy fuck, editing is hard.

I spent two hours, and made it through about twelve pages. Twelve double-spaced pages. There's black marks everywhere, sentences added, sentences modified, whole paragraphs yanked out. I'm ripping this book to absolute shreds, and it's actually a book I'm more than a little bit fond of. I can only imagine the sort of editing work that would go into something I didn't like at all. Although, more reastically, if I didn't like it at all, I doubt I'd bother with the editing work. You can't polish a turd, as they say.

And I'm only one night, and two hours, and 12 pages into this editing job, and I'm already wondering, when I'm done all this, when I've transferred all the changes back into the document, so it's a true reflection of this version of the story, when I'm done all that, will I be able to look at it and not make any further changes? Or, if I let the book sit for another six months, would I find myself making just as many edits as I did this time? Would I end up going through this whole process all over again?

This is what I'm afraid of. This, more than anything else, is why I don't edit. Because once you start, you can edit forever.

I have a book called "Paper Dreams." I first wrote it, as a novella, in 1990. Since then it has been rewritten, from scratch, another three or four times. Each time it's become considerably better. Each time I've found new things under the surface that can be mined for meaning, for significance. And each time I find myself thinking, "Wow, this is really, really good."

And, inevitably, time goes by and I look at the book again, and find myself think, "Oh, that's shit. I should just start that over again."

This is why I don't edit.

But I have to, and so I will. I have to make "Waiting for a Miracle" is good as humanly possible. Because I really want to be able to proudly send it to publishers. I really want an editor somewhere to read it, and then phone me, desperate to be able to put it into print. I want this book to have a life outside of a folder in my computer. I want people to read it, to experience it, to be moved by it. I want an audience.

And yeah, I'm thinking maybe "Write a good book," isn't a bad idea for a next career.

Ha ha!

Well, it's not even the end of January yet, and I'm already struggling with this stupid "write something every single day" resolution. I suppose under the circumstances it would be easy to blame my current involvement in two different theatrical productions, which leaves me very little in the free-time department. But really, that's just making excuses.

Because, honestly, I'm really not so busy that I can't find at least fifteen minutes to post a little something here. I could, if I was so inclined. I'm just not. When I do have a few minutes to myself, the only thing I want to do is lay on the sofa and relax with a little bit of gaming.

In a little less than two weeks, "Seen Change" will be at an end, and I'll have a little bit more free time on my hands. At that point, there won't be any excuses left, no reason that I won't be able to write at least a little bit more. Any one want to make any bets on whether or not I'll actually do it?

I actually can't believe it's been four days since the last post here. It feels like maybe two at the most. Time is flashing by me at a ridiculous rate right now, and there doesn't seem to be any way to slow it down. Some days I find myself staring blankly into the distance, wondering what the heck day it is -- I honestly couldn't remember if it was Wednesday or Sunday for a couple of minutes yesterday, which doesn't make any sense, because there were plenty of little cues around me to indicate what day of the week it was, such as it being the opening night of the play. But still, for those few minutes, I just about had a panic attack because, if it was Sunday, there were a whole lot of things I didn't get accomplished that needed to be.

Fuck it, I've got nothing interesting to report in this space. I'm just filling it up so I'll feel like I've actually written something today. So now I have.

Goodbye.

(Picture above is courtesy of the Ha Ha Funny Pictures site. Check it out and make your own!)

Well what do you know, you *can* stop procrastinating.

So, I did it.

Sat down with the novel tonight, and pushed my way through the trouble spot. And it was...well, I won't say it was a nightmare, but it sure wasn't easy.

I found myself tangenting an awful lot, going into some insomniac, stream-of-consciousness style stuff that, essentially, allowed me to pad the last chunk of this chapter just a little bit. What's weird about it is that, at the time, while I'm writing it, it doesn't feel like padding. It feels like this character struggling for coherence, struggling for meaning, struggling to make sense of his own head, and the world around him. But when it's done, the whole bit just feels sort of...meaningless.

Meaningless because it's not really driving the story forward. And in a way, it feels like anything that isn't driving the story forward is just padding. Just taking up space. Just killing time.

But I'm wondering if, in a book like this, part of the story really is what's going on in the character's head. Not just his internal reactions to the things going on around him, but the random flailing of his thoughts as well. Just letting his headspace go wherever it wants to go. Because, even outside of the raw, point-to-point narrative, this is a book about a guy flailing about in his own broken perspective on faith, and coming out the other end with something new. Seems to me I'd have to have a lot flailing around to capture that.

I stumbled upon a nice bit of metaphor, entirely by accident, but completely botched my attempts to actually bring it to life on the page. I'd include a segment here, but, like I said, it was pretty badly botched, and not something I feel up to sharing publicly at the moment. Hopefully I got enough of the gist down on the page that, when it comes time to edit, I'll remember what it was I was going for, and be able to actually do it properly.

Here's one line, though, that captures the basic idea: "I’ve gone without sleep for so goddamn long that, until this moment, I had forgotten that being awake meant a whole lot more than just not sleeping."

And on that note, it's time to hang up the writing hat for tonight.

I'll stop procrastinating. Tomorrow.

I'm still avoiding the next portion of the Insomnia novel, for particularly good reason except that I'm not sure how to get from point A -- where I am right now -- to point B -- which is the start of the next chapter, which I wrote months ago in anticipation of the fact that I was eventually going to get there.

I should just stop procrastinating. Just throw caution to the wind. I actually had a flickering of an idea just before I sat down to write this post, an idea that could get me through this next potentially rocky area without a hitch, while keeping my narrator's head spinning, not entirely from a lack of sleep.

So I really should just sit down and do it. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow I'll stop procastinating.

I guess on some level, I'm afraid that I'll hit another road block as soon as I get past the intro to the next chapter. Because I have a pretty solid idea of how it starts, but after that, only a general idea of where the rest of the book is going. My hope is that by working my way through easy part of the next chapter, it'll get the creative lubricants working again, and everything after while move as smoothly as really, really smooth moving things. That's the hope. Of course, the opposite is just as possible -- as soon as I get through the easy stuff, I'll just hit yet another road block.

This is part of the problem of writing a novel with a "follow the story and see where it goes" mentality. Sometimes it just doesn't go anywhere. And the fear of it going nowhere can be quite overwhelming at times.

I didn't actually do any writing yesterday, not proper writing, but I did sit down at the computer for an hour or so to work. A few nights earlier I had done some editing work on "Dinner and Drinks" -- a vulgar one act play about love and romance that I finished last summer -- and needed to transfer the pen-and-paper edits into the computer, to make an official second draft of the play. Which felt sort of good. It's not often I actually do any editing. Usually I'll write something, and then move on to the next project, leaving the previous to collect dust, never to be touched again.

My initial thought with this "Write every single day" resolution was to include *only* writing of new material. A friend wondered if I would include editing of a previous book as part of the "write every single day" resolution, and I immediately told him no. But I'm beginning to have second thoughts.

Editing isn't as obviously creative, and you certainly don't have anywhere near the word output as you do when you just sit down and start writing, but it's still a very, very vital part of the creative process. And on days when I'm just dry, and I have nothing to say here, or anywhere else, at least if I sat down to edit I'd be behaving in a constructive way, instead of playing video games or watching movies. And really, that's the point of the resolution. To be constructive, and creative, in some way, every day.

So I may have to rethink this knee-jerk response to editing as part of the "write every single day" regime. Between now and the end of the year, I could get a lot of editing work done, even just on days when I found I had little actually say that was new.

Sometimes truthiness is better

One of the most improtant things in all of my creative work is honesty. And for the life of me, I can't think of anything that could possible be any more important. A creative work -- whether it's a film or a play or a novel or a painting or even a stupid newspaper column -- should endeavor to communicate something real, something significant, something true.

I made a vow in my column a couple of years ago, when I decided that I wasn't going to retire it on the tenth anniversary, to be honest with my readers. In my own words:

As writers – and more importantly, writers lucky enough to find themselves published – we have a responsibility to you, the reader, to speak truthfully. Because this is a column and not a news story, I’m thankfully free of having to ensure that I quote people properly or spell their names right (at least most of the time). But even when writing a rambling, general-interest, opinion-based piece, it is my responsibility to ensure that it is an honest, rambling, general-interest, opinion-based piece. I owe you that much.

Having said all that, I am currently questioning the wisdom of, essentially, confessing to copyright violations in this most recent column. While I fully stand by my new year's resolution to try to right those wrongs by purchasing one CD every two weeks of music I have already acquired illegally, it did occur to me to today that maybe proclaiming that resolution -- and thus proclaiming the illegal acquisition -- might not have been the best choice.

It's the sort of thing that can come back and bite you in the ass.

I'm hoping, of course, that if it should come back and bite me on the ass, that by the time it does, I'll have purchased enough CDs to make the majority of my MP3 collection completely legal. This is, of course, assuming I follow through with the New Year's resolution for longer than one week. Which, given my history with New Year's resolutions, isn't such a safe bet.

So what I'm really hoping for is to not have this thing come back and bite me on the ass. And for me to learn a very, very important lesson from this. Try not to discuss your own criminal activities in a printed newspaper column.

Let that be a lesson to all of you as well.

Maybe this wasn't such a great idea...

Part of why I wanted to establish multiple writing outlets for my New Year's resolution to write every single day is because -- particularly at the moment -- I don't always have the time to focus all my attention on just one thing, like finishing the Insomnia novel. Which is where I'd like to be focusing all my attention. Two bursts of writing on it in the last few days has me almost feeling like the ball is rolling again (though I'm about to push that ball through a sort-of sticky patch, where I might get hung up a little bit...).

Unfortunately, acting in two different plays which are both in rehearsal is leaving me with A) Very few free evenings to actually sit down and focus on that novel; and B) Very little energy left by the time I actually do get home.

Simply put, I don't feel like writing. I don't feel conscious enough to string together a sentence, let alone a series of them, one after the other.

On the bright side, coming here and writing about how I don't feel like writing actually manages to fulfill my promise to myself, of writing. On the down side, writing about how I don't feel like writing is going to get pretty old pretty darn quick.

I think getting back to work after the Christmas holidays is sort of sapping my energy a bit too. After two weeks off, it's a little tough to get the motor running in the morning, a little tough to drag yourself out of bed. Even after the all-important first coffee of the day, I'm still half asleep until the afternoon.

I suppose I'll take Wednesdays off in my "writing every day" thing because I'll be writing my column that day, which will be the fifth possible outlet for my daily writing. I considered taking off on whichever day I happen to do Stick Figure Drama, but decided that might be just a little bit cheap, as really, there isn't a lot of writing that goes into that. There isn't much drawing going into it either.

Speaking of Stick Figure drama, when (NOT if -- I promise, it's a when) the updates get done, and regular updating becomes more consisten (okay, that one might be an IF), there's some exciting stuff for you guys to see. The next few weeks will see the introduction of a whole new, well, gimmick I guess. But the idea makes me laugh. And, really, that's the most important thing.

Nothing personal.

On titles

I've actually been meaning to post this for rather awhile now, but just haven't gotten around to it for a number of reasons, but following the post of a few minutes ago -- also about the novel -- this seemed like a perfectly appropriate time.

I'm still working on a novel that reads, "UNTITLED," at the top of the title page. This is, of course, the norm for me. Generally speaking, it's not until I'm at least halfway through, and quite often not until I'm at the end of something, before I know what the right title is. That's because, quite often, I don't have the foggiest idea what it is I'm writing about until I'm at least half-way through, or, quite often, at the end.

I already had a title that was bouncing around in my head: "Absence of Faith." It was a title I'd tacked onto a never-completed short story some years ago, taken from a chunk of lyric in a Nine Inch Nails song. I'd always liked the way those three words fell together. They seem to say so much with so very little.

But a few months back, another title idea came to me.

I was having a drunken conversation with a roommate who, just before going to bed, said something to me about "significant epiphanies." The rest of his sentence was muddied by out mutual drunkeness.

But the phrase "significant epiphanies" stood out to me.

I'd always liked the word "epiphany", specifically the third definition provided by dicionary.com:

a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.

And so the two-word phrase hung around in my head for awhile, mostly because I liked the word epiphany, and because the character in the novel would have a few, and because they would, occasionally, be significant.

But something about it bugged me too. Too many syllables. Too clunky. Too awkward. It needed something to help clean it up.

After a few days, my brain came up with something new -- one word the same, one word completely new: "Everyday Epiphanies"

Still a lot of syllables, sure, but it's made a little easier to swallow by the fine use of alliteration. Which I usually detest. Well, which I always detest. But for some reason, this one I could swallow. Because it worked. Because it wasn't the significant epiphanies that I cared about. The significant ones always stand out. That's what makes them significant. It's the everyday epiphanies, the ones we almost don't notice, the ones that you almost throw away, those are the extraordinary ones. And those are the ones that are the most important to my character.

So there it is -- a second title option, making two titles with two very opposite meanings. Both very appropriate for one novel.

Votes?

Random book excerpt

My legs feel like jello. I wobble.

For just a moment.

Just a moment.

My hand shoots out, and it grips the edge of the closet doorway. It fumbles around. Fingers twitch like spider legs, looking for something solid, something to cling to. There’s a black hole swirling behind me, and it wants to devour me, and more than me, more than my flesh, it wants to devour my mind, my consciousness, my soul, my very reason to go on living.

The spider legs scrambling up the wall, my left leg disappears. Gone. The world turns sideways, and I’m reminded of call centre suddenly, of spinning, of losing direction, of losing focus, of losing track of who I am. And then the floor hits me on the side of the head and everything goes white.

Then grey.

Ashen.

Then black.

No, I think.

Fuck no.

Not black, I think.

I try to call for Jamie. My own mushmouth makes a bubbling noise. My throat is a sewage line, backed up with rotting, stinking death. I’m choking on a week of consciousness, I’m choking on desperation.

“Help me…” The words slip out on my breath, as light as a breeze. Intangible. I can feel them blowing away the moment they’re out, like smoke.

There’s a noise down the hall.

“What the fuck are you doing man?”

Jamie’s watching The Sopranos, I guess. Or pay-per-view. Or, I don’t know, uncensored episodes of Jerry Springer.

“I heard a crash. Is everything all right?”

I answer the television. I say “No, everything is not alright,” or I try to at any rate. But the only noise coming out of my mouth is some sort of grunting, wheezing hybrid. And besides, I was talking to the television.

And still, everything is black.

I try to open my eyes, but they’re sealed shut. There is not a force on this earth that could open these eyes.

Even in the darkness, the world spins. I feel it spinning around me, and then it’s more than the world. Suddenly I can feel every planet – Mercury and Mars and Venus and Neptune and…fuck, I don’t know, how many planets are there, anyway? Nine? Ten? Twelve? They keep finding new ones. Everytime you turn on the TV there’s a new planet. And I don’t know all their names, but they’re spinning around me, the sun is spinning around me, and all those planets we know of, all twelve or twenty, and all the ones we don’t, or twelve or twenty thousand or million or trillion, at this moment, every one of them is spinning around me as well. For just a fraction of an instant, I am in the center of the universe, and the universe is spinning a circle around me, staring at me, watching me. Every living thing on every planet with a living thing has its eyes on me, holding my breath, because this is my moment.

This is the most important moment of my life.

And I’m about to fall asleep and miss it.

And as soon as I do, as soon as I drift off into unconsciousness, then the laugh track will start. They’ll all have a good laugh at my expense, and I’ll be too deep into the darkness to notice or hear or really give a damn.

And there’s no escape.

I don’t even feel the floor anymore.

I’m floating.

I’m floating in this blackness, and this blackness wraps its arms around me, and it is so peaceful, it’s so amazingly warm and quiet and restful, and I’m so fucking happy to be here right now. I’ve wanted this moment for so long that it no longer matters what I’m giving up to be here. It’s worth it. Oh God, it’s worth it.

And then I’m gone.

And then I’m not.

Then there are hands.

Hands on my shoulder.

They’re picking me up.

And the world stops spinning and the black turns to ash, then grey, then white, and something dissolves whatever was gluing my eyes closed, and they open, and I’m blind it’s so bright in this room, and there hands sliding me backwards, and they’re setting me back against the bed, and then there’s a voice that sounds like what ever was on television, and it says: “What the fuck happened in here?”

And I realize it’s Jamie.

And I say, “I fell down.”

I say, “I think I almost fell asleep.”

And he laughs and he says, “Well, shit, if I’d known that I would have left you alone. But you made suck a fucking racket that I thought you’d hurt yourself.”

And I wonder if I have hurt myself.

I still can’t quite feel my legs.

I know my arms are there, because I can see them. But they seem disconnected. They seem to belong to someone else. I try to move my arm, to lift my arm straight up, and dose a crazy wobbling jig sideways and my smacks Jamie in the shin.

He looks at me.

“What?” he asks me.

He thinks I was trying to get his attention.

Maybe I was.

“Make me some coffee,” I say. “I’ve got to get dressed.”

Can't say if there's anything terribly good in this batch of text quoted from the novel-in-progress, but here it is anyway, just to verify that I am at least trying to maintain my new year's resolution to write on *something* each and every day this year. Although, sure, yeah, I could have written this in December and just posted it here until now, it's not like anyone would know.

But I would. And I'd feel bad about lying to you. And that just wouldn't cut it.

I'm about to try to push my way through an awkward portion of the book. I know sort of what has to happen in this next chunk of text, until the end of the current chapter, because I know exactly how the next chapter begins -- I know it so well, in fact, that I wrote it months ago, right after I started the novel. I knew that this next chapter was going to happen eventually. I just wasn't sure when.

I'm not sure, at last, that it's the next chapter. And I know, sort of, more or less, what I have to go through to get to that chapter. But the details...the details are hazy.

So I'm nervous. I'm not sure I want to just dive in and wing it because, as much as that has worked for me in the past, it also has sort of a tendency to steer off my original course. And while that can be fun sometimes too, getting steered off my original course might not be so good when I have a fantastic plan for exactly how the next chapter should start.

So I'll probably do what I usually do when I bump into trouble like this. Avoid the novel for a couple of days. After all, even though I've resolved to write every day, I still have at least three other things I can dump words on.

So, here's the deal...

As hinted at in an earlier post, I have made one and only one new year's resolution this year (though I had considered making a resolution to be even angrier and bitterer than ever before, but I ultimately decided that went against the general notion of resolutions). And that resolution is somewhat related to this blog.

That resolution is this: Barring days when it is simply physically impossible, I'm going to write every day this year.

It doesn't matter what it is. As long as it's writing. Words. In english. One after the other, in a series that we often call "sentences" which then make up things we call "paragraphs".

At the moment, I have four projects to choose from in my daily writing. I have, of course, the blog you're currently reading. There is a new blog, started just a few days into January located here, which will be the new home for most if not all of my gaming-related blogging (stop by if you're so inclined). There is the novel about the insomniac. And there is the play about the guy with the knife in his stomach.

If I can't think of something write in at least *one* of this things on a given day, there's a problem.

There'll be breathing room, of course. I didn't actually write much of anything yesterday, as I'd been struck with a nasty case of insomnia the previous evening, leaving my brain a bit like porridge. Days like that will happen. Other days will have other things come up, making it impossible to write. I'm not going to beat myself up for missing a day here or there. Because shit happens. And if I do beat myself, I'll just end up even less inclined to actually get the writing done the next day, and the day after that.

As for SFDs (which, heh, uh, I should have known about all along, obviously) I'm delaying updates just a little bit, as I think I may be redesigning the whole Stick Figure Drama interface, now that I've found a spiffy little album-generating application with which I can make a proper sort of interface for the strips, instead of just having each jpg individually linked. No guarantees on when that'll happen, but it's unlikely to see completion until February.

Of course this post itself, this little entry bringing all you fans up to speed on my plans, in fact counts as my writing for the day. And so now I can go to bed tonight feeling good about myself, because I accomplished something, however little, however insignificant.