earthbound01

I had an idea of what to write a few days ago. And then another idea. The second idea is completely lost, but the shape of the first idea is still somewhat present.
I remember when I had the second idea I felt it was superior to the first. When I forgot the second and retained the first I was disappointed but still felt lucky that I had any ideas at all. Now I only have the ideas about the idea I had- a sort of fossil made of the impact the idea had on the rest of my mind. The surrounding making room for this one. Right now I’m filling this absence with plaster and making a mold to see what kind of precambrian proto-idea I was going to have for you.
On my way home from work I had a plot element I was going to include for you. A car accident. I was going to have the character going on about the absent idea, perhaps starting to cue up for an epic Randesque monologue explaining my opinions about (idea) and about how my opinions are right and everyone with other opinions are of suspect mind or character. I was going to cut off that speech with a car accident. I began to muse about the best way to disjoint or add surprise directly into text. “hyphen endquote and suddenly” wasn’t going to cut it for the visceral impact. I was perhaps not even going to close the quotes and have the events or impressions of the accident then be narrated starting midsentence. I began then to sort of wonder who would narrate the story, whether I was going to do first-person if the narrator became incapacitated or died. Rather than panic and despair about ever coming up with a story I resolved simply to write until I was painted into a corner, then keep on painting. Because rather than painting a metaphorical floor, it’s more as if I’m painting an actual fine art piece. Every painter will tell you that you can always add another layer until it looks right. I thought of this on my way home from work, as I slowly lost grip on the idea itself.
Stephen King tells me that his ideas for fiction are less fabrication and more like excavation of artifacts or fossils. I began to wonder what this twisting about of the place of the narrator would be in this metaphor. It seemed to smack of academic dishonesty, of making a new dinosaur species out of old bones or twisting an ape into a missing link. Then I remember Pressfield wrote that ideas aren’t bestowed on the unworthy- that they are the reward of devotion to the muse, a sort of receipt one gets for having paid ones dues.
And so here I am, writing to you and hoping that I’m not digging at an empty fossil-bed and am instead adequately phrasing my supplications to whichever muse it is that I ought to be trying to impress. Perhaps Calliope, she was in those Sandman books and I enjoyed those immensely.
My first idea, then was about writing a story I had about an opinion. Oh! I remember. It was about the duality of logic vs. emotion, about the different crazy ideas people have as to whether we ought to follow our guts or our heads, and the well-known perils of either.
I (hopefully) will write about this, and it may-or-may-not have a car accident in it. I don't know that it will fit in this story.

It's been a busy week, but sadly none of it has been busy with writing. I realize I'm not so much afraid of the blank page as I am afraid of the unfinished project. Some vague anxieties about taking pure ideas and making them impure reality is unsettling. This is entirely indicative of my lack of craft and experience. Once I'm a better writer I shouldn't worry so much about process.
Real life has been encroaching on my desires to create, and I've become obsessed with some difficult non-creative problems, but I am making headway with those at least.
Also, full disclosure, I have no intention of doing nanowrimo properly. I haven't looked at the proper format, or checked in with a word count, or anything like that. I also haven't really been writing either. No way I'm going to hit 50k words. I think it takes a certain kind of craziness to be able to be as productive as that, and for better or worse I don't have it.
I'll have something for you though.

I haven't written in a couple days.
Writing takes a lot out of me. Verbally I'm out of shape. My form and my endurance are terrible resulting in low output of stilted, awkward prose. But I'm doing this as an exercise, and because covering novel ground is a funner run... than... whatever the literary equivalent of a treadmill would be. Hopefully. I have a tendency to overestimate my fitness and take on exercises that are too onerous; it leads me to gas out early and get discouraged. But I ran a 5k this summer, and I'll be damned if I won't have a big pile of words at the end of this exercise either. I'm back on the horse though. (Oh god mixed metaphors.)
At any rate, I've got the house to myself after work tonight. Expect at least a couple more words.

Cribbed from Emerson, by way of my Friend Mr. Beaudry-
"Always do what you are afraid to do."
Fear will always hold me back, but I'll push back until I'm dead.

I'm anxious about giving characters their names. It feels too final. Do you suppose I ought to bite the bullet and do that up front, given that I might just awkwardly write a lot of pronouns ad infinitum?

One line
Alright.
Arg, names, histories. I have to loosen up and just go with it. There'll be a draft, maybe. I can fix things and change things up until the very end.

Before I could sit down to write, I had to reassemble parts of my father's desk. I had to find a screwdriver amid the still unpacked boxes of his things. I grumbled and huffed and scolded the cats, but I was glad to be sorting through his things and finding proper places for them. For all that it might have seemed like procrastination, I thought of it as paying dues.
I like my workspace, I think it will work well as a quiet place to write. I'm far enough away that the wireless doesn't quite reach the shed, but I've discovered that my phone allows some kind of tethering which allows this update to occur. There is also an added bonus in that the internet is dialup slow, causing my compulsive tab opening to be blunted for the moment.
I am terrified to begin writing a large project, but the alternative is much much worse. I'll share what I've got at the end of a couple hours if anyone is interested.

I've written and rewritten a short story that was pretty much this plus also some mythology.
http://www.webcomicsnation.com/jaseh/guh/series.php?view=archive&chapter=49498&name=guh