Scrapbooks make me nervous. Diaries, even more so. In a childhood bedroom in Scranton, still, piles of my unfinished diaries sit on a shelf. Unlocked — no need for security — blank pages. Empty. Started, never in earnest, the entries were more interesting as fancy penmanship practice rather than as content. Stories trailed off, while the cursive z’s in my name: perfection.
Bobulate: Margins
Month: September 2010
Novel Editing: Week Eight(ish)
My editing run through the hard copy of “the novel” (I need to figure out a name for this thing) wrapped up weeks ago, but everything else has conspired to slow down my efforts to type up those edits. And I’m finding myself still editing beyond my notes as I type them in and review the book on the screen. Which is all part of the process. Eventually the book just has to be done.
So the next task at hand trying to figure out what to do next. Honestly, I’ve been trying to figure that out for a while now. I haven’t written anything new in so long. But what exactly to write I don’t know.
I’ve been reviewing my old bits and notes for a novel I started involving Jack Diamond (Hell Of A Way To Live was a short story I did to get a feel for things). The whole thing was an experiment in playing with supernatural and noir, both of which I never touch. I’m more excited about playing with the noir than the supernatural so I supposed I could drop the latter but it’s easier to write stuff when I can just make it up and ignore things like physics and the real world.
I have the constant temptation to return to my more lighthearted comic nerd fare that was Bush43 or at least continue revisiting the characters via the Post Modern run (one, two, three) that started but fizzled out. Or just do an reboot of the whole thing and take the names but restart from scratch with the lot of ’em. Or just make a movie of the Bush43 script I wrote a while back. Anyone got a camera?
Or none of the above and start from scratch. But of what?
As the editing wraps up I’m digging around for writing exercises to get the creative juices flowing. OneWord is always fun but does little to help with actual development of anything. Stream of consciousness could be the way to go but I rarely find that lasting more than a thousand or so words before it really just peters out and still makes absolutely no sense.
Who knows. I just feel the need to force myself to write something so maybe I’ll just have at and see what bubbles to the top. Besides, maybe I’ll be so busy trying to shop this finished book around I won’t have time to think about writing.