disorganized ranting.
I’ve got four documents open in Scrivener. Each is less than a month old, and not one of them is more than 700 words long. One is just an outline, and if you look closely you’ll find it’s actually a recipe for baba ganoush with some plot-related notes surrounding it.
Internets, let me be honest: I don’t know what in hell is going on from one second to the next. Perhaps my brain has finally melted in the intense heat. Maybe I’ve gotten so out of the habit of writing every day that my reality has frayed and thinned out into a loose matrix of threads. I’m bored. I’m restless. Irritated. I feel like that psycho kid that I used to be who’d poke a hive of bees just because. That kid whose boredom always turned into something dangerous. Ideas will not fully form. Nothing is stable enough. The stuff I’ve been cranking out is like an old boyfriend from high school, one you loved at the time, but haven’t seen in 20 years. You’ll smile and chat. Maybe even get a little nostalgic against your better judgement, but there is no way you’re hanging out with him again. I mean, crap, he’s got 8 kids, calls the president ‘Nobama,’ and still works at the Kwik Fill on Route 322.
There are complicated other feelings over something I’d thought it best to bag (the failure that was the sex, drugs, rock-n-roll & psychic emitter novel). I got some much appreciated crit concerning the novel the other day. It was kind enough not to come right out and say ‘JESUS FUCK, THIS IS AN ABOMINATION!’ but it still bothered me that this person (whose input and eye I implicitly trust) asked one simple question to which I exploded internally.* Regarding the novel itself, it’s been months of feeling so bad over how it turned out that I wanted to burn it, let it go. Chaulk it up as a flaming failure but a decent learning experience. If I was an alcoholic, I might have drowned it far enough down by now. Alas… This woman’s simple honest question brought it all back.
What are your current plans for (this)?
Truth is, I had given up thinking about that story’s problems. About what I wanted to do with it. About ditching some bits that didn’t work and re-doing the timeline entirely. About taming down certain elements and lifting others. And I had given up because it had broken my heart. It needed to happen. I had over-reached my abilities writing it. I had failed. It was done. Then all my friend had to do was insinuate that there should maybe be additional something… and suddenly I’m back to the beehive, stuffing it into a burlap sack and debating whose picnic to throw it into.
Do I go back there and utterly slash and burn the thing until something is strong and solid from the wreckage? Or do I put it back in the folder under my bookshelves and go on with the High-School Reunion of topics until something with a broad back comes along? Rargh! It might have actually been long enough that I could do it with fresh eyes, too. It’s the crippling embarrassment that my friend(s) read the hot pile of garbage that I might not recover from.
Full disclosure: Throughout the generative process, I was avoiding doing what most needed to be done. The beginning needed a trackback with a LOT of character integration. The kind of thing where the setting does all of the heavy lifting. An establishing shot, if you will. I couldn’t do it, so I pressed on. Of course the longer I typed without getting that beginning straight, the worse it got. The voice got swallowed up by Order. Because the order of things was never right, it just got louder until it took over completely: This thing happened, this hand lifted, these words slid onto the table, that voice choked because…because…you see where there this is going. It was a shame, and I knew it the entire time.
Total nightmare, but it least it taught me that I need some more fundamentals up front to even get relaxed enough to be honest with my voice. It taught me that unless I get comfortable paying attention to these fundamentals at some level, I will trip and fall. It’s not a new issue, actually. I can hear my college Poetry prof. in my mind right now (a man whose opinion weighed less in my mind than a feather) asking me with long drawn-out hand gestures “I need to know what is happening in this po-ehm…” But it’s different between prose and poetry. Poetically, I’ve found ways around it.
Fiction is a whole new bag of bees. But I am trying, with ginger plucking motions, to pick up that bag and run.
Honestly, I want to go back and drastically revise. I want to spend about a week away from my job and just hack it into better shape, then more casual time smoothing it out. I want to. I’m worried that I shouldn’t. That maybe I can’t. In the meantime, I will just keep poking the bag of bees with a stick. It’s only a little dangerous, and it gets boring pretty quickly, but eventually I’ll learn to have faith in the burlap, in the stick, in the venom inside all of those bees.
Moving on isn’t working out too well right now. I’m still looking for the right picnic to ruin.
*I don’t mean to discourage feedback here. My friend was brave in wading through that thing, and even if I didn’t love her already, I would still be incredibly grateful. And what she said was completely right. And completely helpful. And if she was here right now, I’d buy her a big mocha and hug her for hours.
I send you hugs. I hope you can figure it out. Maybe you should take that week off (if you can) and give it a shot. Worst thing that happens is you still think it’s a mess.
[...] friend Yojo recently wrote this: I’ve got four documents open in Scrivener. Each is less than a month old, and not one of them is [...]
Through The Looking Glass » Blog Archive » Bus Rider said this on July 17, 2010 at 11:27 pm |