Being Better and Not Editing and Fucking My Muse

I’m reading my old stuff and, as per usual for a persnickety, self-absorbed and altogether unconfident writer, I think I’m better now. But I’m actually right. I used to, believe it or not, write too thinly. I was obsessed with not falling into the gauntlet of rookie novelist traps – over-purpling, over-writing, under-storytelling – that I actually edited too much in my early attempt. Not enough writing, too much storytelling. As a result, I wasn’t grabbing myself – or the reader – in any sort of conscience-pulling prose. I wasn’t bending minds. During the recently-expired intermission, I spent most of my time on poetry, digging through my own mind. I’m getting bored with this post so I’m not going to expand, but I think it helped.

Alright, the muse just hit me. Time to get laid.

Coffee Shop Girl

I have a huge crush on the girl who works at this coffee shop. She totally knows it.

Picking Up an Old Manuscript is Like Picking Up Someone Else’s Baby: I Don’t Want to Drop It, But This Child is Just Genuinely Unattractive.

I’m going back over my old Shadow manuscript – you know; trying to figure out where I left off, what ideas I had in my mind when I called it quits, and why I was such a godawful writer nine months ago. Jesus fuck. Terrible. It’s a situation because I’m still on draft one, but I reread every sentence like I’m in the editing phase. This is my first shot at a novel and there is such a gargantuan amount of fixing to be done that it feels hopeless.

Also, I had left off after introducing a new series of chapters to be layered throughout the first half of the novel, and that’s honestly a problem because I’m trying to remember where I was going with that. It’s rough and it needs fixing, and I was hoping I was going to be able to just pick up the pen again and work miracles. It’s looking a little more complicated than that now. I just need to do some sorting and organizing. You know why that sucks? Because I’m a fucking writer. I’m not a “sorter” or an “organizer.” I write shit. That’s what I do.

Alright, enough bitching for now. Time to go rearrange my life – erm, novel.

PS – Although, on a brighter note, it is pretty cool to read through old stuff I had, at one point, thought was perfect and realize it is very much imperfect. That comforts me somehow. I know now that I’m not entirely blind to flaws in my own writing.

New Story: City Boy

Obviously I wrote a lot of new things in the infinite time warp that occurred since I abandoned you. Here’s one of them. Enjoy.

I’m Not Dead (I Just Took a Really, Really Long Nap)

Alright, so nine months is a generally asinine amount of time to take off from a blog, especially if you expect your meager-to-begin-with number of readers to be sitting at their computer, 846th cup of coffee in hand, clicking refresh every thirty seconds.

I don’t (but really, come back). But for those of you who are still here, there is nothing to update you on. I stopped writing my novel precisely two hours after my last post here. I found myself severely addicted to spoken word poetry after performances by Sarah Kay and Shane Koyczan absolutely rocked my world. I tried my hand and, finding myself surprisingly talented, performed for my mirror about seven thousand times but never got my balls up to perform for anyone – or thing – with, y’know, a pulse. I even tried my hand at two other novels. I murdered them both within a week. I didn’t quite know why at the time, but I’m thinking now it was because the story my mind wants to write, is Shadow of a Man.

The problem here is, quite honestly, that I’m not joining the army anymore. If you were here in person, I’d light a cigarette and tell you in a slow, emotionally restricting voice that I was scared. But we’re on the internet, so I can lean on the crutch of sarcasm and just say I didn’t really feel like getting shot. But fuck it. I’m going to try to get through this novel anyway.

Sorry for leaving you. I can’t promise it won’t happen again, but I can show you an adorable picture of me with my four year old brother. Hopefully it will restore your faith in me. Enjoy:

Come Back!

No!! Come back! I’m still here! My laptop charger stopped functioning last week, so I’ve been down a computer ever since. I’ll tell you, realizing that’s all it takes to be disconnected with the world for two weeks is a bit of an eye opener.

During the inconsolable rage that consumed me in the time I was away, the time I normally spent bullshitting on the internet was reallocated to book reading. As a result, I knocked out like three novels in two weeks (I spend a lot of time bullshitting on the internet). I read Echo Park by Michael Connelly, To the Death by Patrick Robinson, A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini and Lie Down With Lions by Ken Follett (except it sucked so badly I put it down after fifty pages).

I’m normally a Ken Follett fan – Eye of the Needle, Jackdaws and Hornet Flight were fantastic. The man has an inkling for raunchy sex scenes, which is fine by me. But this one – it was terrible. Horrendous. SO BAD. Never read it. I couldn’t even really tell you what it was that turned me so off so quickly. I don’t think Kenny did his research before this one. Nothing seemed realistic. In the first fifty pages, a bunch of college kids meet a Soviet SAS agent (its the 80s) in a hotel room to ask for funding to kill a bunch of relatively innocent people. They show up in pink polos and plaid shorts, like they’re going golding. Frankly, the conversation they had would have been better suited on the golf course as it was. NOTHING productive happened. Oh and some asshole French guy stole a CIA agent’s girl. I assume the CIA agent is going to absolutely fuck Frenchy’s ass up in the end, but I will never find out.

Just ranted for a while there. That’s the beauty of a blog. Bye now.

Am I Dreaming?

Oh, no. Oh, no, no no. I don’t know how I got here. I just regained consciousness in a hipster coffee shop with a half-finished mocha latte, another finished chapter of my novel and a blank entry page open for my blog. WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME? I am a registered Republican. I like girls. I don’t wear wire-rim glasses. I do mainstream things.

WHO GLUED THIS GOATEE TO MY FACE!?

On a lighter note, they have Bob Marley playing. That’s probably why I lost consciousness in the first place…

Just kidding, no goatee.