The Write Thing

Folks, I'd really planned this evening to resume my shredding of John Wojnowski's attack on the Church. But just now I'm neck-deep in what I have to call a creative fog.

Thanks to a suggestion a couple years ago from newly-eighteen, soon-to-graduate daughter-two Portia, and a request from an Azerbaijani coworker a couple months ago, I've taken back up a story I first wrote in brief back in college in 1979, fell in love with, but scrapped immediately...

And now find I've been able to untie all the bad knots, and lay out some fresh, new, good ones. This can make a very readable novel, a great movie, if I choose to take it that far. And I may not. But I need to keep writing it now.

Anyone who's written anything that's seized them (rather than vice-versa) knows that there are times where it's got to be written/keyed this instant, or lost for good. I don't want that! I've lost too much good verse, music, engaging tales, great theories, over the years… through not recording them.

A few weeks ago, I took some of the characters from that original story, cranked them back to their childhood (reviving one from the dead into a delightful feistiness I hadn't expected), set them on the electronic page, and let them write their own story. Really! It was fun, a total riot, and they had me giggling most of the time.

Some stories you need to plot out in detail (and this one I have, portions of it), research intensely (still need to in some crucial areas... and in fields and geographic areas I know nothing about). Write, sweat, curse, rewrite.

Not just now. I mean it; I dropped these guys on the page, and they started moving around and talking. They took off! And I can't share any of this with you folks; sorry! I've already seen my rants, raves, and riddles snatched up and dumped into other blogs. (Boy, some people are really desperate for material, or camouflage!). But this just may yet see light of day. Even if not, I'm still having great fun.

(Actually, I did send a fresh chunk over to patient Spartacus last week; he was far more impressed than I'd expected, offered a suggestion I integrated; and he traded back with an early draft of a story of heartbreak and disintegration he's been working on lately. I then tossed another idea or two his way, and could picture him nodding sagely in his concrete bunker. I think his will hit the bookstores before mine... might have to race him. Hmm...)

The backstory, the character buildups I'm working on right now, keep taking turns I hadn't anticipated — while providentially setting up situations I'll be able to make great use of later on. I hadn't meant for the sombrero to take center stage, but one of my characters (re)solved that all on her own.

Why did they get to discussing palindromes and boustropheda over chicken dinner? How does Kojak fit in? What about Pago-Pago? Why did the delightful eighty-year-old woman storm off? A little bit ago, a box turtle showed up, and just now I have a teen and pre-teen squatting under a window, listening in where they shouldn't be.

I've been at this since early this afternoon, and it's now approaching midnight. It is a total blast!

But I'll be back blasting Wojnowski as soon as tomorrow evening... just let me run with this one.