Refuse on the Street
July 15, 2002
7:10 a.m.
I suppose I should get the promotion out of the way first. Get thee hence over to fictionwise and find the switch.blade project (it should be there sometime today), which is a really cool collection of original material from a lot of really good writers, and of course, myself. You'll find "Oh-oh," a story by John Bodin and me. With any luck, you'll like it all right ... and if not, well, then there's some ex-i-mundo stuff in there from a couple other folks like Lisa Silverthorne, Tobias Buckell, Matt Horgan, Vera Nazarian, Amy Sterling Casil, Jim Van Pelt, and a bunch of others.   We did LA for a couple weeks--my brother got hitched over the weekend of the 4th, and I got to be the best man and all that. Best man ... what a great title, eh? We took a train out there, something we've talked a lot about doing, but only finally got around to. It was okay, I guess. There's a lot to like about trains while you're awake [grin]. We spent much of the trip out there in the lounge car, watching the land go by. At least, that's what Lisa did. Mostly I read. I made it through three and a half books over the five or so total travel days. Not too bad, considering I also have problems sleeping on moving things and my concentration waned in the last days of each leg. We stayed for a few days at the Hollywood Hilton. Which is prominently featured in Spinal Tap. Brigid, Lisa, and I played cards out in the pool area where the "farewell" lunch was held, and where David St. Hubbins and the bass player (geez, what's his name?) discussed their old "Saucy Jack" project. Pretty cool, eh? We ate at the House of Blues, and did another dinner at Medieval Times out toward Anaheim. Very cool medieval sport, with some really fantastic horses. We did Santa Monica pier, and the Chinese Theater, and a wax museum. We did Disney, and Universal Studios. Got back Friday. I did not write anything over this two week period. It felt strange. I've tried to go without writing other times and failed. I didn't fail this time, though. I think this is good but on the other hand I wonder. It was pretty easy to not write. Part of this is that the logistics of writing were difficult, using a computer on a train is uncomfortable, and most of the LA portion of the trip was spent doing things with other people. Still, some of that is just a collection of excuses. Paper and pencil works in place of computers, after all, and I've written a lot of material in 15 and 30 minute snippets of free time between events. Ron's Law: You can always find time to write a page a day, no matter what. Still, I was wordless for something over two weeks. I found myself thinking of situations, or being struck with ideas. I found myself framing how I would start a story. I found myself internally vocalizing sentences and constructing characters. I found myself getting excited about an idea, and then souring on it. This last bit--getting excited about an idea, and then souring on it--was really bothersome. I think this may be the root of "writer's block" if such a thing exists. I learned from this trip that if I have an idea, I need to write about it and I need to write about it really soon. I learned that if I don't get that idea on paper (or phospher) my internal critic gets revved up and tells me how stupid that idea is, or tells me that I'm not a good enough writer to make anything of it, or that I'm not intelligent enough to get the technology right, or that it will take too long to research and be just way too hard and wouldn't it be easier to just sit back and watch TV or something like that? I also discovered that it's really easy to get lazy. It's really easy to fall into a pattern of not writing. It's not hard to not write. But I've also got to say that it's painful to have all these ideas flow through you to spill out wasted like refuse on the city streets. And then again, Not Writing makes me cranky. I knew that before, of course. But I've had it drilled into me again this past few weeks. And this morning I've started scraping off the rust. This morning I dug back into my book, trying to acclimate myself to the work again. I did a little cutting, and a little pasting. I typed a line or two. I finished a paragraph. It was just a little paragraph, but it was a good one in that it was clear, and didn't (I think) even have a single misspelled word. (ha!) It made the story move along. Oh, don't get me wrong. The critic was in full force all morning. "Don't move that! You might not remember where it went!" it said. "Sure, you got that paragraph done, but it's a long book. You'll never finish. Oh, okay, so it's a page, now. Still, you'll need five hundred of those suckers ... no way, Jose." But I decided to ignore the critic today. The critic may be right. But still ... A few words every day--nothing more, but certainly nothing less--is the only way to find out. Have a great day.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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