On Writing & Storytelling: A Late Start to My Workday – and the Weekend is Nigh

“Let’s get one thing clear right now, shall we? There is no Idea Dump, no Story Central, no Island of the Buried Bestsellers; good story ideas seem to come quite literally from nowhere, sailing at you right out of the empty sky: two previously unrelated ideas come together and make something new under the sun. Your job isn’t to find these ideas but to recognize them when they show up.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Hi, again, Dear Reader. It’s early afternoon on Friday, April 21, 2023, and I’m off to a late start both with my blogging and the New Story.  I’ve been up for a while now; I woke up at 6:30 AM Eastern Daylight Time, less than half an hour before sunset, and even though I had my usual weekday café con leche, which I supplemented with a snack bar, I’m sleepy and, yep, foggy-brained.

I already posted something on A Certain Point of View, Too – the second version of a poem based on the backstory of Reunion. Called Remembering Marty: A Ballad Based on ‘Reunion: A Story’ 2.0, it summarizes the novella’s core story and adds a few details about Jim (my main character/narrator) and Marty’s life seen through his eyes.

Remembering Marty: A Ballad Based on ‘Reunion: A Story’ 2.0 fudges a minor detail from the novella; not a major inconsistency, mind you, but I had to write the line in the relevant stanza so the rhyming scheme wasn’t messed up as it was in the first version of the poem. Ballads – indeed, any style of poetry where rhymes are a feature – are not my forte; I tend to be “better” – for lack of a better word – at penning haikus, and the first version (which was the last thing I published last night) shows it. It starts out okay with the rhymes and allusions to the novella, but the last two stanzas are all over the place.

“So okay― there you are in your room with the shade down and the door shut and the plug pulled out of the base of the telephone. You’ve blown up your TV and committed yourself to a thousand words a day, come hell or high water. Now comes the big question: What are you going to write about? And the equally big answer: Anything you damn well want.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

I probably shouldn’t be wasting my time and energy on this blog post, but I need to “warm up” before going on the “playing field” of the New Story, aka Project X. Otherwise, I’ll end up sitting at my desk, gnashing my teeth, and uttering profanities because the words aren’t taking the Brain-to-Fingers-to-Keyboard-to-Screen route. And then, if that feeling of frustration doesn’t go away, I’ll be more susceptible to the siren call of Regiments or, the gods forbid, FreshWomen, Season One.

On the Good News front, at least I have a decent d first draft of the Prologue in the Word document file for the New Story. This is the first time I have written a story with a prologue, and from my perspective – which is admittedly biased – it looks good. Not great – I don’t think Stephen King, Jennifer Egan, or Jonathan Franzen have anything to worry about when it comes to my writing – but I’m happy with what I have produced so far. It’s even better, I think, than my screenplay for Ronnie and the Pursuit of the Elusive Bliss, which – in its finished form with the revisions made by my collaborators in the Big Apple – is my Pride and Joy.  

Also in the same Good News Front, today is Friday, which means I can take Saturday and Sunday off from working on the “for publication” story. You know, all work and no play and all that. I still have so many books that I’ve bought over the past few years that I’ve not finished, as well as a few Blu-rays of movies and/or TV shows I have not watched, much less reviewed! I love writing – I would not be doing it if I didn’t – but my brain needs other stimulation…and a bit of R&R.