Dodging you

Where have I been, Blogreader? These last couple of days, have I been avoiding you?

Maybe a little.

I'm wrestling with myself a lot about the novel—its characters and contents—and have fallen behind on my promise to pluck out 2,000 new words each day. I have not been eager to admit this. I am still working on it daily, and thinking about things almost constantly (which may or may not be part of the problem). I have some new directions to try to feel my way through, characters who are only slowly revealing themselves, plot lines that occasionally unravel completely while I am writing them. It's been slow going, and today I have decided to do some outlining to see where I am and what lies ahead.

Progress.

I still could reach the 30,000 words I'm supposed to have before I retire for the night. I'm not so far behind that it's an impossibility.

One of the problems I am having is that each tweak I make to the overall story seems to make the novel more ambitious. Ambition is good, of course, but at some point I fear I will be trying to tell a tale which is beyond my abilities as a writer.

So, yes, I suppose I have been avoiding my blog while I work through all this. I apologize for my silence.

Another boring writerly post

I was asked a question by fellow blogger and writer Reading the Signs in the comments of the last little chunk of first draft fun from the current novel.

She wrote: "I would be interested to know how you eventually decided what the subject and focus for your novel should be. Did you just plunge in and see where it led or did you have a sense of what you wanted to do before you started?"

I don't claim to be an expert on writing, but I thought discussing my process might be beneficial to myself and to some of my readers.

It's different all the time, of course. That's the first thing that comes to mind. And varies wildly depending on what I am writing. A blog post is usually a spur-of-the-moment affair, going from initial idea to published post in 20 minutes or so. Since I don't really edit anything that appears here at The Moon Topples, the time is spent mostly writing, with a quick read back (usually) just to make sure that I am making as much sense as I hoped.

For short fiction pieces, I tend to have an idea of what the story is about before I begin writing. I don't know much about my characters yet, and I do not have the entire plot when I sit down to write it. Instead, I have my initial idea: the conclusion or an arc or even a single moment that inspired the piece in the first place, and I feel my way into it somewhat slowly, allowing the characters to tell me how they will get to the thing that I had planned.

I used more or less the same process during NaNoWriMo. At the beginning of the month, I had only the notion that it might be interesting to explore a man struggling with a list of New Year's resolutions. What his resolutions were, how he would fare in his quest, even how long a span of time I might cover were all details that came later. I had a man and his resolutions (and I think the notion that he had broken several of them by a few hours after midnight).

This made the writing more difficult than it might have been otherwise. I hit a lot of blind alleys, wrote an awful lot of redundant or bad prose. Due to the nature of NaNo, I soon became focused primarily on the word count. I seem to recall that I spent time each day trying to work my mind up to what might happen next, which was always a total mystery to me. Once I had decided, I would write what I could about that subject. This was not a very pleasant experience for me, although I suspect that was due to the work I was creating rather than the process.

For the current novel, elements of the story have been in place since I was about nineteen. I had the protagonist and some of his problems in my head when I decided to write. I had eight or nine major plot points left over from the draft I attempted in college. While I knew I had to hit each of these notes eventually, I tried not to plot out too much how I would get from one to the next, or what might happen in between or as a result of the abuse I planned to heap upon my character. This has left me free to explore some aspects of the character that I might not have thought of while creating an outline. I have discovered many new elements of the character by doing it this way, as well as stumbling into some entirely different storylines and characters that I had not initially known would play a part.

I fully intend to outline the thing completely, but not until I have more or less improvised an initial draft. I think outlining is a great tool for writers, but I worry that I might use it as a checklist, and lose some of the creative flow in the process. So I want to use it prior to second draft in order to make sure I have hit upon all of the things I had intended to write about, to double check that the elements of the story are all present.

So the shorter answer to the question seems to be that I mostly improvise within the constraints of an idea or plot points.

I'd be curious—for you Blogreaders who also write—to hear about your processes as well. Knock out down in the comments or just let me know if you've done something similar on your blog...

2300 words since making my pledge. I'm a little behind, but still have a lot of the day left to catch up.

A vow

Hello, Blogreader. I'm glad you're here. Please...have a seat. I wanted to talk to you about something.

As you know, I left work a little over a month ago in order to concentrate full time on my writing for a little bit. I recall you being very supportive of this, and if I didn't thank you at the time for being so nice about everything, I do so now.

Truth is, though, that I've barely written more than I have cut in that time. I don't even bother to update the word count meter anymore. I wrote 4,000 new words one day a couple of weeks ago, and was sad to find I was still floating around the 20K mark.

It is less than a month until the first anniversary of my decision to write seriously. July 1st.

To make sure that I cross this line with a feeling like I have accomplished something, I am making an official vow to write 50,000 new words by that date. Essentially, this means I'm sort of doing NaNo all over again, but without any hope of a crappy, downloadable certificate.

The rules are: the 50,000 words must be written for one of the two novels on which I am working, or for a short story. Ideally, though, they should be for the main project, the one that taunts me from my own sidebar. They need not be brilliant words, just new ones which advance the plot as I have it planned, and get at least some version of the events which must take place on paper.

Completion of this task will require 2,000 words a day. This will also mean I'll probably end up writing more bitchy blogposts about writing. I apologize in advance for these. It also probably means I'll be blogging more often than normal, perhaps going back to a couple of times a day. I found that writing about something non-fictiony or funny or whatever was a great way for me to take a break during NaNo last year. So I hope when you stop by, you'll scroll down a bit and see if you've missed anything.

You guys have been wonderfully supportive of the snippets I've posted, and I'll probably end up throwing a few of those up throughout the month as well.

Whether this decision is merely leftover delirium from my fever, I cannot say. I do know that this is something I am capable of doing, even though it means I shall be something of a workaholic in the next few weeks.

So, uh, wish me luck! Here I go...

Current Novel Excerpt: Returning to work

Here's another little chunk of the first draft of the novel I'm writing. Baranatalo has been fired from his job, but returns the next day in an attempt to restore his routines. The following takes place shortly after he is noticed by Lemont, his former coworker in the mailroom. I thought it might be nice to include a piece from one of the few times in the novel where someone is talking to Baranatalo.

*****

“Go, man. Please. You don’t work here. Not anymore.” Lemont looks like he himself might cry now, as though he were shooing away a beloved puppy at a roadside.

A single envelope drips from Baranatalo’s hand as it begins to shake.

“Not anymore,” Baranatalo echoes.

“That’s right, man. Not anymore.”

“I don’t like English muffins. Not anymore.” This is the first time he has given voice to the thought that has been beating against the side of his skull for the entirety of his morning, if not longer. He replaces the envelopes on the table and bends down to retrieve the one he has dropped.

“I don’t like English muffins. Not anymore,” he says again as he stands and puts the errant mail on the table. This time he says it more urgently, as though this were the one thing Lemont needs to know about him. A small cackle breaks forth from his lips in a spasm.

“That’s cool man. No English muffins. No problem.” Lemont’s eyes have lost their pitying quality and gained something harder. He has spread his arms out and lowered his center of gravity. He is preparing himself should Baranatalo attack him, should the situation require physical intervention or restraint.

“My name is not Barry,” Baranatalo says in a loud voice which startles them both. Another cackle escapes him and even he is starting to feel like he has taken Lemont hostage somehow. He is not used to so much eye contact, but Lemont does not look away.

“Yeah, okay, man. Not Barry, no English muffins. We’re all good here. Check on both counts.” Lemont is attempting to sound soothing, and moving back and forth on the balls of his feet.

Baranatalo stares into Lemont’s eyes for a long moment before lunging toward the door. Lemont flinches but holds his ground, proud of himself for having sucessfully averted a crisis. He feels this way in spite of the fact that Baranatalo has not moved toward him at all, but rather fled the room in a rush.

Lemont peeks out from behind the door to check Baranatalo’s passage through the office, wondering if he should call someone, wondering if Baranatalo is planning to attack someone else. Baranatalo is already at the elevator, pressing the call button repeatedly. A man stands next to him, also waiting for the elevator. He does not see the look of horror on Baranatalo’s face, just watches the jabbing finger and chuckles.

“I’m not sure hitting it again makes it come any faster,” the man says.

“My name is not Barry,” Baranatalo replies, darting to his left to take the stairs instead.

Potpourri

Busy times, Blogreader.

While I've spent a lot of time lately working on my novel, and a lot of time fretting over what seems to be a shortage of entries to the current GBA(s)FC, I've also been living a life (of sorts).

Well, good news on all fronts. The first two entries to the contest are posted and I'm hopeful that more will show up soon. Click the graphic in the sidebar to check them out. Still plenty of time to get your own stories together, by the way.

A friend of mine joked yesterday (when no entries at all had yet come in) that he could write the word "growth" five hundred times and walk away with all of the prizes. I informed him that no entry can win more than one prize. I also informed him that he is mean.

"Maybe your topic just sucks," another friend counseled via chat. Special "thanks" go out to that friend as well.

*****

I went to see a softball game last night, a team of Workers battling against some athletic foes in a very chilly late evening match. They did not fare well, in spite of the celebratory nature of the image at right. Something called a "slaughter rule" was enforced, and the game ended early. Perhaps they were simply happy to be able to go someplace warm, or that none of the players had sustained an injury.

*****

Tonight was a trip with a cadre of good folks to see the incomparable Grant Lee Phillips. I have reached the conclusion that no one has more fun at a Grant Lee Phillips show than Mr. Phillips himself. His humor and obvious pleasure at playing music are incredibly infectious, and I think we came close. He's a tremendous singer and a great songwriter and if you've never heard him, there is almost certainly something in his catalog that will bring joy to your ears. Try Jubilee or Virginia Creeper or Mobilize.

*****

The biggest bit of personal news is that I've made a bit of a breakthrough on my novel. A lot of pieces suddenly made sense this week, and I've got a better idea of the larger story and how things are going to connect. I've solved a lot of the problems that have kept me from being able to write much, and this weekend I plan to spend some time outlining in preparation for a serious burst of writing next week. If I can carry this story into a full draft without crushing it in my big clumsy hands, I think I'll have a pretty good book. I haven't felt like that for a while.

And I'll close by reminding you all yet again that there is still plenty of time to cobble together an entry for the GBA(s)FC. Deadline remains May 7.

The moment before something

Last day to enter the contest over at Clarity of Night (links in, uh, the last few posts). Thirty-nine contestants, when last I checked. Looking forward to reading them all on Thursday morning.

"Sentence fragment" is also a sentence fragment.

Woke up kind of grumpy today. Stayed that way, more or less, until a migraine took over. Now I'm just lying here awake in the dark, trying not to look directly at the computer screen.

Novel ideas are gestating at the moment. At the very least, I can say I'm spending several hours a day thinking through things, deciding on the direction the next section will take. I know more or less the plot points, but I have a lot of ways to get from point A to point B, and am ruminating as to which option(s) will feel the most natural and require the least amount of blah blah blah.

Right now, I'm looking for order, structure. In the work and in my life. I've started rearranging all of the furniture in my home. I have already begun to sleep during the day, awake at night. While this is a little irritating for numerous reasons, it is also when I get the most done. I am far more productive at night.

I flit and flutter, but I can feel it: I will settle soon, and the real work will begin.

Is it tomorrow?

Workers, white space, "Without Rose"

Those of you who have been reading for a while may recall this post, in which I detailed my first day of my recent bout of Dayworking. One of the many puzzling scenarios in which I found myself involved cake, and a strange cake immunity I noticed among some of the Workers.

Today I went in to pick up a check, and while I was there, the intercom once again sang its siren song of free cake to be found in the breakroom. This time, I was free to go in and get a slice.

So there's balance in some things, at least.

*****

I spent a lot of time today looking at a page upon which is written only the words "Chapter Fifteen." My hope is that later tonight or tomorrow morning I will fill it with something more.

*****

Below is my entry to the Clarity of Night "Endless Hours" contest. It's very short, but I hope it tells a story even in its brevity. People have been very nice to it so far over there, which is a bit of a relief, even though I wouldn't have expected attacks or anything. I'm still not sure how I feel about it myself.

Many of the comments I've received so far concern the "twist" at the end, which I found surprising. I guess I didn't think of it like that. It certainly isn't of the "I sold my pocket watch to buy you this comb" type.

Posting this technically violates one of my rules that I have set for my blog: I am not really permitted to edit anything that is posted here. My rule is basically that the writings here be extemporaneous, and when I post fiction it is always the first draft. I guess my story for the contest never technically went through a second draft, but since I submitted it somewhere as "final," it's still technically breaking the rules.

Rules are nice sometimes, but they certainly aren't everything.

*****

"Without Rose"
by maht wells

The front door let out a creak and Tim nearly bolted, letting the exhilaration of coming close be enough. This was his dare, though, and he intended to prove himself. He felt his brother’s eyes on his back as he crossed the threshold.

They’d lain in the bushes and watched the old man push through the crooked screen door and pick his way to the truck. Tim had never heard the old man speak, had only seen him moving from house to truck and back again, and once in a great while sitting out front in an ancient metal deck chair.

He shut the door behind him and stood still as his eyes adjusted to the darkness inside. As the green wash faded, he was able to make out a pile of magazines stacked next to an easy chair, and an enormous, overflowing ashtray on the coffee table.

It was when he reached the kitchen that he thought about Rose, once the old man’s wife. Even Tim could feel her absence as he stared at the piling sink, the fallen curtain, the decay. This was his first real image of death, the effects of it and what life could become to those left behind. He would carry this kitchen with him.

“Tim!” His brother’s voice, from outside, probably halfway home already. The old man had returned.

Tim stood still for another moment, weighing his options before he turned on the water, squeezing soap from the bottle onto the dishes.

Blathering on (again)

I seem to have given some of you the impression that I have toiled and toiled, doing Daywork my whole life, and have given it up only yesterday for the life of the pen. In the interest of honesty, I feel compelled to rectify these impressions.

I have worked mostly from home for the past three years. I am sometimes lured from my domicile by a nearby company, where I once ran the department in which I now occasionally serve. I didn't work out as the manager. I fought a lot with my superiors, and when I got tired of fighting, I became lax in fulfilling my obligations.

That is all water under the bridge.

GoodThomas suggested that I point out that I have never worked. This is also not true, and he better have been kidding when he said that.

As for the writing, I made a promise to myself last July to give this a legitimate shot. I hadn't written in paragraphs much for more than a decade before that. My promise took the form of a five-year plan, in which the goal for the first year was simply to write and write and not worry about publishing or anything else.

I felt I needed at least a year to to remember how to make words rub against one another in such a way as to cause meaning to spill forth.

I'm sure when my year is up, I shall feel I could really use another year to remember these things. I'm pretty sure I'll always be working on that particular problem.

I was considered a "natural" writer when I was in school, and somewhere in there, my teachers failed to impart to me any of the discipline I am now trying to create for myself. This is not the fault of the teachers, at whom I sneered and scoffed as much as I could get away with. I hardly ever completed the assignments they set in front of me. Where the fault lies with them, it is only that they did not fail me more often. The rest is all on me. I am well aware that I robbed myself of a pretty good education.

So now I set assignments for myself. I've been at least mediocre with my follow-through. I completed a novel in November as a participant in NaNoWriMo. Before that, I had no way of knowing if I could write about something and sustain even my own interest in a single set of characters and ideas for that many pages, for that long a time. While I am not exactly enamored with the output from that exercise, I do think that I learned a lot. Not the least of which is that I can, indeed, write a novel-length piece, however turgid and excruciating.

Completing the Daywork has me thinking about all of this all over again. Now is my time to write, to put my money where my mouth is, as it were. Or my something where my something else is.

I've been trying to reawaken my more playful mind, and am giving myself a week to decompress before I start expecting any sort of real output on the novel.

But, listen: I wrote a short story today. It is bad, but it is a first draft. First drafts do not need to sparkle. I hadn't really intended to do even this much, but I'm happy I did.

In my adult life, I have been an actor, a musician, a graphic artist and many other things. I was even an accountant. I have expressed myself creativity since I can remember.

I finally stopped acting about seven years ago, because my band had become infinitely more interesting to me. I stopped being in a band because it had started to feel like Dayworking. Writing is my Last Big Dream, and the only one I have never really followed. It is also the one in which I can most easily see where I am succeeding and where I am failing. Each art I have discarded (I don't think I've really discarded any of them forever) has been in pursuit of the more challenging option at the time.

There is nothing more challenging, to my mind, than grabbing a stranger and making him or her feel things with nothing more than the alphabet. To take someone on a ride with such meager tools is an accomplishment indeed, and I salute all of the writers who have taken me on such journeys. This list will undoubtedly include some of you Blogreaders, those of you with blogs, anyway. I had thought blogs were a bit silly right up to (and a little past) the point where I started one myself as a writing exercise. Thank you for proving me wrong.

See how quickly I lose the point? I came here to tell you that I was only a Dayworker for about three months this time, and all my crowing about being unshackled and free may as well be the sound of the wind blowing. My present circumstances and freedom to write are merely the product of circumstance and luck, whose unwitting pawn I shall ever be.

Current Novel Excerpt: Adventure!

Baranatalo closes in on Michigan Avenue, where the map he consulted before leaving the house has instructed him to turn right again and walk south. He believes he will recognize the building when he gets near. It has been years, but he has been there before. There are lions atop the stairs in front of the building, he recalls. He will look out for lions.

A rumble from his stomach reminds him that he has still not eaten any breakfast, and he ducks into a cafe to obtain something suitable. He has no idea what sorts of foods he might like. He is nervous to try anything but an English muffin, but forces himself to order a bagel sandwich instead. It sounds exotic, and he hopes he will enjoy it. The word “bagel” comes up as corollary to a type of fish in his mind, and he wonders what sort of fish it will be, what sort of fish people choose to consume for breakfast.

The woman at the counter is named Gladys, according to her badge, and she receives his order impassively, not looking at him or asking any follow-up questions, attempting to persuade him to also purchase this or that. He had hoped that she might appraise him anew when he asked for the bagel, that she might be impressed with his worldly discernment. She calls out “Next!” in a flat, weary voice while he is still standing there.

Baranatalo moves down the length of the counter to await his food, and soon a man in a hairnet reaches over the tall counter to hand him a red plastic mesh basket with a sheaf of waxed paper lining its sides. The man in the hairnet wears no badge displaying his name, merely a stained white t-shirt and the hairnet to serve as his uniform. His arms are dark with hair, and he has a thick moustache above what would be a week’s growth of stubble for Baranatalo. The man’s left eye is the same red as the basket.

Inside the basket is not fish. Instead, Baranatalo sees a round bread roll which has been sliced in two and covered with a white paste. He supposes that perhaps the bagel is in the paste. He wonders briefly if there is some sort of culinary dictionary he can purchase to guide him through this exciting time of new things. He wonders also if he would rather not know, if the knowledge would be dangerous to him.

The hairy man also hands him a cup of coffee, which Baranatalo has not ordered. He has never tried coffee, but he knows it is something that the other people he used to work with in the office enjoyed, and since he is on an adventure, he decides to try it.

The bagel on bread is delicious. Tangy and creamy, and the bread is warm and chewy. The coffee tastes like something forged in a dark place by malevolent forest creatures. It is bitter and earthy and makes his stomach rise, but he forces himself to drink it anyway.

Soon he is fed, and he remains at his little table for a few minutes congratulating himself on a successful breakfast. He has completed this task with an ease that makes him feel grand and even bolder than making the eastward turn on Washington instead of the left which would have taken him to where he used to work. Anthony Baranatalo is a man of the world. Anthony Baranatalo is fitting in.

Current Novel Excerpt: Tomato soup and Johnny Carson

It's been a while since I posted a fiction excerpt, so I thought I'd pop something up to remedy that. Since I'm gearing up to spend a lot of time with this project, I thought maybe you'd like to learn a little more about my protagonist, whom you last saw getting ready for work in Chapter Two. This excerpt is from Chapter Thirteen and is set in April, 1986. The normal, first-draft disclaimer applies.

Baranatalo pours most of the soup into a large mug and carries the mug with him into the living room, where he drinks it on the sofa while staring again at the muted television.

The man on the screen now is Johnny Carson, running through his monologue in front of a curtain. Baranatalo can see from watching Carson’s face where the punchlines are, and smiles to himself when the comedian reaches one, enjoying the expression on the man’s face more than he might the jokes he tells, as Baranatalo does not understand a lot of the jokes on the program.

He drinks the soup and finds it delicious. It tastes like something familiar and reminds him of childhood. He cannot recall purchasing the can in the first place, as it is not a part of his normal diet, but he is suddenly grateful for its presence in the cupboard. He likes it, and he will add it to his list of consumables to be obtained from the market the next time he goes.

He drinks it fast, relishing the heat against his throat as he swallows. There is something like safety in the warm liquid, and he drinks it greedily and refills the mug with the rest of the soup from the kitchen, drinking that down, too.

The soup has recharged Baranatalo, even though it is bedtime. He is almost always asleep by the time Carson brings out a guest, but over the lip of the mug he can see that Carson has moved to the desk and is chatting amiably with a beautiful woman. This is just another thing people on television do that Baranatalo does not fully understand, talking to each other excitedly, at ease with themselves and each other, apparently unaware of the physical attractiveness of one another. Or aware, and acting somewhat differently sometimes, luring the other person into a kiss or a dimly lit room and a commercial break.

There is the television and there is the soup, and Baranatalo is wide awake at nearly eleven at night enjoying the latter as he puzzles over the former. The beautiful woman laughs at something Carson has said, throwing her head back and putting her hand on the desk. Carson beams at his triumph, and Baranatalo wonders if the two are lovers. He watches to see if Carson will kiss her or lead her into darkness, but the commercial break comes and they are still at the desk, the woman still touching the desk, Carson still looking into the camera to say something, and the large sidekick sitting silently on the other side of the woman. Baranatalo thinks it is perhaps the sidekick that prevents the kiss. He is possibly there to chaperone the event, to keep things from moving too far.

Either that, or the kissing is what they do while they watch the commercials.

When the camera again shows the desk, Carson’s is the only face in the frame. He says something into the camera and another person walks out from behind the curtain, this time a handsome man wearing a beige sportcoat he has pushed up his arms to catch on his elbows. Underneath the jacket he wears a bright red t-shirt, which hangs low down his neck to display a forest of chest hair. The woman moves away from the desk, and Baranatalo wonders what it is she has done to be discarded in such a fashion. Carson does not speak to her again.

What happened to the funny posts?

I no longer amuse you in the ways I used to, Blogreader, and this makes me a little sad. I've been achingly serious lately in my real life, too. I cannot explain this. It seems, through looking back in time on my blog, that my last truly jokey post was the Writing Tip joke that people found so uproariously funny over a week ago. I'm kidding, of course. No one found that post all that funny.

I find I can fake it at work, but not here.

To those of you who keep blogs and have noticed that I don't comment very often anymore, I apologize. Between working a lot and keeping my promise to myself with regard to novel-writing, I find myself at a loss for both words and time. Often, I'll come up with something to say on one of your posts and then be pulled away for ten hours or so and the freshness has gone. Again, I apologize. I still read pretty much all of the blogs in my links section, and a few more besides, whether through the actual site or through Bloglines.

I suppose I'm in danger of being considered a bad blogger, and not participating fully in the community, and that's probably fair. I guess I'll consider myself a truly bad blogger only if I stop reading the other blogs I've grown to love, or stop wanting to comment and interact with you.

I still try to reply to any comment left here, and I'm trying to post as regularly as I can.

To those of you who have grown accustomed to speaking with me via telephone or email or in person and have noticed that I haven't been in touch lately, please read the above and substitute words more appropriate to your situation.

I suppose I just haven't been feeling very communicative lately. Those of you who have been around me a while know that I get like this from time to time. I disappear. I have nothing to say that feels urgent enough to express.

Mostly, right now, I just want to dissolve myself into my novel until I can finish the first draft. I feel like I haven't accomplished much lately, and the time I put into my blog feels a little like time I should be spending on the novel. I wrote almost eight thousand words this weekend, and I want to keep that momentum going, which takes a lot of effort for me.

I don't know if I should admit this, but I hit a wall on the novel tonight, fell into a hole, and am experiencing one of those periods where I think the whole thing is just a pile of shit. This probably doesn't help me feel funny and expressive either. It makes me feel terrible, vulnerable, and fraudulent. I went through this sort of thing every few days during NaNo, so I know by now not to let it stop me. But it still really sucks. I suppose I should take my solace in the fact that I've been writing every day for a week and this has been the first day that has felt like this. Perhaps that's some sort of growth. Or an increase in my capacity for self-delusion.

Having said all of that, it is entirely possible that I will awaken tomorrow morning, refreshed in spirit, and begin posting and commenting all over the place. Because those who have known me for any length of time also know that I am flighty.

But should I awaken feeling just like I do right now, I hope all of you will know that I still read and think about the things you say, even if I don't always stop by and tell you so.

By the silvery light of a cellular phone

Although it was not very cold today, I still walked to the dock at work a couple of times to smoke. It's a little quicker, and I like the quiet those cavernous hallways I showed you Monday offer (and show you again now). It's quiet enough to think.

I was down there this evening, some time after dark. The dock was cool and still and open and I was thinking again about how nice it would be to live in a giant loft apartment. I totally understand the appeal of living in converted industrial space these days.

I was nearly finished with my cigarette when the timer that controls the lights activated and I found myself standing in utter darkness. A tiny amount of light seeped in through the windows of the truck bay, but not enough even to see the ground beneath me anymore. I was perhaps thirty yards from the hallway, where at least some lights were lit, but wasn't sure the nature or number of obstacles on my path to the safety of the hall.

I opened my cell phone and held it down towards the ground. It provided just enough illumination to make out my shoes, dark against the pale gray cement of the floor. I figured that so long as any obstacle was not the same color as the floor, I could make it just fine.

And I did, Blogreader. I am not still there on the dock. This is my thrilling survival tale for today. Kind of peters off at the end there, I guess.

In other news, I just broke past 10,000 words on the new novel. Come to think of it, that's the thing from today that I'll likely remember later. So forget about the stupid "trapped by darkness" thing and pretend that I wrote about my progress on the novel instead.

I am very excited (almost Caroline excited) for tomorrow, when my new thing is scheduled to arrive, and when I should pass the 14,000 word mark ( I plan to simply write and write after work tomorrow night). 14,000 holds a special significance for me, as that was the final word count of the novel I tried to write when I was 19. Until November, that was the longest thing I'd ever written. And so far, anything I write that passes that mark blossoms into a full-length novel. All of the only one thing I have written that passed that mark, anyway.

Whaddya know? I guess I did write about my progress on the novel after all.

Promises, promises (+498)

Distraught over how much I have been allowing my work to interfere with my writing lately, I am hereby making a public promise to myself to write at least 500 words each day, no matter what. I plan to ratchet up the word count as each of my projects come to a close.

I started today, and while they weren't a particularly good 500 words, there they are on the page where I needed them to be. The idea is that if I write them I can always edit them later, which is similar to the point of NaNo, which seems today like a better idea than it did yesterday. It was a pain in the ass, but there's no denying that I learned a lot of lessons from it.

I'm guessing I have about six weeks left of on-site dayworking. After that the pages should start to pour out of me like a big pourey metaphor involving a liquid of some kind. Like I said: I'm not writing very well today.

Just letting y'all know that I'm still writing my novel, in case you were wondering. Letting you know that, and I also seem to be better at keeping promises I make here on my Moon Toppley blog than the regular real-life promises I make to myself.

You have a way of keeping me honest, Blogreader. I treasure that about you.

I write a little myself, as well...

A woman, one of the Workers, asked me on Monday if I had witnessed the Super Bowl sporting contest the previous evening. I said no, that I was writing poetry in my journal at the time.

I was kidding with her, giving her an answer that contained what I imagined might seem like the opposite of watching the Big Game. She laughed, like she was supposed to, but then kept on laughing at the very idea of me writing verse into a notebook.

This is something I actually do. But to her it seemed as likely as if I had told her I had played in the Super Bowl the previous evening. She does not believe I have the depth necessary to want to write things down.

I walked off a little offended. Sure, the personality I display among the Workers is a bit less than poetic, but the idea that me sitting down to write something would strike someone as inherently comical stuck with me.

Ultimately, I decided she was probably not wrong in reaching her conclusion. She does not know me well, and Worker Maht is a bit of a strain. I am not particularly eloquent in general when my words fly out into the air. I cannot massage them as I can on a page. Add in my ADD, stress and various other factors and I can see how it might be a little unlikely that the loud, weird guy might spend his nights agonizing over the phrasing of a sentence.

I think some of the people there think I spend my nights coming up with clever things I might say to them.

And then, it sort of happened again with my written words yesterday. I sent a brief excerpt of my current novel to a friend, and he replied that it didn't really read as though I had written it. I think he expected the somewhat breezy style I maintain on my blog, which is also what he has encountered reading bits of my NaNo piece. He expressed surprise that it contained so much imagery.

This sort of style (the blog one) is pretty easy for me to write, and I don't think it is a bad way of expressing myself, but it is not really what I have in mind when it comes to crafting this story. I used that style to get through NaNo, sure, but I never had any intention of publishing that book, and the characters and situations lent themselves to a more casual approach. I guess I don't think of it as "my style." It's just a style. My current novel requires another.

I use it here on my blog because it is the closest I can come to my side of a conversation on a page. And I deliberately do not edit or tweak the words much, letting them instead just pour out as they might if I were speaking to you. I tell myself that this makes me seem more communicative.

I've finally started making headway on my novel again. This one is coming so painfully slow that I keep thinking that I cannot tell this story. And then, when I am just about to quit for a while and go write my other novel, a small facet will sort of make itself evident and I can write that part. In this fashion I got about 4,000 words this week. This feels great, especially as I cut 3,000 last week but never updated the word count meter in the sidebar. I couldn't bear the thought of advertising to you that I was going backward. But now that I'm a whole one percent closer to a completed first draft, I feel like dancing.

Well, OK, maybe not dancing. As likely activities go, dancing falls somewhere below writing poetry in my notebook. And somewhere above watching the Super Bowl.

Current Novel Excerpt: A morning routine

This is from the novel I'm working on now. It's not polished, but I felt like sharing something that isn't from my somewhat awful NaNo piece. This takes place early in Chapter Two, which is set in early April, 1986. As with all the excerpts posted to date, this is very first draft-y. The writing is, perhaps, a little overly clipped and terse.

Beside the bed is a nightstand, upon which rests a digital alarm clock. It tells the time in angry red characters, blockish and terse. Like many mechanical objects of this period, it lacks elegance. It displays numbers using only straight lines and right angles. It has a radio built into it, but Baranatalo does not use this feature. The radio and the time and the noises it produces at a scheduled time are all it can do. It cannot determine the day of the week, or the month and date. It is unaware of time beyond a 24-hour cycle which it repeats and repeats.

Anthony Baranatalo presses the “snooze” button on the alarm clock and moves to a sitting position on the bed. Pressing the button means he has nine minutes before the alarm shrieks and cries again.

He rubs the sleep from his eyes, the last shred of a dream fading from his mind like a blob on his retina caused by looking too long at a bright light. He sits there at the edge of his bed with his head bowed, waiting for the next crash of his alarm which signals the beginning of his day.

When it does, it breaks the spell holding him motionless, his arm stretching out absently to silence it as he rises to his feet.

Baranatalo moves into the bathroom, cranking both of the knobs of the shower full on and causing water to pour from the head of the shower before adding a thin strip of toothpaste to his brush and brushing his teeth. There is a mechanical quality to his actions. When he has finished moving the brush against his teeth, he spits three times into the sink before pouring a capful of mouthwash into his mouth. He gargles it while turning “C” knob counter-clockwise to increase the temperature of the water streaming from the shower head. The shower begins to shriek, emitting a high-pitched steady drone which Baranatalo can no longer hear, any more than he hears the lumbering, industrious sounds of the El train a block and a half away. The sound from the shower is heat and pressure.

Baranatalo gets into the shower, throwing his underpants onto the floor behind him as he lets out a long, slow breath and feels the water warming his body. Steam rises from every surface the water touches, and Baranatalo’s skin turns a deep red as he lathers and rinses, then lathers and rinses again. When his hand presses against his torso, it leaves a white reminder of its presence for several seconds, his true skin color reappearing beneath his hot shower skin.

Once he has completed the requirements of the shower, he moves back into the bedroom, the excess water from the shower dripping from his body and onto the hardwood floor, as he does not possess a bath towel. He selects from his closet the leftmost of the identical white dress shirts which is slightly rumpled before he even puts it on, but more so afterward, wrinkled and clinging to his wet skin. He dons a pair of slacks over a fresh pair of underwear and sits on the bed to don black socks and shoes. He transfers his wallet from the previous day’s pants and places them into the hamper next to his bureau, then returns to the bathroom.

Baranatalo wipes his hand across the mirror to remove the remaining steam, creating a reflective but blurry surface on the glass. He slathers shaving cream across his jaw with the other hand, rinsing both hands afterward in cold water from the tap in the sink. He shaves quickly, scraping the blade in quick rows across his cheek, around his mouth and down his neck. He rinses his face in the cold tap water and watches his blurry, steamy reflection in the mirror for a moment, warily, as if expecting his reflection to do or say something. His mouth is slightly downturned, which is its normal position. He pushes his hair back onto his scalp, away from his sightline. His large, melancholy eyes gaze back at him, awaiting the same thing. Neither of them speaks, and so he rubs a green deodorant stick against his armpits, reaching under the shirt to cover first one, then the other with a thin layer of chemicals and antiseptic scent.

A start, at least (at last)

Finally broke through and made some progress on the novel tonight, after struggling so much lately over the intro. I had less than 400 words earlier today, but now have zoomed to 3,500. I should pass the part of the plot I had initially reached in December by the end of the week.

I feel like it's starting to take shape and be the story I wanted to tell. I'm still way shy of my target, but a few more days like this and I'll feel pretty good about my progress.

Tomorrow I shall don the shirt I received from Ian and see what I can do about passing the 5,000 word mark.

I read about a site that's encouraging some sort of incremental novel writing project. It's called Word Count Journal and the idea is that you write one word your first day, two the second and so on for a year. By the time you're required to write 365 words in a day, you've got 66,795 words, which is pretty much novel-length. I thought about trying it, but don't think I can write like that. All the prose would be extremely, Hemmingwayishly terse at the beginning. It'd be weeks before I could write even a complete sentence all at once. No good for scatter-brained swoopers like me. Still, for any plodders out there daunted by the idea of writing a full length piece, this might be a way to achieve that, bit by bit.

I'm pretty sure Hemmingwayishly is a word. Still, it won't be one of the 100,000.

As much as I wanted to shift the tone of things and start over, it's also possible that I was blocking myself out of fear of moving forward. This isn't a book I can just chuck like the NaNo one. This one is important to me, and I think I've been worried that I'll ruin it.

So now that's the goal. "Try not to ruin it."

It's a little weird, still, the process of writing itself. I have gotten used to most of my creative output being collaborative through my years in theater and the band, and it feels strange to be creating something more or less alone.

I'm pressing on, though. I'm excited again, and ready to do the work. Once I build up some momentum, I should be all set.

Because I have a freakish side about certain public challenges, I am now declaring that I will finish the first draft by the middle or March. Done before St. Patrick's Day, that's my motto. Accomplishing this requires the same 1,667 word per day commitment that NaNo did, assuming 60 working days between now and then.

No sweat. Right? Right?!?