Driving All Over The Place And Going Nowhere...

I figured it was time to throw another post up, you know to stay in the habit of posting... at least every couple of months... or so... Anyway, I'm *finally* over whatever abominable plague I had. At leas, I'm over it enough to feel like a million bucks, but I suspect I'm still slow enough that once I'm *TRULY* over it, it'll seem as though I've been sick for most of my life. Point is, I'm back to doing stuff, laughing and snorting, and writing. Also, mowing the lawn.

Anyone who's known me for any length of time will remember that I'm not normally allowed to touch things like the weed eater or lawn mower. This is because like some sort of rogue EMP wave, I can break the shit just by touching it. No joke, this happens a lot. On smaller things (like watches) the stuff just stops working for no obvious reason. On larger things, it's sometimes more obvious (split main belts, ruptured things, whatever) but the result is the same. Shit no work, no more. So normally, I don't touch it, and that solves the problem.

But Dad, while he's doing fine, is at a point where stuff like riding the mowing for two hours, affects him more and more. So I'm his replacement. I know, terrifying. It's like sending Chris Farley to stand in for Chris Pine. Not the same. But after a lesson from Dad, I managed to mow the whole property without dying, killing anything or breaking anything. Sunday, I repeated the procedure (except that I forgot to mow the back lot...) and succeeded again.

While I was driving the mower the first time, I was hit with yet another story idea. I know, I know. You're thinking Just pick a story and write it, kid! But the problem is that I don't have anyone waiting for the stories, so I just keep plodding along with them instead of running a marathon, and along the way I find shiny new things to pick up, and eventually I start dropping other shiny things that I've gotten tired of carrying. But I do remember where they all got dropped, so I can go right back and pick them up if anyone is ever interested in them. This is what happens when you drive all over the place and go nowhere. You start playing make believe while you're driving.

In my case, that means that while I'm writing, but not moving forward toward publication (not that I can tell, anyway) I tend to have many multiple projects going at once, and sometimes, they get traded out for new projects, which eventually get set aside so I can work on older ones. But at least my engine is still going. And when that gate toward publication finally opens, I intend to roar down the racecourse without a backward glance, my stories flying behind me like banners in the wind!

Childhood Dreams Become Artist's Fodder

Overdue for a post... as is custom. But I must have some traditions, mustn't I? Anyway, I've been laid up sick for a week (not in a fun 'oh I get to be 'sick' and stay home and write' kind of way, but in a 'occasionally surfacing to consciousness, then submerging again' kind of way) and since I've been able to cling to humanity long enough to string a few thoughts together, I've been writing madly on yet another new project, one that I already love dearly.

I'm not entirely sure what this project is going to look like once I'm finally facing it at close range. It's like a massive stag moving back and forth through thick fog. But I know the project more intimately in other ways. I know the characters in it, the things that drive them, the things that haunt them. I know where it's going, and I'll learn what it looks like on the way.

All of this ties into the fact that while I was sick, I saw the latest Transformers movie (Edge of Extinction, or Age of Extinction or some such...) and - I know, I know, stop rolling your eyes! So much of the recent 'live action movies' are terrible, but some parts of them are actually pretty wonderful. While I have an undying hatred of the 'token hot bimbo with no intelligent reason to be there' and the 'token hot guy who's supposed to be witty' (I'm not even able to quantify my hatred of Shia Labeouf. I mean, plagiarizing your apology for plagiarizing something else? I can't even.) and all the other random story devices that Michael Bay has made up because, Bay does what Bay wants, I really do think he got the souls of the Transformers themselves well represented. It's something I'm willing to debate, anyway, with anyone who wants to. Also, the music in those movies is awesome.

So, anyway, the whole point is that I'd never seen the most recent movie, so I watched it. Like four times. Because, you know, I'm sick on the couch, and they just kept playing it, so I kept watching it. I cannot remember a time when I didn't love the Transformers. I've been with them since the very beginning, and I maintain a certain devotion to them even in less than perfect manifestations. I, personally, rather liked the newer looks given to them in the more recent incarnations, because they're viably realistic. Even if there are parts of these movies I don't care for, the Transformers themselves give life to all the daydreams I thrived on as a kid. They make me go out and look at the stars at night and wonder what might be up there. Consider things like the idea of a non-human entity having more humanity than humanity generally does, and how being alive has more to do with actions than it does with having a heartbeat.

Which leads me to new ideas, new themes, new stories.

My happy obsession at the moment is this revisitation of longstanding childhood dreams involving the Transformers, and associated themes. But they're only one remnant of my childhood dreams that provide me with fodder for stories and characters. So often as people grow up they leave behind influences that, at the time, meant a great deal to them, even shaped how they viewed the world. Let's face it, not many guys will say 'I went into the Marines because it was the closest thing to being He-Man that I could find.' But how many engineers really wanted to find out if you could built a glider out of three pieces of bamboo, a trash bag and a garden rake, like MacGyver, how many conservationists wanted to be like Jana of The Jungle and run with the animals. Adult underestimate the influences of childhood dreams, even as they're utilizing those very things in their careers.

I prefer to embrace my childhood dreams, feeding them and loving them.

Random March Post

This post will be random and rambling. I'm warning you because I've had two good glasses of scotch and I haven't had scotch in at least two year, so I'm pretty drunk about now. Obviously not drunk enough to throw grammar and spelling out the window, but then, the moment I'm so drunk that grammar and spelling go out the window, you need to lock me in the shed out back...

ANYWAY... I'm sitting here drunk because I am very unhappy right now. There's shallow unhappy, like I had a shitty day, and I hate my job, I don't have enough time to write all the things I want to write and UPS didn't deliver my package that I paid extra to have delivered today, unhappy, and there's deep unhappy, like I still miss Di, I shouldn't be sitting here missing her because she ought to be alive, instead of half the worthless souls who are still walking within our realm, unhappy. And I'm sorry, I know she's *just a horse* to most of the population, but she was a lot more to me.

But shallow or deep, the fact remains that I'm unhappy. Blah blah blah.

There's not point in whining. What is, is what is. All I can do, is to write. Sometimes, I write better drunk. Who said that? Hemingway? Write drunk, edit sober? It's good advice. You're free when you're just enough tipsy to not give a shit about the consequences of saying wha you feel.  Now, maybe you're going to say something in your ms now, and then later when you go back to edit, you're like WTF was I thinking? And you change things- usually for the better. But I think you know what I mean. You get so much more in touch with raw emotions when you're not worried about what anyone is going thing of you for revealing those raw emotions. Like I said, maybe later you go back sober and edit things, but there's something to be said for offering up your most raw emotions.

And on that note, I'm off to offer up my most raw emotions on a new WIP...