Dark places.

The more I write--and oh yes, I've been writing--the more I feel like I'm descending into a cave. I'm exploring the darkest places. The darkest ideas. They're part of this story, and therefore they're also part of me.

Sometimes I'm actually depressed because of it. If you hang around in the dark long enough, your eyes get used to it; you sometimes forget what the light looks like. While I'm generally a reasonably happy person (at least for a twisted writer), even in my happy moments lately I feel like there's perpetually this gnarled, sinister hand touching my elbow, beckoning me to places that most people simply don't go.

But I have to go to these places. For the good of the story. And to some degree for the good of me. Annoyingly self-analytical me.

"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." --Nietzsche

Guilty.

Yeah, I feel seriously guilty when I'm not writing the book.

Mind you, I've been writing other things. I haven't been a total lazy-ass. And right now I'm sick with several different maladies in addition to being annoyed at everything and anything for no real reason at all. Not exactly the most productive sort of writing mood. I feel weak in health as well as weak in spirit. It'll pass, but right now I'm mentally berating myself for not being able to write just one lousy goddamn chapter.

My muses have been influencing me like crazy. Shall I start referring to them as the cliched devil and angel on my shoulders? They both affect me so deeply, and they're both having a profound impact on this story. They've been flooding my twisted little brain lately, and yet all I'm able to do is blog about how lame I am for not having the energy to write about them.

Tomorrow, though. I hope.

True story.

"You're adorable," he told me this morning, standing there in his underwear, looking down at me, blushing.

"So are you," I said, stepping up on my tippy-toes to kiss him.

"I mean it," he said, nudging me back to being flat on my feet. "I say you're adorable, but I really do adore you."

"And I adore *you*," I said for hopefully the first of many times, running my hands gently over his cheeks--surprised but pleased to hear whispers in my head, the soft sounds of two characters stirring as they, too, began to wake up...

* * * * *

Characters are melting pots. As the original idea for a character bubbles in its base form on the stove, I start adding things. A cup of that him, the original concept. A few spoonfuls of this him, to make that him seem more likable, more deserving of being cared about. A dash of my natural reaction to each him. A pinch of my feelings for each. A shot of my own imagination, for that fiction factor. But we know that fictional characters are often anything but fiction--or at least anything but complete fiction. They're this strange brew of people we've known, things we've seen, feelings we've felt.

I have never been the best chef...but it seems I can cook up a very intriguing character soup.

Something

I didn't understand would be vital to how I write this story:

How it feels to truly be in love with someone.

(And I don't think I knew how that felt until recently.)

I have a better understanding now of what sorts of things S might be feeling toward B, as unrequited as some of those feelings are.

I've always thought this story was, to some degree, an anti-love story. Not so much, though. It's more a different kind of love than anti-love. A weird kind of love. The kind many people read about rather than experience.

I've experienced some of it.

And I'm going to infuse this story with it.

.

Off from the day job for a few days to work on the book.

Inevitably, when I return, people will want to know how much I got done. Right now I've done three chapters. That number will surely increase.

But what they don't understand is that novel work is not all about just the writing. You can't always measure your work in pages. For me, it's about:

* Listening to that band whose work inspires me.

* Listening, for the first time, to Chopin.

* Reading lyrics. Then rereading them again. And again. And...

* Connecting with those people who inspire me, even though they might be bad for me. Good for the novel > bad for me.

* Reading things that other people have written (so much of writing is about reading--especially when you're constantly analyzing what you like and what you don't like, and what you think works or doesn't work in a story).

* Revisiting well-loved monsters. Hello, Dexter; hello, Benjamin Linus. Nice to see you guys again.

* Thinking about sex.

* Pondering the details of the sequel. And the next book, totally unrelated to this one and its sequel. (But only writing this book at present. Let's not overwhelm ourselves, shall we?)

* Taking long, hot showers. Often where I have some truly brilliant ideas.


I can honestly say that I've been working on this book all weekend long.

Just a little shaken up.

When I write, I can't be too happy. I also can't be too angry or sad--that distracts me. But I have to be some sort of weird medium. I'd call it a happy medium, but...no. I generally don't write well when I'm too happy.

I need to be in a mindset where I'm more or less content, but am just a little shaken up by...something. Maybe an episode of Dexter really got to me. Maybe "Unintended" came on the MP3 player unexpectedly. Maybe something happened with someone to shake me up, to awaken my own dark passenger.

Like, for instance, hearing from him. I've mentioned him before. There have been many men over the course of me writing this book, but there's only one him. For the record, no, I'm not still nuts about him. (I'm nuts about someone else who is similarly nuts about me. That's a good feeling.) But that doesn't mean that his words don't affect me. They do--possibly more than anyone else's words do. Four sentences from him can trip me out just enough that my literary dark passenger uncurls itself, stands up, stretches its wings...and grabs a pen.

He--that him again, he of the trip-me-out emails and text messages--wants very desperately to read this book. "It's art I know I want to read," he said. "It's you."

Except I don't think he knows that. I think he thinks that. Because if he ever does read this thing, I don't know that he's going to want to see it through to the end.

But he's right about one thing. It is me.

Fall is my best writing season; this fall is no exception.

I've been writing like crazy all week. It's fall, I'm inspired, I've had a bit more free time than usual, etc.

I've been kinda down on myself for not writing more, or not writing more quickly. I have always been my own harshest critic.

Then I thought of something I was shocked I hadn't really considered before. How many pages of single-spaced Microsoft Word pages equal one book page? I was pleasantly surprised that the general consensus seems to think it's about 2 book pages per Microsoft Word page. I have 60 pages at present. So that would be approximately 120 book pages. I'm aiming to write something that's between 200-250 book pages (I'd originally been aiming for 300, but I think that would be overkill for this story). Which means I'm about halfway to my goal.

Halfway fucking through.

It doesn't feel like I'm that far along, but now just knowing that I actually am that far along makes me feel a renewed sense of optimism. It also makes me feel like I don't have to clutter the story up. I'd been worried that for my story to reach the amount of pages I'd originally wanted it to reach, I'd have to add more. Well, I like writing, but I don't like adding anything unnecessary--that'll take away from the story. I like keeping things succinct and concise. Knowing that I don't have as far to go as I originally thought I did to meet my "book pages" goal makes me absolutely ecstatic.

To add to the optimism, I was doing some research on the internet and came across an interview with an author whose books I don't even really like--but the interview offered up some extremely helpful tidbits of information both on her own publishing process and where to go to replicate some of the steps she took to get published. That whole "potentially getting published" thing brings a smile to my face.

That being said, I won't have anything to publish if I don't go ahead and finish what I'm writing. Aiming for 70 typed Word pages by the weekend's end. Can I do it...? :)