I wrote a short story almost 15 years ago that I’ve never submitted anywhere, and that I haven’t even really thought that much about since committing my braindead scribblings to paper so long ago.

Today I found a short introduction I wrote for it a while ago, apparently thinking a particular magazine would pick it up, and it makes me want to pull out the original and rework it into something I can sell for $20. At least I could say I’d been published then.

God is God. As such, He requires nothing of the usual middle-management or bureaucratic nonsense, and prefers the roll-up-your-sleeves-and-knuckle-on-up variety of interaction over the human delegation style currently favored by the trendiest of the false gods, earth spirits and pet rocks. Because this is true—as it must be since I, your omniscient narrator, have never been asked to advise the Almighty—the story that follows must then be patently false. The more clever of this magazine’s readership will recognize the lack of value afforded such a work, and will discontinue consumption immediately. For those intrepid few low-brows who remain, however, what follows is a none-too-good example of what might have happened had God, tiring of the whimperings and supplicant fartings of the angelic host, turned ownership of a few minor details of the universe over to the wisdom of various panels, focus groups and bureaucratic committees. In this poor illustration, we consider life.

Raisin is a very special girl who figured out how to cheat the system and endow herself with various superhuman abilities before her birth. She gets these abilities, but a series of horrible miscalculations on her part whilst pursuing perfection makes life… well… not what she expected. I won’t give away the biggest plot twist, even though it’s revealed in the first paragraph, but I assure you it’s a doozie. And sort of stupid.

Maybe I’ll work on this soon. I think it’d be a quick and easy one to knock out, and it’d give me a much-needed sense of accomplishment after my mounting feelings of inadequacy over the past several months. I’ll let you know how that goes. 🙂

I haven’t worked on my crappy sci-fi novel in months, not one crappy bit, and I’m kind of depressed about that. I’ve got more important worries right now, of course, which is fine for the time being, but the person I am and the person I tell people I am are diverging by the day. Am I a writer, or am I not?

I found this on my laptop tonight, and realized that one reason nobody cares about Project One is because they don’t know anything about it. And another is because they’re dweebs.

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Seven hundred years after the near-destruction of the human race by an ancient but unknown enemy, the opportunity to travel back through time and witness the invasion first-hand presents itself to the government of the New Earth Colonies. After much preparation, a small group of observers is assembled and sent back to the year 1931, just months before the catastrophe is to occur.

The book actually begins with the arrival of one agent, Samuel Foote, who quickly tires of the mundane chores with which he has been tasked and begins to search for glory and meaning on his own. A combination of drive and inexperience leads him through a series of mishaps and harrowing adventures wherein he forms a tenuous relationship with the Mafia, becomes entangled with a foreign assassination attempt, accidentally saves the Earth from its intended doom and ultimately embodies the very hero whose legend was passed to him as a child and whose exploits caused him to join the observation team in the first place.

Though originally tasked only with the detached observation of the conflict, the team have rewritten history and become obligated to defend the planet from a secondary attack just weeks after the first was supposed to have struck. Conjoined with unlikely allies, the special agents fight the swarm of well-armed alien invaders alongside mobsters, U.S. National Guardsmen, Foreign Legionnaires and Native Americans. Successfully turning back the assault, the observers return to an unsure future but leave behind the troublesome Sam Foote and his battle-bonded friends, the very people for whom the adventure has just begun.

This guy’s going to be a minor but important character in Project One.

I’ve just recently discovered I needed Tommy, and for some reason I’m really excited to start drafting out that section of the story. I’m not sure why, but part of it may be that all the details of his personality and reactions to the storyline–and even his name, for little Petie’s sake–came rushing into my big fat head all at once as if they were real and obvious and thunk up by somebody smarter than me. That’s never happened before.

Anyway, I can’t say much about the guy, but he’ll work with Trick Dickel (Lynn thinks that’s a rude name, but I don’t see it. His name was originally going to have the “Tr” and “D” transposed, and I’ll give 100% concession to the fact that that really wouldn’t have been a good idea) in the garage up until the time his loyalties to the mob cause enough trouble for the main character and the Dickels (Trick and his daughter have integral roles) that Trick has to go all Jack Bristow on him.

That’s all I can say, other than that it’ll be “bloody” fantastic. 🙂

For me, anyway, because I’m enjoying putting this thing together. I realize the odds of my finding an agent round up to 100% against me and getting a book deal beyond that would be an even bigger stretch, but this is what I’m doing right now. Get over it – I have. 🙂

So it’s five months later and I’ve decided to give the blawgin’ thing another go.

Of course, nothing has changed as far as my having anything important to say or even having an audience to read said unimportant posts, and obviously I’m still the same old lazy me.

Writing is therapeutic, though, at least for me, and this is something to do when I’m too beat to work on Project One. Not that I’ve made much headway on my crappy Sci-Fi novel since the whole Writers’ Conference letdown, but it’s time to change that too. Looking back at the blogs I wrote earlier, I saw a small list of long and carefully worded entries (masterpieces all if not for their being drivelous who-cares-its) and grimaced at the amount of work that would lay ahead for me if I decided to keep up that kind of pace. I originally wanted to put out something meaty at least five times a week, and I got all nutty scampers when I missed a day or could only come up with a short entry. Being who I am, I realize now, it was inevitable that I would get frustrated and move on to something else. Well, something else has wound up being lots of sitting around on my butt being sick, and of course I used very little of that time creatively.

That’s all changing, just you wait and see. And don’t laugh if it doesn’t.

From now on, I’ll post when I can, and won’t worry about missing a day. Or two. Or a week.

From now on, I’ll stop worrying about writing perfect entries. Everything will be draft-quality, like this post. That long paragraph above is an absolute mess, but I don’t care. Or rather, I do care, a lot, but I’m going to start trying to ignore the screaming voices in my head that don’t want me to publish such poorly written stuff. Because really, the best I can do now will be poor in comparison to what I will be capable of if I keep practicing. Right? Maybe. Just you wait and see.

From now on, my posts will all be written in conversational English, meaning that I won’t worry too much about dangling participles or preposition-terminated sentences or any of that other muckety-muck. I’ll just write something and click “Publish” when I’m done.

From now on, MWP will be secondary to Project One. There will probably be lots of times when I can work on both, but if I’ve only got a few minutes to write, I’ll be choosing the book.

So that’s the loosely-formulated plan as I see it now. But I still don’t know where the man is. I’ll let you know when I find him.