I haven’t completely worked out what all will be changing or how… but you, my long forgotten three followers, will know my plans almost as soon as I do. Or within a month or two, or something.

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.

—

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.

Anyway, it’s something I’ve been putting off looking into for months because I’ve been trying my best to get back into Project One full swing, and my immediate thoughts were always that I didn’t need yet another distraction to keep me off task.

And I still think that’s true, mostly.

But I get bored and frustrated when I don’t get to switch gears now and then–just ask all the bosses I’ve ever had or my wife (is that redundant?)–so having other things to work on when I would otherwise just be sitting around playing Civ IV instead of pumping out crappy Sci-Fi might not be a bad idea at all. How’s that for a messed up sentence?

I’ve got some great ideas I really want to work on as far as recurring guests and themes and whatnot. We’re talking about a spoof of an old-timey radio program (probably a variety hour thing) with lots of singing and music and interviews and what have you, but we haven’t nailed down a specific historical time period for the sucker. I’m actually of the mind that we should leave it like that, and sort of float the actual decade around as it suits us. Or just leave it vague, and allow the inevitable inaccuracies (assuming we even talk about “current” events) to accumulate as they will.

It would surely all be before Dubya Dubya Two, so there would be plenty of room to make fun of the wannabe world powers that were all shuffling into better positions to pee down each other’s neck holes (and of the wieners who weren’t concerned by said shuffling). A German choir might be an interesting choice, singing in English, of course, with plenty of ominous references that foreshadow their “adventures” to come. And lots of stuff about the puny little agrarian society known as Japan, etc. Plus, since nothing really should be sacred in such a venue, there were plenty of ridiculous domestic issues before the war that could be exploited.

Less obvious but at least as important as the state of the world (at least from a writer’s standpoint) was the writing style from back in the day. There was an odd mixture of formality and innocence in correspondence back then, and marketing certainly wasn’t the beast it is now. It would take a whole lot of research and effort to duplicate the style, but–man!–there are about a zillion and 9 different directions we could go with it.

So, anyway, I’m cyclical about stuff like this, but I think I’ve cycled back around to the “excited” setting for the time being. I just hope Wayne hasn’t given up on me like he usually does, cause he needs to write the stinkin’ music.

Oh, and, yeah… to podcast. For sure.

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.

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.

1. Judge Julius told me today that the judging for the writing workshop scholarship is behind schedule, and that a winner hasn’t yet been named. And I was all nutty scampers in the head all week for nothing.
2. Watched 300 tonight. Oh my. Not oh my bad because I definitely enjoyed it… more like oh my intense. That’s it. It’s visually intense even when there’s nothing going on. Surprisingly enough for a movie that features so many decapitations, skewerings, tauntings and whatnot, nothing goes on for a good portion of the rolling time. One more beheading or festering mutant parade would have probably evened out the action for me.
3. Most folks ditched Wayne’s LAN party this weekend. Just a bad time for scheduling, I guess. There will just be 4 of us in the morning, but that number will swell to a whopping 6 when my boss and my coworker Sam show up later on. I wanted my boss to meet Wayne at some point in case a job ever opened up in our department. Wayne’s a very bright and capable guy, and he’s mentally more flexible than me in some ways. I think he’d do really well in a job that actually paid him what he’s worth but I’m not sure I could pry him away from the college campus, which is an environment in which he’s always wanted to work. Long as he’s happy I won’t meddle too much I guess.

Night. I’m beat.

I’ve been moping around for days about the whole assuming-defeat-and-not-being-informed-otherwise thing with the writers’ conference I wanted to attend. I’ve been in a bad mood this whole time and I haven’t been able to stop wondering why Judge Julius won’t return my emails about the conference. I’ve checked my mail about 35 times today already because, even though I know in my heart I didn’t make the scholarship, the lack of closure has got me all crazy in the head. I even moved all my inbox stuff into an archive folder so my new email would show up quicker after a refresh. Plus it’s hard to miss new mail in an otherwise empty inbox.

As soon as I got all that cleared out I polled the mailserver again and–bink!–there was the email that’s changed my whole outlook.

It wasn’t from Julius or the writing workshop folks, though. It was from a guy I used to do improv comedy with, and somebody I’d probably even consider a friend. He’s got three sons now (I only met the oldest, and he was a foot long and curly at the time) and the newest arrival, whose name is Feller, has been in and out of the hospital with the respiratory problem that’s so dangerous to infants. Bob and his wife have been stretched long and far over the past few months taking care of the boys (and trying to take care of themselves), and his email was a call-in of all the favors his friends and family have offered since Feller was born.

The asking for help wasn’t really the thing that twisted my guts and made me feel like such a schmo, but rather the subject of the plea: something better to eat than macaroni and cheese once in a while. Spank. Life is a lot rougher for Bob than it is for me if he doesn’t have time to make anything more complicated than a presto-magic-whip-it-up-quick meal. Thanks to my wife I’ve been eating like a king for 11 years and, no matter how bad I thought my life was, I always had good food, a loving wife and someplace to sleep. That’s not to say that Bob is homeless or has a crappy wife, though. Home and spouse are both good. It’s just… what is it? It’s a life in constant near-crisis is what it is, and Bob and his wife are making it through without all the drama and hysterics that I would bring to the table under such circumstances.

So I need to just go ahead and shut up, I reckon, about this whole writing workshop deal. Burt, one of the network guys at my office, sent me a nice email the other day, and it’s a bit of good advice that I really should take:

“Don’t cry little baby. You cry like a little gurl! HAha…little gurl!!!!1!”

In recent history my work life has actually been one of the biggest boosts to my writing life. I couldn’t find the creative job I had imagined for myself after finally getting my bachelor’s at the end of 2005 (Mass Communication, Middle America State University, cum laude even!), though I spent nearly four months actively trying to find it. Back when I was doing the Internet marketing development thing I had a lot of satisfaction with where I was and where I thought I was headed. At the same time, though, I knew I wasn’t creating anything upon which I’d ever be able to prop my feet; whatever mediocre talent I had was being spent on somebody else. That it went toward making scads of money for my employer wasn’t really a problem since I wanted it to do the same for me, but I was always strangely jealous of the time and effort the company “stole” from me. I got paid pretty well, sure, but around 2004 the pay started losing ground as a “good enough” factor for me. I’ve never had aspirations of running my own business or anything like that, but I really started feeling the need to build something–in the creative sense–for myself. Problem was, I came home so mentally exhausted every day that there was no way in the world I could even think of writing or repairing my butt-ugly website or anything else of that nature during my downtime. Ever. So, after I finished my re-education and found that my “dream job” didn’t exist… and after the couple weeks of second-guessing my decision to become a software loadtester instead of something better suited to my perceived abilities… I started settling back into the work-eat-sleep pattern with which I had become so accustomed. It didn’t take long to realize, though, that even after a long day at the office the part of my brain that can create (and wants very much to do so) was–shocker!–not tired and cranky and fed up! So… short story long, late last year I started writing again in earnest.

I discovered at some point that my friend Julius, a big director/producer/digital effects guy here in Middle America, was (on top of everything else) also a very talented writer. He propped me up but good with some encouraging words and started talking about a writers’ workshop with which he’s been involved for many years. It really looked like a pretty good program and I was excited to attend, but it was too expensive in terms of dollars and time away from the job hunt to be a viable option for me last year. I learned they had full-pay scholarships available for first-time attendees, and so I decided the best way to get in this year would be to win that. It’s a ten day event but since it spans across two weekends and Memorial Day I would only have to take 5 days off work to go. That’s half my vacation time for the year, but it seemed worthwhile considering all that I stood to gain from the [potentially free] seminars and lectures.

And so it was that I worked my butt off to polish the first chapter of my current novel, Project One, the name of which serves double duty in meaning, in order to meet the scholarship submission deadline this past February. I made myself physically sick with worry over it and even missed a couple days of work so I could finish in time. It didn’t surprise me, though, that as soon as I overnighted my finished package to the judging committee the deadline was extended by two weeks. It also didn’t surprise me that they lost my entry for a few days. Why? Because I was confident I would win, and bad things always happen before the good… right? That’s how my mother always felt, anyway, and it seemed she was usually right about those kinds of things. There was nothing to do but wait at that point, and since the winner notification date got pushed back along with the submission deadline there was a whole lot of waiting to be done.

So I waited and waited and waited, and the knots in my stomach got bigger and tighter and more clearly visible from the outside every day. As my wife would say, I had knots that gave birth to knots. Every time I got done waiting, it was time to wring my hands a few times and then wait some more.

The notification day was supposed to be Monday, but here it is Wednesday and I haven’t heard anything. I can only assume this means I lost, but along with being totally and completely crushed I’m also aggravated beyond measure that the losers weren’t contacted as well. As fellow writers, the committee should understand what an investment we applicants each have in our stories, and the eagerness with which we submitted them in the first place. Simply put, this was a very big deal to me, and I’m confused and disappointed by the sounds of silence. Nothing from Julius, either, who was one of the judges again this year. He did ask a question a few weeks ago about my going even if I didn’t win, though, and at the time I sort of took it as an indication that he felt I wouldn’t be getting the scholarship. They say the waiting is the worst part, but I think waiting unnecessarily trumps everything else. The conflict between hoping for victory and assuming loss is terrible, and I just wish I could have the bad news already. This stinks. Actually, this fracking stinks.