Practicing My Blank Stare

I was at a show the other day, standing by the bar waiting for something to happen. A kid noticed the shirt I was wearing and waved me over.

"What?" I said, meaning "What exactly are you trying to sell me?" He asked if I had heard of [A Clever Pun On The Band Shirt I Was Wearing]. I told him I hadn't.

"Oh, they're a cover band, you should totally check them out." He said.

I nodded and disentangled myself from the conversation with a fantastic Jedi Maneuver that involved Time Travel!

Not really, but TIME TRAVEL IS AWESOME and dangerous in the wrong hands, which would be any set of hands (or hand) attached to a human being.

It took reserves of self control that I didn't know I even possessed to keep from going into a rant about how the only cover bands that I could ever give a shit about are all female avant garde, art-punk, reinterpretations, not a bunch of dudes playing songs that I already know note for note, in an inferior way to the original, because it could only be inferior because it's not original. Enough with the rehash already!

I'm sure he meant well, so it never got to that and to that end, I rewarded my good behavior with a drink.

Actually I bought a round of drinks for everyone and made it rain for posterity's sake.

Oh, who am I fooling....

Inspiration

It's a bad feeling to wish it were Friday before leaving the house on a Monday but anything that you're getting paid to do shouldn't be fun all of the time. That's why it's called work.

But I'm tired, like seriously burned out, curl up in the fetal position, toss a blanket over me and turn the light out tired. We're wrapping up a big project and the way these things go, the difficulty level increases the closer you get to the finish line. This has the effect of eating up the motivation and draining the will to complete the various tasks required to push the thing out the door.

I don't want to see it again but it will be waiting for me tomorrow, hungry for a fresh coat of paint.

Weeks (as in the plural) like these present a secondary issue. Coming home, my brain is pile of gelatinous mush that proves resistant to forming complete sentences. So the ideas that I come up with can't be put to the page until my mind is in a better spot.

I'm a morning person and I can usually crank a few words down before I head out for work. Only a few. I spend way too much time clicking on INTERNET SHINEYNESS to be effective. Gotta read my blogs, network socially and news, news, news! This means I do most of my writing on the weekend in a small window of time before my wife wakes up.

Luckily, there's no shortage of ideas for me. It's somewhat problematic because I'm really trying to stop myself from writing short stories and focus on the bigger deal but sometimes an idea gnaws at your insides so hard that it's impossible to let go of. I suppose this is better than being completely dried up.

All the books I've read on novel writing say that it's important to complete The One and focus on only The One until it's complete. On my fifth try (actually started another one in Chicago but that doesn't count!) I'd like to finally get The One finshed whether anyone reads it or not. At least I'll be able to say I've done it. Maybe it'll make the next one easier too.

Inspiration is in everything. I overhear conversations, friends say stupid things, news stories, a line of prose from the book I'm reading. It's impossible to hide from. What I'd like to do is figure out a way to incorporate these things into whatever I'm working on rather than spinning them off into their own little islands. If I can weave them into the theme of my current story I suspect that I may have found the secret, or at least the method that will work for me.

Then there's this thing. It fills me with guilt every time I post in it because I'm always thinking of how these words could have been used to pad the other thing. The other more meaningful thing.

I'm not even sure what this blog is most of the time other than a random collection of jumbled mishmash held together by a common thread of directionless shoe gaze.

It's fun though.