The following mindless ramblings are my way of planning. My plan still moves along and I use this as a way to air my dirty laundry. These are the scary thoughts that tunnel through my winding brain. Sad, huh.

So I don’t want to write about a man who abandons his dying wife. I’m not sure what I was thinking, but there’s nothing good to come out of that (well, that’s not true—what is true is that there’s nothing good I want to get into that comes out of that). That leaves me with a big hole where my story used to be. I still have the characters, I think. I need something to bring them together. I was thinking of a Chuck P* imitation story, or perhaps something more ethereal, whatever that words means in this context. I have a better than a week to make all this come together. I cut my fingernails, so I expect today will be a good typing day.

I’m thinking my increased intake of coffee has increased the required dosages. After a short coffee this morning, I’m not feeling that laser beam of concentration that I expect from yummy caffeine. It might be because it’s a Monday morning, or it might be more insidious. Already I feel my concentration shifting, waving away the initial effects of the browned water.

And now back to the story and my dearth of ideas. It has to be about something crazy or extraordinary to be a Chuck P* clone. Let’s get it moving. Take the characters and send them on a slow moving trip. Where are they going? What are they doing? Make the character histories deeper, more interesting, more mysterious. It’s family relations, it’s generational. It’s the place you want to visit but not stay, but you’re stuck there and now you have to make the most of it.

You’re a failure. You’re a recovering winner. Who are you? I’m a haunter of the Marathon forums. I never post, I just read and make fun (all to myself). It passes time and I need time to pass because, well, if time isn’t passing, then I would be thinking of clever and great ideas and writing them. One of the clever and great ideas I read in the forums was write what you love, even if your audience won’t understand or care or in any other way want to read what you write. I guess I keep imagining what DFW would think of my writing, instead of thinking what would DSF thinks of my writing. I need to focus on that. Pick on the stuff that I care about or know about or want to know about but am too lazy to research.

I remember that painful memory the first year: sitting in a comfy chair about to write about The Pink Sweater and realizing I had nothing. I swallowed my heart and closed my eyes to slow down its pitter-pattering, and then wrote. It was nothing, of course. It was absolute and utter crap. All my planning flushed through the plastic tubes, but it was words, and come November, all that matters are words. I have too much of an addicted personality to worry about such craziness.

Okay, what now. Where am I going with this? I need the skeleton of a plot. I need a voice. Man, do I need a voice. Craziness is as craziness does. Happenings and hoping. Think outside (or inside!) your tiny box. Maybe fan-fic? There are worse things than that. Don’t worry what other people think. You’re doing it for DSF. He’s the important person.

Real people in real worlds, or fake people in fake worlds. Is there a difference? I don’t get it. I don’t get the difference.

It’s about interesting people and interesting places and interesting happenings. All come together for what? Where and why. What and for what? The pain. A disconnected person. A philosophical introspection of a person. Someone trying to do good, make a difference, make choices with a consequence, but finds himself unable to do so. Independently wealthy, but a slacker. Garden State but interesting.

Where do you want to go from here? A corporate entity? A timeless nobody? The clockmaker? The man without the wife. The wife without the man. Making a marriage work. The teachings of the book. The overly religious, under analyzed thing. The philosophy w/o the research. What is it you want to do or say?

I am going to waste my time with this. There is something to be said about wasted time and wasted lives. I’m going to say it. Is there such a bad thing as this out there? Why do I care about the bad things. I’m going to pound away until something is said, and that something, well, that something is there for me.

Hit the ground running and don’t stop until you cross the finish line. And use as many bad analogies as this to get your point across. Okay?

Action, action, action. Less talk, more doing. Show don’t tell. You want him to be interesting, make him interesting. He’s insane, or is he normal. He is doing or is he waiting. Boring or exciting. These are all the obvious things. I’m not even sure what the unobvious things would be.

It’s about relationships, consequences, and missteps. Nobody is perfect. Just make his imperfections interesting.

I wander the campus mumbling to myself. Some of the mumbles are reassurances. Yes, I’ll get it. It’s only a matter of time before the idea hits me and bowls me over and leaves me panting and wanting to know more. Some are ideas seem brilliant when I mumble them, but after I jot them down, I realize they were as dreams in dreamland, seemingly brilliant until you awake and somehow transform them into rubbish.

But I’m still waiting, still pounding out words in the hopes that something will happen. My fingers are stretched and I’m beginning to remember what it feels like to push words onto paper and not care much about their content or where they lead. I’m belittling the experience. I do care. I want to hit the ground running. I don’t want the last week to be everything I have. I want the first week to be everything I have, I want to explode onto the page and not know how to stop writing each day. I want to have something to say and I’m not able to keep up with me saying it. I want.