As I try desperately to write a story, I come against the same wall: I want to write something that isn’t boring, and yet all I throw out there is inane. I think of plot as this complicated animal, something that once I throw the reins around, I’ll know it and be able to ride it out and actually say something. All I see capable of saying, however, are these types of words: words that aren’t stories but are regrets and feelings and misguided thoughts. If only this voice worked for stories, and if only those stories would tell themselves as I write, as my brain comes up with the next point and then the next. All the thought in these musings happen on the page. I throw out words as guideposts, but I form the paragraphs as I go along, as I search for what it is I wanted to say.

That’s the trick, of course, to head somewhere and end up somewhere else. I’ve done it before, and sometimes I’ve succeeded, but most of the times I’ve failed. I’ve sat down and started pounding out words as I did below, in my early attempt at writing a story. It didn’t go anywhere, obviously, but I tried, giving up when I hit that decision block. I shouldn’t call it a decision block, since that’s not accurate. I don’t have a yes or no decision to make at the end of my writings. I don’t even have the diamond, to use an image from flowcharts. Instead, I have the universe of emptiness. I’m searching for anything that will let me say something, but I find nothing.

Isn’t that how all things go? This is a painful business, this dredging up of ideas and pushing on paper actual characters. I’ve never succeeded of course, but much of my failure I attribute to not trying. This is a good example: I am finding words easily now, opening my brain and letting my ideas open wings, and yet I waste them on these thoughts, these thoughts that I’ve had thousands of times before and put to paper hundreds of those thousands of times. I spent a bit of time rereading some of my older outputs, not the finished products, but the half-started and the half-thought through works. I remembered the pain that brought me to those points. As I said, it’s a hard business, but it’s what I want to do and I have to start doing it. I have to stop making excuses and put my face close to that grindstone, maybe tearing some skin off in the process. Wounds build character, of course. You learn much in conflict, even when that conflict is with yourself.

I resisted video games again today thanks to Doolies. Erik has been tempting me with his daily mails relaying the times he planned on playing. The rest of the week promises to be slow at work, and I’m hoping to spend some of that slowness thinking through some ideas. I still have that big story floating through my brain. I need to stop thinking of its extent, and start concentrating on its smaller pieces. When the size and breadth of an idea dominates my thinking, I have to remember the mountain analogy, the even the greatest mountain succumbs to the force of time. I need to take my time and whittle away at it, writing as much as I can on the idea and not giving up. I have so much to learn about character development, plot progress, beginnings, middles, and ends, and I’m wasting so much time consternating, that’s it’s hard to believe I’ll ever accomplish anything.

As I learn to better fight through the pain and save my critiques for more finished works, I’ll get closer to where I want to be in this writing business. For now, I’m going to go through what I had written earlier and see if there’s anything worth saving. I still have half my words left, and I plan to use most of them to buttress that work. I’m sure there’s not much saving, but any exercise is better than no exercise. But that’s enough quasi-deep thoughts for the day.

I have a few hundred words left after editing and adding and destroying the story fragments I posted below this. I finished watching the second to last “Band of Brothers” episode, the one about the Holocaust and the German’s denial and reaction. It’s a very powerful episode in the series. It is the second to last episode. I’ll be sad when I finish this year’s viewing. There is nothing glorious about war, but there is something glorious in the men’s support of each other and courage.

I’m almost out of words for today. I still need more words for the Goal, but I’m fresh out of ideas. There is a word you don’t see used in that context often anymore: “fresh.” I’ll try to go to bed early again tonight. I’m still catching up on sleep from the past week, and I want to be well rested when I head to California this weekend. Doolies bought tickets for an Arthur Miller play for Saturday night. I enjoy the dramas more than the musicals and comedies on the stage. I guess I’m a dark person now, and the musicals are too light, too must entertainment to satisfy my dark heart. Speaking of darkness, we’re also planning to watch “Batman Begins,” for which I’ve read excellent reviews. I figure it can’t be as disappointing as Episode III was. I can’t imagine what can ever be that disappointing again.

Having nothing else to say, I’ll give you the statistics for today’s writing. I’m hoping this doesn’t happen again tomorrow because this is what broke me last time: running out of things to say and adding filler to meet the Goal. I could, of course, always lower the goal to 1,500 words, which is probably much more realistic for the types of things I need to say. It’s not like anyone wants to read this many words—hell, most people don’t even want to read 500 words. I noticed I’m one of those persons. I find myself skimming through many blog postings when they’re too long. Part of the reason is that I don’t trust the author of the blog. Magazine articles, such as in the New Yorker and NY Times Magazine, I’m willing to put in the time to read them because I know it will be worthwhile. I don’t feel the same way about much that is written on the internet.

Okay, I blew through my Goal on that last one. I guess there’s no need to share statistics now.