I’m still thinking. I thought I’d start with that warning. None of this thinking is good for me, I know, and I know that I’m not coming up with any new or interesting ideas. I can’t control it. Today was a bad day. I was depressed and possessed little energy. Not that this will explain much, but the day is over and I eat an apple and I type and wonder where these words will take me.

I’m still in that limbo, that place where I’m not sure what it is I want to do with this medium. Sure, I litter my house with books that purport to tell me how to do this, this storytelling that I keep bellyaching about. But being told how to do something is different from doing it, and doing it as books explain is different from doing it as I envision. I keep looking for a resolution to how I will write (and think), to find that spark of brilliance I pretend exists. No matter how much lip service I give to disowning that belief, I know it’s out there, and I know if I look hard enough I will eventually run over it. It’s this that keeps me looking, even as I search for possibilities outside my experience, or throw words down in my futile search. I’m like that student at the start of an introductory class. The professor explains simple concepts, and the student immediately begins to think how the entire orthodox establishment has it wrong, how, in his three hours of study, he, the student, has already moved the study in an entirely new direction. It’s the hubris of youth that I cling to, even though there was only one Einstein and I certainly ain’t he.

I’m writing this with my head bent over and my shoulders slouched. I’m thinking of story arcs and conflicts; of characterizations and long pages; of themes and discoveries and mysteries. And of all these things, I’m thinking, these building blocks, these primitive tools, I don’t know what to make of them. I want to look beyond them, but I see nothing, a gray void. I’m tired of late, tired of my own bullshit and my failed attempts, tired of being tired, of giving up after only an hour or two of heartache. I want to put in eight hours of writing; I want to know what it feels like to leave myself on the page, to forget about everything but the words and the tools. I want to stop relying on false stimulants and find the energy inside of me. I want to stop pretending and start doing. I hear the fakeness in these words and cringe in hope.