As expected, today is a P.H.D. (post-headache day, for those who have not read every word I’ve written for the past 30 years), a beautiful day where my head clears and ideas gush forth (like sewage from a broken pipe). Ideas have popped into my head throughout the day, and I’ve faithfully recorded them (mostly using my fancy voice recorder thingy on my phone—as I type my notes in, I’m realizing that I talk way too fast. How can anyone understand me, let alone take notes when I talk? I’d make another note to remind me to slow down, but I’m sure it’ll be garbled. And, no, I don’t want to hear “I told you so” from everyone. You just have to learn to listen harder). I’m going to transcribe these voice memos here and try to get my daily quota before heading home (I failed, in case you were wondering). I missed the coffee lady. She leaves at 4pm, which has left me drinking a second Vanilla Coke for my caffeine fix. We’ll see if that hurts my output.

I have so many things I want to say today, so I’ll get right to it. Remember many days ago when I said I was desperate to get work because I was really bored and going crazy. Well, I want to find the person who said that and shoot him because now I’m terribly busy at work and I have no time to do what I want to, like go to the gym, write these entries, and prepare for Nanowrimo, which is seven days from now. But I’m still going to do it. It’s just a matter of getting this stuff down (i.e., the writing) and hopefully finding a balance between working and playing, until such time as I publish my first, bestselling book, and I retire and write all day, everyday. This morning, right before I left for work, I typed in the following paragraph. I would have given anything to continue writing, but I had to drive to work. Thankfully, I remembered the voice recorder:

Find out what you love about your story and focus on that. Don’t just write for the sake of writing; write because you have something to say and something that you want to say. If you love the characters, you will want to live with them longer. If you love the twist, then it’s the twist that will keep you up at night as it winds and twirls around your character’s lives. Use that. Figure out what you love and go with it. Stop trying to force yourself to do this writing thing and instead enable the writing thing to force you.

Am I terribly inspiring, or what? Now, onto more thoughts (transcribed poorly from my voice memos) I had about the story today.

The book will begin with the main character (protagonist) Lenny visiting his grandma. She’s a stodgy old lady but she knows that she’s stodgy and old. She tells Lenny that she hasn’t always been like that; that she used to be young and vibrant, but somewhere down the road something in her changed, and she wishes she could go back and fix it, but her bones tell her it’s too late. Her voice is nasal and high pitched, and she has a Midwest accent. The grandma (or perhaps it’s an elderly Aunt—those are usually better because they are childless, something a grandma can’t be, and have a different, regretful outlook on life. I’ll give that some thought), anyway, the Grandma or Aunt gives him the pink sweater. I’m not sure if she actually knows its powers or what it is, but she knows something about it. One possible direction the story can go is that the Grandma’s purpose for giving the main character the sweater is to teach him a lesson. I’m not sure if that will work with the following description in mind.

I’ve hit upon the sweater’s power, something I really needed to document and figure out before this story can go anywhere. The power is the ability to judge situations. It’s a little more complicated than what you’re thinking: The story will raise the obvious question of what is a “correct” judgment and whether the sweater judging correctly, but I’m getting ahead of myself here. Once Lenny wields the sweater, the sweater will allow him to judge a situation. It will give him guidance. You can think of the judgment in an ethical sense, i.e., he knows or has some feeling (thanks to the sweater) about what is a better choice, perhaps when he’s choosing between wrong and right in a situation. The sweater does not necessarily give correct answers (not that there can be “correct” answers), but the answers, at least in the beginning, turn out to help Lenny to improve himself or others. For example, perhaps the sweater will push Lenny toward selecting the right team in his office football pool, or selecting the right sales strategy that lands him a big client, or catching a mass murderer that’s been on the lose for years, or choosing the perfect gift for his girlfriend—you get the idea.

The sweater is telling him—and it won’t talk; it’s more like it conveys its feelings, since I’m a big fan of feelings—what he should do. For Lenny, it will be very relaxing and very intoxicating to know you he’s always doing the “right” thing. The sweater communicates through feelings, and that’s how Lenny discovers this power. Or perhaps the grandma, in her conversation when she gives him the sweater, will explain it or hint at it. At the very least, if she understands its powers, still a big if, she should give him a warning about trusting it, or anyone else, to make decisions for him.

Now the twist: the sweater’s goals or ethics—a concept I plan on explaining ad naseum—is not about what’s right or wrong, it’s more about Lenny’s perception of what’s right or wrong. That’s the key: The sweater has goals of its own, it is a sentient being. By playing on Lenny’s insecurities, Lenny becomes reliant on the choices the sweater makes. It’s going to be one of the reasons he’s afraid to lose it (or eventually take it off or wash it, etc.). The one limitation on the sweater’s judgment has to do with the sweater itself. It cannot tell Lenny whether he should take it off, wash it, etc. It cannot give him any guidance about itself or its relation to Lenny or the world. In other words, the sweater can’t lie to him, so it must remain silent on this point. I’ll have to give this idea more thought. If it can’t lie to him, what exactly is the nature of its advice? Perhaps it’s one of those oracle thingies, which give answers, but not always the answers that the questioner is looking for or understands—i.e., trick answers that are usually mischievous. Perhaps in the case of the sweater, there’s more than just mischief at work.

As time goes by, Lenny discovers that he doesn’t want to lose the sweater’s powers because he’s afraid of making decisions on his own. That’s what the sweater is after. The sweater understands his reliance on it and uses this to its advantage. As to what the sweater’s purpose is: alien conspiracy to take over the world; evil ends to serve the devil; trying to make the world a worse/better place. I have no idea. It depends on the nature of the sweater. This connects back to the discussion I had the other day about the One Ring. I still don’t think that the sweater has any persuasive powers over Lenny—i.e., the sweater won’t be able to convince him not to remove it. It’s more about Lenny not wanting to remove it for fear of losing his powers. What the sweater hopes to accomplish. Ugh. Much more thought on that is necessary. Worse comes to worse, it could be nothing; just being mischievous (that would be a cop-out).

The power itself is like the little window in my head—it provides feedback on yes/no answers and choices. Lenny doesn’t have to follow the suggestions, but, at least at first, when he does, good things happen. That’s what the sweater makes him believe. The sweater is manipulating him. The sweater —it is a sweater but it’s not going to be a pink sweater, it might be a blue sweater or green, but who cares—does have a greater understanding, but I still haven’t figure out where it comes from or what it’s purpose is. What I want to do is keep this idea away from the “Twilight Zone.” It should be more than just a cute twist played out to its obvious conclusion. Getting back to the sweater, what its trying to accomplish by forcing its judgment upon him is the important question. Its judgment is obviously better than his, at least for decisions that can be quantified for bettering his social life, job, etc. With that said, Lenny is not going to be one of those shleps (Yiddish word alert!) in the very beginning who can’t make a decision for himself and needs the sweater to egg him on. He’s more like Leonard, this guy from work, who might make bad decisions, e.g., he’s not terribly good with relationships, more because he doesn’t understand things and hasn’t thought things through. When it comes down to it, however, the sweater has goals in mind and certain things that it wants to accomplish. There’s a question of whether what the sweater has to accomplish is good for Lenny or, I don’t want to say the world, but it’s what Lenny wants to use the sweater for. He wants to be able to say that with “great power comes great responsibility,” and he wants to use that power responsibility—you know, to help the world. (Thanks, Spidey!)

The sweater at first is going to help him deal with his girlfriend. It’s going to correct the mistakes he’s made, or at least push him in the correct direction. Like Leonard making all his mistakes, e.g., not taking her to the airport and not paying for her dinner. The sweater will push him in the correct direction to save his relationship. As time goes along, however, the sweater will begin to portray a different side. It will try to persuade him to break off the relationship (yes, I don’t know how this fits in with the “Sweater always telling the truth” or “the sweater must be ethical”; these are all things that I need to work out). The sweater will want him to end the relationship because, from Lenny’s perspective, the sweater will be trying to tell him that he has more important thing to do. Of course, it’s really the sweater’s ulterior motives that are pushing him in that direction. The sweater wants him out of the relationship to further its goals.

How is the sweater going to help him at work? There’s going to have to be a honeymoon period where it will actually help him achieve good things at work. Again, he works as a corporate salesperson or something like that. At first it’s going to help him achieve good things at work. It’s only until later when it really wants him to do things. Some other crazy thoughts: At first it’ll help him be a superhero, help him catch the bad guy. And do all sorts of neat and important work until the end where the important work disappears. By the end he’s so addicted to the sweater—i.e., his judgment is completely controlled by it—that he seemingly has no choice but to do what it suggests. The question at the end is whether he’s going to be able to break free from it, and take it off. It’s not about doing the right thing—originally I thought he’d have to choose between the sweater and saving society or being shunned, while that’s still going to be part of it, Lenny is going to reach a point where the shunning makes no difference to him, because he’s doing something good. Lenny will eventually find out that the sweater is no longer doing “good,” as he understands it. And then he’s going to have to change what he did, or at least understand it and decide what, if any, actions are necessary. He might start doubting himself, questioning whether it’s really his judgment that’s skewed and not the sweaters. Or perhaps he’ll try to figure out what the sweater really is: confront his Grandma/Aunt, search for information on the Internet, who knows? This is where he’ll be given the choice, and what he chooses will define who he is and what becomes of him. So, we’ll see where that takes us.

I’ve hit my limit for the day and it’s almost 10pm. I obviously wasn’t able to finish this before leaving work, and after heading to the gym, I only just now got a chance to sit through and read through the, yes, here’s the word you’ve been waiting for, drivel that is today’s entry. While the voice recordings helped me come up with some interesting aspects of the story, transcribing the results was difficult and resulted in some rather awkward paragraphs. I’m sorry about that. Until tomorrow.

Writing time: 1 hour+; word: 2,246; Caffeination: 2 Vanilla Cokes. Editing time: unknown.