It’s been a long, long time since I’ve posted an update, BUT I STARTED THIS MOTHERFUCKER TWO YEARS AGO TODAY SO LET’S UPDATE!
I’m not going to wax poetic about what I’ve been up to, because it’s pretty straightforward. I met someone last fall that was unlike anyone I’d met in a long time. Things were good… great, even, for a while and I let myself get carried away. When it inevitably went south, I had no one to blame but myself. It’s a process, dealing with expectations (warranted or not) that you’ve set for yourself when they don’t pan out. Work has been… interesting for me as well, lately, for a number of reasons I won’t list here because it could potentially put me in an untenable situation.
Dealing with heartbreak and loneliness and occupational discont in addition to anxiety and a bipolar disorder and fluctuating depression, in addition to the contemplation of mortality and legacy that always creeps around the corner of every birthday and in the waning minutes of another hour I remind myself I could have been doing something productive, well, it takes a toll. Mentally, emotionally, physically. It’s easy to fall into a routine of spending money on any number of things in an effort to distract myself. If I’m paying for a top notch meal, the succulence and implied luxury trigger an endorphic response that, hey, life ain’t that bad. If I’m drinking in a crowded area, the music, the crowd, it serves to make me feel included even if I have no interest in taking part.
I’ve been in a slump of sorts. I’m trying to reign those base impulses in and begin focusing again on the steps I need to take to get where I want to be. A place where I can be a face among many, where I can start new relationships without all the weight of history and rumor and preconceived notions and tainted impressions. I’ve been trying to be more proactive in saving and in creating.
I’m writing a love story now. The book I was working on, one I did exclusive character spotlights for and whose Prologue I shared here, is on hold. In the wake of a woman, a revenant lingered with a story to tell and no body to do it with. I became the body. I became The Story.
It’s called Read in Denver. It was only intended to be a quick fluff piece, a short story, on the low end of 40,000 words and it has since blossomed into what will probably be double that at least. I’m only around halfway through but as I began writing the novel, I realized I couldn’t just shit out the bones of a work and pretend it was worth anybody’s time. This was a story that bothered me so much I had to halt other projects to work on it. It was a story about art and intense emotion and relationships, and I think all three things require the space to bloom or wilt into what they’re meant to be.
The book is fictional. The characters are fictional. Their story is a work of fiction. And yet, more than anything else, I’ve included a lot of things that are rooted in reality. There are scenarios that actually happened, memories that are repurposed for the plot, characters named after one person and modeled on another, lines of dialogue that were actually spoken.
Including devastating ones.
I wanted to pour as much of myself and my experiences into the book to grant an irrationality, a vulnerability, a rawness, a realness that could only otherwise be portrayed in real time with real people. Is the book good?
Well, it’s not done. I hope it will be good. I hope I can capture things like anxiety and indecision and passion correctly. But of all my works so far, I can see this about Read in Denver: it will be my most personal, honest work.
Also, I’ve designated this year the Story Year. I’ve been occupying a good chunk of my spare time to A) watching a movie I’ve never seen each day and B) reading a lot more. I’ve been thoroughly engrossed in consuming a multitude of stories across a plethora of times and genres.
And you know, thats pretty much all I’ve been dealing with, I guess. Existential crises, the fear of dying alone, guilt at not writing more or more quickly, wondering why I’m still at the job I’m at in the city I’m in, and ways to ignore all of that and push it to the back of the line. I hope to get back on a more regular schedule with my blog posts, but we’ll see. I’m the sad sack who writes novels to deal with putting myself in a position to get hurt. At the end of the day, though, it really comes down to the fact that after work and writing and whatever personal and emotional struggles I slog through, I’m not left with a lot of energy to do much else.
So far, though, I’ve got Read in Denver to occupy most of my free mind. Will the end result be good? I can hope. I like it so far, I think. It’s at least different than the other works I’ve done and that’s enough to excite me. I wish I could share more with you! The cover, the synopsis I haven’t written yet, the book itself. For now, I’ll leave you with this:
A candlestick was doing its damndest to seduce a feather duster.
“We should all be so lucky,” Mariah said.
“You’d be surprised.”
“What, is romance dead?”
“No. Romance is a clusterfuck.”
Word Whiskey 