Saturday, January 19, 2008

Free your mind, and the blog will follow

You know how sometimes you look at the stack of books on your bookshelves and you feel paralyzed by the possibilities and you wind up playing Xbox instead of reading literature because really there's just too many options for where to go from here? It's sort of like that when I look inside my brain right now and I try to think of what I should say next. Life is busy and my brain is busier except instead of giving up and playing Halo like any sane 20-on-the-verge-of-30-something boy ought to I've started writing a novel with a teenage character in it who himself plays a lot of Halo. And while writing a novel isn't something I have not done before (I've got one completed but long since grown dusty novel on my hard drive and one file with 300,000 words worth of novel in it that I wound up mining for exactly one 2,000 word short story before jettisoning the rest like so much carbon dioxide) this time it does feel different because I realize now I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing and I also realize I must be absolutely insane for doing it in the first place. I must be insane. Which is hilarious if you are me because there are so many ways to be crazy today and I've selected one of the ones with the lowest success percentages. Astronomical.

3 comments:

David Niall Wilson said...

Insanity loves company. I was where you are at one point...now I have 14 of the damned things sold...and I'm writing more. Go figure.


DNW

Maureen McHugh said...

Go Darby, go!

Darby M. Dixon III said...

DNW: Go figure, indeed. Hopefully I'll get to say the same as you to someone else, myself, some day.

McQ: I'm tryin'.