I had an idea…

For all the wacky antics Scamper and crew get into, the world they reside in was pretty blank. I know a lot about their orphanage, and their part of town, but the further we get from that part of their world, the less I know.

Recently, I've had an idea. It involves the creating of an empire through the systematic conquering of neighboring kingdoms, partly inspired by what I know of how China and ancient Persia formed (very little, but research is under way). Rome, too, now that I think of it.

It's early; a mere notion, at this point, but it's interesting an interesting one; worth looking into, I think.

 

--Cris

Ah, Blogger; I’ve missed ye, ye blonde, busty bitch…

It's two o'clock in the morning; I'm surfing the web, posting on a blog (via MS Word; ain't technology grand?) and watching Comedy Central (Jackie Kashian; an underrated comic, I think). You know what I'm not doing? Writing. (Well, except for this; which doesn't count.)

I got a laptop a couple of weeks ago (give or take a day or two); I thought it would increase my productivity. (That's not why I got the laptop; I'm just saying, I thought it might help). It hasn't. Now, I just have more places I can go to not write.

Distractions all around. Too many distractions, and I'm easily distracted.

I'm still working on Scamper. It's been a while since I've worked on Out of Tadara, but even though I haven't made any real progress there, my brain tinkers with it without my permission. Out of nowhere, I find myself having Ethan-related thoughts: How old is he? (around 15); what's his environment like? (he lives on a river island, several days' walk away from a native village)… etc. My brain does this all on its own. I'll be watching Discovery Channel, or the History Channel, and my brain will suddenly go, "Ooh! Dinosaurs! Are there dinosaurs in Ethan's world? (No. Yes. Maybe.) Will he ever fight one? (No.) Can he have one for a pet? (Hell no.)"

And yet, for all of this background noise, it's been a long time (months, at least) since I've sat down and written more than a page or two. I don't know what my hang-up is. Nothing ever seems good enough. Ever. Write, then rewrite. Then rewrite the rewrite. Then scrap the whole thing, and start over. Then rewrite the restart. Set it aside. Let it sit. Move on. Write something else. Rewrite something else. Come back to what I wrote. Rewrite it.

Ad infinitum.

I've been reviewing some of my old posts, on this blog and others I've started (and subsequently abandoned). I mention deadlines a lot. "The deadline is August 31^st. Remember, August 31^st. The deadline is still August 31^st. Change of plans; the deadline is now in September."

The theory behind that was simple: because deadlines worked in school, and because they worked for NaNoWriMo, and because they still work when I do Flash Challenges for Liberty Hall Writers (you get 90 minutes to write a complete story centered on a prompt they provide), they should work for writing novels on my own. Yet I'd overlooked the key factor in these situations: The deadlines were coming from someone who is not me. It's that outside pressure that pushes you to work (by "you" I mean "me"), which is why it wasn't working when I tried to do it myself.

In this very blog, I said that January 31^st was the deadline for Scamper. Not for the completion of the novel, but for putting it on the backburner and working on something else. In that sense, it worked. I've started a webcomic, State of Dementia, that's been updating three times a week since February 29^th. I'm quite happy with it. It's a new medium to work with, a new structure to tell a complete story (It took me 50+ strips just to complete the first storyline), and it's a lot of fun. The website design is less than ideal, but I'm not a web guy. I can appreciate a good-looking site, but it's not that important to me. I've made a deal with a web designer who'll do it for free if I let him advertise on the site (also for free), and I'm eager to see what he'll come up with, but if that hadn't come to light, I'd be content with what I have now.

As is the case with Out of Tadara, I'm still working on Scamper, as well. I put it into the background when I started State of Dementia, but damned if that sucker didn't just elbow its way back to the forefront. Ideas for story, character, settings, even plot twists occur at the oddest times, with the oddest stimuli, and I have to write them down. I've been doing it since I was nine. I can't not write it down.

I'm starting art school in October. One of my first thoughts was "That'll be my new deadline for Scamper." Then I remembered my past history with self-imposed deadlines, and I reconsidered the notion.

My new philosophy on writing is thus: Just write.

I'm not going to impose anymore deadlines. No goals to be reached. No time limits. Just write, and sooner or later ("later", probably, but I'm okay with that), it'll get done. That line where I'm most comfortable, (and which, if I stray too far away from, causes a near-paralyzing nervous anxiety; which, I believe, could have something to do with why I haven't finished) will shift; I'll grow comfortable in a new place (right now, I seem to be stuck at 35-40%), and move on from there.

It could take a while. Years, even. But you know what they say: The journey of a thousand miles, blah blah blah.

 

--Cristian V. Gurau

PS – Visit State of Dementia. Leave a comment. Click on some ads. I don't do it for the money (obviously, as there is none), but it sure would help keep it alive longer.