Ok, so now that I'm here (again) and I took the first leap on to the 2nd step...am I a blogger? Is it real yet? I'm going to do my best not to abandon myself now that the blog is officially made. But is this really, real?
My whole point in finally taking step one was to find an outlet for all the static in my mind. To put all the little things that really don't lead to a bigger thing, in one place. Maybe if I give the words a place to live they will stop living in my head. They are after all, pretty crappy neighbors. Noisy, heavy footed busy bodies. Sometimes what pops into my head is a simple idea or quote, other times a poem. Often its a realization. I do know that in the past there were things that I would write down thinking it turned out ok, just to misplace it. Or things I thought up and convinced myself there was no way I'd forget it. Its just too good! Of course, the next day or by the time I got home, I just couldn't piece it back together quite the same way. Is this the cure? A collection of moments like a photo album for words? A viable collaboration between then inner and outer me? I recently bought myself a voice recorder. I often lose thoughts simply because I cannot write as fact as I can think. Perhaps I am finally taking writing seriously? I hope so. I really hope so. Its in my heart. And I have neglected it for a long time.
This is, I hope, like exercise. As I attempt to actually complete the dreaded book, I will see this as baby steps to gradually increasing my attention span. And as I clear my mind writing all the "extras" here I hope to make room for the bigger ideas I need to put into this book. The ideas that will take more than 5 minutes to type. The ones that have no real end, unlike my moments here. The book excites me. But it overwhelms me. When you have so many ideas, and so many very large scenes to write, where do you start? And can I ever make them look they way they do in my minds eye. Can I do my characters, who I already love dearly, the justice they deserve? Or will this end up in a heap of chicken scratch tucked away in a box somewhere, never to come to life. If I truly love them, I shouldn't let that happen right? Or, like most dreams are they better off dwelling where they were born? Sometimes I feel like Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third kind...remember the terrible scene where he was making the mashed potato plateau? I still recall the stress I felt even as a child from his extra-terrestrial haunting. But will I ever find that fantastical realization that he did? That moment when I stand face to face with the words I gave a home outside my gut? Will I ever know that I was right all along?
My thoughts have been hijacked. My quiet moments, gone. My former thoughtless videogaming/TVwatching/internettrolling moments squashed under the weight of...I just decided I will call Mr.Dreaded book, Mortimer. And Mortimer is not petite. I am eating, but the story is floating around in my head. I do not think I actually sleep anymore. I lie awake thinking of who, how and when. When I do sleep, I dream the scenes as if they are real. I relive them again and again. I don't wake feeling rested. I simply close my eyes to one world, and open them to another. No matter what I am doing, my mind is always, at least partially elsewhere. The only way to stop it, is to allow it to live outside of me. And so, I write.
Edgar Allen Poe wrote at the start of "The Raven"
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door -
Only this, and nothing more."
This was me tonight. The gentle rapping on this dreary day is simply the desire to tap a keyboard or pick up a pen. It calls to me. Its funny though, unlike all the other stories I've always wanted to write, this one leaves me no choice. It used to be that I thought up an idea that I liked and wanted to write about it. I thought of a scene and wanted to build around it. I thought of a character and wanted to create them a world that fit them. But this one...It is demanding and noisy. The story is telling me what needs to be written. The concept was not something carefully developed and thought out. Something born of creativity. It came to me, like the vision of a memory of something real. Something I'd seen before. I did not create it. It is living inside of a crowded & distracted mind and it wants out. It is rapping at my chamber door.
So. To be or not to be? I fear my sanity shall not retain its composure if I give up on the dreaded book. And, I do think I am enjoying this whole blogging bologna. Though I by far prefer salami or roast beef...blogging bologna, is an aquired taste I think I can get used to. As for the book, the dreaded thorn in my side...I will continue to call him Mortimer. I should hate to give him a complex with the repeated title of dreaded.
So, this is blog two. I did not give up...yet? I am not generally a pessimist. More like an optimistic realist. And, I would rather not set myself up for failure, but...again I ramble, incessantly....
This will be my last blog about blogging indecisiveness...promise :-) My goal is to get here at least once per week. Kinda like the gym....
Quoth the Raven...I'll be back, once upon a bloggers query....
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