There is SO too much going on in my head right now.

And it's making it very difficult to finish anything.

I mean, I know I come in here with writing problems every couple of weeks, and I make them seem major, but this one just slays me because, well . . . I mean, everyone has That One Story: the one that's been on your mind forever and that you need to write someday even if it kills you. Even if it just a story purely for you that you doubt anyone else would care two cents about reading.

See, the worst thing has happened: the story I've been trying to figure out for the last six or so years of my life just decided to make perfect sense - only, naturally, I am in the middle of so many other projects right now (Camp NaNo, TGoES, TH: Skyborn) that I'd feel like a total jerk for dropping them all for this. And I'm so changeable when it comes to what I'm working on, I'm a little doubtful about haphazardly throwing myself behind something that, to me, is a very important story that is going to need a lot of my time.  

But at the same time, I feel like I need to drop everything. At least for a couple of weeks.

The thing is, I started this one story years back called Until the End of Colin Ackartt (now that I check, it's #6 on The Bucket List), and all I had were the characters (so vivid in my mind that I could not ignore them) and such a vague idea of a plot that it literally was incomprehensible. The whole idea verged on the notion that the title character, Colin, just . . . should not have existed. And I mean in a metaphysical/existential/order of the universe extent. And that he was near to just totally disappearing. But I did not know what he was, why this was happening to him, how he had come to exist in such a unstable state in the first place, or what he and the other characters were going to do to save him. But I had the atmosphere and there were scenes in my head and I knew how it ended. Elaina, the FMC of the piece, was and is still my favorite character I've ever come up with. The story was just so out there and missing so many pieces, though, that beyond a few scenes I could not possibility write it and feel right about it. It wasn't a story. It was this disjointed, dream-like scenario. 

(I nearly choked a few years back when I found a book that was similar in subject matter/surreal-ness called Frozen Fire by Tim Bowler. Like the story I was trying to write, few answers were given concerning the nature of the strange boy that the main character meets.)

Then, about two nights ago, I was playing with a plot in my head that I had no intention of actually writing - it was just a mental exercise, like, "OK, what if I wrote this kind of story, with this scenario? How would I do it?" And I thought pretty far into it - the setting, the main characters, the initial few chapters - until it hit me in the face that this was my story. I honestly leapt out of bed. If I dropped Colin, Elaina and crew in, and looked at it from the perspective of UtEoCA - well darn, it suddenly made perfect sense. I mean, it was still surreal and out there and everything, and there were still things that would be unexplainable - but it was a purposeful kind of unexplainable. And the whole story, beginning to end, was just there. I talk about wanting to have just a skeleton of an outline when I start a story, and with this all the bones for UtEoCA just fell in my lap. After I had been trying to figure out how to get from point A to point B with this thing for years. 

Anyway, I guess this is just something I needed to get off my chest. I still plan on doing Camp NaNo in April, because NaNo events are like long writing festivals for me, but if I'm scarcely seen at Figment for a while, this is probably why. I'm just . . . very happy and anxious about this story. 

OH almost forgot - on the subject of the much celebrated notebook from my last post, I've decided to hand-write my Camp NaNo story in it. Last November revealed to me that NaNo goes a lot smoother if I can just carry a notebook around with me.

Mwahaha New Post

(Maybe I'll get the hang of this again?)

I went out and bought a new notebook yesterday - just one of those standard 70-sheet college rule ones. I'm pretty sure if I could be bothered to open a couple drawers, I'd find that I have a stash of them, but I'm kinda of  (read: definitely) a nut for office supplies. I could spend all my money on pens, and anyway for me there's this spiritual aspect of going out and buying a notebook for a specific purpose. (Seriously. Me and office supplies. Don't even let me start.)

See, before I had a computer - or at least before I had one that didn't sound like a race car when I turned it on - I wrote notebook-long stories. That actually got finished. That were all in one place and not scattered across files and loose sheets. So yesterday I arbitrarily decided that I was going to buy a shiny new notebook and do that and who cares if I've already got like, three stories on Figment going that need attention and does it really matter that I have no idea what I'm going to write in said notebook, I'm sure something will happen once I start. (The God of Encloses Spaces though. That is going to get updated. Because it's my baby. And I'm almost done making my pretentious soundtrack for it.)

I don't know what it is. The last few months I've felt a bit stagnant, writing-wise. (I think I have a new writing crisis every other month, but this one's been the prevailing one.) My composition books are full-up with story snippets and scraps and beginnings that stop three paragraphs in. I think I really do need to just fill up a notebook with a story, any story. Maybe have my own little NaNo, only measured in pages instead of words because I need baby steps.

I love this box. Teddy bears.

ALRIGHT, SO SERIOUS WRITING BUSINESS ASIDE - What else is going on with my life? I don't know. I'm job-hunting, but it's not going too hot since I don't have easy access to a car and most of the jobs are at least 30 miles away. Waiting for college acceptance letters. Fangirl-ing about stuff (finally made myself finish Cowboy Bebop last night - I'm now having a serious case of emotions). After a long hiatus (it was hot chocolate season) I've resumed collecting tea.

Oh, I'm planning a surprise party, which I'm super-excited about. I've never thrown, attended, or been surprised by one, but my best friend called me up a few weeks ago and declared that since our friend always throws his own parties, we should get the jump on him this year. And apparently someone is dressing up like Slender Man? We've told the birthday boy it's just one of our usual horror movie days, so I guess it kind of fits . . . Slender Man though. Oy vey.

Still Alive. Honestly.

Alright, so keeping a consistent journal/blog/etc has never been exactly my thing. I started keeping a diary once in middle school, wrote at least once a week for a while . . . and then it turned into about twice a year. Which resulted in these really, really long entries that were basically a breeze over of all the significant events that I could remember at the time. But, anyway.

Right now The God of Enclosed Spaces is getting top priority, and I'm trying to figure out how I'm going continue the version that's up on Figment right now. I think it might actually end up being the prologue to the actual story, though chronologically some of the chapters might be set during the main story . . . (this always happens to me, by the way: I right a story and then realize too late that I've totally botched the chronology, so I decide that I just couldn't care less about time and the natural order of things so I jump around to my heart's content, to be edited later). See, 'cause the main story, I think, is going to be lot more focused on what is presently skulking around the Anderson woods and upsetting the local wildlife - and the identity of the entity (oh, that phrase was fun to write) is intrinsically tied to not just Mackenzie, but to Oscar Valentine, Sabrina Andrews, and the events on which their film Orithea Town was based. But to say any more would be spoilerific, and I don't know if anyone wants that.

I've been warning, anyhow, that in all likelihood whatever chapters come out in the near future are going to be vignettes, because I'm still having a lot of fun fleshing out Mac and Flan and their relationship, and sometimes I just want to write about what happened that one time they were at the beach, or that one time Mac adopted a cat, and so on. But I did say at the beginning it was a slice-of-life deal, so really that just fits in with the project from the start.

Now, I will attempt to post again sometime this month. :)