Notes on Writing - False Start

 A few years ago, maybe longer, I decided I was for sure serious and real about getting my Dr. Bob fiction off the ground. Determined and re-energized (as much as I possibly could be), I decided to add new pages to the tale each day - an effort, much like this exercise - to build the habit and muscle memory needed to build (or salvage? repair?) a writing career and at least prove to myself that could put some of these good ideas swirling around in my head to work. 

I plodded through and eventually worked my way up to 60 pages in Word (double spaced), adding page after page while also attempting to track new and existing characters, their arcs, story developments, scenery, etc. I had a good narrative in my head and however sloppily, the whole thing was kind of sort of coming together. 

While the Dr. Bob idea wasn't 100% mine, my plan for adopting the unlovable loser/miscreant/anti-hero and creating a universe spawned almost entirely from my own neural pathways was kind of sort of taking shape. I mean, 60 pages, or so I thought, was no small feat, and if I could only keep certain details straight and organized in my mind, I could continue rattling off pages until I had something that demanded attention.  

My goal, of course, was to create compelling characters that could actually carry the narrative, and to create a narrative that was not only interesting but pulled readers in and delivered something unexpected at the end. These aren't new approaches, for sure, but I felt as though I had something original to share, and that if I could just put in the work and commit to it, I could actually make something funny, flowing, digestible, enrapturing, satirical, and even accidentally profound (admittedly, this last quality is always a crap shoot, and my fingers were crossed tightly in the hope I could punch out something brilliant, or least brilliant-adjacent). 

For a while, I felt like a had a good thing going. Characters were being introduced and traveling in and out of the fold, and the story seemed solid. The idea for turning Dr. Bob into an accidental misadventurer pitfalling into tragedy after tragedy was starting to come to life. I had good reason to believe I might have actually been onto something. 

I was writing something real, dammit. This was part of my own redemption arc, from nobody into somebody with a title to their name (other than Johnny Normal the bloody fucking maniac). 

Of course, it's attitudes like that that usually hit the fucking wall. And sure enough, it did. Splat! 

At first, output was consistent and I was feeling good or self-satisfied about where the project was headed. I was producing something, and even though it was a bit hole-y, there weren't problems I couldn't go back and fix or shore up later. I had a solid story outline (though, admittedly, not near detailed or lengthy enough), and was more or less following my ideas to see where'd they go. I was along for the ride. I got stuck every now and then, but I pushed through and got ink on paper. I was doing something real. 

But the Pirate Truckers saga was also falling apart. The "holes" were gaping and the characters were insufficiently developed. I had no experience building out believable beings who could believably traverse a realistic universe with detailed, captivating scenic elements and conflict that would result in emotional buy-in. The frustration grew and compounded and slowly painted me into a corner from which I couldn't escape. I was trapped and overwhelmed, and as my insecurities grew more powerful, my progress waned, until, eventually, it was nothing. I was no longer building anything. 

It wasn't immediate but gradual. Bit by bit, day by day, the fog of frustration grew. I was eventually swallowed by it, unable to move or breathe. 6 pages turned into 4, turned into 2, turned into a paragraph, turned into lame excuses for taking a week off and coming back to things when things cleared up. I ran out of reasons to justify putting the damn thing off and simply and quietly resigned it to, I guess, history, where it remains in a lonely Doc file to this day. 

Certainly not one of my proudest moments. Perhaps one of my bigger regrets. I've been thinking more and more lately of the Dr. Bob tome and what, if anything, I should do about it. Should I revisit it? Begin anew? Shelve it completely? Some answers seem scary, while others are simply agonizing. 

I guess, in part anyway, that's what THIS exercise is - to find or create the spark that will (at long last) make fire flow from my fingertips and transform me into an actual WRITER. Or not, Maybe that's just a dead or silly dream I should have given up on a long time ago. I wrote once. I had the creative spark, once. Now it's gone, the time is to move on.

I'm in middle age now, and I'm not even sure if I have the energy or gumption to revive something that may have never existed in the first place. I'm also a father with a wife, and a job, and writing takes time, which is either a tired excuse or long-standing truth or both. Either way, do I even have the time or patience, or energy, or stamina, or wherewithal to proceed?

Again, as I have to continually remind myself, that's what this exercise is ultimately all about. To see if it actually might be possible to pull oneself out of the doldrums and become more than a walking carapace and be something more. 

Til Tomorrow