Projects At Hand

Uncertainty is a constant while I put down words every now and then here and there – what project to focus on? Sometimes so much time has gone by that I no longer remember the aim I had for a certain scene or chapter. The only way to get back into that piece of work is to read it all and look through the notes, if any. I feel a lot of time is wasted, time I could otherwise have spent writing. Hours pass and then it’s either time for bed or to head for work. Another day’s gone by without any new words written. Bloody depressing.

In recent times I have more and more been looking at keeping my stories short, compressed into a longer series instead of a few large tomes. Easier said than done when it means restructuring several years of work. Maybe that’s what it needs, what I need. I looked into this the other day, trying to outline some kind of timeline but that would give me fifty+ two hundred page stories to write only to complete one of my larger projects. There’s another two equally large stories, partly in writing but mostly in my head. Those are connected with the first one.

As of today I really have no practical idea of how to deal with this, how to structure it all so I can stay focused. At the same time I am writing on two different stage plays and trying to write some poetry on the side. Something has to go. That’s one thing I am sure of. Who will be thrown into the sacrificial pit?

On one hand I know I’d like to self publish a novel series. On the other hand I really love writing stage plays, something about telling a story through dialogue. There’s a reason why I describe myself as “a coffee loving playwright…” I feel like I am standing at the crossroads but the once clear signs has been run over by a semi-truck and are nowhere to be found. And I do not have a map.

Motivation Restored?

From having too many ongoing writing projects and the inability to pick one to work at I have slowly come to find that my most recent stage play currently called The Baron of the Haunted House is the one. It’s a story not that well planned out which gives me space to play around and be somewhat creative with the narrative.

This story started as a simple genealogical tree – created with Scapple – which a few hours later became a much bigger thing than anticipated, with a lot of background history, key figures and plots that really shaped the overall picture. I never thought such a simple tool as a genealogical tree could become that useful when creating and building a story.

This story is inspired by Poe – The Raven and The Tell-Tale Heart in particular – but also by Ingmar Bergmans Fanny and Alexander. It’s set in the early 1900s (although not necessary historically correct) in the country side of a fictional country not yet named. With that said, it references some of my other stories inside The Gardener-universe which have a few cities named – Riverdale and Lancaster (not to be confused with the city in England) – hence this town featured in this story will also need a name. Not sure yet what to call it.

Moving forward: I have set aside two writing days a week with a deadline giving me about 500 words to write per session. That slow pace has taken off the pressure of writing and so far I have written a lot more than that quota. This coupled with the nature of the story being slightly loose I have regained some of that joy of writing I had lost and longed for.

What I will take away from this is: planning every detail of a story might become a hindrance, removing that and giving yourself a reasonable deadline with less writing days the motivation to continue writing will return.

The early days of a newborn writer.

Days a long time ago I would get up early in the morning with excitement and turn on the coffee brewer for a fresh cup of coffee for the morning session of writing. A cigarett did go nicely along. Back then I had one story in my head, one script to focus on. And I did so for the longest time. Nowadays are much different. Ideas did not stop coming to my mind and while I just wrote the ideas down they would come up in a later day when least expected and as more and more new ideas formed my original once got blurred out to the point where I could no longer write on them. My morning coffee became lunch coffee and afternoon coffee. Less writing got made. I still think back to those days, the passion for the story at hand I could feel. Granted, I had just found writing and I was newly born, eager to do it again and again and for a while nothing else existed.

My early writing was bad – might still be – and I wrote novels, inspired by American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. But it was not that book that had me started. No. It was no book at all. Back in those days, before the web content sharing platform PirateBay, people used DC++ and I was no different. Surly I downloaded some pornographic content, most of which one did not know what it was until you had watch it. I remember one of those, horrifying. A “classic” boss/secretary-scenario but brutal. This came as a shock to me and I thought to myself after the visit to the bathroom toilet where I sat and almost vomited: I have seen a rape taking place. Today I have found out that the porn actress was called Sophie Evans and was regarded a pro and also that this kind of porn was nothing all that strange on the internet. It took my brain a week to form the early ideas of a novel script and months before the thoughts of sex would not get me sick. All this was more than ten years ago. The story, I back then called Sick Boy (after a song title by Kill Hannah), has now been rewritten three times and are far from seeing a finish day. It’s not even the same story any longer. Reshaped, it has now found the way into the Gardener-series and I believe it’s where it belongs.

I have never really stopped writing. I have just been writing more or less in the periods that followed this one huge day of my life. For better or worse, stage plays. One simple reason: I found my way into the world of theater by chance and I got more and more into writing stage plays. I have written a few as of today, although no one has reach the big public. One turned into a real production. Being a playwright is more of my thing. Writing dialogue and trying to get your actions and story into place through just that I found is just way to exciting. Maybe the theater is to blame to why I have not finished any of my early novels, such as Sick Boy? It does not really matter as long as I am writing the things that get me going.

I still do look back at the early days and I hope to one day feel the same way about writing as I did back then. Writing has become more of just another forced activity which I do very sporadically. Something of note: Writing has so far been the one and only thing I have stucked with for a longer period of time and I do believe I will only stop writing when I am dead.