11 days.

That is the num­ber of days since I last posted or wrote any­thing of sig­nif­i­cance. I know this, those of you look­ing out for some­thing new know this and the cre­ative part of my brain also knows this.

The prob­lem is endemic to me and me alone — this I also know. I am wait­ing on a time frame, a goal in which to write 50k words and this has come as a double-edged sword. Although I am excited to get under­way, the wait­ing is killing my imag­i­na­tion. I have attempted to build upon my ideas for Novem­ber, but really there is only so much I can fore­see before I begin it. I don’t like to sketch out every facet and detail and so, what to do?

I know when the time comes, I will undoubt­edly be unpre­pared. Some­thing will hap­pen that I did not expect or think of before­hand, but that’s life: a series of events, some planned for and some not.

The plan? Well, I have had a cou­ple of short fic­tion ideas and one is based on a pre­vi­ous flash-fiction of mine. Yes­ter­day I decided to try my hand at ran­domly writ­ing some­thing akin to decent and you know what, it did not turn out well. Sur­prise. That is what hap­pens when you don’t do any­thing for 11 days — you’re imag­i­na­tion looses it’s mojo. I think I have a gift and I believe in it enough to war­rant the time I spend fix­at­ing upon it, but that does not mean Mr. Gift does not some­times decide to won­der off freely and take a holiday.

My epi­demic is a lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion between the pic­tures, music and emo­tions in my head (those pro­jected for the story, not hard felt in my heart) and my cog­ni­tive writ­ing abil­ity. I can’t get the fuck­ing things down on paper. I can sense them and they form some­what, but when I try to feed them and nur­ture them, they just fall over like a card­board cut-out on a slightly breezy day. It’s pathetic, it really is.

Here are the first two para­graphs — which I am not par­tic­u­larly happy with;

“A shadow, a fig­ure – a dot of forged shape on the hori­zon flick­ered against killer suns and where blur­ring heat danced along the sand some­thing mag­i­cal and mechan­i­cal waited. Tow­er­ing, it reached out a hand of black and drew a clench­ing, nul­li­fy­ing end to the colour­ful arch stretch­ing out before him. There, the rain­bow ended.

Edward lay alone in the gar­den of his par­ents’ house. Amongst the daf­fodils and weeds, he stared into the deep blue sky above and won­dered, what if? There was lit­tle resound­ing the­ory or con­tem­pla­tion, he had no great imag­i­na­tive won­der on which to base his ques­tions. But he sim­ply pon­dered, as every ten-year old did, what if? ”

I don’t know what hap­pened… the first para­graph, the mini ‘pro­logue’ if you like was the way I wanted to enter the piece. I wished to show a glimpse of how it ends — or approaches an end — and then snap back to the begin­ning and slowly (but not too slowly) intro­duce the char­ac­ter. One prob­lem I kept encoun­ter­ing was the feel of it, the emo­tional umbrella shad­ow­ing every detail and move­ment. Did I want it dra­matic, adven­tur­ous, dark, intense? Back and forth I hopped and even­tu­ally I just didn’t know.

In the end I wrote about 600wds in an hour (1.5 .doc pages). That’s not par­tic­u­larly good for any writer with a key­board — espe­cially when you can type a good 60+ wds per minute. Per­haps tonight, tomor­row and the week­end I will knuckle down and do more. If I don’t, well there won’t be much left to my imag­i­na­tion when Novem­ber finally arrives.