Points and Lines

Every now and then (sort of like my need to examine the state of my Religiosity), I need to sit back and look at why I'm doing this. It's been a few months now since I've started this blog, and so I thought I'd reexamine my purpose.

It seems like I've become an essayist. Somehow that doesn't seem quite right. I never thought about becoming an essayist. I never wanted to become an essayist. I never sat up, late in the night, gazing at the stars, and whispered into the darkness "I would like to write the Great American Essay."

What did I want? Well, I've always thought about becoming a novelist. Barring that, a screenwriter (OK, so who hasn't thought of that. I think my mistake - or success - in not becoming a screenwriter was despising LA and being unable to afford life in NY). There's a lot of glamour in the screenwriting business, or at least the fantasy of seeing your work up on screen.

There's a very similar desire to see a book on a shelf in a bookstore with one's name on it. Being a novelist really should be about telling a story. A story of a man. A radioactive man...no, wait that's been done.

Ay, there's the rub. Much of it's been done before. Or at least that's how it seems. Perhaps it's just a bit daunting to get started. That blank page makes one both fearful, nervous, yet ready to fill it with words. Hopefully words full of meaning and theme and Great-American-Novelly-type things. In other words, a grandiose tale of men (and women).

It usually ends up being a page of crap.

That page of crap is important, as I've said before. That becomes the first draft and the house of ideas in which one can raise a story.

So here's where I put myself after these few months blogging. I find that the barrier to putting words down to be thinner, taking less effort to overcome. I can sit down and bang out an essay. It's usually crap but now I accept that part of it. The crap becomes part of ideas and elements that perhaps I can use later.

Now, as far as writing a novel goes, these ideas aren't necessarily worthwhile. There not even good. But, I have been leaving out my fiction ideas. There's two reasons for doing that. First, they haven't quite gelled yet. There's still some ideas of plot, character, setting, style, pacing and that sort of thing that needs to be worked out. Secondly, its a matter of having no idea where to start.

The essays are easy. Even if it's about something I'm not too knowledgeable about, I'll look it up. That's what many of the essays have been: short explorations of an idea. Fiction has to be made up entirely. Write about what you know, they say. If I did that, it would be terrible uninteresting. So I need to really figure out how to imagine people and places and situations, before I can sit down and write about them.

Lies are all in the details, and so is fiction.