Inlanders - Stephen Reese

Okay, I’m ready.

Or nearly so.

I look back at this month’s measly two posts and realize I’m not interested in killing time anymore.

March saw a surge of creative energy directed at this blog to get the thing rolling and somewhat relevant. But my enthusiasm for ice-breaking small talk has subsided.

I’ve been poking at two new, unpublished posts: one about the hypnagogic state and its role in my creative process; another about how attempting to finish a first novel mirrored the adoption of serious long-distance running into my lifestyle.

Both are worthy topics, and there’s decent sentences in ‘em.

But I’ve no drive to keep nattering about writing.

I want to get on with the real thing.

Also.

To counteract the necessary labor of completing my tax return, I sought to MAKE something this weekend, to work on a creative project whose completion would fulfill me where finances couldn’t. So I dug out some sound files from the Upcoming Mixes folder on my hard drive (I do that, too, for fun - make music and mix other people’s), and some DJ-centric ideas popped out of nowhere for me to explore yesterday evening.

Alas.

They. Did. Not. Hit. The. Spot.

No, there’s a bigger unfinished project yodeling its presence from on high, goading me from behind, its incipient forms now three months distant, its Platonic ideal teasing ahead, and friends, readers, it’s now time to distance-run toward that destination clearly visible from my comfy spot here atop Procrastination Peak.

I’ve been scared. I’ve been excited. Now I’m just impatient.

I thought maybe there’d be a quiet moment, a whimper not a bang, that presaged my return to the naive, sputtering first draft, there to whip it into an honest, upstanding novel.

Turns out it was neither.

It’s a burn. An itch. A barely-articulate buzz at the back of my subconscious that keeps intoning, as best it can:

Yes, fool, yes - the need is ripe.

Behold that dubious fruit you’ve harvested, then make of it a satisfying meal.

I’m hungry.

And so.

I’ll not wait another month. I’ll get back into a tussle with Inlanders some 30 days earlier than planned. I’ll finish the damn taxes, rip through what’s left of the fiction I wanted to consume while on vacation from my own make-believe, then blunder headlong into draft two at the top of May.

If nothing else, it’ll give me something to yap about here.

You’ve been warned.

- Stephen Reese

Some writers with links in my blogroll at right have been posting about the number of novels they wrote (to varying degrees of completion) before the one that got published came outta them.

Now.

I haven’t published a novel yet.

But I’ve no shortage of unpublished ones.

Because it’s fun, I’m gonna post mine too. Here’s the rundown:

1986 - Identity
My attempt at a Fighting Fantasy gamebook, heavily influenced by Steve Jackson’s Creature of Havoc (my favorite in the series). You play a wordless brute trying to figure out who you are - or were; your enemies have magicked you into monstrous form to prevent your interfering with their nefarious plans.

1987 - The Heroes of Goodlund
My desired addition to the Dragonlance canon, focusing on heroes from a remote area of the Ansalon map who matched, nearly to the race/class/orientation, the existing Heroes of the Lance. I outlined the entire book in the spirit of Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman’s original trilogy. Basic monkey-see, monkey-do.

1988 - Stones
Almost a direct ripoff of Michael Crichton’s Sphere, with giant extraterrestrial chunks of obsidian subbing in for an otherworldly sentient globe. I was learning a lot of new words thenabouts, so I eschewed Crichton’s spare, screenplay-ready style for extremely long sentences crammed full of mouthfuls like “plenipotentiary”.

1990 - The Sixth
Clive Barker and J.D. Salinger were retrofitting my brain by now, so this time I mixed big words and florid prose with counter-cultural pretensions. A disagreeable fellow eats his entire body, while alive, to “prove a point to society”. When he awakens in the afterlife, he gets his own personal Virgil to guide him through ethereal strata of meaning - and correct his self-eating ways.

1992 - The Twilight
Blown away by William Gibson’s Sprawl trilogy, I tried to convert the events of a cyberpunk roleplaying session I was game-master for into narrative format. I ran out of plot when the gang stopped playing. Strangely, I didn’t try to ape Gibson’s poetic wording; my own voice was starting to emerge here.

1995 - Roadfolk
Not understanding Douglas Coupland’s method of jam-packing encyclopedic pop detail into his stories of godless youth fumbling toward epiphany (but wanting to duplicate it nonetheless), I ported a notebook around with me, scribbled copiously, and later tried to assemble the jots and thoughts into a plot about city-born youngsters trying to become adults out in the country. Four years later, after countless changes and rewrites, this once-novel turned into my Nicholl semifinalist screenplay.

1998 - That Problem Child
Started as a short story, alternated between a screenplay and a comic book script, and eventually ended up as my first mostly-finished novel. I may finish it yet. It’s about the future, but I’m not sure it’s science-fiction. The idea grows from my wondering what high school might look like a few decades down the road.

From 1998 through 2005, I was trying to become a professional screenwriter. I wrote ten scripts, had one optioned, and even tried a few literary adaptations. It was when I was working on the last of these adaptations I realized I was far too interested in wordplay to continue pursuing a career where the end product is images and sounds, not sentences in sequence.

And so I returned to my first love, the novel.

It was the top of 2006. Inlanders happened.

Will it join the unpublished list above?

Time tells.

- Stephen Reese

It was a beautiful spring day. I went for my first bike ride of the year. Skidded through some leftover slush. Mudded up my legs. And when I came home, I found myself poking at the query letter.

Thing’s a little closer to where it needs to be now. Maybe halfway.

And so am I, incidentally.

Halfway through my vacation from the novel.

Halfway near the edit.

I’ve carefully monitored my feelings toward that task as my distance from the novel increases across these months away. There are days I’m chomping at the bit to get started cutting and rewriting. There are days I’m scared shitless of seeing just how bad the first draft turned out (I didn’t look back, you see, as I wrote it - my first time trying this technique, which I’ll discuss in a future post). Ups and downs. As roller-coastery as the writing was.

But as time goes on, my emotions are tipping toward a more balanced, neutral perspective on the whole business. And that’s probably the best place to be in. We’ll see.

In the meantime, the meanwhiles continue, with a few additions:

• Uploading music (and obsessing over playlists) on http://anywhere.fm/Podge
• Reading The Ruins, The Kite Runner, Tuesdays With Morrie and Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures
• Getting the aforementioned bike back on the road

Vacation remains fun!

Two months to go…

- Stephen Reese