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I’ve been poking at two new, unpublished posts: one about the hypnagogic state and its role in my creative process; another about how attempting to finish a first novel mirrored the adoption of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

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

So I finished the first draft of Inlanders on 4 February 2008, in the midst of starting a new job, securing a renter for my condo across the country, and suffering the sickening sneezing and snotting stage of my first head cold in over a year. That means I wrote the finale feeling like a crushed pop can being kicked around a particularly dirty part of town…perfect for typing THE END!

Now the manuscript sits untouched by me for at least four months while I cool down, regain some perspective and prepare for the merciless editing phase. To be honest, I can’t wait to hack that bloated, pockmarked, larval sack of a story to grisly pieces, but I must win some distance from it first.

In the meantime, I started work on a new query letter. What a difference from the early attempts at same, way back when Chap 1 was all I had committed to word processor! Even one month outta the jungle, I could see more than just the trees, and was better able to summarize what my mess of sentences might be about.

I’ll keep picking away at said query during this four-month vacation from the novel. Also on the itinerary: a synopsis. But NOT an outline, not until I wade back into the underbrush and start plotting a clear path through the forest. When I’m out the other side, I’ll be ready.

For now, I won’t even open the Word file. There are plenty of meanwhiles to keep me busy in my off-time:

• Uploading music to http://anywhere.fm/Podge
• Reading, for the first time, Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories
• Perusing Monster Hunters and Unexpected back issues
• Enjoying the heck outta Lost season four

My conclusion? Vacation is FUN!

- Stephen Reese