How to write when happy?

The surf has been consistently good, the wind lightly offshore.

I'm losing weight and gaining muscle mass. At the rate I'm going I'll be in the best shape I've been in 4 years by November. I'm dark brown from head to toe, except for the parts that are typically covered by baggies.

Not one, but two local bars are starting up open mic nights and with any luck a band or three will congeal out of that over time. I'm playing at Coquitos tonight with Aaron.

The youth hostel I help run now and then, La Casa Feliz, has been packed with interesting visitors from all over the world for months now. (Last year, the year they started, they weren't). I have met more people in the past year than in my entire life prior, and gained insight into many viewpoints. I've been sharing my office with writers from 5ones.com, Shaun chills out here a lot - and Cameron just did a wonderful writeup of his trip to Nicaragua. Kelly Ann Thomas of Picasso Dreams writes of Nicaraguan politics and white woman's guilt...

A couple days back I met a bunch of folk visiting a friend in the peace corps, one of them writes a darn good blog about everything from the rights of primates to robots... Tom Trumpinski now has his first book, The Hellbound Train, available for sale from lulu, Brian Clapper has resumed writing about everything from python to Django- and Cubic Dog's been posting about environmental issues and has up a nice rant about responsibility. Doc continues writing profoundly on everything from Lyndon LaRouche (on his birthday, no less) to the memery, to opening the cellular infrastructure...

and me... I sit here with 30,000 words stacked up and don't care... I've been through dry periods before, but this one is different...

I'm happier and calmer than I've been for a really long time, and although I have frustrations - like deciding to never own anything that can be easily stolen again - I'm happy... and... although I'm surrounded now by writers... I don't have any driving urge to write!???

I have several big articles on important subjects (stuff that angers me) stalled out, I don't have the drive to finish any of that. I poke a paragraph here, a sentence there, and quit. I've spent a little time organizing things so people can go through my old threads on space, asteroids, the 2008 election, and my assaults on the framing issues the mainstream media has, but that's it.

I find English slipping away more and more often as I attempt to operate in Spanish. I keep thinking that I could exit the internet with nary a backward glance, and use up the time for something else.

Wordlessly, I have an urge to paint - and instead of words, music fills my head. Music has always filled up my head, I have no idea how it gets stored, but I always used to ignore it, now it is louder than it has ever been....

I keep thinking - is that bad? It's not like I make a living from writing. Why should I subject myself to the pain of exposing truth or bias in the media, when there's a living, breathing world all around, with fun things to do, friends to hang with, and good things to eat and music to be made? - And everybody else, actively writing, doing such a great job?

Perhaps, today, I'll finish something. In my grabbag, fed by the prolefeed, are subjects like stagflation, the pending decline of Australia's economy, the saga of Terry Childs, and some stuff on corporate governance that all tie together... somehow.

Perhaps I can just serve as an amplifier for a while.

Labels: civilization, happiness, nicaragua, writing

  ¶ 8:18 AM 5 comments

  My failed attempts at fiction

Tom Trumpinskijust finished writing his first book, which takes its title from The Hellbound Train. I'm sending a lot of empathy, joy and jealousy his way. One thing that he wrote that really struck home: writing makes you insufferable, and yet you need stability and support while you are wandering around inside your mind - and on another planet.

I've been there while writing, too - I try to reassure people that the real me will be back soon - when I remember - weeks later - that maybe I was being a bastard....

Tom also penned some good tips while his ordeal was still fresh in his mind.

He actually *read* Steven King's book "On writing". I didn't. I thought the audiobook was much better. I could listen to it while NOT writing, in the car, or on the beach, mixed in with some prog-rock. To this day I still hear King's voice and the Moody Blues at the same time, in a combination much like that of Stephen Hawking and Juno Reactor on "Transmissions".

These days I can toss off a decent 1000-1200 word essay in half a day. 3000 words takes me a month. 9,000 words takes me somewhere between a year and forever. It's frustrating as hell, and that doesn't even count my sorry attempts at fiction like the below:

---

After the anniversary...

The next morning she got up early and made tea for herself, and coffee for me. I woke with the breath of her kiss on my forehead, and the taste of a biscuit in my mouth. Her smile illuminated the whole world.

As the real sun rose, we sat in chairs by the window.

A prism dangled against the light - it was a figure, a Michaelangelo figure, five pointed, arms and legs spread, stretched out, reaching in to the room, and at the same time, trying to fly, like Daedalus.

The light illuminated dust motes in the air and glimmered, here and there, against the carpet.

Later on, we went for a walk. There was still a slight winter chill in the air, but the spring flowers were blooming, and we walked hand in hand down to... well, nowhere really, we just walked, and laughed, and chatted, and the day passed like thousands of days before them, and ultimately, became night.

---

There's nowhere to go from there. It's all cliches from there on out.

The Casablanca version:

"Same time next year?" - she said. "Maybe", said he. "Paris, perhaps."
"Ah, Paris..."

The pathological serial murderer version:

They found him, later, by the lake where his first gf had vanished long before. Over an open fire, he'd roasted the breasts of the 22 year old he'd picked up that night. Her blood stained the sand, her brown hair pooled deep in the drinking mug he'd made of her smashed skull, and he was drinking coffee mixed in with her brains for breakfast."

Or the poisoner:

"Mmmm... almond cream... where'd you find that? Thanks... um... urgh.. agggggggh."

The ghost story:

She said that she'd always haunt him, and she did. Most mornings he woke up with a aching head and a sour mouth, but two or three times a year she showed up in some form and the chemical and physical memories kept him going through the day. There were times, even, when she appeared just above the covers, at night, and if he kept his eyes closed he could feel her ghostly body against his....

The hard techno-pR0n version:

"She slammed his porgan repeatedly down her throat, gripping his vutt with both hands. The Zapp-erMaster embedded in her gagima turned at an ever faster rate. He jabbed the remote control and changed the setting to "swallow-it-all" and she started circular breathing through her nose and around his thing in a technique she'd learned at the Zen Monastery...

And let's not forget the zombie story!

...That night, the zombies returned as they always did - around the house, they howled and beat at the barred windows. "Do you think they will ever stop?" - he asked. She crouched by the gun-slot, with her trusty Remington rifle, methodically picking off the ones that seemed to have some intelligence. "Who cares?", she said, grinning madly as she squeezed off another shot - 'There's no one left but you and me and them - and every time I get an urge to shoot you, I remember we're out of batteries for the vibrator. "

"Reload this for me, will ya?"

I kind of like the last one, actually.

Labels: science fiction, writing, zombies

  ¶ 4:04 PM 3 comments