The existential place called Should Be
Thinking about stillness with the desert still fresh in my mind. I do like the idea of having somewhere quiet to write. But I also recognize that's an excuse for not finishing the projects I have. The only outside distractions where I live are the sound of barking seals and the occasional boat chugging along the marina.
I'm just in a weird spot called Should Be. I should be looking for another freelance gig but the issue isn't pressing. I'm coming off seven months of an intense gig that took me to Santiago. It's the first time in my two decade career that I really feel like deserve time off. But this is something I've never been good at accepting. I like projects.
Please don't blame me for the music; it's not a song, singer, or cover of said song I would have chosen in a million years. When I update the ad portfolio there will be different songs on both spots.
On the non advertising front, I have two drafts of two vastly different novels I should be bringing to completion. One in particular I am bound and determined to finish simply because writing it has been like pulling teeth while handcuffed and blindfolded. It took more than a year just to come up with a title for it. Even if in the end I decide not to let it go public, I have to complete it.
The premise is amusing enough to keep interest. The characters are funny, I think. It combines my love of music and science fiction, and I have a feeling I will be mining these two loves for a while to come. I just need to push the story and flesh out the plot some and get it to final draft. But it's a slog.
The bigger problem has nothing to do with the fact the two novels are still cooking. I set the current one I'm talking about aside to write New Roman Times and it's just been hard to get back to, as if I lost momentum in one sports car because I hopped into another.
New Roman Times was an undertaking of a different sort. First came wrangling the far-out conspiratorial comic darkness that is a Camper Van Beethoven concept album. Then taking David Lowery's songs (including instrumentals) and shaping them into something cohesive. And finally, adding enough of my own words and thoughts and concepts there to create something new, including purposefully fucking up the narrative to strengthen my own concept. Despite the intensity of the story (which admittedly made me physically sick at one point) it was still an easier birth.
On that note, (and keeping with the advertising topic for a moment) I noticed there were so many empty billboards on I-60 driving back to L.A. I'm considering I buying one out to run an ad for New Roman Times there. I think the cover that Åsk Wäppling designed would at the very least get some tongues wagging.
Perhaps I'm being too hard on myself. What it really comes down to is that for every onion layer of New Roman Times, this other novel is more straightforward, even light-hearted. There are still themes and a social commentary of sorts. Notably, on the Carter administration which required a good deal of research even if it will only be for texture rather than anything tangible. I only discovered it there when I was halfway through the first draft. But if New Roman Times was more of a Vonnegut/Pynchon branch of the writing tree, this new one is closer to something Lawrence Block would write.
Block is still one of my favorite authors. His characters Matt Scudder, Evan Tanner and Bernie Rhodenbarr are so fleshed out. The first (an alcoholic unlicensed detective who becomes sober) is dark and intropective and jaded and wounded, the other two ( man who doesn't need to sleep and bookstore owner burglar) are more snarky and just fun. Block is a master of detective fiction and storytelling in so many ways. I still consider it a tragedy that one of my favorite Block novels, Eight Million Ways To Die, was such a horrible experience as a movie. I remember tracking it down a few years ago and becoming livid at how poorly written and filmed it was. Easily Jeff Bridges at his worst. This is also true of Block's other novel adapted to cinema– Burglar, starring Whoopi Goldberg.
I realize not everything I write has to be Written™ in that sense of the word. Sometimes you can just tell a good story, right? It's allowed, isn't it? So if one falls more into that category it's okay. Besides, there's no way of knowing whether something more meaty comes out of the next draft. And there won't be until I do it.
The lady woman is going out of town for business soon and may be gone for a minute. I'll take that time to buckle down and get back into it. And if freelance comes along, I'll thank the good Lord for day rates, and just write in the morning at night and on the weekends. If it worked for New Roman Times it'll work for the other novels. As with most things in life, the point is to just shut up and do it. And as someone who doesn't love it when writers write about writing, it's good advice to take.