I’ve been listening to my various MP3s for the past week or so. Seeing them linked from the main page of this domain is becoming something of a burr in my behind.
Previous designs of Gregbueno.com were little more than splash pages with links to my other projects, so it was easy to overlook the fact a ghost in my shadow and Eponymous 4 still employed all my design ethics from three years ago, let alone lacked any new content.
So now when I fire up my browser, the first thing I see at the top of the page are my MP3s — nothing of which reflect anything I’ve been “writing” since 1999.
Yearly Archives: 2003
I quit
… and after only one chapter.
By now, I should have written 16,660 words in my NaNoWriMo novel. I’ve only accomplised barely one-tenth of that total.
I wrote a chapter. Read it over a few times. And decided I didn’t want to rush this story. The characters sounded wrong to me. I want there to be more tension between Det. Cleary and Tommy Durst. I don’t know what I want Det. Ellison to be, but it sure isn’t what he sounds like now. And I want to know Adam Fulton — the victim — a lot more.
I have a strong sense of the dynamic between Cleary and Crash, but it’s Crash’s relationship with Adam that drives him to get involved with the investigation.
I’m not going to this story justice in 30 days.
It was easy to write The Courtship of Gary Huang in 30 days because I was making Gary deal with something I didn’t want to — mustering up the courage to love and, potentially, to be hurt again.
I’m not sure I know Crash, let alone Adam, enough to figure out why he’d work to find Adam’s killer. I think, though, part of him wants to be around Cleary, but he can only do it under the pretense of “work”.
Yeah, yeah. It sounds like I can churn out this story. But I can’t. I don’t even have details of the crime down yet. And I haven’t even begun to think about Adam’s bosses, the guys who supply him with the Ecstacy he sells.
So I quit.
I’m not writing the novel I said I would for NaNoWriMo. I didn’t register anyway, so I’m not out of any cash donations.
More to the point, I just don’t feel like writing right now. I’m worried about my car. I’m worried about my money. If anything, slowly getting back into the job market — first with the store, now with the new job — occupied my time and energy. The great comfort of being laid off in a sucky economy was the futility of job searching. Why bang my head against the wall when I could write a novel instead?
Can’t quite do that right now. Not while I’m trying to rebuild my nest egg.
NaNo … NaNo …
Back in the first week of September, I took a trip with AndyA to Galveston. Our intention was to lock ourselves in a hotel room and write. We didn’t get much on paper, but we did talk at length about the kinds of ideas we wanted to pursue.
After talking her ear off about the Crash novel no. 1 — codename, September Boyfriend (to keep with the Number Girl song title theme, albeit altered slightly) — she told me I had enough to start writing.
In terms of general direction, I guess I did. In terms of detail, I wasn’t so sure.
Sexy detective + burned-out lawyer = romance gold!
Only a handful of people have read my unpublished novel, The Courtship of Gary Huang, in its entirety, so before I prattle on about a character named Crash, I probably ought to fill the rest of you all in on his history.
Gimmick
I think I would like the Crash novels to be named after Number Girl songs. I mean, how cool would it be to read a book titled Destruction Baby or Brutal Man or Urban Guitar Sayonara or Sentimental Girl’s Violent Joke?
Hmmm. They’d turn out to be very violent books, wouldn’t they?
Inventory
I have an overactive imagination.
For as long as I can remember — or perhaps for as long as I’ve been aware of sex — I got into the habit of plotting stories in my head in the time right before falling asleep and the time right after waking up. (Neil Gaiman’s work has often been described as possessing that quality.)
It’s really the only time of day I have to focus exclusively on fiction. It’s this habit which has allowed me to store up a lot of ideas.
The Lightning-Struck Tower
(I sent this as an e-mail to AndyA a while back. I’m posting it here to keep it close to the forefront of my head.)
Introit
Great. Just what the world needs — another freekin’ weblog.
Of course, I’m skirting around the nomenclature by calling this a “scrapbook”, and in a way it is.