April 29 - Not writers' block, detectives' block, and magical dystopia realism.

I'm taking a relatively small break in writing The Week of Dreams, and I promise this isn't anything resembling a cop-out or an attack of writers' block, because I believe in neither cop-outs nor writers' block. Writers' block is a cop-out sort of way of saying, "I don't particularly want to work on this because I'm not stretching my mind far enough." I don't experience writers' block, I experience not knowing what exactly to do next. It's like building a house or something; you've run out of bricks and you can't find the right kind of bricks anymore, so you're just staring at the unfinished house and maybe your tools, and you're trying to figure out what else you can use instead of bricks. I'm sure things like that happens, but I have never once encountered the term "builder's block". Perhaps all professions could be said to have some kind of "block". Let's say there is "dentists' block", "lawyers' block", "detectives' block".

Actually, detectives' block makes complete sense and sounds much like what I'm experiencing (and I don't say this just because I've been watching Sherlock lately and thus entertaining such thoughts). I've got these ideas and information, and I'm trying to piece them together in such a way so that they make as much sense as they can, but I don't have all of it yet, or I can't figure out how to make some parts connect, so I leave it alone and go do something completely different, like make scarves or draw cheetahs or catch turtles (actually, no, I don't catch turtles). And I try to make it make sense in my mind. So yeah. Detectives' block. That's what I have. If anybody asks me why I'm not making 1,000 words anymore is about, I'll say, "Oh, I have detectives' block," and leave it at that. Because people know me, they will not think it's incredibly strange, or they do, they will know not to question it.

That said, I do know what I'm writing over the summer. It's a project I've had in mind for, what, three years that I have not yet done justice to. I'm calling it All the Madmen right now (like the David Bowie song, but this is really probably subject to change). Those of you who know me know all too well what it's about. Those of you who don't...well, I have no idea why you're following this blog, but it's about a semi-dystopian future and the story of one person who lives in it, although it's more just a "life story" kind of thing (not as dumb as that sounds) instead of a political dystopia kind of whatever. The magical realism version of dystopias - the dystopia is just there, it's not what the story's about. Magical dystopia realism. That must be it.

So apparently I've coined the terms "detectives' block" and "magical dystopia realism". Someday, I must use them both in the same sentence. "So, why haven't you been writing, Jude? Any good reason for that?" "Yes. I've had detectives' block with my magical dystopian realism." And I will leave, and the other person will have no further explanation of that. And I'll go stare at bricks or run around trees or catch turtles or something. Yes.

April 21 - Doing what I want, action scenes, and

Yesterday, at about 9 PM, I told myself that, in the next twenty-four hours, I was going to do What I Want To Do (capitalized as such in my mind). Which was my way of saying, "You know what? This Saturday, I'm not going to do anything I don't want to do."

This attempt has led to me sending several things out for publication (I want to do things like that), watching Doctor Who (old stuff, with Jon Pertwee), texting an old buddy of mine about video games that I don't play and Doctor Who (there may be too much Doctor Who in my life), and planning out the complicated plans of my villains from an upcoming project. (The Palmer Zimmerman stories, for anyone who's reading this, knows me, and knows what I'm talking about.)

Well, it took quite a lot of time for me to actually get around to working on The Week of Dreams. In fairness, I was out and about for a lot of today (accompanying my aunt to places such as Barnes and Noble, Costco, and Barnes and Noble again). Though I did have a notebook with me and did some writing in that. I wrote an action scene in which Chris and Avalon shoot moths with a water gun in the library in the House of Impossible Things.

Now, I mentioned that scene, and that's important. You know why? I was worrying a bit today about writing and what makes me write. There seems to be this trend (or at least there was a trend in the 20th century) of writers writing because they had all these things inside them, all this torment and ecstasty and pain that they needed to expel through means such as writing, all this brilliant social commentary and ideas that they needed to show the world. Hence we have things like The Great Gatsby and 1984 and Hamlet. Wait. Hang on. Hamlet wasn't a 20th century piece. But it's the same basic principle, and my point is that I don't write for those reasons. I don't really feel like I have anything to say beyond what I say in my everyday life (it's like my life is an ongoing performance piece or something). I don't have difficult emotions that other works don't express as well and that I can't just as easily enjoy therapeutically (Doctor Who comes immediately to mind). I'm not trying to create symbolic masterpieces anymore (I have a huge ego, but it doesn't make me think that I do great masterpieces).

I tried to make a list of reasons I write. Here's what it looked like:

1. It's a matter of habit.
2. I want to be Neil Gaiman.
3. It's fun to see if I can make money off of it.
4. I want to be remembered by people I don't know after I die.
5. It's a hobby.

Which is a number of reasons, but there are those who would not consider them especially worthy. So then I wondered if there were any deeper reasons that I wrote. Nope. No soul-baring purpose, no uplifting inspiration. It's a habit, I want to be Neil Gaiman, I want to see how much money I can make, I don't want to die in obscurity, and it's a hobby.

I remember that I came to some deep conclusion about why my writing is still valuable and brilliant beyond those five reasons, but I forgot it after we got to Costco and my aunt gave me money to get a Coke, which I drank as I planned out my villains' complicated schemes and wrote about Chris and Avalon killing moths with water guns.

Then I realized something. No matter how stupid it may be, no matter how selfish and petty a reason it is, I understood what made writing worth it. I get to tell people that I'm writing a part of my story where a guy and his dead girlfriend, brought back in his fantasies, run around in a library full of never-written books, shooting matter-eating moths with water guns. I'm reasonably certain that I'm the only person on Earth who can make those claims. (Unless someone else has written this and I wasn't aware of it, in which case I intensely want to meet this person and become their new best friend.) So I write to feel good about myself and be impressive? Well, I don't see anything wrong with that. Not right now, anyway. Does this benefit other human beings beyond myself? Maybe. But I'm deriving a whole lot of pleasure from it, and while I typically disapprove of my doing things that benefit only my pleasure, today is the day where I do What I Want To Do, and I honestly don't care. I think this is a good thing.

April 20 - Giving up, word counts, and not giving up.

I do not characterize myself as one who gives up, but I have given up. Not on The Week of Dreams, though. No. I'm not that much of a quitter. But I have given up on updating this blog every day (as though that were not completely obvious), and I have given up on writing a novel. The Week of Dreams can't possibly be a novel. Maybe if I'd written it so that it could take place over a longer period of time, it could be. But The Week of Dreams is, well, over the course of a week. It's hard to cram, what, 50,000 words into a week.

I'm at 15,000 words or so right now. I'm impressed with myself. I probably shouldn't be impressed. It's a sign of narcissism or something. (That said, I admittedly do have a big ego. I admit this fact. I say it's better than the crippingly low self-esteem that I see in artistic types to the point where it must be some kind of requirement.) But I am impressed at my word count. So what if it only makes my work a novella? Novellas are legitimate. So what if Mr. Powers wanted me to write a novel for this class, not a novella? He knows that I write novellas, not novellas, I told him so. So what if it - actually, no, I can't think of anymore valid "so whats". But yes, to the only actual "so whats" that I can think of - that's what!

So I won't give up. I'll give up on some things - like writing this blog daily (not important) or writing a novel (novellas are valid). But I will not give up on the writing. No. That's the important thing. Writing this piece is the thing that matters. And I will not give up. I'm not that much of a quitter. I do not characterize myself as one who gives up.

April 17 - Accomplishments before lunchtime, laziness, and upsetting things.

You know what's a nice feeling? Getting the 1,000 words in before lunchtime. I always consider an accomplishment to be even bigger if it happens before lunchtime (such as seeing the everyday worst of humanity before lunchtime, which happened to me recently - strange day, and I don't want to summarize it here, but I had doughnuts and diet Coke for lunch afterwards and then I went to a bookstore, where I overreacted with happy fits to everything there that I liked.)

Anyhow. Yes. I got my 1,000 words in, and I decided not to really write anymore. Why? Because...I don't know, I guess I'm a lazy writer. I get something done, I don't want to work at it anymore. I get the bare minimum accomplished and I don't want to keep making it better. I actually feel bad about myself right now. If it weren't so late (it's late for me, anyway), I would actually get to work on it. Well, maybe I should get to work anyway. Just get a couple hundred words in or so.

I keep wondering how much I should tell about what I'm writing as I write it. I wonder if that spoils anything. Well, I'll give a mild spoiler. All my characters (other than the dead girlfriend) have gathered at a restaurant in the mind of one of the people and they're about to see what food tastes like in dreams. While they do so, they're going to talk about all this business with the otherselves and innerworlds, and it will get a bit serious with some of them getting rather upset. Nothing really upsetting has happened yet. And I need some upsetting things now. (Why is that demand so funny?) Well, this feels like a midway point or something (I'm only at 13,000 words now, and I'm really quite sure this will be a novella.) It's the midway point where things need to get truly upsetting, I think. Bad things will happen from here. But if I were to reveal what they were, then I'd really be giving out spoilers, wouldn't I?

I shall refrain from spoilers. Even though the words are getting all wavery in front of my eyes (not too wavery, just somewhat), I will try to write. Yes.

April 14 - What I've learned from Doctor Who, action, and averted spoilers.

One thing that Doctor Who has taught me (and it's taught me a good many things) is how action in stories can exist. Most of what I read before getting into Doctor Who consisted of The Great Gatsby, A Wrinkle in Time, Catcher in the Rye, stuff like that. And there is some action in some of those books (except not Catcher in the Rye...nothing actually happens in Catcher in the Rye). For example, at the risk of giving spoilers, something happens with Gatsby's car (spoiler: Daisy runs over a drunk woman). And in A Wrinkle in Time...I guess there's a little action there. Not much, really. No, not really.

But Doctor Who...that's a different story. And most of it is in the form of running. If you watch Doctor Who, I'm sure you know this fact. There's an outrageous amount of running involved. (Or, as the band Chameleon Circuit puts it, "An awful lot of running...to dooooo-ooooh....") And furthermore, there is monster-fighting, but not in terms of "brute strength and ray guns saves the day". I mean, the Doctor is clever when he battles the monsters. Ever noticed that? For example, in "The Eleventh Hour", he doesn't actually physically fight Prisoner Zero. He takes pictures of it. But in a brilliant kind of way. Or you can go further, like in "School Reunion", where he uses sound, oil from the monsters themselves, and a tin dog to rise victorious. Or you can go back even further than that, to "The Sontaran Experiment", where good ol' Tom Baker gets Harry to disable the monster's energy supply while engaging it in a swordfight. Well, the monster has a sword; the Doctor has a large stick, which is a result of the Doctor being...well, the Doctor.

That large chunk of fan enthusiasm was to bring back my own point that, if action scenes need to happen, they ought to be clever and involve more than just blow-by-blow battle accounts or unnecessary shootouts. At least, that's my theory. Actually, there's nothing inherently wrong with blow-by-blow battle accounts or unnecessary shootouts, as long as they're interesting. It could be fun to watch on film. But that's my trouble; I don't have film. I'm a writer of the written word, so if it's not interesting to read, it's not good. I find it difficult to make my running scenes interesting (and there's quite a bit of running in this story - every time I plan out running in my outlines, I write, in parentheses, "Awful lot of running to do", to remind myself. I'm not sure what I'm reminding myself of, but I am reminding myself anyway.)

Wit is interesting to read. Cleverness is interesting to read. Problem-solving is interesting to read. And our protagonist Chris is a problem-solver. The type of action is always interesting because it takes place in psychological dream worlds, where everything they fight is created by the character's worries and fears. I've already written the first action scene, which involves moths that eat beautiful, impossible artifacts, and I can't tell you how it ends, but it involves a very large sunflower. And today, I am going to write another action scene, which involves humanoid creatures in a bleak wasteland, and I can't tell you how it ends, either, but it involves vinegar. Chris can do all this because he's a problem-solver. This is one of his good points and one of the reasons he's resiliant enough to go through life unscathed. His friend Keith is mentally unstable, and the smallest stress sets him off. He can't solve his own problems like Chris can solve his, which is why they're so different. So not only are my action scenes entertaining, they highlight the differences between two of the characters and explain why one of them can manage life as he does. Tim Powers told us that every scene we write should do more than one thing. Because of how the action is written, it's always doing quite a few things. That's what action should be like. It should always have a purpose. All of it should have a purpose.

April 13 - Over 9,000, characters, and plotless psychology.

So far, I am at over 9,000 words as far as the progress of The Week of Dreams goes. (And yes, I deliberately phrased that to reference the "over 9,000" meme.) Everyone I know is impressed. Actually, I'm impressed, too. I don't think I've ever made progress like this before. Hooray for progress.


I may have only gotten this far because I've been sick this whole week. I've stayed home from school every day this week (except on Wednesday). That gave me the time to write. (It also gave me the time to goof off on the internet, watch Doctor Who, make scarves, go to the doctor, excessively text message my friends, and buy They Might Be Giants and Legendary Pink Dots albums, but I obviously refused to let that stuff interfere with my writing.) I could say of this story that it was "conceived in health, born in sickness". Though that's a bit too flowery, even for me.


I'm so far at a point where all the major characters have been introduced - Chris (everyman narrator who hides his fantasies from everyone else), Keith (mentally ill painter who wants to explain everything), Tackett (cheerful and eccentric but also serious keeper of Chris's dreams), Frell (joking, regretful keeper of Keith's dreams), and Avalon (Chris's dead ex-girlfriend, reincarnated in his dreams, loving and sad). Actually, these would seem to be the only characters in the story. So yes. The main ones are the only ones. Except for Chris's mother. She shows up at the beginning and a few times towards the middle, and at the end, but there's really not many scenes with her. She just...exists.


My main concern with this story is whether or not it's going to have much of a plot. The trouble is, I'm calling it a "psychological fantasy" right now, and "psychological" things tend to be low on plot because they're too busy being "psychological". This is one of the reasons I got into fantasy - so I could actually learn how to construct a plot. It seems to be turning counterproductive on me. However, I will construct some kind of plot (for example, one of Chris's innerworlds suffers from an invasion of moths - inspired by my bedroom's current infestation of moths and my general dislike/fear of those insects - and they must find the source, which also has a real-life source manifesting itself as a metaphor). And furthermore, Chris will have real-life concerns that he must decide to choose over his fantasies.


I really am excited about writing this, though. I really am. And after finishing this blog post, I'm going to go to my moth-infested room and keep writing.

April 12 - Lost momentum, M.C. Escher, and self-analysis

This is the point at which the writing has actually gotten somewhat slightly hard. Which is absurd if you consider that it's only been, what, six days. Then again, if you think that it's been 8,000 words (which isn't a whole lot, but...you know, it's still words), then that makes some more sense.
I told myself I didn't need to know where the story was going, entirely. I thought that the concept was intriguing enough to carry itself. I should never fall into that trap again. I know I will. It's inevitable, like death, taxes, having your heart broken (unless, like me, you don't go in for love), and bad cake. (Seriously, cake can be really good, but it can be really bad.)

Yesterday, I did not want to write my 1,000 words. But I did. And I'm at 8,000 words now instead of 7,000. It's been interesting; I've been sick all this week and I haven't gone to school at all except for yesterday. Which I went to solely on account of my novel-writing class told by the magnificent Mr. Powers (yes, Tim Powers of On Stranger Tides fame). Except he wasn't there. There was a substitute - Ms. Freshwater of...not-really-anything fame, I don't think. She's a nice teacher and all, but she's not Mr. Powers. But I did get my 1,000 words written in that class. Or after it. Well, I did some writing during that time, which is what matters. I think.

I wasn't incredibly happy with what I wrote. Mostly it was just sending Chris (my narrator, if I haven't already established that - I can't remember) and Tackett (Chris's otherself) into an M.C. Escher meets Alice in Wonderland-style house. It didn't really serve any purpose (I think a lot of scenes of this book aren't going to serve any purpose beyond being cool and dream-like and psychological). But it did establish what my characters are dealing with.

There seems to be this running theme of M.C. Escher-like stuff. One of the characters (Keith, the insane painter) lives in an apartment that "make[s] one think it was the result of M.C. Escher experimenting with three-dimensional architecture". I was about to write "(Conlee [page number])" after that, like how you do for quotes when you're writing MLA-format essays. I've been working on my Dracula essay too long. But hey, I'm proud of it.

I digress. The Escher thing. Keith also paints in an Escher-like style (or he's experimenting with it; he gets more into it as the story goes on). I think it's because Escher's stuff looks like either reality trying to manifest itself in an impossible world or impossibility trying to manifest itself in a realistic world. (This is where I point you to TVTropes and their article on "Alien Geometries".) Also, there seems to be this thing with Alice in Wonderland, too. What with the first dream world being described as like falling through a rabbit hole, and Frell's Cheshire Cat smile (he's Keith's otherself), or even this thing for checkerboard (Tackett's got a checkerboard tie and the Escher house has a checkered floor). Someone entering a world of their own invention that reflects itself in their dreams. That makes perfect sense, actually. I love analyzing my work like I didn't write it.

And this is the part where I legitimately get onto my work. Yes, it is.

April 9 - Food, trying to be Neil Gaiman, and food again

It has occurred to me that The Week of Dreams may actually be my first piece of writing to depict anyone eating. There was a short story, "Jeremy", which had a part where the title character was given some cake, but he didn't eat it. (Or, if I remember correctly, he didn't eat it. Or it didn't say. Though he was taking an awful lot of painkillers. But I don't count that as eating.)


Seriously, though, what is this thing where I don't talk about eating? Is it this weird reverse oral fixation thing, where I just don't depict it a lot? That said, I do enjoy food quite a bit. But that could be it; food is a mundane pleasure for me that has no place in the realms of fantasies or unpleasant stories. That is, "mundane pleasures" will not occur in stories that are not mundane and/or pleasurable.


Or it could be that I'm reading American Gods and there are a number of references to eating in it (such as Odin taking all the mythological gods out to dinner after they ride the world's largest carousel - I love being able to say things like that out of context). You know how you might experiment with trying to be a writer you like - you might try to be F. Scott Fitzgerald, or C.S. Lewis, or That Creative Writing Teacher You Had Two Years Ago - well, I'm trying to be Neil Gaiman. Which is actually pretty helpful. His sentences are always masterfully crafted, and whenever I'm staring down a sentence that doesn't want to be so cooperative, I just think, "What Would Gaiman Do?" and fix it accordingly. Do you see what I mean?


I ought to get back to writing. I don't think I've done even 500 yet, and I am very much sticking to my "1,000 words a day" rule. I am. What's giving me trouble is, well, food. I'm quite serious. I don't know what my main character's favorite food should be, and that comes up in a very important way. He comes home to find his otherself (sort of a dream-keeping doppelganger) raiding the fridge or cupboard or whatever and eating his favorite food, but I don't know what the favorite food should be. It should be something kind of odd - like fish and custard, maybe, but of course I can't use fish and custard. (The BBC probably wouldn't like it, and I'd have lots of Doctor Who fans realizing how much my works are a ripoff of their beloved program.) I was thinking about having him take meat (any kind of meat, I guess - like beef patty or something), put it in a bowl of milk, and microwave that for thirty seconds or something, but then I realized how disgusting that sounded. It's not even silly, like fish and custard. Maybe he should just like pickles or something. No. Pickles are cliche. I honestly believe that. I must stay away from the cliche of pickles.


I know. He slices up mangoes, puts a little bit of salt on them, and microwaves them in a bowl full of milk. That's it. Actually, that's a pretty good one. It's not too wacky and doesn't sound too disgusting. Sounds like something my little sister would eat. I have figured out my narrator's favorite food and I can continue writing. See, I knew this blog would be useful. I just figured out my character's favorite food, and the writing can commence as usual. I knew this would be good for something.

The first post, the one that explains everything.

It's been a long time since I've actually blogged. It really has. I used to maintain a blog some years back (when I was...what, thirteen, perhaps? That's a strange thought). Most of it was amusing anecdotes about my little sister, random thoughts and sayings, and semi-sarcastic fan remarks about Pink Floyd. (Incidentally, I still like relating amusing anecdotes about my little sister and random thoughts and sayings. And I still like Pink Floyd, though I haven't been producing so many semi-sarcastic fan remarks since then.)

But I digress. This blog is called "In which Jude writes", which is what I'm talking about here. Or trying to. Those of you who know me know that I am a writer, and that I take this idea somewhat seriously. (As for those of you who don't know me...I honestly don't know how you found this blog, and I know even less why you're bothering to read it.)

Furthermore, the ones who know me will also know that I try to write novels. Yeah, emphasis on "try". But I came up with a beautiful system with which to help me actually write novels. The system is called "1,000 words a day" and "In which Jude writes". That is, the strategy of writing 1,000 words a day (obviously) and maintaining a blog about writing.

The idea of the writing blog is that, not only will I be able to measure my own progress, I'll also have people comment on it and tell me things like, "Yay, Jude, you're an awesome writer!" or "You call that 'progress'?" or "Dude, your narrator's middle name should totally be Alberto." (I don't know, Alberto was the first name I could think of.)

I'll blog about novel-writing (especially a novel/la that I'm working on right now, tentatively titled "The Week of Dreams"). And poem-writing. And short story-writing, though I don't do much of that. (I should fix that.) But I will blog about writing. And I will hopefully stay on track most of the time.