My Novels

Friday, June 06, 2003

What oh what to write in this entry? I have been neglecting this journal again, and with no good excuse. I'm sure that there MUST be more interesting things to write about than my daily life: boring! The routine tedium of constant dieting and exercise, trivia of grocery shopping, housework, etc.

I've been going through a spell of itching to write fiction again, and it reminds me of how before I wrote my dozen or so novels, I always wanted to write, but had nothing to write about. When you enter the world of a fictional creation, there's always plenty of drama and danger to write about, which takes you AWAY for mundane reality. Ah yes, that's why I began fiction writing! And why I miss it so much now.

I miss the grand vista of creative writing, and the escapism...as one writer so aptly put it:

This, of course, is one of the greatest things about novels, and is something I've started to enjoy in my own writing more and more in the last several years - this chance to completely leave the real world behind and to create whatever kind of flights of fancy one may want. Writer as God is an oft-used cliche, but it's a cliche in the first place precisely because it's so true; with an omniscient blink of an eye, a writer can make whatever changes to the natural universe he wants to, including stopping time and getting rid of gravity, and all it takes to enact the change is one command to his typing fingers of, `Thy will be done." --J. Pettus

There is a vast difference between writing in this journal and/or factual writing and creative writing. For example, consider the pedestrian tone of this journal compared to this flight of fiction fancy:

He never played by the rules, for why should he? Playing by the rules was for suckers, squares, idiots that thought the world was ordered according to rules when all it took was one look at the wealthy and powerful to know they didn't play by the rules.

He looked out over the clifftop, seeing the diamond-glint of city lights far below, the hundreds of houses and citizens living their little antlike lives, and knew he could touch any one of them he chose. He could start the car, drive down the highway a few miles and secretly, silently enter any of their homes, disturb their narrow, well-mannered lives and wreak havoc. Ah, the power of not living by rules, it was heady and gave him a rush equaled only by cocaine and sex.


That isn't from a novel, it's just something I wrote on the spur of the moment here. Is it worth pursuing? Who is this mysterious monstrous man? I don't know...but I MIGHT be able to breathe life into him via a story. Is it worth telling? Anyone care to let me know their thoughts via email? If so, drop me a line!


Rainy here all day, so I've been stuck indoors -- had to use the ski machine, though less dull now that I can listen to music with the small radio and earphones.

I'll close with this quote:

Work became more important to me as I grew older. When you are very young, there are competing pleasures. Maybe you need less to make yourself happy because everything is new to you. The world of old age is a shrinking world. Smaller things are magnified. It's like childhood. Few people are important to you, but they are VERY important. Little things get bigger. Food becomes more important. It is your work that makes you feel young, not your love affairs. After a certain point, your love affairs make you feel older." --Director Federico Fellini

If this is how it feels as you age, I DO need to start writing fiction again...and SOON! :-)

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