Reformatting February

For the past several years, February has just been an inordinately difficult month for me. That's when I've tended to get dumped, laid off my jobs, have fallings-out with friends, and so on. Despite its containing the birthdays of lots of my favorite people, I've just identified all too well with Dar Williams' song, named for the month, in which she declares that she has "lost to February."


Then, I realized something the other day: This year, this February, however, I did not have the urge to listen to that song a single time. In the past month, some other tunes that have been stuck in my head have changed as well.

It was:

I had resigned myself to probably never actually finishing this novel I've been working on (in an on-again/off-again sort of way) for a while. I was stuck on a major plot point that kept me from knowing where the rest of the story was going to go. Furthermore, the 30,000 words I had written were in notebooks that seemed to have gotten lost when I moved.

Aside from the fiction-writing, the site that was paying me to write started presenting just problem after problem. It went from being mediocre to hateful in a very short span of time, so that by the time I'd finished with that for the day, the last thing I felt like doing any more of was writing. Pop Bunker was the exception, as a relatively pressure-free environment where I could just write a few hundred words of what I felt like and know that a couple of nerds would laugh either at or with me over it.

Add to the professional and creative failures this feeling of social detachment because I couldn't afford to go out and do anything, seeing my friends and family depressed at their own crummy work/social/financial/creative situations, homesickness, and middle-of-the-night loneliness, and yeah, I was on team LifeSucks.

but now it's more like:

But then, just standing in the shower one night, this simple, painfully obvious solution to my plot problem just hit me over the head with staggering force. I dried off, made some notes, and decided I'd just start over if I had to, because after that moment of inspiration, I just saw the entire book unfold before me. But wait! There's more! As I rummaged through drawers in search of a pencil sharpener the other night, I found the missing notebooks! After the new revelation, a lot of those 30k or so words are going to end up on the cutting room floor, but there's a lot in there that I want to keep! I started writing the new beginning, and I think it'll shape up nicely.

As for the paying work, I've got a couple of new avenues I'm pursuing. One mostly involves ghostwriting and general online copywriting. The other is a job I'll report to, which has nothing to do with writing, but depending on how it goes, could be an excellent source of income, allow for a pretty flexible schedule, and let me travel a bit - and maybe rack up some frequent flier points, which brings me to the next change.

Socially, well, things are definitely looking up there as well. It seems like lots of friends are finally catching a break here and there, and there's a general upswing in the mood of those around me. I've been able to visit with a friend who's in town for work, spend some time getting to know some newer friends, and catch up at length with some long-standing friends who had fallen out of touch or been stuck in phone-tag limbo. Also, here's where the frequent flier points come in handy - I've met a boy! A really awesome one! It's new and involves a long distance, but I have a really good feeling about it. When I find myself continually looking over my shoulder to see who he's talking to, then realizing with delight that it's actually me... yeah, that's worth putting up with some inconvenient miles and wait-and-seeing.

It had been brought to my attention that I've been lax in my updates of late, but there you have it - so far, the Metal Tiger has been here for two things: to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and he's all out of bubblegum.

Writer's Blockhead

I spent the majority of last night with my friend Sam, discussing our respective novel-writing. While I'm glad to have had this conversation and feel rejuvenated and excited about a project I've been lacking interest in, I'm still stumped on one point.

Villain of the Day: ?????

Whether it's true or not, I've convinced myself that I can't keep writing this book before I truly understand my antagonist. The thing that kills me is that, once upon a time, I did. I was on a road trip and while soaking up the sun on my face along the open road, inspiration struck. I pulled over and used my trusty Sharpie (attached to my keyring so I'm never without a writing instrument) to scribble my ideas on my arm. Feeling better, I resumed my trip, reached my destination, and proceeded to shower off the road-funk... and my brilliant villain. No matter how much I wrack my brain, it's gone.

I've tried to tell myself that it's enough for my villain to simply be a representative of Evil in the classic, eternal struggle versus Good, but I can't accept it. If I can't accept it, how will my reader? This is a work of Urban Fantasy we're talking about, by the way. Angels, oracles, sandmen, soul mates - these beings are real, among others, and what's more, they've been done. I flatter myself that I'm doing them differently, not just presenting them as belonging to their classic archetypes. What does that mean for the purposes of this dilemma? It means that it's not enough to say the bad guy wants to foil the good guy because he's the bad guy.

Now that the sun has come out, I think I'll go for a jog (this is, by the way, workout #3 of the Couch to 5k program) and hope that, at the most inconvenient time, a muse will visit me again.