Now if I can put my serious pants on for a second, I'll provide some sort of update as to what's been going on lately and why you've seen a trickling decline of posts over the past few months.
I am creatively bankrupt.
No really, I am. One might attribute it to random spikes of crippling depression and self-loathing incapacitating my work ethic, an exhaustion of ideas that I could enjoy working with, or judging from my recent pieces over the past year, a pursuit of something more significant. You can check the box in for all three.
As school has come barreling in and the time to sit back inside the hole in my wall is slowly disappearing in favor if big scary grown-up problems compounded by agonizing moodswings, I can't fucking keep up anymore. It has put a halt on what I want to write, what I want to do with these little fables of mine. Funny stories are good. Funny stories stick with people and put a smile on their face when they think about it. And I'm grateful that the small niche of the internet I sit in still remembers some of those stories about random murderous rampages, drug-induced deliriums, and frankly fucked-up bullshit most people care to turn a blind eye to. But to me, they've become like one-night stands. They're fun, I'll remember them, but I won't really remember them for anything significant other than the experience I've gained in pleasuring an audience with more than one kind of wooden utensil. They're cheap fun thrills is what they are. But they aren't really anything significant or important. And frankly, I feel like I've exhausted that spectrum of writing that relies PURELY on shock humor and horror to amuse people. Note the word “purely”, as I could never stop writing stories without having elements of that style of humor with them. It's just what I do.
But bear in mind that a lot of these horrific stories as noted in the heading of the blog if any of you have read it, are power trips. A lot of these stories are written due to a power struggle, to self-insert oneself into a situation where one is no longer completely powerless in a terrible situation, but in the irony of humor becomes one of the most despicable human beings alive. It's to show how people are miserable but even given the strength to overcome a situation often abuse it and just go fucking nuts, or something. I'm not sure myself. But while still there, there really isn't much of a power struggle in my life anymore to constitute writing those kinds of stories as often. I don't feel like going on random tangents where I fight my way out of Hell to arm-wrestle with Zeus on the moon while a herd of goats are fucking in a crater. Although that actually sounds like an awesome story, so I might capitalize on that idea further some other time.
So I've been trying to write a lot of things. Psychological horror. Mystery. Fantasy. Tragedy. Drama. A lot of them feel something close to comfortable, but aren't there just yet. So yes, there will be a tonal shift in some of the stories I'm going to write. Not all of them are going to be funny. Not all of them are going to be morbid and corrosive. In fact while a lot of these feel right to do, I'm exiting my comfort zone. I've never had to portray serious drama before. I never tried to write a tragedy to evoke sorrow out of somebody. I never tried to paint abject terror without attempting to be ironic. Or oddly enough, I've never really written anything really, well, happy. Maybe happy in that “oh that cynical motherfucker got his revenge and satisfaction” sort of way, but nothing really heartwarming.
So I'm trying to take that narrative voice of mine and I'm trying something different. Not all of it will be what you people are used to, and you might not certainly enjoy the change in pace. And it will probably take a lot more time because now I'm writing a lot more for myself here. And instead of winging a story and finishing one in a sitting at the spur of a moment, I'm taking weeks, if not months figuring out what the Hell I'm trying to convey, or what the Hell I'm feeling while I write some of this tripe. Note that this isn't going to be completely different than what I write; from what I'm told I have a fairly distinct narrative voice that I probably couldn't change even if I wanted to. I'll still have the dry sarcasm, the bluntness, the language I typically use. Just expect some stories that are a bit different, and I'm just going to need a little more time than usual.
With that said, I have some shit in the pipeline. NaNoWriMo gave me a new novel idea that despite not finishing is still in the works. My Dear Remi is actually going fairly well and I'm fleshing out the purpose of that novel a bit more extensively, and I've been dancing around the possibility of kicking Beautiful World back up some time. Again, a lot of ideas being started, but none really being completed. Much like life, there are some pieces where I actually want to revisit, to continue whatever storyline that might be in there. But that's up to the discretion of whether or not it's appropriate. Sometimes something deserves to be carried on, to be continued. But as much as you want it, some of it also needs to be let go and you just got to leave it as it is. So I'm sorting that out as well. But last thing I have to say is that expect SOMETHING in the coming week or so. I got some wind behind my sails so there should be a new piece coming.
I hope.
