Two of my increasing number of Moleskine notebooks. The red one on the left, complete with Moleskine pen, contains all of my notes for Joshua’s Nightmares so far.
The purple one on the right? That information will have to wait until Monday. I’d like to say I picked a purple Moleskine because it seemed like a mysterious color, but it was actually just a whim decision.
Anyway, Monday’s big reveal. Big news. Good news. Hopefully, and I mean very hopefully, it will result in good progress as well.
This is one of those big, crazy, confusing, and amazing times of tremendous change in my life, where I’m transitioning from one job–the very first job I’ve ever had–to a new job, and I’ve only got two days left there. It’s bittersweet and all, but I’m more focused on how it’s a huge change in my life. One of those “oh-shit-am-I-really-sure-I-know-what-I’m-doing?” changes. So naturally, it’s pretty daunting and my creative thinking processes seem to have handled it in the most appropriate fashion possible by completely shutting down. Those lazy, good-for-nothings. (On a related note, however, I do have a short horror story idea that needs writing once I figure out just what the hell I’m going to do with it.)
As a teaser of sorts, I’d like to say this much (and only this much), and I’ll leave the rest for next Monday: I start my new job next week, and I feel like something new should accompany that. Something new in terms of writing. Ooh, mysterious.
Still doing an absolute ton of world-building for “Joshua’s Nightmares”, and I think I’ve reached the point where if I were to lose my red Moleskine notebook I would also actually lose my mind.
Lastly, given the way last week went, I hope anyone who reads this, their families, friends, and so on, are all safe, happy, and healthy. There’s enough bad shit in the world as it is, so do remember to take care.
Let me start by saying this much: this is my second to last week at my first-ever job, and it has been quite busy. I finished my second of three 3p.m. to 10p.m. shifts in a row, which is a lot more tiring than I’d expected, and so writing’s been minimal at best. Really minimal at best. There’s an idea, drifting about in my brain, for a short horror story.
That much out of the way? Good. Thank god. I hate whiny, personal-blog-stuff me.
I built a very large chunk of the world in “Joshua’s Nightmares” tonight at work (in my trusty red Moleskine notebook, actually). It’s evolving into this big, amazing, surreal thing that I’m slowly falling in love with, which is dangerous for a writer because there’s always the risk it’s actually not nearly as good as I think it is. However, I do have the good fortune of getting universally positive feedback so far.
Building worlds, when my brain permits such activities, is one of my favorite bits of writing (the top favorite being writing villains, which may very well get an entire series of posts dedicated to it and by may very well I mean it actually just will). Sometimes the environment takes a backseat, like with Death at Teatime. The location was irrelevant in the grand scheme of things, so there were just little glimpses of it with the bigger focus on the characters.
There’s just a tremendous joy in building something massive out of what could’ve started as a tiny detail, one little point in a vast landscape, and just going from there.
The Sleep State of “Joshua’s Nightmares” is turning into this massive, and hopefully highly-varied, mix of different locations that I hope will encompass the vast, bizarre realm of dreaming quite well. A taste, just to tease readers of my blog with: there’s an entire landscape that exists in the sky of this world, linked to dreams about flying and such.
At any rate, I hope to get some writing done should I survive the remainder of the week. And by the remainder of the week I mean the insane sale that’s going on tomorrow and Friday.
That frustrating moment when:
And so, the plan from this point is as follows:
Hopefully this will pan out, but I’ve also come to realize most of the time when I make plans, the Universe tends to throw a curveball my way. All I can really say is onwards to creativity.
Phil's Misadventures In Fiction 