I'm not going to write a story today, he said, opening another beer. I'm going to break something.
I'm going to take something I've taken for granted, and grant it its final reprieve. Break my pens, snap them over a fire and let the ink dot the embers a new shade of black.
All I write about are things, and colors, and scenes, but not people, not feelings, not complex emotions and negotiations and mistakes.
Characters that do, but don't analyze themselves. There's a lack of a mirror that's prevalent in life.
A pathway that's so smooth and slippery and easy to slide down, because you know it doesn't end in spikes, that come 9, 10pm at night and you know you have to write something, you find it time and time again as the easy thing to do.
But does it sharpen your senses? Does it push your limits, your safeties, fire your guards and kick down the golden gates of your shielded communities to embrace the weird, the torn, the scarred beyond?
Is this a path I can take, he said, opening another beer. Had he finished the first one?
Where to draw from, what well opens up to this new light - no, not things, not scenes - this new joy, this new fear? This anxiety and wonderment and hurt?
Paint over your scars long enough, it'll just replace one for another.
I know these rooms well enough, and that's not to say that I couldn't design them better - but you've got to leave the house in order to get a fresh perspective, don't you?
But after you open that wide front door and the sun beats down upon you, where do you go from there?
and then you ask what mindset to be? that's when you stop seeking a mindset to be... and stop being.
btw i love the juxtaposition between are struggles. i notice i can't make my characters do anything at all. all they do is self examine. must make them do something... other. than. drinking. beer. and. smoking. cigarettes. and. thinking. about. themselves. and. their. place. in. the. created. world. in. their. heads. so. detached. from. reality.
they have so much power to make a single incision, but how often do they
or should they?
maybe they are training, and maybe they are a main course at an $80 a plate restaurant where if you math it out, that sprig of mint on your plate is something you paid $14 for
i think i just need to steal more
if you don't mind laying your keys on the table?
This obsession with affect may not be serving me well though.
If i were to lay the keys out then it wouldn't be stealing would it?