Writing burns

I am writing.

I’m not sure what I’m writing but writing anything at all, even this, seems worthwhile.

I have stories on the go. I have J---- S--- mid-flight and I have S-- B------ on the run. I have S------ and R---- somewhere in space and Christopher, Livia, Candy, Wolfgang et al everywhere at once. I have Westerns and comedies and love and hate and all get-out.

You know what I seem to lack? Actual stories. An actual story, like a joke, has three steps. Without the three steps, neither a story nor a joke is really worth a toss. You can’t be working on two steps of a joke. You can’t have a joke about two rabbis and an Irishman on the go. You’ve either got all three steps, and maybe you’re tightening it up, or you’ve got nothing whatsoever.

I seem to have dozens of started stories, which collectively add up to nothing. In this context, a story as simple as Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Girl, Girl Is A Vampire would be something – anything - a winner. Many writers discuss needing an actual story before you begin your writing. Others believe you can find your actual story through the process of writing it. My experience, being the lessons of those things I actually somehow finished, supports the former opinion and pounds the latter opinion into a bloody, pizza-shaped mess.

But I wish it were that simple. Having an actual story isn’t a free pass to a finished work of narrative art. On the contrary, on the fucking contrary, having an actual story also means having a new world of problems. An actual story needs to be done right. An actual story isn’t going to surprise you. An actual story is going to take work and effort and craft and courage and discipline to manifest. An actual story is a pain in the arse.

Say after me: being a writer is a pain in the arse. There’s no escaping that, unless you’re a writer who’s organised and functional and wouldn’t even be reading this in the first place. How do we embrace this pain? How, when the TV is just there and the webtube is just there and look, there’s a bird and that wall could do with some new art. Sure, we can consider the pain a short-term condition leading to long-term improvement in our condition. Good luck with that. I hate to tell you, there’s no guarantee these words are going to lead to anything other than new kinds of heartbreak and frustration you can’t even imagine yet. To live with the pain, you need to be having just a little, just a tiny little smidgeon of fun.

Now, if you know how to keep the fun in your writing process, word after word, time after gut-wrenching time, please share. You are amazing and I must eat your still-beating heart so I can absorb your mysteries. Here on Earth, fun wanes like yesterday’s erections and all that’s left are the one-dimensional characters and their seemed-good-at-the-time predicament, going nowhere just like me. Some parts of the process are fun, I’m sure I remember that, but creating little fun bridges over the chasms of despair between them is just as difficult as … as … damn, lost my concentration for a sec there.

So, in the absense of solving the impossible upfront, I’m going to consider this: if plotting your story’s three steps is a critical part of the process, what’s a good way to get that shit happening? I’m going to consider that as I go home now, then later while I eat my dinner, then again while I’m falling asleep. And hopefully, when I wake up tomorrow, you might have an answer for me.