{ 19 } "Are You Dead?"

I get this question a lot. I haven't posted a writing blog since September of '10, for goodness sake. No wonder everyone thinks I'm dead. To make matters even worse, I haven't been on Facebook since November! I guess I would think I was dead, too.

But, since I'm writing in the first person, I must not be dead (or, before I died, I programmed a robot that could emulate me perfectly). Actually, I went from working out of town overnight to working in town at the crack of dawn. Apparently my creativity flows best while drinking at 7 a.m., something I'm no longer able to do... Sigh...

Per usual, however, my little dancing creativity man has reared his beautiful head, propelling me in to a new project.

You might be now asking yourself: "What happened to the old projects, Little Miss Scatter Brain?" Well, let me give you the rundown, much like in my last post...

- Working on HOS? Still, not lately. It's in my brain, but that hasn't changed since, oh, 1998.

- Working on that YA novel? I've kicked around a few words here and there, but I've seemed to have lost the narrative. I'm at Point A, and I know where Point B is, but getting there is HELL.

- Getting the self-published project off the ground? If I could actually find things in my office, this would be a done deal. Since I last discussed it in March '10, nothing has changed except the death of the guinea pig (R.I.P, Matty Piginoink, Jan. '07 - Feb. '11). It's still a giant storage unit, but now with 50% less animal poop and 300% more VHS tapes!

- Any new "Dave" episodes? Yeah, right. Keep the dream alive.

- Examiner.com? Wasn't that paying you? I've learned that there is a fine line between "paying" me and "promising" to pay me. Yes, I'm still writing for them, but not with the frequency I once was. Yes, I still enjoy it. No, I have not seen a dime. Blarg.

- For the love of Christ, B! What have you been doing, creativity-wise? Very little, as of recent. Art is HARD, dammit!

Let me tell, you however, about the way my creativity works, chemically. It reaches into your brain chemically, and then it locates your happiest memory chemically, then it locks onto that emotion and freezes it chemically, and then it keeps you happy, happy. ... Wait, wait. That's Gleemonex, not my creativity.

Here's what my creativity actually does: it forces me to get up five minutes after I go to bed, jot down 65 words, then go to sleep only to wake up the next morning to spin them in to 2500 words. It's pretty cool/creepy, and it totally happened last week.

Basically I wrote 85% of a prologue to a new book. It's good. It's really, really good. It's so damn good that when I get the prologue to 100%, I'm going to post it. And you will all cheer. Keep your eyes open.

More later, True Believers.