It’s been a long time coming, but I’ve finally built up a sufficient head of steam that I feel comfortable saying a few words about a current work in progress. As I’m writing, it feels like a short story in waiting. As of last night it’s 2904 words and will most likely offend those with deep religious convictions. Being an offensive douche wasn’t really where this all started out (and it’s still not my intent), but any time you so much as touch on Christianity and are anything but strictly differential to the Almighty, there’s a certain subset of the population who will get their knickers in a twist. That’s ok. They’re entitled. As I’ve said before, opinions are like certain anatomical orifices – everybody’s got one and needs to use it often.
The fun (and admittedly frustrating) part of this whole effort is that after tinkering around for a couple of weeks, I actually have no idea where it’s going, how it will end, or what the point of the whole exercise is. There’s no outline. No concept map. Every day I sit down, re-read what I wrote the day before, and then have a little exercise in free writing. I’d like to bring the draft in around 10,000 words, but I’d be happy with anything from 8,000 to 12,000. Really, the plan is to just keep plugging away until it feels like something close enough to done to justify pasting it with the “first draft” label and chunking it over into my version of the editorial process. I’m not bold enough to even suggest a date when that might happen, though. It’s just going to take as long as it takes.
I’m not going to sit here on a sunday morning with a few thousand words on the page and guess whether it will be good or bad. At best, I can promise that it will be. That may not sound like much, but for a guy who’s been taking about trying his hand at fiction since high school, it’s a pretty big deal.
