Through The Looking Glass

So.

Have not been posting as much as I've meant to.  This is entirely due to the fact that I can't write a novel and anything else at the same time.  I have tried.  I admire those that blog and build their 'platform' - which is so key to what indie authors need to do these days - and I admire the hell out of authors who can produce quality material at a decent pace, since that's also apparently something we need to do. 

In just about every other aspect of my life, I can multi-task like no one's business.  Not when it comes to writing.  I have to focus on what I'm working on to the point that I can't really see what's in front of me.  And that's really the problem.  I've talked quite a bit before about my struggles with the Big Damn Epic.  Over the last several years, it has taken this strange place in my life.  The elephant in the room.  The monkey on my back.  Alternately it feels like I'm turning into Axl Rose, and this is 'Chinese Democracy,' or I'm Brian Wilson, and in my head at least, this is 'Smile.'  Either way, I feel a bit cracked.  And clearly delusional.  And lost. 




Any time over the last few years I get any traction on what I think the BDE is, I get stuck in the mud.  The novel literally exists in four (five?) different versions, all of them perfectly legitimate, and I'm sure all of them sufficient at least to call it good.

  • The original BDE, and its various drafts
  • The BDE through the lens of a more Indiana Jones type thing, if Indy were an asshole
  • The BDE from the POV of a man who has outlived most of existence, which produced some of my favorite writing but painted a big picture of how outlived this idea is
  • And most recently, and promisingly, I began a novel set a planet where night comes only once a year.  The idea was to approach it as sort of a sci-fi John Hughes.  I really liked this idea.  The issue is the world of the novel filled in with all the unused architecture of the BDE, and before I knew it, it was transforming into the BDE. 
The only thing I know is that this idea, this world, won't let me alone.  The issue has always been how to express this idea.  And the real issue I think has been myself.  As I said, any of one these versions of the book would have been fine in their own right.  I doubt each one, to the point that I'm pretty sure - only pretty sure - that I had the right approach before, and didn't trust myself.

We'll see.  The idea lives, in my head at least.  God willing it will live on paper.

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