Tuesday, December 18, 2001
This morning, I started off with the aforementioned Ritual of Procrastination (see my entry for 11 December) and by noon I was beginning to worry that this might not be the day that I get the novel going after all. But sometime around one o'clock I forced myself sit down, shut the door to my office, put on the headphones, and start typing.
It rained all afternoon and I listened to The Doors, mostly "The End," "Riders on the Storm," and "Touch Me" - I often wind up with a song on repeat, not realizing that I've been letting just that one song play over and over and over again for an hour. That would drive a sane person mad, right? But, anyhow, rain and four hours' worth of The Doors and in the end I had the prologue of Low Red Moon, which, at least for now, is called "Providence." The prologues of Silk and Threshold were also both written in single sittings, so hopefully it's a sign that I'm off to a good start.
But it was a suprisingly unsavory beginning, even for my stuff, taking me a little off guard, and I was left feeling disoriented and jumpy and in need of a long, hot shower. That doesn't happen very often, fortunately. That I write something which actually upsets me while I'm writing it (or afterwards, for that matter). It's happened with a few of the short stories - "San Andreas," "Two Worlds, and In Between," "Rats Live on No Evil Star" - and with the climax of Silk, the scene where we finally see what happened to Spyder Baxter when she was a child, locked up in the basement with her crazy father. I started writing that scene on Christmas Eve 1995, alone in Athens, Georgia, and finally had to make myself stop working about 9 p.m. and go out to a movie, just to be around other people for a little while. I went to two movies, actually, one right after the other, trying to stay away from the empty house and the things I'd just written there.
I've often argued that authors have a moral obligation, not only to their readers and to themselves, but to their characters (which are, in fact, only facets of themselves). So it seems to me that there's something terrible about taking yourself, and a character that you've created, into such dark places and situations. It's one reason that I maintain that certain sorts of stories should never be viewed merely as entertainment. If nothing else, it's a damned peculiar way to make a living, digging up these thoughts and putting them on display for everyone to see. And I'm starting to ramble . . .
But I've felt distinctly ramblesome most of the evening. Which is also a good sign, a sign that, for the moment, some part of me is lost in the story. I watched some of the Marx Brothers' Monkey Business and that helped a little, and it has stopped raining, and I don't think I'm going to listen to The Doors for a little while.
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