Thursday, March 27, 2003
Tapping the Vein blaring through my headphones. Me, trying to wake the fuck up. Harder this morning, a lot harder (no, now it's afternoon, you dumbass), because I had to take a Benadryl last night and it doesn't mix so well with other the pills that I take on a regular basis. Pharmacologica Kiernanii 101. Oh, and I should add a note about my hypochrondria, since, for some reason that shall remain unknown to all but omniscient creatures, I felt compelled to share the fact of it with the world yesterday. I currently recognize two classes of hyprochondriacs: Class A) active hypochondriacs, who go to the doctor at every imagined symptom and often take scads of medicines prescribed by doctors too lazy, greedy, or irritated not to send the person in question to a psychologist instead (or, better yet, just tell them to shut up and go the hell home), and Class B) passive hypochondriacs, who worry constantly over every imagined symptom, thinking themselves always at Death's door, but who steadfastly refuse to go to the doctor, even if they really are ill, especially if they really are ill, and who rarely take medication for their nonexistent illnesses. I'm classic Class B. I almost died four or five times last year alone. No shit. It's a wonder I'm alive to type a single of word of this. You should all be very thankful, to who- or whatever you might bother being thankful to.
Remember when this journal was actually about writing? Before Farscape was cancelled and Bush went on the warpath? Before Eminem won a bleeding Oscar? Well, good, because it's about the be about writing again.
I have to write a proposal today (yesterday, the day before), an outline for a nonexistent novel. Worse still, the novel isn't merely nonexistent, it's unimagined. Because that's the way that I write. Most of the time, I'm running blind. I start Here, at the start, and proceed forward towards There, the fabled point beyond the horizon which I have, in the past, spoken of with such awe and trepidation, that place where The End might be found. That's how I make novels, and short stories, and novellas, and so forth. Fuzzy ideas that slowly solidify as I move from word to word, page to page. Often, as with both Threshold and Low Red Moon, the novel may repeatedly veer in directions I never imagined. I consider this a natural and healthy part of the creative process, the unconscious mind making itself conscious, the process of art unfolding at the rate it requires of itself. It can be rushed, but only at risk of ruining the work. Obviously, all this makes it very hard to write what is, in essence, a book report before the book exists. Nevertheless, it is required by my publisher.
And it's not as if this is the first time. I did an outline for Silk back in 1995. I did one for Threshold (still Trilobite at that time) at some point or another. And I did one for Low Red Moon early in 2002. But I seem to suffer from some sort of selective memory phenomenon when it comes to writing outlines. I seem to actually forget I've ever done this before. There's no scar tissue from the last outrage. It's always the first time, and I'm just as clueless as if I'd never had to sit down and cobble together a story from nothing but the need to cobble together a story. That's not writing, by the way. That's hackery. I've told my NYC agent and my publisher at Penguin, more than once, that the outline is pointless, that it will, in the end, bear little resemblance to the actual ms., but they merely reassure me that's immaterial, not to worry. And remind me that it's required, regardless.
Which leaves me here.
And I figure, hey, how hard can it be. I know how hard if can be, of course. I've had to do it three times already, but that doesn't count, remember, but cause I don't actually consciously recall having done this three times before. How hard can it be? I really don't need more than an introductory paragraph filled with tantalizingly vague phrases like "a surreal dark fantasy" and "an exploration of the weight that the past places on the present," followed by a brief synopsis, maybe a sentence or two per chapter. All told, maybe a page and a half, two pages max. Yep, sounds like a walk in the park. But, in fact, it's a lot more like a long walk on a short pier. That's exactly what it's like. I can readily summarize the three existring chapters and then . . .
Then, I don't know. Because it hasn't happened yet. Because I haven't written that part yet.
So, it's time to lie. Time not to tell a story, which should be true, regardless of its relationship to fact. But it can't be true if I haven't spent the months piecing it together, letting it evolve. It can only be that most soulless of all fictions, a lie. A necessary lie (many lies are necessary), but a lie nonetheless. This happens, and then this happens, and then this happens. I'm always put in mind of that Daffy Duck cartoon, "The Scarlet Pumpernickel." He has to pitch a story to a studio exec. At some point he's run through the entire treatment, everything he has on paper, but the excited studio exec is still asking, "Yeah? Yeah? And what happens next?" So Daffy is obliged to start making things up off the top of his head, and an absurd story quickly becomes bizarre. It concludes only when Daffy is driven, at last, to suicide. That's exactly what writing outlines are like for me.
Pulling it out of my ass. Hoping I find "the end" (as opposed to The End) without having to pull a trigger or blow myself up with big sticks of Acme dynamite or some other such messy drama of self-annihiliation.
Maybe I should post a synopsis of the three chapters I've written so far, and then you guys could send me random sentences, which I could stitch together in some order or another, creating an unsightly but perfectly adequate golem for my editor. That's not such a bad idea.
No one would ever have to know.
Damn.
Poppy's new collection, The Devil You Know, is staring at me from a nearby shelf, reminding me it would be so much better to spend the day reading than lying. Oh, woe is me.
No, really.
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