in

Continuing on with the Fictions, but also with one eye and one or more braincells focused on transitioning to more of a balance between prose and cartooning / comics. If I were being honest with myself, I'd tell you that my goal is to shift entirely to cartooning but, alas, I'm too chickenshit to go all the way without a bit of a fallback (and, I can't forget that the medium is the message, right, Marshall?); suppose it’s moderately poetic that it only took me 35 years (and will probably take a couple more) to get to where I wanted to be when I was eight.

playacting(?)

in

Effort of late being to discern the point at which my work times veer from essential aspect of myself (as my psychology prof wouldve said: breathing, sleeping, eating, shitting) to playacting: while the pre-breakfast part, from about 0445 until 0745 feels like the former, the post–, more often than not, feels like the latter. Question, then: do I stick only with the times when it's an essential aspect of myself, or do I strive to make the playacting feel as essential? Or do I roll with the playacting? Pondering, with no answer in sight, but hey if nothing else that Panama Canal scene in 3 BODY PROBLEM was all kinds of oh my fuck amazing.

internal

in

Felled, by hands competent (read: neither mine nor weather): the longstanding evil chestnut tree at the back of the yard. Far better to bring it down in a controlled manner than the alternative – which, I feared, was becoming more and more likely to happen. Only big change / adjustment being that the little green shed was thrust out of the shade for the first time in 600 years, give or take, and, so I – that we might enter and retrieve various yard implements sans oxygen – had to cut a vent into the thing (read: a lopsided rectangular hole stuffed with chicken wire).

But hey, I got to play with my reciprocating saw.

Continued: a(nother) recalibration of my reasons for continuing my writing practice to being less from the external (career, being heard, etc) to the internal (because I want to – though I probably should have deeper reasons that). Tried social again and I didn't like the thought patterns it dredged up: too much reliance on the external, creation for it, unnecessary pressure. Wasted how many years of my life subjecting myself to that? No, much better to type things up here, post them, and be done.

Note: that you are presently unable to discern deeper internal reasons for continued practice may be the source of the problem. Solution: plumb the depths – or say fuck it and do whatever you want, IDK.

in

Since eliminating all long-term projects and career ambitions and switching to little short things that I release whenever I feel like it (or they feel like it), I want to spend all day tinkering on my various explorations – but don't feel like life is getting in my way when that, inevitably, doesn’t happen. First time in more than 20 years I've experienced that; a most welcome change.

in

Monthly-release approach to writing fiction has given me what I needed (a defined timetable and a desire to find out what happens) to bring the once-MainFictionThing I threw out to make way for the monthly Fictions back from the bin (at least in this early stage) as the second and third of the Fictions. The first release is still rolling out in Sunday morning's edition of MacroParentheticals, with the former MainFictionThing being released in two parts in June and July. Think this might become the default approach: a two-parter followed a single, unrelated fiction before the next. Feels right.

in

Started in earnest on the second Fiction release and, as a way to open things up, riffled through my ideas folder and found precisely fuckall that felt right: amazing how everything I jotted down back in the days of yore has no bearing whatsoever on where I am now, mentally and/or creatively – if it doesn't get used in the moment, it seems, it won't be used at all. Probably a wise decision, then, to focus solely on writing short monthly releases instead of big, long-term projects, especially given (what passes for) my process.

in

So much of my working times these days are spent figuring out where the voice went: where it's hiding, if it'll ever come back, if it ever existed. Right now, a spirit of experimentation: do I need to balance the timed (TSBMR, newsletter, Attendance Cards, intended Project500) with something of a more open-ended duration? Only if I can accept that "open-ended" doesn't mean "never-ending.”

something new

in

Been a long time coming, but today feels as good a day as any to commit it here (so I can possibly undo it by Sunday's newsletter, but I doubt I will, not this time): I'm stopping work on MainFictionThing and moving on to something new.

I love the characters and the story, but I can't crack it, and, more importantly, I feel no connection to it, no spark, none of the important, unwritten things to make it at least semi-compelling to a reader. It feels like a relic of a former me, a time – among other things – when the most important person in my life for the entirety of it was still alive.

As I'm moving on with other aspects of my life, it's time to move on with this one too, into something new. The something new is percolating, and I need more time to process it, but I think it'll work; all I know is that I've little interest at present in long-term, long-form projects, fiction or non–: the weekly SHORTBOX MEMORY REVUE pod is part of it, but not the whole of it.

Aiming to have a better picture of it by Sunday's MacroParentheticals. In the meantime, the only way to get that clearer picture is to play with sketches and fingerpaints and see what comes.