The Plan Going Forward

Decided to pass out the candy tonight, after all. Just couldn't resist the chirping of the younglings on what turned out to be an amazingly pleasant night. Plus, I think when you're sad it's always good to try and pass along a little joy into the world. Actually had a fairly decent crowd although the night did start off slowly. I blame it on daylight savings time. It was just too light out when kids around here normally start treating. And, yes, people loved the pumpkin.

Didn't get a chance to play the Costume Brawl today and I don't really feel like it at present, so it looks like I'm going to end the event with a mere 150+ victories and something like 1k in Gamer points. I'll take it, considering I only played a few hours a day for the past five days. And I'll hope that format makes its way back some time soon. Did manage to log in and idle in town and score the two hats being offered. A mummy mask in Kamadan and a scarecrow outfit in LA. I have no idea why I bothered but at least my festival hat collection isn't quite so threadbare anymore.

Anyhow, tonight is not only All Hallow's Eve, it's also the last night before November. And I've already booked a ticked on the crazy train and, recent tragedies and all, I don't really intend to miss it. It's just going to be a much sadder trip than I originally intended. November is about letting go, and I've got a lot to relinquish at the moment. I've just realized, for instance, that one of my first scenes involves euthanasia, a pulling of the plug on someone too sick and too weak to continue. And, now, I have no idea how I'm going to write it without turning into a pitiful ball of sheer sadness. Can't really drop it, either since it's something of a lynchpin scene. Something that really establishes one of my major characters. It's been on the books, so to speak, for months and I only just realized just how much it's going to tear my heart out.

As you might have guessed, I have a massively complicated and horribly intricate story planned. Even more so than usual. I've decided to let my freak flag fly this time around. Not to try to channel, to restrict my tendencies towards searing ambition and to just run with them. This isn't a book that's going to sell. This probably isn't even a book that I'll finish. But it's a book that I have in me and I'm going to drag out, piece by bloody piece.

I was intending to start off each day by blocking out a few scenes. Sketching in what I wanted to work on that day, how it fit into my overall plan, and then spend the rest of the day going over it until I found the time to sit and write it all down. I'm tryign to do something of a modified snowflake method which involves going a barebones framework and filling in the details along the way. I've got plenty of framework thanks to the massive outline that I've been working on over the summer. At its height it clocked in at 125k alone. I've since trimmed the redundancies and out-dated material and it's down to a svelt 45k now. In other words, in writing down what I plan to write about I've nearly won the competition already. Of course, getting to 50k was never really my goal, but knowing that, worst comes to worst, I can always just retype my notes and feed them into the magic counting machine is wonderfully freeing. I don't need to meet any word count or daily goals, I just have to let go and write until I'm happy. Or exhausted. Preferably both.

Of course, by now my plans have obviously been shot to hell. And I think I'm going to have to start out of the gate slowly. No staying up late tonight to burn myself out with an initial surge of creativity. No trying to fill that word meter in the first week. I need to take it easy and, you know, maintain.

Instead, I'll be heading to the homestead this weekend, when my mother is planning to put the dog to sleep. It's not that I really want to, it's that I feel I have to. That someone should be with her at the end. And the dog, too, I know my mother won't want to watch them push the needle in. In a lot of ways, this is even worse than the cat who died earlier this year because that was so sudden. Now, we have time to plan and regret and question. And prepare. Like I'm doing for those awful last moments. And I know it's incredibly selfish but at the moment, all I can think about is just how much I've been looking forward to the light of the night, tonight, and just how little it now means to me.

But, you know, art comes from pain. From suffering. From all emotions, really, from joy to passion to the darker threads woven in us all. But mostly from the sadness. Because art is, at heart, creation. An attempt to understand, if not explain, just why we're here and what we're doing in flickering space between the darkness. And if I have to reach a little bit harder, a little bit deeper, I will because the only way this is a truly sad day is if I can't use it. If I can't, somehow, remember it and these feelings and turn them into something positive.

I had also planned, this month, to build up a backlog of posts and subjects that I could slowly run through over the month. A way to keep this site from going dark while I concentrated on other things. Unfortunately, recent events and the whirlwind of the Costume Brawl have meant that I haven't quite made it. Just too many plates to keep spinning and that means the ones furthest from crashing to the ground are left the longest. All I've got are a bunch of outlines and hooks that still need fleshing out, not the polished finished products I could use to save myself some work. I suck at this kind of thing, I guess. I'll see what I can do but I'm hoping to devote all of my energy into my stories or some other side-projects I have going to keep the creative juices flowing. So, if I go silent for a while, it's not because I'm depressed - this time - it's because I'm busy with other things.