The Book

Mostly my massages are hard physically. Last night's was hard emotionally. At the end of it, both RB and I were exhausted. I felt about 20 pounds physically lighter, but like he'd scooped it all out of my chest.

"There was one point there where I thought I was going to throw up," he said.

"Oh, you mean the part where I howled?" I was a little embarrassed. I hadn't meant to, had opened my mouth to say something and instead, a high loud long curl of noise came out. I'd sounded inhuman even to myself.

"No, that was fine. It was at the end, when I was pressing on your scalp. It was from your brain."

I knew exactly when he meant. I spend a lot of time during the last part of the massages drifting around from thought to thought, and this time, my thoughts had been drifting over The Book, and how to structure it, and where to put this, and what's going to be the climax, etc. etc. There was one scene I was thinking of particularly.

California broke my writing habit. I'd been doing pretty well on the word count thing, and had high hopes of continuing, but then there were just other things to do there, and my real life and work seemed like it was someone else's real life.

Haven't been able to get back onto it since. Really haven't. Have thought about it, have had the time, have avoided it.

Truth is, I'd gotten kind of bored with what I was writing. The voice was too much the same, or it was too close to the tired stories I've been telling myself for 10 or 15 years.

Knowing that didn't help me figure out a way around it. I kept playing with other ways to get me writing, but nothing worked well enough for me to even try.

Then, strangely, I didn't have to. I watched Vertigo. A co-worker had loaned it to me to watch before going to San Francisco, and I hadn't gotten around to it. Mostly because I've tried to watch it before and it's bored me off my noodle. But I had a couple hours to fill on Friday night before going out, and I didn't want to fuck around on the computer. And D.Jack, who'd been over for dinner on Thursday, had pulled it off the shelf and talked up its charms.

As I was watching it, I started to feel that feeling you get when shit is clicking together. Gearing up, some clashing and creaking, but faster spinning gears, indeed.

Not that I've gotten any actual writing done, but I've got more bits outlined, a more concrete setting, stuff to read through to pull some themes together. Whenever my brain has a few moments, it goes back to how this should fit together. I can feel a phantasmal world gelling behind my real world, sometimes thicker, sometimes spreading out to fine mist.

We'll see if it lasts, we'll see if I can get anything more than notes jotted down: I've yet to put words to paper.

But fuck, at least I'm not bored.