I'm trying to figure out what happened to my writing time since I first logged into Google Docs back in late December 2017, and stopped writing in my “old folder”, where it seems I have such an impressive amount of work stored.
In the old folder, it always felt like I was getting a ton of work done, because I was working on short stories, often writing new ones every single day. I was also constsntly writing on my iPhone, and then uploading the shorts I'd write on the iPhone, to the old folder.
When I switched to Google Docs, I was finally able to keep myself in the same story, whether I was on mobile or my computer. As a result, it seems the passion I had for short stories throughout 2016 and 2017 has sort of died. I keep thinking I'm writing thrm still--- but then I look out over my archives dating back to January 2018, as I say, and I never really find any.
So what the hell have I been writing exactly, since January? It's now nearly July. That's 6 months of writing time. Half a year. Eek. Don't tell me I've wasted an entire half a year and got NOTHING done!
Well, it depends how you look at it.
Here's what I remember writing:
The very first documents I wrote once switching to Google were, I vividly remember, a few fantasy short stories, followed by a rather intense amount of poems, most of which were dedicated to my now ex Jennifer. I'm pretty sure I lost some of the poems but saved most. So they should be back there somewher on the earliest part of my Google Docs. I'm pretty sure I saved most of them. Oh--- I'm also remembering that, in January, I was still occasionally scribbling things on my laptops hard drive in this cool word processor I have there. So some work I'm not seeing is definitely on the laptops hard drive. And then of course, towards January's end, I split with Jennifer and started frantically writing all those journals.
The journals went on for a long while, and as it currently stands, seem to account for, like, an embarrassingly large portion of my Google Docs files. But fear not scribbler! For the truth is that I did maintain a fairly steady train of fiction writing, but as I wrote above, I concentrated it all across just a few stories.
In early February, I began work on a fantasy story about a boy named Aldwind. I achieved 40.000 words on this tale before dropping out of it in mid February. I then began work on a tale set in reality (heavily referenced in journals from the same period) about a girl named Franny. It was a tale of interracial “ghetto” romance that I perhaps find a bit embarassing to have actually written. Nevertheless, I quite enjoyed the first person narrative and this Franny story reached 65,000 words plus, and took me, I think, to some time in March. In March I'm not quite sure what happened exactly. It's possible I was still briefly adding to the Franny and Aldwind stories. I don't think Franny was just a February enterprise. But I can't really tell. I was definitely writing tons of diary entries throughout March , and i have located a few sporadic short stories, but nothing much seems to have gotten done. Nothing new was started. For the most part I think I was doing the Franny story and diary entries. So it sort of seems like a nothing month.
Oh then of course, before I forget, I did start the “Space Drifter” sci fi tale (which I've now leapt back into!) at some point in February too , immediately after splitting from Jennifer. I reached 12,000 words on it. That's a fair bit of writing.
What about April and early May though? Well, April is a bit like March, sadly. I'm not too sure what I was doing, but I think it was mostly very frantic diary entries, which then of course started to turn into a blend of realism and fiction. I was now making a conscious effort to get away from the endless whining I was doing about jen in the diaries cause I realized it was eating up tons of writing time. But I had gone through a major trauma and it wasn't easy. So I had to switch gears gradually. The result was that I put together this weird fictional diary mix thing….I don't know what else to call it. Personally I almost like it . It kind of has a Bob Dylan Tarantula feel to it. It's all very confessional style stuff , I guess, which I always kind of regret writing after the fact, and feel was a waste of time. It was still writing thoigh so I shouldn't whip myself that hard for It. Honestly it wasn't half bad. Who says confessional real life scribbling is a sin anyways?
At any rate, by May, I was basically back in the saddle. Indeed once May began, it seems I had probably started looking back over my Google Docs files and realizing that not as many random short stories as I liked were there, so I immediately commenced to trying to focus , keep my mind off jen, and write some. Sadly I was still a bit trapped in the diary form, but I managed to put together two bizarre “short story collections “ --- entitled the Western Realms 1 and 2 --- each of which has about 45-50,000 words in it. Each collection features a weird mix of short stories, diaries, and the occasional essay. Again, I wasn't pitching perfect games still, due to jen trauma, but I was always still writing. A perfect game for me just means I'm writing pure straight fiction. No diaries. No essays. Not even poems really. I almost see that all as weeds I need to get rid of .
May of course was a pretty good month, and seems to have been the month when Jen really died kff and stopped haunting me and my writings. I started diving into Spanish again quite heavily, talking to all the South Americans and the girls from Spain, which is always a sure fire way to keep my writing inspired (since English learners love to be sent huge paragraphs of prose).
So, for the most part in May, I kept adding to those Western Realms files, and then by May’s end, I started work on that vampire story, which I wrote a journal entry saying I’d work on “all summer” -- but of ocurse where I crapped out at (let me look) 36,000 words. Oh and what is this! Why do I keep forgetting about this collection? Strange the way it keeps slipping my mind, as though it never happened -- but yes, the Reginald stories! These were a collection of pirate tales that were 100% born out of the weird dream like diary entires I had been doing. 20,000 words on this as well! Google Docs tells me these pirate stories were started on April 4th. So thats what I was doing during April. Yes, I remember it all now: I was working on these pirate stories in a mad frenzy of inspiration, leading up to Easter Sunday. Then on Easter I had to go out with the family, get degraded and yelled at, and all inspiration was lost, so I stopped continuing them. But they did happen! 20,000 words, as I say. They can and, I’m certain, will be returned to. Eventually.
And so far as June is concerned now, who and what ate June? Well, admittedly, I was doing a lot of roleplaying throughout June, so i definitely didn’t technically write as much as I should have, but , again, i was still always writing -- it’s just a question of how much of that writing was saved. For the most part, not much was, but hey, come on, look at all those stories you got sitting there now, ready to be taken to further heights. For starters, thanks to Maria from Spain, you’ve now entered back into the “Space Drifter” story, and taken it nearly to 30,000 words, and also don’t forget that weird story about the girl going off to be a porn star, either (which is kind of similar to the Franny story ad quite entertaining).
So hey...what the hell… you haven’t been pitching totally perfect games, and a lot of the past 6 motnhs did sadly get eaten up by horrible grief over that asshole Jennifer, but you did still write. A fair bit, even. Certainly some would say a lot. Not as much as you could have, no, you failed in many respects, and certain windows of time and days in each month were totally wasted - but you still spit out quite a bit to show and take into the heart of the summer with you now.
At this point, my advice to you would be to try and spread your summer writing time between all the longer stories already begun. If you add a bit here and there to “Space Drifter”, “Aldwind”, “the Pirate Stories”, and then the “Vampire Stuff”, you could possibly come out, at summers end, with four decently sized “books” of a sort on your hands.
The best triumph was probably the “Space Drifter” story of course, because I never ever jump back into stories that stall -- but for some reason, I did jump back into that one, and kept the narrative going.
So there we have it. 6 months of writing time. You didn’t really do that bad. Stop stressing over it. Keep writing. Whats done is done. Whats past is past.
----- June’s End, 2018
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