The Cheese of Nothingness.
How’s the third book going? Well, yesterday I ate a wheel of brie and an entire box of crackers and wrote 230 words. So, on the cheese eating front, things are going well. There’s a strong future ahead of me there. Maybe a simple smoked cheddar, next time. Or a blue cheese and don’t be stingy with the mould. Possibly something a bit fruity. The world is my cheese oyster and that’s the way I like it.
In the book writing department, however, it’s a slow plod. I’ve reached that point where I have a lot of words but they zing off all kinds of directions, mostly unrelated to each other. Characters turn up, gallop around a bit and then are never seen again. Sometimes I open a chapter to see what I’ve got and think “Oh no. This is not good. Who wrote this nonsense? Then I remember it was me. I wrote the nonsense.
This is the normal state of being half way through a book. For me, at least.
Are there writers out there who start at chapter one (“Pow! McWivern heard the bullet go over his head. He smiled to himself grimly. They weren’t going to take him hostage again. Not again. Not today.”) then just keep pounding the keyes until the final page (“He scooped her into his arms and kissed her deeply. She melted in his embrace and he slid out the Beretta 21A Bobcat she had hidden in her pants. “Oh McWivern,” she said, “You always get your girl.”)? Are there writers who have no chaos? No writing out of order? No forgetting halfway through a page what they named a walk on character so Susan suddenly becomes Rebecca?
If there are, good luck to them. They’re probably very successful and happy. They’re not staring a computer screen with one hand in a packet of Jatz cracker biscuits, dreaming of Roquefort.
I’m not of their kind. How I wish I was. It seems much better than the disasters I get myself into. I write bits and pieces of scenes all over the place and then wade through them, trying to figure out what I have and what I need to write. Some days it starts to come together, depressingly slowly. Many more days I have nothing. But on those days, we’ll always have cheese.
