The Wombat File Is Yours to Keep

More absences, more excuses. A glance at the timestamp on this entry should give you a sense of the problem: I get to the possibility of writing in the blog most evenings when I should most certainly be already riding the escalator to the mezzanine of sleep.

See? The incoherent metaphor -- a sure sign of a brain running out of fuel.

I've also been neglecting the blog because I've been trying, in my hamfisted way, to work on the project. April did not bring forth the profusion of gloriously revised pages it was supposed to. However, it did see a new outline of the whole story, incorporating even some revisionary thoughts I've had in typically inconvenient locations where it's either difficult (subway) or impossible (shower) to capture the fleeting idea before it darts back into the shadows and expires.

In the process, I've come to some significant understanding about how the whole story needs to shift. Mind you, this is a good thing; it really is a change for the better. However, reading over the pages I've already created, and hoped to "revise" in the next phase, I now have to confront the fact that my changes to plot, characters, and atmosphere have been pretty tectonic. There's no hope that the existing prose is anything more now than a well-stocked warehouse full of rags and bones, from which I can take when such fragmentary parts are necessary (suddenly I recall of the flesh-and-bone gun in Cronenberg's ExistenZ, and I also recall that sense of, y'know, ew, that went with it).

Point is, I've got to face something like the Blank Page again. There's nothing for it but to admit that version 2.0 is going to have to be built from the ground up. I am trying to be optimistic about it -- but it's daunting, nevertheless.

Of course, I could just start channeling some unconsicous echoes of works that have inspired me. That's a good way to get started, right? You just have to go back and make sure that you clean up behind yourself.