The bargain: the plot thickens...

Bet you thought I'd forgotten about this, eh? Well, life intervened... Birthdays, visitors, holidays - the usual summer crap. But what I should really say is, the Queen of Procrastination returned. Anything that could be vaguely disguised as an excuse, and I've latched onto it and refused to let it go. Too busy. Too tired. Too unmotivated. Nothing to write about...

Actually, that last one is the killer. Books are great, as is saying you're going to write one. But what the fuck am I meant to write about?!?! Vague recollections of old short stories float in my mind and I wonder if any of those are decent. But the truth is, if any of them had been decent, they would've been more than short stories.

I have a friend who is also embarking on this crazy book malarky. We thought it would be a great motivator if we made a bargain: by the end of August, we would swap an outline and first chapter with each other. Both being former journalists, we work best to deadlines, and August had, at the time, been a looooong way away. But today is 1 September; the deadline has been moved. We are terrible.

I will be good at this. I promise myself, I will get this done.

So, plot. What on earth am I going to write about? Characterisation, story arcs, back stories, these will all come as soon as I have found a protagonist and a story to tell. I have something kicking around in the back of my head; I'll try to flesh it out and see how it goes. A tale based somewhat on reality; but then, we're meant to write what we know, right? Right?

Welcome to the circus

Yikes. OK. So a real, proper novel... It's time to actually get off my arse and do this thing. Yippee-ki-yay motherfucker and all that. Shall I wax lyrical about childhood dreams of being a celebrated author? Probably not; I'm sure that's a given. Needless to say, childhood dreams are yet to manifest at the ripe old (young, sorry) age of 30 (well, 30 next month). My bad. Sorry.

No, instead of delving into fiction, I took the tried-and-tested "real job" route and became a journalist. A bloody good one, too. And then the quarter-life crisis hit - aided and abetted by a hellhole of a newspaper and small-town syndrome - and I packed up and hit the bright lights of the big city. Three years down the track, and I'm lost. The quarter-life crisis persists, although I at least am working out what I don't want, which is infinitely important.

And so, as I journey back through the recesses of my mind to work out what went wrong, I've stumbled across the fever once more. That fever that had me writing endless amounts of short stories as a kid, hand-written in self-published runs of one. That fever that drives a need to create. It was staved off while in newspaper-land, but now, in the real world, it's bubbling away. Something is bubbling away. Something needs to come to the surface...

Something will come to the surface. I just need to figure out what. What is my story?! In the parlance of the time, stay tuned....