Hello darkness, my old friend....I'm come to talk to you again. Because a vision softly creeping, left its seed while I was sleeping...
S&G "The Sound of Silence".
We all have a dark side of some particular kind to our writing personality. A majority of the time we keep it very well hidden, only letting it out very briefly when we need to draw some kind of inspiration/bring some clarity to our writing, then afterwards tucking it back in all comfy cozy.
However, there can be that rare occasion where the dark side can reappear and instead of just stopping by for a chat, will make itself comfy cozy in your humble abode and become a short term/long term live-in companion.
Such is the case with my current project, with the working title of "Time To Go".
Some time ago, I watched a few minutes of a movie called "Animal Kingdom". One scene in particular left a lasting impact on me, although I did not know it at the time. Many years later, that particular scene would be inadvertently drawn upon while I was looking around for a new project to work on (with me, looking around would mean either a slushie to work on or something fresh and original).
Anyways, at that particular day in my life I was experiencing some particular kind of short term aggravation. This in turn sent me down the rabbit hold of "writing while angry", which was something that I used to do early on, but slowly kicked it to the curb as I became more controlled about the hate/anger that I needed to inject into my writing.
So down the rabbit hole I went, and after searching my vast memory banks of my past/present, I came up with two rather revolting scenarios that might have a chance of melding together. So after mulling about it for a few minutes, this was the opening line of the novel, which I decided to write from a first person point of view (yes, I know, the majority of the books out there are not written this way, but I like to challenge myself from time to time).
I take a couple of hard sniffs, and after chewing back the rising tide of vomit, I knew it was time to go. You would think that after experiencing twenty-three straight days of pure hell, I would be long used to the smell by now. But I wasn't. In fact, after twenty-three days, my sense of smell was so acute that I could tell whether a mosquito was draining blood from a human or an animal.
Surprising (or disturbingly as I'm want to say), the words simply came pouring out of me at a rather fast clip, and about a month or so later, I had 3 full chapters and a sliver of a 4th totaling 50 pages written. By the time I got to that 50 page point, I decided to cry uncle. Why? Because the further along I got, the more it bothered me to write it.
I don't know about you, but when words are pouring out of you at a decent clip for a story that is increasingly making you squeamish and disgusted at the same time, it's time to end it and put it somewhere where it will make you think thrice about restarting it once you open that three ring binder and read the first page.
So I did.
But, as you can see, some half dozen years later, I returned to it. Deep down, I probably shouldn't have, but sometimes, when it comes to writing projects, you want to take the easier of the two evils, and for me, the easier of the two evils was returning to this book.
Not sure if I'll publish it when it's completed, but right now, I simply need a mental break from my trilogy project, and this project will provide that for me, no matter how revolting it may turn out to be in the long run.
Sometimes, as a writer, you need to excise those demons once a decade, so that you can continue being you doing the you that people love you for.
{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved
