I’ve been toiling for at least a week over something as simple as a place.  For the most part, it’s not even a real place!  This is the excuse I’m going to use for not writing at all this week, and probably the same excuse I’ll use for not sleeping much either.

I had an… encounter.  It’s like every time I take my son to the mall to place in the padded little playroom area, I become incensed at some parent or child.  Seriously, I’m not that bad, but this is the one place that always seems to trigger me.  Anyway, there was an incident that I’ve been holding on to for at least a couple months that is going to go in to the new book as the “first encounter” our main character has with his little vengeance, but I’ve been seriously toiling over the simple condition of where to have the encounter take place.  Like punishing a dog or a child, you have to catch them in the act and inflict the proper action upon them, but it can’t be noticed by God and everybody and it can’t in any way punish this guy’s poor kid anymore than the unwilling dad already had.

I thought I had it figured out and it was just going to be a simple injury to the dad and a stern talking to.  That was also going to alleviate the problem of the public place being an issue, but something had bothered me about that scenario.  I could make it work and I think it’s decent, but… I dunno, maybe it just lacked the dramatic flair that I was hoping to bring to the story.  Alright, it didn’t satisfy my latent bloodlust!  Are you happy now?

Yeah, so I came up with another scenario that would happen as the dad and his poor family left the mall.  Something in their minivan or similar.  That seemed to really put too much of a burden on the children, which was the exact opposite intention that I had.  Maybe that was right out.  I was flummoxed.

Then, the simplest and easiest solution presented itself as I was driving home today.  The saddest part is that the solution was something that I had already intended to include into the story anyway, but, for some reason, never attributed it to this particular incident.

My newest book is basically just a jumble of interviews, diaries, blogs and what-not that are going to come together in some way to tell the story of a man (the main character).  I love the idea of the main character never even having his say in his own story.  As a result of who is telling the story – the other characters in his life – some facts were gonna get messed up and you could basically just pick and choose what you wanted to believe from what each person was saying.

Why not just use that and write up both scenarios for this instance?  Genius!  Yeah… why didn’t I think of that.

I woke up this morning at 7:02 AM.  I know this because I look at the clock before I think I’m going to sleep and everytime I wake up.  It’s my own little anal retentive way of knowing how much I’ve slept.  7 AM was way too early, so I went back to sleep and had the most amazing dream.  It was in the form of an episode of Futurama.  That’s not really that surprising because the last tv show I had watched was Futurama.

Please forgive my drawing skills and allow me some leniency on the actual build of the story.  It was a dream and I’m not an artist.

The story revolves around Fry being sad about being lonely to the point that it angers Bender.  Mr. Rodriguez decides to do something about it and takes Fry to something similar to an Apple Store.  There’s just nerdy stuff in there and it doesn’t necessarily have the Apple feel.  There’s a cute girl inside who shows an interest in Fry, but he completely ignores her.  Bender decides to take things into his own hands.

It gets very convoluted and this was like the 1000th attempt that Bender had done through either him simulating the event or some kind of time shift, but that doesn’t really matter.  My mind had over an hour of sleep to play with, so I guess it was filling time =)

Anyway, Bender picks up this game called the NILF and tries to show her how to play in front of Fry.  The idea being that Fry would see that she’s nerdy, attractive and skilled (as you’re going to learn), and that they should get together and have a little fun so that Bender can have his old, non-depressed and moping friend back.

The little triangle on the side of the game is the main display and the others just show lives or score or whatever.  The main display shows little ships flying around and what not, but it has a vertical line going right through the center.  This is a version of the conversation that follows.

Girl: Ooooh, what’s that?

Bender: [with his side to Fry so Fry can see.  Whenever Bender is not speaking, he's looking over at Fry giving him affirming looks] This, meatbag, is the NILF.

Girl: How’s it work?

Bender: Well, the main screen is motion controlled, so all you do is make a first and move it along that vertical line to destroy the ships.

Girl: What, like this? [she makes a fist and waves it in front of the screen very quickly]

Bender: No, no, no!  You can’t just dive in like that!  You gotta start off slow, then work your way up to going faster.

Girl: Ooooh, like this? [she motions]

Fry: [mouth drops open watching]

Bender: Yeah, that’s it.  It’s pretty boring, if you asked me.  Each game is a little different, but the ending is always the same.

Girl: What’s this for? [she grabs the joystick]

Bender: That’s for players who want an old school, tactile experience.  Lemme show ya. [Bender sits down in a chair in front of Fry and puts the game in his lap.  The joystick basically looks like a robot dong]

You get the idea after that.

Sorry to those few who have been waiting with baited breath for me to write some stuff.  It’s coming, I swear =)

Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

So we had some friends over last week and my wife had apparently listened to what I had said because she mentioned my books to them. I’m pretty sure one of them knew about my books, as I know she’s come to this site before, but her husband may not have. Long story short, I knew it was not going to be a good idea to “show them off” because I’m in a kind of fragile mood lately and am not up to taking criticisms about something as personal as my writings or my books. My wife, God love her, didn’t really think about that and was just acting on something I had said a while before.

The husband mentions something about being good with graphics and that maybe he could help me make my “covers look better.”

It’s the stupidest thing because I don’t particularly care about how the books look, but just that they’re out. You know, I’m out there. It’d be like if I said I was gay or something, and someone said my invitations to the great coming out event weren’t fruity enough or something. I dunno. It just hurt.

They’re just graphics off my website that I made one day on a whim. If he had said my website looked shitty, I would have agreed. The book is different.

Instead of blogging, I think I’m just going to use those feelings and those thoughts and thrust them in to this book I’m writing.  At least then… it gets out.  Out of me.

I showed my son my copyright the other day.  I told him that it was his after I am gone.  50 years after I’m dead.  Hopefully things will sell better then =)

What’s the difference between fiction and non-fiction?  Not the literal definition, but in actual practice.  If history is made by those that write it, isn’t even true non-fiction just someone’s perception of the events and guesses at the motivations designed to slant your thinking one way or the other?  If a story is completely true and all the events happen to you and you only write about your thoughts and motivations, but then you change one thing, is it still non-fiction?  I’m serious here.

I liken it to writing term papers and having to cite sources, which is something I really hated doing.  Look, I can bullshit with the best of them, and I can probably write a couple pages to try to sway you to one side or the other, but what I really hated was trying to figure out what to cite.  Isn’t everything, especially now, an idea that someone else has had?  I mean, the only original idea was fire, and even that was created by [insert whatever deity you like here, or Atheists use... I dunno... Al Gore].  Even that wasn’t an original idea, regardless of how you look at it!  I innately knew how to breathe, blink and make my heart beat, that’s about it.  Everything else I have ever learned has been through imitation or force.

My teachers may as well have invented this language that I am typing to you with, shouldn’t I cite them?  The syntax comes from grammar school, keyboarding from middle school, computer from some guy, electricity from some other guy, sense of humor (if any) from my parents… I mean, where does it end?  A book report on Catcher in the Rye is assigned by the teacher, book assigned by the teacher, written by Salinger, distributed by Penguin, typewriter by a French dude…  I’m serious.

I had an assignment to write a paper about any book I wanted and it had to have sources and everything else.  Know what I came up with?  I wrote a paper about “Catcher,” using Holden’s syntax and demeanor, and explained to my teacher that I figured I was probably going to fail her class anyway and it wasn’t her fault because her lectures were very interesting and I didn’t want to be a phony.   Seriously, I had this idea in 1998 (the whole “fiction not being fiction”).  Look.  This is from that paper I was talking about.

You may ask yourself why I entitled this “Fiction is Just Another F-Word.”  Besides the obvious answer, I think that there are very few things which are fiction.  Mr. Salinger may call this fiction if he wants but I will not believe it for a second.  I really won’t.  I believe that Mr. Salinger felt much the same way that Holden did.  I know I do.  Certain people can see the world through different eyes.  That may scare some people and some people just may not believe it.  But if you take a look at some things close enough you may be able to look through it.

I write shit that happens to me.  It’s what I know and it’s what I want to deal with.  I change a few things here and there, but even that’s either to make the story better or to make it so I don’t get sued.  My stuff is considered fiction.  Tolkein’s stuff was considered fiction too, but words like “dwarf” and “elf” have made it in to our consciousness, there’s 3 movies out about his works that have grossed more than all but 20-or-so other movies ever, 10 years was spent working on the movies, Tolkein write languages for most of the races in his world… I mean how much more real does fiction have to be before it just crosses over in to non-fiction?  We’ve killed people and gone to wars for less non-fiction than Tolkein’s stuff.

It’s just frustrating, so I’ll leave you with one more excerpt from that paper.

Why is Holden worried about the ducks?  Why shouldn’t he be?  Where do they go?  One day they are there and then one day they aren’t.  I mean that would be something to know.  I think it may also have to do with the fact that they are aesthetically pleasing to Holden.  They are free.  They really are.  If they want to go somewhere they can just fly there.  And in the air they can see everything.  They can see all the phonies being phony.  And nobody cares if they take a crap in the goddam lake.  They just can