Serials Section: “Season of the Witch” intro

The Serials Section project:  Write 12,000 words a month, free of outlines or rules and avoiding my GS habit of recycling old writing.  A sort of long-form flash-fiction, if that’s possible.

I start with a title and four chapter headings, with each chapter split into no less than 3000 words.  Of course, when the stories hit the front page here, they’re chopped down to about 1500 words per posting… Sort of ruins the effect, I suppose.  But my goal is to write.  And not, necessarily, to write well.  I want to hone the discipline of writing.  To cure my chronic inability to just sit down and fucking do the task at hand.

I’ve always loved the long form.  The Zen that comes with diving into a story.  But as every writer knows – whether they’re clumsy and mediocre or the Great and Powerful Oz – you always have to face the doldrums.  A starving, maddening, life-threatening Equatorial calm.  And not just in the middle of the story.  It’s an evil spirit that haunts every corner, and lurks behind every tree.  It’s what inspires procrastination and the pursuit of distraction.  One reason why I’m avoiding outlines for these stories.  I’m going to try and fool that evil spirit (and myself) by just sitting down and writing to the 3000 word mark.  Then starting another related “chapter” and doing the same.  And, ultimately, ending at 12,000 words.  Using that as a goal if the doldrums do occur.  So I’m able to say: I’m in it now, so I must continue.  There is an end in sight.  It can be done.

Consequently, the storytelling may suffer.  I was happy with Finzel, despite a few dips in the road, but I think this second story has struggled.  Largely because part of this project has started to pay off – the old idea machine is working again.  Instead of trying to kill my mind and burn it away with TV and movies while sitting at my dead-end, sedentary job (which demands only about 45 minutes of focus out of a 7.5 hour day), I’ve started thinking of all the stories I can belt out at 12,000 words.  I’ve planned titles and chapter headings well into 2011 at this rate, and more every day.  I guess you could say that I’ve started to have fun.  And that has been the most elusive part of my writing (and this webpage) for a few years.  I’ve let myself become downtrodden, and infected by bad people — dark angels, diseased souls.  I’ve become too distracted by the pain, and the strangely difficult task of being suddenly pain free.  I’ve not yet rebooted my life.  Part of this Serials Section project is to do that.  Awaken the creative spirit, and get myself thinking about other things besides my own petty problems.

Season of the Witch began as a novel idea a few years ago.  It spun out of The Very (another abandoned novel) and, maybe, you’ll recognize the house the protagonist visits in the climax.  I’ve removed all other connections, though.  While I’m tempted to recycle The Very into the serials section (and, therefore, achieve a side-project: write linked serials that can eventually equal a novel), I’m not yet ready to do so.  So screw it.

All that actually existed of Season of the Witch before I started was a very lame variation of the first half of the first chapter.  An “invocation” of sorts.  The mood remains, but I dug a bit more into it.

Things got hectic in my life around the 6000 word mark, and it was a struggle to get through to the end.  As I write this, on the morning of November 18th, I’m only at 10,000 words.  Already, I’ve dropped the ball on the 12,000 words a month idea.  Pushing through to the end when life and work doesn’t really allow for it is part of the challenge, though.  No excuses.  No escape.  I just, simply, have to finish the project.  For better or for worse.  In a strange way, though I resent my wage slave life from getting in the way, I’ve felt stimulated by this challenge.  I sat down and wrote most of Finzel in about a week.  That bred false confidence.  That wasn’t a good opening lesson.

So here we go.  Next week is part one of Season of the Witch.