I am experiencing a prolonged entropy of thought, er, somethin - my notions are growing further apart, harder to arrange into reasonable stories, or explanations, or whatever it is that notions are supposed to become. It is clear to me that my measurable writing output is declining, even as the thoughts that inspire me come more frequently. Indeed, sometimes they seem constant. All indications suggest that I will never catch up.
They come more frequently, and yet they are more distant than ever from words, and from any practice of expression of which I am capable. It is as if any practice in translating my inner language onto the metaphorical page is also strengthening my fluency in the inner language.
Writers need focus, I have heard. Maybe this is why?
I have more desire than ever to share my thoughts, and my writing, and this blog and Fifty Mile Point are my outlets - given my pathetic output, there clearly exists a disconnect. I will keep trying. And yet, I do have another outlet that has not expressed itself yet.
I am trying to organize some subset of what I have written - the subset that I suspect could be coherent (and maybe even resonant) to other human beings - into a collection of short stories. I feel I have a semblance of focus on this goal, even though all that really amounts to is finishing decent stories and deferring or forgetting the rest. I do not pretend that I am a good writer - the list of things I need to improve is a very long list - but I have something to say, and find it possible that others would read it and find something they can connect with.
Shitty writing likely detracts from any connection a story is capable of forging, but I want to try anyway. I am not so much a perfectionist as a simpleton, capable of ignoring some pieces of the puzzle.
I think it will be fun to see what year I actually finish it. Forced to guess, I would say 2017, although I have to admit now that the key variable aside from focus is drive:
1) How much time will I spend writing? (drive)
2) How well will I use that time to finish the collection? (focus)
Still, it would be depressing to muse on what might be a reasonable confidence interval.
