jr conlin's ink stained banana

More opening lines for stories i may one day write:

On that particular bright and sunny morning, Allister decided his balanced breakfast would not include the still smoking box of recently exploded Wheetie Bits.

By his 21st birthday, Ralf was already 38.

Oliver expected to awake with a loud ringing in his ears and his sinuses filled with the acrid scent of singed metal, however when he did finally regain conciousness, he found that his expectations had sadly switched places.

Why are these so damn easy to come up with?

i used to write a series called The Grayhound Chronicles. It was silly, but buried deep in it was a story i kinda wanted to tell. For about three years, i did. Every few weeks i'd publish another "chapter" of about six pages of story, to the point where i've got something like 800+ pages of it divvied up into three "books". There was a lot of silly in there, more than enough to make up for actual "plot", because i was frequently distracted by shiny things and floating, dismembered heads of Satan offering canapés to visiting house guests.

A little over four years ago, however, i stopped writing it.

There are a number of reasons why (life got in the way, it wasn't as much fun, Venture Brothers was doing a better job of things), but as much as i kept trying to tell myself i was going to pick it up and finish it, i never really did. What was even worse was that there were a few folks that seemed to like it enough to be fans and kept pressing me to start it again. i'd try, fail, and feel even worse.

So after not getting anywhere for a year, i decided to post up the notes i had. Perhaps i may actually pick it back up again once i've got time to work on it (pronounced: retired and rapidly approaching my death bed). Perhaps someone else might step up and finish the damn thing the way it should be.

Granted, a great many folks with literary skills are breathing a sigh of relief and giving thanks for a bullet dodged, but i'm kinda bummed i didn't get to finish it. i don't like leaving things unfinished.

Perhaps this will give me the chance to work on a better story for November…

[GAH! Stupid blog decided not to publish this last night]

i asked a good friend (one with a long track record of writing real things) to look over a story i wrote. His candor was refreshing, his complements rewarding, but what i really appreciated was his utterly and completely true comment that what i had written wasn't so much an actual story as a series of loosely bound skits around a common theme.

i couldn't argue. It was. Then again, that's generally what most of the stuff i come up with is.

Ultimately, the problem i have is that while i'm rather good at coming up with opening lines for things, and can string hair brained plot lines together to beat all, i absolutely suck at coming up with endings. Granted, that makes me eminently qualified to do things like write episodes of popular TV series or yet another continuing story of some space soap opera, ultimately it means that i'm not really capable of creating a proper "story". One that, to paraphrase one of my favorite authors "Starts at the beginning, works its way through the middle, and stops when it gets to the end."

Perhaps what i need to do is work backwards like i'm writing some detective story. Start with the Butler being taken away in chains and work your way in reverse until there's a body on the ground. Not quite sure how that works with comedy SciFi, but hey, that's the challenge, isn't it?

i wonder if i should work with JIM to figure out a good ending for next years NaNoWriMo?

Based on something i was doing for the aforementioned Steve, if and when i ever do publish Grayhound, i think this is going on the cover:

Like a good 102% of folks out there, i harbor a secret urge to one day become a published author. That, or possibly become a math major. Either would be fine, really. Thing is, i am increasingly made more and more aware that it just won't happen.

Perhaps it's just the fact that i listen to a good many book critics. For instance, after reading a snippet from a book featured in a column called You Must Read This, i felt overwhelmingly depressed. (It's at the bottom) It was about porn, auto-castration and various other things that could actually be fodder for a good deal of writing.

It was then that i realized that critics are never going to like me.

i've heard book reviews where critics pile praise upon new authors describing the lyrical twist and phrasing that makes words dance off the page like a Sex Pistol's mosh pit. i've heard them tell of characters from the novel being so very real that you come home and find they've been drinking straight from your milk container. Of vistas so grand and sweeping you'll need to pull over and ask for directions.

Yeah, i'm pretty darn sure i've none of that. Heck, i'm lucky i remember to include a subject and noun.

Still, i wondered what i was missing. The article didn't sing to me like a canary in a meth plant perched on Roger Daltrey's microphone. It was like a slug to the brain, but for me it was more "garden" than "golly". In fact, i was fairly certain that this was about the driest presentation of the matter that i'd read. i'll also add that a great many of the critical reviews i've heard seem to consist of the reviewer dazzling us with their own words rather than those of the person they were dazzled by.

So, maybe not getting critical acclaim isn't so bad after all. Heck, maybe that should be my goal. Perhaps i should try to avoid critics as much as Dracula avoided dining on bruschetta. If i ever were to create a successful novel, perhaps i should carry a supply of ninja smoke bombs if i were to ever meet a literary scholar.

Or maybe i should just realize that unless i get off my duff and actually write something, this just isn't gonna be a concern for me.

But man, i've SERIOUSLY got to lay off reading those book reviews. i think they give me gas.