Hello Blogland.

yada yada.  it's been a while.  I haven't been able to think of anything to write.  I still haven't thought of anything, but whilst I wait for a load of laundry to be washed, I decided to get online and blog, for lack of anything better or more important to do.

So, I don't know if you know this, because I probably haven't told much of anyone.  It's not the type of thing that comes up in normal conversation.  But, I'm writing a book.  And I'm not talking about the "Oh, I wanna write a book!" thing that happens to everyone, then they actually sit down to write it and quickly lose interest.  I mean the type of "writing a book" where I have been planning and plotting and writing it for over a year.  The type of "writing a book" where I see things and I think of ways it relates to my book or my characters or some random something. 

I read a quote once by George Orwell, I think, about writing that I found very apt.  Ah, I found it.

"Writing a book is a horrible, 
exhausting struggle, like a long bout with some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand." 
— George Orwell

It really is true.  I feel that if writing a book were a waste of time, the Lord would have let me lose interest in it, or something would have happened like a massive fire in which everything I've ever written is burned to ashes.  But not only has that not happened, but this book in my head literally attacks me in the most bizarre of places, and I find myself making plot connections and character connections in the middle of math class, about to copy down a problem.  (I wonder why it's always math class that I have epiphanies.)  Even now, when I've forced myself to put it to the back of my mind, because I have much more important things to do, I feel almost guilty for not writing.  

Perhaps it isn't almost.  Writing a book is not only a horrible, exhausting struggle, but it's a lonely one at that.  No one knows the things that occupy your head until you secure them in a more tangible form, such as in descriptive, beautiful words, but that requires writing, and thinking, and editing, and writing even more, which is the very thing that exhausts you.  So, you are either all alone, haunted by a character, place or plot which won't unstick itself from the recesses of your brain, or you are all alone holed away in a dark room, scribbling or typing away, irritable at the slightest noise or break in your frenzied work.  I think I was built for the job, at least, as I actually enjoy time alone and have always been fascinated with words and how they are strung together.  But still, I can't help but feel, every time that I thinking about writing that book, that there is something more important that I should be doing, that my dreams will just have to wait another month, because I need to live in the present right now.

You probably don't know what I'm talking about.  Honestly, that's alright.  I'm haunted by something I cannot define, to paraphrase a song by Cake.  (Going the Distance, if you were wondering.)  And certainly something you cannot define, unless you too are in the passionate throes of writing a novel.  Which, if that is the case, you must be haunted by something you cannot define, so you would understand completely what I'm saying.  

Alright, I'm rambling now.  I'd just like to say that you should never, ever want to write a book.  I had no idea what I was getting myself into. 

Yet...  Don't be surprised if you walk into a Borders one day and there, in the Young Adult section, you spy a book written by yours truly, Stranger Dainger.  Because it's coming, it's in the works, even if my social life tries to tell me otherwise.

Ta-ta.