by Anywherebuthere on Thu Jun 15, 2006 9:08 pm
I'm just posting this here for posterity's sake....
You ever make plans to do something...like say...run a marathon, or write a novel in a month, and halfway through it, you discover that life just went a whole lot of bonkers on you, and what you REALLY had, sitting there, stewing in your brain pan...this really GREAT idea, this incredablely awesome, kick ass, knock everyone flat down on their teeth story that you were going to wow people with...how it's there, and you're doing it, and everything's going great.
And suddenly, unexpectedly, the entire bloody plan changed.
It's like running a marathon, geting to the 20 mile mark, and SUDDENLY, you have a heart attack.
BOOM, colapse right there in the middle of the street, and get wheeled away while the medical team does palpatations on you.
That's what it feels like happened here.
And I don't mean the story rewrote itself mid streem. No, that's expected.
I mean, my entire plan of attack, from March on, just took one, huge, monumental U-turn on me.
And I just sat there and went "OH CRAP...now what." How to I try and adjust what I'm doing to even TRY and make this work now. How can I POSSIBLY work all this crap out? I mean, what I WANT to do, what's running through my brain, is THIS...but I cant POSSIBLY do that now...because there's just no bloody way I'll physically be able to do it.
Well, welcome to "The Long Road to Nowhere."
SERIOUSLY.
In March, when I was thinking there was only...ten to fifteen full pages left to this bloody thing, life went reaaaaly weird on me. Suddenly, I'm not looking at spending all my time drawing a strip. I'm looking at funerals, and engagements, and trying to figure out exactly HOW the hell I pay for a wedding in 8 months (5 months now...so donate you bastards, DONATE). Suddenly I'm looking at china patterns, and home's, and figuring out rates on 30 year morgages vs 15 year morgages, and weither or not I TRUELY know enough about remodeling to take on an investment property, gut it down to the studs, and completly renovate it. (I do, by the way...thank you dad for 12 years of on the job constuction and restoration training. I DID notice the bowing in of the foundation, but the roofline WAS good, no leaks...thank you very much...however you did get me on the Hemlock floors. I knew they would have to be replaced, but I wasn't certain WHAT we were looking at there. And how the hell did you MISS that the buffet wasn't square any more. I mean...COME ON MAN.)
Suddenly, inexplicably, my life changed in the blink of an eye. And as much as I WANTED to finsh up this MASSIVE, tale I had brewing in my head, life gave me the finger.
So I filled. I bullshitted.
There were NEVER suppost to be pirate ninjas. But I figured that would give me one extra week to work on what I wanted to work on. There were NEVER suppost to be three FRIGGING months in this god damn mother fucking tub.
NEVER.
PERIOD
HONESTLY, I sat there and went...WHAT THE HELL DO I DO?!?
So I filled, I split up the story I wanted to tell. I padded, I moved stuff around, I changed what would have been published over a week and a half into what wound up being published over three MONTHS.
And I HATED doing it. Honestly, I HATED it. The entire time I'm doing it, I'm looking at it going "WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING MAN!?! Wrap this up...get this DONE with...screw the ending you had planned...SCREW it just go on."
Honestly, the entire time I'm filling, I'm thinking to myself "Goddamn it, you're going to have to pull a Lucas on this one and just 'Special Edition' this whole goddamn story arc."
You have ANY idea how much I hated that?
And I WILL wind up special editioning this if and when it winds up getting collected. Because it's ...UGH...it's some of the absolute worst writing I've EVER done. It's forced, it's contrived, it's absolutly HORRID.
It's NOT what I intended when I set all of this in motion in February, and I absolutly HATE that.
And don't try and make me feel better. YEAH, there's some decent stuff in there, but honestly people. HONESTLY...
I was bullshitting. You know it, I KNOW it, and I'm sorry.
-Jason