Story Writing

My characters are angry at me, and I'll tell you why.

I'm currently sitting at my not-quite-a-desk, listening to a song called "Storywriter," from the soundtrack of the anime series Eureka(pronounced "eh-uh-recka") Seven. Though I admit that I don't know the lyrics, the music, tempo, and general feel of it is very lighthearted, fun, and inspiring. It's actually one of the main themes of my Dungeons and Dragons character Drake, who is very much "kitty cats and rainbows, YAY!" I may outline him on here at some point, but that's for another day.

Anyway, the point of what I was saying is that, despite the fact that this song usually helps kick me into gear when I feel like I want to write something - and even has "story" and "writer" in its title - I haven't been able to produce a lick of anything even remotely resembling work on my various stories. And it's been this way for several days, longer if I don't count the rework I've been cobbling together for the setting my old buddies and I have used in our D&D games back home. Every time I pull up NaNo 2008 and try to fill in some gaps, I just wind up staring at the screen like a lobotomy outpatient for a quarter of an hour, and then give up.

That's why even the chipper warrior protagonist from my story is about to leap out of the book and missile drop-kick me. I'm getting very gung-ho and excited about the thought of looking for an agent, 'cuz then that would mean I'm really getting the ball rolling on this whole novelist deal. But I can't really do that until I have a finished product to submit, to make them go "ooh!" and "ahh!" at the fact that I've already demonstrated the ability to do novel-length work(which just happens to be something that many prospective writers never manage to do).

Admittedly, there are some things going on now in life that are sapping my focus, so hopefully this is just a temporary situation. But the honest truth is, I need this ability to jet away mentally and immerse myself in weaving these stories, maybe more so now than ever before. I rely on it to keep me semi-sane, when being ridiculously upbeat and dogged doesn't do it for me.

It's times like these that I find myself wishing I could just go out and lift. In case you aren't familiar with the term "lifting," it too is from Eureka Seven; basically, it's a sport/hobby that's the equivalent of surfing, if you took the board out of the water and were able to fly through the air with it. I realize that anime isn't the origin of the concept, but it's my most recent exposure to it, and considering my music selection at present, it's rather fitting that I would think of it. I think soaring among the clouds through a late-winter sky would do wonders for my writer's block. Not to mention making me look really cool to all of my future fans out there.