Although I’ve posted bits and pieces of information about the latest book, and even uploaded the opening paragraph to tease you for your reading enjoyment, I haven’t really said much about the book itself. Unfortunately, that’s not about to change today. The good news is, though, I thought I’d at least tell you why.

Have you ever gone to a job interview but didn’t tell anyone about it? Or maybe started a diet and not said anything to anybody? Or perhaps even started writing a book and never told anyone what it was about? Why do people do this? I have one answer for it. In a word: embarrassment. If you announce something and it doesn’t turn out the way you promised/expected/hoped then you kinda feel stupid. Therefore, at certain times in your life, you really want to make sure something is fer real before divulging too much information about it.

I’ve had one or two people in person ask me, “What’s it about?” In response, I hem and haw a bit and usually just say, “Well, it keeps changing.” Then I mumble a few odd and vague words, sounding like a sit-com character caught in lie while trying to cover up for his roommate who’s dating two girls at the same time. (How was that for a hideous simile?)

But the fact is, it does change and mostly because I’m making it up as I go along. Back when I started the project, summer of 2008, I was going to write three books, each one a retelling of another story, with the three of them together retelling a fourth story. It was a cool idea. I worked on synopses, characters, and plots all through the end of 2008 and finally started writing last December. After two months or so, I got ten thousand words into it and stopped cold. It was terrible. The characters weren’t all what I imagined. And I don’t mean that in a good way.

So I kept the title, kept the opening paragraph, and decided on a retelling of a different story, the reasons for which I’ll get to in a future post. This time around, I didn’t write any words before I realized it was another dead-end.

So I kept the title, kept the opening paragraph, and decided on something completely different. I did some intense backstory work then finally began writing again on Saturday, August 1, 2009. And now it’s really moving (in the sense that I’m continually pressing buttons while my word processor has the keyboard focus).

But even now, it’s not going the way I planned. The protagonist isn’t behaving at all like I intended. His best friend is more like a mentor. One character intended to play a major role disappeared completely. The title, which I liked so very much at the start, doesn’t really fit any more, so that will most likely change. Worse, the main character is so unlike what I’d planned, I’m even seriously thinking of changing his name. That’s right. I’ve already written it 1,465 times and something as important as the main character’s name just isn’t working for me anymore.

So if you’re wondering why I call him “Bob” and why I haven’t released the title or told you anything about the plot, it’s because this cake needs to stay in the oven just a wee bit more.

Mmmm . . . cake.

Dory: Hey there, Mr. Grumpy Gills. When life gets you down do you wanna know what you’ve gotta do?

Dory: Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming, swimming. What do we do? We swim, swim.

Ah, were truer words ever spoken? I think Dory deserves a place amongst the great philosophers of the age, right up there with Socrates, Descartes, and George Carlin. “Just keep swimming!” just about sums it up, doesn’t it? And do you know what’s even better? Simply substitute almost any verb for “swimming” and you’ve got a template for life.

Take, for example, a little thing I like to call writer’s block. Ouch. Yeah, you know what I mean. Blank page. Blank head. Fingers not moving . . . except when they stray back to Solitaire. It’s a bad, bad thing, and it happens to everybody at one point or another. Writers great and small all succumb to its icy grip eventually. Most usually get past it, which is why we have seven Harry Potter books. Of course, once in a while, the writer gets stuck forever, which is why we don’t have eight Harry Potter books.

So what does one do? How does one get past this barrier of barriers? I finally learned the trick. At many, many points during my current draft, I’ve hit the wall. You know the wall. Your plot is stuck, you have absolutely no idea what to do next and you really, really can’t play more than two hundred and seventeen games of Solitaire in a row. So what’s left to do?

Just keep writing, just keep writing . . .

No kidding. It sounds silly, but it’s actually started to work for me. Instead of being blocked permanently, I just keep writing. I throw out all the rules, all the plot, all the . . . um, rules, and I write. It’s actually rather liberating. It’s just like the old saying, “There’s nothing like looking if you want to find something.”

It’s likely what gets written doesn’t make it into the final draft of anything. But it doesn’t matter. It might spark something else that does. The whole point is to just keep writing and sort it out later. Trying to sort it all out before the pen hits the paper is just a recipe for a stack of blank paper.

And now we’ve reached the point where I come up a witty ending to my blog post. Unfortunately, I can’t think of anything at the moment. I’m sure it will come to me if I realize that now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their quick brown fox jumping over the lazy jackdaws who love my big sphinx of quartz.

Hmmm . . . on second though, how about this instead: