Chairman of the Bored

My process, an overview: start a new story; write eight hundred words; start another new story; write three hundred words; think “fuck, I really do need to finish a novel”; make revision notes for Black Candy; realise Black Candy is horribly flawed and wonder if starting a new novel will be easier; write a hundred words; hate them; write another hundred words; hate them too; pick up a finished novel and read the opening paragraph; think “the new novel I’m writing is complete pants. I’ll start a new one.”; write 100 words; delete one hundred words; work on black Candy; start a blog post about Whip It;  delete it; start a blog post about how much I hate writing; delete it; work on the second short-story I started; work on the first short-story I started; work on Black Candy; start a new novel; research boredom on Wikipedia; find the following quite comforting and accurate – Boredom has been defined by C. D. Fisher in terms of its central psychological processes: “an unpleasant, transient affective state in which the individual feels a pervasive lack of interest in and difficulty concentrating on the current activity; start a new novel; work on Black Candy; start a new story; discover traction with the new story idea; work on it; blog about process; go back to working on the new story; realise, yes, this one, this is the one I’m ready to write.

Recorded here because it’s always like this, time and again, and I always forget and panic when it happens. Life really would be easier if I had a different process. One that involved working routinely and constantly, rather than gnawing at a dozen bits of bone until I find the one that happens to have a little leftover meat.

Now I’m going to listen to Iggy Pop for a half hour, meet my parents for long, and ponder what happens next for Dead Girl Molly and the Soldier-Boy Walther P.