Writer's Bloc

Since Dr Patch's passing, I have found myself in a creative morass. A few pages of this, put it down, a few notes and diagrams for that, toss it aside, blindly scribblingly pushing through a blog post, mulch that one for revision later... Something has wrought mad havoc on my prose, thrown withering prussic on my prose, and completely unscrewed my lightbulb. It's been hard finding the threads again in the dark. 

I find my thoughts wandering through backhills, from time to time drifting to the page, and then away again. I've caught up on some TV. I've visited some friends. There has been some lovely tulsi coming up in the back garden. The market at Mr Chen's is selling fresh ghost chilis. Leaves are falling. The last full moon was lovely—hung there like a cathedral's eye. 

A play about writer's block. A long poem on Birmingham history. No less than three essays on American Horror Story (and one on this season's trashy but irresistible stylistic inspiration, SyFy's Paranormal Witness). More Lallie and Pat mysteries. Snow and an overabundance of pencilthin moustaches. Priests and baptism. Repeatable routines. Sad lonely snippets spun off and landed out of sight. Most require rewrites. Most require restructuring. 

I'm writing. I'm putting words on the page, on the screen, and I'm happy to do it. But it doesn't feel right. Like a gutterball. You can tell when it leaves your fingers. Doesn't have to hit the lane. The spin is off. You're out of focus. An issue of depth perception. Burnt facts. Staged election. Undeserved access, discovered and cut off. You do not have access to this server. Lost permission is a bitch. 

So I turned to something I have felt proud of: my Tenth Book Prize-winning novel The Furnace. After being bought up by Presse le Conseil, there have been a few revisions as it lingers in galleys—all of which have received "once-overs" by Rex Patch. Dr Patch's input was invaluable in fashioning a vast tangle of a book into something more digestible and far less fibrous. Although Presse le Conseil has not offered me any firm dates in terms of the release of The Furnace, I assume as soon as they okay these last rewrites they'll rush the print. Still, the significantly trimmer Furnace coming out (which holds a much firmer grip upon its structure) leaves behind some significant chapters. Rewrites have made the chronology of certain trimmed sections impossible—although the events depicted within them don't feel so much zeroed out as highlighted in the process. 

Take, for instance, this chapter from a past draft: in it, Daniel Hardiner has just returned to school after his grandfather's funeral (a chapter about which, in an adjusted position, made the cut—so far—), having missed the first day of classes. He ends up attacking a journal assignment very vigorously at a party, where he and his roommates have come to unofficially dissolve their friendship. 

This new-calved story contradicts the closeted Daniel in the early chapters of the new book, but somehow that doesn't make it any less... true.

Daniel surely went to the Pelham house, met Billie and Philip Stokes. John was there, and the older two Lemorder girls hit on Mitch. Dan told his roommates about silk and hinted about the whiskey, he humored Helena Pelham in the basement, and he said goodbye around a peculiar black table in the library before he moved out. None of that happens in The Furnace. Daniel hews close to his room. The black table turns up elsewhere but unmoved, with other palms against the grain. Contingency. A parallel thread in the ribbon. A true thread, and one that bolsters The Furnace from the outside, while on the inside another Daniel hews close to his room. Maybe it's a dream.

In celebration of writer's block, here's to the dropped stories, which somehow gain spindly spiderlegs as, well, perhaps not a prequel, but maybe rather a requel.  

And before we go, a note from Dr Patch written on a printed draft: "Well, it's a book series in 15 pages. It's your book series, and it's staggering, and I can't wait to see you write it. This chapter [scribbled out] central—just not to this book. Harry would have loved the fractal. It's your wholecloth. Still, it has to go. You've got to tighten up, David, and make this something to read, not to ponder. Let's go over the front end of the book over coffee."

We got that coffee. Bless that man.