OK, this is the first entry on this new site. I have been keeping a regular writing diary on my site on Oasis, but wanted to move it somewhere more formal, so that people don’t have to hunt it down within what is becoming such a large community site.

The diary is about the novel I am writing. But, for now, I’m just going to pick right up where the last diary left off. Eventually, i will move those entries here.

This weekend, I locked the apartment up with me inside and shut the world out so that I could write. Now, when I have done this in the past, I have gone all out and taped over all the clocks with black electrical tape, turned any larger clocks toward the wall, unhooked the Internet, and shut off the television.

That occurred this time as well.

The main difference was that both on Saturday and Sunday, I needed to buy concert tickets at 10 a.m., so the spirit of never knowing the time was kind of dented in that regard, since I set an alarm to ring at 9:55 a.m. each day, which gave me enough time to turn on the DSL modem, and get to ticketmaster to buy the tickets. It also meant that every day, I had something telling me what time it was. So, needless to say, I didn’t feel the same level of disconnectedness as last time. Last time, I was writing for hours before I ended the weekend at what I figured was late afternoon sunday, and realizing it was only like 10 a.m., and knowing that I started writing that morning at 6 a.m. at least for that to have occurred.

But, instead, I have Coldplay and Vines tickets, so trade-offs were made.

The other main difference is that I didn’t accomplish a lot of writing over the four-day weekend. That’s not to say I didn’t accomplish anything, but rather that I didn’t accomplish as much as I would have hoped (but when do I ever?).

What did take a lot of time was reading everything I had written to date and massaging it into an outline for the first few chapters. I think it was all a little to overlapping and meandering, so now there is a core structure to which I can write to, and make that really tight and reader-friendly.

That took a lot of time. I also made yet another huge plot point disappear, which resulted in a lot of pages needing to be redone. Now, the first five chapters have all been reworked to reflect this new information. The only othr chapter that needs to be updated is chapter six, but I want to go near-sequentially at this point, start digging into the meat of the characters more as I go. Give them the opportunity to start forming their own lives, rather than having them just be shaped by the limited possibilities I can only bring to the table.

So, that is the main takeaway from the weekend.

As for this blog, I think it’s a good start to getting things going here. One more step in me cutting the Oasis umbilical cord and stepping out on my own. I’ll still show up there, too, but you will find me here more often.

This is still a default style that comes with the weblog software I’m using, and that will change soon enough. Other writings will also appear soon enough, including some stuff I’ve never put online before, like interviews with Marilyn Manson and whatever else I can find laying around on my hard drive. so, stay tuned, there’s definitely more on the way.

Peace,

Jeff