Since picking up this here Blog, it's been a means for me to consistently express myself. While I continue to keep a hardcopy Journal, the entries in there have been fewer and farther between. As I was looking over some of last week's entries, I feel as though I'm ready to take another step.

If I got down to it, I have been developing the skills, potential themes and some ideas to churn out some fiction for real. This Blog is like a test run. There's a theme -- my life -- and a main character -- me -- who tries to deal with his life and circumstances. The only difference is that I'm recording facts.

And this Guy, he knows this *Girl*...
The journals have helped me describe people. Take my tenant, for example. I don't know much about her -- she seems basically nice and all -- but she has emerged as someone who's constantly attracting accidents. Of course she's more complex: Another slice of her would bring out her family. Two out of her three sons live unofficially with her and are some of the biggest Mama's boys I've seen. Does drama have a way of occurring to keep her family close?

Now I'm not saying that she fell off the chair and broke her leg on purpose. But if I needed to illustrate someone in my story that was always being victimized, my conversations and knowledge about her could create a more three-dimensional character. It's a starting point -- Maybe a character in my story *would* break a leg to attract attention.

And, uhm, like there's all these *other* people, uhh...
There are all kinds of blogs in this brave bloggy world! In addition to ones that comment on politics and poetry and *gasp* Madonna, I've been following a host of blogs written by people all over America and the (english-speaking) world. I haven't followed the fashion for linking and blogrolling -- my efforts haven't met with the best of success. Early on I would leave comments and invite responses, but the responses were uniformly negative: My blog either made them flip their wig or bored them to death. So, I stopped.

For awhile I was following gay urban blogs, a genre in which I'm a loosely-related hick cousin. I don't follow them as much anymore because, well... it got tiresome. They all chat about the same thing at the same time. (See my Madonna entry below for your very own second-cousin taste of it.) I'm curious to see if I get laid as much as they do. (Sometimes yes, and sometimes no.)

Recently, I've started checking the blog of a single woman in Alabama who works in a mill and has a boyfriend who, in her words, "Mel Gibson he is not." I also follow a mountain guy in Colorado who describes himself as a "Freedom Fighter" and if he isn't quoting the Bible is throwing bile at gays and feminists and blacks. Part of me would love to have links to them! Even if what they write is so different than my frame of thinking, I enjoy reading it nonetheless because it *is* different.

All these people, you know, so they go to this *Party*...
When I took a Creative Writing class at the community college, we would be given weekly assignments. "Write a five page double-spaced story showing character conflict," our professor would say, or "Write the same story told from three different points-of-view: One in first person, one in third person subjective, the final in third person objective." I would start -- and sometimes finish -- the assignment that same night. Sometimes I would have it done with no intention of review, and then completely rewrite it the night before it was due. A few times I'd be certain of a scene's direction and suddenly it would take a wholly different turn. The results, if surprising, always meant a stronger story.

Reviewing my entries here, it seems like I frequently start out that gate with a strong lead. I've set or created scenes and some dialog. There's been a lot of vignettes.

Then I stumble... I can't think of any story.

I miss the class assignments that imposed a goal. I try visualizing my professor, "Write no more than 200,000 pages on a guy who has Issues." I don't think this is what she would have in mind...

An earlier version of Luscious Desert had an e-guestbook people could sign. Within two weeks of starting, I was "flamed": "What an egotistical, self-important little b*tch you are!" said my guest, "But you also write very well. If you have something to say, then say it."

err, and, uhm... yeah!...So-oo, is it hot in here or is it me?