It makes me something like sad that here I am 45 years old and I have never successfully completed even a short story when I have wanted to write for 30 years now. I think I'm more or less about in the right place finally to do so. I think. Still haven't finished anything so who knows. But I feel like I ought to put it down, what was going on, as I spent a lot of time over the years trying to understand why I just couldn't seem to do it.

I have no idea the importance of each of the following. Some combination of:

1. I wanted to write something amazing. I wanted to change the world. I kept rejecting anything short of amazing. I should have set my sights lower and perhaps as I went along I would turn it into something at least intelligent while still enjoyable.

2. I had these strong feelings attached to some images/feelings in my head. They were vague though and not remotely a story. I kept trying to turn them into a story and as I went completely losing the original motivation. I simply needed to focus much more on the nuts and bolts structure even though it meant I wasn't feeling the original inspiration and it had instead turned into a simple problem solving exercise. It's not about that intense artistic feeling. That inspiration. It's about persistence and day to day problem solving.

3. I have been quite unhappy most of my life. But much less so in recent years. Really once my situation improved it still took time for my mental/emotional state to catch up. Anyway, a story for the most part, usually amounts to bad guys doing ugly stuff to good guys. Inventing that sort of stuff in your free time when you already have real life bad guys doing stuff to you is really quite hard.

In a lot of ways it can be difficult to create bad guys anyway as evil is ultimately quite banal. It can be hard to want to focus on making it and all that.

4. For so long I just flat out couldn't stand just sitting down with myself and writing. I felt like I was missing something. This was in part because I didn't have enough in the way of friends when younger. Didn't have enough just hanging out with my friends. Maybe exacerbated by who I am somewhat. That I vaguely had this feeling of this great fun I was missing. I couldn't stand to just sit by myself as my life passed me by. Finally I have had enough of those good times with friends and I see that as nice as they can be, ultimately time just spent alone can be really nice too. Or something like that I guess. Not exactly. I recall as a young child playing with match box cars all alone and making good cars and bad cars. It was the beginning of being a writer. They fought. I was alone. I enjoyed it. And I hadn't had all that fun hanging out at that time. So, I don't know. Something negative happened. I don't know. Somehow I needed fun with friends that was missing from my experience.

Something else may come to me later. So at least in the age of microsoft word, I can create bad guys and good guys now. It's not some horrible thing to just sit here and do that. It's like I've done all those other things enough now and my life situation is positive enough. Finally. At 45.

So now, the nuts and bolts. Bad guys and good guys who are more or less evenly matched. Enough so that the match is interesting to read. Nuts and bolts stuff. Pacing. Finding the right words. Hopefully something more. Hopefully something much more. At this point I have a ways to go I think. I have to write and as I write figure out the characters abilities, the magic system, the world. I can't just throw together a good outline first. Too many choices I can't decide about. So I start writing and I have to rewrite a lot. For example, I realize I've made my one character too powerful compared to the bad guys. I have to weaken him. And on some level it feels like a silly thing. Contrived. Also it's all been done before. And perhaps in this age impossible to get published probably anyway.

But I have a brain. And I can sit down and enjoy writing daily now. Finally.

https://www.soundclick.com/widgets/song.cfm?songid=7917805
I sure wrote a lot of music like this. Not good enough to promote. Not really remotely. Although some in a weird way are way better than this. But they're all weird or a bit amateurish. Or not any good. The good ones are too weird. There are some not weird ones that I feel like just aren't quite worthy of promoting for other reasons. Bad drums, etc.

But still. Some of it's damn good to me. And I feel like it's a little sad no one will ever hear it. Probably not the only one who feels this way.

Anyway, set up now, to get back to it.

I have been trying really hard to write for 3 or so weeks. I was taking the attitude of just making it a daily ritual where everyday I try to write sentences that are actually publishable.

So I wrote a scene that occurred in a graveyard. And then what? Then the character goes back to the city she came from and so then I have to create so many characters and so much. I have to stop and world build. And then I go back and more or less completely rewrite that first scene. And still there is so much world building I need to do that I can't decide about. And it seems like for fantasy fiction, I have to do it first otherwise I will just have to rewrite things.

World building is hard. I had a creative writing teacher (met him playing tennis) that it's better to just start with writing fiction.

So in trying to world build I run into a problem for me. That I couldn't stand to create villains. It's enough to have live with them in real life, let alone go create my own. That is an issue I've had before. But so much of writing is simply about that. You have to make up the good guys and bad guys. Usually. Just has to be done.

Anyway, I feel like I keep trying to write and then I stop. And right now, I am thinking I should stop with the story I was working on and instead try to write some very simple short stories instead, where I concentrate on making good guys and bad guys and hopefully get used to creating villains even though I already have dealt with more than enough in my real life. I worry this is the same sort of thing I've done before (stopping the story). But as long as I'm still continuing to write fantasy fiction stories, I guess it's not like what has happened before.

So then, switching to short stories. Simplistic stories with good guys and bad guys and magic.That's all. Maybe my confidence will grow.

I want to fix the evil in this world. So when people do evil things to me I want to understand why. Of course such people generally do not want to speak to you. So you're left not understanding why, at least not for certain, not exactly. You can guess. Jealousy. Misjudgement. Perfect selfishness. Unable to face that they were wrong for some reason. Desperately trying to conceal something else... But you can't know for certain. And it can be a puzzle you just keep trying to understand. Trying and trying. And so you spend so much time thinking about this ugly thing. And some of that time is spent feeling a combination of amazement and moral outrage.

Sometimes you just have to accept that you will never really know why. You don't have adequate information to work with. And stop trying to solve the puzzle.

It has been 2.5 years since last contact with S and it still really really bothers me. I'm sure that because she refused to speak to me and instead texted for months is a big part of it. I had too many negative things previously happen to me that way because I searched for mentally unstable people to be friends with long distance. The negative texting thing is just a horrible nightmare to me. And it seems like maybe that's exactly why she did it. That she wanted to hurt me as much as she could. Maybe. I maybe she didn't understand. I don't know. And that's part of the problem.

Maybe though I need to face that there is another problem. Which is that I found her to be the most attractive women I had ever known by a very long way. I can find the usual women attractive. The barbie doll types that are interchangeable. And, well, in other words they aren't really that attractive actually. They just have regular features. So what. But S was totally unique. There is just no one else remotely like her. I think that she would be considered kind of unattractive by most.

Understand that when we were friends there was never anything inappropriate. We were just friends. I thought it didn't matter that I found her so attractive. But, perhaps it was why we were friends in the first place. Why I liked being around her so much. And I think I must face that it must be partially why I'm still so unhappy about her suddenly refusing to speak to me when I became friends with her sister. Her sister (and her sister's husband) are actually far better friends. But I am not entirely just this rational sentient creature. I have an animal side and my animal side, I guess, is unusual.

There is only one of her on this planet it seems. Truly a unique creature that can't be replaced. And just the only one, I guess, who just "does it" for me. If I had been single I would have wanted to date her for sure. And I'm pretty sure that would have been some kind of hell. I am just totally ensorcelled by her. And she is mid 30's and never had a boyfriend (or girlfriend?). And there was something going on there, that she would have had such an issue with me being friends with her sister.

I can make it without her. It's just like a part of me has died I guess. But I'm mid 40's now. I may not live so much longer anyway. So I can make it. Maybe it's even for the best. But it's 2.5 years later and I'm just as upset now as ever.

How unfortunate to have had such feelings for such an evil person. That is definitely a flaw I have. The reality is that her sister is a sort of angel while she is a sort of demon. That is not an exaggeration. They are extremes. So I did send a message to her through her sister. I feel better about matters now. She prefers to keep things ugly forever. No one thinks it makes any sense. It's sad. It serves no purpose except that she is sadistic and petty. This is the most hurtful thing she can do in response to me being her sister's close friend. And if she ever spoke to me again it would mean I "won" the battle over speaking/not speaking to me. 

How intelligent am I really that such a person meant so much to me? I am of course part animal. This is how "did it" for me. I wanted to see her improve. Become more self aware. How much better to take an intelligent woman and convince her to work out some, lol. Not that that's the same.

But that doesn't entirely explain it and I hardly can see the point of explaining it. We were friends a long time. Why turn that into something ugly forever. All those memories. Her sister thinks she is irrational. My wife thinks she is mentally ill. Her dad thinks she's childish.

Read On Writing by S King. Really liked it. Straight and to the point. Mostly. Useful.

Read Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Currey. Interesting. Has caused me to start getting up before work to write for at least an hour. Getting up at 5:30 or 6 to write for an hour is OK and doable for me now. Though once a week I will have to get up at 4:45. As I do anaerobic exercise I want to sleep in more. Except for some tennis I will avoid anaerobic exercise.

Reread first 17% of Lyonesse by Vance. In some ways he's very impressive and unique but in other ways it's really not good story telling. Little dialogue. Just kind of meandering along. Almost like a history summary.

Reread first 6% of Bleak House by Dickens. For some reason I really want to be able to say I read this. He's such a highly thought out writer. But good lord this is terrible. Trying to at least make it to 10%. I seem to not be able to stand to continue around 5 or percent. So far what has happened....? There's some lawsuit that has gone on a long time and some orphan girl who is really nice and has lived a bit here and there. Not treated terribly but not super well. Not much for so many words.

Read some short stories from a Shadows of the New Sun: Stories in Honor of Gene Wolfe. Highly forgettable.

41% of Wind and the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. Surely Tolkien was greatly influenced by this? ...Yes. He was. And it's enjoyable in the same sense that the Shire was.