Appearances is a project that I'm determined to see through to completion, even though I'm pretty sure it is unlikely to find either a publisher or an audience.  I'm calling it a novel.  It is, though, more accurately a sort of clunky collage of ideas and scenarios.  It's an experiment with clockwork mechanics and archetypal palliatives.

I don't exactly know why I'm writing it.  I don't exactly know how to write it.  I do know, however, that I have to try to write it.

The goal had been to complete a first draft in a year.  16 months in and I'm about 12 sections shy of being 2/3 of the way through that first draft.

In this project I'm not writing for any other reason than to see what I can learn to make as I go.

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Emotional nuances don't always translate particularly well on blogs.  But...
A blogger/ranter/acquaintance of mine recently tipped in his blog to thinking that novels are only written to make money.  This is a guy who "loves to write" but seems to have decided to dislike an awful lot of writers. At least in the abstract.  And then he's always apologizing for his opinions after the fact and then restating them later.  

See: I can put things under erasure too.  What's the passive-aggressive effect?

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I haven't discovered an unmediated way of living.  I say this less than 3 months away from my 60th birthday. The fact is, we edit ourselves and are edited by others.  The space I inhabit isn't mine alone.

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Appearances, projections, thrown voices, hypnotic suggestions, ghosts, doubles, shadows, speech balloons, fun house mirror reflections, chalk outlines, zombies, etc, are my peeps these days.

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Out.

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