Travel Log VI

06Feb2011 [personal]

• A writing-focussed entry, this is an exceptionally weird piece, but as will become clear, I need to get it out.
• It's scary, but I'm finding that while I'm writing this story, dozens of others are taking form in the back of my mind and pushing forward, begging to be told. They're clearly separate stories, not things that just want to be worked into Raphaël's story. And as it is, there's a lot squeezing itself into R's story, references and ideas that I hadn't actually thought I was trying to get out.
• I'll wake in the middle of the night, after an especially vivid dream (and before a couple of months ago, I'd hardly dreamt in years), needing to write something down, like a selection of barely coherent references I have in a notepad, attempting to describe a collection of visual snapshots, about some ancient/alien technology hiding in Europe's central banks, in the form of massive discs of some unknown true-black metal, looked after by formerly-human guardians, backing (evidently just barely) massive currency and trade systems.
• Or I'll just be sitting there and something completely fresh will pop into my head, unbidden, completely in the form of words rather than images, like:

  The war between men and angels started simply enough, in a sleepy town in the middle of nowhere, in a sleepy time, approximately three years ago. I say approximately because, time being what it is for the angels, it's difficult to pin down. That may have just been the particular when and where that they chose to fire the first shot, declare the first battle. Other battles have since been fought, strewn back and forth through time. There've now been fought some eight decades worth of individual battles, and both sides grow weary of the fight. We look to other means, any means, by which this war might be drawn to a close.

• Or an idea I first had years ago will return, seeming to have more potential than it used to, like a story about a facility hidden deep in the middle of the Australian outback, preserving a diverse gene pool while the country's coastal fringe becomes increasingly homogenised, driven by genetic engineering and racism and a particularly narrow view of beauty; but maybe the story can take a YA spin, with the lead someone fleeing an arranged marriage, or a forced sterilisation.
• When I drink, the romanticised writer image will sometimes play out, and I tell myself I'm drinking to silence the voices, that I need the depressant just so my brain will stop; they're not "the voices" of the crazy variety, in-so-much as they're not telling me to do things I wouldn't normally do, but I'm very easily slipping into a mode where the creation of these artificial worlds is an utterly consuming act, as though I could comfortably go for days just writing, barely eating, and drinking each evening just to put myself to sleep.
• I realise, too, that I'm barely taking in the amounts of caffeine I'm accustomed to, having cut back on the coffee and largely switched to tea. I wonder if there's a relationship there, in not requiring that particular sort of stimulant.
• I'm left without a conclusion. There are two sorts of creation going on, one the daily writing as I advance a single story, a methodical exploration of a single coherent world, constantly pushing ahead, ridiculously exhausting work but incredibly rewarding; the other is the largely accidental, purely conceptual, wide-ranging fly-bys of numerous disparate potential worlds. Both are incredible experiences, the latter being so terrifying mostly because I'm not seeking it out. Both are messing with my brain chemistry somehow; my body's pumping out some cocktail of happy chemicals, but to what end, or what evolutionary benefit that might serve, I've no idea. And I understand neither situation, with only a vague knowledge that the feeling is familiar, but without knowing what I'd have to do to reproduce its creative power under different circumstances.