A run-on sentence about writing anything until you write Something

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So it seems to be more complicated than, “OK, I’m going to sit down and write something now,” because your brain goes, “I don’t know what to write,” and you say, “write anything except nothing,” and the next thing you know, you’ve doodled the word “SOMETHING” in big block letters with googly eyes and duck faces all around it and maybe a little shading around the edges of the letters, and then you write about the weather, how it’s cloudy out and you sure wish the sun would shine and that it would cool off or warm up (depending on what time of year it is), and you keep on moving your fingers to spill words onto the page, sometimes for pages and pages of incoherent nothingness, and what do you know all of a sudden you’re in the Arctic searching for a lost shipwreck, and just as you’re giving up hope the sun comes out from behind a cloud and there’s the wreck just where you expected it to be, but suddenly the villain is standing in your way aiming to snatch your victory away, or maybe you’re a young child racing across a field of wildflowers with not a care in the world except to get your mom’s batch of cookies over to the neighbors, when all of a sudden you realize the neighbor won’t know if you’re bringing a dozen cookies or 10 and they sure smell good.

But if you don’t move your fingers and you don’t write nonsense until it starts to make sense and tell a story, well then, I hope you have a nice day even though you didn’t write anything. I’m just here to tell you that nothing is nothing and nonsense is something, and something is better than nothing almost every time. And if you’re hoping that maybe this is the time that nothing is better than something (I did say almost), well, yes, and maybe this is the time you win a million bucks in the lottery, too.

Allen the Alien, Chapter 6

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And now Allen was alone with Ellie.

“You spoke of needing something to be done,” Allen said. “What is this ‘necessary’ thing you want the federation to do?”

“We’re all just so tired of all the fighting and bickering on our planet,” said Ellie. “We need to unite under one gentle and benevolent leader, and I was wondering how you all could play a role in that.”

“Do you have a particular gentle and benevolent leader in mind?”

Ellie’s wide smile grew even wider. “Why, me, of course.”

“I understand,” said Allen. “Well, I just told you that we don’t believe in bosses and we let each member planet go its own way.”

“Oh, I don’t want to boss anyone around,” Ellie said. “I just want to end all the divisiveness and make peace.”

“That will be up to you and your people,” Allen said. “As I said, we don’t typically interfere in each other’s business.”

Ellie was still smiling with her face, but her eyes seemed to grow darker.

“I see,” said she. “Well, I guess that’s how it has to be.”

“Correct,” said Allen.

TriSight and Count Duckula returned.

“The boy is safe,” said TriSight.

“As he always would have been even without a babysitter,” said Count Duckula, who seemed a little irritated.

“Oh, I was hoping you boys would get to know each other along the way,” Ellie said.

Duckula and TriSight looked at each other and something was exchanged without words.

“We do understand each other better than we did before,” TriSight said.

“Splendid!” Ellie said, and her smile grew even wider — but Allen thought her eyes grew even darker. “Well, we will leave you to it, then. Thank you, Emissary Allen, for your graciousness.”

“I am in your service,” said Allen.

“Apparently not,” Ellie said, but then she shook her head. “I apologize, this has been a wonderful visit and truly historic. We have much to learn from you magnificent aliens.”

They watched Ellie and the count walk away for a while, and then TriSight raised all three eyebrows. “What was that all about?”

“It appears Tommy’s advice was sound. We have much to discuss with Fearless Leader,” Allen said. “But first, tell me why you said you understand each other better than you did before.”

“Ah, yes,” said TriSight. “We had a very enlightening conversation.”

In search of a subtitle

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Most people probably don’t pay attention to such things, but anyone who does may have noticed a couple changes to the cover of What I Came to Say since last month when I announced the title of my next book, which is atop the right sidebar if you’re reading on a laptop or down below my bio if you’re on a “smart” phone or tablet.

(Actually, the latest version of the cover is under the subject line, isn’t it?)

I’m a practitioner of “morning pages” in my journal — three pages of more-or-less stream-of-consciousness writing first thing in the morning to stir the creative juices and get my early-morning thoughts out on paper and out of my system. As you might expect if you have followed me for any length of time, some of Tuesday morning’s musing was once again chastising myself for unfinished business.

For example, it’s two weeks since I decided to devote Saturday’s blog to the ongoing story of Allen the Alien. When I made that decision, I had completed Chapters 4 and 5, and my Tuesday morning self-flagellation was how I had not yet produced Chapter 6 for this coming weekend. For what it’s worth, I wrote Chapter 6 before sitting down to write this post.

I also have started another whimsical little bit of fantastical fluff that I am planning to turn into a series of short podcasts to be released once I have written and produced a “Season 1” of 10 episodes. More on that project if I ever write Episode 2 and beyond, which was another round of self-flagellation on Tuesday morning.

“Where does the time go?” I chided the guy in the mirror. “Down the drain, or rather, to the same place it has always gone and never to return, never to be changed, all those present moments squandered. The fruit of the spirit is blah blah blah blah and self-control. Self-control is last on the list but still a fruit of the spirit, and yet I can’t seem to stop myself from having another snack, watching another YouTube video, playing another game of computer solitaire, or catching another episode of whatever I’m binging.”

I reminded myself of the words of my poem and song “I’m Not Done”: “I still have things to say and I don’t know how I’ll say them, but sure as I feel, I feel that I’m not done.” And I reminded myself that I wrote a song called “Refuse to be Afraid” 30 years ago, which became the title of a book 16 years ago, and that I wrote my most well-received short story, “Wildflower Man,” 30 years ago, and I have made precious few attempts to bring those creative efforts to a wider audience in the meantime.

At this point I was about to bemoan my constant tendency to whining and self-flagellation without follow-up, when I caught myself and remembered the whole point of morning pages is to flush out the negativity and put myself in a better place for creative exploration.

“If I can exorcise these demons, recognize them as the demons they are, and sail past them, maybe I can say what I came to say, figure out how to say them, and build myself what legacy I can build in the time that’s left.”

“Making the most of the time that’s left” — I realized that’s the best candidate for a subtitle I’ve been able to conjure since I settled on a title for the book. And so that became the second tweak to the cover since I unveiled it last month — the first was to pull back the focus of the illustration from the black-eyed Susans to the guy taking the selfie, and the second was to add the subtitle.

No doubt there will be further tweaks as the project draws nearer to publication, whenever that may be. At this point my publication date is “sometime before Christmas,” and my next goal is to make that a little more specific.

Here’s how I finished my Tuesday morning pages:

“I have points to make, songs to sing, and stories to tell, and this morning I have the ambition to get started and get going. I so prefer this version of me to the one who struggles with melancholy and indolence. How do I bury that guy and fly with this guy? Probably by acknowledging they are the same guy, bearing with the sad lazy guy and encouraging the whimsical happily driven guy to take the wheel, with God’s help.”

It was a good start to the day. I did mention I wrote “Allen the Alien,” Chapter 6, before I sat down to write this post, didn’t I?