So, no more politics. That should free up 2-3 hours of work time every weekday, if not more.

I've cleared the bookcase next to my chair in the living room of all of the politically themed books, including those I was in the middle of, meant to write a review for, and am now deciding to ignore for a while (if not permanently). I dug out the most interesting books on writing I have and stuffed some of them in the hole, but there's still a huge gap. Very sad.

Last night, I took the two pages of dialogue I abandoned in 2002, gathered up my mental thoughts about a story that have been germinating, and outlined the novel. The outline is about six pages long, indicating I have some work in front of me.

If it gets written. I've run into a rather interesting little problem. I don't know how to write.

I mean, sure, I've done some writing, but it's never been a conscious effort for me. Whether I'm blathering on about politics or helping Walter get Mulder out of his pants, it's always been a stream-of-consciousness thing. I mean, my conscious brain has never been involved. I just put my fingers on the keys and words happen.

Writing has always been in response to a pressure inside me...whatever I'm writing about is in there and screaming to get out. Even the other two novel-length works I've written weren't the result of planning. I had an idea (usually an opening scene) for a story, and I just wrote whatever poured out of me at the moment. Once the internal pressure eased off, I put The End on that story and moved on.

(This naturally doesn’t necessarily produce good stories. I'm inexplicably comforted by the memory of that day, two or three years ago, when I went to my page and yanked off what I considered the 15 or 20 worst stories on it.)

Sometimes, in a sop to the conventions, I used to force friends to read excerpts from works in progress and demand that they tell me if the material was just too stupid to publicize, (I used to have a beta reader of the most conscientious and hard-working kind, but I had to give up using her. For one thing, at that time I was writing too much to be comfortable asking any one person to dedicate a sufficient amount of their time to beta-reading my stuff. For another, she was a better writer than I am. She thought about things too much. For me, thinking and writing don’t have much to do with each other. She was always asking what this or that meant, as though I had any idea.)

For some reason, I'm suddenly reminded that I once produced a lengthy series of rants laying down the law about how to write or, more often, how not to write. I think it's time I confessed, in case any of you read those, that those were produced the same way. I had an idea, sat down and wrote it at white-hot speed, spell-checked it (usually), and posted it. I shudder to think of what I probably said, of the rules and regulations I had no intention of bothering about myself. If I were honest, I'd pull those down and post an apology to the world at large. (Went. Looked. Regretted. Also fixed some formatting problems.)

Anyhow, back to the whole writing things, I'm not feeling pressure at the moment. I'm still very interested in my original idea and I don't doubt that a bit of episode-watching (ghastly idea - OaT was not a good show) will help me clarify the characters, but I'm not feeling the pressure from inside. Without that, I don't have any idea how to write.

I sit there, with pen and paper, and stare at the page. I have characters. I have a setting. I have a story. I even have, I think, good ideas for the plot. I have some bits of business. I have a couple of scenes, a couple of conversations. I have a climax to the story.

I knew I was in trouble when I started writing an outline. I've never outlined a story before. (Well, I mean, I did once, but the story sucked. I think I was outlining in a desperate attempt to convince myself otherwise.)

I have no idea how to write if it doesn't just happen. I've occasionally used a keyboard, but mostly I use paper. I get a pen that has ink. I put the inky bit of the pen on the paper. And writing happens.

It's never failed me before. I don't understand.

Now that I've seen some formatting things I'd like to fix on my page, maybe I'll waste the day doing that and forget about the writing.

(Note: As I started to post this, it occurred to me that actual case-file stories were never my strong suit. I only ever wrote one and it was pretty feeble. Maybe I'm just being too ambitious? That's a pity, because I'm just entirely over the PWP thing. I'm not getting any and I'm not going to sit around writing stories where everyone else is.)