INSPIRATION

I've been running myself ragged.

The animation, after months of haggling over its final form, is pretty much close to being put onto a DVD and shopped. The haggling came in the form of Purple Paulie and Peter wanting it to be shorter. Ten minutes long, to be exact.

It ended up being eighteen minutes, which is only ten minutes shorter than it was originally.

I love Paulie and Peter to death, but they listen to too many outside influences. I am pigheaded and stubborn: if you give me a suggestion, I will nod my head, say "yes", and then proceed to completely ignore what you just told me to do. I do this because I know that people sometimes talk out of their asses and have no idea what they are suggesting to me.

I may be an insecure mess, but when it comes to what looks and sounds good, I trust my instincts, and I also trust the instincts of the people I work with... however, they don't always trust their own instincts, and they end up trying to please everyone-- and as we all know, if you try to please everybody, you end up pleasing nobody.

Anyway, once this is done-- and I'm putting my foot down if it's not done right --we can officially start a production company and begin the entertaining task of trying to get money from people to finance this venture. I have been contemplating whether I should pull a Producers and start whoring myself out to lonely old ladies with big bank accounts.

Maybe I should just let the animation speak for itself. In the meantime, I need to get Internet access at home so I can start doing some updates on the website. I can no longer work on it from the office, so I must start updating it at home.

It has been a year this month since we first started working on it. I realize that, in the world of entertainment, that amount of time is a mere drop in the bucket. I think we're doing okay with this.


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I get asked this one question a lot:

"James, if you are such a dedicated writer, why don't you try and get published?"

My immediate answer is "because I'm lazy", but really it has to do with one thing: I have no interest in being famous for writing.

I'd rather be influential, and there's a huge difference.

You don't have to be famous to be influential. However, if someone you influenced becomes famous, then your profile rises a bit.

Anyone know who Neal Cassady is? If you do, then you are a diehard Beat fan. If not, I don't blame you for not knowing who he is-- Neal Cassady never wrote anything of any worth, but he is still important to the development of 20th Century literature because he was the inspiration for Beat writers like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, as well as Sixties writers like Ken Kesey.

Ever read On The Road? I'm sure you have. I was bored by it overall, but the moments in the novel that were the most exciting revolved around the character of Dean Moriarty.

Dean Moriarty is based on Neal Cassady.

You all know that Socrates never wrote anything. Neither did Jesus Christ. But I believe that they did write things down-- they just didn't care whether anyone would read them or not. It was more important for those types of men to influence and teach others.

I know for a fact that I have influenced people. My ex-girlfriend, "Vera", was an aspiring poet when I met her. The poems were amateurish, but rather than tell her they were a crock of shit, I suggested that she increase her writing time. I led by example, almost daring her to keep up with my unstoppable pace. In due time, she became better and better, until finally she was writing on a daily basis.

I looked her up online a few years ago. She still writes. Her stuff is awfully good. And when I contacted her to congratulate her on her modest success in publishing, she thanked me and called me a "big influence".

That meant more to me than any book deal I could ever broker for myself.

Recently, an old high school friend and I got back in touch with each other. Last time we talked was two years ago. We had lunch and discussed writing. She was also an aspiring writer. But back in the day, she hated her poems, and despite my encouragement she never picked up on the vibe.

Anyway, two years ago she asked me why I never wrote a book about the good old days of high school. I told her that in fact I had written a novel and two short stories concerning the high school years. She asked me why I didn't hustle to get them published and I told her that I just didn't care, and that blogging was meeting my emotional needs in terms of recognition for my work.

She told me she had an idea for a novel. She told me she was sick of all the stuff that passes for literature nowadays, and she felt she could write something better than half of the published hacks out there. I was surprised to hear this from her, because I distinctly remembered her attitude towards her own work in our school days together.

I told her to start writing the novel immediately. Then, we lost touch, due to my getting laid off from my job and all sorts of tomfoolery on my part.

Two years later, she has e-mailed me to inform me that the novel is finished, and that she is working on another, and that she is determined to get the finished novel published.

You don't know how proud it made me to hear her say that.

If these women ever get to be gigantic authors who command hefty advances for their work, I will be satisfied knowing that I helped them get on their way, in a small but significant manner. They don't even have to acknowledge me in interviews or in their works-- I'll know the truth, and deep down those girls know the truth also.

It feels good to know that I may have inspired someone to take a certain path. I don't care for the accolades-- those sentiments embarrass me and make me feel stupid. No, I'd rather be the one in the background, who helped launch the ideas that changed the world, rather than the one who must bear the brunt of all that cultural transformation.

I'd rather be Neal Cassady than Jack Kerouac. And so far, I think I'm on my way.


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The high school friend who wrote the novel (I will refer to her as "Rose") also expressed her interest in singing. This totally shocked me, and so I suggested that we work together on some stuff.

I don't know if it will pan out. She may not be able to deal with my working methods. But it's worth a shot.

I don't think I'm going to give up on music, but I do know that I'm going to give it a much-needed rest for a spell. I mean, I will still work on studio songs, but playing live will be limited to paying gigs.

Instead, I will concentrate on more writing, but not on this blog. I blog too much. Everyone else that I know who blogs post every now and then; I post once, sometimes twice a day.

What a waste of my time.

I have a half-finished screenplay sitting in my computer at home. I have a collection of short stories waiting to be transcribed to the hard drive, along with two-thirds of a novel.

What am I doing squandering my energy on blogging? I should be completing these above-mentioned tasks because I started them with the intention of completing them.

Blogging is great, but one side effect is that I haven't written ANYTHING for myself in a long, long time. I don't write in my notebook anymore. I don't write poems by hand. I don't hole myself up in the apartment and scribble madly anymore.

All my writing is done on this blog. And although it has helped me to hone my style in a different direction, I am starting to miss the insularity of my old writings.

It took me six months to complete the first draft of my novel. Why did it go by so quickly? Because all of my friends were traveling abroad and I had a load of free time on my hands. That's why I titled it Free Time. I literally sat down at my electric typewriter every night, smoked pot, drank whiskey, smoked a cigarette, and proceeded to write and write and write (at the rate of 56 wpm) until I had hundreds of single-spaced typed pages.

I need to get back to that.

So, I'm not quitting on blogging, but then again this may be the last post that I put up for some time. I owe it to myself to step back and reclaim my writing impetus, because I'm taking this blogging shit way too seriously.

I repeat for posterity: I've been running myself ragged.

I will most likely post whenever I have a new installment to add to my online novel.

PEACE