Inventory - The Island of Unfinished Posts

Photo by Joshua Earle
image courtesy of unsplash.com

I was sitting down to write a post and I said to myself, Hey, I should really finish one of those series of posts that I started, and then never got back to.  And then I realized: I do not currently know how many of those there are.  There may be too many to count.

I hate blogging about blogging, it’s not what I’m trying to write on here, and it’s not what you want to read, at least so I imagine.  But I’m in the tall grass here, and 

So I’m going to take a short break this week and try to at least get a handle on all the juggling pins I have in the air that deserve should be brought back to earth at some point.  Consider it a checklist for the next few essay series, unless if something more interesting or more urgent comes up.  Maybe that should be ‘until when.’

Unfinished Essays

First is the “Favorites” series.  This one got a little ugly.

Hey, I hadn't even got to that one yet.

This one started with the best intentions, and I actually had something like a long-term plan for bringing it off.  I wanted to illustrate, in reverse, that I think there are four main kinds of stories, the way I understand them, and this would lead into a discussion of what makes those stories the way they are.  Sort of a new categorization of genre, but based on the structure of the story instead of its content.  In hindsight this was more like a structure I wanted it to grow along as it progressed (nota benne: even with essays this is a crapshoot).

The analysis became self-sustaining, and sort of breached its banks.  The series ran into a second month, the breach breached with an endless series of analyses of, ye gods, Hamlet.  At this point, for some unknown reason (cough) I lost steam eventually, and we didn’t finish our analysis of puzzle stories, the second of the four categories I was working on.  

So if I want to pick that one back up, I’ve got to keep the description and analysis of each favorite story short.  If you’ve got a point you’re trying to make by talking about something from the ground-up, remember that you’re going to have to get to that point sooner or later.

Also if it’s picked back up, I have to be sure to nudge things along more towards a definite statement, even if I have to occasionally say “this will make sense later, for now remember that X is X, and it’s important because of Y.”

I think the series may have, in general, been too much for this media, unless short posts (≈400 words) are going up every day, and that’s the only thing that’s going up.  This is a blog, not a textbook.  The comics and the essays have to be unrelated, to keep it from being boring.

But I’ve started it, and it deserves to be finished, because we might learn something.  You never know.

Next up is the How to Start a Story series.

This can't be Georgian England, that guy wasn't a big deal until at least 1882!
image courtesy of imdb.com

This one I think didn’t go that bad (badly! Who taught you adverbs?!), though it did suffer somewhat from over-compartmentalization of its entries.  By which I mean each segment got written so far apart from its predecessor that it was impossible to keep up the flavor and the general drift, and the ideas, which should have been conjoined across entries and back each other up, were as useful to one another as a suspension bridge’s towers without cables between.

By which I mean I kept putting off writing the next one until a few days before it was due to go up, and, surprise surprise, they lacked both forethought and any spontaneous energy.  All the alive-feeling of something canned for weeks before being unshelved and served, combined with all the careful attention of something thrown together at the last minute.  As Aunt Betsy used to say, “Ba-a-ah!”

This dereliction is especially egregious on two counts: first, if I’m not mistaken (I’ve turned off the WiFi to get this post done and cannot check), I left it actually on an essay cliff-hanger, with the next post to resolve some issues of character changing with or without changing setting.

Second, it was proposed as the Three Body Problem of starting a story; if you’re going to write a series of how things are essentially and inseparably intermingled, and that you can only understand one thing by understanding the others, it’s probably not so great an idea to write about one one month and then the other two months apart.

I think this should probably be written, as I originally planned, en block all at once, or as near to all at once as possible, and then parceled out in discreet, short segments over time.  This would avoid a lot of the troubles that come from too much time passing between entries (repetition, unrelated thoughts stealing the action, loss of focus) and get the thing done.

If I can’t do it all at once, I should at least set aside enough time to re-read the last of the previous entry before starting on the next, in order to ensure some continuity of effect.

Still, not a bad thing.  Some surprises came out of the details.

Superheroes

Writing: a balancing act of excuses, deadlines, and excuses.
image courtesy of imdb.com

A recent notion, just introduced last month or the month before at the earliest (I would check this but I don’t currently have wifi).

The trouble with this one is I’m kind of sick of the subject.

I was trying to write a series of essays trying to figure out why we, the people who pay money to watch movies and TV shows mainly, are not sick of superheroes yet.

And then an unexpected thing happened: I got to be so sick of superheroes all of a sudden that every time I sit down to write something I 

The other trouble is EVERYONE, I mean every single person blogging about writing and entertainment, is writing about super heroes right now.  And they have been since about 1954 or sooner.  Unless something wonderful and new occurs to me, it’s just white noise.

Still, I’m interested, me, in this subject, because I really do want to know why these stories are so enduring.  If they are.  And the only full post I’ve done about it so far, On Saving the World, was actually meaningful to write to me, so maybe one day I’ll pick it back up.  Originally I thought I’d write the series over the summer, which is the season of superheroes, but maybe now I’ll be subversive and think about them again when it’s time for costumes, who knows.

Kinds of Story Meanings

This I mentioned above was the planned follow-up to the Favorites series, and I hope one day it still comes about.  I should get the favorites out of the way, so I can write this one, I think it’s worth thinking about.

In other words, not one I’ve started, but one I’m still looking forward to, if I can get out of my own way.

The Unfinished Stories

Oh lord, he’s not going to write about writing fiction that was never wrapped up, is he?

You had your chance, Jubal.

Well, it’s also a part of this blog that’s in its own middle without apparent threat of ever being brought to justice.  I mean, being finished enough to actually make sense.  Whichever.  Also the above isn't my work, so I take no responsibility for it.

I’m not going to analyze the unfinished stories, I think that would be like a kind of suicide.  So I’ll just list them:

Tireless (two detectives are investigating an odd murder)

Roam (man with surfaces but without substance is currently lost in Asia)

Untitled Ben and Dan series (they're trying to get through a very slow-going verbal description of Dan's new story, and were last seen fleeing their bar as smoke alarms went off).

What’s next?

I’d like to tackle these in the reverse order that they’re mentioned here, in order to wrap up the most recent first.  However, as mentioned above, unless I’m suddenly overcome by something new to say about the whole Superhero thing, I think that one can be safely left to dissolve until it’s a bit more more off-topic.

So maybe I’ll alternate the two.

In the meantime, I’ve got a seriously messy set of folders labeled ‘blog’ to try and clean up... better me than you, reader.

OH WAIT WHAT ABOUT the series I started on sad things and why sadness? Dang it!!!

Or I’m going to go watch Beverly Hills Copy.  Either way.

(like that's even a choice)