Process

Have you ever put your ear to a cat?

This is an ongoing question.

"Ongoing" is self-contained. One cannot "ongo" and a group cannot "have ongone." Nor: he/she/it "onwent" but it "went on" for some time. Things happen; they "go on" every day.

"Fiction should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable." -David Foster Wallace

Part of my process sums up as a lot of rolling around not writing much of anything, but holding the story on the edge of a knife: I don't think about the story too much but I think about it.

The process functions in fragmentary fits. There is no quota. There is no product. The process is ongoing. Everworking. Phenomenal. There is no blame. (Like SUBTLETY: it's not SUBTLE without a B.) When the pen is not in motion, the mind is. The eye is. The nose and ears. The tongue. The skin, the heart, the lungs, the entire nervous energy, the demand for food, the bursts of lust, the need to fuck, it's all the process.

I think I'd rather have my masculinity questioned than be called spineless. I could get by without my balls, but not without my spine.

Of course your characters will evade your attempts to invade their lives. You're God to them. They hate you for it. They're real. But they're not actual people. You won't hurt their feelings by writing out their secrets in detail for the whole world. It's only human to want to witness the misery and suffering of others, and be able to say, "I'm glad that's not me."

The process is very slow. This is because I don't know where the fuck I'm going.