Chapter Nine: Say it ain't only in dreams

I feel like writing out summaries, plotlines and such before actually writing something takes away my incentive to write.

A lot of my writing is just done for myself without much mindfulness of where it's going, or whether anyone will actually see it. My webcomic is this way. I don't write out scripts beforehand, because when I did they just got in the way. I did used to write out plotlines when I was co-writing with Eric, because it was part of the collaboration process.

Back when I was younger, though, if I wanted to write a story, I wrote it. A play, I wrote it. I started the dialogue of Half-Past Eight PM without any knowledge how it would actually end, and it wasn't until a few pages after introducing the Billy and Louie characters I realized how they might connect to Mark and Beth. Nowadays I don't have the time or energy to actually write the way I did when I was in high school (and I never did my homework.) So for a long while I had a vague idea for a play, and walking home tonight it all sort of came together in my head, so I got home and... wrote a summary. So now I don't have to write a play, sadly, so I probably won't. I have several other ideas that exist only in summary form, although they are more daunting novel projects, or screenplays.

Summaries do help sometimes. When I first wrote Melancholy for NaNoWriMo, I was working off a summary I had first set out several months earlier. Last week, out for coffee/studying with Robyn, I took the chance to write a summary of a story for Curiosities, which is the first time I'd written a summary of a short story, beyond a possible character list. The one I wrote recently, I had done a character list somewhere, that I didn't refer to while writing it and thus only vaguely resembles the finished product. I love it when a product dances away from its origins in that way, and yeah, summaries kinda prevent that. If I ever had some kind of outline to work off for SWP, it would defeat the entire purpose. Here's an example.

Last week, I was bored before class and wrote out some thoughts that would be worth sharing on SWP later that night. They weren't really bad thoughts either, but when I worked them out on the page, it became sorta "Why would I just transcribe this? I'm done with it." Maybe I'll come back to those thoughts later. I never got back around to them because that was the night I met Train girl (Vasa.)

I ran into her again tonight, which is probably my hint that I am being stalked. No, not really, she has a job and she gets out when she gets out, and she just happens to know when I get out too.

She finally made explicit reference to her current boyfriend, but only because I asked (we were having random question time and I asked "Longest relationship?" I have a ton of conversation starters squirreled away in my psyche.) I had already known she was unavailable due to Facebook, which is a handy tool for this sort of thing. Manda and I had a discussion on the weekend about a theory of mine... well, more of an observation, that if often takes girls a long time to get around to admitting they have a boyfriend. I have no idea why that is, but I'm working on it. I don't prefer to think they're being malicious, just that they don't consider it important to talk about. The problem with this is that if they happen to meet a random single guy (like me) it may send the wrong signal. I need all the help I can get, quite frankly, and I don't like being misled.

Anyway, this observation first cropped up way back in first year at Sheridan when I met Rachel's friend and, for pretty much the first time in my life, flirted my ass off, only to hear the next day, from Rachel, that she had a boyfriend. I've come up against it a few times since.

Anyway, I began to worry that this girl isn't getting the best of me. The funny, cool Scotto - she was getting the "tired, I don't really wanna deal with awkwardness end-of-the-day" Scotto. Not my favourite me.

Which led me to wonder - who am I? Who am I to myself, and who am I to the world? It's a question of perception. I think maybe readers of this blog, for better or worse, are probably getting the best view of me, both the funny clever Scotto and the bummer one. But the trick is, since I'm writing all this anyway, aren't I still in charge of the narrative? So I am basically constructing myself. It goes all the way back to Cobb's class, part of the lesson he was trying to get across, invoking things like Facebook, were that we build narratives about ourselves to explain how we want ourselves seen. Obviously this is mine.

A friend of mine once described me as one of the most (laid-back/easygoing) people he knew. People who have seen me get stressed and freak out would balk at this. so it causes one to wonder about the history I am building with different people. I did indeed get very stressed out at Sheridan on multiple occasions. About a year ago I was very notably shaken when I felt like a friend had betrayed my trust, and I probably seemed to react too extremely, out of character, although that can be attributed to bottling things up and generally being insecure, though I try to hide it (I'm insecure about seeming insecure.)

I used to talk with a girl in high school repeatedly about how who we are depends on who we are with. It's a pretty elementary statement but it holds true.

School was pretty boring; had guest lectures in Short Story, about stories I mostly didn't read and wasn't that interested in.

I drew three comics over the weekend. Also, bought Lost seasons 2, meaning I'm one away from having the complete (as yet) set. It's good not to have to borrow them anymore.

I could use a bit more organization, a bit more time management, but I'm getting better at stuff.

Well, I'm just me.

Keep on rockin'
-Scott