005: Another way out

Sometimes, man, I get bummed out.

This blog, once so lively, whether I was in a good mood or not, is now a haunted, lonely place. I often thing it's time for me to, in the words of Pavement, quarantine the past, leave SWP behind with school. There are so many gaps in it now that it's not really the record of my existence it once was. Things change.

I'm sitting here in my basement, where 99% of these 1307 posts have been written. I wonder if I'll get out of here ever and join the real world. There's silence, except for the space heater and, of course, the sound of my own fingertips smacking the keyboard. I'm not even listening to music. Eric was here until about 8, visiting since Tuesday, so get some stuff done. I've been writing all day. I wrote over a thousand words for a prose piece I'm working on. Good progress. I wrote a review for two CDs in one (Weezer's Hurley & Death to False Metal, which I got from work for free several months ago.) Now it's not even 11, I'm tired of playing Minesweeper over and over, so I thought that while I had the mindset, I'd write another blog post.

That's the thing. No matter what it was, I've always written. That's what separates me from a lot of my friends who would write, who get ideas, who have thoughts. They don't push themselves, they don't make it a part of their routine the way I do. Man, it was early on in this blog that Ana challenged me to write a screenplay as fast as I could for a hundred bucks -- still my highest-paying writing gig. I was only 17 goddamned years old at the time.

Tuesday morning, I was coming out of the subway at Museum and ran into Cary coming the opposite direction. It was funny, because while we were just outside his law school building, I never go that way. I'd only gotten off at Museum because I'd intended to get lunch near there. So we got a cup of coffee and caught up on the usual topics.

The main topic of conversation with Cary is some combination of girls, writing, (specifically Half-Past but more generally whatever I write) and copyright law. He gave me an idea, that I should write eBooks that can be sold on Amazon. Brilliant. So simple. Why didn't I think of that sooner?

The main obstacle is this: for a while now I've been working on myself as "serious" writer. If I was going to put time and energy into writing something it was going to have substance. The problem with this is sort of that I knew that if I wrote all that, then put it on the internet, nobody at all would take interest in it. It would drop off, and my work would be done. I have one or two big books in me, and if I just chuck them into the eBook store, that would be it. Time to go work in an office.

And so it is with this in mind that I begin what I am calling the "vampire porn" phase of my career. A few weeks ago, I was talking to Kris for the first time in a long while, and we began rolling around ideas like we often do. I mentioned my theory that if I wanted to just be in it for the money, I'd do a vampire porn comic and get donations. It sounds cynical, but since there's a market for it, you can't argue with the logic, assuming I do a good job writing it. Before long we were talking about characters and concepts, as we always do.

We've been having these same conversations since I was 12 or 13 years old, and we were hanging out in his room reading X-Men. My God. We've tried to get so many projects off the ground, and after he moved to Detroit, I gave up on the idea of us ever being collaborators. Suddenly it's like we're teenagers again and I'm sitting on his bed in Palmerston going "What if the character does this? How about if the girl says that?" It's fortuitous that I have this idea in my head while I'm considering cashing in via the e-books, I'll admit I'm wary: I don't want to pursue this particular idea without Kris' involvement. I owe him that much, even if I just end up writing prose stories and asking him for illustrations or at any rate his input.

For now then, I've got a few other quick and dirty ideas I might be able to peddle for a small sum. It isn't like I believe this will be a real moneymaking venture, but it's a free service, so it's no risk-whatever reward. So it's spurred on a fair bit of activity, in addition to whatever else I was getting at.

Anyway, I've been drinking, this post has been sitting for like an hour, I'm pretty tired, so I might as well call it a night. Productive day... I could use more like it.

Keep on rockin'
-Scotto