I am a writer, but not a successful one, because I’m not productive enough. While I write, it is usually in dribs and drabs, in the margins of old documents, the corners of napkins, backs of index cards or envelopes of unpaid bills, or in the gooey tapioca that is my brain most days. Sometimes, I get stuff down, usually with a good start, before futzing out at the three-quarter mark, then dying ignominiously in a gelatinous pool right before the finish line.

No one’s to blame for this, save myself. I need to finish what I start. Or at least finish before I start another project. My franken-manuscripts sit there, half-formed monstrosities of creation, begging to be finished, knowing that their creator, with the attention span of a gnat, is already gleefully rubbing his hands together, his fevered imagination devising yet another long-form novel, short-story, blog-post that might, by some miracle, survive the creative process and rise from the muck and mire of the shitty first draft tarpits, to shake its fist at the sky while crying, “I live you bastard, I live, now double-space me!”

And so it goes until my attention drifts, the dog craps, the dryer goes off, my meds wear off, etc., ad nauseum. So what does this mean – my madness is my method, and my method is my madness. To that end, I’ve decided to twist my own arm and force the content out of myself, like a literary tube of toothpaste.

I will post what I write for all to see—a veritable Stephen Dedalus, “The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.”

Will it be worth reading? A painter smearing words on paper, a starry night of literary gems, or perhaps the mental dribbling of an old man circling the drain of self-imposed mediocrity. Who knows? But it will be an adventure.

Enjoy the postings, but be careful around the manuscripts, they react poorly to torch bearing villagers with pitchforks. Works in progress they are, not entirely tamed, and still annoyingly feral.