Can't tell you

how many blog posts I've written in my head. Fat lot of good that does. Words slip away with the next project as easily as melting snow in the sun.  When I'm composing in my mind, it's all pithy, witty, or relevant (I'll settle for one of the three), and I go on my  merry way, feeling as if I've actually put the fingers on the keyboard.

A lot of writing is like that. Bits and pieces get stored in my brain until I think I'll explode, bone and hair all over the walls.  That's part of my process. I think about a story, a character, a scene for years until it's time for it to get the heck out of the little gray cells (as Poirot calls it) and onto something more permanent.  Wait a minute, I, of all people, should know there's nothing permanent or protected about a hard or jump drive. I have too many 3" disks that can't be read anymore, they've deteriorated so much.  And that's why there are boxes of manuscripts sitting in my attic. Everything I do goes on paper in the end. Not that paper survives, but at least it'll last as long as I do. I hope. Fire and flood notwithstanding.

Right now I have a story thread, and I mean a slim thread, banging in the frontal lobes. I really like it, but I'm not sure what to do with it. It'll get there, or it won't. If it slips away in the night, it wasn't meant to end up on paper.

I just finished Tana French's Broken Harbor. I love her writing, but I fear that her lovelies won this book over plot. The theme -there is no why - got hammered in once too often.  It felt as if she went back and inserted the theme in just those words to make sure it got recognized in the midst of the poetic prose and clever craft. Not my favorite book of hers. I did love one character though - a total original, a failure in some ways in his life, but great success as a character. He's the true innocent, a man who cares too much. Liked him way better than the hero.

And now it's January, that gray, ugly, and barren month. I swear I'll wear red just to perk things up, but I find myself instinctively reaching for black, just to fit in with the this month's mood. Good time to write scary stuff.