On Life as a Sarcastic Fringehead

I went through my current journal last night so I could post yesterday's story fragment. I don't write daily in my journal. I write in it when I can locate it. I use only a Pilot Precise V5 rolling ball extra fine pen. Usually blue. Sometimes purple. Occasionally green. If I can't find a Pilot Precise V5 rolling ball extra fine pen, and I just have to write down what's in me, I'll use what I have, but I'll complain loudly in writing as I'm writing. Before I had a steady paycheck, I had to use any old pen because those V5s are relatively expensive. Not that they are $100 a pen or $100 a box or anything, but when you have no money, neither are they 300 for $3 Paper Mates.

I don't write daily in my journal, so one journal can contain entries for a year or more, depending on how active my writing phases are. The journals are a mix of story fragments and dated personal entries. I can tell the story fragments from the personal entries by the date in the upper right hand corner. Date: that's me talking. No date: it's a character.

It turns out I've been working on the posted story frag for over two years. Two years, four five paragraphs. It doesn't always take that long for me to get a story on paper, but my characters have a tendency to lead their own lives once I flesh them out enough. They start doing things I hadn't planned or outlined. They are living and sometimes they get away from me. About 13 years ago, one character died suddenly. I didn't mean for it to happen. It certainly was not part of the original outline. That morning I was writing him, by that night, he was dead, killed accidentally by his schizophrenic best friend. I didn't write for a year after that. Was I mourning the death of my character? Who knows? His name was Troy.

Stillwater Crowe is the first character introduced in the current frag, but the story actually focuses on Parker Gale who has yet to hit paper in any form. The other main characters are a guy who thinks he's Freddie Mercury and a guy named Tim Woodman. It's an adaptation of another story, so it's important that I stay fairly close to the original intent. That's what's taking me so long--disciplining myself to stick to the character and plot outlines. In four five paragraphs, I don't know if it's clear yet that Stillwater has no tangible memory. Maybe it comes and goes. I don't know. I haven't figured that out yet.