Fool-hearted Memory

so, i started writing again tonight. It's a short story based on a short script i wrote a couple of months ago. it's totally about me and J., but the "event" in the story is completely fictionalized. it feels really good to be writing again, because I think it means that I'm finally able to start fictionalizing things between us in a really objective way that I haven't really been able to do until, well, maybe now. Even now, we'll see. But I'm happy with the way it's going so far. It's also been ages since I really tried to write actual fiction, as opposed to screenplays. Years, really. It's really hard, but I like the freedom it offers to go places that scripts just can't, partly because they have such a rigid format, and partly because you can't really bring thoughts, or feelings, to life in a script until it's filmed, and then it's the actor's job. But with fiction, you can just go wherever you want, and it's very liberating. And this particular story, in screenplay format, is a pretty terrifying prospect to film. It's very sexually explicit, and it's deeply, deeply personal, so much so that I might be betraying some intimiacies that I might someday regret betraying, but for the time being, it's working for me to exorcise them in this way, even if it is dredging up a lot of uncomfortable and painful feelings and memories.

So depending on how it all turns out, maybe I'll try to actually get it published someplace, though god only knows where. Anyway, I worked on it for about an hour and a half at Little City downtown tonight, and I've still got roughly half of it to go. I'll worry about the "publishing" aspect of it later; for right now, it's doing worlds of wonder for me to just get it out. i think. maybe i'm just rehashing a lot of stuff that just needs to die. Writing is funny that way. Well, all art, I guess, is funny that way. It's always a fine line for me between being really self-indulgent and wallowing in my own misery, and actually getting the demons out. But I guess you never really know until you do it.

And on a somewhat related note, the biggest problem with Little City is that you can't step outside to even smoke a cigarette without 18 homeless people walking up and asking you for one, or for money. the sans maison, J. used to call them. which always made me giggle. i hate homeless people.