I'd like to tell you the story about how and when I knew I wanted to write. I'm sure my story is very much like yours. I mean, there can't be that many different ways a person is drawn to this endeavor, n'est-ce pas?

Didn't the writing bug also bite you that one day you left middle school right after lunch due to the flu and on the way home you were abducted by aliens? Then, after being gone several years, they returned you back to the exact time and place they took you? And you were pretty much none the worse for the experience except for the curse they laid upon you: the ever-present desire to write novels but without the ability to construct a plot that would hold a reader's attention for more than half a latte? Didn't that happen to you too?

Here I am, more than seventeen years after my abduction, and I'm still living with this issue. I may someday fill you in on what happened during those intervening years, but not right now. Suffice it to say I spent a good chunk of it writing non-fiction. I certainly figured out how to write words good . . . but then I made a naive mental leap. I assumed this meant I could write a novel. "You're a great writer!" my imaginary friends would tell me. "You should be able to write a book without any problem at all."

If by "without any problem" my invisible pals meant "with lots and lots of problems," then they were spot on. Simply being able to write good is not the same thing as telling a good story. For a number of years I had an uneasy feeling this was the case. Fortunately, two very non-imaginary people, Jack and Jill, took a look at my work and pointed this out to me. They each employed a constructive manner using plenty of terms that couldn't possibly terminate a friendship.

As I prepare to give this another go tomorrow, the second month of PBWQ, I'm hoping the story structure I've worked and reworked over the last four to six weeks or so pays off. Otherwise I'm calling those aliens and demanding my money back.

If you're one of the two-to-four people playing along in the First Annual PBWQ, then you should be painfully aware that the end of the first month is upon us. Have you spent it planning? Plotting? Writing? Sleeping? Or did you do what I did and wasted too much time making a synopsis that looked a wee bit too much like the final product?

Productivity-wise, I had a pretty good week. In spite of the fact that I had several nothing-at-all days, the (essentially) two days I was on were good ones. As I mentioned in my PBWQ update yesterday, I decided this week to visualize the entire storyline as a series of bullet points. So instead of writing a long and winding synopsis like so:

At this point the protagonist decided to fix a bowl of cereal. He had been up all night trying to figure out how he was going to get out of his current predicament. He decided to talk things over with his buddy right after breakfast. His buddy always knew what to do.

I ended up with something quite a bit more succinct:

• o Bob eats breakfast.
• o Buddy helps out Bob.

It's easier to read, understand, edit, manipulate and discourages the fluff that tends to creep into my synopsizing. Which is another way to say: it's virtually darling-proof. If you're taking the whole just-the-facts-ma'am approach, you're not creating little literary gems all over the place. If a bullet point doesn't fit, out it goes and no one cares. It's refreshingly clinical. I wish I'd thought of it fifteen years ago.

I find it ironic that I frequently find myself lacking any sort of ambition when it comes to doing the thing I want to do most: namely, drink beer. Er . . . wait. No, I mean write. I mostly want to write.

Most of the time it's because I'm too dejected to write anything. Storylines hit brick walls. The brain goes numb. Everything I've done for the past six weeks is crap. I know I need to keep at it if I'm going to knock down those walls, reignite the brain, or turn the crap around. But it can be really difficult to harden myself to the task at hand. I think Gimli summed it up best during his orc-chase with:

"Well, let us go on," said Gimli. "My legs must forget the miles. They would be more willing, if my heart were less heavy."

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