Imagine your a novelist.

You have carried around a story in your head for almost an entire decade, but have been unable to write it. There have been several attempts, rewrites, false starts, and even one successful but aborted attempt. Life interrupts throughout all of this, making any attempt to sit down and get the damn thing onto parchment impossible.

It's curious being alone in another country. You find you have surprisingly little distraction available to you. The television is full of barely comprehensible programs in a language you cannot parse. Those you know back home are now several timezones offset from yourself. You may even be terrified to step outside of the hotel for fear of being seen as strange, or worse, that you may become lost completely with no one to help you.

You might have noticed that I've been writing a bit more often the last week. Granted, they haven't been the highest quality entries, but there is a purpose behind them. While I've been trying to determine the cause of my creative doldrums, the simple fact is that I'm not writing, drawing, or coding things I enjoy. The obvious solution then, is to write, draw, and code more.

I had an unusually dream intensive night. This happens to me occasionally, when I'm on progesterone and I'm fortunate enough to have a proper night's rest. The downside, of course, is that I typically only have nightmares.

This time I was lucky. While several threatened to become nightmares, none of them reached that point, save for one. The dream itself was verging on being frightening, a state that I can often recognize in the dream and force myself awake. I tried to force my eyes open, I chanted to myself, "Wake up. Wake up!" Usually this has results within minutes.

The clock on my deskphone blinks a solemn "11:20 AM", reminding me I only have 40 minutes of my lunch hour remaining. Lunch itself was devoured in less that time, while I depleted the contents of my feed-reader and scanned a few websites. The typical course of the day is for me to go back to work at this point, saving any pursuits of my non-working life for off hours when I'm well away from my desk.

I learned something about writing last Friday. For the last several weeks (maybe a month) I've been trying to divise a new opening for Paper Girl. To say that this has been no easy task is an understatement. I've gone through several different versions and false positives. I researched the experience of other writers -- all far more experienced than myself -- in crafting the perfect first line:

It was late at night and I was rifling through my library. I would take a book from the shelf, and open it to the first page. The book remained open only a moment as I scanned the page before returning it to the self and moving on to the next book. The process did not take long due to the size of my library. The two stout, white painted bookshelves could only hold so many books and manga. I was searching for something.

To be more accurate, I was conducting an analysis. I was looking for archetypes, patterns, and ultimately, guidence. I read only a short selection from each book:

"How do you do it?" I asked offhandedly in the chat window. It was late evening, and I was experiencing a rare moment of lucidity in the seeming perpetual fatigue I now exist.

Nifty! Moonspell is releasing a new album this month in Europe, and next month in the US (drat). I only stumbled upon it earlier this week when Sirius 27 played the title track. Needless to say, it's been stuck in my head for the last few days.

Sample, anyone?

I've developed a fondness for the Portuguese Gothic Metal band the last few months. More times than not I've plugged their name into Last.fm and listened for hours and hours. Delicious, dark, symphonic in places, their sound can be oddly comforting to me.