Pulped Fiction

I like pulp detective fiction. There's no wasted words in pulp fiction, just wasted people. Everything means something. Not that much rambling, unless it means something to the story. It's black and white terms, but grey areas abound. The world's not fair, but the protagonist has to go along with it to get through another day. Not everyone survives. Sometimes, it feels like if you made it through that day without dying, it was a good day. No wonder it speaks to me.

It really started with a pic M.N. snapped and photoshopped. I'm in a tie and an overcoat, fedora hiding half my face. I'm looking down at the ground and slightly frowning. There's a greenish tint to it, as if it came from years back. Yeah, it's me as a pulp detective. Couldn't you see me in California back in the 30s, watching the rain fall, holding a highball glass in my hand, waiting for the next case to come in the door?

That thing became my Gtalk icon, and as an exercise, because I get easily bored and my imagination doesn't really stop, I decided to start posting status messages with a pulp fiction bent. Some nameless detective, really a full-blown alcoholic, trying not to get busted for good by the cops, muddling through his life, takes what jobs he can just to make it another day. I'd like to think he's successful, because he's got enough money to keep buying bourbon and whiskey, but he's on a cold streak now.

This concerned some people that thought I'd lost my mind. Which is fine, as long as you're concerned I've lost it, you're still concerned about my well-being. I'm still sane, by most objective measures.

I've been waiting for some people to finish reading the would-be novel, and found myself backed up mentally, no outlet for my creativity. It really was starting to wear on me. But in the end, T.G. convinced me I should start a blog based on this detective's life, my status messages writ larger. The past few nights, I've been writing up some potential posts to create a backlog of material. If I push myself, and post every weekday, I want two months of backlog, or forty posts, before I start posting.

The basic idea behind it is this luddite detective's secretary wants him to start posting his stories to a blog. He, being a hard-nosed ex-boxer, does it because she keeps insisting, but he makes her type up what he hand writes. As he recalls his stories, she chimes in in the posts, either with technical explanations of her data mining/online research, guesses at what his malapropisms mean, or just general comments. Between the two, he gets drunk, gets in fights, and pounds the streets to find information, while she surfs Myspace and Facebook. Thus far, I've got posts about his naming the blog, hunting a contract killer for the mob, a side story about boxing and MMA, and working on an investigation about the theft of a garden gnome. Further ideas include going to the opera, finding stolen baby formula, process service in the woods on Halloween, getting stuck in a drunk tank and being hired by a five-year old to get a cat out of a tree.

So much for keeping it constantly dark and gritty. Maybe this is postmodern pulp fiction.

Over the past few nights, I've got twenty-two posts written. Once I finish with this, I will generate a few more before bedtime. If tomorrow goes according to plan, I will have my forty. I think this is a perfect example of why you need to do what you love for a living. Right now, I'm not even getting paid for this. Just think what would happen if someone were to sponsor me.

***

I've noticed that my journal and this blog (my pseudo-journal) go through various peaks of activity, followed by troughs of inactivity. You can map it to how much I write elsewhere. There seems to be some level at which I write, and once that is achieved, I don't need to write as much for other things. If I drop below that level, I get depressed, and I usually need to ramp back up. Generally, the journal is that outlet.

But then, I can hear you asking, why don't you just write all the time? Skip the inactivity and the depression. What it boils down to is that I'm lazy. I wish it were something as romantic and straightforward as writer's block, but that's usually not a problem, not anymore. I don't say much, but apparently I have a lot to say, and that comes out through my pen. I'm like a junkie in rehab. The methadone's starting to work, so I figure I'm good, and I stop taking it. Next thing you know, I need more smack because I fell back in my old habits.

Gotta wonder, will I ever hit Malcolm Gladwell's estimated ten thousand hours of practice to become good at this craft? Not for a long while. I have always written, but never obsessively. Then again, I am only counting straight fiction. I have written a lot for school and for work. Roll all that in, and I come closer. If you count all the time I've spent reading (an entire cop-out), then I've probably exceeded it. But really, from that perspective, I'm a master of reading. Can't really get paid doing that, unless I get more creative, and I'm kind of tired, seeing as how I've been up at around 5 AM every morning for the past few weeks.