11.15.02 | done
More than a year of work, and it ends like this? This, perhaps, is why novelists don't normally get rolling until they're at least 30. They don't have much to say before that, and they lack the tools to to say it. But what am I talking about? People like Zadie Smith and Jonathan Safran Foer are doing lovely work, and they're younger than I am. Age is relative. And I may be a kid forever, though that's not my goal.

To those of you who read this, thanks. This has been good. The struggle is good. From here, I hope to work on a bit of a project with my friend Rohit; we'll being doing a bit of fiction tennis together. I'll get the page up and rolling tonight. What else? Hell, I don't entirely know. Something will come up, right?

11.11.02 | back in effect
Things are getting pretty mixed up, and I'm feeling a powerful need to wrap stuff up. Look for things to get more complicated soon — or just end.

10.19.02 | short but sorta lame
Well, Chapter 21 is hardly a chapter at all. It's a tiny bridge to what I hope will be an interesting new section. Sorry for that. Maybe I'll get my act together and write more this week, before I fly to Chicago for a wedding this Wednesday.

10.05.02 | short but sweet
Chapter 20 iz in da hizouse! Christ, that's so 1999. Anyway, it's done, even if it's short. I like it. I think I'll reward myself with a celebratory glass of port. Oh, shit, I drank that while writing it. Guess I'll have another.

10.02.02 | clippin' right along
Wow, this is getting more cinematic than I thought it would. I hope that's a good thing. Behold... Chapter 19!

10.01.02 | some memories
Melissa gets pretty fleshed out in this latest chapter, I think. There are threads in her that I want to develop. I'm noticing a theme: The richness and complexity of Earth versus the hollow bitterness of Heaven. This isn't bad, but I think I need to support, integrate and justify this a bit.

Chapter 18 came together okay, I think. And I have my my girlfriend to thank for so consistently insisting that I write tonight.

09.19.02 | back at last
Holy God. It is six months later. I'm a terrible, terrible human being and a failure as a novelist.

I think I owe anyone who stumbles onto this site an explanation. I'm a news editor. That's my day job. I edit stories about suicide bombers, and "the Arab street," and economic blackmail, and body counts. I've been doing this since the beginning of February, 2002.

When I come home, I'm fried. Dead tired. Burnt like a used-up sparkler.

But I just traveled across the country, and I'm feeling my spark return. I'm going to get back into writing this damned book. And I'm going to finish it. I'm going to finish something. And it will be good.

Here's the latest.

03.31.02 | two more chapters
Wow. I just wrote two more chapters – on Easter, no less. That creeps me out, just a tad, particularly since I've been in a wretchedly existential and self-destructive mood for the past three days. Are me and Jesus on some sort of parallel path? We can only hope not. Anyway, read the men from the head office and patterns, and, for the love of Mike, let me know what you think.

03.09.02 | fourteen — booyah
Here's the latest in the series; hope you enjoy the chapter. I'm digging where this is going.

02.16.02 | thirteen, too!
Wow – chapter thirteen was written in a hurry. Is it any good? So much dialogue, but I love the image. Hmm. Feels good to write two in a night, though. Maybe I'm actually getting into this story...

02.16.02 | twelve!
I'm really excited about this chapter for some reason. I think I'm really going to start cracking the nutshell of this plot. Whaddya think?

02.01.02 | eleven done
Whaddya know... an empty Friday night punctuated by the back-to-back viewing of Annie Hall and High Fidelity has led to the completion of chapter 11. I wonder what I've done with this one. I hope I've left some interesting clues about what's to come, and fleshed out the world a bit. But maybe I've disposed of the David Johnson character too soon. Or maybe he'll return. Hmm.

01.23.02 | ten is complete
Thank you, Isaac Babel, for this new chapter. The elegance and prodigious quantity of your work has shamed me – your honesty and brutal understanding of humanity has made me realize how far I've gotta go before I'm actually getting anywhere. So, here's to the task at hand.

01.01.02 | nine - finally!
Wow. Why do I even bother at this point? At this rate, I'll be dead before this thing is halfway done. But it's so hard to get both time and motivation to write. Fortunately, I spent New Year's home alone. That's pretty motivating. Please, no pity. My girlfriend's in another state, and my friends are all in stupid places like Florida and Wisconsin. New chapter is here.

11.16.01 | eight is done
What is it, like a month later? And all I have to show is a tiny, brief, nothing of a chapter? Jeez, maybe it's time to quit the job and go for broke. Or, actually, that may be a bit ambitious. New chapter is here, folks.

10.22.01 | late night breakthrough
This is good news, I think. I woke up — right as I was falling asleep — and realized what this story is about. I knew before, on some sort of subconcious level, and it was struggling to make it to the surface of what I was writing. But it's much more clear now. The point I'd like to make about God, religion and the universe's construction — cleared up. Now, I just need to make the story compelling and fun so I'm not shitting dull heavy bricks of muddled philosophy onto everyone's heads. I am psyched to write.

10.18.01 | happy birthday to me
Another step closer to death. I'm 26 and I've done nothing with myself. That said, man: the food here on Earth is great.

10.14.01 | chapter seven done, again
I scrapped and re-wrote my whole new chapter seven. It's done. I like it. I think I'm doing some good stuff here. Bearing down on Melissa's viewpoint is paying off, to some extent — I'm getting inside her weird head, and starting to telegraph some of the larger themes I'm working on. "Larger themes." Heh. Like I know what the hell I'm doing. Anyway, here it is: chapter seven. Really. Flat On Her Back.

10.13.01 | breakthrough
I'm 50% done with a new chapter seven. I hope to have it posted tomorrow. I've just made a real breakthrough as to heaven's physical structure and organization – this will help, a lot. Plus I've got seven or eight questions I need to ask myself and answer before I move much further. This damn thing may not be dead, after all.

10.13.01 | reconstruction
Okay, I've got my head on straight. The secret to fixing this is simple: concentrate on Melissa's story for now. Don't try to introduce two or three new threads, when your first isn't even really concretely settled. Joseph Heller can do it in Catch-22, but even there, you just want to yell at him: "Hey! Settle down, and tell one story before you start two dozen more!"

I'm no Joseph Heller. I'm going to boil this fatty mess down to its bones and reconstitute a more beautiful animal.

09.29.01 | burning down the house
I am sick. My luggage has been lost. The Nan fucking Ling won't bring mu shu pork to my house DESPITE having shoved its flyer under my door. My left ear is (temporarily?) out of commission due to a painful descent from 35,000 feet. Things in my little world of petty grievances could scarcely get any worse.

But I am going to resist the overwhelming temptation, the compulsion, to just delete this entire project and spend my time on something more profitable. I've been re-reading "All the Kings Men" and I feel that if Robert Penn Warren could push himself to create a book that good, I can push myself to go through at least a couple revisions on this miserable piece of crap. Which will undoubtedly require burning down the last couple of chapters and trying again. Anyway, as long as you're here, you can read something short I wrote recently that actually works: "Polaris".

09.18.01 | i hate this
I'm completely unhappy with the last chapter. I think I may just scrap it and start over. Assuming I don't just blow this whole project off, polished formatting and everything. None of my characters are acquiring depth. Correction: I cannot write my characters so they have any depth. And heaven itself is so dull. So so so so dull. God, what am I doing? I think I need to rip out the last one or two chapters and write Melissa and Leinenkenen like they actually relate. And write heaven so its physical appearance somehow reflects the ideas I've got swimming around in my head for what it was and what it has become. Grr.

09.16.01 | chapter seven done
And it only took me a month. Holy crap, why isn't this thing developing more quickly? I get new ideas every week, but hardly ever sit down and work on it anymore. Anyway, I think the brutal destruction of downtown New York was just the stimulus I needed to write again. Hard not to put thoughts into words when an appreciable part of the country has been savaged by maniacs. Here's the new stuff. I don't think it's very good. Maybe the next chapter will be better.

08.16.01 | chapter six done
That was incredibly easy to write. And I like how it reads, at this point. I wonder what holes I've dug myself into, though. It's strange how the easiest stuff to write is usually my favorite. I hope you'll agree with me on this. Check it out.

08.15.01 | working on six – honestly
This entry is probably here to make me feel good, more than anything else. But I'm feeling frisky, it's midnight, and I've got some ideas for chapter six. So, I'm going to see what I can do. This project lives, godammit. I told a possible designer for the site that I'd have ten chapters done by the end of August. That probably won't happen. But it'd be nice to have seven or eight. The story is here – I just need to pry it loose.

08.02.01 | chapter five done
Now that I've got a nice new look, I have reason to write. Huzzah! And yet, instead of writing, I'll just graft on part of my rough draft that seems to sort of fit. I wonder if this will make sense to anyone. I've introduced a new place to this little world.

08.02.01 | redesign
Welcome to the Smiling Archipelago, v2.0. The first version of this story was fairly clunky — basically a solid block of text. I don't want you to suffer, though. The story is now broken down into its constituent chapters.