Scenes from my real-life:

[jack_babalon]

Finished up logging some stubborn words across cold pages. It's been a tough process working on the second novel. Drawing upon biographical material means revisiting old friends swallowed up by distance, circumstance and the grave. It also means re-introducing myself to those whom I loved in that way us flowery mother-fuckers love and subsequently lost in that spectacular way one can shoot oneself in a fleet foot so long as it's lodged in a big mouth. But what's really tough, in that I've had root canals performed by drunken proctologists that were more uncomfortable, is that as a writer I can't settle for the 'caricatures' my memory has cast them to play. I have to get inside their heads in order to get them down write. Which means at times empathizing not only with those who did me wrong but also realizing how much I've hurt good people who did little else but right by me. And I can do it. I have no other choice really. But it means seeing things I should have done differently then for the first time and trying to reconcile that it's too late.

Heh, which means basically it's gonna be another book about a guy in love with ghosts and his troubles with dangerous clowns.

Anyway, it doesn't matter in the long run. I've got to get it down one way or another - the blood demands it no matter how lazy the flesh or how scared the heart that pumps it. So it's got to be done, even if it means rolling with the self-inflicted punches and praying I'm not half the asshole I used to be. Still I miss them all - my viking boys, my valkyrie girls - some for who they were, some for who they are now and others for who they could have been.

Report filed for anyone listening. Hitting the sack after a last cigarette and waking up to do some paying work tomorrow.