Chapter 42:

In Which Josh Ran Across An Entry In One of His College Creative Writing Journals from Spring of 2004, and Decided to Share It With You

Josh’s Journal: a hastily scribbled mind transcribed

It’s been a while since I really felt the gumption to write in this journal, because so much has been going on I haven’t had time to stop and organize or schedule life as I have been doing: get up in the morning, go to class, eat dinner, do homework, write, go to sleep; and instead am consigned to do what is necessary: eat dinner, do homework, go to class, repeat process.
I find that a journal -- especially now that we are done writing stories for class, and are only casually going over poetry for the sake of covering it -- is a hindrance to my creativity, because I don’t feel like writing anything because I am forced to write for classes (e.g., this week I had a 3,5, and 10 page paper due Tuesday, and am now sick of words).

I find that the journal, as such -- even just using the name "journal" -- is a hindrance to my creativity which, through training over the years, has been trained, at a moment’s notice almost, to give me writer’s block when I have to keep a journal. My writing process involves thinking up an idea, writing it out, re-reading it and editing, then, more often than not, saving it on my computer where it sits and rots. If writing for a class, I skip the rotting part, and hand it to someone else to mark up and hand back so I can decipher their handwriting and finally realize they were writing in an ancient, unused Chinese dialect transcribed in either Greek or runic symbols.

The point being: I don’t "journal." IN fact, I mistrust any guy who seriously "journals" just because it means he is unable to process his own thoughts in his head and has to put them down for his grandchildren to be embarrassed about when they find it after his death some forty-five years and two published novels later.

The main story ideas I have had over the last three weeks is based on the stories found in German song cycles, which use a basic plot. In the first song of the cycle, a girl is sitting with her sheep on a hillside and is lonely, but enjoying the nice, fresh air scented by sheep-droppings. She then sees, afar off - so far in fact, that she can’t exactly make out what it is -- a moving speck on the horizon, who she knows to be her love, coming for her, but it turns out to be another sheep. The second song in the cycle is all about the sheep dancing in the meadows, and how they are like chickens on the hillside, because it probably rhymes in German; then some large creature comes and eats all the sheep and the girl. The third song in the cycle is of the little shepherd boy who finds the wild beast - possibly a giant, man-eating gerbil, or a small duck - and kills it with his little bow and arrow, thereby releasing the girl from the beast’s entrails. The last song is the lament of the little boy that he didn’t get there before the girl had been eaten, and how the prairie is still beautiful and still smells of her hair... and sheep-droppings. My story would run a little different: the sheep would be rabbits, there would be no shepherd girl, and the large beast would probably be a trial attorney for the IRS.