Today I flaked on some writing goals. I had planned to get up a little early (for me, meaning early afternoon) to have a phone chat with Kiki and do some brainstorming for Honeycutt Tales. My fibromyalgia left me hurting through most of the daylight hours and so I spent them sleeping or whining about how much pain I was in. Brainstorming has been postponed and no writing got done either.

Even so, I can’t help but feel a little anxious because it has been a couple days since I put actual new words on the page. I’m getting that niggling little itch in the back of my brain that says, ‘better write!’ If I don’t, the itch gets worse and turns into full-blown irritation, irritation I’m liable to take out on my friends and loved ones, or myself. And anyway, I have (self-imposed) deadlines to make.

One issue is I didn’t redo the tickybox wall-chart we use to track our progress each week. Got to take care of that tonight. And then, some actual writing …

Or else who knows whose head I might bite off.

I got some good reminders to trust my process, that I need to relax and let my writing output grow naturally. A little later, when I got home, I made the decision I wrote about here. As soon as I did the inspiration hit and I wrote 3 pages of “Encounter at Hedonia.” Caspar isn’t even in this story, but it felt like renewing my trust in the process combined with a willingness to let my characters take up more psychic space helped open things up inside my head.

In the hopes this trend will continue, I’m letting it be known that my characters can take up as much brainpower as they like. If they were closed before, I’m throwing the doors to my brain wide open — come on in, guys, girls, and creatures in between. Do whatever you like — dig through the medicine cabinet, babble incessently in my ears, leave your dirty laundry lying around and empty milk cartons in my fridge.

Come into my brain and inspire me.

While I still respect de Lint’s talents, I read a good deal less of his work these days and, recently, the name ‘Jeck Crow’ has seemed increasingly alien to me. It feels especially so whenever some new virtual acquaintance asks me where the name comes from and I have to tell this story again.

After experimenting with the handle on Civ4 Online, I’ve decided to adopt the persona of one of the main characters of the Honeycutt Tales. You can now reach me on AIM and Yahoo! Instant Messengers as CasparLocke. Caspar is the handsome, ethically challenged commanding officer of Caprice, the starship where most of the action in the novel takes place.

It’s not that my own personality is so much like his, but more a way of acknowledging how much of a voice these characters have in my head, of honoring how much of my psychic space they take up. Knee-deep in this novel, I spend much more time inside Caspar’s brain than I ever did inside of Jeck’s.

Since I use Pidgin anyway, I will be leaving my old identities logged in and still accepting IMs to either name but I encourage my friends to message me as CasparLocke (on Yahoo & AIM) instead.