Dispatches, thoughts, and miscellanea from writer Jon Konrath

Mental roadblocks, celery MRIs

I’m already hitting various mental roadblocks during this new rewrite of my first book, Summer Rain. My new outline is not much more then a mental recollection of how the book is supposed to work. The problem is – sometimes I forget. And when I go back and try to reference the old draft, it corrupts things and I go from creating this new, more functional structure to just rehashing all of the old shit that’s in the book.

I read pieces of a year-old draft, and the amount of work ahead of me is overwhelming. Writing shifts from bad to poor, the story drags with no real ‘hook’ to it, and everything is sloppy. It goes from describing everything too much to having no descriptions at all. I like bits and pieces of it, but some of it is pretty corny. I’ve tried editing it, but I think it would be easier to just start over.

I got my stupid checkbook from Seatac airport. It cost me $2 to park there for 20 seconds and get the thing. But I was able to balance everything and pay another round of bills last night.

Does a cross-section of celery look sort of like an MRI, or is it just me?

I got a kick-ass Camaro catalog in the mail – I must’ve put my name on a list a few months ago. It’s mostly stuff for 67-69, and mostly original with some repro stuff. So it is all expensive, for people who want to pay $175 a tire to get the original Firestone red-wall tires for their totally restored 69 Z-28. Anyway, it’s got me thinking more about buying another Camaro after I unload this piece of shit Escort. I’d need garage space, though. We’ll see…

I had a weird dream about my ex-girlfriend Tanya. I was at some unknown house watching Apocalypse Now with Simms, Andrea, and this guy who lived down the street from my parents. He was on the phone with someone, and then hung up. I asked who it was, and he said it was Tanya and that they were going out. I told him that I dated her a while ago, and he started telling these stories about how they slept together on their first date and how she was really wild in bed, and I was getting insanely jealous about the whole thing. It was like being a Giants fan back when they totally sucked, and you give up on them, and then they get incredibly good. I woke up and thought it all was real, and I was still all jealous about it. I don’t think jealous is the word for it – I didn’t want her back or anything. It was more like a betrayal. I don’t know – maybe it was because I ate right before I went to bed, who knows.