Today's Update

Remember my first Daily Dirt from a mere three weeks ago, where I detailed the convoluted and protracted writing process I underwent for each update? Yeah, that's completely outdated now. I'm nothing if not flighty. Starting with the G4TV piece, I've been writing my updates from start to finish in one sitting the very afternoon I come up with them. This wasn't a conscious decision, it just started happening for no particular reason. The best part is that I'm having actual fun when I write, as opposed to the self-imposed pressure I was experiencing for a long time. It's entirely possible that I accidentally learned something or got better as a writer, but I suspect my new wheat-intensive diet is the real driving force behind the change.

As a relatively new front page guy I think I inadvertently played it safe for a while there, sticking to a formulaic style I felt comfortable with. I've written some stories in the past featuring bizarre situations and characters, but these potentially interesting concepts simply served as a backdrop for a series of loosely connected (and honestly, sometimes forced) jokes that I plugged into the aforementioned formula. Which leads us to today's update.

I wanted to write a story that - aside from the brain which none of the characters finds particularly unusual - could actually stand up on its own as a really bad scene in a soap opera or a really good chapter in a romantic novel. No more loosely connected jokes, just cliched and heavy-handed melodrama featuring a googly-eyed brain that serves as a catalyst for a breakup that would have likely happened even if it weren't in the story. Without very many punchlines in this update, I'd imagine readers will either really dig the absurdity of the story or hate me for wasting several minutes of their lives.

Either way, I'll be doing something with actual jokes next time around. There was a lot of positive response to last week's Inactive Fiction update and I had more fun writing it than anything I've done so far, so I might reprise the idea as a series at some point.

That's enough of my self-indulgence for today. Avoid the Noid out there, people. He's still in the shadows somewhere and the moment you become complacent he will devour your soul after systematically destroying all that you hold dear.

– Dennis "Corin Tucker's Stalker" Farrell (@DennisFarrell)

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