I think that my biggest stumbling block, in terms of getting any writing done (aside, that is, from laziness and a short attention span) is that most of my ideas for stories have sort of grown together into something I pompously refer to as my "mythos" in emails to firends who are thankfully fairly patient with my ramblings about writing. It's very convoluted, and many of the snippets that have come to me are not actually stories but characters or details. For instance, thanks to my interest in paying homage Kill Bill style to a number of works that have influenced my thinking about my "mythos", I have the names of a handful of businesses located in my imaginary region.

Backing up. I realize I just sort of started out in media res here. Ten deep breaths. Ready? OK then.

I have been toying since high school with the creation of several Vermont towns of varying sizes. Over the years, my sporadic (and usually incomplete) forays into fiction writing have made use of these towns, though they have never really been given much attention. They were usually just names thrown onto paper so that I could set things in places with names. I guess part of it is due to my teenage fanaticism for certain works by Stephen King. The two towns that I guess I retaibned often enough for them to stick with me over the past 7-8 years are Westborough and Garstow. At some point, perhaps primarily influenced by my college readings in Faulkner, things organized themselves a little more clearly into a fictional county which I've always figured would be Westborough County. These days, I wonder if it oughtn't be named something else, and a different town be made the county seat, despite Westborough being a decent sized large town/small city. Brattleboro sized, for anyone familiar enough with Vermont to know. But Hyde Park, the county seat in Lamoille County, is in fact one of the smaller villages--little more than the county buildings (cops & court) and a few houses. So it isn't impossible. Another recent discovery, through historical research, is that counties in VT, and much of New England, have never been very important except as court districts. Probably the effect of having such emphasis on town governance via Town Meeting. This has let me to wonder how many towns I need to create, because the county would only be an "arbitrary political division," rather than a dfistinct and important entity. My initial plans for the Westborough County "mythos" don't need to be as far reaching and county-bound as I initially planned, particularly since my background in cultural studies emphasizes lived spaces as perceived by the inhabitants over abstract political units...

Anyhow, rambling again. Point is, I have some ideas about Westborough County, but nothing is really set in stone.

Would you believe I actually started typing up a gazette-like compendium of some of these characters, places, etc here? Sheesh. Not exactly what anyone wants to read. I'm not sure why I even started this post. Shrug. Guess there wasn't much point...still, if I get any stories actually written, I think I'll post them here. Again, not that anyone will actually read this blog in the first place...