Michael Braun's Blog

The last time I completed any fictional work of great length was in 8th grade. So what’s that… 11 years ago? That was a story, covering two notebooks, of attempted murder, mob connections, and a wild international chase for justice – all done by me and two friends (and yes, we were in middle school). Escapist fare, to be sure, but it was fun to write and complete. Since then, I’ve attempted to write more, but never got anything done beyond a lot of poems and a fair number of short stories.

But when you’ve got plenty of ideas bouncing around, there’s always a push to try something longer. And from years of reading mystery novels and a childhood desire to be a PI, most of my ideas are mystery stories. I never wrote a short mystery story, and I never had an idea that could easily translate into greater length without a lot of sketching and planning. It’s been ideas and no production.

When things aren’t working, sometimes you have to blame the medium. Here I sit typing on this blog and thinking that any writing of length would be done on the computer. But there’s some great, secret pleasure to a fine pen and a nice notebook; it’s always inspired me. So on Monday, with the semester finished, I purchased some fine Moleskine notebooks and set to writing.

It’s a mystery story, joined by a plot piece from a sitcom and a line from an obscure Brazilian novelist. But so far, I’m feeling pretty good. It’s fun and relaxing to write fiction at night. It’s also nice to force yourself to write and then be unable to vanquish that writing if you later grow tired of it! When I type fiction, I use the delete key as much as the space key. But I can’t get involved in that kind of editing when handwriting. If this comes to anything, and I do end up typing it up, no doubt there will be substantial changes. But this way, any progress I make remains so, and I feel like I’m getting somewhere, even if it leads to naught.