My little project now known as The Coldwater Diaries started out on a blog-site identical to what you see before you now. It was Fall of '07 and I was spending an afternoon sharing lines with a china-girl twenty-three-stories above Wilshire Blvd in a high-rise apartment in Brentwood I had been living at the time. It was somewhere around noon and we had already hoovered our fair share of Bolivian-flake while managing to burn through two packs of Parliaments at the same time. Slightly bored with our stash running low I flipped on the tube to find Less Than Zero playing on one of the movie channels. I thought to myself how similar my situation was to some of the situations in not only Less Than Zero, but all of Ellis' work. I had managed to weasel my way into a clan of the wealthy and elite and the Westside of Los Angeles was my playground.
I took a moment to reflect while watching Robert Downey's Character Julian smoke base at some House Party in the hills and for reasons still unknown to me today, a sudden urge to write a flash-fiction piece overcame me and within moments I found myself before my laptop prepping a blind writing session. What followed was a piece of flash-fiction through the eyes of a character named Donnie as he navigated his way around a party he didn't want to be surrounded by cretins he loathed to see. And one thing came to mind after another and next thing I knew this little piece of flash-fiction grew legs and the moment I finished up with Donnie I dove straight into a whole other kind of character in Andrew. And like Donnie before him, once I wrapped Andrew I dove into another character and then another and before I knew it I had a little piece of smut fiction that was in a sense writing itself.
By sunup I had written close to ten-thousand words and a thought came to mind – what if I tell a story day by day online… in blog form as if the characters wrote each entry themselves… and each day interested parties could watch the madness unfold in real-time. I called it an online novel for the blog generation – with the idea being to trick people into actually reading a book – no matter how smutty it may be.
And thus the following day a blog was built and what I named (at the time) The Shitty-Pipe Diaries was born. Loaded on creative inspiration, a gallon of hundred-proof optimism, and 30mg of Adderall I slaved over the project for a little over a week – absolutely certain this unique way of storytelling would take off in very short time in turn launching my writing career at the mere age of 22… neglecting to come to terms with a very large elephant in the apartment…
…These characters I had birthed and the world I created around them were hardly the products of a sane mind in a stable place. That said, those initial chapters written during that first week were born off experiences of my own – loosely based off my time in Los Angeles, the people I had met, and moreover, the many faces I had taken on for myself…
Point being, what is now The Coldwater Diaries (originally The Shitty-pipe Diaries) was more at the time (despite my not knowing this fact then) a more than a story to tell but more of an account of what had been lived up until that point.
And although I really have only committed a few months time in the actual writing of Coldwater, these writing spurts were separated by many times off where my chaotic life had gotten in the way time and time again only through this not only did I grow as person/writer – but then became capable of writing Coldwater the way it should be told.
Now finally at point of execution after many months of living and getting over some of the stories seeded deep within the words of Coldwater, I've Two Volumes "In the Books" with the Third Volume being told in three-acts live on the Coldwater Site – www.TheColdwaterDiaries.com
This particular blog – The Coldwater Diaries 'Unplugged' – has been designed to at first glance present the work as it had originally began – as a blog with individual posts – where the entire first volume will be available chapter-by-chapter (opposed to the single PDF file option on the Parent Site) along with whatever Chapter Updates I've put to The Main Coldwater Site in regards to Volumes Two and Three. Along with each chapter will be a preface written by myself – reflecting on the time and place I was in my own life while writing each chapter along with insights as to what I may have endured in the world of non-fiction that eventually fanned the flames of my fiction.
Apart from these more in-depth entries this branch of The Coldwater Diaries will provide more insight to those interested in the upcoming Video Short projects on tap – with character synopsis, outlines, scene sides, etc – that go beyond what's available on the main site.
Again as I write these words I stress The Coldwater Diaries has still a bit of work left… but I can still say with confidence I'm closer to telling the story proper than I have ever been ready since its date of conception way back in the fall of '07.
There's more to come but for now I leave you with these words while in the background I lay the finishing touches to the project as a whole where (hopefully) I wont need a 947 word introduction to (when you really look at it) tell you (the reader) absolutely nothing…
Until it all makes sense I thank you for hanging with me thus far and hope you return when all affairs are in order,
Geoffrey A. Citron
Los Angeles, October 2009
