I have a bunch of homework.
BacktoSchool
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Music about Volcanoes
Is called "Bach-lava," in case you were wondering.
Start school tomorrow. Time to get my game face on. I'm terribly hung over. I'll return when I'm in better shape.
Start school tomorrow. Time to get my game face on. I'm terribly hung over. I'll return when I'm in better shape.
Friday, August 26, 2011
Hurricane Lockdown
Hurricane lockdown. One roommate is in Greece (hi Joe!). The other roommate (hi Dave!) is housesitting and won't be around either. This means that (hi Elisia!) will be braving the storm with a bottle of wine, a thousand piece puzzle, two cats, and possibly the lead singer of Dave's band (Scott I'm not going to pretend you read this blog. But I'll tell you in person I mentioned you.)
People in grocery stores are losing it (I wanted to say "going ape-shit"--keeping it clean for you Mom!) All the D batteries are sold out. Flashlights flood the aisles of hardware stores. I lugged a big box of 20 water bottles onto the subway today. The subways are shutting down, for the first time in New York City's history. I was surprised to find out they don't have large, metal, guillotine style doors that will slide down and block the entrance. I wanted to hear the swish-bang of steel doors all across the city. It would feel really epic and I would stand on my rooftop feeling like Batman at Helm's Deep (this is, after all, my blog. I can say whatever I want).
As it happens I have the bulk of my novel completed. Or, at least, I've finished all that I wish to workshop this semester. Woo hoo! So this means that I'm going to start doing a ton of re-writing in the mean time.*
Now my brain is free to think creatively in other directions. I have this great story about three roommates, in different places, when a hurricane comes...just kidding. I wonder how many people will include a hurricane in their first short story/novel excerpt ever workshopped in graduate school. I wonder if they'll substitute "tornado" or something else so it's not as obvious. I wonder if I'm the only one that corny.
I would love to be one of two extremes during the hurricane. The first option is to be frantically busy. Maybe gathering all my magazines, tearing out random pictures, then throwing said pages up in the air for hours once the storm hits. Once we're in the eye of the storm, I'll sit on the floor in the middle of the magazines and meditate. Once the storm starts up again I'll start taping the pages onto the wall in a mural of the universal truth I discovered while centering myself. The piece will be called: _______ (to be fulfilled).
The other option is to meditate throughout the entire process. Let the storm pass through me and achieve some grand ultimate catharsis.
Neither of these options will happen. I'll watch tv until the electricity goes out, maybe play some Beethoven during the most intense parts of the storm (on our grand piano bwa ha ha), and drink wine while doing a thousand piece M.C. Escher puzzle.
But as I was saying before, people are going crazy. A woman nearly ran me down while I was in the cross walk this afternoon. She was evacuating the city! No time to stop for the less fortunate mortals on foot! Another woman talked to me quite openly in the CVS line about the thrills and woes about being carded when you're clearly of age and your health is failing. Did she know I'm only 24?
Apparently the third best selling items, behind water bottles and flashlights, are water proof cameras. For the lightning, I suppose. Otherwise people will have 24 pictures of gray rain. "Here's the storm at oh-three hundred hours," they'll tell their grandkids, although they were never in the military. "Here it is at sixteen hundred." The kids will peer closely at the fuzzy gray snapshots, curious as to when they will be old enough gain the wisdom that their grandparents have, the wisdom that discerns something meaningful in the fuzzy photographs.
Everything, in hurricane weather, can be said ominously. My definition of ominously is: a) any statement which is impossible to either support or refute. b) anything said in a whisper.
Ex: "There's an electricity in the air."
"The animals are acting strange."
"I feel the tingle...do you feel it? Oh Marianne."
Listening to Leonard Cohen.
Overall, storms are exciting. I hope everyone is safe. I hope everyone had time to prepare. I think the hype in the media (for New York, at least), is perhaps a tad overblown, but that's an okay thing. If that's what it takes for people to pay attention, then play on, ye soft pipes, play on.
Can you imagine if the telecaster's 'news at nine' voice was her everyday speaking voice?
(at home with her husband): Tonight the McCarren residence will have chicken for dinner.
"Marjorie, you don't have to talk like that. This is not being broadcast to any audience."
"On the freeway home from work this afternoon, a car dramatically cut another car off. The passengers are safe, although officials recommend staying tuned for updates."
"Marjorie for Christ's sake put the round wire brush back in the bathroom drawer. You have real microphones at work."
A long time ago I started a short story about a weather man named Don who is going crazy. I'll cut and paste the beginning for you here:
The sky was hot, too hot, and as Mac O’Donnell brushed his teeth in front of the mirror, he wondered how badly his toupee would be seared today. By noon, the heat would bristle and scorch like a toothbrush against the tongue—the plastic fingers scrubbing against a filmy, pasty sky. Milky residue over a pink stratosphere.
O’Donnell switched toothbrush from hand to hand, admired his profile from first the left, then the right side. From the left, the twitch in his cheek remained invisible. If he swayed right, he exposed the burn from last week’s accident. O’Donnell knew its relative insignificance. O’Donnell knew this burn, and every other injury on the planet, was the scratch of an impending gash.
As he transitioned from toothbrush to razor, he unconsciously sucked in his gut. He had lost weight again—the innermost corners of his rib cage stuck out like door handles. Don’t open me. Stay away. He had made the mistake of muttering these words in front of Sally, News at Nine’s secretary. “What?” she had asked, her ponytail’s shape mimicking the question. “What?” O’Donnell mimicked her now. He wished she had more substance to her than one word. That she had answers behind that question mark.
“Nothing,” he had answered, and turned back to the water cooler, dampening his leathery tongue. What a lost cause. Nothing, nothing could satiate his worries now, his constant anxiety that trickled through the crevices of his mind. What about when the rain began to sear off people’s skin? When the lightning started spelling out answers in the sky? When that fucking comet blasted through the atmosphere? And he wasn’t around to tell people, watch the fuck out? What? What then?
O’Donnell finished up his grooming routine and walked through his vaulted ceiling, skylight filled apartment. The walls shot up at a staggering 20 feet height. Ridiculous? His ex-girlfriend had suggested to him, and ridiculous? He had leered back. What’s ridiculous? That I’m the most successful weatherman in the tri-state area? That this has earned me a future? That I predict the future? What’s fucking ridiculous about that? (This was two weeks before she left him for a gamer who spent his days underground, just of age, pizza skin and thriving greasy hair. Irony, said O'Donnell bitterly to himself, knows no limits.)
Now, O’Donnell luxuriated in the freedom of disconnection. Like an outdated jagged graph, his routine lacked consistency. After all, as a weatherman, his job only required him to be conscious and loquacious for 2 hours a day, from 8 to 10. After a few jokes, pinches, and howdy do’s, he could free wheel his way through the other 22. O’Donnell became used to sleeping till 3 AM, then going golfing in the dark; making origami out of take out napkins; watching re-runs of Matlock while slouched on the sofa, eating bags of potato chips, shirt unbuttoned so the crumbs didn’t stain his work t-shirts, only tangled in his chest hair—there had been a time when his work cautioned him against gaining weight. And there had been a time when Mac had cared. But now, with the very walls yelling at him you are not safe! And when he found himself whimpering in the sheets at 5 AM, terrorized by the suggestions of a cockroach, hiding in the bathtub because all cotton smelled of sulfur—
Now Mac did not care about his appearance, though not too long ago women would approach him in the grocery store, asking for an autograph. He had been the hot weatherman, and relished in the savory pun. But now, his recent fear had pulled out all his hair, cinched his belt in two notches, and slackened his jowls. He paused in front of the key bowl, catching his reflection in the entryway mirror. “Stealth. Control. Fire.” He whispered to himself. Recipe for success. “Stealth. Control. Fire.” And opened the front door.
Outside, O’Donnell braced himself for the heat that would hit him like a frying pan. He reeled, until he saw the neighborhood girl riding her tricycle, ponytail bobbing and sweater clasping around her ankles. Her cheeks rosy with the cold.Whatever catastrophic change O'Donnell read in his graphs before work, clearly would not happen today.
Stepping into his silver sedan, O'Donnell backed out of the driveway with radical precision. It was O'Donnell's ability to always be right, 100% right, about things that nobody else cared about, that had landed him the job as weatherman at channel 5's station. In the same way that he now drove down the freeway with exactly 1.5 feet on each side between the next lane and his car, O'Donnell knew what cloud patterns would dictate what side of the veranda to sit on for the month of June; knew what parks would receive the most rain, thereby driving nannies and mothers to the best parks for puddle splashing; knew the layout of the city so meticulously that a gentleman, should he wish to impress his date, or a lady, for that matter, wished to be unimpressed, would always know to read O'Donnell's weather report before departing, for O'Donnell would know if Portofinos, Bella Vista's number one first date spot, would actually be drafty that night or not.
Yes, in a sense O'Donnell was Bella Vista's most prized possession. His unnatural dedication to weather patterns, coupled with his scrupulous knowledge of the town's layout, made him a sort of legendary clairvoyant in the tales of Bella Vista's housewives, who gossiped about him while swirling their Long Islands clasped by orange nail polished hands. There was even, at one point, talk of creating a billboard with O'Donnell's face superimposed upon a blue sky, next to his motto: “Weather for Every Pleasure” (O'Donnell lost the spot to an anti-tornado campaign).
All devolved, thought O'Donnell as he swung his sedan into the studios' 3rd best parking spot. All decayed. He strode into the studio, wiping the corners of his mouth of the sweat-paste that was nowadays in constant formation.
“O'Donnell, you're late,” Larry the sound technician half whispered, half hissed at him. No matter.
O'Donnell walked over to his platform, green screen spread out behind him, and began that day’s weather report. “Winds in from due East,” he muttered, hardly paying attention to what he was saying, “We expect this to collapse the major bridges and send automobiles careening into the water, paper airplanes lacking a propeller, warning all swimmers to tread the fuck away from two ton projectiles—“ Mac became vaguely conscious of a frozen feeling in the room, like the ice chest before you shut the lid—“this is not to say that you should avoid exercise, or that all hope is lost. It’s only February, people. Those New Years' resolutions are near enough in the recent past to bite you in the ass if you don’t lose it, har har. Rather, we recommend heading towards the coast, away from the winds, and--
O'Donnell was cut short by a foreign whirring sound. Looking around, he realized that the green screen behind him had gone black, the camera's red lights disappeared, and all 48 of News at Nine's employees staring blankly at him.
*"Mean time" is a very funny phrase. Taken out of context? In context? "Time is mean."" 'mean' in the stingy sense. Time is mean in the cruel sense. Mean in the 'average of' sense. In the meaningful sense. Is it okay with everyone if I use single quotes? I really dislike double quotation marks. They're thick. Just my feelings on the matter.
People in grocery stores are losing it (I wanted to say "going ape-shit"--keeping it clean for you Mom!) All the D batteries are sold out. Flashlights flood the aisles of hardware stores. I lugged a big box of 20 water bottles onto the subway today. The subways are shutting down, for the first time in New York City's history. I was surprised to find out they don't have large, metal, guillotine style doors that will slide down and block the entrance. I wanted to hear the swish-bang of steel doors all across the city. It would feel really epic and I would stand on my rooftop feeling like Batman at Helm's Deep (this is, after all, my blog. I can say whatever I want).
As it happens I have the bulk of my novel completed. Or, at least, I've finished all that I wish to workshop this semester. Woo hoo! So this means that I'm going to start doing a ton of re-writing in the mean time.*
Now my brain is free to think creatively in other directions. I have this great story about three roommates, in different places, when a hurricane comes...just kidding. I wonder how many people will include a hurricane in their first short story/novel excerpt ever workshopped in graduate school. I wonder if they'll substitute "tornado" or something else so it's not as obvious. I wonder if I'm the only one that corny.
I would love to be one of two extremes during the hurricane. The first option is to be frantically busy. Maybe gathering all my magazines, tearing out random pictures, then throwing said pages up in the air for hours once the storm hits. Once we're in the eye of the storm, I'll sit on the floor in the middle of the magazines and meditate. Once the storm starts up again I'll start taping the pages onto the wall in a mural of the universal truth I discovered while centering myself. The piece will be called: _______ (to be fulfilled).
The other option is to meditate throughout the entire process. Let the storm pass through me and achieve some grand ultimate catharsis.
Neither of these options will happen. I'll watch tv until the electricity goes out, maybe play some Beethoven during the most intense parts of the storm (on our grand piano bwa ha ha), and drink wine while doing a thousand piece M.C. Escher puzzle.
But as I was saying before, people are going crazy. A woman nearly ran me down while I was in the cross walk this afternoon. She was evacuating the city! No time to stop for the less fortunate mortals on foot! Another woman talked to me quite openly in the CVS line about the thrills and woes about being carded when you're clearly of age and your health is failing. Did she know I'm only 24?
Apparently the third best selling items, behind water bottles and flashlights, are water proof cameras. For the lightning, I suppose. Otherwise people will have 24 pictures of gray rain. "Here's the storm at oh-three hundred hours," they'll tell their grandkids, although they were never in the military. "Here it is at sixteen hundred." The kids will peer closely at the fuzzy gray snapshots, curious as to when they will be old enough gain the wisdom that their grandparents have, the wisdom that discerns something meaningful in the fuzzy photographs.
Everything, in hurricane weather, can be said ominously. My definition of ominously is: a) any statement which is impossible to either support or refute. b) anything said in a whisper.
Ex: "There's an electricity in the air."
"The animals are acting strange."
"I feel the tingle...do you feel it? Oh Marianne."
Listening to Leonard Cohen.
Overall, storms are exciting. I hope everyone is safe. I hope everyone had time to prepare. I think the hype in the media (for New York, at least), is perhaps a tad overblown, but that's an okay thing. If that's what it takes for people to pay attention, then play on, ye soft pipes, play on.
Can you imagine if the telecaster's 'news at nine' voice was her everyday speaking voice?
(at home with her husband): Tonight the McCarren residence will have chicken for dinner.
"Marjorie, you don't have to talk like that. This is not being broadcast to any audience."
"On the freeway home from work this afternoon, a car dramatically cut another car off. The passengers are safe, although officials recommend staying tuned for updates."
"Marjorie for Christ's sake put the round wire brush back in the bathroom drawer. You have real microphones at work."
A long time ago I started a short story about a weather man named Don who is going crazy. I'll cut and paste the beginning for you here:
The sky was hot, too hot, and as Mac O’Donnell brushed his teeth in front of the mirror, he wondered how badly his toupee would be seared today. By noon, the heat would bristle and scorch like a toothbrush against the tongue—the plastic fingers scrubbing against a filmy, pasty sky. Milky residue over a pink stratosphere.
O’Donnell switched toothbrush from hand to hand, admired his profile from first the left, then the right side. From the left, the twitch in his cheek remained invisible. If he swayed right, he exposed the burn from last week’s accident. O’Donnell knew its relative insignificance. O’Donnell knew this burn, and every other injury on the planet, was the scratch of an impending gash.
As he transitioned from toothbrush to razor, he unconsciously sucked in his gut. He had lost weight again—the innermost corners of his rib cage stuck out like door handles. Don’t open me. Stay away. He had made the mistake of muttering these words in front of Sally, News at Nine’s secretary. “What?” she had asked, her ponytail’s shape mimicking the question. “What?” O’Donnell mimicked her now. He wished she had more substance to her than one word. That she had answers behind that question mark.
“Nothing,” he had answered, and turned back to the water cooler, dampening his leathery tongue. What a lost cause. Nothing, nothing could satiate his worries now, his constant anxiety that trickled through the crevices of his mind. What about when the rain began to sear off people’s skin? When the lightning started spelling out answers in the sky? When that fucking comet blasted through the atmosphere? And he wasn’t around to tell people, watch the fuck out? What? What then?
O’Donnell finished up his grooming routine and walked through his vaulted ceiling, skylight filled apartment. The walls shot up at a staggering 20 feet height. Ridiculous? His ex-girlfriend had suggested to him, and ridiculous? He had leered back. What’s ridiculous? That I’m the most successful weatherman in the tri-state area? That this has earned me a future? That I predict the future? What’s fucking ridiculous about that? (This was two weeks before she left him for a gamer who spent his days underground, just of age, pizza skin and thriving greasy hair. Irony, said O'Donnell bitterly to himself, knows no limits.)
Now, O’Donnell luxuriated in the freedom of disconnection. Like an outdated jagged graph, his routine lacked consistency. After all, as a weatherman, his job only required him to be conscious and loquacious for 2 hours a day, from 8 to 10. After a few jokes, pinches, and howdy do’s, he could free wheel his way through the other 22. O’Donnell became used to sleeping till 3 AM, then going golfing in the dark; making origami out of take out napkins; watching re-runs of Matlock while slouched on the sofa, eating bags of potato chips, shirt unbuttoned so the crumbs didn’t stain his work t-shirts, only tangled in his chest hair—there had been a time when his work cautioned him against gaining weight. And there had been a time when Mac had cared. But now, with the very walls yelling at him you are not safe! And when he found himself whimpering in the sheets at 5 AM, terrorized by the suggestions of a cockroach, hiding in the bathtub because all cotton smelled of sulfur—
Now Mac did not care about his appearance, though not too long ago women would approach him in the grocery store, asking for an autograph. He had been the hot weatherman, and relished in the savory pun. But now, his recent fear had pulled out all his hair, cinched his belt in two notches, and slackened his jowls. He paused in front of the key bowl, catching his reflection in the entryway mirror. “Stealth. Control. Fire.” He whispered to himself. Recipe for success. “Stealth. Control. Fire.” And opened the front door.
Outside, O’Donnell braced himself for the heat that would hit him like a frying pan. He reeled, until he saw the neighborhood girl riding her tricycle, ponytail bobbing and sweater clasping around her ankles. Her cheeks rosy with the cold.Whatever catastrophic change O'Donnell read in his graphs before work, clearly would not happen today.
Stepping into his silver sedan, O'Donnell backed out of the driveway with radical precision. It was O'Donnell's ability to always be right, 100% right, about things that nobody else cared about, that had landed him the job as weatherman at channel 5's station. In the same way that he now drove down the freeway with exactly 1.5 feet on each side between the next lane and his car, O'Donnell knew what cloud patterns would dictate what side of the veranda to sit on for the month of June; knew what parks would receive the most rain, thereby driving nannies and mothers to the best parks for puddle splashing; knew the layout of the city so meticulously that a gentleman, should he wish to impress his date, or a lady, for that matter, wished to be unimpressed, would always know to read O'Donnell's weather report before departing, for O'Donnell would know if Portofinos, Bella Vista's number one first date spot, would actually be drafty that night or not.
Yes, in a sense O'Donnell was Bella Vista's most prized possession. His unnatural dedication to weather patterns, coupled with his scrupulous knowledge of the town's layout, made him a sort of legendary clairvoyant in the tales of Bella Vista's housewives, who gossiped about him while swirling their Long Islands clasped by orange nail polished hands. There was even, at one point, talk of creating a billboard with O'Donnell's face superimposed upon a blue sky, next to his motto: “Weather for Every Pleasure” (O'Donnell lost the spot to an anti-tornado campaign).
All devolved, thought O'Donnell as he swung his sedan into the studios' 3rd best parking spot. All decayed. He strode into the studio, wiping the corners of his mouth of the sweat-paste that was nowadays in constant formation.
“O'Donnell, you're late,” Larry the sound technician half whispered, half hissed at him. No matter.
O'Donnell walked over to his platform, green screen spread out behind him, and began that day’s weather report. “Winds in from due East,” he muttered, hardly paying attention to what he was saying, “We expect this to collapse the major bridges and send automobiles careening into the water, paper airplanes lacking a propeller, warning all swimmers to tread the fuck away from two ton projectiles—“ Mac became vaguely conscious of a frozen feeling in the room, like the ice chest before you shut the lid—“this is not to say that you should avoid exercise, or that all hope is lost. It’s only February, people. Those New Years' resolutions are near enough in the recent past to bite you in the ass if you don’t lose it, har har. Rather, we recommend heading towards the coast, away from the winds, and--
O'Donnell was cut short by a foreign whirring sound. Looking around, he realized that the green screen behind him had gone black, the camera's red lights disappeared, and all 48 of News at Nine's employees staring blankly at him.
*"Mean time" is a very funny phrase. Taken out of context? In context? "Time is mean."" 'mean' in the stingy sense. Time is mean in the cruel sense. Mean in the 'average of' sense. In the meaningful sense. Is it okay with everyone if I use single quotes? I really dislike double quotation marks. They're thick. Just my feelings on the matter.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
My Orientation is Tonight
Tonight is orientation. It just so happens that my boyfriend scored tickets for a recording for SNL of comedian John Mulvaney tonight. When I was a freshman in undergrad I slept through half my orientation. I sorely regretted waking up for the other half. The only important thing, really, was the part where they showed you how to hook your computer up to the campus internet. Everything else was just embarrassing. I already knew that I wasn't going to be dating anyone, hated team sports, community, and talking to strangers. I put myself and those team leaders through equal parts misery by showing up to....did they REALLY make us alternate boy-girl seating in the dining hall and force us to talk about our food? Memory overwrite.
Anyway, I'm not sure if I'm going tonight. I met with a professor a couple days ago and mentioned the orientation. He mumbled something about it not being important. Off the hook! John Mulvaney, here I come!
It was a good meeting, though I think we were missing each other's points at certain parts of the conversation. I'll start from the beginning.
When I was in undergrad I thrived off writing experimental fiction. "Chronological" was not something I did or did well.* Time and space were divided and placed wherever I felt like it. It was liberating to work with such an "I'll do whatever the hell I want" attitude. It gave me a lot of confidence and I had a lot of fun messing with the convention that stories must be told sequentially. And, I did it fairly well, so I got away with a lot. However, I think that because this style was so easy for me, I could slide into these edgy structures and alienate the reader in the process. I think ambiguity, stylized structure, and pretty much all unconventional stylistic choices can be justified if there is a deeper underlying meaning behind them. If you're being ambiguous just to be ambiguous,* however, than that's stupid. You have to have control of the craft; you have to know what's up with what. Obviously sometimes a writer is taken over by the muse, and may write deep, complex, highly ambiguous passages. That's a different situation, in which genius meets high inspiration. Obviously, a beginning writer can rarely lay stake to that scenario. So until then, I think it very important, more important than usual, in my case, for me to learn more conventional standards of writing, and then go back to fucking with the structure.
So when I was meeting with my professor, we started talking about the writing process. I explained that I had a basic chronological plot structure laid out. However, I work on different parts each day. One day I'll work on the third chapter, when she is ten and in the hospital. The next day, being in a different mood or frame of mind, I'll write the penultimate chapter, which takes place when she's twenty. He started talking to me about how things didn't have to be chronological, and that I should trust the organic process.
I think he was under the impression that I was afraid of experimentation, or I had taken hook and bait the artist's maxim that you need to learn the rules before you break them. That just is not, was not the case for me at all. I allowed my flair for non-chronological writing to become an excuse for not focusing on the crux of the story: character development, the raison-d'etre for certain actions, etc.
In the end I think we both saw the other's point of view. He brought up a good, refreshing point: who really says, in the end, I ever have to write chronologically, at all? Creative advice is, in the end, just that: advice. If you take it to be the end all be all of truth then you're probably going to stunt your artistic growth.
So this morning I woke up thinking about a specific scene when she's about sixteen. She's sitting on a bed with a friend, and they're doing drugs while discussing their lives prior to this moment (or rather,the friend is: the narrator is just kind of high and listening).
It's a long scene, which takes place at a pivotal point, about two-thirds the way through the novel. I was thinking of introducing the novel with that scene, then going back and forth between that scene and the narrator's experiences leading up to it. We will see. It could be wasted time, but fortunately I don't have work today. And it's raining. And I'm going to a comedy show tonight! This post is very long.
* My thesis director put it most poignantly: "I don't know if you're incapable of writing a structured thesis, or if you just refuse." The sad truth is that it's kind of both. I try writing normal papers to no avail. And, I'm obnoxiously stubborn in my ineptitude.
**You think it's cool, or use the excuse "it's an existential work,'" "I'm a nihilist," "negative capability," or "I'm only Humean."
Anyway, I'm not sure if I'm going tonight. I met with a professor a couple days ago and mentioned the orientation. He mumbled something about it not being important. Off the hook! John Mulvaney, here I come!
It was a good meeting, though I think we were missing each other's points at certain parts of the conversation. I'll start from the beginning.
When I was in undergrad I thrived off writing experimental fiction. "Chronological" was not something I did or did well.* Time and space were divided and placed wherever I felt like it. It was liberating to work with such an "I'll do whatever the hell I want" attitude. It gave me a lot of confidence and I had a lot of fun messing with the convention that stories must be told sequentially. And, I did it fairly well, so I got away with a lot. However, I think that because this style was so easy for me, I could slide into these edgy structures and alienate the reader in the process. I think ambiguity, stylized structure, and pretty much all unconventional stylistic choices can be justified if there is a deeper underlying meaning behind them. If you're being ambiguous just to be ambiguous,* however, than that's stupid. You have to have control of the craft; you have to know what's up with what. Obviously sometimes a writer is taken over by the muse, and may write deep, complex, highly ambiguous passages. That's a different situation, in which genius meets high inspiration. Obviously, a beginning writer can rarely lay stake to that scenario. So until then, I think it very important, more important than usual, in my case, for me to learn more conventional standards of writing, and then go back to fucking with the structure.
So when I was meeting with my professor, we started talking about the writing process. I explained that I had a basic chronological plot structure laid out. However, I work on different parts each day. One day I'll work on the third chapter, when she is ten and in the hospital. The next day, being in a different mood or frame of mind, I'll write the penultimate chapter, which takes place when she's twenty. He started talking to me about how things didn't have to be chronological, and that I should trust the organic process.
I think he was under the impression that I was afraid of experimentation, or I had taken hook and bait the artist's maxim that you need to learn the rules before you break them. That just is not, was not the case for me at all. I allowed my flair for non-chronological writing to become an excuse for not focusing on the crux of the story: character development, the raison-d'etre for certain actions, etc.
In the end I think we both saw the other's point of view. He brought up a good, refreshing point: who really says, in the end, I ever have to write chronologically, at all? Creative advice is, in the end, just that: advice. If you take it to be the end all be all of truth then you're probably going to stunt your artistic growth.
So this morning I woke up thinking about a specific scene when she's about sixteen. She's sitting on a bed with a friend, and they're doing drugs while discussing their lives prior to this moment (or rather,the friend is: the narrator is just kind of high and listening).
It's a long scene, which takes place at a pivotal point, about two-thirds the way through the novel. I was thinking of introducing the novel with that scene, then going back and forth between that scene and the narrator's experiences leading up to it. We will see. It could be wasted time, but fortunately I don't have work today. And it's raining. And I'm going to a comedy show tonight! This post is very long.
* My thesis director put it most poignantly: "I don't know if you're incapable of writing a structured thesis, or if you just refuse." The sad truth is that it's kind of both. I try writing normal papers to no avail. And, I'm obnoxiously stubborn in my ineptitude.
**You think it's cool, or use the excuse "it's an existential work,'" "I'm a nihilist," "negative capability," or "I'm only Humean."
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
My List of Writerly Things
1) Writers like writing about themselves: it's true. Writing about writers and their tendencies is some sort of fun meta game for writers, which they shamelessly partake in, maybe the way that guitarists like to shred.
2) Writers, whether they like it or not, often interrupt: in my experience, true. Maybe this only happens when I, specifically, talk to writers. Maybe it's a writers-talking-to-writers thing, and writers don't interrupt other non-writers. But many of the writers I've met interrupt. Maybe they're so used to observing that the prospect of using words in the real world overtakes them. Maybe this is just a fluke in my experience. It is counter-intuitive, since you'd think in order to be a good writer you'd be a good listener. Maybe I'm a bad speaker myself, and they spare me the agony of misused words. I'm only saying what I've experienced.
3) Writers are not all like Ernest Hemingway: it's true. I used to go to parties for accepted students expecting to be in good drinking company. I was already pretty loaded by the time I realized no one else was fond of getting drunk and telling outrageous stories. No, most people were sipping their beer and talking politely about course work. Maybe writers these days drink mostly at the keyboard or in private or not at all. I've also realized that many writers I've met are on the reserved side and that maybe musicians are the ones that get loaded and tell outrageous stories. God, probably none of this is true and it just applies to me and my group of friends.
4) Writers aren't as funny as I'd like them to be: also true. I think comedy is a seriously important mode of expression, that comedy has the ability to reveal cultural and universal truths in a way unparalleled by other methods of communication. So it makes me sad when I go to a party where no one is laughing and everyone is very serious and you ask everyone what they write about and they say something about death and war and failing relationships and the like. This is obviously a very personal preference, and I don't mean to undermine death and violence and other unpleasant human truths and tendencies. Oh wait, yes I do.
5) Writers are secretly intensely competitive: I'm going off a vibe more than actual evidence for this one. But anyone who possesses the persistence and self-awareness that it takes to be a writer probably also has, somewhere not too deep down, a somewhat unseemly competitive streak. I know I do. It crows victorious when I hear other writers let it slide that they may have an inkling of competitiveness in them. “Weakling!” the streak says. “I would never admit to that.” and then I take a sip of my beer and nod and smile, saying yes yes so and so is very good I wonder about this and this?
6) Writers have a hard time believing that they're writers, even after success: I think, with the exception of writers like Joyce Carol Oates or Stephen King,* you probably feel like a fraud at some point if you're calling yourself a writer. I don't know why this is. I certainly feel fraudulous and self-important if I label myself "writer." I prefer "student," or "American," or even "twenty-something," most days of the week. I feel like calling yourself a writer is akin to calling yourself a Jedi when you've only had a couple of lessons with Yoda or maybe even just gotten really good at shooting sand creatures on Alderaan. Who knows. Maybe writers give themselves too much and not enough credit, and that's why we're so off balance.
Writers like Beethoven: I'm bullshitting now I don't know I've got to go to work but I love Beethoven and am going to listen to him now.
*Because both of them churn out amazing quantities of work, both living off their work at a relatively early age.
2) Writers, whether they like it or not, often interrupt: in my experience, true. Maybe this only happens when I, specifically, talk to writers. Maybe it's a writers-talking-to-writers thing, and writers don't interrupt other non-writers. But many of the writers I've met interrupt. Maybe they're so used to observing that the prospect of using words in the real world overtakes them. Maybe this is just a fluke in my experience. It is counter-intuitive, since you'd think in order to be a good writer you'd be a good listener. Maybe I'm a bad speaker myself, and they spare me the agony of misused words. I'm only saying what I've experienced.
3) Writers are not all like Ernest Hemingway: it's true. I used to go to parties for accepted students expecting to be in good drinking company. I was already pretty loaded by the time I realized no one else was fond of getting drunk and telling outrageous stories. No, most people were sipping their beer and talking politely about course work. Maybe writers these days drink mostly at the keyboard or in private or not at all. I've also realized that many writers I've met are on the reserved side and that maybe musicians are the ones that get loaded and tell outrageous stories. God, probably none of this is true and it just applies to me and my group of friends.
4) Writers aren't as funny as I'd like them to be: also true. I think comedy is a seriously important mode of expression, that comedy has the ability to reveal cultural and universal truths in a way unparalleled by other methods of communication. So it makes me sad when I go to a party where no one is laughing and everyone is very serious and you ask everyone what they write about and they say something about death and war and failing relationships and the like. This is obviously a very personal preference, and I don't mean to undermine death and violence and other unpleasant human truths and tendencies. Oh wait, yes I do.
5) Writers are secretly intensely competitive: I'm going off a vibe more than actual evidence for this one. But anyone who possesses the persistence and self-awareness that it takes to be a writer probably also has, somewhere not too deep down, a somewhat unseemly competitive streak. I know I do. It crows victorious when I hear other writers let it slide that they may have an inkling of competitiveness in them. “Weakling!” the streak says. “I would never admit to that.” and then I take a sip of my beer and nod and smile, saying yes yes so and so is very good I wonder about this and this?
6) Writers have a hard time believing that they're writers, even after success: I think, with the exception of writers like Joyce Carol Oates or Stephen King,* you probably feel like a fraud at some point if you're calling yourself a writer. I don't know why this is. I certainly feel fraudulous and self-important if I label myself "writer." I prefer "student," or "American," or even "twenty-something," most days of the week. I feel like calling yourself a writer is akin to calling yourself a Jedi when you've only had a couple of lessons with Yoda or maybe even just gotten really good at shooting sand creatures on Alderaan. Who knows. Maybe writers give themselves too much and not enough credit, and that's why we're so off balance.
Writers like Beethoven: I'm bullshitting now I don't know I've got to go to work but I love Beethoven and am going to listen to him now.
*Because both of them churn out amazing quantities of work, both living off their work at a relatively early age.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Freakout!
For the past month or so I haven't yet freaked out about the whole process. Now I find myself freaking out. This is the largest body of work I've done so far where I've not received some sort of feedback. I think much of it is bad. I'm .45% done. The school year is frighteningly close. I guess there's nothing I can do but suck it up and continue writing.
John Gardner's "On Becoming a Novelist" is a bit scary. I found the first half to be concrete and helpful in terms of describing the writer's aptitudes. As soon as I got to the section on finances I started to grow nervous. Writers are poor, I know. The chances of success are slim, I know. I've been poor and hardworking since I arrived in New York. I'm taking out loans and counting pennies and splurging for me means buying a $4 falafel sandwich rather than cooking at home. Authority figures like police officers and landlords scare me, not because I'm doing anything illegal (per se), but because they have the power to take my money from me. So if nothing else I've got the starving artist lifestyle downpat. If I had read this book before now I wouldn't have changed anything about my current course. But for some reason it's unnerving to hear a professional writer talk about the relentless process. Living the life with eyes set forward is actually somewhat easy. A simple lifestyle with simple needs is easier and fun when you surround yourself with people of similar orientations. I have a clear focus and I live with people who have the same goals. So to be honest I'm not sure why hearing it from the horse's mouth sent me into a sort of panic this afternoon. Maybe it's just nerves over the impending school year, and maybe after I meet my quota tonight I'll settle down.
Blogging before writing acts as a sort of centering act for me, so I realize this post is more immediately about me than writing. But it is a fact that writing is demanding not just in its intellectual ground but what type of lifestyle it necessitates.
Gardner also has some entertaining passages on the personality traits of the writer. I'll transcribe one here for you:
"Like other kinds of intelligence, the storyteller's is partly natural, partly trained. It is composed of several qualities, most of which, in normal people, are signs of either immaturity or incivility: wit (a tendency to make irreverent connections); obstinacy and a tendency toward churlishness (a refusal to believe what all sensible people know is true); childishness (an apparent lack of mental focus and serious life purpose, a fondness for daydreaming and telling pointless lies, a lack of proper respect, mischievousness, an unseemly propensity for crying over nothing); a marked tendency toward oral or anal fixation or both (the oral manifested by excessive eating, drinking, smoking, and chattering; the anal by nervous cleanliness and neatness coupled with a weird fascination with dirty jokes); remarkable powers of eidetic recall, or visual memory (a usual feature of early adolescence and mental retardation); a strange admixture of shameless playfulness and embarrassing earnestness, the latter often heightened by irrationally intense for feelings for or against religion; patience like a cat's; a criminal streak of cunning; psychological instability; recklessness, impulsiveness, and improvidence; and finally, an inexplicable and incurable addiction to stories, written or oral, bad or good."
-John Gardner, "On Becoming a Novelist," W.W. Norton & Company, 1983, pg. 34.
John Gardner's "On Becoming a Novelist" is a bit scary. I found the first half to be concrete and helpful in terms of describing the writer's aptitudes. As soon as I got to the section on finances I started to grow nervous. Writers are poor, I know. The chances of success are slim, I know. I've been poor and hardworking since I arrived in New York. I'm taking out loans and counting pennies and splurging for me means buying a $4 falafel sandwich rather than cooking at home. Authority figures like police officers and landlords scare me, not because I'm doing anything illegal (per se), but because they have the power to take my money from me. So if nothing else I've got the starving artist lifestyle downpat. If I had read this book before now I wouldn't have changed anything about my current course. But for some reason it's unnerving to hear a professional writer talk about the relentless process. Living the life with eyes set forward is actually somewhat easy. A simple lifestyle with simple needs is easier and fun when you surround yourself with people of similar orientations. I have a clear focus and I live with people who have the same goals. So to be honest I'm not sure why hearing it from the horse's mouth sent me into a sort of panic this afternoon. Maybe it's just nerves over the impending school year, and maybe after I meet my quota tonight I'll settle down.
Blogging before writing acts as a sort of centering act for me, so I realize this post is more immediately about me than writing. But it is a fact that writing is demanding not just in its intellectual ground but what type of lifestyle it necessitates.
Gardner also has some entertaining passages on the personality traits of the writer. I'll transcribe one here for you:
"Like other kinds of intelligence, the storyteller's is partly natural, partly trained. It is composed of several qualities, most of which, in normal people, are signs of either immaturity or incivility: wit (a tendency to make irreverent connections); obstinacy and a tendency toward churlishness (a refusal to believe what all sensible people know is true); childishness (an apparent lack of mental focus and serious life purpose, a fondness for daydreaming and telling pointless lies, a lack of proper respect, mischievousness, an unseemly propensity for crying over nothing); a marked tendency toward oral or anal fixation or both (the oral manifested by excessive eating, drinking, smoking, and chattering; the anal by nervous cleanliness and neatness coupled with a weird fascination with dirty jokes); remarkable powers of eidetic recall, or visual memory (a usual feature of early adolescence and mental retardation); a strange admixture of shameless playfulness and embarrassing earnestness, the latter often heightened by irrationally intense for feelings for or against religion; patience like a cat's; a criminal streak of cunning; psychological instability; recklessness, impulsiveness, and improvidence; and finally, an inexplicable and incurable addiction to stories, written or oral, bad or good."
-John Gardner, "On Becoming a Novelist," W.W. Norton & Company, 1983, pg. 34.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Still Working!
It's raining in New York right now, as it has been all week. Fall seems more audacious than usual this year, not tip toeing around summer like it usually does but rather brazenly showing its face in full daylight. I can't believe that summer's nearing its end, although when I think about these past few months it's no surprise. Me and everyone I know unconsciously become frantically busy during the summertime. I often translate Belle and Sebastian's song "Summer Wasting" to "Summer Wasted."
"I spent the summer wasted/the time was passed so easily...Seven years of river walkways/seven weeks of staying up all night...." seems aptly suited for drinking as well as pleasantly idling away the hours.
I've been thinking lately of the image of the alcoholic writer. Personally, I find alcohol inhibits my writing process. I usually can't write if I've had a sip of alcohol. To me having a drink initiates relaxation and stimulates conversation, taking my words from paper into the auditory realm. What's more, I find it difficult to write without an absolutely clear state of mind. I can't be tired, or hungover. I have a variety of rituals to prepare myself for writing: most involve either a cup of coffee, or a nap. I often take my computer with me to bed, nap, and write upon awakening. Something about the lingering of the submergence into the unconscious makes writing upon waking more vivid and cogent than otherwise.
Alcoholism seems to be the occupational hazard of being a writer. A myriad of reasons as to why present themselves. Personality type coinciding with career choice, the image of the failing writer drinking away his or her worries, the thirst for life. The idea of destroying to create. More on this later.
One other thing I've been thinking about is how, while I enjoy the ritual and discipline of working steadily on one project, I miss the creative randomness of stream of consciousness, for-no-one-in-particular, writing. Yesterday my boyfriend and I drew a picture together, where I would draw a line or shape, then he would. As we drew a story unfolded, which I more or less transcribed and will copy and paste here for your boredom or reading pleasure:
The birthday candle went off in his brain. “I”m sad,” was the idea that it had.
"Why are you sad?" The man, or possibly somebody else, asked him.
"I'm sad because I want to go swimming," he replied.
He had a backpack. He had a zipper on the backpack that allowed him to retrieve his belongings. He had two flippers, and one snorkel. He had a reptile-tie. A Reptie. He had a baby alligator eating a book in the tears the sad man cried from not being able to go swimming. Not crocodile tears, sad man tears. That the alligator swam in. The alligator, not the crocodile. A boat sailed in the tear water. A sailor looked on while a smiling man swam in the waves and basked in the flames of the thoughts. And above it all stood a sparkling crooked jewel.
The man had a great deal on his mind. He had a scale, in fact, perched on top of his head. Half the scale was his nose. The other half held the backpack and fins. “Follow Your Nose,” was the name of the scale. The game was to Be Responsible For Your Own Happiness.
"We can't make him happy," the man, or possibly somebody else, said to him.
The paradox was that he wanted to go swimming but couldn't until he was sad that he couldn't go swimming and cried enough tears to go swimming in.
The birthday candle was obvious, because he was born before the time of lightbulbs and so had to have a birthday candle go off. It was also obvious that it was his birthday, because he was just created, and nobody had bought him presents even though he had all this nice stuff. What's more, we had eaten his cake.
A snake asked him why he was sad and the forked tongue looked like the mouth on the pyramid. If only the man knew his backpack was on the other side of the pyramid. If only he could speak Pyramid.
Meanwhile, the man swam and the other happy man looked on. The baby alligator from the dreams ate the book. It was all highly symbolic.
Right now I'm reading "On Becoming a Novelist," by John Gardner, per the suggestion of my professor.
"I spent the summer wasted/the time was passed so easily...Seven years of river walkways/seven weeks of staying up all night...." seems aptly suited for drinking as well as pleasantly idling away the hours.
I've been thinking lately of the image of the alcoholic writer. Personally, I find alcohol inhibits my writing process. I usually can't write if I've had a sip of alcohol. To me having a drink initiates relaxation and stimulates conversation, taking my words from paper into the auditory realm. What's more, I find it difficult to write without an absolutely clear state of mind. I can't be tired, or hungover. I have a variety of rituals to prepare myself for writing: most involve either a cup of coffee, or a nap. I often take my computer with me to bed, nap, and write upon awakening. Something about the lingering of the submergence into the unconscious makes writing upon waking more vivid and cogent than otherwise.
Alcoholism seems to be the occupational hazard of being a writer. A myriad of reasons as to why present themselves. Personality type coinciding with career choice, the image of the failing writer drinking away his or her worries, the thirst for life. The idea of destroying to create. More on this later.
One other thing I've been thinking about is how, while I enjoy the ritual and discipline of working steadily on one project, I miss the creative randomness of stream of consciousness, for-no-one-in-particular, writing. Yesterday my boyfriend and I drew a picture together, where I would draw a line or shape, then he would. As we drew a story unfolded, which I more or less transcribed and will copy and paste here for your boredom or reading pleasure:
The birthday candle went off in his brain. “I”m sad,” was the idea that it had.
"Why are you sad?" The man, or possibly somebody else, asked him.
"I'm sad because I want to go swimming," he replied.
He had a backpack. He had a zipper on the backpack that allowed him to retrieve his belongings. He had two flippers, and one snorkel. He had a reptile-tie. A Reptie. He had a baby alligator eating a book in the tears the sad man cried from not being able to go swimming. Not crocodile tears, sad man tears. That the alligator swam in. The alligator, not the crocodile. A boat sailed in the tear water. A sailor looked on while a smiling man swam in the waves and basked in the flames of the thoughts. And above it all stood a sparkling crooked jewel.
The man had a great deal on his mind. He had a scale, in fact, perched on top of his head. Half the scale was his nose. The other half held the backpack and fins. “Follow Your Nose,” was the name of the scale. The game was to Be Responsible For Your Own Happiness.
"We can't make him happy," the man, or possibly somebody else, said to him.
The paradox was that he wanted to go swimming but couldn't until he was sad that he couldn't go swimming and cried enough tears to go swimming in.
The birthday candle was obvious, because he was born before the time of lightbulbs and so had to have a birthday candle go off. It was also obvious that it was his birthday, because he was just created, and nobody had bought him presents even though he had all this nice stuff. What's more, we had eaten his cake.
A snake asked him why he was sad and the forked tongue looked like the mouth on the pyramid. If only the man knew his backpack was on the other side of the pyramid. If only he could speak Pyramid.
Meanwhile, the man swam and the other happy man looked on. The baby alligator from the dreams ate the book. It was all highly symbolic.
Right now I'm reading "On Becoming a Novelist," by John Gardner, per the suggestion of my professor.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
No Title
Today I'm some combination of tired and sick my writing is subsequently lagging. I did pick up a copy of "The Lover" by Marguerite Duras from the sidewalk and finished it in a couple of hours. I love French literature. Is that too broad a statement? Let's say this: I've never read a French author I didn't like. I find it profoundly indulgent and effortless. It's so French that it makes me laugh at its Frenchness and also feel slightly inferior for not being French. I could read Anais Nin all day. Read Nin and smoke cigarettes exhaling hearts all day, but not in America because if you do that here you get lung cancer and die rather than a nice meal and a lover who shares your enjoyment of the post-coital cig and cognac.
Camus. Camus is great. Someone recently told me he addicted to speed. Anything that follows that sentence is not a conversation i'm trying to have here so I'll just move on. I'll read Madame Bovary for a craft of fiction class this fall. I read it when I was 16 or so and again in undergrad. The auctioning scene--I'm whining--bored me both times.
We were supposed to read Montaigne in school. I never did. I was either psychotically bored or depressed at the time and genius didn't seem to help the situation. So I never read Montaigne.
A well known French woman writer with a brilliant short story collection--some long title loaded with ennui and tough-mindedness--not very helpful hints. But every story was brilliant. The one that stuck out to me was about a woman veterinarian who is duped and raped in her own home. So she drugged the attackers with horse pills and grafted their balls to their throats. Then called the cops and sat calmly on her front porch waiting for them to take her away. It was one of the most kick ass stories I've ever read.
On that note, my boyfriend and I have recently been getting back into the Greek tragedies. The stories of Clytemnestra & Medea especially....my roommate is in Greece right now actually and all this is mostly rambling except to say that all these facts could tenuously make a game of connect the dots.
My list is over for now. I've got to get some writing done. It's raining which helps considerably.
Reviewing this post it's clear to me that I have indeed recently indulged in French literature.
Camus. Camus is great. Someone recently told me he addicted to speed. Anything that follows that sentence is not a conversation i'm trying to have here so I'll just move on. I'll read Madame Bovary for a craft of fiction class this fall. I read it when I was 16 or so and again in undergrad. The auctioning scene--I'm whining--bored me both times.
We were supposed to read Montaigne in school. I never did. I was either psychotically bored or depressed at the time and genius didn't seem to help the situation. So I never read Montaigne.
A well known French woman writer with a brilliant short story collection--some long title loaded with ennui and tough-mindedness--not very helpful hints. But every story was brilliant. The one that stuck out to me was about a woman veterinarian who is duped and raped in her own home. So she drugged the attackers with horse pills and grafted their balls to their throats. Then called the cops and sat calmly on her front porch waiting for them to take her away. It was one of the most kick ass stories I've ever read.
On that note, my boyfriend and I have recently been getting back into the Greek tragedies. The stories of Clytemnestra & Medea especially....my roommate is in Greece right now actually and all this is mostly rambling except to say that all these facts could tenuously make a game of connect the dots.
My list is over for now. I've got to get some writing done. It's raining which helps considerably.
Reviewing this post it's clear to me that I have indeed recently indulged in French literature.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Tuesday Two Posts Tuesday
If people are going to ask me a question about this whole process the question will probably be: "what is the novel about?"
If I'm talking to someone who will never take the time to read the novel, or whom I wish to impress (just being honest), I tell them it is a re-telling of the story of Joseph the dreamer, told from the viewpoint of one of his brothers.
Both the Bible and the Qur'an have beautiful renditions of this story. I find the story to be immensely powerful, imaginative, and interesting. I would love to write something that shares any sort of parallel with the story of Joseph. But the truth is that I'm using this novel as an exercise to discover my own strengths and weaknesses, my ability to build something action based rather than idea based.* And so in this process I've started a story where the plot is less of a straight shooting arrow than a heat seeking missile. It kind of meanders all over the place following the temperatures of my mood or the day. The motives are still unclear because I'm still unclear. The characters are underdeveloped because I'm still finding myself as a writer. I have a loose idea of what the novel is actually about, but really I'm just doing my best to keep my head above water. As counter-intuitive as it may sound, I think at this point I would find it extremely difficult to try to model my story after a blueprint of somebody else's story rather than finding my own way. One day I would really like to retell the Joseph story, but for now the comparisons are few and far between.
I can tell you what elements of the Joseph story attracted me to it, and how I'm trying to make these elements appear in my own work. I'm strongly compelled by the idea of redemption that plays out in the psyches of the characters. Society tells Joseph that he needs to be redeemed for a sin that he didn't commit. He is imprisoned to repent for his actions. But Joseph's heart is pure. He dreams dreams sweet and full of promise and hope. His dreams are both his spiritual testimony (he is connected with God) and his physical salvation (the dreams get him out of prison). So although he is imprisoned he is impervious to the pain this might bring. His dreams bring him hope that allows inner freedom. In short, he stands outside the law by merit of his virtue. (this is radical!)
His brothers, on the other hand, are laden with guilt. They will spend much of their lives bypassing and waylaying the guilt that physically manifests itself and plagues them: famines, poverty, etc. Spiritually they are sick, while Joseph lies in his prison cell and dreams. And not just dreams, but prophecies! He inhabits the traditional role of a poet in the purest sense of the word. Pharaohs come to respect and rely upon him. Joseph becomes the most respected member of Egyptian courts. He rules alongside Pharaoh. By sentencing one man to death, Joseph's brothers inadvertently brought a rich spiritual life to all of Egypt.
I could go on and on. In the Bible the story is 8 chapters. The Qur'an's version is perhaps a bit longer, 111 verses. If you happen to visit this story I would love to talk to you about it. Ahh, so good!
So some elements I've tried to bring into my own work are those connected to the idea of the societal damned being the spiritually enlightened, the spiritual reality of dreaming playing out in the day to day world, and the redemptive qualities of the story that I've already touched upon.
Alright, to work!
*Which is a weak point for me. I'll want to write a story based off a philosophical idea and think, wow! That wil be great! Shortly afterwards I find myself struggling to bring the idea into reality: to find concrete actions that represent abstract ideals. This is a bit of a tangent, but I believe that in good writing every action, ideally, is in a sense a metaphor for some higher spiritual reasoning.
If I'm talking to someone who will never take the time to read the novel, or whom I wish to impress (just being honest), I tell them it is a re-telling of the story of Joseph the dreamer, told from the viewpoint of one of his brothers.
Both the Bible and the Qur'an have beautiful renditions of this story. I find the story to be immensely powerful, imaginative, and interesting. I would love to write something that shares any sort of parallel with the story of Joseph. But the truth is that I'm using this novel as an exercise to discover my own strengths and weaknesses, my ability to build something action based rather than idea based.* And so in this process I've started a story where the plot is less of a straight shooting arrow than a heat seeking missile. It kind of meanders all over the place following the temperatures of my mood or the day. The motives are still unclear because I'm still unclear. The characters are underdeveloped because I'm still finding myself as a writer. I have a loose idea of what the novel is actually about, but really I'm just doing my best to keep my head above water. As counter-intuitive as it may sound, I think at this point I would find it extremely difficult to try to model my story after a blueprint of somebody else's story rather than finding my own way. One day I would really like to retell the Joseph story, but for now the comparisons are few and far between.
I can tell you what elements of the Joseph story attracted me to it, and how I'm trying to make these elements appear in my own work. I'm strongly compelled by the idea of redemption that plays out in the psyches of the characters. Society tells Joseph that he needs to be redeemed for a sin that he didn't commit. He is imprisoned to repent for his actions. But Joseph's heart is pure. He dreams dreams sweet and full of promise and hope. His dreams are both his spiritual testimony (he is connected with God) and his physical salvation (the dreams get him out of prison). So although he is imprisoned he is impervious to the pain this might bring. His dreams bring him hope that allows inner freedom. In short, he stands outside the law by merit of his virtue. (this is radical!)
His brothers, on the other hand, are laden with guilt. They will spend much of their lives bypassing and waylaying the guilt that physically manifests itself and plagues them: famines, poverty, etc. Spiritually they are sick, while Joseph lies in his prison cell and dreams. And not just dreams, but prophecies! He inhabits the traditional role of a poet in the purest sense of the word. Pharaohs come to respect and rely upon him. Joseph becomes the most respected member of Egyptian courts. He rules alongside Pharaoh. By sentencing one man to death, Joseph's brothers inadvertently brought a rich spiritual life to all of Egypt.
I could go on and on. In the Bible the story is 8 chapters. The Qur'an's version is perhaps a bit longer, 111 verses. If you happen to visit this story I would love to talk to you about it. Ahh, so good!
So some elements I've tried to bring into my own work are those connected to the idea of the societal damned being the spiritually enlightened, the spiritual reality of dreaming playing out in the day to day world, and the redemptive qualities of the story that I've already touched upon.
Alright, to work!
*Which is a weak point for me. I'll want to write a story based off a philosophical idea and think, wow! That wil be great! Shortly afterwards I find myself struggling to bring the idea into reality: to find concrete actions that represent abstract ideals. This is a bit of a tangent, but I believe that in good writing every action, ideally, is in a sense a metaphor for some higher spiritual reasoning.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Sunday Lazy Sunday
Yesterday I wrote the first 1000 words that I'm proud of out of this entire process. This is what it is. I've approached this whole undertaking with the understanding that it's a learning experience, in discipline and creation (the two going hand in hand), and so am trying not to be discouraged when I look at my work and am disappointed that it's not my best writing.
I don't have much else to say today. Moosewood cookbook is the best.
I don't have much else to say today. Moosewood cookbook is the best.
Saturday, August 13, 2011
On My First School Assignment, Thoughts From Outer Space, & The Idea That All Writers Rise at 4 AM and Hit the Keys
It's pretty early and a giant woodpecker is outside our window, tapping out nature's stamp of perseverance and necessity. Just kidding! It's 1:30 and a jackhammer is drilling away in the brick factory that is our backyard, just like every other weekend. This is mostly irrelevant except for offering a Time and a Place, and to say that I've tried to wake up early to write and never do, and yes we have a brick factory in our backyard and also a railroad track which the LIRR comes through about three times a day to pick up bricks and turn around. It's fairly Wild West in this sector of Brooklyn.
A bunch of writers I've talked to say that the wee hours are when they get their writing done. I just don't--I can't--wake up early. I hate paper and pen and everything but my bed. When I was growing up my parent's favorite phrase was "the early bird gets the worm." To prove it, my mom, on weekends, would sometimes wake me up, then take me out to breakfast very early before any of my brothers were awake. This ended up backfiring, because I would be in my parent's room at 5 AM with shoes on and teeth brushed asking when we could go eat.
Besides this being an awesome (and heartwarming) tradition (thanks Mom!), I'm now realizing that I associated these morning breakfasts with hot cocoa, and how I now associate worms with hot cocoa. Brains are strange. Tangent.
I got my first school assignment. It was an essay entitled "Dysfunctional Narratives" by Charles Baxter. He starts off with an anecdote about Richard Nixon's testimony during the Watergate Scandal. He then goes on to say that the way in which Nixon passively places the blame for the scandal upon a variety of other variables sets the tone from which most American fiction springs. He says that Nixon's refusal to accept or place blame creates a political climate where ambiguity is the norm and responsibility is given to no one. Story telling, therefore, by merit of its ability to imitate truth, is severely limited--for there is no truth in such a climate. No moral truth, no personal truth. No convictions of the universe or the individual to use as guidelines for telling the story. The narrative cannot see clearly through to the root of people's actions. The plot revolves around displaced aggression. Characters are not held accountable for their actions. Protagonists don't make mistakes; they are the victim of various circumstances. Concrete antagonists or villains have disappeared off the radar, to be replaced with obscure, untraceable social and personal circumstances. It's a Bermuda Triangle of cause and effect.*
I'll stop here, for the article says many interesting things and I feel I'm not doing it justice by offering a hasty summary. But I will say that Baxter raised a couple of points that tie directly to what I'm working on right now. First of all, I unconsciously have been trying to preserve the innocence of my narrator while exposing her to morally complex situations. This just isn't going to work! The need to allow your protagonist to make mistakes is masked by the urge to keep her "safe." The timing for reading the article was opportune because I'm about to start working on the part of the novel where the protagonist has to make some concrete decisions of who and what lies on what side of the dividing line between good and bad.
Other than that I'm excited to spend an entire Saturday writing. Woo hoo!
*I'm not sure what this sentence means but I like it for now and am leaving it.**
**It's impulses like these that made me a bad paper writer in college.
A bunch of writers I've talked to say that the wee hours are when they get their writing done. I just don't--I can't--wake up early. I hate paper and pen and everything but my bed. When I was growing up my parent's favorite phrase was "the early bird gets the worm." To prove it, my mom, on weekends, would sometimes wake me up, then take me out to breakfast very early before any of my brothers were awake. This ended up backfiring, because I would be in my parent's room at 5 AM with shoes on and teeth brushed asking when we could go eat.
Besides this being an awesome (and heartwarming) tradition (thanks Mom!), I'm now realizing that I associated these morning breakfasts with hot cocoa, and how I now associate worms with hot cocoa. Brains are strange. Tangent.
I got my first school assignment. It was an essay entitled "Dysfunctional Narratives" by Charles Baxter. He starts off with an anecdote about Richard Nixon's testimony during the Watergate Scandal. He then goes on to say that the way in which Nixon passively places the blame for the scandal upon a variety of other variables sets the tone from which most American fiction springs. He says that Nixon's refusal to accept or place blame creates a political climate where ambiguity is the norm and responsibility is given to no one. Story telling, therefore, by merit of its ability to imitate truth, is severely limited--for there is no truth in such a climate. No moral truth, no personal truth. No convictions of the universe or the individual to use as guidelines for telling the story. The narrative cannot see clearly through to the root of people's actions. The plot revolves around displaced aggression. Characters are not held accountable for their actions. Protagonists don't make mistakes; they are the victim of various circumstances. Concrete antagonists or villains have disappeared off the radar, to be replaced with obscure, untraceable social and personal circumstances. It's a Bermuda Triangle of cause and effect.*
I'll stop here, for the article says many interesting things and I feel I'm not doing it justice by offering a hasty summary. But I will say that Baxter raised a couple of points that tie directly to what I'm working on right now. First of all, I unconsciously have been trying to preserve the innocence of my narrator while exposing her to morally complex situations. This just isn't going to work! The need to allow your protagonist to make mistakes is masked by the urge to keep her "safe." The timing for reading the article was opportune because I'm about to start working on the part of the novel where the protagonist has to make some concrete decisions of who and what lies on what side of the dividing line between good and bad.
Other than that I'm excited to spend an entire Saturday writing. Woo hoo!
*I'm not sure what this sentence means but I like it for now and am leaving it.**
**It's impulses like these that made me a bad paper writer in college.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Non-Novel Related News Flash!
Heads of the Bed are DEAD and Recent is Safe!
That's right. Heads of the Bed were shot dead this morning by Kimmy B. and Johnny Z. We have scant information on the event but from what our sources tell us Heads of the Bed were shot DEAD and it is implied that they were killed in order to protect the most recent partial, Recent. While some may mourn the passing of Heads of the Bed I know that at least a few non-brushed mouths out there will be happy to hear it is safe to return to the land of sleep again.
Obituary forthcoming.
I personally will miss Heads of the Bed but then again I maybe won't. Go away, Herself.
That's right. Heads of the Bed were shot dead this morning by Kimmy B. and Johnny Z. We have scant information on the event but from what our sources tell us Heads of the Bed were shot DEAD and it is implied that they were killed in order to protect the most recent partial, Recent. While some may mourn the passing of Heads of the Bed I know that at least a few non-brushed mouths out there will be happy to hear it is safe to return to the land of sleep again.
Obituary forthcoming.
I personally will miss Heads of the Bed but then again I maybe won't. Go away, Herself.
A Few Obvious Observations
Fairly frequently I forget that this is my book, and I can do whatever I want with it! I can write about what I'm interested in! This may sound obvious, but the truth is that while you're pounding out some scene that you don't, as of yet, have a particular investment in, it's very easy to forget that this is something you're supposed to enjoy, and not something you face with a grimace, like clipping your grandmother's toenails. I'm learning that if I don't enjoy writing a scene, or if the writing feels forced, that chances are I don't know enough about it yet. I haven't explored well enough the psyche of the character that I'm writing about, or the reason behind the unfolding action. The feeling is akin to trying to bluff your way through a test in a foreign language that you don't know well. Thinking your knowledge of cognates will be enough to get you through (My Spanish teachers must have had a blast grading my papers). False cognates. They are not true!
Today I'm very excited, because I managed to nail down a key part of one of the character's psyches. I'm using sleep as a sort of motif/linking trait for all the characters in order to demonstrate their relationship to beauty. Each of the characters have peculiar sleeping habits that speak to how they understand beauty's relationship to their lives. The protagonist is prone to night terrors, for example. The mother stays up feeding a baby and chain smoking all night. And so on and so on.
It's fascinating though, because while I knew that I wanted sleep to be important, and while much of the writing thus far deals with elements of sleep (alcohol abuse, morphine drips, dreams, even crying babies), there was still a gap between intuition and knowledge. Intuition is what placed those scenes in the book. Knowledge is what wrote them out. The gut understanding of the material, however, was still missing. I'm now looking forward to revisiting those scenes and re-writing them with my newfound understanding of their weight and significance.
Yesterday I posted a video of babies laughing and said you should watch all of it. Why? First of all because it's adorable! A ray of sunshine in your day! Second of all because laughter is infectious! If you weren't laughing at the beginning I bet you were laughing towards the end. Laughter is the only disease that's good for you! (I'm mildly obsessed with laughter, a story for another time). Also, my job is to babysit infants and toddlers. My job is to make children happy. How great is that?
Off to work!
Today I'm very excited, because I managed to nail down a key part of one of the character's psyches. I'm using sleep as a sort of motif/linking trait for all the characters in order to demonstrate their relationship to beauty. Each of the characters have peculiar sleeping habits that speak to how they understand beauty's relationship to their lives. The protagonist is prone to night terrors, for example. The mother stays up feeding a baby and chain smoking all night. And so on and so on.
It's fascinating though, because while I knew that I wanted sleep to be important, and while much of the writing thus far deals with elements of sleep (alcohol abuse, morphine drips, dreams, even crying babies), there was still a gap between intuition and knowledge. Intuition is what placed those scenes in the book. Knowledge is what wrote them out. The gut understanding of the material, however, was still missing. I'm now looking forward to revisiting those scenes and re-writing them with my newfound understanding of their weight and significance.
Yesterday I posted a video of babies laughing and said you should watch all of it. Why? First of all because it's adorable! A ray of sunshine in your day! Second of all because laughter is infectious! If you weren't laughing at the beginning I bet you were laughing towards the end. Laughter is the only disease that's good for you! (I'm mildly obsessed with laughter, a story for another time). Also, my job is to babysit infants and toddlers. My job is to make children happy. How great is that?
Off to work!
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
August 10th. T Minus 16 Days Before the First Day of Classes
I think. My college is rather disorganized and I can't seem to find out when the school year starts (meaning I can't and neither can my fellow students. So 16 days-ish).
Yesterday I brought my protagonist out of the hospital (she's healed!). This was a big deal, considering that at the outset, I never knew she would be in the hospital. But it turned out to be a handy plot device. Symbolically, hospitals are important. What happened to her in the hospital was also important in terms of character development.
People use all sorts of approaches to writing. Some outline, some mix and match and copy and paste like a collage or patchwork quilt. I do a bit of both. Ultimately, what I think will happen is I'll write the entire story, then go back chapter by chapter and rewrite each one. I think if I tried to do an excellent job on every sentence I would get bogged down and never make progress, no matter how much time I had.
The scariest part of this approach is how often you go into auto-pilot mode with your writing and snap back into it to realize how much backtracking you'll have to do. I mentioned this before, but want to reiterate seeing how this fear is a direct result of my writing approach.
Anyhow, I have two hours before work and a big task ahead of me.Today I've got to introduce her into the world, a world she used to know and which to me is brand new. When you're ten years old how big is your world?
My world was cursive and sketching mountains and learning I didn't care much for math. At that time I lamented the fact that I didn't live in an English forest and that my only viable skill was knowing how to spell well. This was before I relished my opposition to mathematics. Life became much easier, in some ways, once I had a concrete foe.
(Recall the anecdote of Joker in the Arkham Asylum. Joker was locked up bat shit crazy, pun intended, but as soon as Batman went into retirement Joker became completely placid and serene and just sat watching television all day. Villains and their foes, in a twisted way, need each other and even depend upon the other).
My protagonist as of yet does not have a concrete villain. She has plenty of opportunities for opposition set up before her. I feel that at ten years old, feeling hate for what is unknown and against you is a natural and maybe healthy reaction. When you're ten and you don't understand something hate is a handy self defense mechanism. If you didn't hate it you would turn it inward and end up hating yourself. Maybe hate is a strong word, I don't know. This suddenly feels heavier than I realized and so am going to stop and share. Check this out! (be sure to watch the whole thing! Next post I'll explain why).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzHM8JnJkdM&feature=player_embedded
Yesterday I brought my protagonist out of the hospital (she's healed!). This was a big deal, considering that at the outset, I never knew she would be in the hospital. But it turned out to be a handy plot device. Symbolically, hospitals are important. What happened to her in the hospital was also important in terms of character development.
People use all sorts of approaches to writing. Some outline, some mix and match and copy and paste like a collage or patchwork quilt. I do a bit of both. Ultimately, what I think will happen is I'll write the entire story, then go back chapter by chapter and rewrite each one. I think if I tried to do an excellent job on every sentence I would get bogged down and never make progress, no matter how much time I had.
The scariest part of this approach is how often you go into auto-pilot mode with your writing and snap back into it to realize how much backtracking you'll have to do. I mentioned this before, but want to reiterate seeing how this fear is a direct result of my writing approach.
Anyhow, I have two hours before work and a big task ahead of me.Today I've got to introduce her into the world, a world she used to know and which to me is brand new. When you're ten years old how big is your world?
My world was cursive and sketching mountains and learning I didn't care much for math. At that time I lamented the fact that I didn't live in an English forest and that my only viable skill was knowing how to spell well. This was before I relished my opposition to mathematics. Life became much easier, in some ways, once I had a concrete foe.
(Recall the anecdote of Joker in the Arkham Asylum. Joker was locked up bat shit crazy, pun intended, but as soon as Batman went into retirement Joker became completely placid and serene and just sat watching television all day. Villains and their foes, in a twisted way, need each other and even depend upon the other).
My protagonist as of yet does not have a concrete villain. She has plenty of opportunities for opposition set up before her. I feel that at ten years old, feeling hate for what is unknown and against you is a natural and maybe healthy reaction. When you're ten and you don't understand something hate is a handy self defense mechanism. If you didn't hate it you would turn it inward and end up hating yourself. Maybe hate is a strong word, I don't know. This suddenly feels heavier than I realized and so am going to stop and share. Check this out! (be sure to watch the whole thing! Next post I'll explain why).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzHM8JnJkdM&feature=player_embedded
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Observations Thus Far
Observations I've made Thus Far:
First of all, it's very hard. As the title of this blog suggests. Not because I'm one of those writers who sits for two hours, chewing her pen, and then puts it to the paper and liquid gold flows out. It's more like I write a bunch and meet my quota and realize that it's macaroni noodles glued to construction paper with tooth paste, and no one will eat my mosaic because it looks bad. This is not me being self-deprecating. It's just a fact. I once read the first book in the Twilight series. I read it in a day but that's beside the point. The point is I didn't find it to be very good writing. I feel throughout this entire process that I write sentences like Stephanie Myers' and my inner child cries a little.
Second thing I've noticed is that it's very good to have a Regular Schedule. This is something that writers talk about. You have a time, you sit down, and you write. I guess I do that. Recently a slew of visitors came through town (New York, New York!) and I didn't work for about one and a half weeks. Cue caffeine abuse and Philip Glass on repeat.
Third thing I've noticed is that you have to make decisions. This is difficult! I'm sitting at my desk writing about pretty clouds and yellow daisies and realize I haven't accomplished a fig newton in terms of plot or character development. I've taken my Crayola water colors and spilled them all over my smock instead of the nice canvas in front of me. Things have to happen in a novel. Like, what is the protagonist's deal? Is she walking down the street? Does she go into a coma where she can hear but not see? (man I wish I thought of that before). It's hard to catalyze action in a novel because you won't be sure why you wrote what you did until after the fact. Which is, despite meeting word quota and all that, why writing is hard. You'll be on a roll and regular schedule and then realize your last 2000 words were headed in the wrong direction, and you weren't actually writing what you thought you should write. The novel is going in a direction that you're not. It's a belligerent Pinnochio.
(I joke with people that I feel like a puppet master when I write. Power! bwa ha ha. Not true. Things happen and I obey the whims of these small people running around and thumbing their nose at me in between the pages).
Every now and then I think I hit a stride. I've heard writers talk about these as well. From what I understand about writing all these paragraphs I find beautiful will all go out in the first draft. ("Kill your darlings," says Faulkner. "They're already dead," is my reply).
Because I know by now there will be several drafts. I've got about two years' worth of work before I finally complete a book that is 50 rungs below Stephanie Myers (she may be the wrong example to cite, considering that objectively she is extremely successful as a writer. I choose her as a subjective personal canon because once again, I didn't find her writing to be very good and I find my own work falling short of that. Just to clarify that I don't mean to offend or make controversy over this example).
But let's move onto the positive aspects. The positive aspects are this is what I'm supposed to be doing. I've got to suck it up and just write. It's a very good lesson in discipline. No more undergraduate, staying up all night before and wiping the night sweat off the title page as you hand it to the professor, type of writing. Also, I tend to be one of those head in the clouds people who wakes up banking on the royalties from a screenplay she is going to write from a dream she had the night before, and then brushes her teeth and forgets what the idea was in the first place. So the discipline is good because it is exactly what it sounds like: discipline.
Also I'm just writing more in general. I respond to emails faster. When I respond to my mother's emails about her border collie I feel like a cross country runner doing sprints.
I half apologize for anyone reading this who finds it boring. Although I always say, as a reader I reserve my right to skim read. Which is probably why I always know everything about the romance portion of a novel and little about the politics (hello War and Peace).
Next post: the very mundane technical details of writing a novel! (I'm trying to aid you in your skim reading!)
First of all, it's very hard. As the title of this blog suggests. Not because I'm one of those writers who sits for two hours, chewing her pen, and then puts it to the paper and liquid gold flows out. It's more like I write a bunch and meet my quota and realize that it's macaroni noodles glued to construction paper with tooth paste, and no one will eat my mosaic because it looks bad. This is not me being self-deprecating. It's just a fact. I once read the first book in the Twilight series. I read it in a day but that's beside the point. The point is I didn't find it to be very good writing. I feel throughout this entire process that I write sentences like Stephanie Myers' and my inner child cries a little.
Second thing I've noticed is that it's very good to have a Regular Schedule. This is something that writers talk about. You have a time, you sit down, and you write. I guess I do that. Recently a slew of visitors came through town (New York, New York!) and I didn't work for about one and a half weeks. Cue caffeine abuse and Philip Glass on repeat.
Third thing I've noticed is that you have to make decisions. This is difficult! I'm sitting at my desk writing about pretty clouds and yellow daisies and realize I haven't accomplished a fig newton in terms of plot or character development. I've taken my Crayola water colors and spilled them all over my smock instead of the nice canvas in front of me. Things have to happen in a novel. Like, what is the protagonist's deal? Is she walking down the street? Does she go into a coma where she can hear but not see? (man I wish I thought of that before). It's hard to catalyze action in a novel because you won't be sure why you wrote what you did until after the fact. Which is, despite meeting word quota and all that, why writing is hard. You'll be on a roll and regular schedule and then realize your last 2000 words were headed in the wrong direction, and you weren't actually writing what you thought you should write. The novel is going in a direction that you're not. It's a belligerent Pinnochio.
(I joke with people that I feel like a puppet master when I write. Power! bwa ha ha. Not true. Things happen and I obey the whims of these small people running around and thumbing their nose at me in between the pages).
Every now and then I think I hit a stride. I've heard writers talk about these as well. From what I understand about writing all these paragraphs I find beautiful will all go out in the first draft. ("Kill your darlings," says Faulkner. "They're already dead," is my reply).
Because I know by now there will be several drafts. I've got about two years' worth of work before I finally complete a book that is 50 rungs below Stephanie Myers (she may be the wrong example to cite, considering that objectively she is extremely successful as a writer. I choose her as a subjective personal canon because once again, I didn't find her writing to be very good and I find my own work falling short of that. Just to clarify that I don't mean to offend or make controversy over this example).
But let's move onto the positive aspects. The positive aspects are this is what I'm supposed to be doing. I've got to suck it up and just write. It's a very good lesson in discipline. No more undergraduate, staying up all night before and wiping the night sweat off the title page as you hand it to the professor, type of writing. Also, I tend to be one of those head in the clouds people who wakes up banking on the royalties from a screenplay she is going to write from a dream she had the night before, and then brushes her teeth and forgets what the idea was in the first place. So the discipline is good because it is exactly what it sounds like: discipline.
Also I'm just writing more in general. I respond to emails faster. When I respond to my mother's emails about her border collie I feel like a cross country runner doing sprints.
I half apologize for anyone reading this who finds it boring. Although I always say, as a reader I reserve my right to skim read. Which is probably why I always know everything about the romance portion of a novel and little about the politics (hello War and Peace).
Next post: the very mundane technical details of writing a novel! (I'm trying to aid you in your skim reading!)
Hello, Dear Reader!
And by dear reader I don't mean the general, anonymous audience of several different types of eyeballs perusing this page, but you specifically. If you are reading this, you are probably the only person on earth to read this blog. Congratulations. You, like this blog, are unique.
I'm going to pretend you're not one of my very bored friends who already knows the raison-d'etre for this blog. I'll start from square one.
So square one: I'm going to graduate school for creative writing this fall. Yes, I'm very excited about it.
(Before square one, so square negative one): i don't really do blogs. A stupid statement since I'm obviously doing one right now. But I figure that blogging about my novel on a daily basis will help keep me on track with writing, and maybe even help me untwist some of the knots that this impossible task is. A Gordion knot (do you know the story of Alexander and the Gordion knot? off topic--)
So really, I hope you Mr. or Ms or Mrs X, don't take offense when I say that this blog is primarily a way of thinking out loud.
It is, also, obviously, a way to procrastinate.
And also, I kind of procrastinated horribly with writing this novel and so have to do an outrageous amount in order to have enough material once the school year begins. How long did I procrastinate? Let's say about two years, more or less. I had two years to write this novel and I started about a month before the school year begins.
So now...we're at square the square root of 23 over the average of thoughts per second (4.12932038098 about sorry I'm bad at math)...here at square 4. whatever rounded down or up. I hope you understand the situation. I'm writing a novel, a lot of words per day, very quickly, and I'm starting a blog to track my progress and help me through this mess. To follow in the next post: observations I have about writing a novel so far!! Stay 'posted!' (get it?)
I'm going to pretend you're not one of my very bored friends who already knows the raison-d'etre for this blog. I'll start from square one.
So square one: I'm going to graduate school for creative writing this fall. Yes, I'm very excited about it.
(Before square one, so square negative one): i don't really do blogs. A stupid statement since I'm obviously doing one right now. But I figure that blogging about my novel on a daily basis will help keep me on track with writing, and maybe even help me untwist some of the knots that this impossible task is. A Gordion knot (do you know the story of Alexander and the Gordion knot? off topic--)
So really, I hope you Mr. or Ms or Mrs X, don't take offense when I say that this blog is primarily a way of thinking out loud.
It is, also, obviously, a way to procrastinate.
And also, I kind of procrastinated horribly with writing this novel and so have to do an outrageous amount in order to have enough material once the school year begins. How long did I procrastinate? Let's say about two years, more or less. I had two years to write this novel and I started about a month before the school year begins.
So now...we're at square the square root of 23 over the average of thoughts per second (4.12932038098 about sorry I'm bad at math)...here at square 4. whatever rounded down or up. I hope you understand the situation. I'm writing a novel, a lot of words per day, very quickly, and I'm starting a blog to track my progress and help me through this mess. To follow in the next post: observations I have about writing a novel so far!! Stay 'posted!' (get it?)
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