Thursday, September 27, 2007

New Story

I have just started working on the third story, and it is slow going. I wrote an earlier draft, but I am not happy with it, and am starting over from scratch, trying to get the tone and voice right. The printed copy of the last draft lies on the desk next to my notebook. I'm a little over half a handwritten page into the thing, and I have little need to do more than glance at the thing. But it is slow. The voice is taking work to do, and I feel like I am fighting against a mountain right now, trying to get as much of it right without really knowing what it is going towards. I just know that I like what is down so far, and I am trying to take my time, so I don't mess it up and have to start over. No end in sight though. I hate starting new stuff. It's so...consuming.

Last story almost done

Last night and this morning—okay, early this morning and early this afternoon—I rererereedited my latest story. I think it is getting pretty good now. Yes indeedy, polished to a sheen, almost. Maybe just a few bits of dirt stuck along the edges.

Some books I like, in no particular order

Neuromancer

Man, I have just not been able to put this down lately, for some reason. I just really like the asymmetry of it, I think. The way it starts off as a tense chase sequence short story, then shifts into a film noir set up. The episodic second section, the character and atmospheric sequences from the third. And then the almost real time focus of the fourth section. Also, I just love love love Molly. One of the best characters ever.

Slaughterhouse Five

I was just thinking recently about this book, that its basically just super reliable. I really can't so anyone not liking this book for anything other than political purposes. Its storytelling is almost objectively good.

Gravity's Rainbow

Been rereading this, slowly, off and on recently. And I do mean slowly, as in that's the pace I read at. It's bizarrely become easy to read for me recently, when before could only get about 10% of what was going on. But now I am actually following it. It has the lit fiction tendency of more describing characters a states and showing them ruminating and reminiscing than just showing the fucking action already, which is the approach I prefer, but one it's terms its remarkably good at sucking me in. And the vitality of the prose is nice too. I think the main reason I picked this back up is I read a shitload of Gibson interviews and—surprise!—he's a fan too!

Neverwhere

Just the best villains ever really. Up there with Molly. I like to fantasize sticking Croup and Vandemar in other stories/mediums, delight in the damage they cause. Unstoppable Inhuman Common Thugs. Why didn't someone think of that sooner? "I'm afraid we have no redeeming qualities." Sweet.

Crying of Lot 49

What a nice compact, short, sweet little book. And not that much Navel-gazing. Well, more navel-gazing than V. but nothing interesting ever happens in V. and at least here interesting things happen in the navel-gazing. And the plot is excellent: off-kilter and of ambiguous import. I feel like I hold myself back from rereading this one, just because I know it would be over so soon, and I have other stuff I am trying to read. Or something. I don't really know why I deny myself. Maybe I am afraid I will just assimilate it into my being, and just know it my memory. I bet if I gave myself the chance, it could happen.

The Enchanted Forest Chronicles

The most reliable of all my childhood fantasy literature. The ones I keep rereading. Because they are so much fun.

Ulysses

I think I have read Part I four or five times. Only book where I don't mind starting over, though I got through it all once. There is a lot in this book, and I am still trying to get my head around it, every so often, but whatever is there is really interesting. I think Joyce is the only author I have read, in fact, is the only author, who is the objectively good. If you don't like it, you're wrong. Doesn't mean he isn't frustrating, or that I don't kind of wish we had three more Ulysses instead of one Finnegan's Wake, but still, the guy is good, there is no way around that. I mean, other writers are maybe arguably better, from a certain perspective, but they all have faults. Joyce is completely in control, and unlike, say, Nabokov, he also has heart. Only writer with both technical and thematic perfection. Little hard to get, though.