Sunday, January 31, 2010

Maybe scratch some of that last post

You know, I just read an earlier version of the first page and a half of that story, and it actually reads allright. In a different voice, but actually a pretty successful voice. Loping, descriptive passages, use of free indirect discourse for the main character's internal thoughts, and sparsely annotated passages of dialogue. It's all the changes I started making that fucked it up.

It's always a good thing to keep previous drafts lying around.

Most of writing isn't actually writing

Man, nearly a week went by, huh? I can't believe how I squander time.

I haven't got much writing done in this time either. I started writing a new story completely unrelated to anything else, and just to have something to work on, to, you know, write, that isn't so tied down to some large complex world system. Sort of a palate cleanser, if you will.

By way of comparison, I spend most of today researching the area surrounding the story that I thought I had "finished." Turns out I didn't. I printed it out, and realized that I would have to go through it, sentence by sentence, the words feel so jarring to me now. I had also, during the week, done some editing one of the other three or so interrelated text files I have up all the time on my desktop, and had finally stumbled upon something closer to what I want to be the voice of the piece. I have toyed with the idea of leaving this story as is, in a different voice, so to speak, but I find that this voice is not just different, but also inferior, and based upon certain approached to syntax that are really just unclear and needlessly messy. I tried to be poetic, and all I got was unclear.

So, it needs a new draft, into which I can then start making the necessary insertions that are necessitated by plot.

But, in order to do that, I figured I needed to make sure all the thing are correct in terms of time and place and culture. Hence all the researching today. It had been so long since I had done such things, I couldn't remember what I had based certain aspects of the story on, or if there were changes I had to make to make sure the story was historically accurate, or if there certain details that could be added to make the story more vivid, or just to make the way I went about writing it feel more lived in.

And this meant spending much of the day freaked out that certain assumptions I had based the story on were erroneous, and wondering how much of the story would have to be changed, or if the entire internal arc would have to be dumped. It looks, at this point, that that is not the case. Basically, I needed to be sure that the place I set this story in was the farthest area to the west along a border, or at least the farthest area of it's own size. (This does seem to be the case.) As this area is in France, I spent most of the day bopping around the French version of Wikipedia, as run through Google Translate, checking on all the major towns in the surrounding area, marking them on Google Maps, and taking notes on which ones existed when, and for what reasons. This was useful for more than purposes paranoid, as it a lot of the information I accumulated can be added in in ways that are useful and colorful more than destructive. Still it was a rather unpleasant experience.


By the by, the patron Saint of the region is Martin of Tours, whose feast day is November 11.

Monday, January 25, 2010

No progress

No more writing tonight. Started drinking around seven or eight. I think a part was actually freaked out about the idea of making so much progress so quickly on a story. Given I am used to short bursts of creativity interspersed by long bouts of procrastination, but this latest round of writing is almost too much. Five thousand words in four days?! When was the last time that happened? It just not done!

one voice, two voice

One thing I found out today is that different mediums are useful for different types of storytelling. I find it easier to write dialogue/conversations, if I write freehand, and easier to write descriptive passages on a computer.

With dialogue, for some reason when writing out the words longhand, maybe it's the motor-act of writing out all the words, but it is almost like the characters are conjured up, speaking to one another and not paying attention to me, and I am just transcribing what they are saying. I add in very little description, usually just whether a response happens to be nonverbal or not, and whether or not any time passes. I got through two scenes of dialogue, totaling six handwritten pages, in a little under an hour. When I try to type dialogue, I spend so much time second guessing them that what comes out doesn't really sound like how I think they should sound. Right now I am debating going back and rewriting several dialogue passages, just because I didn't write them out freehand originally. But maybe they don't need it, and it's just me.

On the otherhand, with descriptions, what I am writing is so dependant on the exact word choice, and the arrangement of words and sentences, that I am editing, cut and pasting, and rewriting so much that if I tried to do it freehand, I would just have a large pile of crossed out lines that I could never go back and decipher, and if I just kept starting over to make clear what I wanted, I would just have pages and pages devoted to getting one simple paragraph on paper. It is much easier to just erase everything I don't need as I go.

Two thousand, two hundred, and fifty words today

So far, at least. I got to the end of the main story I have been working on, though I would not say that I have complete the first draft, there is still a scene or two that I need to add into the main text, some large revisions, and then I need to do a really comprehensive edit to make sure the the references to the past add up to a concrete idea of what has actually happened. But still, I have gotten straight through to the end, and completed the main, "present day" action of the story. And that feels really, really good. This definitely gets easier the more you do.

P.S. Remember to call your Democratic Representative and urge them to PASS THE DAMN BILL, and to call your Senator and tell them that you support using reconciliation to fix all the problems that the House has with it.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Over two thousand words today

It looks like having a laptop is helping my productivity.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

The body of an American



This song has been helping get through this weeks doldrums. For some reason, it just soothes me.

In other news, I am finally learning how to whistle. At twenty-six, I know! So early of me! I just figured out how to do the Bogart on Bacall today. Two days ago I had gotten the "call the dog/children back in" down. Hopefully I'll be on melodies by some time next week.

Both whistling and the song are things I became interested in through the Wire, by the way. Funny that I haven't actually finished the last season yet, though I suppose that's in part because I don't want it to end.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Massachusetts

I hate this country.

Monday, January 18, 2010

...And I feel bad again.

So, it's back to drinking.

...And now I feel fine.

Well, I did start drinking. And stopped reading about politics. Still, I think I am having one of my bi-polar days.

No Dreams, No Future

It's Martin Luther King Day today. I have it off thanks to a schedule shift. I should be writing, or reading a book. Instead I stare the my laptop while sitting on my bed and click over and over through websites that aren't going to update so often on Martin Luther King Day because this fucking election on Massachusetts has me completely on edge.

The Democrats, man, the fucking Democrats. They fuck everything up.

Croakley was up by fifteen goddamn points. Fifteen points! And she pissed in all away in a stream of entitlement and lazy campaigning. And now some asshole Republican that no one can decide if he is a rightwing fruitcake or a "moderate republican" but who will definitely uphold a filibuster against, healthcare which, because the fucking Democrats wanted to be so nice to the Republicans who have given nothing but bad faith from the start, still hasn't fucking passed!

This should have been done by now! They should have been on to other things! But now, it looks like the healthcare might fall apart because the Democrats managed to fuck up and lose Ted Kennedy's seat!

I hate this. I hate Coakley, who can't run a fucking campaign. I hate the party apparatchiks who can't run a fucking party, and turn everything into a party machine putting these useless empty suit types up that nobody likes or is inspired by. I hate the fact this this band of cretins and losers is the only thing holding this country back from the Republican Death Cult that will surely destroy us. I hate the liberals out there, the influential ones and their followers, who don't see this, and in some act of holier than thou pique and display of false integrity and independence spend all their time shitting on the Obama Administration (about the only bastion of sane, responsible leadership and organization in the entire party), thus destroying his base of support, not just among themselves, but among independents as well, making situations like this special election fuckup possible. I hate independents, for not seeing how they are being manipulated by dishonest hacks into doing things that will hurt the country, thinking some kind of protest vote will somehow make things better instead of making it harder to get done the things that they want done and are angry are not getting done.

And of course most of all I hate the Republicans. Every last registered one of them. They have destroyed my country with their stupidity, hate, lies, and greed. They are all, every last motherfucking one of them, unAmerican, as unAmerican as they think I am, because everything they do, every action they take, every political cause they champion, hurts us. Hurts me, hurts them (unless they are rich, and those ones need to be fucking shot), hurts all the other Americans, and hurts everybody else in the world. I have nothing for them but contempt. Pure, leaden contempt, and I long for the day when they are gone and destroyed and their every value and ideal is has been crushed and cast aside by the wheels of history.

Today is not a Christian day for me. It is not a loving one. Some days, I am just so fucking tired of you people. You are just so goddamn stupid.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Old stuff

Well, the last few hours have been rather happy. Frustrated with the writing I have been working on, unsure of what content to include and unsure of the fineness of my sentences, I went back and read some old writings, just to remind myself of the continuity of the world I am working in, and found them to be...quite good! Not even "not bad," but quite good! In fact, one piece in particular that I was expecting to be clumsy and hamfisted, I found, minus a few easily corrected missteps and spelling errors, to actually be about as well-written as I could have hoped or wanted. It did everything I had been hoping for it to do, and that is something rare to say about your own writing, so don't think I am just trying to blow smoke up my own ass. I was legitimately surprised at how good it was.

Reading those old bits makes me feel quite positive about my abilities right now. It's always nice to get a bit of a pick me up.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Nag

I have been surfing the internet tonight, and at some point I read something that made me feel kind of down. But I can't remember what it was now. So I can't decide whether to feel kind of down right now or not. On the one hand, I had some reason to feel down, so that probably means I should be down. But what's the point of being miserable if you don't know why you are miserable?

It's confusing.

Friday, January 1, 2010

The Aughts are over

So what the fuck do people even do on New Year's Day, anyways?

I mean, besides get over nasty colds. I can't breath through my nose, you know.