Today and yesterday I worked on an finished (with the exception of minor edits and additions) the sixth section of that last thing that I mentioned. I think I am going to jump back in and trying outlining out section seven, so I am still in the breach, or at least about to go once more into it, but I just wanted to stop and take a moment to record the occasion.
I am thinking now that maybe it isn't such a bad idea to do this writing blogging. Sure, I can't really use it as a place to sketch out my ideas and talk through what I am working on, but that's what my notebooks are for anyways. I think just using this a a place to record that I am writing, in a basic recording-what-you-did-during-the-day type of journal, is a useful tool. If I get in the habit of posting a progress report, maybe I will keep up my momentum. Just taking the time to verbalize it in a pseudo-public way exerts a little bit of pressure, which is good for me.
Still, I think I should get on posting some thoughts on, you know, stuff, at some point. This blog will be pretty disappointing if there is absolutely no substance on it.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Not much going on here.
Writing is such an elusive process. Today, I haven't really done anything, (well, yesterday, that is) by which I mean I haven't typed anything out, or written in my notebook(s), but I have still been mulling and mulling over ideas and issues. Does that count?
Also, today I read the Telemachy from Ulysses—that is, the first three episodes that constitute that constitute book I—partially for inspiration, partially just to read something really good. I feel I have been reading a lot of crap lately, and a lot of the time I can't actually tell what's good and what's crap. And what I mean by crap, I don't mean books or stories that are objectively good, I am referring more to the quality of the prose. What what I mean by "can't actually tell what's good and what's crap," I don't just mean that I can really tell what people out there in the world consider good writing and what they consider bad—although that too is a problem I have—I mean that I often feel like I don't know if the writers that are considered to have "good" prose, that is the people who unquestionably qualify as literary fiction, even qualify. I recently read some comments online bashing David Foster Wallace as being a know-it-all twit when it comes to language, which I enjoyed for the shadenfruede, and he is usually considered one of those "literary," types. I mean, are the literary types even that good. I mean, I like my Thomas Pynchon, but even there I see the tendency to disappear up his own asshole. And what's it say that my favorite book of his is the really really short one he dismissed as lightweight? Joyce is really the only writer that I can really think of as objectively good. Despite being hard to understand, that's usually due to the level of complexity behind the ideas he is trying to get across, and he always plays fair. He never ties to be wordy just to be wordy; when a simple word will do, he uses it, a habit that a lot of postmodern lit types seem to avoid. It's only when dealing with very specific concepts, like the "ineluctable modality of the visible," that he breaks out the truly strange words. The rest of the time he is just being very specific, and that makes me feel like I can trust him, in a way I often don't feel I can trust Pynchon, and that makes me feel complete disinterest when I read any sentence by Wallace.
By the way, Joyce takes the prize for my favorite use of Carlin's Fourth Dirty Word, as well as the neatest description I have ever heard of the Middle East, when he has Leo Bloom describe the latter as the "grey sunken cunt of the world." Think about that one.
Also, today I read the Telemachy from Ulysses—that is, the first three episodes that constitute that constitute book I—partially for inspiration, partially just to read something really good. I feel I have been reading a lot of crap lately, and a lot of the time I can't actually tell what's good and what's crap. And what I mean by crap, I don't mean books or stories that are objectively good, I am referring more to the quality of the prose. What what I mean by "can't actually tell what's good and what's crap," I don't just mean that I can really tell what people out there in the world consider good writing and what they consider bad—although that too is a problem I have—I mean that I often feel like I don't know if the writers that are considered to have "good" prose, that is the people who unquestionably qualify as literary fiction, even qualify. I recently read some comments online bashing David Foster Wallace as being a know-it-all twit when it comes to language, which I enjoyed for the shadenfruede, and he is usually considered one of those "literary," types. I mean, are the literary types even that good. I mean, I like my Thomas Pynchon, but even there I see the tendency to disappear up his own asshole. And what's it say that my favorite book of his is the really really short one he dismissed as lightweight? Joyce is really the only writer that I can really think of as objectively good. Despite being hard to understand, that's usually due to the level of complexity behind the ideas he is trying to get across, and he always plays fair. He never ties to be wordy just to be wordy; when a simple word will do, he uses it, a habit that a lot of postmodern lit types seem to avoid. It's only when dealing with very specific concepts, like the "ineluctable modality of the visible," that he breaks out the truly strange words. The rest of the time he is just being very specific, and that makes me feel like I can trust him, in a way I often don't feel I can trust Pynchon, and that makes me feel complete disinterest when I read any sentence by Wallace.
By the way, Joyce takes the prize for my favorite use of Carlin's Fourth Dirty Word, as well as the neatest description I have ever heard of the Middle East, when he has Leo Bloom describe the latter as the "grey sunken cunt of the world." Think about that one.
Monday, August 27, 2007
Progress?
Yesterday, I edited and reworked the third section of an eight section story that I am working on in conjunction with the one in the 'reading' stage to give it a better construction, finished the fourth section, and wrote all of the fifth section. Today I kind of took the day off, but the next section, I don' t really have a feel for yet, and am still debating things within my head. Perhaps progress will be shortly forthcoming. I just took a nap, a result, I think of not having enough caffeine today, so I think it very likely I will be doing some nightowl writing in the near future. Good. I like the nightowl approach; it's like I'm completely alone in all the world, just me and the thing I am working on.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Ummm...
Haven't posted anything in a while. Figured that it's kind of hard to write about what I am writing, since, since it would seen wrong to give away all the nifty ideas I have when I am trying to, you know, maintain the niftiness of the ideas. And if doing so, any post that I could make would lapse into such shattering levels of vagueness as to be a waste of time both to write and to read. So I haven't.
Anyways, in the meantime of not writing anything hear, I have managed to complete a draft of a story. I've passed it on to my two Readers, so let's see what they have to say. Also, I am starting work on my next story, like the last project something that has been in limbo forever, and that I am now firmly committing to getting fucking done already.
I'm thinking about reinventing this blog as a repository for all my rants and opinions on non-writing related issues. Lord knows I need a place to vent my frustration with the world at the world. Stay tuned.
Actually, don't stay tuned. Who the hell knows when the next post on this godammed thing will come. Just, you know, flip back to the channel, every so infrequently.
Anyways, in the meantime of not writing anything hear, I have managed to complete a draft of a story. I've passed it on to my two Readers, so let's see what they have to say. Also, I am starting work on my next story, like the last project something that has been in limbo forever, and that I am now firmly committing to getting fucking done already.
I'm thinking about reinventing this blog as a repository for all my rants and opinions on non-writing related issues. Lord knows I need a place to vent my frustration with the world at the world. Stay tuned.
Actually, don't stay tuned. Who the hell knows when the next post on this godammed thing will come. Just, you know, flip back to the channel, every so infrequently.
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
My Liberal Male Guilt Complex
Earlier, tonight, which is to say, late yesterday, I talked to my sister Mary, on the phone. (Hi, Mary!) It went very well. We have a wide ranging discussion where I got to air out a lot of my problems without having to directly come out and whine about them. We kind of more shifted from casual conversation into discussing them, without explicitly stating that we were going to discuss them, like a dance, except hard to know who was leading.
I got to air many of the problems, that have been vexing me, and Mary suggested a reason for it that seemed to described exactly one of my pocket theories for my lack of direction, which I think about be called the Liberal Male Guilt Complex, or in my specific case, the Liberal White-Middle-Class-Male Guilt Complex. In brief, the basic idea behind it is that certain men in this day and age, aware of the injustices done against other groups throughout human history, feel bad about those things, do not desire to be part of the problem, and thus are going about sabotaging their ambitions. It's not that they don't want to succeed, it's that they don't feel they deserve to succeed, so they go about making sure they don't. At the same time, the revolutions in the structure of modern society that have been going on for the last couple of decades haven't come up with a new role for men in society that conforms to those changing values, which really only leaves the traditional model in place, or no model at all. Which means, of course, that men who agree with the values that have come about in the last couple of decades are left not really knowing what to do with themselves, hence the need for sabotage. Who can you succeed in society if your success hurts society? I mean, if (white) men are disproportionately and unfairly filling the job ranks, then isn't your success, if you seek it, a way of keeping the disadvantaged down? Never mind that it makes your the capitalist oppressor of the lower classes. The result is mindbending identity crisis issues. Mary's advice is to just get over it and try to succeed anyways, I think.
Women, in this New Era, are faced with a slightly different problem. It's not so much a question of not having any role to fill, its not knowing which role to fill, that of stereotypical housewife/mother, or that of go-getter. That is the "typical" male and female roles, which are impossible to perform at once which driving yourself to the point of exhaustion. Short of completely changing the way labor is performed in this country, and I think it will take a socialist revolution to change our labor paradigm this much, women are stuck making a choice that is going to cut off one of those things that society is pushing them to be. Now, they have the option of just going completely in one direction, but there will be blowback for this from some circles, no matter what they do. Of course some people manage to find jobs that allow them to fulfill all their desires, but that's usually circumstantial to the requirements of the job, and not applicable to wider society.
Oh, also, Mary was quite and constant to point out, and I agree with here, that all this is bullshit and hearsay, and I agree with her. This could be totally wrong and just based on anecdotal evidence. But still, it felt nice to hear someone else say this, someone who wasn't me. Usually, arguments of this nature come from the right, and are basically made to argue that everyone should just go back to the way things were. The left, or liberals, especially those of the identity politics crowd, tend to dismiss such arguments on the ground of there point of origin. Hearing Mary say such things gives me confidence such concerns aren't just my Inner Conservative piping up, but are, maybe, actual concerns. In fact, I think liberals ignore these things at their peril, since i think it is the fact that these problems exist might account for a certain amount of the traction that that conservative values hold in our society. It social liberalism doesn't offer people a new way to live, they won't even bother to consider that arguments about how it it is more just and stuff like that.
Anyways, another thing Mary said is that I probably need to start journaling my thoughts, to try to work through these issues that are hanging me up. Once I get them aired out, shaped into written form, it will be easier for me to observe them, put some distance between me and them. This is as good a place for that as any, I guess. So expect more complaining in the future.
Such complaints are, of course, actually related to the whole Blogging About Writing Thing, which is the actual purpose of this job, since my various mental hangups, which have gotten me stuck in my shit job, living at home, and basically feeling miserable and directionless, are also the reasons for my Not Writing, so getting over all that crap is actually instrumental to the actual purpose of this blog. What a circumlocutory path this is.
I got to air many of the problems, that have been vexing me, and Mary suggested a reason for it that seemed to described exactly one of my pocket theories for my lack of direction, which I think about be called the Liberal Male Guilt Complex, or in my specific case, the Liberal White-Middle-Class-Male Guilt Complex. In brief, the basic idea behind it is that certain men in this day and age, aware of the injustices done against other groups throughout human history, feel bad about those things, do not desire to be part of the problem, and thus are going about sabotaging their ambitions. It's not that they don't want to succeed, it's that they don't feel they deserve to succeed, so they go about making sure they don't. At the same time, the revolutions in the structure of modern society that have been going on for the last couple of decades haven't come up with a new role for men in society that conforms to those changing values, which really only leaves the traditional model in place, or no model at all. Which means, of course, that men who agree with the values that have come about in the last couple of decades are left not really knowing what to do with themselves, hence the need for sabotage. Who can you succeed in society if your success hurts society? I mean, if (white) men are disproportionately and unfairly filling the job ranks, then isn't your success, if you seek it, a way of keeping the disadvantaged down? Never mind that it makes your the capitalist oppressor of the lower classes. The result is mindbending identity crisis issues. Mary's advice is to just get over it and try to succeed anyways, I think.
Women, in this New Era, are faced with a slightly different problem. It's not so much a question of not having any role to fill, its not knowing which role to fill, that of stereotypical housewife/mother, or that of go-getter. That is the "typical" male and female roles, which are impossible to perform at once which driving yourself to the point of exhaustion. Short of completely changing the way labor is performed in this country, and I think it will take a socialist revolution to change our labor paradigm this much, women are stuck making a choice that is going to cut off one of those things that society is pushing them to be. Now, they have the option of just going completely in one direction, but there will be blowback for this from some circles, no matter what they do. Of course some people manage to find jobs that allow them to fulfill all their desires, but that's usually circumstantial to the requirements of the job, and not applicable to wider society.
Oh, also, Mary was quite and constant to point out, and I agree with here, that all this is bullshit and hearsay, and I agree with her. This could be totally wrong and just based on anecdotal evidence. But still, it felt nice to hear someone else say this, someone who wasn't me. Usually, arguments of this nature come from the right, and are basically made to argue that everyone should just go back to the way things were. The left, or liberals, especially those of the identity politics crowd, tend to dismiss such arguments on the ground of there point of origin. Hearing Mary say such things gives me confidence such concerns aren't just my Inner Conservative piping up, but are, maybe, actual concerns. In fact, I think liberals ignore these things at their peril, since i think it is the fact that these problems exist might account for a certain amount of the traction that that conservative values hold in our society. It social liberalism doesn't offer people a new way to live, they won't even bother to consider that arguments about how it it is more just and stuff like that.
Anyways, another thing Mary said is that I probably need to start journaling my thoughts, to try to work through these issues that are hanging me up. Once I get them aired out, shaped into written form, it will be easier for me to observe them, put some distance between me and them. This is as good a place for that as any, I guess. So expect more complaining in the future.
Such complaints are, of course, actually related to the whole Blogging About Writing Thing, which is the actual purpose of this job, since my various mental hangups, which have gotten me stuck in my shit job, living at home, and basically feeling miserable and directionless, are also the reasons for my Not Writing, so getting over all that crap is actually instrumental to the actual purpose of this blog. What a circumlocutory path this is.
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