Work

I wrote for about 40, 45, 50 minutes today. And at least a half an hour of that time was spent writing precisely this:

The bridge was truly a most curious thing. In its way, it was more curious than the bodies and the wreckage. The Mount lay several thousand feet out to sea, where it rose out of the clear shallow water so quickly, it was as if some young gods or giants had piled up the earth while at play during some long-ago age. And then, just to make their sandcastle complete, they had added the Bridge. A single strip of raised earth running from the Mount to the far, sandy shore, just wide enough to support a traffic of carts (except at high tide, when it was all but underwater). Though the land bridge widened somewhat as it approached the Mount, suggesting that it was not, after all, the carefully planned work of tidy human hands, the convenience of placement and the precision of its height (rising just so above the water) were enough to imbue the bridge with a kind of mystical presence, as if some unseen, knowing force, perhaps gods, perhaps something greater, had seen fit to set such a thing deliberately upon the world.

Writing is hard.

Damned if you do...

So, I did some editing on an old story after writing that last post, just to be doing something. I am moving more and more towards the opinion that editing actually is writing, that it is so essential to the writing process, that good writing is so intrinsically connected to doing it, and doing it, and doing it, that it cannot really be separated from writing as a distinct act; it is as central to writing as the production of wholly new sentences.

So, I wrote today. Yay, me.

Except, by the time I got to where I left off, I was doubting almost the entirety of the procedure I had put forward. I realized that a good chunk, about 25%, of the story was unnecessary and besides the point, and maybe as much as 35%. Of course, what I had written after that was contingent on information that had been passed on before it, so If I was to excise that those sessions, I would have to completely re-write what had come after it. Then I realized, that the main thing that I liked about the story was those opening paragraphs (the 10% that I only maybe had to excise), that I had written the story basically as an excuse for that part, and that what came after, I wasn't sure I was interested in. I had just come up with that as a way to maybe bring the first part to some sort of conclusion or point. And I don't feel like the latter part is strong enough on it's own to bother shaping up, not unless I restart the whole thing form the beginning, and if that's the case then I simply have no idea what changes would have to be made to make it a self-contained, interesting story. So now I don't know what to do with the bloody thing, and until I come to some sort of decision, about what parts are worth keeping, I am either going to have to put it back on the backburner, or just abandon it as a failed experiment. Which is really too bad, because I really like my main character, and would kind of like to see her story get told. But I can't really justify to myself going through the bother of telling a story if I can't make it interesting. It's the creative equivalent of hearing nails on a blackboard, for hours on end.

Ugh. This is so degrading.

Where is my mind

Yes, so, no writing the last two days. Was working, and it was very tiring.

I've been thinking about my relationship to stimulants and depressants, namely caffeine and alcohol. I like both, but I have been, lately (as in within the last week) been cutting back on both, not out of any moral or self-improvement urge, but because, I think they might hamper my writing. I can't concentrate after a drink, and I can't fight through the cacaphony of voice when I have caffeine in me. (And now that I am cutting back, I can really tell when I have caffeine in me.) I need that calmness, that tranquility of untired reflection, in order to bring my mind to bear on writing. That's why I think in the past it has been easier to write in in the morning, at least morning when I'm not zonked out of my mind; I have no stimulants in my system. I have been sleeping. The most productive bout of writing I ever had was five days where I woke up at 5 and wrote until 11. I wrote an over 10,000 novella.

On the other hand, I feel that is still a place for such things in my creative process. Though caffeine is a poor aid to dramatic thinking, it's quite helpful when brainstorming ideas for things. And drinking has, for whatever reason, always worked to strip away my layers of anxieties, as opposed to many people for whom it seems to let them out; the times when I feel something like a religious experience, or perhaps just bouts of zealous humanism, have usually occurred while my mind races around after having a few. And both those states of mind have a marked influence on the things I think about writing, and the things I want to write about, even if they move me away from the disciplined state I need to actually write.

Still, best to decrease their usage.

Things I have learned about setting up your drum kit

1. Don't Frankenstein your kit. Drums kits are tuned to themselves; you start using parts of other kits, the drums will make ringing sounds in odd places. Adding a new brand of drum is like detuning one string on a guitar. It throws everything out of whack. Likewise, use one brand of cymbals. That one cymbal from a different brand will stick out like a sore thumb every time you hit it. However, allowances can be made for hardware, since it doesn't really effect tone, so you can use Tama Iron Cobra Double Bass Drum Pedals with your Pearl bass drum.

2. Get a Tama Iron Cobra Double Bass Drum Pedal. They're sweet.

3. Make sure your legs are directly aligned with your foot pedals, so that your foot and leg bones are along the same axis. Don't sit bowlegged. If you do, you spend too much energy and time moving your thoughts down from your brain to your foot, navigating the twists of your body, and thus lose on not just speed and power, but finesse as well. This means you also are going to want to angle your hi-hat/double-bass pedals out from the bass drum slightly. Don't make your pedals parallel. Accommodate the natural triangle of your legs positions comfortably at rest and place your pedal(s) where your other foot happens to be. Speed, power, and finesse are just as important for your hi-hat foot as for your bass drum foot.

4. Keep the floor tom positioned low and flat. If you angle it, you lose the force from your stroke, and bounce strokes become almost impossible to keep up. The mounted toms, it's alright to angle, since you will be playing them at an angle, (unless you're really tall) but try to keep them as close to the angles of your sticks as you can.

5. Don't mount anything on top of your hi-hat, like cowbells or tambourines. The extra wight throws off the clasping mechanism, and whatever novel little sound you get out of it isn't worth the loss of finesse on what is probably your most-used instrument. Doohickeys, if desired, can be mounted from clasping mechanisms attached to cymbal stands and other drum hardware, just nothing where pressure and weight are essential to function.

6. If you're short-sighted enough to have become a left-handed player at a right-handed kit, the easiest way to use your ride cymbal is not by placing it behind the floor tom, as right-handers do, but in front of it, so that you can play it cross-armed, the way right-handers play their hi-hat. This is a lot easier than trying to reach diagonally across the floor tom whenever you want to play ride. you don't have to twist your back or extend your arm or anything. Of course, it does make it almost impossible to play the ride with your right hand, so it's harder to do super-fast sixteenth-note patterns on it. There's always learning to drum ambidextrously!

The Magician in the Grove

So, I just signed up onto Scribd, after editing that story I had mentioned writing in the last post. If you feel like reading it, tell me what you think in comments. Thanks!

The Magician in the Grove