Anyways, writing.
Not much on that front today either. Well, OK, not totally true. I resolved some issues of plot that needed to be resolved long ago, and also did some crucial editing. I am on track to return to the story, and make it itself. But then, my word count from probably like, less than 50. But a crucial set of fifty words! Lots of note-taking behind it, and reading and research. Oh, and pacing. Lots of pacing. I also went shopping and did the dishes, and that always feels like accomplishment.
One thing in general I feel is that the writing is slowly but surely becoming easier and more ingrained in my habits and desires. I really am, over a long period now, becoming more and more comfortable and effortless in the laying down of words and the organizing of ideas and the creation of plot. I consider my writing and am more cavalier in discarding or rearranging my ideas. I still have a ways to go, but it is coming. I even almost like editing now! That's a big thing for me!
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Monday, February 1, 2010
I'm just counting down the minutes now.
Some years it hits harder than others. This year it's riding in on a wave of dread, or something like anticipation.
Nine years ago, some time right about now, as I type, my sister Anne and I were getting in the Zeiger's car to drive to some hospital around Chicago. Colleen and Dave and Laura were there. I remember that Laura apologized for coming along, but neither Anne nor I would have none of that. I remember sleeping along the way, then waking up when we were almost there. We walked through a long stream of hospital corridors, going from one section to another. I don't remember feeling anything. It was just like, we were doing what we were doing. Then we got in an elevator, and went up. It all seemed so labyrinthine.
And the elevator doors opened, and they were all right there. Mom and his brothers and their families, and she cried "Oh, kids, he's dead!"
And Anne screamed "No!" and started crying, and I sat down in the chair that was right next to the elevator, where I stared off into space. Someone tried to take me along to see the body, practically carrying me, and all I said was "No, no," and I don't know that there was anything specific thing I was rejecting to: that I was going to see the corpse, that he was gone, that this could actually be some kind of reality, because nothing about what was going on seemed real. And then, I got one brief look at the body and turned around screaming. It was dark in the room and the was a sheet over him and his face wasn't moving, nor his chest, and you could already tell that whatever had been there that was actually him was gone and what was there on that table or that bed was just what remained. There was no point in seeing it, because he wasn't there. And he would never be there again.
After that, It's all more feeling than event. I remember that I was sitting most of the time in a chair on the opposite side of the elevator room from the elevator. I remember that Laura was crying, and I remember, in some weird way, feeling grateful for that. I remember either Danny or Rick worrying about how "Stan," their father, would take it (this would be the third of his five children he would have to watch go into the ground). I remember that he used his given name, as if the moment had stripped away the importance of honorifics. I remember driving back, home, saying I would go to the model UN the next day. I couldn't tell why, really, then or now. Part of it was the weird fear of grades and odd belief that such things would not be considered when calculating grades. Another was that dad had said expressed remorse over dinner, on the night before he left for the procedure, that he would not get to go to it, it being one of those things parents attended, and I wanted there to be an actual thing for him to miss, like he thought there would be. Another, is that I didn't want to go back the next day and see the body, and I just needed something to get the fucking lance out of brain, just to try to get away with it, though I really couldn't. When I go home, I screamed and collapsed on my bookshelf and slid to the ground. Eventually I was so exhausted from the emotional tension, that I actually slept for about three hours.
Then I woke up and went to UN. I told everybody I knew that my father had died. John Rudolph hugged me, and that was the most anybody was ever able to do to comfort me.
After that, I hung out with my friends from Drama, and they were determined to cheer me up. We made plans to go out at night. I went home, and Greg P from Dad's work was cooking Spaghetti sauce, with meatballs, and as I entered he shook my hand. There were a lot more people there, from all over the place, and I was happy to see all of them. But I went straight upstairs and took off the red tie I had been wearing, which was one of Dad's, and tied it about the baseball-bat-shaped tied rack that dad had made me when I was a kid, and started crying again.
I went out with the guys that night. We went to a mall that had a used records store, and I bought my first Butthold Surfers album, Independent Worm Saloon. I got to ride with Alex in his Corvette on the way home, and we listened to it and laughed, it was so weird. And then I went home.
I sometimes wonder about who I would be if that hadn't happened. I am pretty sure I never would have picked drumming back up, because that was very definitely a some kind of unexplainable response. I think I would have eventually started writing though, since I already had the stories bouncing around inside me. I think I would have been more stable, settled, by this point, not still an entry level lifer trying to turn into a person, but somebody with some sense of stability. But maybe not. I've always been fucked up. Maybe I would have been fucked up with Dad too.
It's been nine years. I turn twenty seven in five months. My father has been gone for over a third of my life. Most of the people I know don't know him.
Tomorrow will also be Groundhog Day, and St. Brigit's Day, and James Joyces' and Sir Charles' birthdays. Its the halfway point between the Solstice and the Equinox. Hell of a Day to Die. Still doesn't make sense.
Some years it hits harder than others. This year it's riding in on a wave of dread, or something like anticipation.
Nine years ago, some time right about now, as I type, my sister Anne and I were getting in the Zeiger's car to drive to some hospital around Chicago. Colleen and Dave and Laura were there. I remember that Laura apologized for coming along, but neither Anne nor I would have none of that. I remember sleeping along the way, then waking up when we were almost there. We walked through a long stream of hospital corridors, going from one section to another. I don't remember feeling anything. It was just like, we were doing what we were doing. Then we got in an elevator, and went up. It all seemed so labyrinthine.
And the elevator doors opened, and they were all right there. Mom and his brothers and their families, and she cried "Oh, kids, he's dead!"
And Anne screamed "No!" and started crying, and I sat down in the chair that was right next to the elevator, where I stared off into space. Someone tried to take me along to see the body, practically carrying me, and all I said was "No, no," and I don't know that there was anything specific thing I was rejecting to: that I was going to see the corpse, that he was gone, that this could actually be some kind of reality, because nothing about what was going on seemed real. And then, I got one brief look at the body and turned around screaming. It was dark in the room and the was a sheet over him and his face wasn't moving, nor his chest, and you could already tell that whatever had been there that was actually him was gone and what was there on that table or that bed was just what remained. There was no point in seeing it, because he wasn't there. And he would never be there again.
After that, It's all more feeling than event. I remember that I was sitting most of the time in a chair on the opposite side of the elevator room from the elevator. I remember that Laura was crying, and I remember, in some weird way, feeling grateful for that. I remember either Danny or Rick worrying about how "Stan," their father, would take it (this would be the third of his five children he would have to watch go into the ground). I remember that he used his given name, as if the moment had stripped away the importance of honorifics. I remember driving back, home, saying I would go to the model UN the next day. I couldn't tell why, really, then or now. Part of it was the weird fear of grades and odd belief that such things would not be considered when calculating grades. Another was that dad had said expressed remorse over dinner, on the night before he left for the procedure, that he would not get to go to it, it being one of those things parents attended, and I wanted there to be an actual thing for him to miss, like he thought there would be. Another, is that I didn't want to go back the next day and see the body, and I just needed something to get the fucking lance out of brain, just to try to get away with it, though I really couldn't. When I go home, I screamed and collapsed on my bookshelf and slid to the ground. Eventually I was so exhausted from the emotional tension, that I actually slept for about three hours.
Then I woke up and went to UN. I told everybody I knew that my father had died. John Rudolph hugged me, and that was the most anybody was ever able to do to comfort me.
After that, I hung out with my friends from Drama, and they were determined to cheer me up. We made plans to go out at night. I went home, and Greg P from Dad's work was cooking Spaghetti sauce, with meatballs, and as I entered he shook my hand. There were a lot more people there, from all over the place, and I was happy to see all of them. But I went straight upstairs and took off the red tie I had been wearing, which was one of Dad's, and tied it about the baseball-bat-shaped tied rack that dad had made me when I was a kid, and started crying again.
I went out with the guys that night. We went to a mall that had a used records store, and I bought my first Butthold Surfers album, Independent Worm Saloon. I got to ride with Alex in his Corvette on the way home, and we listened to it and laughed, it was so weird. And then I went home.
I sometimes wonder about who I would be if that hadn't happened. I am pretty sure I never would have picked drumming back up, because that was very definitely a some kind of unexplainable response. I think I would have eventually started writing though, since I already had the stories bouncing around inside me. I think I would have been more stable, settled, by this point, not still an entry level lifer trying to turn into a person, but somebody with some sense of stability. But maybe not. I've always been fucked up. Maybe I would have been fucked up with Dad too.
It's been nine years. I turn twenty seven in five months. My father has been gone for over a third of my life. Most of the people I know don't know him.
Tomorrow will also be Groundhog Day, and St. Brigit's Day, and James Joyces' and Sir Charles' birthdays. Its the halfway point between the Solstice and the Equinox. Hell of a Day to Die. Still doesn't make sense.
The Pogues
Holy living Fuck do I love the sound of the tin whistle. It's like a bag pipe, but pretty and mournful instead of blaring and mournful. I want one. If anyone is wondering what obscure gift to get me for a birthday or Christmas that would convince me you love me, well, there you go.
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.
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.
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.
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