Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence?
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| High Concept Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence? |
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Saturday, November 08, 2003 The Pitch: It's like The Matrix: Revolutions meets Orange County! There are times when you can't think too much about writing or it'll warp your brain dramatically. Or, I guess, if you think about writing, you can easily reach a point where everyone around is sure that you've warped your brain.I'm here at work, and it was a little quiet, and I didn't do any Nano work yesterday so I kind of tapped away at it discreetly. Although I try to stay away from the Net when I do Nano work, it's a little different at work since I'm not really supposed to be doing my writing on the company dime anyway. Consequently, I'm a little less worried about being distracted and can use the Web in all sorts of immediately gratifying ways. Once I decided my characters were in a Lexus, I went to the website and looked at models so I could come up with a way to describe it. It was nice crutch for my imagination. Anyway, I need a good aphorism about being ripe, (it's a character's playful response to a charge of ogling a much younger debutante), an aphorism I decide has been passed on through the generations of the character's family and points indirectly to their decadence. And, of course, since this is New Orleans, if the expression sounds cool in French, all the better. Googling on "quote" and "ripe" I end up with "Ripeness is all," an expression I'm inclined to dismiss because the babelfish English-to-French translation ("maturite est tout") doesn't sound particularly impressive, and also is an odd rejoinder to accusations of lechery toward underage girls. (Although now that I think of it, it's not a bad ironic rejoinder.) I'm also not crazy about it because it sounds familiar and, sure enough, it's all over the forty or fifty pages I've just read of Updike's Couples. Considering how uncomfortable I am about the similarities between my NaNovel and Couples anyway (if you took Couples, and then excised all the lovely writing and put in a lurid setting and an absurd plot but left in the undertone of misanthropy, you'd have something kinda close to my book), I was doubly inclined to dismiss the phrase. But then I started poking around to find out what, exactly, the damn phrase meant and it turns out it's from King Lear, and, further, is pretty much the key to the thematic center of my book. So not only do I use it, my head is rapidly charting all the other ways in which this phrase will enter the narrative. It feels almost essential at this point. So: here's the head-warping point for me. If I had written this yesterday, I wouldn't have been near the Net and when it came time to that scene, I would've likely passed on using that "ripeness is all" quote. And if I had passed on that, the novel would be different. So, did I not write yesterday because I was too busy, or did I not write yesterday because I needed to write that section today? (It makes me think of the great little quote from the Matrix--"What's really going to bake your noodle later on is, would you still have broken it if I hadn't said anything?"--which the Wachowski Brothers obviously liked too, since they used it to fuck their whole damn trilogy). It's little happy accidents like that, that make you wonder just how accidental the whole thing is, which is why artists seem to frequently end up becoming mystics and egomaniacs and frauds. How else to explain that the universe wants your tiny crappy novel written? Another fun fact: I didn't write anything yesterday, and I had forgotten to wear my St. Expedite medal. I still don't have it today, but pinned to the typing stand at my station is a refrigerator magnet of a singer and two men, all of them African-American. Underneath them, the magnet reads: New Orleans. I'm thinking about palming it when I go to lunch, so it can sit nearby while I write. I could be wrong, but I guess my writing would go much more smoothly. posted by Jeff Lester | 12:53 PM | |
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