Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence?
|
|
| High Concept Am I blogging...or am I pitching my existence? |
|
|
Monday, November 24, 2003 The Pitch: It's like Blast from the Past meets True West! Wow. Two weeks since any real entry from me. I suck.But I've been off sucking at Nano so, you know, sue me. I'm somewhere between four and five large in the whole, and fifteen large from finishing. My secret dream? I crank another three large tomorrow, and then do a massive twelve large write-out on Wednesday, leaving me Thanksgiving and the weekend after to relax (and/or collapse--I can't quite tell if I'm getting sick or not). Considering my brother showed up Thursday night and I've spent, I'd say about six hours with him total, I don't think that's likely. Instead, we'll probably hang out and I'll slowly crawl my way up the word count (slowly means doing three large every day which is what--twelve pages a day?) I feel guilty because out of the few I managed to rope in to do Nano again this year, I think the only one who's going to be crossing the finish line is Patrick and I feel that may be my fault. (Well, I bet Ryan and Kara will finish but I don't think that counts because they were doing this before I met them. In fact, this is how I met them, now that I think of it.) Maybe I wasn't supportive enough. Maybe I didn't pep talk it up enough. I think--I dunno what I think. I hope I didn't let anybody down, is all. On the other hand, I think a lot of Patrick's recruits that he got to do Nano this year and are part of the mailing list are going to finish (one of them already has). If he can get them to do Nano two years in a row, and they finish, when then I'll have to concede that he's a far better motivator than I. (Or is that "than me"? It's "I" because it's short for "I am," right? I'm glad I don't worry about stuff like this when doing nano...) Oh yeah, the other big reason I know the big all day blowout is mere hooey? Because, just like last year, I will finish Nano, but I will not be finished with my book. Oh, no. Certainly not. Last year, I hit a finishing point, took it, and then skid on my face for another two thousand words. But this time, I know better. I'm going to cross the line. I'm going to keep going. I'm sure if I get a good night's sleep, I'll feel better. But right now, I'm in that feverish uncomfortable world where the only thing that feels more uncomfortable than living is writing. Bleah. posted by Jeff | 6:49 PM | Tuesday, November 11, 2003 I can't stress how great this is.... Church Sign Generator.Expect it to be everywhere in minutes, and for you to be tired of it in days. But for now, it's sacreiffic! posted by Jeff | 4:21 PM | Monday, November 10, 2003 The Pitch: And if you thought the last entry was self-indulgent.... Currently reading Updikes Couples, I remembered writing something snarky about Updike on the Wallace-L mailing list sometime back. I searched the archive, found the entry, and found it so amusing I thought I'd include it here.Mmmm, self-indulgence..... *** To: wallace-l@[omitted] From: "groder groder" Subject: wallace-l: Blackness, Hot Chickness and Gayness, Part 2 (and even longer) Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 09:42:19 -0800 (PST) Okay, So here I am at work, posting surreptitiously (so much so I don't even have time to check and see if I spelled 'surreptitiously' correctly) and so will have to be all-too-horribly quick (although you may have a different take). So, yeah, Ellison. I brought him up in part because we were talking about great American writers and how they stick, unsurprisingly, to their white, hetero neighborhoods. And although there is certainly a good case to be made for it being a result of classic American "head-up-own-ass" syndrome, there may also be a part of it where white guy writers being just as naive in many ways about American culture as the rest of us, expected a great tidal surge of terrific African-American writing post-Invisible Man. Which didn't arrive for various complicated reasons for which everyone will have their own favorite finger to point. And also I brought up Ellison because we were talking about great American writers and, as I said, Ellison is a great American writer, just by virtue of one book. More important to me, anyway, was my point that Pynchon at least for a period was very, very concerned and hip to how essential blackness is to American culture and tried, in a cautious but powerful way, to study it. Which brings me to Colson Whitehead, who's "Intuitionist" I finished at the beginning of the month. I originally was little more than nonplussed-half-plussed, I guess you'd call it--because us Pynchonheads can sniff one another out from a mile away and it seemed to me that Whitehead had cribbed a lot of Pynchon's moves and rhythms without a real solid foundation (Pynchon's perfect diction, in other words). Brilliant details without a suitably strong eye for the overall picture; nice blending of the technical and mystical but without (at least initially) the connecting tether of human emotion. Three-quarters of the way through the Intuitionist, I had given it up as a victim of "Promising First Novelitis" where the novelist is onto something good but doesn't get the editorial direction to sharpen it into something great. And then Whitehad, unbelievably, pulls it off in the end. At least for the most part, and in my mind. He spins it all into focus and makes it work. It seems less of the masterstroke of someone who knew what he was doing all along and more of a talented pulling of the fat from the fire at the crucial moment, but it worked. I want to read his next book and hope he can take the Pynchonisms and refine them into something more personally effective. As for hot chickness: I had also heard that DFW's tatt is of Mary Karr's name and after reading The Liar's club recently, I understand why. As amazing as I think Dave is, I can't imagine him being at least a little outclassed by Ms. Karr who's riveting authorial voice and stories lead me to believe that she probably gives off the alluring scent of seen it all, done it all, and, most importantly, can write cogently about it all--the sort of scent that I would imagine would make a guy like DFW, thirsting for genuine human experience, roll his eyes back in his head and thrash zygotically upon the floor at first smell thereof. Little wonder it's easy for me to imagine to DFW resorting to the blue-collar gambit of carnies and service station men everywhere and getting Ms. Karr's name, initials or pet name for her pudenda (or whatever) pen and inked on the squat bicep of his racket swinging arm (as opposed to the lanky, squishy bicep of his non-racket swinging one). Yes, as one can see--all too horribly easy for me to imagine. As for gayness: I know that there are indeed men who have written about sex from the female point of view, and that one of those men being indeed Updike, as it was his very description of same, somewhat early on, in Roger's Version that made me toss the book from my arms as if it had tried to bite me on the throat. This was my first (and to date, last) experience with Updike who, from what I can tell, is like the smart guy you always see at the bar who draws you in with some rapturously gorgeous descriptions of something he appreciates (like quantum physics, in this particular case) and then, when you are sitted next to him and just looking forward to what he'll tell you next, begins chain-vomiting endlessly onto your pants and shirt. Updike's description of what's-her-name's lover, some young student guy who is described with just the right attention to detail to his acne and his skinny wrists and the yokelish expression he gets upon ejaculation, managed to be so precise, and seemed to me so precisely filled with hatred, jealousy, and loathing, that I had little choice but to engage in the previously described book tossing. I couldn't figure out how a book I had found so charming had managed to become so hateable--but then I had yet to sit next to a drunk who's great eloquence and affection is counter-balanced by an equally great hatred and bitterness. Finally, as for Chabon. He's married--twice, I believe. He's got several kids. He's an astonishing writer, albeit a bit too married to his outlines, if Kavalier & Clay is any indication. He writes beautifully about men--as brothers, as lovers, as fathers and sons, and amalgamations of each--and considering he is rewarded for this with such prize-winning consideration of his work as David Fleissig's "Chabon has got to be at least a little gay," it's a little wonder the rest of the American writer lot stick to their novels about titty-humping undergrads. -jeff The Pitch: It's like Hardly Working meets Runaway Jury! I wish I had written the eighty words yesterday necessary to hit quota, because that would have meant I'd already be on point for today. I wrote 1680 words in the hour before work, and now I'm here, sitting at my desk, trying casually to avoid the one or two emails describing jobs that sound like awful horsehit. My hope is that Patrick will want to write at lunch since my obvious M.O. for the month is to climb ahead of quota, then squander that lead immediately. I'd like to think there's a method to that madness, as my previous entries indicate: my subconscious is cautiously bricking together the path, and it seems I have to wait occasionally before walking down it. Although I never know what I'm going to encounter in my day's writing, it all seems too fully formed to be utterly coincidental, time and time again. Today, for example, just as I was getting ready to cut to a scene of two characters grabbing a cigar, I decided to have two other characters have a little talk. Rather than it being a halting exchange of ideas, what emerged was a speedy 1600 words of psychological insight into the characters. And here I thought I was going to be writing about cigars. Silly me.Man, I feel like a pretentious, awful ass talking about this sort of thing. I should just keep quiet here and keep typing there. But this is a bit of a way for me to blow off steam while at work. And it might be like this for a while (at least during November). Still, sucks for you, I know. As consolation, I offer the assorted amazements of the Filthy Celebrity Impersonator. posted by Jeff | 10:23 AM | Saturday, November 08, 2003 Jesus. I just finished a fifty minute writing bout where I had an absolute, exhilarating ball. I'm experienced enough to know that 50% of the time I feel like that, the end product is messy indulgent crap, but holy god does it feel amazing when you're in it. My conscious and unconscious mind just seemed to be working in unison, each playing off the other, and filling the pages effortlessly as I riffed knowledgeably on a topic I knew nothing about and didn't think I could ever do justice to. When I started that session, I had plucked out about 1400 words in the course of two or three slow sessions throughout the day. When I was done, I had added another 1400 words to that, and had hit a planned peak in the book better than I could have ever hoped. Everything else in the NaNovel is a mess (an unbelievably large mess) but taken on its own, just as an in-the-moment, for-the-moment, kind of incident, that little session was among the most dizzyingly ticklish things I think I've ever done. Hopefully, two or ten months down the road, it won't turn out to be crap, but like I said: as an in-the-moment thing, I'm intoxicated. posted by Jeff | 8:03 PM | 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 | 12:53 PM | Tuesday, November 04, 2003 The Pitch: It's like Animal House meets JFK! So I got to the Glen Park BART station and there's a literal gauntlet of six Newsom for Mayor Supporters right where the buses stop--a bunch of clean-cut young men and women you have to get through to get to the station. They look like they might be members of the same family, in fact, and they are holding enormous purple and blue "NEWSOM FOR MAYOR" signs. You have to pass through them and be greeted on all sides as you do:"Good morning, don't forget to vote!" "Good morning, please vote!" "Good morning!" You run this gauntlet, and then there's nobody except one lone Gonzalez supporter right by the entrance, hair shorn very short, goatee, waving banana-colored Gonzalez for Mayor brochures about the size of a takeout menu. My heart sinks a bit at the sight, but then I notice he's smiling and laughing and talking out loud. And as I draw closer, he's saying something like this: "Look at them run, the second they hear a train pull up! Like little sheep down the hillside! Don't be late, don't be late, little sheep! Ah ha ha ha ha!" As I walk up to him, he keeps laughing and hands me a brochure. "Don't forget to vote! Ah ha ha ha ha ha!" I had to laugh, but I was shaking my head while I did it. I feel this says something sadly unassailable about the difference between the two campaigns...but I'm too rueful to elaborate on it now. posted by Jeff | 8:12 AM | The Pitch: It's, like, Poor Time Management! So I'm writing this at just about the time I'd be walking into the cafe downtown, ordering my coffee and sitting down to write. Instead, I'm sitting here at home waiting to go vote. About twenty minutes ago, I realized that I could, in fact, write here for half-an-hour or so, and then vote, and then go to work. I could even do this and show up to work on time.Instead, I just surfed the web and took my time putting on my pants. I'm somewhat bummed out by this, and can't decide what to do next. Do I go vote? I could still write, and then go vote, and then go to work late. Sadly, I think I'll go vote, go to work, and probably hold off writing until lunchtime. But I might be seeing John for lunch so I might be fucking things up here. Crap. This is where my slogan "When in doubt, surf the web" really backfires on me. posted by Jeff | 6:48 AM | Monday, November 03, 2003 Someone Hit His Daily Quota... Thank goodness Patrick suggested writing at lunch. I got almost another thousand words in, which puts me about 500 words over the day's quota. My stopping point is right in the middle of some stuff i find interesting, so it should be easy to pull another 500 words or more out of it. I just can't figure out whether to do that tonight or leave it for tomorrow...I wish work was going as well. It's (obviously) occasionally quiet, but more frequently filled with gray drudgery. I took a day off this week; why do I want my weekend to arrive so badly? If I had to guess, I'd say all of my November is going to be like this. posted by Jeff | 4:29 PM | The Pitch: It's like The Long Walk meets Little Man Tate! Okay, it's day three of Nano. I did 1254 words this morning, so I'm about 450 words short of the day's target. I'd like to stay current on the wordcount so I can cut loose on Wednesday and get ahead, rather than catch up. But to do so would mean either writing at lunch, when I normally see Patrick, or waiting until after I get home. I wish sometimes there was a way you could just call a time-out at work and go off somewhere private for a while. (This statement, written on the Internet during company time, was brought to you by the Association for an Irony-Rich Future.)Last night, I dreamt Edi and I were in a comic book store and I was looking at all the new releases, trying to figure which ones I should get, and which ones had already been pulled for me at CE. There were a lot of people there, pushing like suckling piglets to get at the racks, and Edi was waiting up at the front. And I was looking at the cover of a comic book called Drowned Boys when I wondered why I was bothering with all this instead of spending time with Edi when she was obviously more important. But before I could do anything, my dream segued into the inside of "Drowned Boys," a macabre adventure comic about boys who swim in the rising tide, drown, and become servants to an underwater Pirate named Lech. I remember swimming for the shore, dead boys bobbing around me, with the intention of discovering the secret cave in the cliffs where Lech had hidden the amulet that would set me free... Morbid comic book aside, some of the dream doubtless came from spending a lot of great time with Edi this weekend. We went to San Jose so I could see her old haunts, and we ended up in the stands of her high school watching the end of the J.V. homecoming game. Me being me, I also bought a caramel apple from the school bake sale which, to properly meet the requirements of fair advertising, should have actually been called a polymer apple. Every time I bit into the thick, dense coating, there was a horribly resonant crunch that sounded less like it came from the fruit and more like it came from my jaw. It was nice and tart, though. Other highlights were raiding the pantry at the Hotel De Anza, seeing the trailer park, and being surrounded by leg-breakers turned servers at Original Joe's. I also had a killer nightmare that night about visiting an academy built around the ruins of an old movie house. Seeing Edi's past brought back indirect bits of my own--thick mists and a constant backdrop of 80's slasher movies. If I was more on top of it, I'd figure out a way to work it into the current NaNovel. Hell, if I start running low on ideas, I just might plop it in there wholesale. posted by Jeff | 9:56 AM | |
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
