1259.
I need to add a horn section near the end, on the ship.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
1262...(2)
1262.
Removed the popsicle stick and the dead mouse. Am now figuring out the keyboard that remains.
Removed the popsicle stick and the dead mouse. Am now figuring out the keyboard that remains.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
1270...(3)
1270.
Returned the pitchfork. Making sure the whole second thread points in the right direction. Seeding it with une fausse idee claire, my current favorite phrase that I can't pronounce correctly.
The feeling is like barreling through Bach's English Suite No. 4, the Prelude, and it turns out one of the piano keys is actually a popsicle stick with a dead mouse strapped to it. Like: I know it would probably sound a lot better if it were a normal piano key and there were no dead mouse strapped to it. Even as I was making it up the first time and the second time, I knew it was wrong and yet there it is.
Two fears: one is "'I would like to buy you a necklace,' he said, extravagantly" writ large. This has to do with trust of words. The other fear? Dessert. Here is, for dessert, creme brulee. And then, to top it off, ice cream. With fudge sauce. And then, next, when all that is cleared away: a perfect raspberry tart. And then! Cookies! Luscious, gooey, crisp chocolate chip cookies. Or: a 37 minute version of Pump It Up.
I also walked into a bookstore and thought I overheard someone say "Yes, do you have How the Irish Invented Your Mom?"
Returned the pitchfork. Making sure the whole second thread points in the right direction. Seeding it with une fausse idee claire, my current favorite phrase that I can't pronounce correctly.
The feeling is like barreling through Bach's English Suite No. 4, the Prelude, and it turns out one of the piano keys is actually a popsicle stick with a dead mouse strapped to it. Like: I know it would probably sound a lot better if it were a normal piano key and there were no dead mouse strapped to it. Even as I was making it up the first time and the second time, I knew it was wrong and yet there it is.
Two fears: one is "'I would like to buy you a necklace,' he said, extravagantly" writ large. This has to do with trust of words. The other fear? Dessert. Here is, for dessert, creme brulee. And then, to top it off, ice cream. With fudge sauce. And then, next, when all that is cleared away: a perfect raspberry tart. And then! Cookies! Luscious, gooey, crisp chocolate chip cookies. Or: a 37 minute version of Pump It Up.
I also walked into a bookstore and thought I overheard someone say "Yes, do you have How the Irish Invented Your Mom?"
Friday, October 26, 2007
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
1270...(7)
1270.
Palimpsest is a piece of paper (or papyrus or parchment or the like) partially erased to make way for new text. It comes from the Greek for "scraped again." It's also not the title of a memoir by Lillian Hellman.
Pentimento is the underlying image on a canvas over which something new has been painted. It is the title of a memoir by Lillian Hellman.
They're great metaphors, especially when you are six years into a project of some large scale. You are working on a different book all the time, but a book that works well shows the progression. You pose questions that are answered later, surprising you (because if they aren't a surprise, you aren't writing but you're setting up straw men). As you edit, you realize that stuff you thought would be important isn't, and vice versa. Then there are also glimpses of an ur-book below it, the book you didn't write, and that's always sad.
James Joyce wakes up the night after he has turned Ulysses over to Sylvia Beach and he cries, "Goddamnit, I forgot to put in a yacht race!"
On the other hand, as you rewrite, you start to feel glimpses of something else peeking through. You start to address the obsessions you didn't have when you started. And these are either part of the book, or they're your next book beginning to be overlaid, badly, on the current one. So the palimpsest works both ways, trying to make sure the old book is integrated with the new one, and that the next book hasn't colored it too much.
Palimpsest is a piece of paper (or papyrus or parchment or the like) partially erased to make way for new text. It comes from the Greek for "scraped again." It's also not the title of a memoir by Lillian Hellman.
Pentimento is the underlying image on a canvas over which something new has been painted. It is the title of a memoir by Lillian Hellman.
They're great metaphors, especially when you are six years into a project of some large scale. You are working on a different book all the time, but a book that works well shows the progression. You pose questions that are answered later, surprising you (because if they aren't a surprise, you aren't writing but you're setting up straw men). As you edit, you realize that stuff you thought would be important isn't, and vice versa. Then there are also glimpses of an ur-book below it, the book you didn't write, and that's always sad.
James Joyce wakes up the night after he has turned Ulysses over to Sylvia Beach and he cries, "Goddamnit, I forgot to put in a yacht race!"
On the other hand, as you rewrite, you start to feel glimpses of something else peeking through. You start to address the obsessions you didn't have when you started. And these are either part of the book, or they're your next book beginning to be overlaid, badly, on the current one. So the palimpsest works both ways, trying to make sure the old book is integrated with the new one, and that the next book hasn't colored it too much.
Monday, October 22, 2007
1260.
1260.
You write a scene and it's about encroaching darkness. And when you rewrite, you realize that logically, you have to move some action around. And you described it pretty well the first time, but when you move it, you realize that it reflects atmospherically the wrong thing. If the movement is from infra-red to ultra-violet in tone, suddenly you have slapped gobs of paint over the middle. Action is right, but the the center of it is unaccountably dark, then goes back to lighter.
That's sort of it. Also, that diminuendo thing. Closing the doors, drawing the shades, making sure the windows are latched. Have I spent the right balance of time with everyone? Does one scene feed into the other, now that I've chopped out the center of the rainbow, flipped it, and taped it vertically to the bottom 1/3rd? No, of course not.
You write a scene and it's about encroaching darkness. And when you rewrite, you realize that logically, you have to move some action around. And you described it pretty well the first time, but when you move it, you realize that it reflects atmospherically the wrong thing. If the movement is from infra-red to ultra-violet in tone, suddenly you have slapped gobs of paint over the middle. Action is right, but the the center of it is unaccountably dark, then goes back to lighter.
That's sort of it. Also, that diminuendo thing. Closing the doors, drawing the shades, making sure the windows are latched. Have I spent the right balance of time with everyone? Does one scene feed into the other, now that I've chopped out the center of the rainbow, flipped it, and taped it vertically to the bottom 1/3rd? No, of course not.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
1254.
There's now, courtesy of that John Berger quotation below, a ghost. It feels right, which either means it is right or I'm wrong.
I have a 3X5 card that says "Trotsky/ My Official Wife/ "The Devil gave us a sense of humor"/ tenesmus" which is part of something, and then the rest is as follows:
Attempting to navigate surprise and inevitability. Happily surprised by the view. Oh, there's an old stone wall. Oh, it has graffiti on it. Who knew?
I have a 3X5 card that says "Trotsky/ My Official Wife/ "The Devil gave us a sense of humor"/ tenesmus" which is part of something, and then the rest is as follows:
He seemed innocent and helpless and that this man would so soon be tickled to death made them feel sorry for him.
Attempting to navigate surprise and inevitability. Happily surprised by the view. Oh, there's an old stone wall. Oh, it has graffiti on it. Who knew?
Friday, October 19, 2007
1251.
1251.
A friend of mine told me what when she was little, she thought that falling asleep was the result of a specific narrative of going to bed. In other words: fluff the pillow, put hands beneath it, turn to side, draw knees up -- and if that didn't work, she would try a different order, throwing back the blankets and getting back into bed, then turning to her side, fluffing the pillow -- all the various combinations. And of course the next night, going to bed, she couldn't remember what had actually led her to sleep, so she had to start all over again.
This reminds me of writing. It's about the release of information. It's also about the awareness of the rewards of certain combinations of motion. When I started writing, I was crippled by the idea that there was one specific way to tell a story, and I had to find the right order. Reader needs to know a bunch of things at once: time, place, character, conflict, details, relationships. Or so I thought. It turns out there are an infinite number of paths, and each one has its benefits and its hazards and failures.
And there's a balancing act between information and omission. You have to have faith that the reader is inferring all that you imply, because that bond is a great pleasure. Right now I'm drawing back on the overt and ratcheting up the implied. If you decide, while writing the 97th draft of a scene, that it should end with an orangutan swinging in from the shadows, you have the choice of either telegraphing that or letting it be a surprise. If it's a surprise, you might want to make sure you're writing the kind of book where an orangutan can appear without puzzling the reader too much. Or it's THE puzzle. The scene I'm working on needs foreshadowing. An ook ook here and mysterious almost human forms lazily walking with saddle strides in the distance. So I'm inserting those even as I'm taking out other hand holds.
A friend of mine told me what when she was little, she thought that falling asleep was the result of a specific narrative of going to bed. In other words: fluff the pillow, put hands beneath it, turn to side, draw knees up -- and if that didn't work, she would try a different order, throwing back the blankets and getting back into bed, then turning to her side, fluffing the pillow -- all the various combinations. And of course the next night, going to bed, she couldn't remember what had actually led her to sleep, so she had to start all over again.
This reminds me of writing. It's about the release of information. It's also about the awareness of the rewards of certain combinations of motion. When I started writing, I was crippled by the idea that there was one specific way to tell a story, and I had to find the right order. Reader needs to know a bunch of things at once: time, place, character, conflict, details, relationships. Or so I thought. It turns out there are an infinite number of paths, and each one has its benefits and its hazards and failures.
And there's a balancing act between information and omission. You have to have faith that the reader is inferring all that you imply, because that bond is a great pleasure. Right now I'm drawing back on the overt and ratcheting up the implied. If you decide, while writing the 97th draft of a scene, that it should end with an orangutan swinging in from the shadows, you have the choice of either telegraphing that or letting it be a surprise. If it's a surprise, you might want to make sure you're writing the kind of book where an orangutan can appear without puzzling the reader too much. Or it's THE puzzle. The scene I'm working on needs foreshadowing. An ook ook here and mysterious almost human forms lazily walking with saddle strides in the distance. So I'm inserting those even as I'm taking out other hand holds.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
1249...
1249...
From Ways of Seeing by John Berger:
I hadn't read this book before. This morning, I found it on the shelf while looking randomly at things, which is sometimes helpful when you're stuck. You never know when you'll pull a book off a shelf, see a guillotine illustrated and think, "I know! My scene needs a guillotine!" And the quotation above (there's a lot more to it than that) reminded me of what I'm working on.
It also reminded me of a 1916 book on film theory which is concerned with what this brand-new iteration of "seeing" meant to the world. The argument in that book was that audiences identify so completely with actors on film that even in moments where a stunt double has taken their places, we don't notice, or don't want to notice the substitution, because we have become part of what we're surveying. We don't want to be jarred out of it by recognizing bad edits, illogical leaps, and most importantly new actors taking the place of old. There is some link that I don't yet understand between those two ideas: film theory and Berger's observations on "presence." I think it has to do with movie stars.
Added: one ghost. This is either a good idea or a bad one.
From Ways of Seeing by John Berger:
...the social presence of a woman is different in kind from that of a man. A man's presence is dependent upon the promise of power which he embodies...its object is always exterior to the man....
By contrast, a woman's presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her. Her presence is manifest in her gestures, voice, opinions, expressions, clothes...indeed, there is nothing she can do which does not contribute to her presence...
A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping....She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others, and ultimately how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another.
I hadn't read this book before. This morning, I found it on the shelf while looking randomly at things, which is sometimes helpful when you're stuck. You never know when you'll pull a book off a shelf, see a guillotine illustrated and think, "I know! My scene needs a guillotine!" And the quotation above (there's a lot more to it than that) reminded me of what I'm working on.
It also reminded me of a 1916 book on film theory which is concerned with what this brand-new iteration of "seeing" meant to the world. The argument in that book was that audiences identify so completely with actors on film that even in moments where a stunt double has taken their places, we don't notice, or don't want to notice the substitution, because we have become part of what we're surveying. We don't want to be jarred out of it by recognizing bad edits, illogical leaps, and most importantly new actors taking the place of old. There is some link that I don't yet understand between those two ideas: film theory and Berger's observations on "presence." I think it has to do with movie stars.
Added: one ghost. This is either a good idea or a bad one.
1249...
1249...
Finished the side project. Sometimes projects you have little talent for end up being highly satisfying. Relieved of both convention and worry, you can plough out humorous little things. So I gave it a shot. Done!
Tomorrow: finishing my scene with Princesses, crossbows, et al...
Finished the side project. Sometimes projects you have little talent for end up being highly satisfying. Relieved of both convention and worry, you can plough out humorous little things. So I gave it a shot. Done!
Tomorrow: finishing my scene with Princesses, crossbows, et al...
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
1249...
1249...
Attention is turned two places: the dismount is one. I see the end of a scene like the end of a gymnastics routine. And I am conscious of that moment where the saw horse has been conquered, gravity returns, and with lovely and full extension, both feet go to the ground, the arms begin to raise in that Y of triumph, and then one leg skids out on some chalk, the arms make cartoon-like circles in the air, the gymnist hops three times on one foot for balance, then returns to form: TA DAH. So much of the performance beforehand vanishes, even as the crowd applauds for him regaining composure at the last minute.
Henry James said at the end of The Wings of a Dove "We shall never again be as we were," and scenes should feel like that, in either major or minor key, don't you think? Reader finishes scene, realizes book has changed, wants to read next scene. Endings usually show up around the time that beginnings do, and a lot of work is just cutting a furrow from one to the other, while making sure no one can see where the furrow is heading (unless it doubles back, or unless you give them a brief sighting of Oz in the distance).
Here's an ending: diminuendo. And another: kaBLAM, with someone giving someone else a kick to the head, Chris Sims-style. And another: the reveal -- ah-Ha! And the single melancholy figure walking away down a dirt road, iris drawing shut. Turns out you can't make a wax mold in one of these shapes and then pour your ending into it. You have to listen, instead, to the scene, and to be prepared that at the very last second, it will announce itself. You have to be good enough to listen. Otherwise, you miss your stop. You're looking for a fanfare of brass, the scream of an F-16 across the sky, and it turns out what you just wrote was a muttering epigram in untranslated Coptic. You cross it out and -- wrong! -- that might have been exactly where to get off the train. Forcing it to fit always feels wrong. I wrote something in a last draft that worked really well; now it's another draft and even though I like the writing, it's like the slip in the chalkdust for the poor guy getting the 5.4 from the Romanian judge. So that's on my mind.
And second place for attention these days: learning new skills. Side project, working in a form I'm not that good at yet. But I'm lucky in that I'm collaborating with someone who makes me look good. I finish it tonight, then back to the fade-out, a bottle of chartreuse, a crossbow and a pony sleigh.
Attention is turned two places: the dismount is one. I see the end of a scene like the end of a gymnastics routine. And I am conscious of that moment where the saw horse has been conquered, gravity returns, and with lovely and full extension, both feet go to the ground, the arms begin to raise in that Y of triumph, and then one leg skids out on some chalk, the arms make cartoon-like circles in the air, the gymnist hops three times on one foot for balance, then returns to form: TA DAH. So much of the performance beforehand vanishes, even as the crowd applauds for him regaining composure at the last minute.
Henry James said at the end of The Wings of a Dove "We shall never again be as we were," and scenes should feel like that, in either major or minor key, don't you think? Reader finishes scene, realizes book has changed, wants to read next scene. Endings usually show up around the time that beginnings do, and a lot of work is just cutting a furrow from one to the other, while making sure no one can see where the furrow is heading (unless it doubles back, or unless you give them a brief sighting of Oz in the distance).
Here's an ending: diminuendo. And another: kaBLAM, with someone giving someone else a kick to the head, Chris Sims-style. And another: the reveal -- ah-Ha! And the single melancholy figure walking away down a dirt road, iris drawing shut. Turns out you can't make a wax mold in one of these shapes and then pour your ending into it. You have to listen, instead, to the scene, and to be prepared that at the very last second, it will announce itself. You have to be good enough to listen. Otherwise, you miss your stop. You're looking for a fanfare of brass, the scream of an F-16 across the sky, and it turns out what you just wrote was a muttering epigram in untranslated Coptic. You cross it out and -- wrong! -- that might have been exactly where to get off the train. Forcing it to fit always feels wrong. I wrote something in a last draft that worked really well; now it's another draft and even though I like the writing, it's like the slip in the chalkdust for the poor guy getting the 5.4 from the Romanian judge. So that's on my mind.
And second place for attention these days: learning new skills. Side project, working in a form I'm not that good at yet. But I'm lucky in that I'm collaborating with someone who makes me look good. I finish it tonight, then back to the fade-out, a bottle of chartreuse, a crossbow and a pony sleigh.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Sunday, October 14, 2007
1249.
1249.
A better writer could figure out how to keep Thoinot Arbeau. Today marks his excision, alas.
A better writer could figure out how to keep Thoinot Arbeau. Today marks his excision, alas.
1249.
1249.
Bringing in Cadbury chocolate, a progression of dress uniform from military wear to something more slapstick, removing extra bodies, making the process of falling in love faster, eliminating the statement of ideas. You don't need to show your work -- you have to trust at some point that if you throw A, B, C, D up there, you can skip E, include F, and then go G J L P S, and if there's momentum, people feel like they're flying over buildings -- with you!
Here's a trick to making a scene move faster by slowing it down at first: your character has a single penetrating desire all the way through a scene. But, upon meeting another character, he wants something different. A kid wants a goldfish for his birthday. He meets a bigger, cooler kid who convinces him he wants a piranha. Now the kid wants a piranha. He gets the goldfish at the end and is disappointed. Okay, that's fine. But: you also in rewriting figure out that the big kid wants the kid's goldfish, so he can feed it to his piranha -- but he isn't going to say that. So the interchange isn't just about what one character wants but two and how they interact and what secret agendas are on the table. That makes it seem faster even if it's slower.
Next: same stuff as above, plus: parents will save us; bridge; chocolate, again; propaganda; timing Wod reveal; "ally mate Mary B," the last of which I don't know what it means. My handwriting is terrible.
Bringing in Cadbury chocolate, a progression of dress uniform from military wear to something more slapstick, removing extra bodies, making the process of falling in love faster, eliminating the statement of ideas. You don't need to show your work -- you have to trust at some point that if you throw A, B, C, D up there, you can skip E, include F, and then go G J L P S, and if there's momentum, people feel like they're flying over buildings -- with you!
Here's a trick to making a scene move faster by slowing it down at first: your character has a single penetrating desire all the way through a scene. But, upon meeting another character, he wants something different. A kid wants a goldfish for his birthday. He meets a bigger, cooler kid who convinces him he wants a piranha. Now the kid wants a piranha. He gets the goldfish at the end and is disappointed. Okay, that's fine. But: you also in rewriting figure out that the big kid wants the kid's goldfish, so he can feed it to his piranha -- but he isn't going to say that. So the interchange isn't just about what one character wants but two and how they interact and what secret agendas are on the table. That makes it seem faster even if it's slower.
Next: same stuff as above, plus: parents will save us; bridge; chocolate, again; propaganda; timing Wod reveal; "ally mate Mary B," the last of which I don't know what it means. My handwriting is terrible.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Thursday, October 11, 2007
1251.
1251.
Maneuvering slowly, cutting and simplifying, through a showstopper, from Aarne and Hugo to die Königin ist fünfzig Fuß hoch.
Maneuvering slowly, cutting and simplifying, through a showstopper, from Aarne and Hugo to die Königin ist fünfzig Fuß hoch.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
1256...
1256...
+
Edited Archangel from "Cowboys of Verst 38" to meeting Aarne in "Hugo's Fairy Tale."
Smoothing things, feels right. Fearful of what the next two days will bring, as they requires I actually be good. I am more comfortable with striving toward adequacy.
The photograph above is of Miss Hope Drown, from the 1923 film Hollywood. The plot was diabolical: she comes to California with big dreams of acting. Her whole family follows. And one by one, everyone from her grandpa to her baby brother, they all become famous movie stars. But she can't get a lick of work. Not one. The movie costarred everyone. Chaplin, Fairbanks, Arbuckle, Gloria Swanson, Mary Astor, Anna Q. Nilssen, Agnes Ayers, William Boyd, Viola Dana, Pola Negri, the Demilles, every Pickford within a 100 mile radius...everyone. And it was a success, and then it was forgotten and then every single copy of it (nitrate) went to dust. Contemporary reviews were both positive and cruel, in that they praised the film but didn't want to give anything away. "We'll not explain what marvelous ad libs Mister Chaplin performs at the train station," and so forth. It was a bit about ecclesiastical Buddhism by the end. So this is a photo of Hope Drown sitting on her bed, back to us, awaiting the break that would never come.
Oh, by the way: Hope Drown? That was her real name. Graduated from Beverly High in 1919. Worked on the year book. And after "Hollywood," the film? Never worked on another movie again.
Monday, October 8, 2007
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Friday, October 5, 2007
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Monday, October 1, 2007
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