O Evil Planet

199.

2011-08-26T14:28:00.000-07:00

Less.

Less less less less less less less less less less less less less less.

I remember a farcical title for a book: Science Simplified to the Point of Inaccuracy.

That's about right.

201.

2011-08-18T19:16:00.000-07:00

Starting to close doors. Doors were already closing but I didn't know it.

The list of what has to happen is shrinking. Just because it happened doesn't mean it has to be written down.

Dread might be a fine motivation.

As it continues, search for clarity and inevitability and (contra-indicated) surprise.

No idea what the leap off the balance beam and onto the mat will look like.

198.

2011-08-17T19:53:00.000-07:00

A golden-plate spike.

1. From mania to reflection: learning to think. This must just be self-evident. You can't explain it.

2. Giving up Leo. It hinges (now) on that.

168.

2011-08-17T14:48:00.000-07:00

The feeling is that I tried to make an automobile. I ended up with three round wheels and one square one. And that in this draft I have been adding wheels. So that it still has one square wheel but now there are wheels on the roof, the windshield, popping out of the trunk, wheels in the driver's seat.

Or: I read a book review in 1980 or so that slammed the novelist for saying that a character had been run over by a "lime green car." "Who cares that it's lime green?" the reviewer asked. It was cited as an unimportant detail thrown in to make something seem more grounded. I have had the fear of God in me ever since that the details I think ground a scene are in fact a fleet of lime green cars, in this case covered hood to boot with big, shiny, aerodynamically crushing wheels.

127. But also: that Cocktail

2011-07-19T18:22:00.000-07:00

So, you've likely noticed I don't tend to explain things much here. That's because this blog is for my own benefit, the equivalent of a perpetual first-and-a-half draft. The equation goes like this: first draft, for the author; every subsequent draft, increasingly for the world. But people keep asking me about this, so, courtesy of drinkspirits.com here is the amazing Cafe Flora Carter Beats the Devil cocktail. It is an amazing cocktail and though, kids, you can try this at home, it won't be as good as the Cafe Flora version.

Carter Beats the Devil
2 oz El Tesoro Reposado Tequila
1 oz. fresh lime juice
1/2 oz. organic agave nectar
1/4 oz. del Maguey Minero Mescal
20 drops (eye dropper) of chili tincture*

*To make chili tincture, cover Thai chilis with overproof rum for two weeks, strain.

Put all ingredients in a cocktail shaker, add ice, shake well and pour, straining out the ice.

True story: while I was writing Carter, I kept wanting to set a scene in the building that Cafe Flora later occupied. It's a great piece of Oakland architecture.

125.

2011-07-17T09:28:00.000-07:00

Editing out explanations.

115.

2011-07-08T00:58:00.000-07:00

Will repetition of structure cause pleasure or predictability? Is there pleasure in predictability (well, yeah, I know, sometimes but not other times; it's semi-rhetorical). What I mean is: in this case, what I'm writing now, the risk I'm worrying about is that if I too often repeat a set of beats, will that be something a reader digs on or thinks is annoying?

114.

2011-07-01T11:53:00.001-07:00

Wichita.

103.

2011-06-25T10:08:00.000-07:00

Intermission: Carter Beats the Devil in 12 minutes 54 seconds

2011-06-12T23:02:00.000-07:00

Seriously: fantastic.
Click here for sheer joy.

99.

2011-06-11T22:01:00.000-07:00

99.

2011-06-10T23:18:00.001-07:00

Currently, the hardest thing about writing? Letting the wrong words stand there. Because they have to.

99.

2011-06-10T01:47:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you need to let the more gelatinous parts stay where they are, with notes all around them. Some pages with a lot of writing and cross outs on them can't actually be rewritten. The new words are just ciphers for "help! help!"

I'm putting those parts aside for now and going forward, trusting that in a month or six, I won't be painting and patching the old sections but instead seeing daylight and knowing where to cut.

98.

2011-06-08T23:40:00.000-07:00

I wonder if the spongiest parts, when rewritten, will end up being the best parts or the most painted-and-patched parts.

I remember reading a scholar on changing acceptable language for race. His point was that we keep changing the name of something because we're still uncomfortable with the concept behind it. That's turning out to be true here, too. I am writing and rewriting the stuff when I'm not comfortable with the feelings that underlie. So the question is whether that will be a matter of rearranging sentences or tossing the whole attempt to see and starting over. .

98.

2011-06-07T09:37:00.000-07:00

Finally (ahah!) don't explain the normal, either.

98.

2011-06-04T08:38:00.001-07:00

"I did this from love. But of myself? And did I know the difference?"

I think that's the sound of something cracking open, maybe.

98.

2011-06-03T23:00:00.000-07:00

Also: it is unwise to justify the paranormal.

98.

2011-06-03T08:00:00.001-07:00

Don't explain irrational behavior.

Don't explain that irrational behavior is irrational.

Don't explain how you feel about irrational behavior.

"Knowing what I know..." Nope.

98.

2011-06-02T10:09:00.000-07:00

I know this isn't really the Parallax View, but if one of the things you have to suffer when writing narrative is the release of information -- that is you know a story has to contain certain things -- what you sweat over is initially the order in which everything comes out. Your protagonist is a kid. Should you mention he's good to his parents and has a dog before you mention he's robbing banks? That probably makes a difference. And there's other information: shirt color vs. how tall he is -- whose ordering actually has no import.

Then the alchemy begins: information that's crucial to the story can, when you have enough there already, not be mentioned at all. That Hemingway riff: "For sale, baby shoes, never worn," the rest of the story comes into your head without needing the rest. The point is in trusting the contract between reader and yourself. The contract is harder every day there's an internet, because the synapses used to fire off those particular connections are now keeping multiple windows open and seeing if anyone hot has emailed you. (You kids off my lawn. Now.)

Further, people tend to read differently. You can mention someone's Liberty of London tie 800 times and some readers will have the association you want, others will hold the character up to a totally different set of prejudices and many won't have a clue what it means.

And the current issue: there's what you know now and what you knew then and all the opinions that happened in between.

98.

2011-06-01T08:24:00.000-07:00

There is a taxonomy of naps. You'd think the subtyping relies on measuring quality of refreshment, but I don't think so. The 20 minute nap, the deeper 60 minute nap, and then the utterly useless 2-hour, face-down, sweaty two hour nap after which you think you might still need to sleep, and when you wake up, the sheet creases on your face look like scarification. Obviously, that nap was too heavy.

I had this vision: diving into a lake, and arching perfectly so you head to a perfect depth at which you weigh nothing and your motion is effortless. The return to the surface feels pre-ordained.

Now that's the platonic nap.

And, if the water might be words, it's the platonic chapter.

98. cont'd

2011-05-30T21:50:00.000-07:00

The title of this Goya is "Aun Aprendo," which translates as "I am still learning."

With that in mind:

When do you put your thumb on the scale?

98.

2011-05-30T21:35:00.001-07:00

And urgent.

(0)

2010-12-02T12:49:00.000-08:00

> tap tap <

Hello?

This thing on?

Ahem.

22.

2010-07-01T19:56:00.000-07:00

And howdy: I believe the narrative voice has arrived.

16,

2010-06-28T17:46:00.000-07:00

At this point I literally don't know one thing that's not on the page and I'm not worrying about decisions or consequence.

13.

2010-06-27T17:30:00.000-07:00

True: if you are put on a plain in nature (or, I suppose, a plane in geometry) and told to walk in a straight line, eventually you will walk in a circle.

I think writers might fear that fact but they also know it's true. If you put one sentence in front of another, how long does it take for the story you're producing to veer off that line you drew? Like: two sentences.

The extra worry is that every decision you make is actually a step in yet another different direction.

Today's theory: sometimes it's nice to just go on a walk and see what happens.

The Shallows, cont'd. (3)

2010-06-26T08:36:00.000-07:00

...our unconscious thought processes don't engage with a problem until we've clearly and consciously defined the problem. If we don't have a particular intellectual goal in mind...unconscious thought does not occur.

-- Nicholas Carr, The Shallows, p. 119

My brain has been playing that language in a loop for a day now.

The Shallows. (0)

2010-06-23T16:55:00.000-07:00

Every project works roughly the same way: I go slowly at first, and it's hard to find the voice sentence by sentence. Then it's easier. Then there's a moment when it's much harder to see, even if I know the ending, what happens in between where I am and where the story finishes. Then I spot connections and write them down.

When there's a finished draft, there's a lot wrong and it bugs me. I can't really settle down, even when I'm not at the computer, because I know there are misplaced sentences, ideas, scenes, whatever. If the ms. is with a reader, I await judgment. I fidget. When the critical voices (my own, other people's) have spoken, I percolate. I rewrite. I rewrite. I get it wrong again. I stew. Then it's right enough to go out.

I re-read many times, even if it's been published. I still find things to change. I mark up versions. If I'm doing a reading I might read a newer version of the story.

That's not what's happening now.

Instead, if a piece of artistic work is like a body, and the movement of ideas is like the flow of blood, each heartbeat forces the blood to move, because it's not the nature of blood to move on its own. You need impetus. The heartbeat is the will to make things move and change. I think the internet is good at silencing my heartbeat.

What I mean by this -- and for once on this blog, I'm relatively concerned with being clear to readers who aren't me -- is that with every point I describe above, every sticking point, every place on the decision tree where only my own anxiety, focus and will can cause a story to go forward, every time, the internet is an easier place to go than the confines and difficulties of my own mind.

How that works is like this: I get five pages into a story. There's a moment where a character is (for instance) offered a profiterole and wonders if he'll get it on his cashmere sweater. (No, that's not a real example, but...) I myself don't know the answer: does he take the profiterole or not? The question bothers me. I need to look away. Now, normally, meaning most of my working life, I am only looking away on one level, by literally getting up and walking around, eating an apple, bothering the dog. And inside my mind, there's that heartbeat of unconsciousness forcing ideas around my brain. Profiteroles. Cashmere. Not only will he say yes, but he'll get it on his sister's satin jacket, the one given to her by the Princess of Malfi. It will estrange them. And, having thought that, back to the story, where I write again until it gets hard, again.

But now: the worst possible thing, instead. I might think "I'll look up 'profiterole' on the internet." (Not doing that right now -- I'm only mildly sure of what a profiterole is. I've seen the word repeatedly lately, in that 'Shrimp/Plate of Shrimp' way.) I look it up. I find something interesting. I check my email. I find something interesting. I stop finding interesting things. I don't let that stop me. I wonder how Obama's doing with the oil spill. I wonder how my friends are doing. I accidentally find out how my enemies are doing (they're doing well, so thoughtful of me to ask) and I scowl and then I need to look at movie trailers and then, oh, there's another email, and oh, profiteroles are cream-filled French pastries with beads of dry sugar at the top. (No, they aren't but there's no fucking way I'm getting on the net to research that.) This gives me an idea, I think, and I go back to the story.

Which I find I don't care about that much. But I put it in. I find some reason it works. I move ahead.

Repeat this for every hard decision I need to make. I might get deeper into the story in the sense of it being closer to finished, but the sense of urgency and blood I had is somehow diluted. My ability to make connections among disparate things is lessened. Some level of critical thinking is impacted. I find that when I am anxious that instead of putting that energy into writing, I want to check my email. I want to look stuff up. The urge to make connections is a heartbeat, too, it's a source of life. I worry that the net is killing my heartbeat.

I'm working hard on the concept of living in one place at a time. This blog is, in its impenetrable way, part of that. Another part is to work on only one thing. So, right now I'm working on a response essay for a website that said very nice things about my recent novel. But as I'm doing it I'm reading The Shallows by Nicholas Carr, about these very issues, and I'm seeing a reflection of what I've been writing about: how our ability to make narrative might just be coming unwound.

How do we fix this?

In Medias Res, June 2010 edition

2010-06-06T00:00:00.000-07:00

1. Two-thirds of a draft involving the animatronic kangaroo. I now realize the kangaroo must go, which means the big shoot out in which the kangaroo walks away into the distance, flipping his lucky coin, must go. I think I'm going to focus on people instead.

2. Just a few lines of dialogue, maybe five minutes worth, read aloud, and the faintest hint of how this could be self-contained. The containment is attractive. I have thought of those Matthew Barney scrawls under the dome of SFMOMA as both annoying and as having a point.

3. Just the concept: a two-handed story, an interview that goes horribly wrong.

4. Two-thirds of a draft in which The Courage Test should show up. But so far it doesn't. This might be the author's fault.

5. Lolly.

6. This is actually next, and what's holding me back is tone. Followed by shape. But tone is critical right now.

I have been wondering whether multitasking would work.

No.

128. But really, don't get excited

2010-02-10T10:46:00.000-08:00

So, let's say you're watching a new cop show on this thing called "television," which is an archaic form of tivo or iTunes. And the show, episode after episode, delivers great writing, crisp characters, tense situations and gritty, urban drama you want to keep coming back for. Oh, and the gruff Captain is played by an animatronic kangaroo.

I figure that might have happened for one of two reasons. Either the creators had it in there from the beginning, "Our show, Guts and Pouches, will be different from all the others because the gruff Captain is played by an animatronic kangaroo." And they were really excited about that. Or when they were turning in drafts to the network, some producer there said, "You know what this really needs? An animatronic kangaroo." And they grumbled but they put it in.

Two ways it might have happened; three potential outcomes.

1. No one notices. No review ever mentions it.
2. It makes the show. The Washington Post says "It's a keeper if only because the gruff Captain is played by an animatronic kangaroo." The kangaroo gets his own discussions at Television without Pity.
3. It's a disaster. From the beginning, fans and critics wonder what the hell was going through the creators' minds. It drags the show down. Finally, the kangaroo is gone.

I use a tv show as an example because unlike other forms of art, currently, it's cumulative. You have to keep going back to it. With other artforms, you get one shot to get it right.

I am currently deep, almost done with, a project in which I fret that in many scenes, the gruff Captain is played by an animatronic kangaroo. No one forced me to put him there. I did it myself. But, given that this is not a tv series I'm writing (SPOILER: I'm not writing a TV series), I have one shot.

100. No, really.

2010-02-04T22:08:00.000-08:00

This won't be a complete treatise, only a comment on something my friends and I have talked about: creating something comes with a huge, crippling fear of success. Or a fear of failure. Or both. Fear of failure is the one people talk about, and it seems to be more easily sanctioned. Of course you don't want to fail.

But fear of success is much more mysterious. There's some primal part of the brain that gets upset with change -- that I understand. But there's also something in the brain that sighs with relaxation when a project goes south. Why is it that some part of me is relieved to not finish something?

I'm not in that mode now, so this all feels slightly academic, or like trying to sing show tunes when you're blue. But it will come back, I promise. And that's the point (again) where I'll recognize (again) what concurrent behaviors reinforce fear of success.

Same as last time

2009-12-22T17:46:00.000-08:00

At some point we're going to discuss Fear of Success.

One clue: how long will it take me to post something about Fear of Success and does posting it mean willingness to confront the issue or an interest in not actually writing my work?

22. Thereabouts.

2009-12-17T14:19:00.000-08:00

I'm just starting to see the outlines of the whole piece's form. It's not so much that I've hiked up a mountaintop. More like I've heaped jigsaw puzzle pieces into different stacks and I've started to figure out that a certain percentage of this thing is going to look like seashore and a certain percentage an egret. Or turkey. No, no, egret.

I am feeling blindly, but every day I have a few lines that seem apt, and I write them down, and I just yesterday got to the place where one set of lines met another, two railway tracks heading in the same direction.

18, more or less

2009-12-02T21:42:00.000-08:00

Working outside of my comfort zone.

I have a basic structure in mind for this -- it's something relatively short and I think I know most of the actions that have to happen. But each individual scene doesn't have a shape yet. Generally I need an ending before I can get comfortable with the rhythm and the depth of detail and the places to deviate. If I know the end it's easier to know when I'm driving toward it and when I'm faking left.

Accepting now that I don't know any of that now, today I just started writing what I do know. In the middle of maybe six scenes. It's a little like doing a jigsaw puzzle and taking the pieces that are definitely people and definitely faces, and leaving the blue sky for later.

15

2009-11-30T19:37:00.000-08:00

That count is estimated, as I'm working in a weird format.

Anyway: I actually did have a guy with a gun come in, and everything changed. I'm currently wrestling with whether combining two ideas is going to generate one deeper storyline. The alternative is that it's going to be two separate horses jogging along together until they don't. One of the pieces I'm toying with is significantly older than the other, which might work well.

The key to this current piece is staying true to character, which feels now like trying to stay on a balance beam during a hurricane. The hurricane is the dark force of comedy. Every moment is a chance to toss away character in pursuit of a laugh, and the discipline is all about not going broad. Broad is bad.

I'm also learning that some ideas I knew I wanted to get to are no good anymore. I might have written them five years ago but not now. That story about Tolstoy? Alas.

The white noise has receded a bit and I think I'll threaten to keep at this until it's done.

10

2009-09-30T10:23:00.000-07:00

I transcribed something old, and the words and characters changed as I typed. Also: the meaning of some dialogue was apparent to me now in a way it wasn't then. I was more naïve about how people thought, and what I'd written as coincidence now struck me as the beginnings of conniving behavior.

One character is too much a reactor and a deliverer of straight lines, with some quirks I know will come later. I was thinking of her being the moral compass of the piece, but that requires a vocabulatry I haven't given her yet.

I have sketched out some sedentary but funny interactions. But there's no clock on it. There's no increasing pressure. So I have to decide I care enough about this piece to go back and fix it. Or: does it need increasing pressure? "When all else fails, have a guy with a gun come in" seems arbitrary. I'm early enough and free enough to just play with it until something natural makes me want to keep the pages turning.

A Day's Pleasure: an explanation

2009-08-17T21:42:00.000-07:00

What you see above is a late (but not final) image of the wraparound cover of a book I wrote and helped design. It's called A Day's Pleasure, and it was issued in March 2009 by Knopf. There's a good description of how it came to be riiight here.

I don't think there's a full image of the cover anywhere else on the web, which I rather enjoy. To see what the book looks like, you more or less need to own a copy, which is cool. Likewise, there are no images of the Patrick McDonnell illustrations anywhere, and only one person has shown a scan of the JD King plate.

There seem to be almost no copies available, and to answer people's questions: there were 850 copies that I signed and numbered for Powell's (and which sold out in five days or so). JD and I also signed and numbered 100 limited edition copies. There's an ultra-limited edition: twenty six copies, signed, numbered and slipcased.

Significant Objects

2009-08-04T10:33:00.000-07:00

This was fun to do. And it's my first published fiction since Sunnyside.

A New 0

2009-08-04T10:31:00.000-07:00

Gave it a couple of weeks and realized I didn't want to write it. There's a school of thought that getting into any writing situation, no matter how ludicrous, will ultimately teach you something. Which is true. But I think I'd rather be taught something else by some other story.

This was going to be a short story, but the subject matter would have required a novel's-worth of preparation. I'd rather do something else.

0.

2009-07-21T23:21:00.001-07:00

I'm thinking about the Literature of Contempt. Also - related - the Literature of Insecurity.

0.

2009-07-20T23:19:00.000-07:00

I don't know the answer to this: when gathering threads for a story, it's necessary to shift focus repeatedly, to be distracted by the wind so you can be open. Why is it, then, that the internet is so disruptive to thought? I think it might be because it mimics the freedom of woolgathering while substituting, like a cuckoo's egg, its own images for the ones you might have made up.

0.

2009-07-18T22:51:00.000-07:00

0. And Why It Took Eight Years

2009-07-16T08:19:00.000-07:00

Sun was in eyes (3 months)
Confusion as to whether "Get Set! Go!" meant "Go!" or not (1 week)
Pen rolled under desk; inconsolable (2 weeks)
Sight of self in window looked both melancholy and hypnotic (1 week)
Practice not shaving for potential increase in hypnotic, melancholy reflection (5 weeks)
Took dog to beach (1 month)
Dark plotting against enemies (6 weeks)
Gloating, rubbing together of long, tapering fingers (6 weeks)
Admiration of large, swirling opal ring (4 weeks)
Attempt to teach parrot to sit on shoulder, gloat with me (1 day)
Emergency room visit (6 hours)
Reluctance to put aside 1500 page manuscript about sophomore year in high school (1 year, 8 months)
Chair too high (3 weeks)
Desk too low (2 weeks)
Selection of proper font (1 year, four months)
Dark plotting against friends (3 weeks)
No, chair really still too high; feet couldn't reach floor (3 weeks)
Weeping over lack of remaining friends (6 weeks)
Watching this video (2 months)
Cat sitting on manuscript (3 months)
Project Runway (3 months)
Proper stretching of psoas muscle (4 1/2 weeks)
Consideration and rejection of following main characters: Captain Hook, William Fuld, a talking pencil, a weeping gondolier, Lucifuge Rofocale, Sparky the Noble Failure, Man Thing, Duveen, a stamp-collecting ace reporter, the Minister of Fashion, Apollo, Apollo Creed, Baba Yaga's more reasonable sister, a race of hypersensitive kittycats. (2 years)

0.

2009-07-14T22:13:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine who was teaching a group of young kids with horrific home lives told me this: one day she started telling them a nonsense story -- the sky is green, cows are driving cars -- and there was no response from them. She realized with a sickened feeling that for them, everything was equally likely. I think she started to wonder if that was hell.

I've been thinking about how events are essentially chaotic, which is different than everything being equally likely -- but it's that difference that I can't immediately explain.

Because it's there, because it's like a loose tooth (who first used that as a simile for making stuff up? it's pretty good), I am starting with this fistful of gum wrappers and pieces of string and mints: the woods, a trio, and their cross-ambitions. Et les flics.

0.

2009-07-13T21:17:00.000-07:00

If you scratch under apathy's surface -- in other words, if apathy blinks for a moment -- you find that its batteries are powered by fear. "Why bother?" is convenient.

So: there are a couple of models. One: wandering through a museum, you can see when an artist cracked it, found his mojo, got a following. It's because there are often seventy-eight variations on a theme, riffs on painting #1. That's utterly valid, because you never know -- you might not really get it right until #78.

The other: in an interview, one of the Modern Lovers talked about going on tour with Jonathan Richman, and how the group was excited about building on "Roadrunner," and all Jonathan wanted to do was write songs like "Hey There, Little Insect." In other words, stuff that would get them thrown off the stage. But stuff he wanted to do, maybe because so many people wanted more of "Roadrunner." More apt maybe is One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest followed up by Sometimes a Great Notion. "This may not be what I do best nor is it what you expect but it's what I need to do." Which might be exactly what the artist who paints the same goddamned thing 78 times is thinking.

And the third way? Hands? Maybe you just proceed with humility and without expectation and one day you're either finished with a shiny replica of what you've already accomplished or you've done something completely different. And I bet you won't know which it is, not really.

I've recently been butchering an Orson Welles quotation, which should actually read like this: "The enemy of art is the absence of limitations." I've been saying things like "absolute freedom is the absolute enemy of an artist," which is different, more of a punch in the head, and more weirdly personal. So I am starting this project with some limits in mind.

(These aren't limits - they're notes.)

1. How little can you say?
2. If you finished writing a book, you don't have to keep writing it.
3. Open.
4. The illusion of knowing everything, with compassion, stops being illusion as soon as someone is reading and nodding, yes, I see, got it.

0

2009-07-12T09:15:00.000-07:00

You heard me: 0.

May 12, 2009

2008-09-17T00:13:00.000-07:00

Just so you know this whole thing hasn't been a hallucination. Nor is the plan to reissue Carter Beats the Devil as my Collected Works (though that would rock).

Details here.

-- 988 --

2008-08-16T22:24:00.000-07:00

Happy Trails.

988.

2008-08-15T23:29:00.000-07:00

At a certain point, all you can see is a forest floor of untied shoelaces.

993.

2008-08-15T20:46:00.000-07:00

1000.

2008-08-15T09:26:00.000-07:00

1001.

2008-08-13T23:24:00.001-07:00

1006.

2008-08-13T09:44:00.001-07:00

Too much weather. Weather should be a character and not a placeholder. I think.

1008.

2008-08-10T00:15:00.001-07:00

1023.

2008-08-09T13:10:00.000-07:00

It's War and Peace meets My Dinner with Andre.

1039.

2008-08-08T22:51:00.001-07:00

1046

2008-08-06T20:21:00.000-07:00

As soon as you're done telling yourself what you need to, maybe the choices are to put it in a box and tape it up, or to toss it out there and see if anyone else wants to play. If someone you trust likes some of it, your choice then is whether to start letting it go. Because a lot of this is about calling out from your heart and then hoping someone else out there recognizes what you're trying to say. (This is obvious, I know, but today is Obvious Day.) So after that personal, painful, vulnerable, personal gesture, it's time to start cutting the strings that bind you.

So now I'm doing the things I would never have thought of on my own, and this is liberating. Sweeping away the failed gods (you just know there are gods that never caught on -- there have to be) and tired details. Two things that should be obvious (because it's Obvious Day):

1) The benshi? Couldn't fit it in.
2) Tatiana the witch? Likewise.

Only seven years later...

2008-05-31T20:56:00.001-07:00

Done.

1038.

2008-05-31T14:34:00.000-07:00

1007.

2008-04-27T23:42:00.000-07:00

Now the re-building. I'm finding this interesting: if you have a scene written (say) three years ago, you have re-read certain paragraphs without questioning them for awhile. And then, without warning, they lose meaning. Either because what you intended for them to convey is no longer necessary, or you've forgotten what crucial thing they do. The hope is to not cut through arteries, obviously, but to stay awake to what's actually still on the page.

1020.

2008-04-25T23:47:00.000-07:00

For those of you taking bets, my hunch is that number will drop again in the next week, then start climbing up again. Then stop on June 1.

1027.

2008-04-23T00:01:00.000-07:00

1047.

2008-04-22T10:34:00.001-07:00

1053.

2008-04-22T00:58:00.001-07:00

1056.

2008-04-21T23:30:00.001-07:00

I'm noticing two types of re-writing: one is lightning like. You make a cut or you totally reconceive a scene and it's different. The other is a war of attrition. You make small, subtle changes and modifications and eighteen drafts later a hero is a villain. Or a nuance is a totally different kind of nuance. Or something that was foggy is now clear. You hope.

1064.

2008-04-20T21:18:00.000-07:00

1068.

2008-04-20T14:36:00.000-07:00

1077.

2008-04-18T23:55:00.001-07:00

For those of you who are fans of integers, integers have returned. It should be a wild ride.

Okay, just this once

2008-04-15T16:03:00.000-07:00

Normally, I don't do this kind of thing...but I find the above cover to be so very very cool I wanted to share. Plus: the homegrown Russian moire on that photograph is sort of wonderful. Is that chinless fellow the devil or Carter? I think -- given the Domino mask above -- it's the former.

Plus it's exciting to see footnotes, one of which (I'm guessing) explains the nuances behind the cry "This is for Custer! This is for the Alamo!"

Back to serial opacity.

-- 0 --

2008-04-04T23:03:00.000-07:00

Fewer red herrings. Unless they justify themselves. "Hey, cool! A herring! Gang, come over here -- it's a herring. It's red. Whoo-hoo!"
Where does everyone go by the end?
Benshi. As God is my witness...
My scarecrow is still as wooden as ever.

-- More Intermission --

2008-03-16T20:58:00.001-07:00

I can't read. I had one novel in mind, I felt it would make sense to start there as soon as my own work was out of the way. And I kept getting up from my chair. Book on armrest. Book back in hand. Being hyperaware of words in my ear, bees buzzing. What do words mean? How is it that pictures start forming in your head, or is it never that pictures form but you learn to shake hands instead and form an agreement with the author?

There is some kind of cognitive dissonance going on, and I think it has to do with being receptive to story telling.

In the meantime, I've gone back to a mainstay. Much like Homer Simpson and his six-foot-sandwich, I am taking years to gnaw on a very long and companionable memoir that one of my best friends recommended long ago. I find I can just open it up where I left off, even if I put it down six months before, and pick right up (in this case in Paris in 1750 or so).

-- Intermission --

2008-03-16T09:19:00.001-07:00

Having finished with the War, I am learning to read again. More about this as I figure it out.

1090

2008-03-02T23:27:00.000-08:00

1096

2008-03-02T00:29:00.000-08:00

Marking a moment of optimism:

His mother introduced him to starfish and abalone, and how to pry them away from the rocks with a hunting knife, which he wasn't allowed to touch. And here were hermit crabs and there were fiddler crabs and sea anemones ("If you put a finger in there, they will suck it in and it will never come out" "Could you get it out?" "I could. But it would be very dangerous.") and sea urchins, the last of which he was allowed to take home if the spines were falling out, for that meant they were dead.

He grew up believing that the world was a very dangerous place that invited his mother's rescue. And between the ages of six and ten, he touched hermit crabs, put his finger in sea anemones, removed living urchins from their beds, and even stole the hunting knife from its hiding place in the broom closet.

And I figured out how to use the benshi. That's something which has wanted to be in a story since 1984.

1099

2008-02-29T21:24:00.000-08:00

Hey! Salvation Army lassie, where are you? We need donuts here! We're working all night!

1101

2008-02-28T23:53:00.000-08:00

There is now, in the distant background, an escaped canary on a gravestone next to a broken sundial.

1101

2008-02-28T21:20:00.000-08:00

This is by Tom Gauld, who does illustrations for The Guardian.

Ojai, March 2006

2008-02-21T07:17:00.000-08:00

Good dog.

1109

2008-02-20T18:18:00.001-08:00

1109

2008-02-19T09:24:00.001-08:00

“My childhood wasn’t so bad. I was hungry, but isn’t that what America is all about? Hungry young men who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps? And then ate them?”

1110

2008-02-19T00:10:00.000-08:00

From an early age, he never cried. It wasn't worth it.

1110

2008-02-17T20:32:00.001-08:00

For sixteen frames -- a second -- the frame is empty except for the transient landscape. In the background oak tree leaves reflect like tiny mirrors when the breeze runs through them.

...

2008-02-16T09:47:00.001-08:00

1114

2008-02-15T09:24:00.001-08:00

“To serve you is my pleasure,” Hugo said.

“You serve us in more ways than one,” Anna replied. “You help us observe Lord Chesterfield’s rule that a dinner party, excluding one’s self, should not fall below the number of Graces, nor exceed the number of Muses.”

1115

2008-02-14T23:26:00.001-08:00

Potash of cyanide and tincture of iodine.

1116

2008-02-13T23:56:00.000-08:00

I am particularly fond of a story about a Russian witch named Tatiana (based on an academic's analysis of how a North Russian peasant folktale was told). I am trying to see if liking the story is enough excuse to tell it in the book. Likely answer: nope.

1116

2008-02-12T23:56:00.000-08:00

1116

2008-02-10T22:45:00.000-08:00

"Your reward is to kill."
"Oh, everyone says that," he said, "but they don't really mean it."

1117

2008-02-09T00:22:00.000-08:00

"Until nightfall, he still walked and held it aloft, calling out 'paper hat, paper hat' and no one bought it and finally, exhausted and hungry, he had taken a bite from it and that night he slept in the park."

I'm at that place where I can see where it hangs together and otherwise; there's one specific problem and if I can fix it, I fix about 75% of the problems.

Oh, and if I can't fix it, I don't fix about 75% of the problems.

1119

2008-02-07T00:26:00.000-08:00

"He doubted that the sailors, dashed upon the rocks, thought it had been worthwhile. He imagined a small community of them, bruised, shaking their heads, feeling like saps, looking from face to confused face, and asking "You, too?"

1120

2008-02-05T23:36:00.000-08:00

I keep thinking the part which is currently the most problematic will become, through editing and rewriting, the best part. And then I think: Oh Yeah, that would necessitate me writing it. Damn.

1128

2008-02-04T22:27:00.001-08:00

1134

2008-02-03T21:38:00.000-08:00

...I suppose I can confirm that the new one isn't Carter Beats the Devil II: Assignment Miami.

Let's say that when I finish a draft of a story, a friend reads it and points out that it's fine, and the last few paragraphs, which are indispensable, tie up the piece nicely but also only work if I, the author, am also arguing that blueberries are a vegetable.

(Just stick with me.)

The best fix, probably, is to rework it so that I am no longer making this argument. But damnit, sometimes I'm stubborn. "Of course I'm saying that," said with exasperation. "It's thematic."

And then I run to the front end to buttress support for the blueberry-as-vegetable idea. Or to make a comment on the nature of taxonomy, so that the mistake I've made will look like really smart -- what's the word I'm looking for? -- writing. Or to say the character believes blueberries are a vegetable, and that's important because -- well, that will involve more rewriting.

I'm trying really hard not to do that as much anymore.

1140

2008-02-02T23:55:00.000-08:00

Wilton Barnhardt says you risk irony or you risk sentimentality. Part of this hinges on a really dangerous thing: declaring what you actually find sympathetic. This came obliquely the other day, as I was thinking of rock lyrics used in fiction. When I see a real song quoted in a story, I always think of a warrior covering himself in the skin of a lion as if that will give him the lion's abilities. Music is totally unfair compared to writing novels, in that an audience is only one good chord away from excitement or tears. (Of course music has to earn that reaction, too, but when done well, it happens a LOT faster than with fiction.)

Then there's identification. A writer throws, say, Steely Dan into the story. His character is driving down the freeway, listening to Steely Dan. That's a detail that can only invite distance and mockery on some level. Even if the author loves Steely Dan, and is introducing it in the hopeless idea that it's a universal bonding measure, as if Steely Dan is a pair of frolicking puppies at the world's birthday party, and no one is immune to their charms, even then time and distance will make the reader feel like he or she has to judge the character. "He's driving? And listening to Steely Dan? That BASTARD!"

It is a humbling process, lining up character traits you find sympathetic, and realizing that other people don't feel that way. "He loves to steal from old people! C'mon, don't you just love that? He takes their medication and gives it to deserving school children! He clog dances -- and he's modest about it! Even though he's a champion -- love him!"

Commercial Interruption

2008-01-30T19:52:00.001-08:00

Last night I put up a plug for something I'd written, but I woke up in the middle of the night and thought "nawww." So instead let's enjoy the pretty work here by an artist named Eduardo Risso.

1144

2008-01-29T22:27:00.000-08:00

Doing battle with narrative tension. Don't worry -- there are flamethrowers and everything. But how long can you stay with one set of characters before the others need to show up again? You can quick-cut every five pages, but then the scene never gets a chance to build. You can do 30 page segments, but that means you'll spend 60 pages away from a character (too damned long, unless that person is so well defined the reader won't forget).

I think it's about seeing how things layer together until an overall mood sets in. And here's the mood: Hoo-ray Hoo-ray. Thank you.

The next book will be 22 pages long. With one main character and lots of drawings of bunnies.

1144

2008-01-27T22:33:00.000-08:00

Years ago a friend from a writing class scared the hell out of me with a problem of what seemed like insoluble distance. Like this: when you write you draw on specific images that should be evocative. And they're evocative to you. I remember his example was something like this, "And by my childhood bed was a thick blue book with gold leaf lettering. Its spine was cracked 2/3rds of the way through and it smelled like coffee."

And you present that to a reader for whom that has no association whatever. Or blue book equals blue book. No emotional content. They can tell it's important to you but there's no reason for them to make the leap. So, on the next draft, you go on, "the dustjacket was long gone, the cloth of the cover was worn at the edges so that hanks of fabric hung down and the cat batted at the threads. The text was in German for some reason. I never read the book, and it had no pictures in it." And -- well, for you, that's it, no one has ever evoked a specific feeling so well.

And no one gets it. Why should they?

I am currently sweating that little spark between God's finger and Moses's. Is there one? And if so, can I have some? I read (or I'm making up) that analogy is one of the best measures of intelligence. By that, I think they're counting those tests that say "Catnip is to a kittycat as Politics is to ________" and you put in "the disenfranchised" or "chocolate Easter bunnies" or "Amy Winehouse" and then food pellets come down a slot or something. But it also speaks well of the human desire for metaphor and seeking to close an open thought. "Electricity is to stereo equipment as Gatorade is to __________" Shriners? Sallie Mae? Utopia? The rebel alliance? Stereo equipment?

How do you trust that gap? I know: you just DO, but still, it's a mystery. Every so often, you throw yourself into a heartache of an image and it ends up being that blue book by your bed. You know, the one with bunny rabbits on it and no one ever felt about it the way you did. And, apparently, you aren't very good at explaining it yet.

-- 1144 --

2008-01-26T00:07:00.000-08:00

Seeing all the territory you're responsible for. Sure there are coyotes howling at its perimeter. Sure some idiot decided to plant turnips in the middle of the barley field. And why is there a burning pile of automobile tires where the plans clearly called for a sedan chair piloted by mermaids? But it's all yours, congratulations.

Damn.

1160...1128

2008-01-24T23:43:00.000-08:00

Getting close. This photo was taken on La Brea, facing north from the east side of the street. It was taken with color film rather than being hand-colored after the fact, as far as I know.

1178...1030

2008-01-24T00:20:00.001-08:00