December 2009
10 posts
22: 60,050
Over the past three-hundred and sixty-five days, everything changed. Everything became important. As this city finally wrapped its arms around me for good, as my heart leaped and loved and shattered, all of the minute details of physical environments, of action and inaction, of human capacity became important. Whether they ended up influencing my pages, or ended up as a part of me, they all...
My father has a horrible habit of watching films halfway through. Usually, they’re (lucky to be called) B-movies, so the risk of jumping in on a convoluted plot is quite low, but my mother and I have always found it absolutely baffling that he’s content to repeatedly watch the last forty-five minutes of something, as if that’s how the film is supposed to be watched.
While...
I wonder if fiction works like past relationships. Is it true that the more time we spend away from it, the more we pick at its flaws and failed mechanics?
Category 5 Brainstorm
The big question on the table is if I’ve overintellectualized parts of my book. Me? Overintellecutalize something? Please, quit your laughing. My ceilings are high and it’s echoing.
I was talking to my professor a couple of weeks ago about the language in my flashback chapters. He argued that it was inconsistent with the rest of the prose. I didn’t fight it; in fact, I...
One of the hardest parts about being a writer (or at least trying to, per theme of blog) is how insanely lonely it can get. Physically, it’s alienating in the sense that I need to isolate myself to get things done. I end up spending a significant amount of time alone or in the proximity of strangers, which is hardly proximity at all if I stop to think about it. Cerebrally - well,...
Wherein I Divulge My Secret Weapon, Part I
Names are everything. BabyNames.com is like my writer’s candyland of metaphor and possibility. Disclaimer: said usage, however thoroughly explained, does not alleviate the unsettling suspicions of friends, family, and significant others.
The 3 train took a while to pull up into Atlantic Avenue this afternoon. The day was awful: pouring rain, biting cold, and when the train finally pulled in, the speaker said it’d be running express. I shrugged at a young mother with a boy of seven by her side. ”Just when you think you’re going to get a break,” she said, returning the shrug with a polite smile, patting...
Circuit Board Logic
I was unaware there was such a thing as a “vacation in one’s mind.” Calling myself a “cerebral person” would be a fairly kind, accurate assessment. While my writing physically manifests itself on my two-pound notebook computer (you know, if all goes as it’s supposed to), it spends just as much – if not more – time stewing in my head. I’m constantly thinking...
Freudian type.
It's Getting Late Earlier
November is over. (Note: when you have a nine to five in the real world, it doesn’t matter what month it is.) Some tried to undertake the gigantic task of writing a whole novel. I tried to face editing with a new approach, a meaningful one. And that was a gigantic task on its own.
I think I learned more about myself this month than I did revise. I suppose that’s a decent thing,...