November 2, 2006
Today
When a shite piece of prose grows legs, and Stuart’s eggs show signs of imminent chickenhood. And there’s Japanese curry for dinner. Cheers all around then.
November 2, 2006
Joe saw me first
Joe saw me first, which wasn’t technically true because I’d seen him plenty before that. I knew him, but so did everyone, in that way a whole crowd knows a singer on the stage but no one expects him to know them back. Joe Brighton had been President of the Student Council the year before, when a radical group organized a sit-in at the Chancellor’s Office in protest of the Vietnam War and the university administration’s draconian authoritarianism. Rather unfashionably, Joe had condemned the students’ actions as irresponsible and ill-conceived, and he lent his support to a police raid that saw the protesters jailed. He’d stood up on behalf of mild-mannered, clean-cut boys everywhere, and even when the school paper pasted a headline over his face proclaiming him a fascist, you still had to admire his gumption. Joe’s council impeached him before his term was up, which only heightened his fame really. Felled politician though he was, Joe Brighton was six foot five and gorgeous, star forward of the Varsity Hockey Team, and when I used to take his order at the restaurant where I worked, I could hardly speak without a stammer.
October 29, 2006
Writing Tunes
When I write, I require silence or else music to block unsilenceable outside noise. When I listen to music while writing, I can only listen to one song on repeat, or possibly an extremely seamless album. The top ten most played songs on my itunes are as follows:
Feel Flows: The Beach Boys
Turn Me On: Kevin Lyttle
Helpless: Buffy Saint-Marie
She’s a Rainbow: The Rolling Stones
Crazy English Summer: Faithless
More Than This: Roxy Music
Sweet Thing: Van Morrison
Get Along With You: Kelis
Clocks: Coldplay
Tangled Up in Blue: Bob Dylan
October 25, 2006
A great modifier
I’m sort of in love with the idea of a hyperbolic thesaurus. I don’t know if one exists, or what good it would really be if one did, but I want one all the same. “cold: freezing, burrr-y, 50 below zero, the North Pole, arctic, glacial, polar, Siberian; and if still at a loss, of course “fcking” always makes a great modifier. I think I would be well-qualified to write a hyperbolic thesaurus, if such a position ever became available.
In exciting news (and speaking of cold),Laura has arrived at the South Pole and her first blog entry about it is fascinating. Guardian Podcast: can creative writing be taught (blah blah blah)? I’ll give it a listen tonight o’er my knitting.
Back to work you.
October 25, 2006
Structure
From the Diane Setterfield piece in The Globe yesterday: “Then she began writing the first draft of The Thirteenth Tale over two years. “It was abominably bad when I reread it,” she said. ‘It didn’t make me think, can I write? It did make me think, can I structure a novel?'”
October 20, 2006
the lawn mower that is broken
It is curious that I no longer require the use of an index and can remember that the explanation for “that vs. which” lies on page 59 of my Strunk and White, and yet I never can remember what the explanation is.
October 20, 2006
Bits
Evening rolls in earlier this time of year, and walking home down darkened streets, I am attracted to light like a moth is.
The uncanny is the flipside of reason, all that which refuses to be contained within knowledge, and so, consequently, if new learning serves to bring about further bewilderment, the Enlightenment would have been a most perplexing period indeed.
I never expected to discover myself like this, still in bed half-way through a Friday morning, with you seven hours ahead of me indefinitely, part-way around the world.
October 19, 2006
Names
Until this morning, a character in my story was called Bob. I’m not sure why that was his name, as it’s not a name I’m overly fond of, but it’s been his name for nearly two years now and I’d sort of grown accustomed to it. But it didn’t sit perfectly with me. When I hear the name “Bob” in real life, it brings about connotations I don’t associate with my character. I’d sort of invested him with an “alternate Bob-ness”, but of course a reader wouldn’t get that. Readers have indicated this. And so this morning, with just a click (“change-all”), Bob became John. I am interested to see how this change alters my story, and how his new name changes his character. What elements will the fact of John-ness bring?
October 18, 2006
Sherrie Mitten?
The bad thing about the fictional creative writing workshops I mentioned is that on my bad days, I wonder exactly which pitiful-student-in-the-workshop-driving-my-instructor-to-suicide am I?
October 13, 2006
Nigel
I never mentioned that the story below was my submission to the McSweeneys Thirteen Writing Prompts Contest. A losing submission, obviously, but I still wanted to share it because I had fun with it.
