Taking a page from the spellbook of the estimable Mr. Bransford, I'm going to repost something. Then, like any respectable jazz musician (can a jazz musician be respectable?), I'm going to change it up a bit, riff on it, extend it.
THE REPOST (from Sept 2008)
What does it mean to hold on too long?
As Langston Hughes asked, What happens to a dream deferred?
Where does unrequited love end and bitterness begin? Sometimes, showing respect for the past means putting away the past and concentrating on the future. What's done is done, let the dead care for the dead.
This is the theme that I want to explore in my stories. Not just a dreary set of homilies about death and grief, but lancing the boils of anger and bitterness and disappointment. Holding my reader tightly to the corpses of dreams and hopes and "golden days," learning with the reader that dead things stink and that stagnant pools are only fit for draining.
Because grace is about hope, and hope looks to the future. Hope springs (as they say), hope is motion, and death is a cold, cold thing.
THE RIFF, THE EXTENSION
The year is ending and a new year turning toward us. What will you hold on to and what will you let lie? What will you begin to grow?
In 2010, I resolve to hold on to this blaag, to improve my craft (both literary and home improvement), to work toward publication and to let go of pride and bitterness. Those two don't play well with the rejections we face on our road to publication.
What about you?
I'll be taking a short internet absence for the rest of the day and tomorrow to celebrate the holidays and pay attention to my relatives. Then again next weekend for my sister's wedding. (Yay sister!)
Holla.
Holla.
Challenge here. Listen to the audio version. Tons of extra talking. By me.
Enjoy. Text below.
"The Christmas Rime"
for STC 1
Erastus cast his burden down
beside the flickering fire
that warmed the shadows and the men
a'lee of the mawkish spire.
Three men there were around the blaze,
with Erastus counted, four:
One old, one young, one hidden-faced
yet the shadows promised more.
Said one, 'We celebrate the birth
in the eye of storm and snow.'
Erastus, warm again, began,
'There was a ship, I' 2
'Who 'Halts' at this uncertain hour,
in my agony's return.
Until my ghastly tale is told
the heart within me' 3
--
Enjoy. Text below.
"The Christmas Rime"
for STC 1
Erastus cast his burden down
beside the flickering fire
that warmed the shadows and the men
a'lee of the mawkish spire.
Three men there were around the blaze,
with Erastus counted, four:
One old, one young, one hidden-faced
yet the shadows promised more.
Said one, 'We celebrate the birth
in the eye of storm and snow.'
Erastus, warm again, began,
'There was a ship, I' 2
'No.'
'Who 'Halts' at this uncertain hour,
in my agony's return.
Until my ghastly tale is told
the heart within me' 3
'No,
'Erastus,
ecce agnus dei.
Requisce do vobis.'4
--
2. ln 10
3. ln 583-586
4. Latin: "Behold the lamb of God. Rest I give to you.
Just found this! The 12th Clarity of night contest will take place in January.
Prizes!
Accolades!
Great Reading!
Jason also posted the picture so we could start ruminating.
The theme: Silhouette.
The word limit: 250 (Should be a breeze after Loren's).
Hooray for writing contests!
Prizes!
Accolades!
Great Reading!
Jason also posted the picture so we could start ruminating.
The theme: Silhouette.
The word limit: 250 (Should be a breeze after Loren's).
Hooray for writing contests!
It's baking season, yo. I want to share a bread recipe that's quick, simple, tastes fantastic and bakes up beautiful.
See? -->
Light and Fluffy.
We got the recipe from some friends and, after our success, couldn't wait to share. The recipe is titled "Amish White Bread," but there's no starter as is common with most "Amish" breads I've experienced.
You'll need:
2 cups warm water
2/3 cup white sugar
1 1/2 Tbs yeast
1/4 cup oil
1 1/2 tsp salt
6 cups bread flour (I recommend King Arthur unbleached. Best I've found.)
1 Large mixing bowl
Whisk and Mixing spoon
1 medium mixing bowl (for rising)
2 loaf pans (9 x 5 metal or glass)
an apron
The Nitty Gritty Bid-ness
Dissolve sugar into the water in your large mixing bowl. Add yeast and allow to proof until the top resembles creamy foam (~10-15 min). Mix salt and oil into yeast. Add flour 1 cup at a time using whisk, then switch to spoon when it gets thick.
Once all of the flour is incorporated, knead dough then place in oiled bowl to rise. The dough should double in size ~ 1 hour.
Punch the dough down, knead, then divide into 2 loaves, folding the dough over to get a smooth top.
Place into 2 well-oiled loaf pans. Let these rise for 30 minutes or until dough has risen 1 inch above pan.
Bake at 350 for 30 minutes.
--
Notes on rising.
You can help this process by placing a metal mixing bowl with an inch and a half of warm water on an eye of the stove over the lowest setting (just enough to maintain heat, not cook), then set your rising dough bowl inside that. This also helps the yeast proof.
You can put the loaf pans on the warm stove top, just not on the eye.
If my parentheticals are a little out of control, I'm just trying to elucidate the baking lore that hides in my wife's genes. She does this stuff without even thinking about it. Enjoy!
* Best in the economic sense, the best taste for the least amount of work. Also, meaning awesome.
Audio Blog on Thursday! It's Loren's 100 word Christmas Challenge-tacular, plus me talking and holiday wishes.
To the business at hand. Dude, it's the holidays. Which means that dedicated blog readers are starved for material b/c everyone is on vacation. SO . . . here it is. 1600 words of pure awesome. (Let me know how far off you find that statement. It is more than a bit exaggerated.)
The scene? Father Jack reminiscing on his past lives.
The setting? 1984, High Creek (upriver from Coffeyville). Sunset.
ACTION!
"Hit the Road, Jack"
When I wasn’t yet sixty, as the daylight faded and crickets bowed in the night, I would sit in my study at the church and listen to the radio broadcast out of Memphis. I kept the overhead lights off since my stained glass window didn’t open and I didn’t want to run the air conditioner for the whole building. I had a small desk lamp, an oscillating fan and, in the bottom drawer of my desk, a transistor radio.
My congregation felt more secure in their salvation, knowing that ‘their Father’ toiled late into the night. I did spend many nights working for their souls and my own, poring over theological texts, pouring out my soul, knowing that our Father loves the diligent and the righteous. I also listened to the radio.
I listened to the announcers and wondered if my own voice wove spells like theirs, coaxing, ecstatic, reassuring. I could have been “Catholic Jack.” Not a great handle, but true. And that is what mattered most to me, as I think my congregants knew: Truth. As it is, as it appears, as it is revealed to us.
My older brother Roger came back from the War when I was 9. He wheezed when he breathed and couldn’t play football anymore. He told me he had seen Truth descending on the trenchworks at Ypres. I saw it in my head, a great flat plain with ragged lines of trenches on the edges (like my sister Lizzie’s patchwork on our clothes, her stitching irregular but well-intended), the Light of Truth settling over the entire scene like the morning mist, stifling the warfare and illuminating the inherent goodness of the combatants. Even then I was a pacifist. I didn’t know that his Truth was mortality. I could never get him to tell that story again. I think Mother told him not to.
Ah yes, I was talking about the radio. I still have a radio or two. I like to keep track of what the rest of the world is talking about. Growing up in Kentucky, we were isolated. The mountains protected us, but they also chained us. When I went to seminary, the mountains defined me as a hick and a rube. Before anyone heard my thoughts, they heard dropped g’s and dipthongs. I learned to maintain the endings of my words and to shorten my vowels, but by then everyone knew and judged accordingly. I have always made it a point to listen to the content of every confession, irregardless of the accent that colors it. I’ve heard some doozies too, twangs and confessions both; sometimes separate, sometimes together.
The most convoluted I heard were from sailors in the Yellow Sea. The waves were towering and we were isolated, unable to see mainland China or the Korean Peninsula. Men lined the bows as if for inspection, faces hunched toward the heaving seas. There was no mission, at least that the captain told me, a chaplain; we simply floated, isolated, for two weeks, then back under way for California via Hawaii.
I joined up fresh out of seminary out of a sense of, I don’t know what. Maybe national pride, maybe horror at the newsreels, maybe a need to prove myself. Mother didn’t want me to go to Europe because of the way it affected Roger, so I joined the Navy. When the men in charge found out about my seminary, they stuck me in a chaplain’s uniform and sent me to California for the first ship out.
A lot of things happened on the USS Irving. Horrible and beautiful things. Men telling their rosaries in perfect unison. Men’s bodies becoming primal destructive forces. Men’s souls rotting away. Men loving their shipmates. Men crying in an improvised confessional, a sheet hung from the pipes above the captain’s bunk.
Boredom is the thing that tries men’s souls. I held bible studies in the galley and poker games in my quarters. We had calisthenics on deck every morning and drills most nights. If we’d had the right materials, I would have started a quilting circle. Before we left, three men jumped overboard, one man lost his pinky, and one man held the captain at gunpoint.
The best thing that ever happened on the ship was the discovery midway through the second week that we could pick up mainland radio transmissions that played music. No one spoke much Chinese, and the instrumentation was odd to say the least, but it was miraculous to see toes tapping in time. Some men danced. Some men sat immobile in their chairs except for the fingers keeping beat on their crossed arms. Some men cursed the music and went looking for a fight, others happy to oblige. Music doesn’t cure the savagery inherent in the human breast, it’s only oil on the waters.
After returning home and finding the war over, I went with some of the men to New Orleans, a Catholic city if ever there was one. Somehow, news of my arrival and the fact that I had no church made it to the bishop who told his friend, a bishop in Mississippi, who got the word to the Archbishop of the Diocese of Natchez. They dragged me away from the Big Easy and the slide trombones and dropped me into a church that had been vacant since 1937. My parish had care of two, well, one small town, Coffeyville, and the attached village of High Creek. And I thought people had been bored on a ship.
The church is in Coffeyville. A nice sized brick building, two-thirds of which is empty most weeks. Frances Blumken was the secretary when I started and she still is even after I’ve retired. The children tease her mercilessly behind her back. It is unfortunate that she wears so many orange blouses.
I worry that all of the children I christened will, in their middle age, see me only as an old man. I know that I am an old man. Born January 15, 1901. But I am more than the sum of my years. I’ve lived in Cheuckahoba County longer than anyone else alive. I remember watching Robert Thorris run into the end zone as a freshman then walk home with his parents. I laid Old Jim Thorris to rest under the oak tree in the cemetery north of town. I once beat Sergeant in a potato sack race at the High Creek-Coffeyville Easter Picnic. Nowadays I think everyone sees me as a nuisance, a burden.
There’s a new firebrand in the pulpit. Nobody enjoys his sermons, but they leave feeling cleansed. As if a red hot poker has been shoved, well, as if someone took a Brillo pad to their sinful backs. He’s been down in Coffeyville for two years now. I doubt he ever listens to the radio. He reminds me of a traveling revivalist; burning people’s lips, tearing apart their dignity, and leaving the next day, ignoring the lives destructing behind him like Lot. But this Father Peter hasn’t left. And his congregation is growing.
After my last service, instructing my sons and daughters one last time on the importance of Truth, young Peter walked up to me, shook my hand and whispered in my ear: “They don’t want your Truth, old man.”
Was I too easy on my congregation? Did I somehow pass from absolution into commission? Did I mistake bafflement for amazement, indifference for understanding?
Those babies were baptized in the sweat of their parents’ brow, by the extension of my hand, through the grace and mercy of the Christ.
Did I love them too much?
Perhaps the people who flock to Peter realize the excess of the time. Yesterday, I watched a young wife throw out half of a ham to the dog and I remembered the everyday soup my mother made: water, dried beans, and the hambone, salt if we had it. I still can’t throw away food. Every year, Frances would bring me a jar of fig preserves for Christmas. I never have cared for figs, but there are 36 murky-brown quart jars in the cupboard beside the stove, each tied with red and green ribbon that show, something.
I retired to High Creek because I cannot bear to see the people I love torn between the past and the present anymore than they already are, but neither can I endorse this hothead. So I sulk. I admit it. I am sulking 10 minutes north of where I want to be. There is the desk I sat at for over three decades. There is the confessional with a young Gwendolyn Joseph’s initials carved under the confessor’s seat. They were there when I arrived, and I hope this young man finds them. They were a constant reminder to me that the position of Father is not new nor mine. Maybe that will teach him a sense of perspective.
I think I have too much perspective. I still see the church as I found her: lonely, broken and abandoned. So I nursed her. Perhaps Father Peter is the long overdue snip of the apron strings.
I saved marriages. I taught the words of the Christ. I made a good account of the Gospel in Coffeyville and High Creek. I fed the hungry and gave my shoes to the Sergeant. I christened and buried.
As I stand on this bluff and watch the Cheuckahoba slip toward Coffeyville, the sunset softly gilding the trees, I feel Roger’s Truth settling like a mantle on my shoulders. I pull it close. Perhaps I am the dust on Peter’s sandals.
To the business at hand. Dude, it's the holidays. Which means that dedicated blog readers are starved for material b/c everyone is on vacation. SO . . . here it is. 1600 words of pure awesome. (Let me know how far off you find that statement. It is more than a bit exaggerated.)
The scene? Father Jack reminiscing on his past lives.
The setting? 1984, High Creek (upriver from Coffeyville). Sunset.
ACTION!
"Hit the Road, Jack"
When I wasn’t yet sixty, as the daylight faded and crickets bowed in the night, I would sit in my study at the church and listen to the radio broadcast out of Memphis. I kept the overhead lights off since my stained glass window didn’t open and I didn’t want to run the air conditioner for the whole building. I had a small desk lamp, an oscillating fan and, in the bottom drawer of my desk, a transistor radio.
My congregation felt more secure in their salvation, knowing that ‘their Father’ toiled late into the night. I did spend many nights working for their souls and my own, poring over theological texts, pouring out my soul, knowing that our Father loves the diligent and the righteous. I also listened to the radio.
I listened to the announcers and wondered if my own voice wove spells like theirs, coaxing, ecstatic, reassuring. I could have been “Catholic Jack.” Not a great handle, but true. And that is what mattered most to me, as I think my congregants knew: Truth. As it is, as it appears, as it is revealed to us.
My older brother Roger came back from the War when I was 9. He wheezed when he breathed and couldn’t play football anymore. He told me he had seen Truth descending on the trenchworks at Ypres. I saw it in my head, a great flat plain with ragged lines of trenches on the edges (like my sister Lizzie’s patchwork on our clothes, her stitching irregular but well-intended), the Light of Truth settling over the entire scene like the morning mist, stifling the warfare and illuminating the inherent goodness of the combatants. Even then I was a pacifist. I didn’t know that his Truth was mortality. I could never get him to tell that story again. I think Mother told him not to.
Ah yes, I was talking about the radio. I still have a radio or two. I like to keep track of what the rest of the world is talking about. Growing up in Kentucky, we were isolated. The mountains protected us, but they also chained us. When I went to seminary, the mountains defined me as a hick and a rube. Before anyone heard my thoughts, they heard dropped g’s and dipthongs. I learned to maintain the endings of my words and to shorten my vowels, but by then everyone knew and judged accordingly. I have always made it a point to listen to the content of every confession, irregardless of the accent that colors it. I’ve heard some doozies too, twangs and confessions both; sometimes separate, sometimes together.
The most convoluted I heard were from sailors in the Yellow Sea. The waves were towering and we were isolated, unable to see mainland China or the Korean Peninsula. Men lined the bows as if for inspection, faces hunched toward the heaving seas. There was no mission, at least that the captain told me, a chaplain; we simply floated, isolated, for two weeks, then back under way for California via Hawaii.
I joined up fresh out of seminary out of a sense of, I don’t know what. Maybe national pride, maybe horror at the newsreels, maybe a need to prove myself. Mother didn’t want me to go to Europe because of the way it affected Roger, so I joined the Navy. When the men in charge found out about my seminary, they stuck me in a chaplain’s uniform and sent me to California for the first ship out.
A lot of things happened on the USS Irving. Horrible and beautiful things. Men telling their rosaries in perfect unison. Men’s bodies becoming primal destructive forces. Men’s souls rotting away. Men loving their shipmates. Men crying in an improvised confessional, a sheet hung from the pipes above the captain’s bunk.
Boredom is the thing that tries men’s souls. I held bible studies in the galley and poker games in my quarters. We had calisthenics on deck every morning and drills most nights. If we’d had the right materials, I would have started a quilting circle. Before we left, three men jumped overboard, one man lost his pinky, and one man held the captain at gunpoint.
The best thing that ever happened on the ship was the discovery midway through the second week that we could pick up mainland radio transmissions that played music. No one spoke much Chinese, and the instrumentation was odd to say the least, but it was miraculous to see toes tapping in time. Some men danced. Some men sat immobile in their chairs except for the fingers keeping beat on their crossed arms. Some men cursed the music and went looking for a fight, others happy to oblige. Music doesn’t cure the savagery inherent in the human breast, it’s only oil on the waters.
After returning home and finding the war over, I went with some of the men to New Orleans, a Catholic city if ever there was one. Somehow, news of my arrival and the fact that I had no church made it to the bishop who told his friend, a bishop in Mississippi, who got the word to the Archbishop of the Diocese of Natchez. They dragged me away from the Big Easy and the slide trombones and dropped me into a church that had been vacant since 1937. My parish had care of two, well, one small town, Coffeyville, and the attached village of High Creek. And I thought people had been bored on a ship.
The church is in Coffeyville. A nice sized brick building, two-thirds of which is empty most weeks. Frances Blumken was the secretary when I started and she still is even after I’ve retired. The children tease her mercilessly behind her back. It is unfortunate that she wears so many orange blouses.
I worry that all of the children I christened will, in their middle age, see me only as an old man. I know that I am an old man. Born January 15, 1901. But I am more than the sum of my years. I’ve lived in Cheuckahoba County longer than anyone else alive. I remember watching Robert Thorris run into the end zone as a freshman then walk home with his parents. I laid Old Jim Thorris to rest under the oak tree in the cemetery north of town. I once beat Sergeant in a potato sack race at the High Creek-Coffeyville Easter Picnic. Nowadays I think everyone sees me as a nuisance, a burden.
There’s a new firebrand in the pulpit. Nobody enjoys his sermons, but they leave feeling cleansed. As if a red hot poker has been shoved, well, as if someone took a Brillo pad to their sinful backs. He’s been down in Coffeyville for two years now. I doubt he ever listens to the radio. He reminds me of a traveling revivalist; burning people’s lips, tearing apart their dignity, and leaving the next day, ignoring the lives destructing behind him like Lot. But this Father Peter hasn’t left. And his congregation is growing.
After my last service, instructing my sons and daughters one last time on the importance of Truth, young Peter walked up to me, shook my hand and whispered in my ear: “They don’t want your Truth, old man.”
Was I too easy on my congregation? Did I somehow pass from absolution into commission? Did I mistake bafflement for amazement, indifference for understanding?
Those babies were baptized in the sweat of their parents’ brow, by the extension of my hand, through the grace and mercy of the Christ.
Did I love them too much?
Perhaps the people who flock to Peter realize the excess of the time. Yesterday, I watched a young wife throw out half of a ham to the dog and I remembered the everyday soup my mother made: water, dried beans, and the hambone, salt if we had it. I still can’t throw away food. Every year, Frances would bring me a jar of fig preserves for Christmas. I never have cared for figs, but there are 36 murky-brown quart jars in the cupboard beside the stove, each tied with red and green ribbon that show, something.
I retired to High Creek because I cannot bear to see the people I love torn between the past and the present anymore than they already are, but neither can I endorse this hothead. So I sulk. I admit it. I am sulking 10 minutes north of where I want to be. There is the desk I sat at for over three decades. There is the confessional with a young Gwendolyn Joseph’s initials carved under the confessor’s seat. They were there when I arrived, and I hope this young man finds them. They were a constant reminder to me that the position of Father is not new nor mine. Maybe that will teach him a sense of perspective.
I think I have too much perspective. I still see the church as I found her: lonely, broken and abandoned. So I nursed her. Perhaps Father Peter is the long overdue snip of the apron strings.
I saved marriages. I taught the words of the Christ. I made a good account of the Gospel in Coffeyville and High Creek. I fed the hungry and gave my shoes to the Sergeant. I christened and buried.
As I stand on this bluff and watch the Cheuckahoba slip toward Coffeyville, the sunset softly gilding the trees, I feel Roger’s Truth settling like a mantle on my shoulders. I pull it close. Perhaps I am the dust on Peter’s sandals.
On Thursday the computer system we use for just about everything was down for most of the day. Free day, right? Kind of. I decided to straighten up my desk and in-boxes and clean out my drawers and recycle out-of-date papers tacked to my fabric-board. Which, for me, is pretty big. I'm not what you'd call a neat person. Well, kids think I'm pretty rad, but that's just the beard and the earrings. I don't tend to leave a room cleaner than I found it. But, today I cleaned. And the momentum carried.
Remember the storyline stuff I was working on, the rearranging of scenes? Well, I've got a pretty solid revision going. Here's the skinny:
As you can see, the final sequence (15->19)is pretty much nailed down. I also retained (4->8). The scene titles are probably confusing, but that's the way it works in my head. I just have to pick the path I want my readers to take. That and massage some transitions. Those don't tend to cut and paste too well.
I'm having fun with this and it's keeping me pretty engaged. It's def. legwork. But you get to see your story from a new place and play with the flow. It might be a good idea for you if your story needs a kick in the pants. If you're tech-savvy, it's no big thing. But if you never had a computer class other than typing (like me. Seriously. And I was born in '84.), you might want to break out the scissors and tape before you start cutting and pasting you e-copy. And make sure to version it or save a pure copy.
Remember the storyline stuff I was working on, the rearranging of scenes? Well, I've got a pretty solid revision going. Here's the skinny:
As you can see, the final sequence (15->19)is pretty much nailed down. I also retained (4->8). The scene titles are probably confusing, but that's the way it works in my head. I just have to pick the path I want my readers to take. That and massage some transitions. Those don't tend to cut and paste too well.
I'm having fun with this and it's keeping me pretty engaged. It's def. legwork. But you get to see your story from a new place and play with the flow. It might be a good idea for you if your story needs a kick in the pants. If you're tech-savvy, it's no big thing. But if you never had a computer class other than typing (like me. Seriously. And I was born in '84.), you might want to break out the scissors and tape before you start cutting and pasting you e-copy. And make sure to version it or save a pure copy.
You know what's weird when you think about it from a observational perspective?
Putting your mouth parts on someone else's mouth parts.
Just saying.
(Brought about by the couple making out in the stacks after the semester ended and everyone went home and I was not expecting to stumble upon anything other than mis-shelved books.)
Putting your mouth parts on someone else's mouth parts.
Just saying.
(Brought about by the couple making out in the stacks after the semester ended and everyone went home and I was not expecting to stumble upon anything other than mis-shelved books.)
Nevets. You remember Nevets, well, Nevets posted something Monday that I want to continue; a 'Where my writing story started' post.
You can read his here. In brief, he won a contest while very young. Jerk.
--
My story.
I grew up surrounded by books. I was born into a family of book fiends. I liked to eat, hated to run, loved to lie and had bad eyes. Destiny.
However, I refused my destiny in favor of other pursuits. I still plowed through books like a starving hillbilly at a pie-eating contest, but I chased other things. I focused on acting both on and off-stage. I did drama and band and Monty Python and crushed on girls and discovered that girls like guys who write poetry but never successfully lifted my pen to long-form fiction [1] until recently. (I tried sophomore year of college. I just sucked.)
I don't think I was so much in love with the theatre as with the life breathed into plays on-stage. The magic that happens when words are uttered. Then I learned about Slam Poetry and spoken word, less formal (and formulaic) approaches to poetry. That interest and subsequent attempts segued into short stories and novel ideas.
I also placed second in a state student poetry contest that sophomore year of college, but a professor took one look at my entry and told me not to waste my time. It was less poetry and more directed, concrete phrasing. I'm going to try and post it "after the jump." Let's see how I do.
1. For this purpose, I'm including my poetry as fiction and calling anything more than 600 words long-form fiction. Most of what I wrote was poetry. 600 words of poem is pretty long-form.
You can read his here. In brief, he won a contest while very young. Jerk.
--
My story.
I grew up surrounded by books. I was born into a family of book fiends. I liked to eat, hated to run, loved to lie and had bad eyes. Destiny.
However, I refused my destiny in favor of other pursuits. I still plowed through books like a starving hillbilly at a pie-eating contest, but I chased other things. I focused on acting both on and off-stage. I did drama and band and Monty Python and crushed on girls and discovered that girls like guys who write poetry but never successfully lifted my pen to long-form fiction [1] until recently. (I tried sophomore year of college. I just sucked.)
I don't think I was so much in love with the theatre as with the life breathed into plays on-stage. The magic that happens when words are uttered. Then I learned about Slam Poetry and spoken word, less formal (and formulaic) approaches to poetry. That interest and subsequent attempts segued into short stories and novel ideas.
I also placed second in a state student poetry contest that sophomore year of college, but a professor took one look at my entry and told me not to waste my time. It was less poetry and more directed, concrete phrasing. I'm going to try and post it "after the jump." Let's see how I do.
1. For this purpose, I'm including my poetry as fiction and calling anything more than 600 words long-form fiction. Most of what I wrote was poetry. 600 words of poem is pretty long-form.
This is fun. You get to wreck cars. 'Nuff said.
It's called "I Hate Traffic." Simple use of the arrow keys and timing. Enjoy.
Here is a screenshot.
It's called "I Hate Traffic." Simple use of the arrow keys and timing. Enjoy.
Here is a screenshot.
How did you spend your Saturday?
Now for primer and paints. WooHoo!
Now for primer and paints. WooHoo!
Which phrase should a writer use:
"Joe was the oldest of five"
or
"The house reverberated with the snores of Joe's four brothers"?
The answer to this seems pretty axiomatic to most writers (the whole show v. tell thing) but I want to know why. My own answer is rooted in the belief that the sideways acquisition of knowledge is more pleasing and effective than being hit in the face with a brickbat of facts.
What do you think?
"Joe was the oldest of five"
or
"The house reverberated with the snores of Joe's four brothers"?
The answer to this seems pretty axiomatic to most writers (the whole show v. tell thing) but I want to know why. My own answer is rooted in the belief that the sideways acquisition of knowledge is more pleasing and effective than being hit in the face with a brickbat of facts.
What do you think?
I don't know everything. I don't really know much about most things. But I have heard some great writing advice from a myriad of sources.
1. Tell the story you'd like to read.
2. There must be change.
3. If you're just trying to please yourself, . . . (I'm sure you can finish that one for yourself, dear reader.)
And my favorite:
4. Write for the smart.
However, as a writer you cannot forget 3 and replace it with 4. If the goal of writing is communication (and that's something you have to explore for yourself), then you fail as a writer if you fail to communicate.
What's the best advice you have ever received? Or hope to give?
--
ps. Did everyone see Loren's challenge? Seriously, a story in 100 words. This shall be epic.
pps. mine will be the epic fail. (I really am looking forward to it, though.)
1. Tell the story you'd like to read.
2. There must be change.
3. If you're just trying to please yourself, . . . (I'm sure you can finish that one for yourself, dear reader.)
And my favorite:
4. Write for the smart.
However, as a writer you cannot forget 3 and replace it with 4. If the goal of writing is communication (and that's something you have to explore for yourself), then you fail as a writer if you fail to communicate.
What's the best advice you have ever received? Or hope to give?
--
ps. Did everyone see Loren's challenge? Seriously, a story in 100 words. This shall be epic.
pps. mine will be the epic fail. (I really am looking forward to it, though.)
Wanna know what I've been up to the past few days? Researching library raves.
Wha, who, what the heck?
A developing trend at academic institutions appears to be the Library Rave during finals. From what I can tell, it all started at UNC-Chapel Hill in December of 2008 (see video below).
What recommends a university library for a hootin' hollerin' dance party?
1. It's big.
2. Libraries are generally open late during finals.
3. People are there anyway.
4. Parties are a kickin' way to blow off steam.
5. You get to dress up in funny clothes.
Also in the mix is the challenge of 'Who can do it better/ What school has more spirit?' This sense of competition fueled by generational school rivalries and frazzled nerves from cramming leads to the propagation of the trend. These are generally unofficial and student organized, sometimes underground and unexpected.
Luckily, more organizers are cluing in the libraries so there can be better setup, attendance and less likelihood of the police getting called out for what is, in essence, a celebration of youth and school pride and the completion of the semester. Plus, who doesn't love glowsticks?
Enjoy the video and search around. See if your school and/or rival is represented. Maybe see if you can organize your own. Make sure to put it on youtube, or it's like it didn't happen.
--
Wha, who, what the heck?
A developing trend at academic institutions appears to be the Library Rave during finals. From what I can tell, it all started at UNC-Chapel Hill in December of 2008 (see video below).
What recommends a university library for a hootin' hollerin' dance party?
1. It's big.
2. Libraries are generally open late during finals.
3. People are there anyway.
4. Parties are a kickin' way to blow off steam.
5. You get to dress up in funny clothes.
Also in the mix is the challenge of 'Who can do it better/ What school has more spirit?' This sense of competition fueled by generational school rivalries and frazzled nerves from cramming leads to the propagation of the trend. These are generally unofficial and student organized, sometimes underground and unexpected.
Luckily, more organizers are cluing in the libraries so there can be better setup, attendance and less likelihood of the police getting called out for what is, in essence, a celebration of youth and school pride and the completion of the semester. Plus, who doesn't love glowsticks?
Enjoy the video and search around. See if your school and/or rival is represented. Maybe see if you can organize your own. Make sure to put it on youtube, or it's like it didn't happen.
--
So, last night I managed to break a pair of glasses at the curve above the nose-bridge. By watching television. I have no idea how that works.
Then I broke my backup pair by trying to put them on. Luckily it was just a broken hinge screw and I was able to replace it with a short length of paperclip wire.
But, this does mean that I will spend the first day of my weekend (Friday-Saturday) chasing cheap glasses repair and/or replacement. And I had some freaking sweet ideas and edits for the goat. Most of the edits consisted of "Delete this crap," "What does this have to do with the story," and "Bill would never do that. That's stupid." Oh and then I had this note scrawled across an entire page:
WORDY WORDY WORDY.
--
I found this last night. It looks like most of the cartoons I grew up watching on VHS are from the 30's and available on YouTube. Here's Old Mother Hubbard. I also recommend Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor, available in two parts. It's musical!
Here's Hubbard (and I don't mean L. Ron).
Then I broke my backup pair by trying to put them on. Luckily it was just a broken hinge screw and I was able to replace it with a short length of paperclip wire.
But, this does mean that I will spend the first day of my weekend (Friday-Saturday) chasing cheap glasses repair and/or replacement. And I had some freaking sweet ideas and edits for the goat. Most of the edits consisted of "Delete this crap," "What does this have to do with the story," and "Bill would never do that. That's stupid." Oh and then I had this note scrawled across an entire page:
WORDY WORDY WORDY.
--
I found this last night. It looks like most of the cartoons I grew up watching on VHS are from the 30's and available on YouTube. Here's Old Mother Hubbard. I also recommend Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor, available in two parts. It's musical!
Here's Hubbard (and I don't mean L. Ron).
Menus are minefields, especially with the "choice of side" morass.
Today I went to the Chinese buffet to get my wife some egg drop soup and an egg roll. Or is it a spring roll? The one with the cabbage and shredded carrot. Maybe that's both of them. Anyway, it's 1:45 and the lunch specials are still good. I figure, "Hey, I can get something too while I'm here."
The Lunch Special Banner says: "comes with fried rice and wonton soup or egg drop soup, hot and sour soup or egg roll."
How many sides are there for this special?
5?
4?
3?
2?
1?
It is not 5.
It is not 4.
It is not 3 (like I thought).
It is 2.
And you only have one slot to fill. Pork fried rice is the constant. You can have fried rice AND soup or fried rice AND egg roll. You cannot have soup AND egg roll, you cannot have double fried rice.
It's not a big thing. It's just frustrating when there are 5 people in line behind you to order 'to go' and the waitress wants to bill you for a lunch special and two extra sides. Drink not included.
Today I went to the Chinese buffet to get my wife some egg drop soup and an egg roll. Or is it a spring roll? The one with the cabbage and shredded carrot. Maybe that's both of them. Anyway, it's 1:45 and the lunch specials are still good. I figure, "Hey, I can get something too while I'm here."
The Lunch Special Banner says: "comes with fried rice and wonton soup or egg drop soup, hot and sour soup or egg roll."
How many sides are there for this special?
5?
4?
3?
2?
1?
It is not 5.
It is not 4.
It is not 3 (like I thought).
It is 2.
And you only have one slot to fill. Pork fried rice is the constant. You can have fried rice AND soup or fried rice AND egg roll. You cannot have soup AND egg roll, you cannot have double fried rice.
It's not a big thing. It's just frustrating when there are 5 people in line behind you to order 'to go' and the waitress wants to bill you for a lunch special and two extra sides. Drink not included.
Yes, this announcement is in fact necessary.
Ahem Please do not leave personal belongings unattended in the library. This includes backpacks, notebooks, purses and laptops. Please do not leave your laptop on the fifth floor to go home and take a nap. Please do not leave your purse in a study room while you go play a round of monopoly. Please do not set up your game of Settlers of Cataan in the middle of the atrium and leave it for a pizza run. Please do not complain to me if your own brazen stupidity results in a loss of personal property.
Oh, these college kids. (That's a link to the Relient K song.)
Ahem Please do not leave personal belongings unattended in the library. This includes backpacks, notebooks, purses and laptops. Please do not leave your laptop on the fifth floor to go home and take a nap. Please do not leave your purse in a study room while you go play a round of monopoly. Please do not set up your game of Settlers of Cataan in the middle of the atrium and leave it for a pizza run. Please do not complain to me if your own brazen stupidity results in a loss of personal property.
Oh, these college kids. (That's a link to the Relient K song.)
I finished a story a while back, a story about a goat (the beginnings). And it's not terribly long, but it oscillates between present action and past action fairly frequently. Most readers follow along easily, at least they seem to, but I'm wondering if my organization of the plot points has done more harm than good, given them 'flash-burn' if you will.
The rationale: As the present action takes place, the MC recalls past actions. That's it, that's why I set the whole thing up the way it currently sits. Straightforward enough. The past actions appear as flashbacks, as pearls on the strand of the narrative.
The uncomfortable facts: The story carries you along like a buckboard in the foothills. The view is picturesque, the setting is evocative, the company is interesting but you can't focus because as soon as you settle into a semi-comfortable position, your butt gets jolted half a foot in the air.
The remedy? Short answer: Gruntwork. Long answer: I don't know.
Right now I've carved the story into distinct events and put them in chronological order. I've changed maybe 30 words, but it's a different story. Better? I'm not sure yet. I want to use the flashback because it is an effective informative tool and helps keep the reader engaged.
But: before, I was jigging too much and not letting the fish track the bait. Currently, the story looks appetizing, but it may be dead. I need to put enough movement in the bait to lure the reader into biting.
Enough of my similes and metaphors (semaphores?), what do you think? How do you organize your stories? Do you stack the movement for emotional effect or stick to the day planner approach?
ps I hope this makes sense.
The rationale: As the present action takes place, the MC recalls past actions. That's it, that's why I set the whole thing up the way it currently sits. Straightforward enough. The past actions appear as flashbacks, as pearls on the strand of the narrative.
The uncomfortable facts: The story carries you along like a buckboard in the foothills. The view is picturesque, the setting is evocative, the company is interesting but you can't focus because as soon as you settle into a semi-comfortable position, your butt gets jolted half a foot in the air.
The remedy? Short answer: Gruntwork. Long answer: I don't know.
Right now I've carved the story into distinct events and put them in chronological order. I've changed maybe 30 words, but it's a different story. Better? I'm not sure yet. I want to use the flashback because it is an effective informative tool and helps keep the reader engaged.
But: before, I was jigging too much and not letting the fish track the bait. Currently, the story looks appetizing, but it may be dead. I need to put enough movement in the bait to lure the reader into biting.
Enough of my similes and metaphors (semaphores?), what do you think? How do you organize your stories? Do you stack the movement for emotional effect or stick to the day planner approach?
ps I hope this makes sense.
It's December. That means it's almost Christmas. Here's a bit of holiday cheer from Bing Crosby and David Bowie singing "Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth."
Happy holidays, yo. Enjoy.
Happy holidays, yo. Enjoy.
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