Writing

Exhibit C on why I do not write poetry

(You can see Exhibits A and B here and here, respectively.)

Back in ancient times I wrote poetry because I had to.

Which is to say in my college creative writing class one term consisted of writing poetry. Though we had computers even back then (with snazzy dot matrix printers) I chose to write most of my poetry on one of the clunky typewriters in the library. The typewriters were all in a sealed room for obvious reasons. Just one of those 50 pound behemoths clacked thunderously, let alone a room of them. With my typing style (three fingers, strongly) the noise level was that much higher. BANG BANG BANG POETRY.

This is a scanned copy of the original. An unfinished draft of another poem called The Island is visible on the other side of the paper. As with most of my poetry, Pretty Bunnies and Happy Flowers was written in a single session with little thought and no attention paid to rhyme, meter or really anything that a poet should pay attention to. It was also not one of my submitted projects, probably because I knew better than to cultivate an unwanted reputation as a weirdo by letting others read it. Twenty-three years later the poem strikes me as less creepy and more stupid, a mockery of ‘serious’ poetry, which was my secret way of admitting I couldn’t write the stuff worth beans!

A haiku for my back

Five days later and my back is starting to feel a little closer to normal after The Stooping Incident. I have written a haiku to help remember this less-than-cherished event.

This Back of Mine

Bending down and zap
Pain and the old man shuffle
Stupid random back

Writing exercise: New lyrics for an old song (using California Girls)

Putting new lyrics to an established song is nothing new — it’s done regularly for parody but it’s still a fun exercise, especially if you try for a specific focus.

For example, the song ‘California Girls’ (Mike Love, Brian Wilson) takes 2:47 to explain how girls all around the U.S. (and the world) are nifty but what would be the niftiest of all is if they were California girls, presumably because they’d have rockin’ tans and actually be near enough to date/chase/moon over. Not exactly deep stuff:

Well East coast girls are hip
I really dig those styles they wear
And the Southern girls with the way they talk
They knock me out when I’m down there

Doing the old gender switch is easy for the chorus since it doesn’t rhyme.

I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California girls

Becomes:

I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California boys

Simple! In fact, the rest of the song can easily be switched around, gender-wise, too. This is probably the trickiest verse:

The West coast has the sunshine
And the girls all get so tanned
I dig a French bikini on Hawaii island
Dolls by a palm tree in the sand

What would be the equivalent of a French bikini for guys, especially of that era (mid 1960s)? How about cut-offs? A substitute for ‘dolls’ is tougher. Studs, maybe? Was that in the vernacular back then? I don’t know offhand because I was about one year old at the time and my fashion sense was limited to diapers and pooping in them.

The West coast has the sunshine
And the guys all get so tanned
I dig blue jean cut-offs on Hawaii island
Studs by a palm tree in the sand

Not exactly a masterpiece but hey, if someone ever starts up The Beach Girls, they’re good to go.

How about making the song about music?

Well East coast bands are hip
I really dig those styles they play
And the Southern jazz with the way they strum
They knock me out when I leave L.A.

The Mid-West farmer’s hoedown really make you feel alright
And the Northern cats with their drums and songs
Will keep you grooving all the night

I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California bands

Again, not the stuff of genius but we’ve shifted focus of the song while keeping as much of the original lyrics intact, creating a kind of alternate universe version of it.

Giving yourself the freedom to change the lyrics as much as you want, sticking only to the actual meter of the song (‘sung to the tune of…’) makes it both easier (no need to hew to the spirit/theme of the original) and more difficult (what will the song be about?)

I’m still mulling over choices but I’m thinking of something profound and grim to go with the jaunty music. I’ll post an update when I have put together my morose musings. If I can record it via some karaoke thing, all the better*!

 

* worse if you’ve heard me sing

Exercising the brain

Since I am not so much exercising the body at the moment (more on that in another blog entry coming real soon™) I have decided it is time to exercise that other flabby part of me: my brain.

I am going to start out simple with that old standby, the haiku. I dedicate this one to writing.

I shall write some more
To remove words from my head
And set them amok

These bloggy friends of mine

I wanted to highlight two blogs of PIKOTI (People I Know On The Internet). I made acquaintances with both of them through the Quarter to Three forums and like me, they both cherish the romantic dream of writing and getting paid fat piles of cash for doing so.

Matt Bowyer’s blog is nascent, with a mere four posts to date. It’s called Loading Screen and as Matt puts it:

I started this site for two reasons. 1) MattWBowyer.com was available, and since that’s me, I thought I should do something about it. 2) I’m writing a book. Actually, I wrote a book, or at least I wrote a first draft. It’s not too good, but I think it will end up being good.

I shall tease him unto the end of days if he doesn’t stick with his promise to post three times a week. This will be done to help him build character, lots and lots of character.

The other blog dates back from when FrontPage was considered hip. Actually, it was never considered hip, but Jason Pace’s blog was nonetheless started back in 1998, when Duke Nukem Forever had only been in development for a single year. His blog is called Aim for the Head. Quoth Jason:

This weblog itself is just where I ramble about the things I feel like rambling about. There is a smattering of armchair game design. I review every book that I read. I put forth the effort to track down passes for free movie screening and I review them too. I occasionally writing creative things and post them. And sometimes, like this About page, I just ramble.

Looks like Jason may need an editor. I’m available and cheap. And easy.

Jason doesn’t mention it in his About section but he also does this word of the day thing. On Broken Forum he describes it thusly: “I am also now doing a drawing each day based on either the reference.com or webster’s word of the day (I cheat and choose the better word, and also because some days one will have a word that doesn’t lend itself to drawing).” You can see one of the results in this post. This is exactly the sort of neat idea I love to steal borrow.

These are both a couple of super-friendly and helpful guys. Read their words and when the time comes, buy them!

thennotwrite.com

My last Grand Writing Decision (GWD) of 2011 is to pull the plug on my moribund site thenwrite.com. Thinking it over, I’m just not prepared to give it the effort it needs to get rolling again and with the hosting due in a few days I’d rather put it on ice for now and mull its future over than re-commit and produce lots of nothing.

I may revive the short story exercises I did on the Martian Cartel forum. They worked fairly well overall and produced some nice results. Or maybe I will become a hermit and write haikus on the insides of clam shells while living under the pier at Jericho Beach.

Decisions!

Post-NaNo recovery, step 1

Picking up my writing post-NaNoWriMo flame-out will involve a few things. My first step is organization.

Thus I will be doing the following:

  • converting The Ferry over to Scrivener format. I think this will prove illuminating as I continue to work on the second draft.
  • prioritize the short stories I want to use for my collection, discarding weaker ones or pondering whether they are worth reworking.
  • outline my post-Ferry novel.
  • convert last year’s NaNo project (Low Desert) to Scrivener format and consider whether it is worth continuing.
  • decide on the future of thenwrite.com.

That’s enough to keep me busy this month. I also plan to actually write, too! Any progress made will be recorded here.

Another ride

Here’s another bit of poetry I wrote back when I was forced to do so in that creative writing course I took in college (you can see a couple of other entries here).

This is one in a series of poems I wrote using the title The Ride. Put together, the set of poems was like a concept album in handy text form. Or something. This ride is not as terrible as some of the others but it should provide some evidence as to why I did not go on to become a poet. It’s a love letter to the rollercoaster. Maybe one day I’ll try reworking it sometime to see if my poetic terribleness has changed with age.

The Ride (number eight)

Wooden girders challenge
dare, invite
I cannot resist.

There is a certain smell here
Something faint and not easily determined
Cotton candy wispy, its sweet scent
catching the breeze and riding away
Corn dogs and greasy tacos, a trace of dust
peeling up off hot pavement
and into my face
Memories of others who have stood here
fifty years before.

I queue up, handing a rumpled ticket
that has spent too long in my pocket

A boyfriend squeezes his girl,
laughing as she shudders
A spandex suit with a woman poured in
giggles with apparent excitement

A gang of boys, each trying to outdo
each other with trendy clothes and
unique mousse stylings, declare their
lust for the ride; this is the tenth
time they’ve been here today.

I step up to the gate and watch
as a train pulls in, its passengers
whooping and screaming and swooning
and laughing and sitting utterly still
with no expression at all.

The gate opens and I bravely slide into
the front seat. The woman in spandex
squirms in beside me and a
padded metal bar locks on our laps.
There is no escape.

The train clatters out of the station
and turns to the first hill.
A chain takes hold and we are tilted back,
lifted toward the sky.

An indefinable moment exists
when the train reaches top
There is no feeling of movement,
no sound as the car is released
from the chain
Only the sky, completely clear,
neither far nor near
Then my stomach lurches upward
and I let my arms fly
My tuckus rises out of the seat
and I wonder why people do this

But I know why.

The sensation is reversed going
back up; my organs bob in confusion
What have we done to deserve this abuse?
Wind roars and the car trembles,
seemingly more frightened than its occupants
as it lifts and falls, turns and
hurtles into deep valleys

All too soon it ends.
Distant and not so distant screams
whistle away, the train breathes more calmly
and we are back in the station.

A uniformed and geeky sixteen year old,
blessed only by a lack of acne, quickly
motions us away.
The spandex woman is babbling incoherently.
I think she liked the ride.

She asks if I want to go again.
My endorphins answer for me
and we queue up for another go.

Why I failed NaNoWriMo 2011

Here is my sad story. But it has a happy ending, so read on.

There were a couple of things I did wrong in preparation for National Novel Writing Month 2011, the main one being that I didn’t really prepare at all. Sure, I had come up with a few ideas to choose from in October:

  1. Last year’s unfinished project.
  2. A story idea I’d been kicking around for 20+ years.
  3. A short story idea that I felt would cork in longer form.
  4. An idea that was nothing more than a neat-sounding title. Why not?

Why not? In order:

  1. Unfinished project: Maybe it was unfinished for a reason! I scratched this one off the list pretty quickly.
  2. Story idea 20+ years old: I actually think the idea is fine but the story is beyond the scope of a 50,000 word 30 day dash, which I will get to in more detail shortly.
  3. Expanding the short story: the idea is a good one but it requires research. Too much research (see #2).
  4. The neat-sounding title: Yeah, I’m going to write a 50,000 word novel in one month based on nothing more than a neat title. In a fever dream, perhaps.

And thus problem #1: not enough preparation.

November also turned out to be Health Hell Month for me or HHM as I like to call it. When I went to dinner at a friend’s I mentioned I’d been experiencing a sudden health issue. The first word out of her mouth: “Prostate?” Yes, I am a man in his mid-to-late 40s. Yes, the frigging prostate. And then other ailments followed, minor but annoying and I found myself taking a mix of antibiotics (the ones I’m not allergic to), anti-inflammatory agents and dealing with discomfort, outright pain and when everything finally seemed to be mending back together I caught a nasty cold.

Problem #2, then: stupid body.

Another significant issue I had was trying to fit my ideas to the format, the main reason for the deaths of ideas #2 and #3 as outlined above. I didn’t want to write an epic that would go on for 200,000 words then consider myself a NaNo winner when I completed the first 50,000. I have no problem with others doing this, but it wouldn’t work for me. I needed something that could be written quickly, succinctly and with the ending reached before November 30th. My 2009 project was perfect for this — some people get on a late-night ferry, monsters hop on board and a night of snacking and horror follows. Simple, direct. None of the ideas I latched onto this year fit into a tidy little box like the ferry ride of doom. My ideas were too ambitious, effectively sabotaging my effort before I had even started writing. Sure, I might have pulled off one of them somehow if I had persevered but the chance of that happening was pretty slim.

Problem #3 can be thus be thought of as having square pegs and a whole lot of round holes.

I had suspended work on the second draft of my 2009 novel to work on NaNoWrMo 2011 and in that first week of November I found myself wishing I was working on that instead of flailing about with the current contest. This is not the mindset of a successful NaNoian.

And so it was that my mind and body, working together, defeated my attempt to write a slapdash novel in 30 days. And that’s not such a bad thing, really. National Novel Writing Month is a great way for a would-be writer to light a fire under his butt, to get that motivation going, to get into that very simple habit of writing every day, instilling discipline and reveling in the sheer joy of banging out words. But in a way I think I’m already there and this year’s NaNoWriMo came as a distraction. I didn’t need it.

Perhaps I’m just rationalizing my failure but I am confident I don’t need NaNoWriMo anymore as a tool to get me starting to write. I’m already there. How about NaNoWriMo as nothing more than a fun way to crank out a quick book? Sure. But that’s not what I wanted to do during the 30 days of November. And so I didn’t. Not in the way I might have planned, of course, but the destination was the same in the end.

I look forward to continuing to write, whether it’s forum posts, this blog, a short story or a novel. And maybe next year if I really want to write a quickie novel, NaNoWriMo 2012 will be there for me and I’ll use my foreknowledge to actually plan properly. Assuming the Mayans were wrong, of course.

NaNoWriMo a probable no-go

I am nearly but not officially ready to admit defeat with this year’s National Novel Writing Month. With 12 days to go, I have failed to light a spark on any of my attempts to write a novel. Part of it is poor planning, part of it is various distractions (health, work, fun stuff like that) and part of it is fear of over-committing to a complicated story that couldn’t be reasonably delivered in 30 days.

But as I said, I’ve not given up quite yet. I’ll have more to say in about a week’s time.

NaNoWriMo 2011 update number deux -or- Not going with the Titanic metaphor (this time)

A funny thing happened on the way to the word processor.

My clever plan to use this weekend to pad out my word count on my NaNoWriMo novel, which I shall henceforth call my NaNovel because the insufferable cuteness of the term beats out having to type NaNoWriMo novel all the damn time, lay in ruins, to writing what the Hindenburg was to safe dirigible travel.

Today, while recovering from the various things that caused me to not write over the past 48 hour period, I picked up a copy of Scrivener,  “a powerful content-generation tool for writers that allows you to concentrate on composing and structuring long and difficult documents.” The blurb on the Scrivener site goes on to say “While it gives you complete control of the formatting, its focus is on helping you get to the end of that awkward first draft.” Awkward, yes. That is a good way to describe the situation I now find myself in.

I impressed myself by actually working methodically through the entire set of Scrivener tutorials (I tend to start skimming/skipping ahead with these things) but am uncertain this will help me with my current NaNovel. It will almost certainly prove helpful for The Mean Mind, the great unwritten novel that has existed in outline form and in my noggin for the better part of 20 years due to its epic scale and large cast of characters.

I shall write more on Scrivener as I start to make use of it.

For this month’s contest, however, I have to consider a few facts. I have a little over 5,000 words written for The Dream of the Buckford Church, the expansion of the short story I chose to pursue on Day 2. Today is Day 7 and that puts me about 6670 words behind. Yikes. To make that up over the next week I’d have to up my daily word count from 1667 to around 2620. That’s actually fairly feasible if I’m fully invested in what I’m writing.

Unfortunately I’m not convinced that I’m any more enthused about expanding Buckford Church than I was on adapting my short story idea for The Capitol Dome into a novel. With 23 days left I feel I must make a decision and act on it tomorrow. If I don’t it’s probably best to cut my losses early and go back to editing The Ferry. Oh the drama.