Weerd Write

Like a bat out of hell, I come screeching back to blogging.

Where have I been? Writing writerly writings? Wistfully wasting words wonderfully? Wishfully wrecking women?

Well, blogging is like a season for me. One day it’s over and then like a bunch of days later it starts again. Probably not healthy for my writerly muscles, but whatever.

But, anyway. What’s been the happs in my literary world since like forever ago?

Well, I tried my hands at quite a few different things. Big ones were screenwriting and playwriting.

Screenwriting went pretty “meh”, I started a few projects and they never got around to being finished, mostly because my heart wasn’t in it. But I’m glad I tried it, and I definitely got a few neat techniques from it I use now.

Playwriting was pretty cool. Was just like screenwriting for me, obviously there are some differences, but it felt more literary in terms of my finger feelings. I read some really good plays, and then wrote a few crappy ones. I wrote one that was actually pretty fun for me, titled The Initiation (see At The Drive In). It was kind of like a comedic cross between Clueless and Chula. It got selected for a student-run, one-act play festival at my school and (with almost no involvement-save the writing of the thing and brief correspondences with the director) I got to see it as a production. I sat in the audience and watched as several people I have never met brought my characters to life on the stage. It made me all warm inside (there was nail-biting too).

Guess what else?

I got two stories published.

SUCK IT H8ERS.

Pretty cool development there, seeing as publication has been a goal of mine since forever. It may be worth saying that the publications were both on the small press side of the spectrum, but hey oh well. Credits are all precious credits. Thank the spaghetti monster for Duotrope (check it out if you are an author trying to publish, best tool I have used so far).

I’m currently in the process of revision and redemption of dead/stalled stories, as well as starting the process of creation for new shorties. A bigger project looms on the borders of my imagination, but for now it exists on this plane only as a few scribbled notes here and there.

Things in Tylerland have been pretty swell. Now let’s see if I can breathe some life back into this blog.

I’ve been thinking about voice today, and, well, a lot of days. 

I think voice is like taste, that when you read a story you can feel it on your lips and know how well you’re going to be able to wash it down, whether this will be a snack deal, a good meal, or is this going to be something that you will look back fondly on as being perfect; you’ll always go on trying new things in hopes something equates to that perfect morsel, or even hoping in the back of your head that it can surpass it (but you don’t really want that, do you? Not if you like something enough). 

Some things are bland. I find certain stories that I read tasteless, how easy it is to finish and forget. That’s not good, but then again, there are plenty of manufacturers of the grey stuff that fills up rookie anthologies and rushed e-books and quarterly college publications ran by pretentious little butt plug sitting hipsters (I ain’t attacking anyone, well, maybe I am). I’m not saying I’m better than anyone (most people) but there is that lower level out there, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing, it’s just there bro. Get off my back. 

Here are some (personally attempted) examples of taste, uh, voice: 

Stephen King - a very well cooked home meal that makes you feel warm and fuzzy and is just fun, probably you had a good conversation over it, maybe it was just leftovers but that’s ok, no one’s home and you have a hangover anyway. Sometimes, when you look at the ingredients and sometimes arty (sometimes not) way the thing is compiled, you feel a little silly spending time with it. But, it’s just fun, it isn’t work. But, for sure, if you spent all of your time just consuming King you would get fat and lazy. 

Thomas Pynchon - like some whiskey, hard hard whiskey. You consume, it’s consumable for sure, but it’s only in sips or tentative swallows. You dive into it sometimes sure, but when you do your nostrils flair and you have to sit down afterwards. Some people, they can take it straight, all the time it seems, and go on like they breathe fire. But, those people aren’t always all together there, are they? There is something up with them, they’re interesting people sure, but they’re not the first people you call to go see a movie with. 

Kurt Vonnegut - he’s spicy, not to spicy, but pleasantly so. He has a kick to him, you find yourself eating sometimes very quickly and sometimes very slowly, and sometimes you have to make yourself savor the bites and chew chew chew. Long, short swallows. And, you know, sometimes after it’s over it leaves you rumbling; you don’t get over that so quickly. And sometimes, especially, it gets you at the end (HA). 

I am too exhausted to do more, but you get it. That’s what I see, well, when I compare voice to taste. I don’t often like describing (or attempting, you see attempts here) to describe voice because I am not the particular orator; I am an observer and a contemplator of such observations. 

My thoughts haven’t been concentrating around the voices of the professionals I admire, however, and they are not the reason I am writing about them in this here blog (or journal, you’ve noticed it’s more a journal haven’t you?). Nay, not, I have been thinking instead about my own voice. 

In conversation with my best writer friend recently, in regards to editing a piece I’ve been working on, he said my voice was coming out a bit more this time around the mountain (big fucking mountain) and I was like all “Yay” because that’s a nice thing to hear. Buuuuuuuut I didn’t see it, or notice it, coming out. I’m not saying that I listen to his every word and command like he is almighty and all-knowing hal lee luh yuh (but he is pretty holy). He just knows me and my shit, which he sifts and puts up with. Someday I’ll buy him a nice rug or something. 

Anyway, can I describe, know, or attempt to taste my own voice? Is that like fucking yourself? I don’t know, it feels like I should be able to pull something out of my ass. Themes, that’s different, I know what I tend to concentrate on thematically. Settings, genre tendencies, and the kind of dialogue choices I make…yeah, I know those. But voice? How do I listen to myself? 

Reading my own work, analyzing? (How come his blog is filled with so many questions [to be read in that quirky little old lady voice Jim Gaffigan does in his stand up]?) 

Answer is, not an answer, but it’s I don’t know. I have ideas, the kinds of grammatical patterns I fall into, some of the flatness or apathy that comes off as cold (but isn’t that anti-voice?) but other than that, it’s a big mirror that goes one way. Not my way. 

So, what can I do to find out what I sound like? I entered a bit of my current baby into this quirky little application on some website somewhere 

http://iwl.me/

that told me that I wrote like H.P. Lovecraft. While I don’t think this is true at all (I’m touching my throbbing erection while I say that), I can kind of see that in a silly way. It just frustrated me more. 

You may be thinking, “Why did I just read all of this?” I’ll tell you why. You putting up with my angsty writerly ramblings now will pay off BIG TIME in the future. In fact, here is some advice, break off you monitor right now with this blog post frozen on it, put it in a little zip lock baggie, and hide it away in an attic or some top shelf of a closet. Wait bout twenty (god I hope not that long) years and come bring it to a book signing I’m conducting in some book store (or starbucks) and be like “Hey can you sign this blog post you wrote when you still looked good and had balls?” And I’ll be all like “Sure” and then you’ll be like, while I’m signing (it takes a little while because my body is all shaky from the years of substance abuse and I’m vibrating like a jack hammer) just trying to shoot the shit you’ll say “Hey, it’s kind of funny, how you are so like super successful now, and back then you were just a whiney little shit of a writer who didn’t even know what is own voice was like and all you did was try to get your shitty little short stories published in magazines, like paper ones, and you sucked” and I’ll look up and be all like “You know what I did this morning? I wiped my ass with Jesus’s old robe that he wore during the last supper that I bought at an auction with some money I found in my shoe and while I was doing that I did lines of coke mixed with the ashes of Kanye West and then I looked up and told my house AI that it should take a picture of me doing this and print it off just so I can hand it out to people who make fun of me at book signings and then it did and here is one, made the rest into a funny little picture which I sold at Wal-Mart that helped give me enough money to fund a small arms dealer in Eastern Europe who I’ve never even met but his name is Vlad and I sponsor him just because I felt like being a fuck”. Then you’ll just stand there and I’ll be done signing then and I’ll be like “Here, go sell this and by yourself a nice hovercraft”. 

Yikes. 

I imagine editing is very much like being an animal surgeon, especially if there is a kind that specializes in removing fatty tumors from dogs. On one hand, it’s unhealthy for the thing to have that much extra skin on it, so operations are necessary, but if you fuck up you could detach something vital and kill someone’s beloved pet. 

Whelp. 

Here’s the deal, I’ve been working a lot (not really more than I usually do, but aren’t excuses such sweet things to slide across our tounges?) and I have so wisely chosen to waste a good majority of my days off sleeping in to make up for the extreme late hours I’ve been staying up to whilst being a rascal. Usually I’ve been waking up around twelve or one in the afternoon and when it’s getting to be that Noon time I can more easily disregard the chair adjoining my desk and have more nasty self assurance as I browse the internet mindlessly. Also, I don’t make coffee past noon, and what the fuck can I do without any coffee? 

So, in short (skip that whole sob story paragraph and just read this line) I have been wasting most of my mornings not writing. 

Editing, however, is a different story. 

My latest story that I’ve been running through the merciless re-write wringer is a little diddy I’ve been working on for a few months now, and is currently kicking (for now) in it’s seventh draft. This has broken the record of draft numbers for me, and that’s only because past stories don’t invest me as much as this one. I only, two drafts back, began to feel like I knew the character, I began to imagine Peter Cole as a man and not a name, began to realize that after the story he still existed, somewhere at least, and that he probably is drinking a whole fucking lot. I see him much more clearly now (that the rain is gone [LOL]) and that’s pretty nifty. Still needs work, my good, brilliant, kind and handsome writer friend of mine is helping me edit; here’s a good tidbit: when you look at your shit and are blinded by the sheen of gold, find someone who can point out that the only thing golden about your stinking pile is the flecks of corn in it and that it still stinks. 

So, everything on that front is going pretty well! 

Next, new material. 

I have written approximatly one keeper since finishing the first draft of my current bou, and one that could be a keeper if it was completley reworked. That’s a span of two months, one keepable story. Joycean pace doesn’t seem nifty to me, in fact it makes me feel kind of anxious, like when you keep having the same dream wherein you are going to miss your flight. I have made few attempts, mostly because I’ve been spending the time editing, but this mornings attempt in particular was depressing. 

I sat down, unearthed an idea that popped into my head when I had been laying awake in bed, became re-creeped out, wrote down the outline, and began to write. Sounds promising? At least normal? Me too, I was thinking short, something only a few pages and my ETA was a couple hours. Thirty minutes later, only half a page deep (it should be said that i kept rewriting that first page in radically different ways) I closed out of Word and furrowed my forehead so much I think I broke something vital. 

Why couldn’t I start (or finish) this story? I told myself it was because it wasn’t a story I would really write but that’s bullshit, I am capable of writing anything I like, and I liked the story. Could be I just wasn’t feeling it, and that I could go back to it another time. Although, I don’t think that will happen, I don’t usually go back to reanimate my failures. 

But the sad thing is, this was only the third attempt to write something seriously in two months. Sure, I’ve been a productive editor in that time but a writer writes, he creates constantly (or so I would hope he does) and maybe it’s writer’s block but I think not. I think it’s because I am too involved in my drafted story that I’m feeling monogomous. 

So, what to do now in my productive days off? Will I have writer’s blue balls until I can see this thing in to some sort of publication? I hope not, I hope this is a temporary setback, a sideeffect of dedication, but I have ideas. I’m going to do some research, hopefully outlineing and detailing backstory on a future work will satisfy my writerly cravings. We’ll see. 

P.S. Bought this wonderful book called “Steal Like An Artist”, it’s very light and filled with pictures and quotes, basically supposed to be a creativity booster. It’s written by a semi-succesful poet/writer/artist named Austin Kleon, and you should pick it up. It will at least look interesting on your bookshelf.