Things I Should Have Learned

Isn't Gibraltar pretty? Wish my family and I lived there right now, just to get away from the States for a long long time. I'm not too in love with America right now. We must look so totally stupid to the rest of the world sometimes.

I learned a lot of things in high school. One of the things I learned, and then forgot, and then learned again, recently, is that being strident about the issues of the day gets you three things:

1. A few extra credit points with people who already believe as you do.

2. Added resolve on the part of the people who disagree with you.

3. Absolutely no gain whatsoever among the people you'd like to convince of your viewpoint.

This probably isn't axiomatic or anything, and so there's holes in this in a few places I'm guessing, but it seems intuitive don't you think?

In a few billion years the sun will turn into a red giant. And when it does that its outer atmosphere will be exactly in the perfect place to burn off our seas and turn Earth into a cinder. When that happens, I ask you, who is going to remember how you voted in 2012 AD and why? Huh? Who? ANSWER ME.

Someday you're going to turn around and you'll be dead. What does all this angst and anger have to do with anything when your dead eh? Answer me that one. What? You made a couple points and won an argument or three and looked so very clever and now you're dead. So big deal. What was that all for?

Over the past few months I've been going through somewhat of a minor spiritual crisis. I'm having big problems with an ethical construct I made for myself and how it relates to philosophy and outlook and my relationship to the whatsis and so forth. But I pulled out of it a few days ago and I'm okay. Nice of you to ask.

I have been guilty of what we call, in the Quaker faith, "outrunning my guide." Another phrase we use for it is "going off your watch." You can read in one of the old journals, one Quaker is watching another Quaker get in an argument and it gets all heated and wild and bad words are said and nothing of value is gained. Later as the two Quaker buddies walked away down the road, the observer leans over to the combatant and says "thee was off thy watch there for a minute, friend."

It's a thing where your actions get too far ahead of your spiritual discernment. You went a little goofy. Maybe you cranked on someone a little too hard. Those are all against the ethic we're supposed to be carrying around with us. "Thy neighbor as thyself" and all that.

Anyway I've been guilty of that. A lot. And hopefully I have it all back under control. It's difficult, though, in this rancid political climate, being surrounded by people who seem intent on being jerks to one another.

I've been writing a thing, and haven't said anything about it (and won't say any more than this), that is a lot different than anything I've done before. And I've found that when I have run ahead of my guide, or have been "off my watch", I haven't been able to write for it at all. Then, when I get centered again, it restarts and flows. It has everything going against it. The protagonist is a young Muslim, it takes place in a country not many people have ever heard of, and there's a talking hyena who grants wishes and steals camels. Yeah. Well. Anyway...

Like I said not my usual stuff. And I've been working on it since late winter. You know Faiqa Khan? She's seen parts of it, just as a checker. You can ask her more about it next time you see her. But the point is when I am unsettled I can't write it. When I'm fighting politics or getting all worked up about stuff I can't do it at all. I have to be centered. And to be centered means I have to be on my watch. This is mostly because the novel needs a rational person telling it. So it's been necessary to not get nasty with people. It's why I regret some of the arguments I've been in. Stifles the work.

Oh hi... I have no idea what this post is about anymore.

Never mind. Here's Charlize...

Alright, I'll Come Back...

My poor, beleaguered agent has probably given up with "Think Fast" by now. Those who liked it said they can't deal with the length (it's novella-sized), and those that didn't like it at all were probably the honest ones. And in the end it's the typical phenomenon with me; I can't stand to look at it let alone read it anymore. So I hardly care about it by now. But I temper this with the fact that I always feel like that. I think I've said before.

But things keep coming out down my fingers onto a keyboard or out of my mouth and into my Mac version of DragonDictate when I especially need dialog, so there's always a project working. I'm going to try and make his life easier and give him something more traditional and much longer. It's not urban, it's not a genre-bender, and it doesn't seem to have one profanity in the whole thing so far. In fact that would probably be totally out of place this time. It's actually more like magic realism than anything else; which is totally new for me though I love reading it when it's done well. Think Garcia-Marquez, Mahfouz and Paolo. It's a simple premise and still manages to fall into my usual study (solitary individual alienated blah blah etc.). This guy goes off into the Sahara with his life's possessions. He stumbles upon an unknown well that he turns into an oasis and people think he's a holy man or something, but there's a white hyena who knows the guy is full of crap and doesn't miss a chance to tell him so. Working title "The Well At al-Khiba’" - al-Khiba' being Arabic for a star constellation known as The Tent. Anyway maybe he'll have a better time trying to sell something a bit more traditional and mainstream than the usual crap I do. It's not that I'm going in this direction on purpose, just to please somebody. Not at all. It's pouring out of me and I throw away 80% of what comes out so I know it's just like normal. Only a different style. Don't know where it comes from.

But it's been a whirlwind fall so far and it's going to get crazier. The Reunion is over and was dull and downright anti-climactic when compared to the gathering I hosted of the old theater department. And an offshoot of that is that on November 8 I've been invited back to the school to give a short speech and introduce Rocco, as he will be entered into the Ring of Fame or whatever the school calls it. I'm honored to do it because we were in a couple plays together and I've been watching him ever since I saw him in Donnie Brasco with Pacino and Johnny Depp.

The catch here is that one of the reasons I told myself I stopped trying to pursue an acting career (outside of the fact that I stunk) was that I developed a severe and ever-increasing propensity for stage fright. Awful, staggering, murderous stage fright. It got to the point where I didn't want to do anything simply because I didn't want to feel that way any more. So here I go next month back in front of an audience and I'm strangely not petrified right now. I imagine I will get there starting the night before, so there is that. I don't know how I was convinced or why I agreed to do it. Probably off the euphoria of the reunion stuff. I don't know. Anyway here goes nothing. I hope to put a picture up on the blog afterward. If I survive.

My wife just got back from Tennessee where she and her brothers are finally settling their father's estate. The auction is in mid-November and they each stand to get a nice sum after everything is finished. I have been assigned the task of finding the best uses for the bulk of it, investment-wise. Another interest I never fully pursued? Well not really true, I did read the book Warren Buffet considered to be the Bible standard of investing, the one he utilized by the man who was his professor. And I have been able to keep our head above water in this market - in fact I've been buying pretty much all through 2008 to now. Of course everybody took a hit and I'm no different, but I didn't cash in the chips and things are coming back if you pick your stocks right (always compare book-value to the market price, if it's less than what it is selling for in the market you MIGHT have a value buy. That's just the first step, not ALL the steps. But it is where I always start). Anyway this will probably constitute the last influx of resources into our family from outside our own household so I can't screw it up. I'm suggesting a vacation first. That always makes paying off a credit card or two easier to swallow. :-)

So I'm blithering and it's 4 in the God damn morning. I'll cut it right here. Except to say that I'm trying... really hard... to get back to everybody's blogs and to post regularly. I spruced up the joint a little bit. I don't know what it means.

But okay... I'm coming back to the game.

Little Nothings

Yesterday I was taking the MINI in for it's yearly check-up at the doctor's office and shelling out $600 worth of tune-up shtick and so forth. It's just a "drive in when you feel like it we'll be done in a couple hours" set-up so I always go to the bookstore a little ways down the road to browse, read and have some coffee while I wait.

Of course all this does is reinforce the fact that I find it difficult to read fiction for pleasure any more. I don't get the same enjoyment from it that I used to. It doesn't have anything to do with editing Thrice because when I'm reading submissions people send that's for a whole other reason and I am actively looking for things. I'm talking about the feeling I got when I discovered Bruno Shulz or quite accidentally fell upon the genius of Flann O'Brien (aka Brian O'Nolan). It's not happening for me any more.

It's not because there aren't great things going on out there, even great old things I probably haven't discovered yet. The problem is I can't help but look at everything with a critical eye now. Again that's not because of the Thrice gig. It's more because I've grown more and more vicious regarding my own stuff and I find it carrying on to everything I read.

I mean it's not wholly unusual. Many's the time I would be reading, even in my yoot, something like, say, Arthur Conan Doyle. And I'd be happily wallowing in the atmosphere of the Great Detective's world only to come upon YET ANOTHER example of Doyle's stilted, ridiculous, unreal, affected, and amateurish dialog and throw the book across the room in disgust. So this isn't a new phenomenon.

It's just I find the feeling enhanced as of late.

Like I said, it's not just me-to-others. Mostly it's me-to-myself. I'll open up work I did just yesterday and I don't like the sentence structure or I see that this would have been better said with 40% less verbiage, or that whole paragraph has all the signs of being overworked, or this vignette has no business anywhere in the work at all. And I delete with relish. I think - and this is no exaggeration - I must write 40,000 words for every 2,000 I keep. And that's a conservative estimate.

So I either obviously suck at this or I'm hyper-anal. I guess it depends which day you catch me.

Back at the bookstore - I picked up two "literary" magazines. You know, the well-funded kind nobody in real life actually reads. And I'm going through them and I keep shaking my head. No no no. Oh God don't say it that way. Are you trying to be Victor Hugo? And so forth.

I finished my coffee and decided to head back to the car, convinced I could easily contribute something to either one of these two booklets in the future since what they're accepting is just so much shit.

And then I get home and go through my pile of things never submitted anywhere, only to find I don't like anything in it and no matter what I sent it would need a major overhaul before I'd feel good about presenting it. And there I am, convinced I could do better than these shmucks one minute and certain I don't have anything worthwhile to send the next.

Welcome to my world.

Well that's my lament today. In thirty minutes I've got to go off to my real job. 40 hours in three days begins in 3... 2... 1.

It's okay though. It was pointed out to me that, though my schedule is intense and all-consuming for 72 hours, I only actually work twelve days a month. That's a sustaining thought anyway.

----------------------------------------------------
Oh and, may I be permitted a "blast from the past" from an old blog post of mine? Why yes. Yes I may...

SEPARATED AT BIRTH...?

Sorry, couldn't resist. I just got done telling someone how I dislike celebrating revenge and now I go and republish this photo set. Just kill me now...

Where I Am Now

I already have the idea for my next bit of fiction and can't wait to get going on it. The problem is I'm still not done with the current thing. I'm a little anxious to get started on the new thing and, as expected, I already hate the old thing. But I have promised to send it to someone who wants to try and do something with it in January so I guess I better get that done.

Don't get excited, I hate everything I've ever written. Everything.

If anything I think I've found the voice I've been looking for all these years.
There's not a lot of verbiage anymore. No long-winded paragraphs and descriptions until you've got every last freaking detail.
Don't write the boring stuff; the big, long paragraphs that just make everybody yawn.
Dialog dialog dialog.
As few adjectives as possible.
And one sentence paragraphs. A lot of them. In a row.
Your reader should be on page thirty before they even know it, and wrapped up in the story so that they don't even realize they're that far in.
Take out all the flummery. Distill everything down to as few words as possible. That's the hard part.
Write 6,000 words and cut 5,500 of them. Then do it again tomorrow.
Expect that most of what you did yesterday is shit.
Don't fall in love with anything you create.
Just tell a story and don't be full of yourself. A five-year-old can tell a story.

Hemingway said writing is easy. "All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."

Then don't take the blood seriously.

On another front, I've taken out a subscription to an anarchist magazine. Anarchists are so cute. They realize what they're saying is impossible but they keep going for it anyway. I saw a cartoon, said "libertarians are anarchists with money." But if the people who call themselves libertarians - as it is understood these days - knew the anarchist roots of the idea they'd be shocked. Shocked I tell you.

But I was browsing through Quimby's Bookstore the other day and OMG saw issue #103 of The Match. Do you realize I first saw The Match when I was in HIGH SCHOOL??? Like 1969 or '70 (yes, I've been weird for a while now, and your point IS?). The same guy is doing it. Fred has got to be in his 70's by now and has lived pretty much off the grid since forever, spouting what he styles as "ethical anarchism." There is no website, so forget that. You have to really look to find an address to connect with him via snail mail. And if you can manage to get a subscription you have to realize that he has no publishing schedule. You'll get it. But you'll get it when he's done so bugger off.

Still in all that's not the one I just subscribed to, but just the same it's Issue freaking #103 and I think forty years ago it was like Issue #2 or #8 I was looking at.

And NO I'm not joining the movement. I stopped dreaming of the impossible a long time ago. If everything was anarchism the only people in charge would be gangs of roving thugs. Whoever was armed would say what's what. Which is kind of what we have now except on a worldwide scale. So there is that.

Okay so tonight I'll throw out most of yesterday's work and plow in again. It's like a dam broke but most of what comes out is swill.

No, Rly...

I was sitting in my pajamas throwing out 54 pages and never going back to it again. I had this on the iPod and cutting, slashing, moving around all the useless bs in my story, starting over again, throwing away any hint of sentimentality and loving every minute of it when all of a sudden.....



And if I keep having these lightning strikes changing everything again and again I'm never going to actually finish this thing.

In the meantime I am happily (gag, spit) playing a minor part in somebody else's play and pretty much I think by next Thursday or something I won't care about other people's shit at all.

I want every page of the work to exhaust the reader. Non stop. Cut the frills. That's real hard. But it's getting there.

Time Out Of Mind

Okay so here is that familiar place. I've been here before. I've finished the project and am ready to present it. I've gone through the lists of people I've made who handle this kind of material and am ready to address them. There's not many more touches I can think of right now, though I know I will think of some later. I actually have a title. I am actually finished.

And I don't like it.

I woke up this morning convinced that somewhere in the middle it took a wrong turn. That I should have gone another way with it. Then as I got ready to go off to work I thought, "No, going the other way would be a cliche." I kept telling myself - and always tell myself - let it take you where it wants to go. Don't force it. Let the story dictate what happens. Roll with it. And I did. And I'm sitting here thinking "nothing actually happens in this story."

Of course, I mean, yes obviously something happens. But is it interesting enough? Is it actually what I wanted to write? Is this what I write?

I remember all the influences this time. Hone it down. Get rid of the fluff. Keep it basic. "If it looks like writing, change it." Let the characters talk like actual people talk. It's written in first person; will the people looking at it *get* the language or are they going to mistakenly say "this guy's grammar SUCKS!"

Did I put too much of myself in here? Or not enough? I can't wait to stop thinking about it. I don't want to think about it any more. I want to start the next thing. I already have the opening (that will be changed seventeen times before I'm satisfied, just like THIS one).

I look at the manuscript and all I see are the warts. But I could fix the warts from now until I'm dead.

Forget it. Just send it. And move on to the next project.

OK So Start Cluseing

(Ten points if you figure out who this guy is and how he could be connected to this subject)

The idea is to sequester and to close up in order to concentrate on the work. If you want to be a recluse, you better start cluseing in the first place. I've been spending too much time futzing around on the internet and it's serious now. I've got it worked out at home - you'll rarely if ever see me in blogland once I'm home and Facebook is now a once-in-a-while thing. Problem is the dead time at work. I have to watch the showroom and if there's no one coming in.... well... you know. Opportunity.

So I solved this by bringing some of the work here, but not physically. I use the "New Post" feature on this blog to be my platform I can access from here or at home. Turns out I do dialog better from here (work), probably because I'm hearing real people using real idioms in real time. If you were a "Team Member" you'd be able to see a whole lot of crap, that's for sure. And I mean crap, because it always starts with bits and pieces and until it gets going it's... well... you know. Crap.

I have been watching and reading THIS SITE, run by author's agent Janet Reid and it is invaluable. What an incredible resource. Just don't use it if your skin's a little on the thin side. All it is? A blog where people submit "queries" and she tells you why and how the agent you sent it to is going to look at it. If you're picked you get to revise and keep going till you get it. It's a beautiful thing. Especially when she tells people to "SEND IT!" - sometimes even after several rewritten queries. Once you see what she's saying you have to admit - yeah if the query letter sucks it doesn't bode well for what follows. Anyway it's a brilliant blog.

And with that, why yes, I'm admitting we're going to bring this to the "regular" publishing world. The "alternative" scene is still my old home but I can't really see what I'm doing right now as belonging there. So we're going into the maw of the monster (add a childish "lol" here to make it sound non-threatening. Jesus...)

But I've pretty much made peace with the time handling thing and am confident all the time I need to spend is being spent. I know that just makes you so happy.

So who is the guy and what's the relation to the post?

Discussion

I watched him on the ladder with his head almost completely inside the hole in the ceiling, scoping out the situation with a flashlight. “All kind of ways to look at things. When I was a kid I used to think if I wished hard enough my toy soldiers would come to life and start talking to me. Ever sit there wishing your toys would wake up and start talking to you?”

“No...”

“I blame Disney. Wish this, wish that. Wish hard enough and your wish will come true. I wished for those toy soldiers so hard I got a splitting headache and the damn things just sat there anyhow. Disney’s screwed up more lives than anything. Do mice talk and sing? Do little blue birds fly through the air with ribbons in their mouths helping to make your dress?”

“Yeah I know.”

“Disney screwed up more kids than anything else. All these little kids in a row with their eyes closed tight, wishing so hard. Five hundred kids sitting in a row like they’re trying to take a shit and nothing’s happening. He was on drugs anyhow you know.”

“Somebody told me that, yeah.”

“Do birds have mouths or is it just a beak?”

“Mouths? I guess birds have mouths. Don't they?”

“I mean, yeah they got a mouth where they suck up worms and shit but is it officially a mouth or is it just a beak?” He put the flashlight in his belt and picked up the can of bug spray he'd set in front of him on the top of the ladder.

“I think it’s an official mouth. Isn’t it? A mouth is a mouth.”

“Yeah I’m saying, it’s a mouth but what do they call it in science.”

“A beak.”

“That’s what I’m saying. And if a guy has a big nose they say he’s got a big beak, which is stupid because he doesn’t eat through his nose. But I guess birds got two little holes in their beak for a nose ain’t it?” He started to spray directly into the ceiling. Billows of the stuff came puffing out of the hole above his head. It had to have been going in his eyes but he just went right ahead.

“I have no idea.”

“Well maybe it’s like you have to have a vent there so they can swallow.”

“Swallow.”

“Yeah. Jesus you got a million ants up here.”

“Yeah.”

“Of course I’ve seen some guys that may as well be able to eat with their nose. Christ, they sucked everything else up there.” He shifted his weight so he could shoot the spray in another direction.

“I know.”

“Well, I think I got the eggs. I mean the white shit where they hatch from up here. What’s it called.”

“Yeah.”

He started to climb down. “OK so the plaster guy will be up here tomorrow to replace the part of the ceiling that fell on you. It fall on your head while you were sleeping?”

“My feet. Woke me up though.”

“Jesus. Gives me the creeps. That’ll do it though. All the eggs are sprayed so if anybody is left up there they’ll want to go somewhere else. That's how they work. Anyhow it won't be your problem anymore that's for sure. Good thing it didn’t fall on your face while you were sleeping.”

“Yeah.”

"Jesus."

Who Knows

You get a bonus if you know what happened inside the building pictured on the right. I don't know what you get. Maybe cheese. Maybe a break. Who knows.

"I'd been dying of a heart attack for three weeks and decided to figure out what to do with all my money once I croaked, and all I can say is that the whole thing was just one great big pain in the ass."

OK yeah... tah dah! The opening I decided on when I told you I decided on an opening some time ago. It's lasted more than a week so I figure it'll be there when I'm done. Well maybe. Who knows.

Somebody said the only psychological disorder connected to writers belongs to people who can't write but keep doing it anyway. A kernel of truth in there I guess. but also sounds like someone is trying to just be a hard ass. Who knows.

I can't write anything unless it's first person any more. I blame blogs for that. There's a lot of people who hate hate hate first person fiction. But most everybody did it from time to time. Ernie sez you can tell it's good when people come up thinking it actually happened to you. I think I'm stuck in this mode now from my long ago experience acting where you get inside the character's head and you don't "say lines" you just have the guy talk. I can't conceptualize it any other way anymore. I think when people don't like first person fiction it's because the writer didn't develop the character's voice enough. If they really made the character a whole thing it's easier. otherwise it comes off really stupid, and I've read shit like that. It's shit. How it gets published I'll never know. Anyway that's my take on first person fiction. Here's the rules; You write first person fiction like this... 1.obviously the protagonist doesn't die because he's talking. 2. then just go from there. Pretty simple. I think. Who knows.

I can't even tell you how many words I have written to get to the words I'm sure are done at this point. A few weeks ago I think I said I have 15,000 "presentable" words. Today I'm only sure of the first 9,000. Not only that but I took the order of events and changed it. Four times. I have three endings now. I still don't know what to use. The ending has to match the first line, not in words but in what the hell is going on. Aaaaaand I've got three that do that. So there I am. I don't see this going more than 26,000. Just barely a novel. Anything more and it's just stupid useless padding. I don't care, let the story write itself. It's been doing that all along... every version. I've written maybe 135,000 words for this in the last year. Yes it's still my best, but that's like 14 writes and 24 re-writes and then some of the re-written stuff is just pitched. I don't even remember some of the places this story has gone. It's a humid summer in a dirty city. Before that it was a half-dead city in the middle of winter. Maybe by next month it'll be a bucolic small town in Nebraska. Who knows.

I'm not complaining, mind you. This is what I call fun. The problem isn't that I can't get the engine going, it's that I can't get it to chill. Everybody I know in the business says that's a good thing. But every week I'm a different kind of writer than I was the week before. So I go back and change a word or two or forty back on page six or twenty. Or one. I don't want to put a foot wrong. i want it to be one whole thing. No wasted fol-dee-rol. Don't include all the stuff people skip over. Big thick paragraphs (like this one?) are out. Dialogue. Dialogue! People talking tells the story dammit. I find myself going into the gas station in the morning to get my coffee and listening to people talk. Listen to how they talk. Nobody speaks in complete sentences. Nobody. It's fits and starts and use only the important words...

"Guy said ninety-eight today."

"It's ninety-eight for a week."

"Already Luis's melting over here."

"How they know it'll be exactly ninety-eight? They don't even know when it's raining."

"It's like baseball. Be wrong seven out of ten you're a fucking millionaire."

The problem is the pastiche for the viewpoint character. Once you start down that road you're done. You can't drop the g's or sound out the words in writing because down the road it's a trap. Screw up one time and it sticks out. You just talk as the character and let the reader fill it in. Like describing what a person looks like. I can't begin to list the classic fiction that's been done that never told you what anybody actually looks like. And yet there are also classic descriptions. So okay so there aren't any rules. So sue me. Who knows.

Never think for a minute any of this is a complaint. This is the fun part. This is just how it is. Welcome to my world. Or my ruin.

Who knows.

"To all you people who ever said I was a big nothing, I’m here to say you were wrong. "

I'm one of those people you probably hate who think that the opening line of a book is not only important but possibly (arguably) critical to everything that follows. Standing in a bookstore I'll sometimes decide whether or not to buy a book on the construction and execution of the first line alone. And I actually collect them.

You know what I'm talking about. Just think of the famous, now cliched, line that goes "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." Hell everybody knows that one, right?

That's what I mean. I think first lines are important and can be a kind of icon. But (for my writer friends) if you don't - don't start obsessing about it after reading this. Just do your own shtick. Okay? That's just me.

For myself, I'll labor over a goddamn opening line for days. And change it a dozen times. It's got to work right NOW or else it takes too long to get the reader inside and you run the risk of losing them. It has to have some quality, some tangible thing that makes everything else after it work.

Here's some good ones, I think...

"A man called Berg, who changed his name to Greb, came to a seaside town intending to kill his father." - from Berg by Ann Quin

"At the beginning of summer I had lunch with my father, the gangster, who was in town for the weekend to transact some of his vague business." - Michael Chabon The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

"I think it is the year 1909." - Opening vignette in the intertwined short stories from Delmore Schwartz's In Dreams Begin Responsibilities

"There are sores which slowly erode the mind in solitude like a canker." - The Blind Owl by Sadegh Hedayat

"I am merely copying, word for word, what was in the State Gazette today." WE by Yevgeny Zamyatin

"Life and death, dreaming and wakefulness: stations for the perplexed soul." The Journey of Ibn Fattouma by Naguib Mahfouz

Of course it helps if what follows can carry the load. But the tone-setter is right there. It's all in there. Or should be. Story has happened, now you tell it. And why is it interesting enough to read? Because the opening got you.

Yeah okay, another one of my OC things. But, there ya go.

Method Acting

See update below

I know, I know... posts about writing don't get a lot of traction. But I am experimenting with drunkenness to see if we can hit a certain note.

I knew that might spark your interest.

The other night I came home from work and drank too much for a reason. This thing I'm writing is in first person and I want it to begin with the character talking about/to all the people who dismissed him all through his life. And I wanted it to be mean. The problem is - though everybody's got a few folks like that in their history - this kind of person doesn't carry a lot of weight with me. I have a personality that's sort of like... "you think I'm nothing? OK - you're in the negatives, asshole." And then I just drop them.

I don't believe - I have never believed - in letting that brand of negativity get you down (ha- I rely on a lesser brand of it to get to me. Shutup.)

So I drank a little more than usual and after dinner I came up here and tried to remember all the people who had - and probably still have - a negative view of my abilities, personality or whatever.

Jesus I got a big damn list!

But anyhow... the next step was to tell them off. Tell them off all in one bunch. Let it rip. Go for the throat.

So now, in a minute or so, I'm going to (soberly) rewrite that section to make it readable cuz - y'know - it's not making too much sense right about here. I guess you could call this "method" writing.

We'll see if it works.

UPDATE: I don't think my drinking experiment worked like I wanted it to. I rattled off maybe seven or eight paragraphs, and I mean I let it rip, and when I went back (sober) to do the planned rewrite I couldn't understand it. It really needed to be edited and honed and brought down to something people reading it would get. I suppose it felt good to let a few people have it without naming names, but I can't remember.

It's better now. The only thing the session did is it solved two problems. It gave me an opening that finally stands up to my tests (which I haven't had all through up to now), and also provided me with a closing line. So it wasn't a total loss.