7.13.2006
I have no idea how I found this, but damn am I glad I did:
The Writer's Fight Song
inkgrrl at 10:49 AM
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Otherwise known as all that stuff that wasn't perfect and therefore qualified to be part of the Great American Novel. Karen H. says it all and well - I believe this to be the summary/cleaned up version of a post about fish guts on Jenny's Cherry Writers list, of which I have been a silent and non-contributing member for a while (about to change whoa nelly).
inkgrrl at 2:10 PM
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I really gotta go rent Babylon 5. From Joe Straczynski, creator of Babylon 5:
"Basically, I have this theory that there are five kinds of truth. (This is Joe's Theory of the Five Truths.) There is the truth you tell to casual strangers and acquaintances. There is the truth you tell to your general circle of friends and family members. There is the truth you tell to only one or two people in your entire life. There is the truth you tell to yourself. And finally, there is the truth that you do not admit even to yourself. And it's that fifth truth that provides some of the most interesting drama....."
inkgrrl at 10:05 AM
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Overheard In New York - this is all gonna get into this year's NanoNovel. Waste not, want not.
inkgrrl at 12:04 PM
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Superstition Springs
Come on down to Superstition Springs
where the hills are flat
and the caged bird sings
Where the water is bitter
and the tide is high
Love is long gone
and so was I
Come on down to Superstition Springs
Where sweet honey in the rock
is a sign of bigger things
Where sulphur bubbles madly
and babies get burned
Where memories really haunt you
and the tables never turn
Come on down to Superstition Springs
Bend low and drink
cast off your wedding rings
Because the air hurts to breathe
and everything's a lie
The truth will out
lo bye and bye
Come on down to Superstition Springs
Where tears form a mask
so blinding tight it clings
Where salt stone slices flesh
all shimmering and white
Where tenderness is lost
and darkness eats the light
Come on down to Superstition Springs
Bathe your body in the pain
let your spirit find its wings
May the bitterness of sorrow
release you and and you'll see
Lie down beneath the river
let your heart there wander free
Come on down to Superstition Springs
Where redemption may be found
in the smallness of things
Where salvation beyond hope
and thought beyond reason
are a teaspoon's measure
'gainst the turning of the season
Come on down to Superstition Springs
Where the hills rise deep
and the air hotly sings
Where the water darkens sweet
and the tide calls you friend
Empty is the river
and peaceful is the end.
inkgrrl at 9:40 AM
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My book will make a *best book* list. Maybe my Nano-Novel. Yeah. Uh-huh. In the meanwhile, it's neat to read what some consensus reality has deemed a list of best books.
inkgrrl at 1:05 PM
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And here's the proof. If you believe everything you read.
inkgrrl at 2:18 PM
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The Grand Poobah's thought on a quote I sent him from Blood Orchid: An Unnatural History of America was that it put him in mind of a version of Connections as written by Chuck Palahniuk. I have to agree, with the addition that the main character would have to be building a pagoda of dead butterflies, cementing their bodies together with his own blood that he ritualistically drew every morning over a steaming cup of chai latte, letting the first couple of drops swirl redly around in the cup of human-flesh-toned liquid so that he, too, could consume the process of creation.
inkgrrl at 8:47 AM
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I've often been unable to fully articulate why I write, why I care so much about writing, why each letter is dust in my throat if I am unable to shape the words to draw forth my meaning... and I've been accused of taking it too seriously, of stifling my own creativity by caring too much. I don't buy that. Aitmatov said it perfectly, clear and succinct:
"The responsibility of a writer is to bring forth words that capture, through painful personal experience, people's suffering, pain, faith and hope. This is because a writer is charged with the mission of speaking on behalf of his fellow human beings. Everything that happens in the world is happening to me personally." --Chingiz Aitmatov
inkgrrl at 2:21 PM
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...actually writing, I content myself to find others who write. More soon and later... but for now, this by David L. Ulin.
inkgrrl at 7:42 PM
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I bit off more than I can chew. Surprise. The third UCLA class started, and while the exercises in character are awesome and helpful for my novel, I can never seem to get them posted. I leave in two days for Washington DC to visit my cousins, then head south to Hilton Head for a writer's retreat that I was supposed to have a one-page synopsis, a cover letter and the first fifteen pages of my novel submitted to the instructor of, by like, last Monday. Luckily he's a friend, so he's letting me slide, but 'tis not an auspicious beginning... does not bode well for our hero... feels like dark foreshadowing to me. Gloom. Doom. Drudgery. Despair. All things Nanowrimo, and it's not even November yet.
inkgrrl at 11:11 AM
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I've been going to the local acupuncture clinic on a semi-regular basis to get help with my knees, my neck and my stress level, and almost every time I come back from a session I have an epiphany of some sort. Tonight was no exception save in the significance of what I've become present to.
As I left the clinic parking lot, I started to worry about whether I'd find a parking spot, then decided that it was pointless since I wouldn't know until I got home anyway, and if there were no street parking I could always pull into my garage. After finding the perfect parking spot around the corner from my apartment, I stood outside on the sidewalk for a few minutes, just enjoying the quietness and dark fogginess and feeling of solitude - nobody apparently around. My mind quieted itself in fits and starts, and finally let through the realization, as I started to walk up the path to my gate with ferrets trying to chew my brain about my story titles, that I'm doing my life's work. Right here, right now. Writing. This is it. And it's okay that I get this tightness in my stomach and my breath comes shorter - I'm famous for telling other people how easy it is to confuse fear and excitement - I need to listen to my own advice. Sure, I'm afraid of sucking, but even if I do now, I won't always, and it's exciting to look forward to reading my books and stories in print. I don't have to be afraid of it.
Somehow, as I rounded the corner to my front gate, I got that writing is enough. I don't have to save the world - the things that satisfy me such as doing volunteer work are enough to fulfill that need to go hands-on with helping. I'll always do that and that's okay. Writing is both plenty and enough to make a mark in the world. And maybe if someday somebody reads something I've written and it makes a difference, I will have, in some small, quiet sense, have saved that person in a way that I can be satisfied with. It sounds like hubris, but I believe that powerful writing touches and lights something in us when we allow it in, and that's what I want to do. It's all I've ever wanted to do.
inkgrrl at 10:16 PM
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Okay - back again with cute pic that reminds me of when I was a teeny littl'un tossing crumbled Moon Pies into the Mississippi River. It fits the mood of the novel I'm writing, so deal with the cuteness - you won't go blind if I don't.
inkgrrl at 11:27 AM
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Am now conflicted - if I didn't like it and didn't care how it turned out, should I feel bad for not doing well, or should I feel bad for not doing my best no matter how I felt about the exercise, for not turning in professional work no matter how unengaging I felt the material to be? All it was was an injunction to write 2-4 pages where the ending paragraph had to include an action and a profession that had been supplied by other students. I ended up with a bogus list - all I could strike a spark off of was flying and monkey handler. You see where this one is going, right? At least I showed some restraint and didn't write about monkeys flying out of Kafka's ass. Maybe I should have.
Oh, and also, I'm no longer feeling purple, so I've changed my blogskin. It's too much of a subconscious invite to write purple prose, and since Hustler magazine won't return my phone calls, I shouldn't waste my time getting all sweaty that way.
inkgrrl at 11:27 AM
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inkgrrl at 11:01 AM
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I've been racking my brain and raiding Google to figure out just what the hell literary fiction is - thanks to a fellow WriMo (whose name I promptly forgot) and some writer dude named David Lubar, I now have as good a definition as any.
Oh, and he also offers up this fascinating factoid: "When Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy met for the first time, they immediately got into a bragging match. First, they started comparing facial hair. Then, they got into a vodka-drinking contest. Finally, they began shouting, "Bet I can write a longer book than you," and "Bet you can't," at each other. Millions of innocent readers have suffered the consequences of this rivalry."
I feel so much better now, like I finally understand everything there is to know about litfic, even if there are crumbs in my butter and my eyebrows are furrowing uncontrollably.
inkgrrl at 11:20 AM
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I'm Baaaaack.
Not sure if that's a good thing, but that giant sucking sound you hear is me getting caught up in Nano-ey goodness again.
And I'm also taking two, no wait, three classes from UCLA's Writers Program, which is bitchin' neato and what my life's all about. One has me focusing on short stories (whee!!! playtime) and the other my novel(s) and I'm going to a writer's retreat on Hilton Head the first week of November, so that's gonna be interesting in the greater Nano scheme of things... how freaked out and over-compartmentalized can I possibly get?
I'm getting ready, though. I'm getting strong. Bought some steel-cut oatmeal to fortify my diet. And today, got myself a nifty coffee roaster doogiemaflinger which is all One Hand Clapping's fault.
inkgrrl at 5:41 PM
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I is am be done. For now. Yay me... ahem. Yay Me!!!!
Okay, so slightly burnt, not to mention that as I wrote the ending a lot of things in the middle became clear which means that not only do I have major additions to make to my second draft, but also that the wyrm is turning and it's getting more complex every time I think about it. *sigh* But I don't have to think about that right now, as the next writerly thing on my plate is finishing my thesis - a strange work of fictional truth that will allow me to go on to grad skul some day - before I start up with this monstrosity again. Oh, new title: Meaningful Wars. I made it up all by myself. So there.
inkgrrl at 7:00 PM
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Still behind on word count, but hey, my marriage is falling apart - I'm not writing the drama, I'm living it. *mumph* I'd rather be writing it. And shall, more, still, continue taking deep breaths and backing up my nano novel. I'm somewhere in the 27,000 word range at the moment, planning on busting 30,000 by the end of the evening. I have some terrorists to chase and some tins of Spam to blow up, dammit! Onward!!!
inkgrrl at 9:04 PM
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Did I mention the part where I'm way behind on my word count due to overly obsessing about drauma? That's domestic + drama + trauma = drauma. Like that word? I made it up yesterday. They lied - November is the cruelest month so far, not April. April's the month I got married... heh. I'm so gonna use this drauma stuff to up my word count... hey, might as well get something besides angst and a migraine out it it, right? Not that I'm bitter...
inkgrrl at 10:27 AM
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Ahh... broke through that damned prophecy sequence - my prophet mummy was pompous, but he got over it and died. Hey - nothing worse than a pompous prophet mummy, right? And I flashed way forward in time to Talila and Gabriel reuniting to work on her life story - ork. It hurts when old lovers get back together and they never really got over each other. Good stuff. I wrote 1000 good words on my lunch break. Yay me. Gonna to to Aroma tonight to write lots and lots more.
inkgrrl at 1:15 PM
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I got some writing done at Sworks yesterday while waiting for my mentee, then more at home, but I've hit an impasse of my own making. Talila, my main character, is currently posted to the CNN Bureau in Cairo and waiting for Gabriel to fly in to see her after a year apart. She takes a taxi out to Giza Plaza to visit the Sphinx. In ancient times, people used to sleep in the shadow of the Sphinx in the hopes that their dreams would reveal the future... I've got a much cheesier device - a withered madman of the desert who spouts riddles at her that give her clues as to her real nature and identity. Problem is, I'm geeking out hard and wanting to take two or three days to write the damned thing in Aramaic. I'm behind on my word count and need to be writing, not fashioning convoluted oracles in dead languages. Ha. So I'm stealing from the Book of Habakkuk instead ;-> Yay, public domain.
inkgrrl at 10:38 AM
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Ahh... back from my Secret Lair of Writing... yes, some writing got done, a lot more outlining got done (finally putting all my screenplay experience to work with structure and suchlike here) and I feel good! Yeah baby! Not nearly up to speed on the word count, but some big pieces are falling into place, so I got lots to write about. Thanks to a comment by The Shadow, I have a new opening sequence. I've decided to write this from the beginning forward, keeping the timeline (for this first draft) relatively linear, instead of zigging and zagging all over the space-time continuum like I had been. I give you the new beginning chunk (yeah, I know it's self-referential with the writing and all, but #1 - write what you know, and #2 - they were both already writers, now they're just sleeping together and in love):
“Egg rolls and scotch, “Gabriel rolled over, slipping one hand over Talila’s breast. “So this is the writer’s life?”
She grinned sleepily, then wiggled a bit closer to him. “For two future Pulitzer Prize winners, I think that about sums it up.” She lifted her head and surveyed the wreckage of their tiny studio apartment. They had graduated yesterday and had celebrated late into the night with friends and family making the rounds at various bars. The party had finally degenerated to the two of them polishing off a bottle of Glenmoranghie while feeding each other the last noodles of Chinese takeout left over from the previous week of final exams. They hadn’t made it to the bed, but had fallen asleep in the middle of the floor, a drunken tangle of limbs reeking of sex, alcohol, and peanut oil.
Gabriel shifted his hand lower, sliding his fingers down her belly, tugging lightly at the navel ring he’d tried to talk her out of, then gently tracing his fingers lower. She sighed, coming fully awake, and tried to roll over.
“Ohhh, I didn’t know graduating would hurt this much.” She clutched at the back of her head, wincing.
Gabriel chuckled and sat up too quickly, then groaned and flopped back down on the carpet. “Yeah, I guess I was being overly optimistic with that whole sitting up thing. Again.”
“Yeah, that’s you. Mr. Optimism all over. Way too fucking cheerful to be human. So where’s the aspirin?”
“I think I took the last of it right before we hit O’Malley’s last night.”
“And of course, you didn’t think to stop off at a drugstore and pick more up before we got to our third bar. Boy Scout… sure.”
“You’re just upset because I drank more than you and I’m not hurting as much.”
“I could fix that, you know. Just because tiny evil little dwarves with sharp hammers are banging away at my forebrain doesn’t mean I can’t share the pain. That’s what relationships are for, right? Sharing?” She flopped back down, landing an elbow square in his stomach.
“Oof! Tali, you are my forever love, but if you don’t get off me I’ll have to dump you in the bathtub and run cold water over you again.”
“What do you mean, ‘again’?”
“You don’t remember that part? Go look at yourself in the mirror. I didn’t do such a good job with getting all your mascara washed off.”
Talila got herself up onto her hands and knees, making a point of using the soft parts of his body, as well as his face, to push herself against on the way up, and crawled across the floor to the bathroom door, where they’d hung a cheap full length mirror.
“Oh gods, I have been possessed by a giant raccoon demon. Weren’t you scared when you woke up and saw this? I’m surprised you didn’t scream like a girl and jump across the room.” Her face was a comedy of streaked mascara, a few blotches of smeared lipstick bright red around her cheeks and nose, and a suspicious smudge of what had to be eyeliner along her jawbone.
“What the hell did you do to me in that shower? How did I get eyeliner on my chin?”
Gabriel grinned at her and blew her a kiss. “I was just trying to help, love. You were in pretty bad shape and I still had plans for you.”
“You gave me shock hydrotherapy just so we could have a celebratory fuck? Did I at least enjoy that part?”
He groaned and rolled his eyes up at her, clutching at his heart with one hand and flopping the other dramatically against his forehead. “I swoon at the lady’s displeasure. Did she enjoy it? Alas, I am not memorable…”
“You have way too much energy for a man with a splitting hangover.” She crawled back toward him, her dark hair swinging around her face, moving like a panther stalking its prey.
“Oh no… you’re going to hurt me now, aren’t you?” He started to skitter crab-wise away from her.
“Damn right I am, and you’re going to like it.” She grabbed one of his ankles, then a knee with the other hand, pulling herself up along his body, lying along the full length of him. He grinned and teased a finger along the eyeliner on her chin, then kissed her. Those Pulitzers would have to wait.
inkgrrl at 8:23 PM
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Gee, thanks to Cybele for giving me a stupid quiz to post in this formerly quiz-free space ;->
inkgrrl at 10:05 AM
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W00t! I hit 10,000 words - 20%! Okay, so actually I wrote during my lunch hour and hit 10,039 words. And now I've got a love story going and it's getting all passionate and tragical and soon there will be some heavy sex and poignant broken hearts. Oh, and alien life forms and war. What more do you want?
inkgrrl at 1:43 PM
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inkgrrl at 10:11 AM
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Well, apparently my brain decided that since it had burned all those extra calories and found a plot, it was done for the day. I only wrote 600 words yesterday, so I'm now about 1200 behind ;-< Note to self - watching Buffy and Smallville doesn't work when writing a novel. I can write other crap and partake of the boob tube, but I can't write this crap while watching TV. So tonight I'm gonna head off to a coffee shop after work and get some serious numbers up.
inkgrrl at 6:47 AM
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In deference to Devra whom I adore, I am posting the intial chunk (clot, clog, wad, clump) of my nano novel here, just as it appears on the nanowrimo website. I will probably have to work out a pdf format thingy or a seperate page or something if anybody really cares to work that hard at finding things to make fun of me for. Oh wait, here's one now - my working title (I suck at titles so bear with me) is "Again With The Knives And The Screaming... Oh, And I Found This Really Cool Leopard-Print Babydoll Thing In My Drawer or Speaking Truth to Power" - like it? I thought it up all by my self. Can you tell? I really, really suck at titles... heh.
Tap... tap. Is this thing on? She cleared her throat then started to speak, her voice cracking just a little as she read the prepared introduction from the card in her hand.
“Not a complex life, not a simple one either. Just me and what I wanted, and what I got. I'm here to tell you about that, and about all the places in between that I've finally, in my seventy-eighth year, started to explore. I've gone on walkabout through my head and around my life for the past five months, you see, and this is what I've learned.”
“I started doing this my first few weeks in the camps, back when I was a girl. I’d travel from barracks to barracks, interviewing people for their stories, their bits of wisdom, maybe score a few bites of some sweet that my mother wouldn’t let me eat because we all knew that the camp dentist was a butcher. We were lucky enough to get moved from Manzanar after the first six months, before the cholera epidemic there, so I had a fresh crop of new subjects to quiz and harass and spy on that kept my interest from flagging.
“Looking back, I see it as a way to try to figure out just what I was doing there, what my entire family was doing there… the same way that a group of women will worriedly quiz a rape victim in their midst as to just what she was doing when she was attacked and brutalized, secretly hoping to figure out the magic combination of events to avoid at all costs. I, too, wanted to know why my family was being singled out from all the other families in our neighborhood, why my family was being brutalized, abandoned, betrayed by our country. I wanted to know by what right, what mandate from heaven, our government could revoke all our rights as citizens and throw us into century-old camps to rot the next five years away.
“None of our fellow camp inmates – I see you wince at that work, Honored Speaker – well, inmate is the correct and accurate word. We were held prisoner against our will. We were inmates of a lunatic asylum outside our walls. Society’s fear had curdled to madness and we were the scapegoats driven out of town, curses laden on our heads in the twisted hope that our punishment for your crimes would free you all, cleanse your tribe of every thing that was bad and dark and bloody and painful and the consequence of the political actions of that time. Your father was a junior official at one of the camps, wasn’t he? Does he ever speak of his time there, of the papers he shuffled or the execution orders he signed? Ah, another wince, as if I said something in poor taste… I’m not up here at this podium to be polite or dance around your revisionist sensibilities. I am here to speak truth to power, my truth in the face of the power you represent.”
inkgrrl at 11:20 AM
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inkgrrl at 11:02 AM
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This poem, Author's Prayer by Ilya Kaminsky, is holding my hand for the duration of this novel.
inkgrrl at 1:37 PM
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I have no idea how I found this, but damn am I glad I did:
The Writer's Fight Song
inkgrrl at 10:49 AM
inkgrrl at 2:10 PM
"Basically, I have this theory that there are five kinds of truth. (This is Joe's Theory of the Five Truths.) There is the truth you tell to casual strangers and acquaintances. There is the truth you tell to your general circle of friends and family members. There is the truth you tell to only one or two people in your entire life. There is the truth you tell to yourself. And finally, there is the truth that you do not admit even to yourself. And it's that fifth truth that provides some of the most interesting drama....."
inkgrrl at 10:05 AM
inkgrrl at 12:04 PM
Come on down to Superstition Springs
where the hills are flat
and the caged bird sings
Where the water is bitter
and the tide is high
Love is long gone
and so was I
Come on down to Superstition Springs
Where sweet honey in the rock
is a sign of bigger things
Where sulphur bubbles madly
and babies get burned
Where memories really haunt you
and the tables never turn
Come on down to Superstition Springs
Bend low and drink
cast off your wedding rings
Because the air hurts to breathe
and everything's a lie
The truth will out
lo bye and bye
Come on down to Superstition Springs
Where tears form a mask
so blinding tight it clings
Where salt stone slices flesh
all shimmering and white
Where tenderness is lost
and darkness eats the light
Come on down to Superstition Springs
Bathe your body in the pain
let your spirit find its wings
May the bitterness of sorrow
release you and and you'll see
Lie down beneath the river
let your heart there wander free
Come on down to Superstition Springs
Where redemption may be found
in the smallness of things
Where salvation beyond hope
and thought beyond reason
are a teaspoon's measure
'gainst the turning of the season
Come on down to Superstition Springs
Where the hills rise deep
and the air hotly sings
Where the water darkens sweet
and the tide calls you friend
Empty is the river
and peaceful is the end.
inkgrrl at 9:40 AM
inkgrrl at 1:05 PM
inkgrrl at 2:18 PM
inkgrrl at 8:47 AM
"The responsibility of a writer is to bring forth words that capture, through painful personal experience, people's suffering, pain, faith and hope. This is because a writer is charged with the mission of speaking on behalf of his fellow human beings. Everything that happens in the world is happening to me personally." --Chingiz Aitmatov
inkgrrl at 2:21 PM
inkgrrl at 7:42 PM
inkgrrl at 11:11 AM
As I left the clinic parking lot, I started to worry about whether I'd find a parking spot, then decided that it was pointless since I wouldn't know until I got home anyway, and if there were no street parking I could always pull into my garage. After finding the perfect parking spot around the corner from my apartment, I stood outside on the sidewalk for a few minutes, just enjoying the quietness and dark fogginess and feeling of solitude - nobody apparently around. My mind quieted itself in fits and starts, and finally let through the realization, as I started to walk up the path to my gate with ferrets trying to chew my brain about my story titles, that I'm doing my life's work. Right here, right now. Writing. This is it. And it's okay that I get this tightness in my stomach and my breath comes shorter - I'm famous for telling other people how easy it is to confuse fear and excitement - I need to listen to my own advice. Sure, I'm afraid of sucking, but even if I do now, I won't always, and it's exciting to look forward to reading my books and stories in print. I don't have to be afraid of it.
Somehow, as I rounded the corner to my front gate, I got that writing is enough. I don't have to save the world - the things that satisfy me such as doing volunteer work are enough to fulfill that need to go hands-on with helping. I'll always do that and that's okay. Writing is both plenty and enough to make a mark in the world. And maybe if someday somebody reads something I've written and it makes a difference, I will have, in some small, quiet sense, have saved that person in a way that I can be satisfied with. It sounds like hubris, but I believe that powerful writing touches and lights something in us when we allow it in, and that's what I want to do. It's all I've ever wanted to do.
inkgrrl at 10:16 PM
inkgrrl at 11:27 AM
Am now conflicted - if I didn't like it and didn't care how it turned out, should I feel bad for not doing well, or should I feel bad for not doing my best no matter how I felt about the exercise, for not turning in professional work no matter how unengaging I felt the material to be? All it was was an injunction to write 2-4 pages where the ending paragraph had to include an action and a profession that had been supplied by other students. I ended up with a bogus list - all I could strike a spark off of was flying and monkey handler. You see where this one is going, right? At least I showed some restraint and didn't write about monkeys flying out of Kafka's ass. Maybe I should have.
Oh, and also, I'm no longer feeling purple, so I've changed my blogskin. It's too much of a subconscious invite to write purple prose, and since Hustler magazine won't return my phone calls, I shouldn't waste my time getting all sweaty that way.
inkgrrl at 11:27 AM
inkgrrl at 11:01 AM
Oh, and he also offers up this fascinating factoid: "When Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy met for the first time, they immediately got into a bragging match. First, they started comparing facial hair. Then, they got into a vodka-drinking contest. Finally, they began shouting, "Bet I can write a longer book than you," and "Bet you can't," at each other. Millions of innocent readers have suffered the consequences of this rivalry."
I feel so much better now, like I finally understand everything there is to know about litfic, even if there are crumbs in my butter and my eyebrows are furrowing uncontrollably.
inkgrrl at 11:20 AM
Not sure if that's a good thing, but that giant sucking sound you hear is me getting caught up in Nano-ey goodness again.
And I'm also taking two, no wait, three classes from UCLA's Writers Program, which is bitchin' neato and what my life's all about. One has me focusing on short stories (whee!!! playtime) and the other my novel(s) and I'm going to a writer's retreat on Hilton Head the first week of November, so that's gonna be interesting in the greater Nano scheme of things... how freaked out and over-compartmentalized can I possibly get?
I'm getting ready, though. I'm getting strong. Bought some steel-cut oatmeal to fortify my diet. And today, got myself a nifty coffee roaster doogiemaflinger which is all One Hand Clapping's fault.
inkgrrl at 5:41 PM
Okay, so slightly burnt, not to mention that as I wrote the ending a lot of things in the middle became clear which means that not only do I have major additions to make to my second draft, but also that the wyrm is turning and it's getting more complex every time I think about it. *sigh* But I don't have to think about that right now, as the next writerly thing on my plate is finishing my thesis - a strange work of fictional truth that will allow me to go on to grad skul some day - before I start up with this monstrosity again. Oh, new title: Meaningful Wars. I made it up all by myself. So there.
inkgrrl at 7:00 PM
inkgrrl at 9:04 PM
inkgrrl at 10:27 AM
inkgrrl at 1:15 PM
inkgrrl at 10:38 AM
“Egg rolls and scotch, “Gabriel rolled over, slipping one hand over Talila’s breast. “So this is the writer’s life?”
She grinned sleepily, then wiggled a bit closer to him. “For two future Pulitzer Prize winners, I think that about sums it up.” She lifted her head and surveyed the wreckage of their tiny studio apartment. They had graduated yesterday and had celebrated late into the night with friends and family making the rounds at various bars. The party had finally degenerated to the two of them polishing off a bottle of Glenmoranghie while feeding each other the last noodles of Chinese takeout left over from the previous week of final exams. They hadn’t made it to the bed, but had fallen asleep in the middle of the floor, a drunken tangle of limbs reeking of sex, alcohol, and peanut oil.
Gabriel shifted his hand lower, sliding his fingers down her belly, tugging lightly at the navel ring he’d tried to talk her out of, then gently tracing his fingers lower. She sighed, coming fully awake, and tried to roll over.
“Ohhh, I didn’t know graduating would hurt this much.” She clutched at the back of her head, wincing.
Gabriel chuckled and sat up too quickly, then groaned and flopped back down on the carpet. “Yeah, I guess I was being overly optimistic with that whole sitting up thing. Again.”
“Yeah, that’s you. Mr. Optimism all over. Way too fucking cheerful to be human. So where’s the aspirin?”
“I think I took the last of it right before we hit O’Malley’s last night.”
“And of course, you didn’t think to stop off at a drugstore and pick more up before we got to our third bar. Boy Scout… sure.”
“You’re just upset because I drank more than you and I’m not hurting as much.”
“I could fix that, you know. Just because tiny evil little dwarves with sharp hammers are banging away at my forebrain doesn’t mean I can’t share the pain. That’s what relationships are for, right? Sharing?” She flopped back down, landing an elbow square in his stomach.
“Oof! Tali, you are my forever love, but if you don’t get off me I’ll have to dump you in the bathtub and run cold water over you again.”
“What do you mean, ‘again’?”
“You don’t remember that part? Go look at yourself in the mirror. I didn’t do such a good job with getting all your mascara washed off.”
Talila got herself up onto her hands and knees, making a point of using the soft parts of his body, as well as his face, to push herself against on the way up, and crawled across the floor to the bathroom door, where they’d hung a cheap full length mirror.
“Oh gods, I have been possessed by a giant raccoon demon. Weren’t you scared when you woke up and saw this? I’m surprised you didn’t scream like a girl and jump across the room.” Her face was a comedy of streaked mascara, a few blotches of smeared lipstick bright red around her cheeks and nose, and a suspicious smudge of what had to be eyeliner along her jawbone.
“What the hell did you do to me in that shower? How did I get eyeliner on my chin?”
Gabriel grinned at her and blew her a kiss. “I was just trying to help, love. You were in pretty bad shape and I still had plans for you.”
“You gave me shock hydrotherapy just so we could have a celebratory fuck? Did I at least enjoy that part?”
He groaned and rolled his eyes up at her, clutching at his heart with one hand and flopping the other dramatically against his forehead. “I swoon at the lady’s displeasure. Did she enjoy it? Alas, I am not memorable…”
“You have way too much energy for a man with a splitting hangover.” She crawled back toward him, her dark hair swinging around her face, moving like a panther stalking its prey.
“Oh no… you’re going to hurt me now, aren’t you?” He started to skitter crab-wise away from her.
“Damn right I am, and you’re going to like it.” She grabbed one of his ankles, then a knee with the other hand, pulling herself up along his body, lying along the full length of him. He grinned and teased a finger along the eyeliner on her chin, then kissed her. Those Pulitzers would have to wait.
inkgrrl at 8:23 PM
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inkgrrl at 6:47 AM
Tap... tap. Is this thing on? She cleared her throat then started to speak, her voice cracking just a little as she read the prepared introduction from the card in her hand.
“Not a complex life, not a simple one either. Just me and what I wanted, and what I got. I'm here to tell you about that, and about all the places in between that I've finally, in my seventy-eighth year, started to explore. I've gone on walkabout through my head and around my life for the past five months, you see, and this is what I've learned.”
“I started doing this my first few weeks in the camps, back when I was a girl. I’d travel from barracks to barracks, interviewing people for their stories, their bits of wisdom, maybe score a few bites of some sweet that my mother wouldn’t let me eat because we all knew that the camp dentist was a butcher. We were lucky enough to get moved from Manzanar after the first six months, before the cholera epidemic there, so I had a fresh crop of new subjects to quiz and harass and spy on that kept my interest from flagging.
“Looking back, I see it as a way to try to figure out just what I was doing there, what my entire family was doing there… the same way that a group of women will worriedly quiz a rape victim in their midst as to just what she was doing when she was attacked and brutalized, secretly hoping to figure out the magic combination of events to avoid at all costs. I, too, wanted to know why my family was being singled out from all the other families in our neighborhood, why my family was being brutalized, abandoned, betrayed by our country. I wanted to know by what right, what mandate from heaven, our government could revoke all our rights as citizens and throw us into century-old camps to rot the next five years away.
“None of our fellow camp inmates – I see you wince at that work, Honored Speaker – well, inmate is the correct and accurate word. We were held prisoner against our will. We were inmates of a lunatic asylum outside our walls. Society’s fear had curdled to madness and we were the scapegoats driven out of town, curses laden on our heads in the twisted hope that our punishment for your crimes would free you all, cleanse your tribe of every thing that was bad and dark and bloody and painful and the consequence of the political actions of that time. Your father was a junior official at one of the camps, wasn’t he? Does he ever speak of his time there, of the papers he shuffled or the execution orders he signed? Ah, another wince, as if I said something in poor taste… I’m not up here at this podium to be polite or dance around your revisionist sensibilities. I am here to speak truth to power, my truth in the face of the power you represent.”
inkgrrl at 11:20 AM
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