EclecticWriter

Now this is simply incredible.

So I feel low.  All right.  And I”m questioning everything I’ve written.  The opening section, between Trucker Lews and Rand Carter.  I like it, but it doesn’t seem to fit.  I’m thinking here, what if I combined Trucker Lews with Taylor Dereleth.  Instead of happing in a truck, it would be hitch hiking when he is picked up by Taylor.  And it is not by accident.

Here I go.  Another week rolls around.  The boys go to school.  Eva goes to work.  I sit at my keyboard, contemplating the beginning of my Master’s in Creative Writing.  The class is the Pedagogy of Writing, something I don’t intend to do, but something that I will be qualified to do.  What this class is supposed to be is a JATO assist for the springboard.

I wrote the following as a introduction of myself to the class. 

Why I Write

In Exodus 3:14 (King James version) Moses, an early creative writer, is reputed to have documented the ultimate statement of existence by God, “I AM THAT I AM” or in Hebrew “Ehyeh asher ehyeh”.  With some paraphrasing, that statement touches the heart of why I write.  No, I am not claiming to be God or some relationship to the God Head.  But writing is innate to my existence.  “I WRITE THAT I AM,” declares my existence as a writer indistinguishable and inseparable from my existence as a being. 

Water acts as it does because the chemical and physical properties of that substance define how it acts.  The mental and emotional properties of my existence, those properties that make me human, define how I act.  Because of those properties, I write.  Water in a gravity well has no choice but to flow down hill.  I have no choice but to string words together in story.  If I have a means of recording those words, I do so.  But even if a means of recording in not available, I write.  From my earliest childhood, I created complex landscapes and peopled them with stories for my amusement.  If given a moment to contemplate, I will die in the midst of one of these tales.

As for myself, I am a compulsive reader and re-reader of books. Favorite authors include; Terry Brooks, Orson Scott Card, David Eddings, Sue Grafton, Robert Heinlein, Steven King, H. P. Lovecraft, Andre Norton, Sax Rhomer, J. R. R. Tolkein, Tad Williams, and most anything that I can carry into the John. Books are my addiction, cocaine without consequence.

On Writing

I wrote a bit more than 200o words today.  It took me about 4 hours, I guess.  I am not exactly sure because I did school work before that and ate lunch during the process.  I rather like the way it is coming out now, having rearranged the chapters I’ve written.

In trying to follow some of the methods of King, I find that I am not perfect.  For instance, I don’t just open up and start writing from where I did the day before. Having realized that I needed more of an inciting incident, I moved a chapter, and have taken it closer to the front.  Tollman (if I keep that name) will be murdered, but I have written it to be a bit more suspenseful.  To do that required some considerable rewriting.  Even with the rewriting, I added more than 200 new words.  That is a daily goal I hope to keep to, and even increase.

OK, so I have this Donovan Riff running though my blog.  Yes, yes I do.  It was inspired by Stephen King’s On Writing, because he used it once himself there in reference to poetry that rarely made sense.

Finished Stephen King’s On Writing.

The book is illuminating.  After all I’ve heard about the importance of outlining, King doesn’t.  I find that interesting, in my own fumbling, my best stuff, and everything I’ve published, are not outlined.  I have attempted to use the Snowflake Method and found long before I reach the point where I’ve outlined everything, my mind freezes up like concrete. So I’ve taken the best of the ideas partially generated, and the one that appeals to me as the most original and the most interesting, and took off writing with the situational approach.  And, hey, after two days I have enjoyed the process and it is advancing.

Began rereading Stephen King’s It.

What I am writing so far…

OK, I think it is good with interesting characters, but there is no inciting incident.  Sure, Rand is coming home after loosing his hand.  Weird shit is happening in Dereleth.  The real question is how to tie these together with an inciting incident.  I decided to have a killing in the second scene.  I even think the character of the person being killed in interesting, and somewhat likable in a creepy old man sort of way.  But I don’t know exactly how it relates, except that Rand is coming home and this old man is going to die.

Look, one way or another, I need to push through with this.  I will finish the scene tomorrow and kill the old man, and get Rand into town.

I’m all aflutter.  Eva’s coming  home today, my wife Eva, returning from the land of Cleves.  Her Absence has been difficult.  Being a single father is a bitch and takes a lot of work.  it has its rewards of course.  For instance…

Today was Crazy Hat day at school.  My kids are Jewish, all right, and this is involved with Purim.   For a week, now, each day has had its silly theme.  Yesterday, I made the oh so bad mistake of asking a teacher if tomorrow (translate that into today) had a theme.  Apparently, I asked the wrong teacher, though you would think the Hebrew teacher would know.  So, when I get to school, everybody has Crazy Hats.  (OK, so the teacher I asked did not have a crazy hat.)  There I am, feeling like seven kinds of fool, with two disappointed boys.  A little creativity helped. Ii searched the car, digging down into the floorboards under the discarded toys and Taiquando belts.  I found a Thomas the Train hat, for my youngest.  For my eldest, I took an old loaner Kippah, tore it along to seams and velcroed two gloves to it. 

Crazy Hats galore.

And, damn, but the smiles of my sons melted me.  It makes me wonder about the drive to conform.  Clearly, there is a drive there.  My boys feel it.   Why do we do it.  It is just so we feel that we are a part of the tribe.  I don’t really know.  But that aspect of human character, that need to be a part of something, to wear the Crazy hat, is strong.

The hour grows late. Pushed back into the novel, and enjoyed getting caught back in the cadence I created for the character.  But I’m not sure where to go from here.  There is a Prologue, which probably doesn’t qualify.  In fact, I’m thinking that it may be the closing scene of the novel rather than the beginning.  And, you know, that just occurred to me while I was writing that sentence.  Sure, you are supposed to start a novel as near the ending as possible, but after the end, revealing something deep and eternal about the character, that is only illuminated by reading the novel as I see it now probably isn’t it.

About “On Writing”

I continue to read “On Writing” while considering Writing.  There is a lot of, well, advice, in King’s life.  No, he doesn’t nail me with “this is the way to write” well not yet anyway.  From the introduction, I don’t think he will.  He has illuminated a few key points in his path.  In reading about characters, and particularly about the genesis of the Character of Carrie White.  Stephen King sums it up this way.

“…the writer’s original perception of a character or characters may be as erroneous as the reader’s.”
–Stephen King  ”On Writing A Memoir of the Craft“ (p. 69)

And, of course, it is rare that one mine, even a mine on one page, has jsut one gem.  A scone gem was not about characters, but about finishing. 

“…stopping a piece of work just becaues it’s hard, either emotionallhy or imaginatgivelykl is a bad idea.  Sometimes ou have to go on when you don’t feel like it, and sometimes your’re doing good work when it feels like all you’re managing is to shovel shit from a sitting position.”
–Stephen King  ”On Writing A Memoir of the Craft” (p. 69)

 Something Heard This way Inspires

Heard in the background on the History Channel, “the Journey to the Afterlife begins in total darkness.” Damn, that is a nice turn of phrase, because it says more than the simple definiton of its words.  Darkness, of course, meant the trip the priests took the body of the dead Pharo upon.  Literally, traveling down through the pyramid there was no light.  But, death begins with darkness when the light in our eyes dies.  It begins with darkness that is the unknown.  Is there really nothing known about the far side of death. Oh, we think we know.  We, the human we of shared humanity, have built entire religions, massive structures of myth around that trip that may be no more significant that turning off a life switch, or blowing out a candle.  But it could be so much more, as so many of us hope and pray.  I know that I will use that phrase somewhere.

I’m trying to be less political. Oh, I still care about politics, but I’m tired of the wasted passion and wasted hours. Really, it’s worse that video games, and just as lonely. Also, I’m starting my Master’s degree in Creative writing.  I feel a need to wean myself from the whole thing.  Trying to discover what is going on is pointless.  I will never really know.  Trying to talk with other liberal-lefty-progressives is maddening.

And did I say I was starting my Masters in Creative Writing?

Now one of the really cool things about this first class is reading Stephen King’s  A Memoir of the Craft.  I’ve been curious about the book, not that I needed another book on writing, but that is a different story.  Though the class has not started, I’ve started reading it.  It is not too shabby, to paraphrase Ben Hanscom.  There is one really great quote…

“…we had a chance to save the world and opted for the Home Shopping Network instead.”
–Stephen King “On Writing A Memoir of the Craft”

There I go back to politics.  Addictions are a terrible thing.

Began Reading Stephen King’s “On Writing A Memoir of the Craft”

From above, you can gather that I began reading today.  A writer must read.  I need t his for class, but it also a good read.  Fascinating…. As the reading progresses, I will write more.

Health Care passed the house. This is a great day for the USA, but we still have to get it through the Senate.

Drudge, WND distort health care bill to fearmonger about cost of insurance, possibility of jail time
Matt Drudge and WorldNetDaily.com both falsely asserted that, in Drudge’s words, the House health care reform bill states that people must “buy a $15,000 policy or go to jail.” In fact, as stated by the Joint Committee on Taxation letter on which Drudge’s and WND’s claims are based, the bill does not impose criminal penalties on people merely for failing to purchase health insurance; rather, people who do not buy health insurance and also willfully refuse to pay the tax imposed on them for such actions can face civil or criminal penalties.

Imagine that. If you don’t pay your taxes you can face civil and crimnal penalties. Wow, that has never happened before, I don’t care what Al Capone said.

Whi·gize tr.v. (hwĭg-giz)
Whig·gized, whig·giz·ing, Whig·gi·za·tion. Whig-gery, adj. Whig·gish, n. Whig·gism, n. Whig·asm
The act of purifying a political party into extinctsion. See Republican Party.

Whig·asm n. (hwĭg-ga-zm)
The community orgasm created when Sarah Pallin speaks to Republicans and inspires them to leave the party.

This morning in Democratic Underground a thread titled “ Ron Paul is weird” asked this hypothetical question.

How exactly does he plan to ensured that his ideal vision of a capitalist unregulated free-market system does not turn into the corporatocracy that he apparently doesn’t like? What other than an elected government regulating the economy, could make sure that this doesn’t happen? I thought it is common understanding that unregulated capitalism inevitably converges into the few owning most of everything and buying the government and turning it into whatever they want?

The question is asked from the idea that the belief set of Libertarians and Conservatives is inherently illogical and not informed with common understanding of the world. The problem, with that, is the idea that political beliefs of Libertarians, Conservative, or anyone rely on logic. Truth is, they all operated on the level of religion. My answer was:

It works in their minds the same way religion works in the minds of the religious. They believe because they believe. It is an article of faith not determined by logic.

The answer he would give you would that in a real free market system where corporations were allowed to fail, no mater how big, you would never have that problem. If a corporation got to big, the people (who are all superbly informed and know exactly what is going on) would see the corporation getting to big and quit buying their products, driving them into bankruptcy. Corporations would fear consumers as, in Paul’s mind, the government is supposed to fear its citizens.

In reality, corporations use every modern tool of psychology to control the consumers and keep us salivating like Pavlov’s dogs by manufacturing needs and filling them with ever more goods. The few who do earn enough money to become investors become part of the corporate system in order to maintain their wealth. The government doesn’t fear the citizens, no matter how well armed, because they know that at least half the citizenry rarely if ever vote and they can manipulate their constituents with every modern tool of psychology to control the electorate and keep us fearful of manufactured partisan crises.

Ron Paul is nothing more than a faith healer who drinks too much of his own sacred potency potion.

Not one mind is going to be changed by arguing facts and logic. Both sides simply martial their facts and engage their own version of logic to justify their belief set. Minds are changed only by events that trigger a paradigm shift, like Paul’s vision on the road to Damascus. This usually happens not from a single event, but in one concluding event that finally brings other experiences into a new light. We should quit trying to out logic Conservatives and look for shared events that change the way people look at their own political belief set.