I have no voice and I must scream

November 20, 2008 at 3:14 am (annotative bullshit)

I don’t have the energy to write properly, so here’s a brief deconstruction of the whole ‘write a 50000 word novel in a month’ shebang as it applies to me.

I was apparently somewhat cranky when I wrote this.

week the first

-averaged 2000 words a day, which coasted me above schedule

-did not sound like absolute shit

week the second

-stayed on track, but with mounting difficulty. Broke off to write a couple of short stories, one of which made absolutely no sense at all

 -summarily called out for cheating and veering off track by the pep talk author of the week. It went something like this: “Hey, cheater! If you were planning on starting a different story, STOP RIGHT NOW!”

I should probably add another 3000 words to my total to counterbalance that lapse in fortitude.

-still not sounding like absolute shit. Wrote a couple of sections which I liked more than some of the stuff I didn’t hate in the first week

week the third (present)

-struggling to hit 1000 words a day. I had a 3000 word night. Brutal. Everything starts to sound awkward and vile. I’ve lost any so-called style I might once have had. I haven’t quite stooped to the level of pure padding, but I’m seriously beginning to wonder when I’ll get to that point. Look at this paragraph. Execrable.

further example: marvel at how the construction deteriorates as we continue down the page. Let us examine the horrendous frame transition. You’re quite welcome to fix it.

week the fourth

I’ll get to that.

What happens after the month is up? I need to maintain the discipline required to actually finish a story. The whole purpose of cranking out all the short stories and throwing them up online (even though I know some of them are pretty bad) was to force myself to finish stuff. So far it seems to be working.

Let me summarize my own character conflict for you: stubbornness versus latent laziness. 

 

**update:

-apparently I can write 2200 words in an hour, and possibly a little more if I’m not distracted intermittently by various things.

Let’s make that 2400 words an hour (it’s quite doable if I’m focusing) so we arrive at a nice round 40 wpm. I’m losing 60 words a minute to thinking time, assuming I round my typing speed off to an even 100. Useless knowledge for you and me. Imagine writing at 6000 words an hour, though. That would be something.

My friend and I had an hour-long write-off, which was fairly satisfying, I suppose. At the risk of rendering my other observations redundant, I’ll say that having other people to motivate you works wonders as far as inciting action goes.

Today’s peptalk: “it’s all easier after 35000″. I don’t know.

So? I need more outline and more problem-solving. fuck you, connective insight. how you leave me adrift.

13000 words to go. Let’s say 2000 words an hour. I should be done with the 50k target in 5.5 hours. Huh! And after, hark! the gong show of trying to polish some sense out of the mire. I think this needs to run another 50000 words, another month. A month-long break, first.

 update: max speed so far, 2525/hour.  huh. what do you know.

on Nov 30th, with 8500 more words to go, I was strangely unbothered about the whole thing, since I had the above calculations to soothe my worries. In fact, I look at this like writing a term paper or some such. A 50000 word term paper, no less. I don’t know if I would have been able to do it without the incentive of competition and heaps of moral support. I think next time around it will be much easier.

After a couple of hours I sit here at 47500 words, and decide to take a break, because I will be done with this in an hour. Well, done for now, anyway.

It’s a surprisingly satisfying feeling to be able to sit and think 1000 words is a mere matter of twenty or thirty minutes.

HOWEVER! THINGS I AM LEARNING INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING:

  -apparently I’m undergoing a transitory period of stylistic metamorphosis which doesn’t seem to be working at present

   -evolution probably a good thing, in the long run

-it’s a first draft. it doesn’t matter if prose sounds less than perfect (I’m not talking about grammatical matters okaythankyou.)
 -since it’s all going to be rejigged and reworked eventually

-and frankly, ratifying plotting issues is far more important than fucking around with every other word in a sentence that might be completely eradicated anyway. I need to stop compulsively editing text and start spewing it out, at least for the purposes of a first draft. Let me reiterate and italicise that point for myself.

Left unchecked, I spend hours contemplating the nuances of punctuation.

-I hate how everything on this blog sounds stilted and awkward compared to bullshit I have written on my prolix blog because:

 -I’m stressing out about plot and style

 -protips from wiser people: stumped? make a decision and quit being avoidant.

Things I have come to realise: 

-all my real problems are rooted in plot and organisation, or a distinct lack of either.

-it was wise to shunt aside my natural and immature aversion towards exposing creative foibles. I suck, but attempt to grow.

-having brutal yet constructively critical friends is quite remarkable (thanks).

-I am not at all sensitive when it comes to taking criticism, save in one regard:

SEMANTOFASCISM

  -I’m perfectly happy to take stylistic pointers from people, but I have no patience for people who condescend to me as though I fail to comprehend the grammatical mores of our language as she is written.

-this whole write-a-book thing would be a lot easier if I didn’t have so much shit to chew off my plate this month

-it is far, far easier to find motivation when other people you know are zooming past your daily word count and you are receiving constant reminders of just how possible this task is. Mind you, I haven’t slept too much this month, but that’s my prerogative.

-this has been a learning experience. If you’ve ever considered writing a novel but never actually done it – do it. It sounds hokey as all hell, but when I look at the 30000 words I have written so far, pearls of shit and all, damn me if I don’t feel some small amount of pride.

 PROCESS

-I write in a very haphazard fashion, and usually think up an ending first. Now I have six different endings or something equally ridiculous. I find ending short stories very difficult for some reason. Long stories, not so much.

-so now I have this big accretion of stuff that is all over the place; tying loose ends together is arduous, arduous!

-I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to write sequentially.

-having an outline really helps me, along with a mindmap. (I’m using FreeMind.)

 

*Anything marked “the horror” (or the most recent posts) came from this month’s verbiage fest.

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1500: the unlikely fable of Oleander Olivar

November 18, 2008 at 4:32 am (b) better, the horror)

4.
On an arid islet off the coast of South America, Oleander Olivar limped up the planks of our ship.
He was a long-limbed, wiry man with a broad smile that shone through his sun-browned skin, a Mediterranean cast to his face. I took an instant liking to him, as did the other men on ship. The women, too. Oleander fancied himself a charmer, and I had to admit he was. He talked to everyone with the same easy air. I even saw him talking to Yardman, who grew progressively sullen and told him to get away.
Longdew seemed to get along with him famously, which made me wary at first, thinking perhaps they were good friends, perhaps compatriots. But Oleander told me, when we were occupied with some dull task aboard the ship, that he was curious about the captain’s motives. He might have been dissembling. I did not trust him all the way, but I relaxed my guard a little. I asked him how he had come about his uneven gait.
 
He was from some small village bordering the Black Sea. I have long since forgotten the name.
The wind sired him. So Oleander said, laughing. No, that was just what the villagers said of him, because he ran so fast and so well. He was built to run.
He made his way to the big towns to race, and won, and kept winning, until he was told to go to the largest city in the land. There was a king. The king had once been a runner, himself, and on the longest day of the year he held a succession of races, short to long. People whispered the rewards were stupefying, though Oleander didn’t care. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was the wind whispering in his ear, the land elongating into thin streaks that slurred past him, the sense that he was unstoppable, pushed on by the very gods.
Oleander won his 5th race before the sun lazed into the noon sky.
From morning to evening he was unconquerable, king’s champion, a hero. The king’s daughter wreathed him herself. She was ethereal, with cornflower eyes and flaxen hair. Oleander gazed at her, and wondered how she would look as the white linen of her dress slipped from her shoulders. But the entire kingdom knew she was promised to the neighbouring princedom, matchmade to solidify the land’s safety.
Smilling, the king led him to the treasure chamber and told him he could claim any one thing in the room as his. Oleander took the torch the king himself offered, and looked around. He was surrounded in gold, jewels, paintings, tapestries, weapons, anything you would expect to see in the most opulent vault of the land. Any object would have bought him a lordship.
He walked to the back of the vasty hall, wove in and out of huge and elaborate vases and statues, and turning back, he saw the king’s daughter standing just beyond the doorway, lit by the sconces in the corridor.

Oleander smiled at her, and he made his way back to the two of them, father and daughter. As he was almost at the door he reached out for a goose egg ruby on a plinth, then turned his foot just so, stumbling to his knees. The princess, not only beautiful but kindhearted — remarkable! — reached out to him, and her foot went over the threshold.

They were married the following week, to the fury of the king. The kingdom was happy. A hero should marry a princess. It is right and proper.

Well, now he was a prince, so what else remained for Oleander to do? He decided to grow fat, eating sumptuous delicacies and reclining under the shade of the olives as his wife slid morsel after morsel into his slack mouth. He did not understand her silent moods and resentful stares. He had won, after all. To the victor the spoils. It is right and proper.

The king never spoke to Oleander. Oleander spoke some words to one of the most ambitious of the king’s councillors, and a couple of weeks later it so happened that the king passed in his sleep — a heart problem, so the physicians said — and a councillor became Grand Counsel.

Oleander’s wife spent her time in her chambers, with her books and letters, avoiding him. Oleander, who could not read, left her alone save in the nights, when he awaited her lips and her duties.

On the sixth month of Oleander’s reign, he realised there were a number of men in the council that he hadn’t noticed before; he didn’t tend to bother himself with politics. Yet there were enough unfamiliar faces that a hint of worry began to bite at him.

He went to the Grand Counsel, who nodded, and said they were very good men, very talented, very promising, and did he know there were new delicacies from the Far Far East waiting for him?

Oleander, although he summoned the delicacies (he had begun to use a food taster), still wondered, and he thought about the days when he could have outrun any man in the land. He looked at the sugared candies, and then he pushed the platter away.

He went outside into the sun and made an agonising round of the yard, aware of all the eyes on him. The fat king, running. He used to win races, you know. Oleander struggled on.

By the end of the month he felt something like his old self again, and he could tell the guards no longer laughed at him. Some of them would run with him, and he began to best them. He began to learn about the intricacies of governing a realm, and wondered why the Grand Counsel did things that seemed perhaps not in the best interests of the country, and possibly more towards the best interests of the Grand Counsel.

He ordained a new Grand Counsel, and removed the men who had crept their way in, those responsible for ratifying the most iniquitous of statutes. He was in the process of planning out a set of most benevolent ordinances when war stormed the gates with her bristling panoply of spears and bows and battering rams.

Kingdom marched on kingdom. Oleander knew nothing of war. His own army lay in remnants around him, privatised and appropriated by false statesmen.

The neighbouring kingdom kept coming, sending out more and more men, razing villages left and right. Oleander’s home was the first to go.

War blustered at the gates. Oleander stood on the walls and looked down. The host of the adversary spread over the land for as far as the eye could see. What few guardsmen Oleander had left stood shaking, ready to run the moment the gates broke.

“Surrender, for the sake of your people,” the prince shouted to Oleander, in the tones of one born for nobility. “And for your life.”

Oleander had no choice. The gates came open, the palace traded hands. Oleander and his wife waited in the throne room.

The prince and his retinue stepped through the doors, and in a graceful flutter of skirts, Oleander’s wife rose to her feet and went to her true love‘s side. Oleander’s breath caught in his lungs. Before he could move, the prince’s guards had him by his wrists and ankles, and they stripped off his trousers and pinioned him to the ground so he lay exposed and shivering.

“You, sir,” the prince said, “are a thief.” The axe in his hand swung patiently from side to side. Oleander felt his palms grow slick. His pale and lovely wife, standing by the prince, put her arm through her love’s and said nothing.

“Now,” the prince said, “run.” He raised his heavy iron axe above his head and brought his arms down. Such a ponderous movement, such a sharp and immediate pain.

Oleander screamed a long time.

The prince’s physicians bandaged up the rest of his legs and put him on a beggar’s cart. Oleander writhed and sobbed each time the wheels bounced off the paving stones.

The queen came out through the gates, surrounded by the murmuring of her maids. She looked at him for a long moment, set the goose egg ruby on the cart next to him; the gates shut behind her retreating back.

 

Oleander grinned at me and pulled up his trouser legs. His legs, from the knee down, were made entirely of wood. He dropped the hems and walked around in a circle to show me how good his stride was, limp or no.

“No scampering up and down the rigging for me, though,” he said, laughing as he tapped out a little jig.

“Is that story true?” I asked doubtfully.

Oleander just smiled. “I’ve learned to read since,” he said.

 

***a: fix frame story. last third – the author was clearly in process of falling asleep – style: what style? f: proposition: different ending where olivar keeps his legs, since prince smashing his legs in front of his true love isn’t exceedingly romantic. olivar’s essence is running; how could he charm and smile after losing that? unless he is faking it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Protected: 50208 the horror (a putrescence in thirty days)

November 16, 2008 at 8:54 am (the horror)

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1150: clerk; non-sequitur antinovel interlude

November 12, 2008 at 9:52 am (b) better, c) middling)

They came on the last day of fall, right before the snow came. My dad ran into them when he was patrolling the roads outside our village, and told me I better spruce up the damn place, so I got to tidying and I was only just done when they got inside our little inn.

“Don’t be difficult,” he said. He was wearing nice sharp clothes and shoes that shone. Bad for winter.

“It’s pokey. There’s a smell,” she said, stroking her fur coat nervously. It looked soft, and dead.

“Well, if you want to sleep in the car–” he said. He gave me a look. “Room for two, my good man?” He was holding the babe, and he shushed it every time it squalled.

“That I’ve got,” I said, fiddling around for the keys. “Twenty pound for two. We can take the babe for nothing.”

“More than the place deserves,” she muttered, under her breath. I heard it. I don’t have much but I got good ears from my dad.

He sloughed off a couple of notes from his fat wallet and added a few coins to the mix.

“No need for that,” I said, and pushed the extras back. “Breakfast eight till nine. I hope you have a right good stay.”

The woman put her little nose up in the air and pulled at his arm, and together they went up the stairs.

.

Next morning they came down to the dining room. It was just them. I noticed that the woman had gone all quiet. She held the baby in her arms and stared off into space. Her man tried to engage her in talk, but she just nodded and shook her head.

“Something the matter with the lady?” I asked all chatty-like as I brought him his coffee. She took water and a collection of unbuttered crackers, but she didn’t touch them. Wasting food’s no good, you know.

“She’s fine,” he said. “It’s the weather. Must be the weather. It was a damn cold night you had here.”

I nodded and withdrew. Always stuff to do.

They went out, and I heard the man exclaiming about how the car was stuck. After he came back and paid for another night, I busied myself and put the vases in the right spots on the mantelpiece above the fire. Cleaned their room too, though it hardly needed cleaning.

After dinner they came back and the man took the woman and the babe up to the room.

I didn’t hear anything from them till half past nine, when the man came down the stairs, his clothes all mussed-up.

“Hullo,” I said, helpfully.

“My good man, is there a different room available?”

“Nope,” I said.

“It’s just …My wife is of a rather delicate disposition.”

I cocked my head at him, quizzical.

“Isn’t this inn empty?” he asked, exasperated. “I haven’t seen or heard anyone else but you in this place. If the other rooms are pricier, I can pay.”

“They’re taken,” I said. “You got the best room.”

“The best room!” he exclaimed, and went back upstairs.

I watched the clock. Put everything back in place for the day, so I just watched the hands chase each other round and round.

Thirteen past thirteen, a magical kind of hour. He came down the stairs again.

“Listen, man,” he began. Upstairs there was a really nasty kind of scream, the kind of scream a man makes when caught in a trap. I heard that noise before. Don’t like it so much.

He ran up the stairs.

At fifteen past thirteen he came back down clutching the babe, his wife clinging to him as best she could.

“There a problem?”

“There was something at the window!” she said, her eyes wide and staring. She squeezed her husband’s arm tighter, until he told her to get off, and she stamped her feet and shook as though she were trying to shake something off.

“No idea, miss,” I said. “You’re on the second storey.”

“There was something!” she said. “Hubert! I want to go.”

“The AA won’t be here ’till tomorrow,” he said.

“I’d rather sleep in the car!” she cried.

He gave her a look. “Fine,” he said, closing his eyes, exhaling.

“Can’t give you a refund,” I said. as he stormed out. He didn’t need to drag her. She was pulling him along.

.

In the morning there was a commotion. I went outside to see if anyone needed me for anything.

“That’s him!” the woman cried, pointing a red-tipped finger at me. Just her and her man. No babe.

The mayor was there, and our good old constable was there, and the neighbours were there.

“Horrible little man, you say,” the constable said, mulling the words over. “That’s no good.”

“Yes!” she cried. “Do something about it, for the love of…”

“Shouldn’t blaspheme, miss,” the constable said. My dad was always a right proper man.

“It was him! My baby…”

“Our baby,” said the man.

“Baby,” the mayor said, looking into the car.

“You were in a locked car.” Dad tapped his pen against his block of paper, fumbling a little through his gloves.

“I told you,” she said shrewishly. “We fell asleep and the baby was gone and we got out to look for him. And then Hubert and I saw this creature,” she stabbed a finger at me, “running into the inn with my child!”

“That’s not very nice,” the mayor remarked. “Let’s check the inn, then.”

We all went upstairs and the man held the woman’s hand tight, and she looked at him.

“Not a thing,” the mayor said, dubiously, surveying the spartan room. “Didn’t see any sign of a baby in your car either.”

“Funny, that,” my dad said. “Maybe the other rooms.” He took us along. All the other rooms were empty, of course. He even opened the closets to show them.

“My baby,” the woman said, again and again, but her voice was growing more and more uncertain, even as her grip on her husband tightened.

“I don’t know that you brought a baby with you,” the mayor said, shaking his head. “The things you young people do these days. The things you think you see.”

She wrung her hands and said, “Hubert!”

But his face was all glazed-over and he said, “Looks like the snow is melting.” He saw her shivering and put his arm over her shoulders.

And it was. It was melting down into the road, slowly, melting away from their tyres.

I watched them get back in their car, holding each other like maybe they lost something and found something they never realised they had lost, or something. Beats me, sir. Not like I’ll ever see them again.

“Now then!” my dad said. “See you at dinner.” He patted my head and grinned with his sharp, sharp teeth.

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Protected: turbulence (3)

November 11, 2008 at 10:43 am (the horror)

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400: turbulence intro (better)

November 2, 2008 at 11:32 pm (b) better)

The funny thing about the Amerigo was that no-one aboard knew exactly where the next port of call would be. Two days into the voyage I found myself wondering what exactly I had gotten myself into; the ocean stretched out interminably and my sea companions droned on likewise.

Two months before the Amerigo would dock again. We knew that much. The girl in the cabin opposite kept wandering over to check up on me, make sure I was still capable of breathing, so on and so forth. She was a pallid thing with a beaky nose and pinched face. Her lackwit lustre could have shrivelled the most garrulous of grandmothers. Her father the captain was a noble man, or so his crew said; perhaps before time and the rigours of rampant intoxication had come to collect their dues. Noble or no, I never saw him spare a nod for her.

I spent the nauseous days sulking in my cabin or staring out into the fogstained view. Godforsaken clouds hung low and pregnant with ill-omen; as the weather grew ever gloomier I was soon the only man on deck save the crew, who avoided my cold silences as I avoided their banter. They quietened in the oppressive climate and girded themselves for trouble; we might have been a ghost ship for all the noise we were too afraid to make.

We were sailing through the grey zone. The last clock had tinkled to a stop.

“Look,” said the beaky girl. We were standing on the deck. She had come out to me, and she held in her hand a brooch of startling beauty. As she turned it over in her palm, clockwork whirred, and I realised it was a minute garden, all the parts of which constantly shifted and realigned. First it was a hanging garden, then an arboretum of old oaks. I tried to value it; it would have fetched more than all the trinkets I had ever gotten from my poor wife, it would have been a gift from emperor to empress, and I could not understand how this girl had come to have it.

“What does it mean?” she asked. “Why would a man give a gift to a girl he claims to love, after spending a night with a wife he doesn’t love?”

I had nothing for her. Instead I looked out into the turbulence that had sprung out of the night and lurked into morning. That was how I saw it.

 

 

—more conflict? I have post-dated this so it flows into the bulk of the so-called horror.—

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Protected: 7729 turbulence (1) (first draft) (style up to first * truly sucks)

November 2, 2008 at 10:28 pm (the horror)

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Protected: turbulence (2.5) (first draft)

November 1, 2008 at 2:12 am (the horror)

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