I’m plugging away at this round of edits for the book. The deadline for my second thesis draft is ridiculously close (March 1st) and yet … and yet, what? It seems to be progressing relatively smoothly, but yet at the same time there is so much work that needs to be done on it. I’ll make the deadline, because that’s what I do, but once again I’m not quite sure how it’ll all come together. Spent some time on it this evening again. I forgot my netbook at home, so I kept to making notes on the paper and rereading the sections that have been marked up by my advisor (this sounds like I am able to go over the entire document over and over again. I can’t, it’s much too long. I’m slowly working my way from beginning to end and focusing on it in compartmentalized segments. I’m only now slipping past the 100 page mark with my scribbles, and around the 40 page mark with my in computer edits). Like I said, it’s a process.

My day job has been keeping me occupied. At the beginning of the month we closed one show and this last week we opened another. The time between involved a dentist appointment, schedule making and product ordering. Funny to think of how ordinary so much of our work is when people visit the theatre and can’t help but say things like “don’t you just love your job?” and “it must be such fun to work here!” I tell them that it definitely has its moments, and it’s true, I’ve had some incredible experiences, but it’s also true that much of what we do is the same day to day slog that they all do at their offices. Such is the magic of theatre. I’m not complaining though, I can’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing right now.

My apartment has gotten into disarray again. I’ve been working slowly to try and put order to it all. In the end it feels like I’m only rearranging the piles. This summer I think I’ve got to do a major purge, beginning with the second bedroom’s closet and move throughout the place. It’s hard to feel organized when you’re constantly surrounded by stuff. But such is my natural state, so I have to find some middle ground to make it work.

One thing that’s been wonderful is my kindle. I just finished another book on it the other night and I love it. I love being surrounded by books, but it’s nice having a device that makes every book the same size and that makes finishing one and beginning another completely seamless. I just finished reading The Passage by Justin Cronin. I’ve had the book since it was released, but it’s a massive brick of a book (760 pages). It sat on my shelf since I got it because it’s just been too big to carry with me in my bag. Well, after I got the most recent recommendation to read it, I got a kindle version and sped through it in two weeks. To keep track of my progress in to corporeal world, I moved a bookmark through the book as I read.

The book is pretty good overall. I’m definitely going to get the second book in this series, The Twelve, when it comes out. It’s flawed on several levels, but he kept things moving fast enough that I wasn’t held up by the things that bother me about it in retrospect. I think that people reading it because they are expecting a frightening horror novel will be disappointed (unless you frighten very easily) but if you like post-apocalyptic adventure (action) novels/ movies then you’ll enjoy it. It reads a lot like a Stephen King novel (though I’m more inclined to actually be terrified by Stephen King, haven’t for a while, but it’s happened … ).

I just downloaded The Girl Who Played With Fire onto my kindle. I have a physical copy as well, but again, it’s a huge novel that makes it difficult to go from bag to bag. I have a feeling with this one though that I’ll read it a little bit like how I read The Hunter, bouncing back and forth between the two.

A few personal matters. I spoke with my dad a week ago and he told me that this growth that the doctor found turned out to be cancerous. It was removed and it looks clear, but he’ll have to get checked out again in three months. If he’s still clear in three months, then they’ll check him out again in three years. (It might be every three months for a few cycles before he moves to the every three years thing, I can’t remember as I’m typing this, but I wanted to note it for my own sake. I haven’t had a paper journal for a while and I need some marker for myself). Both of my dad’s sisters have been treated for cancers, so it’ll be something that I have to watch for.

One of my dad’s close friends was just diagnosed with lung cancer. I haven’t seen him for a while, the last time was at his daughter’s wedding (our families have been friends for a long time, almost my entire life). It’s still a tough thing to hear.

I’ve got my website up now. It has links to this blog, my facebook, my twitter … everything that I do online. This makes me ask myself again, what the purpose of this blog is. If it is a personal journal, then perhaps it doesn’t belong linked to a professional website (though, all of my online shenanigans are personal). I have to figure it out soon though. Perhaps I’ll shift the format a little, I’m a fan of Warren Ellis’s page and Wil Wheaton’s blog. Neil Gaiman’s blog (sporadic now, but at one point quite prolific) sort of collected links and pointed people at stuff, something that I use Tumblr and Facebook to do. So, what is this page? I’m not to the point where I’m writing craft essays and I don’t quite have the type of personality that Richard Kadrey or Chuck Wendig project online (this is largely the function of my dual life with my day job–my personality does share some of the darker shades of their humor, it’s just not currently projected on here).

I guess, right now, the answer is that I’m ernest. I’m a fan of the things I’m a fan of. I’m a big nerd with a wide interest base. What I may begin to focus on is the things that are occupying my attention right now. Things I’m interested in.

Or maybe I’ll just keep doing what I’ve been doing. Regardless …

More later …

So, here we are now.

I last left you at the beginning of December, a day before my mom’s birthday and only a few days after I turned in my thesis draft. The gifts were all wrapped and then unwrapped to great success. In, perhaps my last year of relative financial fluidity for a while, I went all out on gifts. I got my mom a kindle touch for Christmas, my brother a kindle fire, and my dad all three seasons of Deadwood. They all liked their gifts, but I could tell that my mom really liked it. It caught her completely off guard and since she had never actually said the words “I want this” out loud, she had no reason to expect to get it. I finally got one exactly right. I found Tiff a singing and dancing Gizmo that is both ridiculously cute and kind of creepy and Meaghan a collection of stuffed Alvin & the Chipmunks. It went well.

I enjoyed the gifts that I received as well, but it’s not always about me. This year, I really enjoyed the giving.

A few days before Christmas, I went over to Tiff and Meaghan’s for our little friend Christmas. Julia and Elizabeth were there as well. I got there around 8:30, followed by Elizabeth and then the first resident of the house, Tiff around 9. I ate my dinner, we had some cocktails, and we laughed and joked around. Julia arrived and then the girls (minus Meaghan, who was still at the G having cocktails with Joe) unwrapped their gifts. Julia received Jeopardy for the Wii, so she played against Elizabeth and then against me. Sometime in there Meaghan got home. Julia left and we unwrapped our gifts. Drank some more and laughed some more. Tiff turned Gizmo on and we all appreciated the things it was preprogrammed to do. Then a short while later, she bumped it and it started singing and dancing on it’s own (it’s apparently touch activated when you leave it on) which caused her to scream out. This caused the rest of us to laugh. It was funny, you would have laughed as well.

Sometime after midnight, Elizabeth left. As she was driving away, she called Tiff to let her know that the car that was in front of the apartment’s door with its lights on when we’d arrived was still there and that she thought that there was someone slumped over in the front seat. She told Tiff that she should call the police. Tiff laughed and said that of course she would. When she got off the phone, we told her that she should call the police as well, so she did. She tried the non-emergency line, but was transferred to 911. “There appears to be someone in the front seat who is slumped over,” she said. “We think that someone should check it out and that someone should not be us.” The operator on the other end agreed (though, we think that they were a bit surprised to be talking to someone who was not hysterical on the other end of the line. They said they would send someone over.

Tiff started tidying up the wrapping paper and accidentally activated Gizmo again, sending her screaming across the room, where she said, while pressed up against the wall, “we’re taking the batteries out of that thing.” I walked over, picked Gizmo up and turned him off. She said, “Oh, you can shut him off. We’re still taking the batteries out of him.”

The cops arrived and we watched as they shined their lights into the car, knocked on the window and tried to get the man’s attention. We watched them break the back window. We watched an ambulance and a fire truck arrive, as well as more cops. We watched as they tried to sit him up in the seat, and presumably, try to resuscitate him. Around 1:30 they called Tiff and asked her to come down and make a statement. Meaghan went with her. I went down too, because it was time for me to go. I offered to stay for a while longer, but they said it was silly. I walked out the door as Tiff was talking to the cop and to the other end of the parking lot, away from the flashing lights to my truck.

I tweeted: “Christmas part one was a lot of fun. Drinks, laughter, and possibly a dead body.”

I text messaged Tiff the next morning from work to find out what happened. She called me back and gave me the lowdown on the events after I left.

I tweeted: “Update: Actually a dead body, turns out.”

So, some guy died in front of their building and sat in that car, unnoticed until Elizabeth left and we called the cops. Makes you think.

The lead up to Christmas was very busy at work, but luckily I had enough performance supervisors and enough staff that I was able to carve out a little Christmas break for myself this year–that hasn’t really happened before.

I was off on Wednesday. My brother flew into town around 1:30 and I picked him up at the airport. We got some lunch, caught Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, finished his Christmas shopping, had a good dinner and went over to Barnes and Noble and had a cup of coffee. It was a very good night. Around 11 o’clock I left him at my place watching Captain America, while I went back to the airport to pick up Jane. Jane and I know each other a little bit through mutual friends and have continued to bump into each other over the course of the last ten years. Last summer, when we bumped into each other at my friend Katie’s birthday party, we actually exchanged numbers and friended each other on Facebook, which allowed us to bounce periodic messages back and forth. We kept promising that the next time we were in the same town (she here or I in New York) that we’d get drinks. Well, Christmas has a way of encouraging one to return to one’s hometown and she came back here. Since I was leaving early Thursday morning to head North with my little brother to my parents’ house in the woods, late Wednesday night was the only time our paths were going to cross on this trip.

So, I agreed to pick her up at the airport.

Her flight was supposed to arrive at 10:30 and then it was delayed until 11:15. She finally arrived at 12:15. I got her loaded into my truck and we set off in search of a bar. Who knew it would be so difficult. The first two places we stopped were locking their doors and closing at 1. We finally made our way to the Dubliner and had that drink (two each, actually) and became better acquainted. It was fun. I dropped her off at her mom’s house close to 3am and we agreed that we should do it again soon.

The next morning, Bill and I got up and got moving (he was up before I was, but then fell asleep on the couch). I loaded everything into my truck and then woke him up so that we could get on the road. Two peppermint mochas later and we were pointed North toward Christmas.

When I say that it was an uneventful trip, I mean that in the best possible way. We just chilled in the woods. It was relaxing. It was fun. This is not to say that visiting my folks isn’t, but what it usually is is hurried. It also helped that I saw them here for Thanksgiving and that I was up by them for a day or two at the beginning of December and then I’ll be going back North in a week again. So, it was fun.

Some highlights: Christmas Day involved several naps, shooting some handguns, and an excellent Packer game. We watched A Bridge Too Far and Sherlock Holmes and Far & Away. There was scotch. There was wine. There were lots of trees and some snow. It was good.

Then I came back, worked a bunch of shows and rolled up onto the New Year, taking a stop along the way at Grumpy’s Friday night for Meaghan’s birthday.

Saturday, as 2011 was coughing up its last breaths, I worked two shows and then came home to quietly wave goodbye to the year from my couch. Best possible solution considering that the brown Christmas that we’ve been enjoying in the TC very suddenly got cold and white. I enjoyed Tucker and Dale vs Evil and then knocked off a little before 1. One might almost think that I was getting old. Almost.

Today, I met with my thesis advisor and got her notes on my book. They were largely positive. Now, as the man says:

Break’s over.

More later …

So, this is what I have now:

a large stack of paper telling a story. 123,470 words ... hopefully in the correct order.

Getting here took some time. Last summer, if you remember, I was off from my job at the theatre. I used the time (two months) to crank out a first draft of around 107,000 words to meet my thesis registration deadline. Once I had that draft in hand, I realized that I needed to insert a whole subplot at the beginning that would hopefully clarify the story overall and make getting from there to here make a little more sense. I had my meeting, told my advisor that, and she sent me on my way to rewrite and revise.

They say you should put it in a drawer for a while–a few days, a month–long enough to approach it as a reader as well as a writer. This is a lovely idea. It didn’t work for me this time. I discovered, upon returning to my job, that the changes that had begun in June were continuing and would continue for a while. My partner at the theatre had decided that five years was enough, so she resigned. That left me to manage my entire area, alone. This isn’t something that I was completely unprepared for, but it happened to coincide with the need to rehire mush of my staff, as many of them were leaving school and going off to do other things. The book took the back burner during this time, and even though I was thinking about it constantly and scribbling notes and ideas, I wasn’t working on it actively. This may have been for the best. The saying goes (heard from Neil Gaiman, attributed to Greg Wolfe) “You don’t learn how to write a novel. You learn how to write the novel that you’re writing.” Or somesuch. Point being, the way that I expected to write this book isn’t how it ended up being written, and maybe it was for the best. I needed the time to think, to reconsider, to keep dreaming … in order to get it closer to being “right”.

new gateposts with new words. a fresh start and a promising word count.

When I finally opened my computer again, it was crunch time. The theory I had was that I would read through my complete draft with my vicious red pen of justice and then mark those changes in the manuscript, creating draft two. Then I’d start typing draft three from draft two, changing things and adding them as I saw fit. Revision and then Rewriting. It didn’t work out this way. I got seven chapters into my red pen horrorshow and stalled. The problem, in addition to time, was that my brain wasn’t wanting to properly edit sections that it new would be changed anyway once I started adding in that new subplot that I was concocting concurrently. It wanted to work on that and some of my notes on the draft reflected that. I finally reached a point where I just didn’t have the time available to read the first draft, make changes AND rewrite. So I did the only thing that seemed to make sense, edit on the fly. I opened a new file and began typing a brand new prologue. And then a new chapter one, and a new chapter two … I took a few lines here and there from my first draft, but it wasn’t until chapter five or so that I started interacting with the text that I’d already written. The novel felt alive again and also surprising. I was still discovering stuff within the stuff that I’d already written. I was suddenly able to make the cuts that needed to be made, reform the stuff that I’d written previously, and craft a better story.

most of the writing occurred in the evening, so it made sense that my facebook updates reflected that.

I plowed through the book in a month, keeping to my system of last summer of public accountability–posting photos on Facebook with updates on my writing progress. The laptop photo was the first for this draft and the tree silhouette at sunset being another (right around the halfway point). Last summer’s updates were varied because I was writing in the afternoons and evenings. This draft was mainly crafted in the evening, as that was the time I had available (and sparingly at that) so most of the photos reflected that. This idea of public accountability came from two different sources. In my studies at Hamline, I’ve worked with some amazing teachers. One, Shelia O’Connor, had us check in with other students each week to verify our page counts. We didn’t workshop them, all we did was sign off on a sheet that said that we made the page count each week (we had to accomplish between 7 and 15 pages a week for those classes). Then, at roughly the same time I was going to begin my first draft, Warren Ellis was going to begin a new book of his own and he said that he planned on using a “death bar” to keep track of his weekly goals (he gave himself 20 weeks to finish and figured at the time that he would need to hit 5000 words a week to make a 100,000 word goal).

The death bar:

death bar

I found a link that explained how to create the death bar at Writertopia, but decided to not use it because of the constant coding required to update it. I also wasn’t sure how it would work on Facebook and since that holds me far more accountable than this blog does, it was the more logical place to do the updates.

As it turned out, I finished two drafts before he finished his one. But, his draft won’t require a much editing/ revision and he already has an agent/ editor AND it’s already scheduled for publication … so I think when the other factors are taken into consideration, he wins this round.

So, once I began implementing the first draft text into my new draft (dubbed hush 2.0) I went back and reinstated my vicious red pen of justice and worked on the fly (very similar to how I maintained my outline last summer). I’d edit a few chapters out, usually 3 or 4, and then I’d copy/ paste the draft one version into my new draft and make all the changes in my new draft. This required me to do close reading twice, once on the paper and once on the screen, for each chapter since the formatting didn’t paste with the text (I could have done, but my “first” drafts are single spaces and I don’t double space until I’m ready to print–I find I’m not as focused on page counts when I do it this way–and as a result, all of my italics go away and need to be restored individually). With this system, I managed to finish the draft with five days to spare.

It turns out that I needed those five days.

I got an email, just after I finished spell checking the document for the last time and was pulling into the FedEx/ Kinkos to make my copies and send the manuscript on its merry way, that there was a decision made about thesis that effected my piece. I chose the “full” thesis, which is intended to be a book length draft, as opposed to the “partial” thesis, which is 80-100 pages of short stories or a partial draft of a novel. A decision was made, apparently, but not put into writing anywhere, that “full” thesis drafts could no longer exceed 300 pages. My draft clocked in at 443 pages. My advisor suggested that I just remove chapters “in the middle” and summarize them. My story didn’t really work that way, so I had to go through each chapter and select the chapters to remove, summarize them, and insert the summary sheet where the chapter previously lived. It was a pain in the ass, but I managed to cut my draft down to 308 pages … which I didn’t mention because, with the page numbering still consistent with my 443 page draft it would require the application of math to resolve that my draft was just a teensy bit too long and I don’t think that will occur.

Now, since my thesis advisor is no longer reading and commenting on my entire draft, but only selections of it, I was left with a quandary: how do I know if the stuff I wrote in the summarized stuff is working with everything else? Luckily, I have an amazing outside reader, who, even though he isn’t supposed to read a draft until thesis 2, was happy to read though the full thesis 1 draft.

business card printed for AWP conference in February.

business card printed for AWP conference in February (back)

And that’s where this novel is sitting currently. It might be a sign of madness, or perhaps that this is a good fit for me, but I’m already thinking about the second book.

In other news …

I was up north at the beginning of the week. I went up to my parents’ house on Monday, dropped my truck off at the mechanic my dad goes to in order to get my 4 wheel drive hubs replaced, and then we celebrated my mom’s 60th birthday (it’s tomorrow). Tuesday, I picked my truck up and then went to Duluth to see my friend Caity Shea’s show.

Canal Park, late afternoon

made my trip down to the lake.

I like having talented friends.

I made my regular pilgrimage to Lake Superior. It’s one of the things that I really miss about living in Duluth/ Superior. The lake is so magnificent and it has such a constant impact on everything happens in the area. It’s beautiful. The last few times I’ve visited have been during the summer, so it’s been a while since I’ve been there when it’s empty. There was a cold wind, but everything was clear and fairly still on the water. I went out on the rocks and snapped a few photos and tried to take in everything that I left. Maybe it is the size of Lake Superior, but it just helps me with some perspective. I couldn’t stay long though. I made a run up the hill to get some dinner and then went to UMD to see Caity’s show.

I met Caity at the theatre when she was a student actor. She’s very talented as a actress, but she also has a wonderful gift with storytelling and language. I saw her first produced show, Paisley Poppies a few years ago, and now at 20 she had another fully realized production. The really cool thing about this is that it is the first time that UMD is presenting a play by a student who is still in the program (they’ve done a few by graduated students). It was a very well written play and she’s all ready to make revisions for the next production (of which I hear there are nibbles …). I really love having talented friends.

It’s also coming up on Christmas very soon, so I’ve been busy concocting Christmasy things. I’ve made lobby mix number two for our holiday show, adding in a few more holiday songs and taking out a few tracks that were dragging a bit. I’ve got just about every gift for the year in hand now. I decorated a little this year too, which is fun. My rearranged living room accommodates that nicely.

No pictures of the gifts … don’t want to spoil anything. It’s been fun though, in that exhausting sort of way.

Other than that, there’s not much to report. I’m loving my Kindle Fire. Finished reading my second book on there. It was also very helpful when I was selecting which chapters were going to get pulled for thesis–I uploaded a PDF draft and was able to skip around through my book, rereading sections as necessary. Lovely. I also just finished watching Cowboy Bebop, which was a great 26 episode anime series from the late 90′s. Very well done and reminded me of Firefly in all sorts of good ways. Several very memorable episodes and the arch was done beautifully so that the last episode was very emotional.

That’s it for now. More later …

YOU’RE GONNA CARRY THAT WEIGHT.

SEE YOU SPACE COWBOY …

Work continues on hush version 2.0. I need to have it to my thesis advisor, Mary, by December 1st. Somehow the months between finishing the first draft and now just melted away. I started with my red pen, marking up my first draft, but that was a slow crawl through the first seven chapters. So I opened a new document and I started retyping, or rather typing, since I was, at that point, mainly generating new material. Somewhere in the first 15000-20000 new words I began to weave in the stuff I’d already written. Now I’m alternating between using my vicious red pen of justice to mark up, edit, slice, dice, notate and puree my first draft and then I’m cutting and pasting the corresponding chapter into my new draft and making the edits on my laptop. It’s going much faster and I’m discovering many new things in between the words that I’d written. I’m up to 67000 words on my 2.0 draft and nearly done with the long first act of my novel (thankfully, acts 2 & 3 are a little shorter, though who knows what they’ll look like when I’ve slashed at them in red pen).

The difficult first hump of the season is nearly finished at my day job. Soon we’ll close the show on our second stage and then I’ll only have one stage to schedule and work. It’ll be a lot easier to wrap my head around. My new boss was also just hired and I’ve been in one meeting with her. I like her, I think she’ll be good for the department and the theatre.

Thanksgiving is this week. My folks decided to come down for the holiday and have Thanksgiving dinner at my apartment, since I won’t be able to get away from the city. (Sadly, my first thought was of the lost writing day–damn you wonderful parents for interrupting my writing schedule with your love for me!) I’m excited though. I’ve been at the theatre for nine years and this will be the first show that they will see there (one of my favorites too, the last time we did this show was my first season and I’ve been waiting nine years for it to be put back on the schedule). Then, on Thursday, after we’ve eaten, they’re going to join me in the only thing that I had planned for the day–we’re going to see The Muppets! I’m stupid excited for this movie.

Other stuff …

Got a Kindle Fire. Love it so far.

At the beginning of December I’m heading North. Going to visit my folks, get the four wheel drive on my truck fixed and go see my friend Caity Shea’s play in Duluth.

Had to work on my birthday this year. Was okay. A few days before I got a package in the mail–thinking that one of my Amazon orders arrived early I opened it. Discovered that my brother got me a Zero Tolerance folding knife for my birthday (a Gibbs knife, for you NCIS fans). I’ve got a wonderful little brother. Then on my birthday, I found out my staff got me a card and cupcakes for my birthday (and thankfully, they didn’t sing). Afterward, Zack and I went to Outback and I got a steak. We hung out for a while and then we went to see a late-showing of Immortals. I wasn’t expecting much from the movie, but was pleasantly surprised. It was very enjoyable (and visually it was gorgeous).

My friend Kjersti brought her daughter August to see Oz on Saturday, so I got to see them.

I designed and got new business cards in the mail. They have book information on them and I’m going to bring them with me in February to AWP to give out. Hopefully, it helps my project stick in someone’s mind that is in the position to help it succeed. At the very least, it’s a very cool business card with my contact info on it for whatever new friends I meet. (That reminds me, I need to book my train tickets ASAP before they go up in price any more).

Did a little more tweaking on my website. Have now purchased the domain http://www.walkingtobars.com for the next two years. Also began building a second website with my name on weebly. The “walking to bars” name will work well for the next few years and if I decide that I want to shift my brand a little, I’ll use my own name.

That’s all I’ve got right now that seems relevant. As I’m moving forward with my projects, I’ve been thinking about what I want out of this blog. It’s still been largely a collection of brain dumping from my personal life, but I’ve notice that I haven’t used it to collect any of the stuff that I’m looking at/ experiencing online (I seem to use Facebook and Tumblr for that, while the immediate commentary and observations go to Twitter). What does that mean for the future of this blog? I don’ t know. I like it a lot, but I’m not spending much time interacting with it. Perhaps, when I’ve reached a little more clarity with my future career path, I’ll reformat it a bit to be a repository of the things that interest me and a place to point to the places that have my current attention (like all the articles I’m reading on the different Occupy cities and campuses and the reactions to them, i.e. militarized police brutally attacking the protesters). There is so much happening in this country right now and so far I’ve been microfocused (on here anyway) on the minutiae of my daily life.

So that’s what I’ve got now. More later …

Last night I went see The Thing with Zack. It was really good and a solid prequel to John Carpenter’s 1982 film. Some weirdness on the way to see the movie–we got to the theater and the place was swarming with cops. Apparently there was a fight in the theater just before we got there. Then, we decided to stop in the bathroom on the way in and while we were in there we kept hearing some sounds coming from the handicapped stall, dice as it turned out–apparently some guys have nothing better to do on a Friday night then hang out in a men’s restroom playing craps in a stall. It was really nice to hang out with Zack, we haven’t been able to hang out for a while since our schedules have been so busy. He’s put Chicago on his schedule, so I have a travel companion now for AWP. I’m looking forward to it–I really need a good trip and to get out of Dodge for a little bit.

What else is new? Detoxing my brain with episodes of Bones (season 6). Watching some movies as I have time. Made some time to go see Real Steel and Drive (really enjoyed both of them). Got a few more books–Richard Kadrey’s Aloha From Hell, William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist and Legion, Dennis Lehane’s Moonlight Mile, and others. I pre-ordered a Kindle Fire, so assuming that nothing comes up to prompt me to cancel the order, I’ll get it on or around November 15th. I’m excited to get my first tablet and e-reader, in the same device no less.

Other than that, not a lot going on. I see Meaghan and Tiff in fits and spurts. Talked to Tiffany for a bit a week or so ago and that was nice, she’s hoping that she can make a trip here in a year or so. I chatted with Megan on Google chat a little the other night, she just broke up with they guy she moved to California for. Otherwise, it’s a lot of work and me hanging out on my own.

Moving right along though. Halloween is right around the corner and I have another draft to finish.

More later …

When the parting words are “watch your back” it’s hard not to feel comforted …

Of course, I’m not crazy about winter following quickly on autumn’s heels. The first snow fall is nice (hell, the first couple aren’t bad) and it’s hard to argue with sipping hot chocolate and coffee (or combining them in my favorite beverage: a vanilla mocha, peppermint mocha for the holidays, of course). But winter seems to set in, once the snow falls, it grips you in it’s icy embrace and threatens to never let go (and in Minnesota, it feels like a legitimate threat every year …). Sure, spring comes eventually and everything blossoms again, but spring is also very wet. I love rain, but I could do without all the additional muck involved. And with a long winter, lots of things get lost in the snowbanks that are found in the muck when the snow has melted.

So, it is autumn and summer for me. Summer is on its last days, drifting away, and autumn has returned.

Life continues on, you know? My brain is split between my day job and my dreaming job. This evening, my dreaming job involved scribbling notes in my notebook, asking questions and expanding my fictional universe. I really need to attack the first draft of my novel with my vicious red pen of justice, but while it’s sitting in my bag I can still imagine around the idea that I created. Once I dive in again, I’ll be back in the sentence to sentence framework of the story. The latticework will still be woven with the blossoming of all the weird and fantastical ideas that I’m cooking up, but it will still be held together with the structure. Some of the things that I’m scribbling will never solidify into a tangible portion of this creepy little world that I’m creating, and some of them will spring up down the road in the second book or the third. Right now, it’s all possible because it’s all dreams.

Talk about weird: my day job involves a anthropomorphic pig who is enamored with toast and my dreaming job involves creepy crawly things in the shadows.

I’m having a hard time getting enamored with anything that’s playing at the movie theater right now. Sure, there are some things I want to see … I just don’t seem to want to see them enough to go see them. Some of the flicks that I want to see don’t have showings for me, by which I mean, they might have a 3D version playing when I can/ want to go, but the 2D version is relegated (if it’s playing at all) to an inaccessible time. Given how people seem to be rebelling against 3D, this seems to be a very callous way of movie studios saying “fuck you” to the general population and trying to force us to pay more for a product that, even though they insist that we do, we do not want.

All of these things swirling around in my headspace has made me think about several things, sort of random, but I’ll bulletpoint it:

~Art is not a product, but a product can be art. You can’t sell or make a living off of artistic concept. But what you can do is make something, a product (a painting, a book, a film) that is artistic. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. You can approach a product as what it is, a product that you want to sell, and still make it artistically vibrant. It doesn’t matter how wonderful or artistic a book, a play, or a film is if it never finds an audience. The purpose of these things is to be interacted with–to be read or viewed. If you have made it inaccessible in your “artistic vision” than your vision is in some way flawed.

~Small audiences are okay. Dedicated audiences are okay. You just have to understand that you can’t spend as much if you aren’t going to get as much back. A movie shouldn’t be a failure if the audience that finds it isn’t as big as you want it to be. A movie shouldn’t be judged by how much money it makes. Shitty movies can make a lot of money and wonderful movies can make shitty money. Did it find it’s audience? Did you, as the maker of the movie, misjudge it’s audience and put yourself in the position of losing money by spending too much money doing the wrong things? Does a movie need to cost $300 million dollars? Should any movie have to make $300 million dollars for it to be considered worthwhile? By not making as much as you think something should make should not be a judgment on whether or not that product was valid, but rather on whether or not the process in making that product was. Everything isn’t for everybody and we need to stop thinking that it is.

~Social media should be accessible. You shouldn’t have to run into a situation where it doesn’t work for you because “you’re doing it wrong”. If the purpose of the platform is to connect people for the purpose of easy communication and sharing of things, you shouldn’t have to force it to work. If you’re forcing it, then it isn’t accessible. Also, stop changing stuff if it’s working fine. Facebook, this means that I want the old link function back. Your newest status options suck.

~In a Michael Bay movie there is nothing more pure that people looking out windows, children running in a pack around a small town, a couple coming together. In fact, these things are so pure that they should always be devoid of context, occur in brilliant golds and turquoises, and never be followed up on.
Also, when giant robots are battling, humans are completely inconsequential unless the robot has adopted you like a pet (I’m looking at you Shia). This is the thing that will save or destroy the universe, let’s give it to this cute little dog who will know how to protect it and keep it safe.

That’s all I’ve got. My brain, I think, is largely mush right now and I’ve wrung out all the good bits for this entry.

More later …

It’s been a wonderful summer. Spending all the hours writing has really confirmed for me that I’d love to do that from now on. This past week I’ve been sitting on the manuscript (printed out and in my bag) while I try to get a little distance from the story. I’ve been filling up notebooks in the meantime with changes that I already see that I need to make, so while reading I’ll be able to figure out where these changes will fit in.

At the day job, I found out that my co-worker decided that she was not going to return this season. Suddenly, a lot more has been put onto my plate. Lots of stuff to do before next week; prep, hiring, etc. Stress.

Feel a little bit like I’m part of a long running TV series … 90210, ER, etc … in the 10th season or so and I’m one of the original cast members that is still around. It’s not a bad thing, but still, when you see so many people come and go its tough. Who knows, maybe Parminder Nagra or Linda Cardelleni will show up this year … a guy can hope, right?

This last week I’ve been trying to cram in some reading too. Reading a book called The Artful Edit by Susan Bell to prep for the next stage of my writing process and Kill the Dead by Richard Kadrey for its sheer awesomeness. Going to put up a post soon about some of the books I’ve read recently.

More later …

Let me say that again, I wrote the first draft of my book in just under two months.

When I finished today (writing this afternoon at the Roseville Dunn Bros on Fairview–other days I’ve written at the Dunn Bros in the Roseville branch of the Ramsey Public Library, the cafe at the Barnes and Noble at the Har Mar Mall, and in my apartment at my desk) I took a breath, saved the manuscript to my flash drive and then went over to the AMC at Rosedale and caught the 7:20 showing of Conan the Barbarian (it’s a silly movie that I enjoyed very much).

Tomorrow, I may spend some of the day reading.

Then, (in more ways than one) break’s over. I’ve crossed one line in the sand, the next is still out there. Draft two isn’t going to write itself.

More later …

I started to make a website a few days ago. It’s basic, but so far I like it. I’ve looked at a lot of writer websites (a lot of websites, if I’m going to be honest, but specifically writer websites when I was thinking about what I wanted mine to look like) and it looks better than a lot of them. A lot of them either use too much flash or looked like they were last updated in 1997. I’m using Weebly to play around with it, which is nice; it is a drag and drop set up where you drag the components into the page your creating. If you want a photo, you drag the photo component to the part of the page that you want it. If you want a paragraph in there, you drag the paragraph component into the part of the page that you want it and then type what you want in there. Rinse repeat.

More later …