Home / Works / 1989 A Novel / Helen of Santa Zita / Guide
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Home / Works / 1989 A Novel / Helen of Santa Zita / Guide |
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The Writing of Chris Ernest Hall
No, not my last blog entry ever, but the last entry using my proprietary blogging system. Reinventing the wheel no longer seems as attractive as it used to, so I switched to hosted blogging at Typepad, one of the SixApart family of products. So, please start visiting my new blog, The Annals of Monadic Deadlock or subscribe to the RSS feed. This blog will no longer be updated, but will be preserved for archival purposes.
and I've reached 14,745 words, which sounds impressive, except that I'm 5,133 words behind where I should be. But the good news is that I've written as much in the past week and a half as I probably have in the past year, at least on 1989. Here are the postings:
I watched Dazed & Confused again last night. It might be my favorite movie of all time, or at least, it seems to be the movie I can watch the most without getting tired of it. There’s not one single moment in it that rings false. I guess that’s partly my goal for 1989, that feeling of total and complete authenticity. No anachronisms, no unrealistic motivations, just the illusion that you are witnessing the literal truth of what life in 1989 was like in a seaside university town. The same thing that Patrick O’Brian, feeling like he just went back in a time machine and transcribed what he saw on the HMS Surprise. It takes as lot of creativity and artifice to make something that seems totally authentic. Another thing I like about Dazed & Confused is that, like Joyce’s Ulysses, it takes place all in one twenty-four period, beginning with the seniors arrival for the last day of school, and ending with the early-morning drive to Houston to pick up Aerosmith tickets, “top priority of the summer.” There’s something about confining the action to a single day that helps focus the plot and keep up the momentum, and yet also gives it the feeling of real life, since the ratio of time experienced by the characters, and your own time spent watching it, is so much closer. (Reading Ulysses, of course, will probably take you much longer than twenty-hour to read. So do yourself a favor and see it. A special edition was just released on DVD with some cool extras that I have yet to watch. Meanwhile, the NaNoWriMo continues. I even bought the t-shirt. I’m up to 6,257 words, which sounds impressive until you consider that I should be to 10,000 by the end of the day.
Well, here we go. The first 1563 words of my NaNoWriMo novel, Part II of 1989.
I’ve decided to do the National Novel Writing Month competition this year. Nicknamed the NaNoMo, it’s a yearly event in which people all across the country commit to writing an entire novel in one month’s time. To learn more, go to the NaNoMo website. It’s a bit scary, to be honest. I’ve never written fifty thousand words in a month. The idea is to get around all of the blocks and procrastinations, and achieve artistic greatness through sheer momentum. Since I tend to spend a lot of my writing time in non-composition activities, I think this might be a good opportunity to break out of that and really make some progress.
Not too much else to report. The Red Sox won the World Series which was sweet. I\'m continuing to do tai chi. Election day is this Tuesday. Get out there and vote.
The sequence where Tim and April go to Beachland Santa Zita to ride “The Orion” rollercoaster was written very early, probably in late spring/summer 1996. It has now been substantially revised, and what I’m posting today is the same as what I submitted to my writing group on Monday.
I'll be continuing work on this chapter in the forthcoming days, so stay tuned for more updates.
I’m back. Over the summer I had a major case of writer’s block. It was brutal. But I worked through it with help from a book called Unstuck: A Supportive and Practical Guide to Working Through Writer’s Block, and it was exactly that. The most helpful idea in the book was to limit the time I spent writing. I used to think that in order to really be a writer you should be spending all of your time doing it, 24-7 (the dotcom mentality.) Well, if you think that you need to spend all of your time writing, and you don’t, since you can’t, it’s just not realistic, well then you are constantly beating yourself up for not measuring up to your expectations. So, now, when I sit down to work, I only work for one hour, but during that hour, I do nothing but work–focus. Sometimes, like this evening, I go for more than an hour, which is okay. It’s really a very liberating idea. I find myself getting a lot more done in one hour than I used to during my two or three hour stints previously, since in those I would end up procrastinating and screwing around for most of the time anyway. A simple idea, but very powerful. Right now I’m working on a submission for my writing group. My last submission… didn’t fare so well. I think my ambitious expansion of POV was preventing the story from going anywhere and the novel was starting to collapse under its own weight. So my new vision for 1989 is “back to basics”, trying to get back to my original idea for the story that I had back in 1989, which was focused on Tim and April, and not so much on Tim and his old friends (Helen, Jessica and all.) I’m living in Menlo Park now. Walking distance to Café Borrone which is nice. I’m also taking tai chi. Oh, yeah, some updates. Although a lot of this is probably going to be scrapped, I’ll still put it out here since there are some things I really like about Tim and Helen’s interaction. Tim’s awareness of how his desire for Helen warps his perceptions of her, and his helplessness to make that awareness help her, or himself. Plus they touch on a major theme of 1989, which is what it means to be happy, how we become happy, and what trying to be happy does to us.
One of the things that will go in the back of basics 1989 is Tim’s aspiration to be a writer. Several of the people in my writing group commented (and I had already started feeling this) that it was awkward to have a character be an aspiring writer. So I decided that maybe in 1989, Tim is still sufficiently passive that he doesn’t think of himself as capable of direct artistic creation, but merely someone who can help those who are, like his friend Shek. However, in Volume III I may have Tim stepping out and starting to create on his own, because I think in that work, I can do some original stuff with showing the impact that Tim’s highly autobiographical writing has on his relationships, particularly with Helen. We shall see–Volume III is still highly inchoate, and who knows if I will actually write it. 1989 feels like quite enough to worry about for now.
After a period when I wasn’t writing much after the baseball trip IV, this weekend I made some progress on Chapter VIII, stitching together the Tim drives downtown scene. During my hiatus from composition, I did do some big-picture rethinking of the novel, which will require me to drastically revise Part I again. But not until I finish it first. And go back and develop Tim as a character better, particularly his early years. I feel like I need to understand Tim better in order to progress in 1989. I spent the weekend at the Searls/Siefker compound in the Santa Barbara Riviera, celebrating my friend Nathan’s 35th birthday. That’s Searls as in “Doc” Searls, the eminent blogger and editor at the Linux Journal, who is also my friend Colette’s father. We had a good time talking about computers, wireless networks, music, radio and other geeky topics. Unfortunately my new Airport Express giznanked during the weekend (possibly because it fell on the patio) and so we couldn’t try it out with his music set-up. He actually has a very different solution to the problem of broadcasting digital music–he runs a small FM transmitter that reaches through his property on 104.1, and apparently, all the way into downtown Santa Barbara.
Today is the last game of the trip. The Red Sox lost again last night, though they managed to claw back to within one, with Dave McCarty pinch-hitting and the tying and lead runners on base. Then he popped out. Weather is cold and crappy. What\'s the deal? Ironically, the weather yesterday was \"unusually warm and sunny\" in Dublin for Bloomsday 100. Some travel vexation: I left my Versateller card in the ATM Tuesday night, so the bank destroyed it. So I have no way of getting cash for the rest of the trip. After the game, it’s nothing but the endless drive back to the bay area. Andrew and Eamon are going to go with Jonathan and Tim in order to ensure they get back in time for the Saturday Red Sox game. I’m not sure exactly when I’m going to get back–depends on how many hours a day I can stand to spend behind the wheel.
And there came a voice out of heaven, calling: Elijah! Elijah! And he answered with a main cry: Abba! Adonai! And they beheld Him even Him, ben Bloom Elijah, amid clouds of angels ascend to the glory of the brightness at an angle offortyfive degrees over Donohue\\\'s in Little Green Street like a shot off a shovel. Well, our string of good weather came to a crashing end today. It was cloudy yesterday, but when I opened the curtains in our room this morning at 11:30am, white sky and rain-slicked streets greeted our eyes. Quite chilly, too. So it appears we may have our first rainout of the trip tonight. When I left the room just before noon, Jonathan and Tim were still sleeping, recovering from the effects of their epic overnight drive. I had to leave and get to Boulder for my epic lunch with Diane Sankey né Kitayama. Which was epic. hadn’t seen her since early 2002, I think, so we had a lot of catching up to do. Diane was product manager at OffRoad Capital, and I worked more closely with her than anyone else in my professional career. She just had a baby five months ago, and is still taking time off to be a mother. Eric Ichiro is a very cute baby, and didn’t cry or fuss at the entire hour and a half during our lunch. We had lunch at a burger place that also served as a microbrewery, I had the taster’s choice selection of ales. Since I was talking to Diane, I unfortunately couldn’t take detailed tasting notes, but they had one beer that was notable–a ginger beer, which was quite tasty, and gingery, but not overwhelmingly so. In order to have lunch with Diane, I had to come to Boulder which I have always wanted to visit, ever since it served as the setting for the show Mork & Mindy. Unfortunately, I ‘m not getting the full Boudler experience since it’s raining, but I would definitely like to come back and spend more time. Happy 100th Bloomsday everyone. Thanks to Joe Mahoney for selecting the quote that introduces this entry.
The bright lights of Denver are shinin\\\' like diamonds Phase Maximum Pwn of the Baseball Trip IV has now been initiated. I picked up Andrew and Eamon at DIA this morning. The Denver airport is out of controllably huge–I got off I-70 and was like “sweet I’m at the airport” since I saw a sign welcoming me, but after that, it took another thirty minutes of driving until I reached “Terminal East.” After we drove to Target to purchase the Simpons Season 4 and Curb Your Enthusiasm Season 2 DVDs, as well as the Beastie Boys long-awaited new album “To the Five Boroughs.” Now we are hanging out a $$$tarbucks in downtown Denver while waiting for our rooms to be ready at the Comfort Inn. Yesterday I drove from Santa Fe to Denver via Taos. I really liked Taos–it’s funkier and more hippified than Santa Fe, feels like a place where artists could actually afford to live. I saw a notice for an artist’s colony house for rent for $850/month, which was tempting. That’s less than the rent I pay in the bay area. After that I made the rest of the drive, most of which was on I-25 north along the eastern edge of the Rockies–high mountains to the left of me, long rolling plains to the left, heat lightening in the distance. Tonight is the first our of three Red Sox-Rockies games. Go Red Sox! Also, now that Andrew has joined the trip, he has started blogging it as well, at The Glorious & Blinding Freedom.
Nothing is less real than realism… Details are confusing. It is only by selection, elimination, by emphasis, that we get at the real meaning of things. As true now as when it was first said. (Anyone who read some of the early drafts of 1989 would certainly agree.) The Georgia O’Keeffe & New Mexico: A Sense of Place was my kind of xibit–I was able to do two circuits of all the galleries and still get out in under thirty minutes. The xibit was very well presented, displaying her New Mexico landscape paintings along with photographs showing the original landmarks. It was interesting to see what features in the landscape O’Keeffe chose to highlight in her paintings (I could say more but since this is a family blog, I will abstain.) They also had cool quotes on the walls between the paintings, two of which I ‘ve included in this posting. After that I returned to Motel 6 to recharge my iBook and watch the Red Sox–Dodgers game on ESPN Sunday night baseball, followed by a visit to one of Santa Fe’s microbreweries. My tasting notes from Second Street Brewery in Santa Fe: Golden Ale: thin, not too interesting, but not terrible… (after 2nd taste) a bit fruity… much better than the first time round…. surprisingly subtle. IPA: Excellent, hoppy, strong on the nose, strong finish. English Bitter: Authentic, inoffensive, not assertive like the IPA Cream Stout: Chocolaty, good finish. A bit sour but in a good way. Sitting on the outside porch in the warm mountain air, under the aspen trees as the sky darkened to purple, tasting these beers, was one of the highlights of the trip. You could tell they were great beers because they kept tasting better as I went along, and none of them had a harsh or sour aftertaste. I bought a growler each of the Golden Ale and IPA for consumption during the Colorado Subvention. Today I drive to Denver, stopping at Taos on the way to check that out. My painting is what I have to give back to the world, for what the world has given me.
Yesterday I had a pleasant afternoon walking around Santa Fe and checking out various cafes. The second one I found I liked a lot more, it’s right near the town plaza, you can sit outside, and it’s sort of santa fe funky, with orange and yellow walls featuring local art. I ate authentic tamales in the sun while sitting in the town plaza. After spending time in such low-rent places like Tucson, El Paso and Albuquerque, Santa Fe definitely feels like another world. Lot of wealthy women here who have invested heavily in their appearance, with wildly divergent results. It’s fairly expensive, though not shockingly so, if you’re used to the bay area. I spent the night in since I didn’t feel like braving the Saturday night crowds. For breakfast I went to Cafe Pasquale and had Heuvos Men-something, which was like heuvos rancheros with bananas and peas, which makes it seem utterly unlike heuvos rancheros. It was good, though a bit bland–perhaps I should have gotten it with red chiles instead of green, to give it a bit more zing. Later today I’m going to do something cultural and check out the Georgia O’Keefe museum. Then more café-ing, followed by epic micro-brewery visit.
Stained glass window ain’t ever gonna carry my name Yesterday evening we took the tram to the top of Sandia Peak. Due to our usual lagging, we couldn’t really stay that long at the top, but it looks like the hiking there would be quite spectacular. Sandia Peak is amazingly high–10,400 at the upper tram station. According to the brochure, it’s the longest single-stage tram in the world. It’s quite spectacular, especially the final approach to the upper station, a mile long stretch of free cable, nine hundred feet above the canyon below. We got to our second Isotopes game a bit late since we made a stop at Wild Oats, which turned out to be the only Wild Oats in Albuquerque that doesn’t sell beer, since apparently it is too close to a church, or school (the cashier wasn’t sure.) ‘Topes lost the game, since their pitching and defense both fell apart. I drank two Tecates, which I have never liked in the bottle, but tasted good on draft at the stadium–maybe it’s fresher because we’re closer to Mexico. Jonathan and Tim left early this morning for their epic drive to Arlington. I’ve driven across Texas. It takes days and days. I will rejoin them in Denver for the final and most epic portion of the trip, the Colorado Subvention, where Andrew and Eamon will also be joining us. The drive from Albuquerque to Santa Fe is quite short–just under an hour. In the interests of making the drive longer and/or more interesting, I took the so-called “Turquoise Trail” along the back side of the Sandias, and I still got to Sant Fe in under an hour. t was a nice, though not epically scenic, drive. Halfway through you have to slow down as you pass through Madrid, a boomtown turned ghost town turned artsy town. I arrived in Santa Fe at 1pm, then started walking around in search of cafes. I found one with wireless, but it’s in this sort of generic mall, so I don’t’ think I will stay that long. Meaning this blog entry will be short.
Across the Rio Grand-eo Following an epic bout of Tmobile giznank, I gave up on trying to post my blog entry and left for the ‘Topes game. The Isotopes stadium did not dissapoint. I wouild consider it tied with Sacramento’s Raley Field as nicest minor league stadium I’ve been to, and is much nicer than many major league parks. Good selection of food and beer, people were into the game, nice view of the mountains that surround Albuquerque over the outfield fence. Unlike the previous night’s AA game, the ‘Topes-Sounds game was played at a high level of competency–I don’t think there were any errors the whole game. Except for some late inning giznank and a first inning solo home run, the Isotopes pitcher Michael Tejera dominated the Sounds. The weather here in Albuquerque is quite pleasant, not as blastingly hot as Tucson and El Paso, thanks the 6000 foot elevation. Later this afternoon we are going to take the tram up Sandia Peak before going to out second Isotopes game. Tonight Aaron Smalls pitchers for the Isotopes, a guy who actually pitched for the As back in 1996-8 whom I vaguely remember. The As are in first place now! Up by a half game over Anaheim and Texas. AL West looks like it could be a good race this summer, though I have confidence the Rangers will collapse after the allstar break. Meeanwhile the Red Sox are three and a half out, but they are in the lead for the wildcard. Other than the Mariners’ collapse, this season is shaping up to be quite similar to the past five. Tomorrow morning my trip diverges from Jonathan and Tim’s for the first time since last Sunday. They will be making an epic journey to Arlington TX to attend two Rangers’ games at The Ballpark, while I make the much shorter drive to Santa Fe for some quality alone time. After spending five days in hotel rooms that look like this I’m psyched to have a room of my own for a few days.
Out in the West Texas town of El Paso My streak of early arrivals at baseball games ended at 1. Due to a variety of factors (trying to finish a scene, traffic, my forgetting that there is a one hour time change between Tucson and El Paso) I ended up not arriving at the Diablos game until 9pm. When I arrived, the gate was open and there wasn’t anyone around I bought a large beer and hot dog–the large beer was admirably hugeous–at least thirty ounces. While I was dressing my hot dog, I heard a cheer, and then a rush of people, as seemingly every single person in the stadium suddenly got in line at the concessions stand. (Turnzout the “beer batter” had just struck out, and thus dollar beers for everyone.) As I walked around the concourse, trying to spot Jonathan and Tim, I looked out at the scoreboard. Hilariously, the game was only in the fifth inning. I soon found them behind the Wichita Wranglers’ dugout, having positioned themselves there for optimal foul ball collection. Alas, we didn’t get one, though there was one that Tim surely would have gotten except it bounded off a railing in the opposite direction. Jonathan managed to get a ball in some complicated transaction which he will have to explain in one of his trip update emails. The Diablos ended up winning, but I can’t claim it was a well-played game. The Wranglers seem fully as hapless as their parent ballclub, the Royals. The Diablos closer looked liked he might be good, blowing away the first two batters in the top of the ninth, but then he giznanked and extended the game another fifteen minutes before finally getting the third out. After the game, we took the long drive to the Studio Six. El Paso is surpisingly vast–it must not be very densely populated because driving across it makes it seem like a city of many millions of people. We took some hilarious video footage which hopefully will make it into the Baseball Trip IV video Jonathan is promising to deliver by the end of the summer, and generally bizooed it up old school, the high point being listening to all of Rush’s magnum opus Hemispheres. Staying at a Studio Six is quite beneficial for us, since there’s more room, and beer management is facilitated by having a kitchen. The drive from Albuquerque was not particularly interesting, but it was hellaciously windy–at one point I really thought the ‘Rolla was going to be blown of the road. I-25 follows the Rio Grande the entire way from Las Cruces, but the route is of only moderate topographic interest. Tonight we see the first of two games at Isotopes Field. I’ve been waiting almost a year for this–our visit to Albuquerque to see the ‘Topes play was originally scheduled for July ’03, but was canceled due to the imminent arrival of Morgana’s kittens. Tim finished uploading his pictures just now, so now there is even more documentation of the BBTIV on the web at his roadtrip site.
We saw an amazing show last night–Burning Brides and A Perfect Circle at this casino amphitheatre way out southwest of Tucson. We got there early, to make sure we caught Burning Brides, and because we thought we might buy scalped, since reserve seats were sold out. However, when we checked the ticket window, it turned out there were some front-row seats available, so we hooked those up like woah. Since we were so early, we waited for Burning Brides while lying on the top of the lawn, watching the sun go down over the low desert mountains. I’ve never sat in the front row in reserved seats. It was kind of odd, since the security guards were standing in a row right in front of us during the whole time, hands crossed over their crotches, like they’re soccer players defending a direct kick. When Burning Brides hit the stage, it was still light out and the place was only a quarter full. They are an amazing band, since no matter how challenging the circumstance, they rock hard, and by the end of their set, they had the crowd psyched. They really deserve to headline. After a forty-five minute break and further beer consumption by the over 21 set, A Perfect Circle came on stage. By now, the reserved seats were completely full. Maynard (the leader singer, whose day job is lead singer of TOOL) sang the first two songs from behind a black curtain. They rocked very, very hard. Even though we were on the side, sound was quite good for both acts. High points of their set were “Disappear”, “The Noose” and “The Outsider.” The latter was particularly out of control–like one of TOOL’s long opuses compressed into three and a half minute, without losing any of the intensity. Leaving the show we got stuck in epic congestion, then had to stop at a 24-hour Taco Bell to refuel. This morning I finally an email from out cat sitter. Very exciting. Excerpts follow:
Now it’s time to leave for El Paso.
Finally finished this scene:
Yesterday we spent all day hanging around Tucson. Much of the day was spent at the café, of course. After that, I went back to the motel to pick up Tim and Jonathan, and we we made the long crosstown drive to Sabino Canyon park. Unfortunately, by the time we got there the shuttle bus that would have taken us up to the canyon proper was no longer running. We were still able to take a walk up the road towards the canyon, through amazing forests of cacti, as the sun set over the city to the west. After that, we drove to Wild Oats, and found a good music store next to it, where we spent about half an hour browsing. I ended up buying the new albums from Melissa Auf der Maur, Monster Magnet, Broken Social Scene’s “You Forgit It In People” and the one KYUSS album I don’t already own “Sky Valley.” We returned to the Motel 6, for what was probably yesterday’s high point–an epic parking lot barbecue. Jonathan set the bbq up between the Furrner and the ‘Rolla, and grilled up the steaks we had bought at Wild Oats earlier. We tasted a variety of interesting beers, including one that hilariously turned to be one that that was supposed to be aged ten years before drinking. Not surprisingly, it tasted sort of raw and unfinished, and had hardly any alcohol content. Some black cats were scooting around the parking lot while we ate, but were way too skittish to come close. I tried to coax one closer with steak treats, but it was much too fearful. When I threw a treat far enough away, though, it would dart forward and gobble it up. The poor thing was skin and bones. The other cat seemed a bit older, and might have been the mother. I dumped all of the steak trimmings over the wall so hopefully they would have a decent meal for at least one night. It was very nice to drink beer, eat steak as the sky darkened overhead and the stars came out. Jonathan and Tim played wiffle catch while I finished off the “Hazed and Infused.” The evening culminated with a trip to see Kill Bill v2, which I hadn’t seem yet. I liked it, but I really feel like I need to both volumes together to get the full impact. I think releasing them separately was a mistake. After looking at the map, I decided to go to El Paso with Jonathan and Tim. However, there doesn’t seem to be any easily accessible wireless there, so any blog update will have to wait until Albuquerque. Jonathan uploaded some of the pictures he and Tim have been taking: BBTIV picture gallery.
Jonathan, Tim and I saw the new Harry Potter film last night. I was bit a disappointed in it–it was very well-directed, but it seemed strangely light. The book is very intense, full of sadness and rage as Harry Potter learns the circumstances of his parents’ death. When the dementors menace Harry Potter, in the books he hears the screams of his mother and father dying. In the movie, you don’t quite get that. It seemed curiously under-stated, almost tentative. One thing I admire about Peter Jackson as a director is that he’s not afraid to be cheesy when the occasion demands it. He had an amazing confidence considering what an awesomely huge and expensive project the Lord of the Rings movie was. I wonder if perhaps the fact that this was Cuaron’s first big-budget film, and that he had the two films previous producer standing over him, might have undermined his confidence a bit. The movie also didn’t really go into the back-story of the Maurader’s Map., which is kind of important, since one of the main themes of PoA is Harry learning about his father’s group of friends, their bond and the betrayal that led to the death of James and Lily Potter. That’s essential to understanding the book, not to mention the entire series. There wasn’t enough Alan Rickman, and Emma Thompson has Symbil Trelawney wasn’t quite as over the top as it should have been. The scene where Hermione leaves the Divination class was a wasted opportunity. In the book, Hermione really tells Trelawney off before storming out. It’s pretty epic. Hermione also smacks Draco a good one, but it felt ouit of context. Draco Malfoy doesn’t really do much in the movie, and he appeared more sniveling than menacing. Not to mention Ron had nothing to do in the movie either, other than panic and, in one scene, stress about the rat. Ron deserves a bit better than to be reduced to comic relief (yes, he’s comic relief in the books, too, but that’s not all he is.) The serious fight that Hermione and Ron have about Scabbers barely registers, which means you lose the great scene where Hagrid tells Ron and Harry off for not being a good friend to her. That might be the most serious problem with the film, that the tripartite relationship that Harry, Ron and Hermione have didn’t really come through in the film. I guess it’s sort of taken for granted that their friends now, this being the third film, but JK Rowling does an excellent job of, while moving the plot along, also emphasizing their tight bond and the vicissitudes of adolescent friendship, especially once the hormones kick in and sexual longing starts lurking beneath. All that being said, Buckbeak was incredibly well-done. The scene where Harry flies him over the lake might have been the best in the movie. It would have been nice to see that kind of confidence and élan applied to the rest of it. In conclusion, the perfect Harry Potter movie remains yet to be made. It will be very interesting to see what Mike Newell does with Goblet of Fire, a book whose size, back-story revelations and mass of characters are an order of magnitude greater than PoA, as much as PoA surpasses the first two. And I’ll say right now, if someone started an internet petition to hire Peter Jackson to film Order of the Phoenix, I’d sign it. After the film, we watched the world series of poker on ESPN3, followed by a simpsons classic. We slept quite late, woken finally by “housekeeping” at 10:30am.
Some roads bring renewal Some readers emailed me and said they were confused about the “3x0’ reference. In ‘n’ Out Burger has a whole variety of undocumented APIs that can be be accessed to order items that are not on the menu. Burgers there can be ordered using the format X by Y, where X is the number of meat patties and Y is the number of cheese slices. Thus, a 3x0 is a burger with three meat patties and no cheese. Strangely, though, the girl at the In & Out in San Bernardino didn’t know that. Perhaps she was new. I have now arrived in Tucson, where it is nice and hot. The drive from San Diego last night was uneventful. I spent the night in Casa Grande, another spot on the landscape for truckers to stop, sleep and eat. I found another cheap wireless network, but it was kind of crappy and I got only limited utility from it. I spent most the afternoon and evening yesterday driving from San Diego to Tucson, via Yuma on the California-Yuma border. The drive from San Diego to Yuma crosses endless sun-blasted landscapes. The mountains between are covered with crumbling rock, as if the sun has baked them so long they are starting to disintegrate. I stopped for lunch in El Centro, at Mexicali Tacos. They served their tacos rolled up in paper, with only meat inside. Very authentic, and delicious. If you find yourself in El Centro, I strongly suggest you hit up Mexicali Tacos like woah. I spent a few hours in Yuma, stopping at Target to buy another pair of shorts, and then did a bit of writing at the Barnes & Noble next to it. At 6:30pm I hit the road again. Driving across the desert in the evening was awesome, especially since I was going east so the setting sun lit the landscape in front of me, and the sun didn’t get in my eyes. The land is stark and beautiful, and the idea of having to cross it via foot or even on horse, is terrifying. This evening Jonathan and Tim rejoin me, and we are planning on seeing the new Harry Potter movie. They spent last night in Phoenix, and saw two Dbacks-Dodgers game. I listened to the games on the radio. The Giants and As have been good for so long I’d forgotten what it’s like to listen to a crappy team on the radio. The announcers keep coming up with the most ludicrous analysis, like one I heard last night: “If the Dbacks come out and don’t immediately give up some runs, then they’ll have a much better chance of winning.” No sh** Sherlock. They seem to spend a lot of time trying to convince you, and themselves, that there is anything that might give some hope.
Also while I was in San Diego, I finished two more scenes for Chapter VII of 1989:
I have now arrived in San Diego. Drive here wasn’t too bad–only hit traffic while going through Riverside, and then for a bit while driving into San Diego. Could have been much, much worse. I made the right call in taking the long way round through Mojave. I spent Thursday night in Lost Hills, which is one of those places which is just somewhere to stop on the way to somewhere else. Motel 6, of course, dinner was a burrito I bought in Los Banos. The next morning at Denny’s I caused minor consternation when I requested that my “special scramble” come without pancakes or hash browns. The waiter attempted to find some substitutes on the menu to my liking, So I just had sausages, bacon, and eggs scrambled with seasoned ground beef. I deemed it not undelicious. I made my first stop at In ‘n’ Out Burger for lunch. A rather curious one, in San Bernardino, that I think must have been fairly old–it had no indoor sitting area ,just two drive-through lanes and a small outdoor patio in the corner of the parking lot. When I asked for a “three by zero”, the girl had no idea what I was talking about until I explained I wanted a I’ve been reading this fascinating book that I borrowed from e.Pizops, 1421. Basically, it explains that the Chinese discovered and colonized the entire world eighty years before Columbus. Reading this book, I came to conclusions:
Amazingly not only did the Chinese explore the entire world, but then they gave it all up, and burned all of their maps, notes and logs. Crazy stuff. Tonight is the first game of the trip–Padres vs. Brewers at brand spanking new Petco Park. Now back from the Padres game. Highlights were Tee Long’s big game (2 for 3, 1 bb, 1 run.) Petco Park is quite nice, but still had a few bugs–the food wasn’t very good, beer selection was crappy, it was difficult to figure out where to get will call tickets. In short I would rate it a bit below SBC or Camden Yards–however, all the deficiencies I saw are easily correctable, assuming they have good management. Caught up in the beginning of holiday anything does mood, once I was into Petco Park I bought an eight dollar “ballpark margarita.” I drank a ballpark margarita, and realized what a mistake that was–the frozen concoction that is sold has almost nothing to do with a real margarita–more like a lime slurpee with a tiny amount of tequila. Almost undrinkably sweet. In the future I will stick to beer at the ballpark. After the game we watched two episodes of the The Office, which is the funniest thing to come out of England since Fawlty Towers IMHO. The lead character, David Brent, shares with Basil Fawlty an inability to know when to stop talking, a compulsion to keep digging himself deeper and deeper into a hole, with hilarious consequences. For breakfast I went to a completely empty Mexican restaurant. I had the chorizo and heuvos scramble, then met up with Jonathan and Tim at $$$tarbucks. They have now left, beginning their drive to Phoenix for the Saturday night Dbacks game, while I hang out in San Diego a bit longer, then drive to Casa Grande AZ. San Diego is nice, it’s kind of like a beachside version of Oakland, though with more nightlife. I walked back through the gaslamp quarter last night, and it was hopping, in a sort of fratboy/girls gone wild kind of way. I could see spending more time here at some point.
I left Berkeley about 11:30am, after making a BevMo run to buy beer and whiskey. Got on the freeway and, in seemingly no time at all, was in Livermore. I got off at the exit I knew led to a $$$tarbucks I had selected as my first internet rest stop. I decided to have lunch at Taco Bell since it turned out I had already passed the Livermore In \\\'n\\\' Out Burger. I got out of my car and as I was heading towards, it, an employee sitting on a railing by the front door told me that it was closed due to a power outage. This proved to be fortuitous, since after finding the mall with $$$tarbucks in it, it turned out to also have a taqueria in it–the Taqueria Consuelita, which translates from Spanish to roughly \\\"Little Consuela\\\'s Taqueria.\\\" I got four dollar tacos, which proved to be huge, but I still ate them. I got four kinds of meat–carne asada, carnitas, roast pork and chicken (unfortunately they didn\\\'t have pollo asado which is common in SF but not elsewhere.) Delicious. Strip mall taquerias are nearly always delicious.
After that I continued over the golden hills, through fields of slowly rotating windmills, then down and around to where 580 meets 80. It was very windy on 580 on the far side of the hills, pushing my little Toyota around like a toy. When I stopped to get gas, I could smell burning. Today, I would guess, is a red maximum alert fire day.
This is actually only second time in my life I\\\'ve taken route 5 all the way to LA, and the first time I\\\'ve actually been the one driving. I don\\\'t particulary like route 5–driving it is an unpleasant combination of boredome and terror. It\\\'s always crowded with slow-moving agricultural trucks and doesn\\\'t have nearly enough lanes. I was quite happy to break up the trip down with a visit to Los Banos, which I\\\'ve never been to before. It\\\'s your basic central valley town–somewhere there is probably an interesting part, but I sure didn\\\'t see it while driving through. It\\\'s hot here–much hotter than in Livermore. I think that\\\'s going to be an evolving theme as the trip proceeds–it\\\'s just going to get hotter and hotter.
After Los Banos, I continue ny drive to Lost Hills, where I probably won\\\'t have internet access. Next internet rest stop is going to be at Buttonwillow, tomorrow morning.
All in all, it\\\'s nice to be on the road, feeling the hot sun, watching the road ahead rise to meet the horizon and blue sky. Road trips rule.
Today I\'m posting the same submission I gave to my writing group last night. It\'s the first part of Chapter VII, which I\'ve been working on the past two months.
I\'m trying something a bit different in this chapter, in which I inter-cut (to use a film term) between scenes much more. Since the first writing class scene was quite long, without much action, I decided to try breaking it up with Helen and Jessica\'s POV.
For the past month, I\'ve been working on Chapter VII, lucky number seven, the number that represents the unity of the being (mind, body, soul) and the World (the number 4).
So get psyched.
I'm now in Tucson AZ on a small writer's vacation, but this update is actually from a few weeks ago, consisting of the first six chapters of 1989, revised with a lot of new material:
This Thursday my writing group will be reviewing the above. There's a lot more stuff in the pipeline that I hope to release soon, as I work on revising and expanding Chapters VII, VIII & IX.
I have finally completed my long-awaited revision of Chapter I, with loads of new stuff.
Now to move further in the plot.
A short little conversation between Tim and April, which will probably appear somewhere in the middle of the novel at some appropriate time.
A while ago I posted some stuff for Chapter VII that you might want to check out.
I spent Thanksgiving alone in Berkeley this year, so I managed to get some work done. I finished revising another scene for chapter I: Helen drives Tim to his new apartment. It's actually supposed to be two scenes, according to the outline which I also updated today, but before that can happen, I need to add some more to Tim's walk from the movie theater to Holly Street–maybe some more description so the reader can get their bearings in Santa Zita. Not to mention the ending is kind of weak right now. Oh well.
I'm finally posting the revised scenes for Chapter One I submited to my writing group about a month ago. Six scenes in total:
After getting feedback from the group, I decided to omit the Helen and April POV scenes from the first chapter. People felt it was too disruptive a shift for the reader so early on, and that they would rather see Tim established as a character before jumping out of his head.
I finished my last assignment for writing class earlier today. Here are the links:
The assignment, by the way, was to polish the ten pages of our novel we felt was the most important. I chose to revise the beginning. In my revisions I tried work on keeping the scenes short and focused. I cut out an amazing amount from these pages. My out-takes file for Chapter I is now eighteen pages, which means that my ratio of what I cut to what I left in is about two to one. Of course, by the time this novel is finished I bet it will be more like ten or twenty to one. And it's not all bad stuff. Some of it is really bad, but somke of it is good but repeats what's said better elsewhere, gives background on the character without advancing the plot, or is unnecessarily detailed.
My writing class is about to end. Our final project is to work on the ten pages we feel is most important. I’m working on the first ten. Right now I feel like that’s the part of the novel that I need to polish the most. As part of that I’ve added two new scenes, as part of my general project of opening up POV in the novel:
Big update today. I worked furiously Thursday and Friday on the conclusion of Chapter VII, which will be reviewed in my writing class this Monday night. It consists of the following scenes:
This chapter now integrates my new thinking on POV, ie the more of it, the better. Also, I've added another narrative a device-a sort of "host" to the novel who handles the transitions between the scenes. I don't how good this idea is, really, but I felt I had to try it since I've never seen anything quite like it in any other novel.
More branching out in the POV department. This time its from April's, in the form of an entry in her diary. I'm going to try ending Chapter VII with this, though I'm not sure it's going to work.
Oh yeah and the kittens are fine, as is their mother. Here's a picture of them nursing.
My mom's cat Morgana gave birth to three kittens this afternoon. Both mother and offspring are doing fine. Stay tuned for further updates.
Now that I've started experimenting with POV, I'm going crazy with it. I'm thinking about trying seven or eight different POVs in the second half of Chapter VII. Tonight I wrote some more first person Tim POV, the scene in which he arrives at Holly Street.
No, not more writing, though there may be some more in a bit as a I continue cobbling together Chapter VII. I'm in Phoenix on the Hall Boys Baseball Trip III. You can read more about it on my half-brother Andrew's excellent blog The Glorious & Blinding Freedom. This evening we begin our drive back to California. I've also fixed the print all selections feature, so you can now view all of the selections from 1989 on one page for easy printingt.
Greetings from Phoenix, on the day after my 35th birthday. Today I'm posting more from Chapter VII, filling in the gap in what I've already posted with this scene of Tim arriving at Holly Street and reading an article about the natural springs at Yaçoan filled with foreshadowing.
Today I stitched together another scene for Chapter VII, in which Tim talks to Alice while waiting for Jessica to change. This is the first time I've written a scene with Alice in it. I'm not sure that ultimately I'm going to keep this here since it reduces the momentum of the chapter, but it does have some nice discussions by Tim and Alice about relationships.
Last night I finally sent off Chapter VII to my writing group. It consists of two scenes:
* Scene 1 * Scene 2
'Nuff said (for now). There's a few other things I wrote while working on this chapter which I'll post this weekend.
The hiatus is over. After a four-month break, I am composing (and posting) again. First, here are some links to new stuff for Chapter VII of 1989 A Novel: So what was I doing during my hiatus from posting? I'm happy to say that I was working. After bogging down in chapter VII of 1989 in January, and getting feedback on Helen of Santa Zita from my writing group, I felt the need to step back and understand the Santa Zita Quintet as a whole. So I decided to create an outline of the entire series. After doing that for a while, I found myself focusing on A City On the Hill. This novel is the first volume of the series, and vague ideas about it have existed in my mind for about ten years now, but I've never really sat down and settled on exactly what happens in it. This creates obvious difficulties, of course, since it's hard to write anything else in the series with confidence if the foundation is so inchoate. Over the past three months I've been collecting plot ideas, scenes and character notes. A City On the Hill. It was a lot of fun, and as part of it, I did some research into mythic archetypes and heroic journeys. For the first time I read Joseph Campbell's A Hero With a Thousand Faces. I tend to generate a lot of plot ideas, and it really helps me to have some kind of structure to give me inspiration and help me fit things in. Obviously you don't want to be too Procrustean about jamming your work into someone else's structure, but the kind of mythic template provided by Joseph Cambell (and adapted by Christopher Vogler in his influential book A Writer’s Journey) is flexible enough to give the writer a nice schema to organize their work.
However, as much as I enjoying outlining A City On the Hill, I didn't want to give up on 1989 entirely. I was feeling guilty because I wasn't actually doing any actual composition and I started to lose my chops. So last writing group I volunteered to present in our next meeting as a way of getting back into it. Athough I considered submitting something else, I decided to tackle Chapter VII again because I want my writing group to read 1989 in sequence as much as possible. I think the break did me good because I've had a lot better clarity about what I want this chapter to be about, and what to include. My plan now is to write 1989 at least until the end of Part I. After that, I will start composing A City On the Hill. If I feel up to it, I may compose both novels in parallel.
Well, I haven't posted in quite a while. For which I apologize. Here is the piece I submitted to my writing group this month–the beginning of Helen of Santa Zita, somewhat revised from what was available here already. I have been working on 1989, but in kind of a slapdash manner, with nothing quite ready to put up here.
I finally got back to entering the edits from chapter II. Scene iii of that chapter had been more recently workshopped than the rest of that chapter, since I submitted to my writing group in July. Now here it is November, and those edits have finally been entered. There's also some new stuff at the beginning, mostly Tim watching the party by himself and ruminating. Chapter II, scene iii: Tim talking to Jessica at the surfer party. Now I have to do decide whether to go back to chapters I and II and edit yet again, or try to move on. I suppose I should think about what's the next submission for my writing group. It could be chapter IX, since that's quite a meaty chapter-featuring a lot of Tim and April one-on-one interaction, not to mention the return of the restless spirit. Of course, I should probably work on the chapters between III and VI. Chapter V needs substantial revision, since nearly all of it dates back to 1996-7, while Chapter IV is nothing but a collection of fragments. And chapter III needs a lot of work, as well. Tons of edits to enter, and a few additions that aren't even written yet. I wrote a conversation with Tim and his father, as he drives Tim to his house, but it needs stitching together and fleshing out. It's easy to get overwhelmed working on a novel. There are so many parts, and once you get one part in good shape, it causes a ripple effect of changes in the rest.
By popular demand (okay, by request of one person, my half-brother Jonathan) I've created a feature to make it easy to print all selections from one particular work. So, you can now display all of 1989 A Novel as one web page.
Surprise. I decided to revise chapter vi again, violating my plan to revise teh chapters of Part I in chronological order. My turn came up sooner than expected in my writing group, and I decided I wanted to get their feedback on this chapter. So, here it is, in three scenes:
Here's Chapter II, Scene 2, in which Tim arrives at the surfer party, hangs out with Helen, Todd Fox, Jessica and Roxy, then learns more about what's going on in Helen's life.
As I continue my revision of earlier stuff, I have now finished scene 1 of chapter II. This chapter takes place across a wide range of time and space–from after work up until Tim leaving for the party, and going from the Movies I & II to Helen’s house, her car and finally Tim’s new apartment. That represents a new development in my writing.
My original experience as a screenwriter taught me to keep scenes very compressed in time and place. If eitiher changed, that was a new scene. When I started writing novels, I kept to that philosophy, which gave my novels a certain cinematic quality. That had some advantages, but as I learned from my writing class this spring, I was missing out on a major advantage of prose, which is skillful compression of time. The writer can speed up and slow down his novel as the story requires.
Tom (our teacher) had us do an exercise to emphasize this truth, making up write a passage that compressed time. I found it difficult, but managed to crank out this, which formed the basis for what I’m posting today.
For the past few days I've been entering the edits I've been accumulating the past few months for the first two chapters (what I submitted to my writing class last April). Entering edits is kind of a PITA-half the time I can't read my own writing, and a lot of the time I have a fear that the edits haven't gone deep enough–that I'm merely pruning where I should be weeding. But it's all part of the process. Chapter I now conists of three scenes, two of which are what I was calling the prologue for a while, but was convinced by my writing class that it really felt like a first chapter. Speaking of which, I should give credit and thanks to the teacher of my writing class, Tom Barbash (who has two books coming out in September, On Top of the World and The Last Good Chance, available for pre-order now at Amazon.com), and the other students, since many of these revisions are based on suggestions and feedback from our class.
So, behold therevised Chapter I, in three parts (Tim trying to sleep at Helen's house, the restless spirit coming to the city, Tim working at the movie theater the next day). I hope to leave this chapter alone for a while, and move on in the novel before revisiting it. There comes a time when, as tempted as you are to keep working over the same section, that you have to move on. To, say, revising Chapter II, which needs lots of work.
Usually the stuff I post here as gone through at least one or two rounds of serious editing. However, in the case of this posting, I've decided to post some very raw stuff-Tim & Helen's conversation while she drives him to his new apartment. This scene is slated to occur in Chapter Two, between Tim leaving the movie theater and going to the surfer party.
You'll note that the scene right now is in a bunch of fragments, which may or may not make sense in light of each other. This is very typical of the way I compose. I rarely write a scene in one sitting from start to finish. Usually I have to stitch together many different fragments written at different times, and do several rounds of editing so the joins don't show (or don't show that obviously).
As promised a few weeks ago, here's the conclusion of Tim & April's expedition to the Del Rio to get ice, presented in three parts (first, second, third). I entered the edits just this evening at a cafe in lovely Bend, OR, a very charming town. Looks like there are others who agree. Coming in to tow this afternoon, I got lost and passed through a section of town where everything looked like it had all been built five minutes ago.
Greetings from Yakima, WA, where it is hot hot hot and the moon is rising over the parking lots of the fast food and motels that line 1st St. near Interstate 82.
Here are links to what I distributed to my writing group last Wednesday:
As part of my preperation for the first meeting of my writing group on Wednesday, here's a revised and expanded version of Tim & Jessica at Willoughby's party. I'm also working on revising the chapter where Tim visits Alta Lara and meets with Shek. Also handwrote (on the roof of a houseboat on Lake Shasta in 100-degree weather) a new scene between Tim and Helen, provisionally slated for chapter 2, which I'll be typing in a bit later–probably on my trip to the Pacific Northwest.
I didn't do as much writing this weekend as I should have. Spent much of time setting up a wireless DSL network at my dad and step-mom's house. Early this afternoon, seemingly for no reason, it started working, so I spent the rest of the day working on 1989. Including entering my edits for the scene I'm posting tonight, Tim & April go to the Del Rio to get ice. I remember when I first wrote this scene, sometime in the late spring of '96, it was the first time I really thought I had something, that I was starting to hit my groove. It's still one of my favorites in the novel. This actually a multi-part post–you'll find out what happens once they get back to the theater later this week. That's assuming, of course, I don't get pulled into debugging DSL bugs.
I finally got this scene in good enough shape for posting. Right now, I'm thinking this will take place after the surfer party. In it, Tim goes to Alta Lara to pick up the car he's going to use for the summer, has dinner with his father's family and then meets with Shek. So, get psyched for... Tim & Shek in Alta Lara.
I keep writing more for this scene, I'm not sure why. Partly it's because I keep trying to end it, but can never find the right tone/moment. Anyway, here is more Tim & Jessica at Willoughby's party.
Greetings from Brownsville, Vermont. After a longer break than I would have liked (two weddings and a whole lot of dealing) I'm posting direct from the scene of my cousin Ch'uya's wedding. While flying across the country I prepared some excerpts from Helen of Santa Zita for posting, in the hopes of having it workshopped by my class. The excerpts consist of the first scene, and one about forty pages in which Helen meets with her professor, Joseph Harkes. It's a tiny bit updated from what you would get by clicking on "Helen of Santa Zita" in the navbar above, and I've also migrated it to using quotes for dialogue instead of m-dashes.
It's a beautiful day here in Vermont–sunny, with a pleasant, brisk wind rushing through the trees. A "giftday", as my ex-boss and friend Joe Mahoney would call it. Speaking of Joe, thanks for the kind blogging earlier this week. If you haven't already, by all means check out his blog Why the Kimono Is Beautiful. He's been posting all kinds of good stuff there, including music, poems, family stories and random tales of post-post-dotcom (or as he calls it "dot bong") flux. Highly recommended.
Here's a small scene I wrote a few weeks ago, and added to in the past two days, mostly while riding on BART. It occurs during Willoughby's party, after the existing scene in which Tim hangs out with Helen, Jessica and Roxy. Without any further ado, here's Tim & Jessica at Willoughby's party. I'm still working on that sceen with Tim and Shek that I mentioned earlier. It, too, has been greatly expanded in the last few days. It's started to take on more importance in the plot since not only do we see Tim and Shek, but we also get to see Tim's family–his father's side, at least.
Apologies for the lack of updates over the weekend. I was away at a bachelor party on the sunny shores of Clearlake, CA. High point was a visit to the Konocti Harbor Inn to see Reo Speedwagon and immerse ourselves in the local culture. Hope to get something up later this week.
Spent much of the weekend digesting the feedback I got last Tuesday night on the new beginning of 1989. My favorite comment (makes me laugh every time I read it): "It took this guy pages to get out of his sleeping bag." Okay, the prologue is a bit static. In first drafts, I tend to overload the text with as much detail as I can think of, and my subsequent edits I tend to add on to that. It isn't until after I've left it alone for a while that I can go back and start pruning. It's very unlikely the prologue will last in its current form–its fate will probably rest on whether I can continue the spirit theme in a creditable fashion. If that goes, then the rest will probably be broken up into character details/flashbacks that will be sprinkled in the rest of the text, if appropriate.
One of the nicest, or most gratifying, comments I received was "It's clear that you like to write, and it's fun to feel that pleasure in your writing." When I see a band on stage, I always enjoy the show(and think the music sounds better) if the band look like they're having a good time, instead of just putting in another day at the office, or worse, like they're having their teeth pulled. The idea that people can tell I enjoy writing from reading my work gives me great pleasure because, well, I do.
This weekend I also write a scene between Tim and Shek. Right now it's too long and I used em dashes instead of quotes since when I'm on a roll composing it's hard to abandon the old habits. I may post it some time this week if I get psyched.
Last Tuesday night was an exciting session of class for me, since it was my turn to have my writing "workshopped". They class was reading the new beginning of 1989, exactly the same as what I posted a week ago. The biggest challenge for me was that the writer is not supposed to say anything beyond answering factual questions while the other students give their feedback. I thought Tom was going to have to put me in a Hannibal Lector retention suit in order to stop me from responding, since I kept forgetting the rule. I got a lot of great feedback from the class, and even more from the other students' written feedback.
We also did another in-class exercise. This time, the challenge was to write a conversation between two characters, but write it as though it's clear to the reader it's a conversation they've had hundreds of times. I decided to write a conversation between Tim and Helen, although I probably won't end up using it in 1989 because I'm not sure it works plotwise. I finished the first conversation so fast I actually wrote another one between Tim and Jessica. Class exercise #3. Many of you from class will be pleased to note that I am, yes!, using quotation marks for the dialogue.
Last Tuesday night we began our class with a writing exercise in which we had to write a bridge section which occurred some passage of time, but which wasn't just summary, but contained sufficient detail and incident to give you a flavor of what happened. (This is something that Patrick O'Brian excelled at.)
For me, this exercise was quite apropos, because I knew I needed one in Chapter II of 1989->A Novel describing Tim moving into his new apartment, but I didn't feel I had time to write it, so I just cut out what was already in there, which created a disruptive leap from Tim and Caleb's return to Tim arriving at the surfer party. Anyway, here is what I wrote in class, somewhat edited and expanded.
Some thoughts on the new beginning of 1989->A Novel, which I posted on Tuesday night. The prologue is a very new idea in the history of the novel's composition. If it feels awkward stylstically, that may be why. There's also some problems with verb tenses, since in the beginning I had thought of writing it in the present tense, before abandoning that as being too affected and out of tune with the rest of the work, which is in the conventional past. Chapter I is a blend of old writing from 1996 along with new writing from this summer, including some ideas I got when I made a brief attempt this past summer at turning 1989 into a screenplay. Chapter II is mostly old, which may be why that section is the most dissatisfying to me of the posting. A lot of it feels unnecessary, and Helen and Tim's relationship is too acrimonious to make sense. There has to be some tension in order to propel Tim forward into his adventures, but right now the reader might find it unlikely that they ever became close friends. Jessica and Roxy are not defined enough, either, other than as foils for Helen's antics.
Without any further ado, here is the prologue and first two chapters of the 1989->A Novel rewrite, the same writing that I handed out ot my creative writing class earlier tonight.
Here's a rough draft of the new prologue for 1989->A Novel.
Still working on the new prologue for 1989->A Novel, but I had to take a moment and note the death of Alice In Chains lead singer Layne Staley. Every junkie's like a setting sun and, this past week, another one just slipped below the horizon. What more can you say then it sucks, and it's sad?
I should have the new prologue to 1989->A Novel posted by this weekend, so stay tuned (I'd better, since I'm supposed to present in class this Tuesday). In the meantime, check out Part I of Helen of Santa Zita or some of my other writing. Also, click here to see what mood it was that I was trying to portray in the writing exercise I posted yesterday.
Welcome to my new weblog. It's intended mostly to track the progress of my writing, but I may stray into other topics if I think it's appropriate. My first posting is a writing exercise we did in the most recent session of The Novel: Continuing Work In Progress, a class I 'm taking at Stanford. The assignment was to first think of a single word that described our character's mood or state at the beginning of our novel, then write a description of the character's home that indicated that mood, but only through physical detail. You can read my
attempt, then try and guess and word. |
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Copyright 2002 Chris Ernest Hall All rights reserved Comments or questions? Please send them to chris@fozboot.com. |
