Unmitigated Energy, Released in a Circle

Since I've last updated this blog, quite a bit has happened.

I started a website, and immediately destroyed it irrepably (I have no idea what I have done, nor how to fix it), gone on twenty (-ish) first dates, written six short stories, and maybe (maybe) found a new job.

Oh, I have also realized that blogging is kind of important. Not even in a "Ooooh, I really want to express myself" kind of way, but in a serious "if you want to be commercially successful, it's good to have some background of writing prowess over a prolonged period of time" sort of way. So that's why I'm back here, doing what I do (or should have been doing) for, like, the past 2 years.

I am starting a book club in the next month or so which should kick off some level of literary profundity that has been sorely lacking in my life. Not that I haven't been reading tough literary novels, it's just a matter of me never discussing them. It's an issue. To rectify, I will be creating two more blogs as supplements to this one over the course of time.

The idea behind this venture is simple: I love to talk about media. Call me a wild, untamed man if you wish, but talking about difficult concepts is kind of what I am all about. The problem with this has always been, since I graduated, that I have no one to talk to about these things that I want to discuss. That's why the bookclub (we're reading Faulkner's The Sound and The Fury first, which I have somehow never gotten around to reading) is going to be so enjoyable. Real intelligent discussion with people I don't really know. It has me geeked out, honestly.

Did you see that? That paragraph was supposed to talk about the two side projects, and instead devolved into the book club again. The two side projects will be the Instant Queue Movie Review (instantqueuemoviereview.blogspot.com) and something that I would like to incorporate straight into this blog, which will just be a basic book review, hopefully spurring on some sort of discussion outside of base "this book sucks" and not quite to the harvard literati level of analysis. Books and movies will be chosen seemingly at random and given a significant amount of time to shine and will hopefully spur someone to either buy the book or watch the movie. That's the plan anyway. There's a good chance that this could fail, but I'm an optimist. Of the eternal variety.

I may be down, but I'm not out. Hope everyone is having a terrific Friday.

Flyer/Faller

"Behold!" A man, stage left, done up like a double-breasted penguin pimple wields a rapier of comedic length and flimsy design. With as much fanfare as he can muster, he brandishes it up to the rafters where The Amazing Avian Alvin is perched, ready to nose-dive into the crowd below.

Only, he will not hit the ground. Instead he will fly. At least, that's what was advertised.

The spotlights burn on him, and casts a triptych of silhouette reliefs on the purple and yellow ceiling. I am almost too scared to watch. The tremolando of snare drum builds to a climactic and tongue-twisting pace – paradiddle-diddle paradiddle-diddle paradiddle-diddle. Just when a crescendo is reached; right when the blasting percussive claps reach a pitch so fevered it's lethal, they stop.

The rest of the world disappears, and all there is is him. He is entirety: Alpha/Omega, Lover/Enemy, Body/Soul, Flyer/Faller. Then, as if it is the most natural thing in the world, he jumps.

What It Means To Write a Novel.

In Rachelle Gardner's latest blog post, she talks about whether or not it is "fun to write." My response became something of a treatise, and I felt like it would be worthwhile to post it here since it formulated into something that resembled a blogpost of its own...

I think authors of predominantly short stories and short-shorts find writing a much more enjoyable thing. They can come to an end of a story in about a week or two, and then they can edit, and be done with it. This isn't to say that what they do is easy, because it is not, but I think authors who venture into the territory of novel-writing are intrinsically masochistic. Writing a novel will undoubtedly test your mental fortitude, and make you -- more than once -- have rather funereal existential breakdowns where you are your own worst enemy. Think you're up for it?

"I'm so bad at this."

This will become your imagination's calling card every day as you sit down to write.

"This is never going to get published."

This will follow you when you save your document for the night.

"All of my characters are thinly veiled interpretations of myself."

This will haunt you as you read it over with a critical eye.

"I didn't write anything AGAIN today."

This will become your own, personal cat-o-nine-tails that you flagellate across your own metaphysical back.

It is truly, as Colum McCann says in LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN, "another day, another dolor."

And despite all these things, you have to, as Ms. Gardner says, love what you do. It's not ALWAYS fun (though I do find that most of the time it is), it's not ALWAYS an eye-opening experience (though there are definitely times...), and it's certainly not always artistic. A novelist is slave to the details. If you want a character to move around, you must get him there, one way or another. Bus, train, car, missle, rocket, submarine, alien transport, or sky bridge made out of crystal.

Novels are, ultimately, labors of love. You must love them, but there is no guarantee that they will love you back.

But you're okay with that, right?

-Ken

What Is This? (Or, Ken Flies off the Deep End)

To begin: This is SPARTA!!!!

Now, to the real post...

Recently, I've become a little fed up with a lot of blogs out there, claiming to purport the continuance and elevation of art, specifically within the realm of literature and writing. I have come to the conclusion that the majority of these blogs couldn't care less about that. All they really care about is growing some festering, gelatinous group of RSS followers to mindlessly accept whatever they eschew as canon. I'm not going to name names -- it doesn't really fix anything, it just turns into flame wars (which I would undoubtedly lose) -- but I would like to point out some of the irksome habits that the blogs, and its followers adhere to.

My Progress

Oy, lads 'n lasses!
No, no that was dumb... let me try that again...
Arrrr me hearties!
Shit, I don't like that one either....
Well, hi there Mr. and Mrs. Internet trolls!
Eh, too "Leave it to Beaver"...
Suuuuuup boiiiiiii?!?
Shit... no....
Hey guys, got a quick update on everything for y'all!
Perfect... perhaps without the y'all, but we'll roll with it.

Today is Friday (sweet, sweet, glorious Friday!) and I am psyched! I'm psyched because my girlfriend got into town last night (love you!) but I'm also psyched because writing is just becoming something that is part of me. After these last three months or so of writing damn near every day, I have become so accustomed to getting my one thousand words a day in that it becomes almost a second nature... let me explain with a little story.

On Tuesday, I put down my pen and texted E___. It said, essentially, that maybe I'm burned out on this, y'know? I write so much that maybe I should just give it a rest. Refresh my writerly well of creativity, and get a grip on my life beyond the strict confines of one-inch margins. I asked her what she thought of the idea...

I don't think she really cared, honestly. She said something about 'well, do what you want.' I can't blame her... I talk about it with her more than I should, I'm sure it's rather aggravating, but I know that she just wants me to be happy, and if taking time off would help -- then she would be all for it. So, I picked up a book I've been aching to read: Dan Chaon's you remind me of me (ostensibly all in lower-case as to make sure everyone knows that the book is a serious work of literary fiction... which it is), and read the whole thing in a period of two nights.

"Wow!" thought I, "what a tremendous book. I would like my book to be that beautiful!" So then, on Wednesday night (so I guess it was only 1.5 days of not writing) I spat out like, three thousand words without feeling the bottom of the well. It was like the whole thing was somehow magically refilled to the brim with silvery miasma that is... whatever it is you need to write. Is that drive, creativity, or something else? I don't know. I just call it like I see it.

Then, still drawing from that well last night, I wrote a ~3,000 word short story about a man who suffers from batophobia, or, the fear of standing next to something really tall; which I just found absolutely fascinating. I stuck him out in the middle of the grasslands and put him in a small ranch house -- all alone and ornery.

And now it's Friday. I don't know if I'll write anything today, but I would imagine at one point, I'll pick up my pen and jot down notes that will get me really keyed up. Then by the time that work is over, I'll be so bursting with story that if I don't tell it, I'd be liable to burst at the seams. Now that I write that, it seems an awful lot like foreplay... odd.

Anyway! I'm signing off. I think I may start posting stories on this sight that I don't really think will make it to competitions or publications. I do a lot of character peices that are only to help me think of new characters that I might use later as a sort of toolbox. Anyway, if I do, you'll start seeing those on here. If I decide not to, you won't. Enjoy your Friday, and get ready for the fete that is the weekend!

-Ken

Totally Didn't See This One Coming...

So, I'm sitting at home the other day, happily scribbling on my yellow legal pad, minding my own business, getting a lot done on the manuscript, feeling all happy with the way everything is going, and then, completely unprompted, one of my main female characters just comes out and says "I love a woman," and means it.

"But… I had no idea," I said to her, laying my pen down and wrapping my fingers against the legal pad. "When did this happen?"

"Oh, I'm not really sure. I’m quite as surprised as you are by this recent development."

"I see… Does she make you happy?"

"Well, yes, but as you can see from everything else that has happened…"

"Yes, that does make it all a little harder, doesn't it?"(*)

We were quiet for a moment, afraid to say anything stupid. What do you say to the character who has just come out of the closet to you? I hadn't really planned on what I would say. I didn't think this would come about especially in my first novel. Maybe my fourth or fifth, you know? I wasn't quite sure how I would go about it. I asked her.

"Just write me like anyone else, I think," she said, dolefully. "I mean, I'm still human, I just have this monster crush on that other chick you paired me with. Does that somehow make me intrinsically different from anyone else and their love-affairs?"

"No," I said. "It makes you just like them." I paused, taking a look out my window and sipping on my tea before I continued, "I think, more or less, I'm scared about writing you like this because of the ramifications of it."

"What are you talking about?"

"Well, you know, being a guy, how would it look if I went around touting a lesbian character? Wouldn't it come off like I was just perv, getting off to some girl-on-girl action?"

"I don't think so," she said thoughtfully, "I mean, you haven't written anything like that this far into the novel. It would seem odd that all of a sudden, just because I was gay, that someone would rail on you just for putting down the truth about me. In fact, I would go so far as to say if you didn't portray me correctly, that it would eat at you for a long, long time. See?"

"Okay," I concluded. "You are totally now going to be a lesbian, and you are going to be awesome."

"Good," she said, smiling. "Now would you mind getting back to the story? I've been driving in this goddamned car for like, three paragraphs now. It's getting kind of boring."

"Sure," I said. I picked up my pen, and continued her story, one word at a time.


By the end of the conversation, I was very excited about the development. It is a part of her – the same way that other characters love members of the opposite sex. As it stands, it hardly takes up any place at all, but I think that in these times, one must be able to approach matters of sexual orientation with steadfast confidence that sexual orientation only makes up a small part of a character in the same way that it does with a hetero-normative character. She has already taught me a lot, and I think there is still much to tell. This is one of the perennial joys of story-telling: Letting characters that you thought you controlled doing something completely different, and ending up teaching you something. It makes me wonder if these aren't real people on some other plane, letting me borrow their own lives for some small moment, documenting their trials and tribulations, and asking only that I do it with the utmost conviction towards art and sincerity.


-Ken

*What does this mean? Oh, wouldn't you like to know…

Christening.

Now, gentle readers, starts my nervous hand-wringings and contemptable snappishness.... if that is a word.  I have one short story that was mailed this morning, and another waiting breathlessly to be sent out, both harboring that inextinguishable desire of wanting to show a glow so formidable that when the readers at the respective lit mags lay their furtive glance upon its pages that they cannot help but run to the nearest blackboard and write, in large, swooping hand, "A+++++++++". 

I think that they are good stories.  Probably two of my favorites.  For that reason, I am setting unrealistically high goals for them, namely, getting published.  The chances are slim (I have sent them to highly selective publications) but my hopes for them are anything but.  I should hear back from the one I sent out last month within a month... and the other one about the same time.  Stay tuned for more fumings, rants, ravings, and maybe a particular shade of joy should the story get published.  It will more than likely contain size 72 helvitica at some point during that blog post, should it weasel its way past the editors and into a magazine.

I imagine this post as the glass bottle of milk or champaigne being cracked against the hull of a ship that is departing the harbor for the first time.  So come with me as I begin the slightly painful journey that is "doing this for a living."  The water is treacherous and deep, and the bottom is lined with ships that didn't make it.

-Ken

This may come as a shock to you...

I'm writing some fun stuff right now, and I think I have stumbled across what may be the most providential moment in my writing history.  It is like a precipice that propels friendship down down down and dashes it against rocks.  I think it is so perfect, it may almost be in the realm of cliche.  It's just a simple sentence, but it does several things that I think make it so great, and I wrote it yesterday, so pardon the idiosyncratic nature of this post...

Maybe it comes as a shock to you, but I don't give two flying fucks about you or your motherfucking _______.

See?  How fucking wonderful that sentence is?  It's like a writer's madlib.  Just put in whatever, wherever when you need a big punch, and it works out great... here's some examples that I just came up with:

Maybe it comes as a shock to you, but I don't give two flying fucks about you or your motherfucking rubber ducky. (Bert finally letting Ernie have it in their three-room flat on the lower west-side.)

Maybe it comes as a shock to you, but I don't give two flying fucks about you or your motherfucking revolution. (What Benedict Arnold should have said to George Washington.)

Maybe it comes as a shock to you, but I don't give two flying fucks about your motherfucking last name.  (Admittedly not as poetic, but equally as effective utturance delivered by Romeo Montague to Juliet Capulet outside her bedroom window. The phrase is changed slightly.)

Maybe it comes as a shock to you, but I don't give two flying fucks about you or your motherfucking e-book pricing structure. (Macmillan to Amazon)

Maybe it comes as a shock to you, but I don't give two flying fucks about you or your motherfucking rules on what constitutes "decent fiction". (Micheal Chabon against the literary fiction monsters that love to hate.)

 Maybe it comes as a shock to you, but I don't give two flying fucks about you or your motherfucking fear of what others think about you. (Roarke to Keating in The Fountainhead.  That is essentially the Ken's Notes to the entire friggin' book, in case you were wondering.)

... and really, it all goes on from there.  Pretty heavy stuff, right?  Anyway, this wasn't too serious of an entry... but you know... you get what you get.

I have 3 followers now!  I feel like I'm heading places, Jerry!  I'm headin' all the way to the top!

That is all. 

-Ken

P.S. -- The thoughts and views shown in this blog do NOT portray the views of any other person other than the author of this blog.  Anything said here was a fictional representation and meant only to be funny.  

The Very Short Prologue.

I have a theory on prologues: they shouldn't be too long.  They should, in fact, be short.  A prologue should be succinct and to the point.  In this vein, I have constructed one for my novel -- Southern Hospitality. So what we have here is the prologue to my WIP (Work In Progress).  I believe it accomplishes what any good prolouge is supposed to, which is to entice without giving much away.  It is a taste and a nice little bite-sized chunk of my novel.

Without further adeu, Southern Hospitality:

Old Tawnee Road was never very well known. It seemed like from the moment that it was laid (from anyone’s best guess it was around the time of the Van Buren administration) it was forgotten. The old road linked two major highways and could save travelers upwards of thirty minutes if they had spotted the street sign that hung slightly askew on a metal pole when it bisected with their path. It was unfortunate then, that the entrance to either side came at a particularly difficult intersection to navigate and so, for the most part, the road remained unchecked for the better part of a century. Traveling southeast along the byway, a traveler would have seen a distinct dichotomy between the two sides: on the driver’s side was untamed and unbridled forest – Georgia Pines, smothered with kudzu and a few bushes skirted along the underbrush; to the right, there were the scant signs that civilization had once prospered in the area – old and rotted clapboard plantations, white and periwinkle paint peeling from the shudders and tiles missing from the roofs. Old Tawnee Road stood as a barrier between the virulent wilderness and the long-forgotten memories of what was.


These skeletons of the past harkened back to a time when slavery was the norm and a house without a bustling team of Negros would be deemed inefficient and quaint. But with the Emancipation Proclamation came an unsustainable business model. The southern rural aristocratic society was born, raised, and died among the shackles of the slave ships that hailed from the shores of East Africa. The great families had long disappeared from the plantations and taken the crops with them. The fields that once bore black-eyed peas, corn, wheat, peaches, and cotton were now fallow, and surrounded the houses that were now mere husks of their former selves – the corpses of the extinct southern gentry

Despite the gentle beauty and glimpses into the past that one could have found on Old Tawnee Road, its ability to keep the forest from encroaching upon the plantation side of the road and the small amount of decay that had come to the structures lining it had created stories about that twenty-five mile stretch of largely uninhabited roadway. The locals spoke of ancient evils that lurked beneath the ground, and ghosts of slaves that lingered in the fields, waiting with scythe in-hand to lop off the heads of any white person dumb enough to walk into their domain. Other stories spoke of specific houses and the histories of their residents, and of murders and infidelities of those residents that branched out to other families and created a web of intrigue and malice that terrified its listeners to the point of taboo.

Perhaps the most intriguing part of those stories wasn’t the variation, but rather the constant. Despite the innumerable ghost sightings and ethereal experiences, there existed one unimpeachable and absolute fact that pervaded every story told: On some nights, at two o’clock in the morning, at 455 Old Tawnee Road in the upper left-hand window, there is a flicker of light where the silhouette of an old woman is seen in a rocking chair – slowly going back and forth, to and fro. After exactly four minutes the wavering, dancing light would extinguish with unnatural abruptness. If one had been unfortunate enough to see that rippling, fiery light through the window, they would not hear, but feel the grating sepulchral lament of that woman as she screamed and moaned in great convulsions of pain that mutilated their senses and coursed through their very being. It would be followed by a feeling that was so brief yet so intense one wondered if they had actually felt it: the cold edge of a steel knife piercing their breast and rending their still-beating heart.

This was the only fact in the lore of Old Tawnee Road. It was never questioned by any of the locals because, at one point or another, they had all had their very essence shaken by that old woman’s death rattle.

Probably still not in its final form, but I like what I have so far.  Thanks for reading!

-Ken

Today is a Good Day.

It is a good day today. Writers are publishing, striving, and thriving. I am reading and writing at a break-neck clip (more on the Novel Blog to come shortly) and I had an entire weekend of a contemplative respite from the busy city and feel refreshed and focused on my craft... even when I'm at my soul-sucking day job. Today, three names are circling my brain: Therese Walsh, Stuart Neville, and Michael Chabon.

One of the first writing blogs I read was Writer Unboxed that is run by a gamut of people, but one of the founders of the site is Therese Walsh who's debut novel is out today. The Last Will of Moira Leahy is primarily for women and has been getting awesome reviews. I'm very happy for this new author and everything that she has gone through to get to where she is now. It's a big moment for any author, and one that is getting these kinds of reviews, well, good things are in store for sure! I think why so many people are actively rooting for Ms. Walsh is because yes, she is an author, but she is more than that. Through her site, she has become a friend to so many authors and readers alike. People will go to the book store today to pick up The Last Will because they like her. I don't know too much about the book (and what little I do know, I won't try to explain here) but I have this inkling that after work (around 4:30) I'm going to head to the Barnes and Noble across one of the busiest intersections in Atlanta, march my butt up to the counter and ask for a book who's genre is "Women's Fiction." I don't think that I would have ever picked this book up, no matter HOW much someone tried to goad me into it, because of that outlier of being "Women's Fiction," but for Ms. Walsh, (I'm going to call you Therese) I'll make an exception.

Stuart Neville's breakout novel - The Ghosts of Belfast - landed on U.S. soil a few weeks ago. I'm always interested in books with the connotation of being in the genre of 'horror'. It always seemed to me that I couldn't become scared by a book, but then I started reading some Stephen King and all of a sudden... I understood. I always thought terror to be something more visceral (if not low-brow) with slasher flicks like Saw and The Exorcist, I thought that to be scared by something, you had to see it, but these authors have taught me otherwise. James Ellroy, another very prominent (and very scary) author has already swathed Neville's first foray to the point of hyperbole, saying that it is the best first novel by an author he has ever read. (not verbatim) Really, really excited about this book, and I don't think it could get here fast enough.

Finally, I'm going through a really fun romp through the ever-growing life work of Michael Chabon. I picked up Gentlemen of the Road on my Kindle a few weeks back, and read through it rather quickly. Then I picked up his semi-auto-biography Manhood For Amatuers and I absolutely loved the glimpses into the mind of one of the best writers of prose alive today. Now I'm working my way through The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (Note: the link isn't to a current edition... I bought this one, it's the limited edition. I think I was lucky to find it.) which is another delightful display of prose from anything else I have read by him. I'm only about halfway through the relatively short book, but it is definitely dense enough to warrant a second reading. I found it interesting that he wrote this book so young, and it puts me in one of those "why-not-me?" mentalities. I enjoy these fires clear and unextinguishable passion for the craft that I practice that have been burning for a while now and don't seem to be going away. Michael Chabon has, better than any other author I have read, made me feel like I can do this too. I think it's his utter brilliance that he can make his writing come off with such ease (or, at least, it seems that way on the page) and can make the whole idea of writing so attainable because it almost seems like he is goading the reader, saying "See? Look how easy this is." I know that it's not easy. Even for him, but damn, those long, prophetic, sexy sentences and metaphores seem to flow almost too easily.

So what is it that these three have to do with eachother? They are all inspirations to me in their own ways. Therese makes me want to write blogs and get my name out there, Stuart makes me want to fight hard and expand my writing horizons and gives me hope, and Chabon is the master of letters that is capable of transporting me to the Pittsburgh of Art Bechenstein. These three have given me joy and prodded at the fires (however futile) of my own writing aspirations. Everyday I write harder and better because of people like this who have, at least to a certain extent "made it." I hope one day someone will mention me in their blog in this same way.

Novel Blog (1)

So I'm trying something new now. I have been mulling over the story for a while, and I have tons of notes, bits of dialogue and a plot outline. What I want to do is talk about my experience in writing my first novel and all the heartache and torture that will inevitably come with it. I don't think I'm going to give too much of the story itself away...maybe a quick outline, but I would like to keep the final product so I can (hopefully, haha) get it published. So, let's try to explain the story that has been making me lose sleep for the past month or so.

What I gots so far...
Mark Menkowitz is a 38 year old Jewish newspaper editor who has just lost his wife to a car crash. When something this horrible happens, there is always a certain grieving period, but Mark's could have been so short that it may have been completely absent. My story revolves around Mark's life post-Sheila (his late wife) and how he remembers through her absence what was and why they had fallen in love in the first place. When he goes back to the house they moved into as newlyweds, he begins to remember the wife that he had loved so much.

While he is going through a prolonged and increasingly belabored grieving process, he also has to deal with the realization that the future of his newspaper (the largest in his city) is hemorraging dollars and is in danger of collapse. Through the continued sadness Mark is faced with, he will go on a journey that will lead him through guilty pleasures and pitfalls, happiness and moments of relfection, love and agony.


I think that's enough for now. I find myself writing a screenplay with the novel, and I don't really know which one will take priority yet. I have the first scene of the script done, and it was the first thing I did to explain it (Thank you goes out to those very fine folks over at Celtx for making deliciously awesome free script and novel editing software! You are my heroes) but without any scripting experience, I am horribly anxious about the prospect of putting so much creative effort into something that may fail miserably. (Or, as Mark would say, "I just ain't gonna sit in a pool of shit if there's a hot tub next to me.")

-Ken

Some things that piss me off...

I was reading some stories on blogs today... stuff that read "First Two Chapters! Enjoy!" and it kind of made me realize where the bridge between good and bad writing is. I think I made a breakthrough in dregging through the literary offal found on the internets.

1. People who write stories about someone writing a story. It's dumb and convoluded. The best story like this was The Secret Window and that was written by Stephen King... the guy can pull off any over-used, horribly cliche plot he wants. The majority of us, however, cannot. So, if you ever feel like your character has to write... think about it again. Is there any other way you can give your character some ambiance of creativity? Think about it. Stay the fuck away from cliches - especially this one.

2. Dumbass page-long narratives of two people staring at eachother in silence. This seems pretty self-explanatory. If your male protagonist looks out into the park and sees a beautiful girl, don't give me a page about her fucking hair. It's dumb and boring and not realistic. As a guy, I can say, without equivocation, that when I see a woman I don't break out into sonnet. Neither should your dude. If your just trying to boost your word count, then you're a poser... if you're trying to show off flowery language, you're a loser... if you're trying to show how emotionally touched your guy is, you're lying.

3. Having one long paragraph that should be broken up into two. Reading devolves into scanning when confronted with a wall of text. When you have a paragraph that doesn't seem to end, find a good place to break it up. There's always a spot out there. Find it. Rule of thumb: if you have more than one central subject going on in a paragraph, you're doing it wrong.

4. Don't be a cocky prick. People notice your douchebaggery. A simple rule of thumb exists here. If you think very highly of yourself, it will come through in your writing and it will no longer be sincere. Self-flaggelation and a good sense of humor are paramount in writing, and without the ability to laugh at yourself, your writing looks contrived and brings up images of Patrick Bateman flexing in the mirror while banging a chick in American Psycho. If you want to write, get over yourself. Write for the love of the story, not for the love of yourself. Prick.

5. Don't make wild claims about how other people write when you're not even published yet. Yeah, and hypocrites. I hate hypocrites.

That's it. Enjoy your crushed egos.

-Ken