Wednesday, September 22, 2010
So, I lied.
Welll, I have to re-post and say: if you want a tidbit more, and you know me, just comment here and let me know. I'll send you an example. I've (obviously) deleted what I had after my "YOUR BLOG HAS BEEN DELETED" scare, and also I'm not going to post any more excerpts...None that are too long, anyway. So, my blog is going to become all talk and very little action, I'm afraid. However -- perhaps there SHALL be something to talk about. :)
Monday, September 20, 2010
Whassup
So...All 2 of my readers have probably been wondering what I've been up to lately! Just so you know: it is currently 162 pages long, divvied into 3 books ("Do not speak slightingly of the three-volume novel! I wrote one myself in earlier days."), with a total of 27 chapters. Thus far. I've just introduced a new character! A middle-aged architect named Linus Brodie. He's sort of befuddled and cute, but his understanding of space and its potential is uncanny and he has created some truly freakish things in his time. If you'd like to meet him, let me know; I can certainly give out a bit of where he meets Nathaniel and Kensington. :)
I'm in a goofy mood. Love and peace.
AGB
I'm in a goofy mood. Love and peace.
AGB
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
The Book (otherwise known as The Tome)
Well, here I am again . . . I randomly decided to visit my own blog and saw I actually had a comment! Thank you very much, my friend . . . it will inspire me to not only work even more assiduously on The Book but should also spur me on to post here more often! I'm certainly not kidding myself that I have more than 2 *readers,* but isn't that how one gleans more? By posting?
"No need to respond, that was rhetorical!" as Galinda would say. :-P
Now for an update on The Book:
It has an official title! I've decided not to use it yet though, not until it is worthy of it. What I'm trying to do is fairly ambitious, and the title suits that level of ambition, but to call it by its name until it is quite a lot nearer being done would only be presumptuous. For now, it will remain "The Book."
However . . . I have recently made some progress! First of all, I have come to the uncomfortable realization that I have been spending too much time thinking in "movie tense" lately, which only makes sense -- I work at a movie theater. Fortunately that job is drawing to a close, as will, I hope, my propensity to write my novel like a screenplay: too many precise details, too many "shortcuts" by way of commonplace turns of phrase and even (shockingly!) cliches! I am even now in the process of trying to expunge them from both my writing and from my everyday conversation. Whatever the cost, I cannot afford to sound . . . well, lame. But duuuude . . . it's really hard not to, especially when the the very air in our culture seems saturated by it. :P
Moving right along: Thomas LaJeune is currently undergoing a character -- well, a re-evaluation is too strong. Let's just say he's gaining more depth and, I'm hoping, more dimensions. He seems suddenly to have discovered his purpose and I'm finding it difficult to keep an eye on my other characters; he seems to be attempting to write himself, and only himself, and force me to neglect the others. Fortunately, I care about Thomas a great deal, but still, he won't listen when I try to warn him that he's only making things worse for himself by rushing things like this.
Overall, I'm trying to focus less on ideas and symbolism and more on specifics when it comes to a character's personality (and not necessarily what color a given carpet is when someone walks into a room). Lady Vivian Fletcher is proving practically impossible, chiefly because though I know women like her, I am not a woman like her, and thus I cannot comprehend her. Whatever it is she wants, and whatever it is she feels and dreams, are almost complete mysteries to me, and yet I still feel confident that I can *write* her. She is not a truly main character, in the sense that Gabriel, Thomas, and Kore are main characters. She is frightfully important -- but like Etienne, or Honoria, or even Nathaniel, she is not always necessarily a common thread. Gabriel is like a brother to me, Thomas like the lover I could never have. But of course, the strangest thing that many real writers have said long before me . . . I am *all of them* and they are all *me.* I don't get the sensation that I'm borrowing from my friends or family, or from strangers I have observed in the doctor's office or laundromat. Instead I feel as though all of these individuals are pieces of who I am, and I have to fabricate identities to couch each part of my own character. I feel I can create my own dreams, my own alternate reality. It is strange, to say the least. Strange, but a comfortable kind of strange. Like I said, it's like a dream. Also, I've spent over 7 years thinking about and working on these people and the highlights of their lives, I feel I know them better than I seem to know some of my friends. That is what I hope to communicate to everyone who may someday get a chance to read The Book -- if, Lord willing, it is ever published! -- my love for these people, with all their bizarre desires and abilities and hopeless, even fatal, flaws. I hope someday you find out what they mean to me.
Forgive me for waxing so lyrical! But at this precise moment in time, I have little else to do . . . And I'm assuming that, if you happen to be reading MY blog at this precise moment in time, you yourself have little else to do either. ;-)
AGB
"No need to respond, that was rhetorical!" as Galinda would say. :-P
Now for an update on The Book:
It has an official title! I've decided not to use it yet though, not until it is worthy of it. What I'm trying to do is fairly ambitious, and the title suits that level of ambition, but to call it by its name until it is quite a lot nearer being done would only be presumptuous. For now, it will remain "The Book."
However . . . I have recently made some progress! First of all, I have come to the uncomfortable realization that I have been spending too much time thinking in "movie tense" lately, which only makes sense -- I work at a movie theater. Fortunately that job is drawing to a close, as will, I hope, my propensity to write my novel like a screenplay: too many precise details, too many "shortcuts" by way of commonplace turns of phrase and even (shockingly!) cliches! I am even now in the process of trying to expunge them from both my writing and from my everyday conversation. Whatever the cost, I cannot afford to sound . . . well, lame. But duuuude . . . it's really hard not to, especially when the the very air in our culture seems saturated by it. :P
Moving right along: Thomas LaJeune is currently undergoing a character -- well, a re-evaluation is too strong. Let's just say he's gaining more depth and, I'm hoping, more dimensions. He seems suddenly to have discovered his purpose and I'm finding it difficult to keep an eye on my other characters; he seems to be attempting to write himself, and only himself, and force me to neglect the others. Fortunately, I care about Thomas a great deal, but still, he won't listen when I try to warn him that he's only making things worse for himself by rushing things like this.
Overall, I'm trying to focus less on ideas and symbolism and more on specifics when it comes to a character's personality (and not necessarily what color a given carpet is when someone walks into a room). Lady Vivian Fletcher is proving practically impossible, chiefly because though I know women like her, I am not a woman like her, and thus I cannot comprehend her. Whatever it is she wants, and whatever it is she feels and dreams, are almost complete mysteries to me, and yet I still feel confident that I can *write* her. She is not a truly main character, in the sense that Gabriel, Thomas, and Kore are main characters. She is frightfully important -- but like Etienne, or Honoria, or even Nathaniel, she is not always necessarily a common thread. Gabriel is like a brother to me, Thomas like the lover I could never have. But of course, the strangest thing that many real writers have said long before me . . . I am *all of them* and they are all *me.* I don't get the sensation that I'm borrowing from my friends or family, or from strangers I have observed in the doctor's office or laundromat. Instead I feel as though all of these individuals are pieces of who I am, and I have to fabricate identities to couch each part of my own character. I feel I can create my own dreams, my own alternate reality. It is strange, to say the least. Strange, but a comfortable kind of strange. Like I said, it's like a dream. Also, I've spent over 7 years thinking about and working on these people and the highlights of their lives, I feel I know them better than I seem to know some of my friends. That is what I hope to communicate to everyone who may someday get a chance to read The Book -- if, Lord willing, it is ever published! -- my love for these people, with all their bizarre desires and abilities and hopeless, even fatal, flaws. I hope someday you find out what they mean to me.
Forgive me for waxing so lyrical! But at this precise moment in time, I have little else to do . . . And I'm assuming that, if you happen to be reading MY blog at this precise moment in time, you yourself have little else to do either. ;-)
AGB
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