Holy Workshopping, Batman!

It takes some serious testicular fortitude to finally put down the red pen and grudgingly hand over a piece of writing for a critique. Sometimes it feels like you’re packing your little story a lunchbox, tying its shoelaces and ruffling its hair before showing it out of the trenches and into No-Man’s-Land. Or maybe a better metaphor is arming it to the best of your abilities and kicking its tail into the Colosseum where hungry lions were just finishing up on Christians and looking for dessert.

I fall prey to a common plague of writers, of constantly revising and rewriting. But if you polish a rock too hard, you’re left with nothing. (Fuck me sideways with a chainsaw, that was deep. Like Marianas Trench-deep. Maybe I’ll write a book of proverbs for y’all.) But for my Fiction class, we’re forced to workshop a story with the rest of the class. And that feedback is priceless.

My workshop was last week, and I submitted a story titled Treadmills for the workshop last week. And it went well – everyone seemed to like it, but more importantly I picked up a lot of useful criticism about the piece. Think, like, the opposite of comments on YouTube.

It’s funny – how everyone picks up on the littlest things. A throwaway, sarcastic line convinced some readers of a subplot of a relationship between two of the characters – something I never intended, but might explore in a later draft. Or not. That’s the beauty of it – between all the marked up copies I received and the notes I took during the workshop (in which I had to sit silently, sort of prowling around the outside of the circle and making menacing looks at those who I thought didn’t get it, until the teacher politely asked me to stop growling at students) I have so much to work with that I can adopt or ignore each piece of feedback.

The story, by the way, was one of the first literary stories that I’m truly proud of – after another revision I’m hoping to start submitting.

Writing Full Time?!

For the first time in a long time, I had a chunk of free time over Winter Break. My summer was sort of devoured by my internship, much like an amoeba surrounds then absorbs whatever the hell amoebas eat. I decided, last fall, to spend that month off writing full time. For a whole, writing was my job.

Yeah, yeah. I can hear you grumbling about how writing isn’t really a job. And, maybe not. Not a real job, because it’s fun. But by that same logic – a real job not being fun – being an cosmonaut, ice cream sampler or art thief aren’t real jobs. (And just imagine if you were all three at once!)

Maybe I didn’t make much money, but I wouldn’t trade that month for anything. Well, maybe I’d trade it for a chance to be an interstellar ice cream thief, but that’s beside the point.

With naught to do all day but write, I actually had some trouble getting started. After making breakfast and coffee, I always ended up screwing around on blogs and reddit – so much that I had to nuke my wifi router to get work done. I found that pressure helps me write – to the point that I’m drawing plans to wire up my net book to a few sticks of dynamite under my desk. (There’s motivation for you.)

But overall this experiment was a success. I ended up cranking out the words like a monkey on crack, producing four shorts and a metric ton of edits on the book. I wasn’t as efficient – but what’s important was I proved to myself that I could do it.

DON’T WORRY I’M NOT DEAD – YET

I’m moving from place to place, laying low, trying to keep out of sight of the mountains of work that’s always following me around like a bionic bloodhound. I can’t stay long – I’m risking enough as it is even just writing this post. But I’m still alive. And I fully intend on staying that way. At least, that’s the plan anyway.

But I haven’t been slacking, that I can assure you! I’ll swear to anything, god, flying spaghetti monster, ANYTHING – that I’ve been busy, because I’m back at school. Being back at school means I’m about as busy as a bee – a bipolar bee hopped up on amphetamines, that is. Buzz buzz buzz. It’s tough finding the time or energy to write, let alone blog. For all those keeping score at home, that might explain my prolonged absence here at AuTOMonous. But! Here’s what I’m doing (in new-and-improved LIST format!), coming at you, think fast:

• Revising Caught in the Cogs of Yesterday - I flaked out on my editor when I realized I wouldn’t be finished in time. This is on the backburner right now, until I can get things straight in my head for where I want the story to go.
• Writing Chronocide - a post-apoc fantasy-ish story that I’ve been kicking around for awhile. More deets on this soon.
• Submitting to magazines – right now I’m putting the final touches on a story and I’ll be shopping that around this week, hoping for someone to bite. It’s like fishing, except, without the fish. If none do (bite, that is), I’ll be collecting and self-publishing a bunch of short stories in the near future.
• Experimenting with other forms of storytelling – I’m envisioning a transmedia project involving reading flashfiction to a series of stills for the youtubes, storytelling with social media, etc.

Between all of the above AND writing for the newspaper, I’m lucky to have enough time to sleep.  Which I’m about to do write now… *YAWN* Catch y’all on the flip side.

I’d Like to Thank the Academy

Last week, while I busy protesting SOPA – don’t you dare say I was too lazy/busy/distracted to blog much – I turned on this newfangled internet machine and noticed I received some distinction for the words I vomit onto the screen for y’all to enjoy.

All I can say is, about freaking time!

Haha, just playin’. In both cases, I kind of felt like those directors that because they figure nobody’s seen their work or they they forgot to bribe the judges with copious quantities of cocaine and don’t even bother showing up to the ceremony. Hell, the only reason I found out about either was I followed the backtrail on wordpress dashboard (No, I don’t run this website from the back room of an Italian restaurant surrounded by my mafioso henchmen, as some of you seem to think. That’s my other job.) of someone clicking through to my page.  It was pretty stealthy, I’ll admit, somewhat like a master hunter tracking a Golden Stag through a hurricane – and also raises the point that I can see everything you do and click on this here site. So in effect, I guess I’m most akin to Sauron’s Eye watching all of Mordor. Be forewarned.  - I’m watching, always watching. Except when I’m not, but even then… even then…

So: I received an Honorable Mention from Jennifer Meaton for the Kreativ Blogger Award. ¡Muchos gracias! (That was Spanish for those of you keeping score at home.) And also, KD Rush bestowed upon me the Versatile Blogger Award! Again, thanks so much gang for the distinction. I will add these to my trophy cabinet – actually, looks like I’ll have to build another because the other one is already teetering from my impressive list of accomplishments. Oh, the latter requisites the recipient list seven things my readers wouldn’t know about me. So let’s see…

I have uncanny hand-eye-coordination when it comes to catching falling objects (possibly/probably a result of a lifetime of clumsiness and knocking over a plethora of things on a daily basis). I play guitar (and actually late for band practice right now). I’m at the University of Massachusetts for English and an Education minor. I used to be addicted to paintball. I want to experiment with different kinds of storytelling in 2012 (more on this later ). I cannot stand the sound of Styrofoam. I work off shifts at a gym when I’m not at school, which is great because I can write and read and such.

Phew. I hate talking about myself. Those were just the first seven things that came to the top of my head. And now, here’s Fifteen Bloggers (also a requirement of the Versatile Blogger Award – this is turning out to be a lot of work and somewhat chain-letter-esque, sans cute pictures of kittens, unfortunately.) that I’m into lately, in no particular order:

C.B.Wentworth

terribleminds

David Gaughran

Z.M.Wilmot

One Thousand and One Parsecs

Gravitas & Giggles

dampsquid

neelthemuse

Whatever

Daniel is Funny

Tobias Buckell

David Brin

Lev Grossman

J.A. Marlow

Michael Offutt

That’s that! Thanks for the awards, I’m off to go build another trophy cabinet.

What’s All This Fuss About SOAP?

All over the internet today, soap is getting a lot of attention.

Not that it doesn’t deserve it – I love soap. (Throughout my childhood, I developed a keen taste for the different flavors. The trial-sized Dove bar tastes the best, in my humble opinion. (Which isn’t necessarily humble – I’m quite proud of my border line-connoisseur tastes from numerous occasions of getting my profane mouth washed out.)) But despite its inherent awesomeness, sites like Reddit, Wikipedia, and Google are protesting soap in a historic black-out.

What’s that? Hold on a sec gang – I’m getting an update. Alright, Timmy the intern is whispering at me – speak up Timmy! Get me another coffee, first though – there’s a good chap. Now get back in your cage. The update? You didn’t tell me about it yet? What am I paying you for then if you won’t work – what do you mean I’m not paying you? Okay, okay, just spit it out. Hmm, unsettling news, audience. Jimmy just handed me a telegram. From his cage. Let me transcribe it for you:

THE INTERNET IS NOT IN AN UPROAR BECAUSE OF SOAP STOP

REDDIT WIKIPEDIA AND THE REST ARE PROTESTING AGAINST SOPA STOP

THAT IS S STOP O STOP P STOP A STOP

IT IS A MISGUIDED BILL IN CONGRESS THAT THREATENS THE INTEGRITY OF THE INTERNET AS WE KNOW IT STOP

Well, what Timmy is frantically tapping out on his foxhole radio (hehe, wasn’t that infuriating, being unable to look up what the hell I’m blabbering about on Wikipedia because it’s blacked out? Imagine how frustrated Timmy feels, seeing as his sole form of communication is that little device for Morse code that he McGyver’d up and is using.) is certainly unsettling. This is why I keep you around (and alive), Timmy – to catch my mistakes so people think I’m infallible.

Now then. I’m going to do some more research about this SOPA debacle, and I encourage you, audience, to do the same – from what I can tell, this anti-piracy legislation was written by the RIAA, MPAA, and other entertainment industry giants to enforce our copyright laws (which are more tangled up and confounding than a Gordian freakin’ knot) but the room for interpretation is so broad that it would stifle that which empowers and encourages creativity and sharing the web – think all social media like Tumblr, Reddit, etc.

It’s almost like throwing a tactical nuke at a zoo when a monkey bites a kid – look, I know that’s how all zombie invasion movies start, but don’t punish the other animals! Especially when the brat deserved a bite for continually pulling the monkey’s tail, through the bars. Think about all the other animals, like the pandas! THINK ABOUT THE PANDAS!

Word Un-processors

Hey Internet, I know you missed me. And believe me, I’ve missed you too. I found myself unable to sleep and staring at the ceiling, trying to make sense of the void I felt, deep down. Then I remembered, oh right, I didn’t blog and promptly fell fast asleep.

See, this isn’t a Dear John letter. I’ve just been busy slogging through another draft of the ole novel.

I’m running into some problems though. Remember that scene in Office Space where they smash the fax machine? Yeah, I feel there pain. Especially when I boot up the computer and find my word processor didn’t process my words right.

This draft, I’m tightening up the voice and style and deleting unnecessary or needless pieces, while also writing comments for next and last rewrite before it goes in for editing. And it screwed up all my comments! Here you me, if something cannot do what it’s supposed to especially when it’s use is in the freaking name (i.e. process words if it’s a word processor, open cans if it’s a canopener, or spray pepper if it’s a pepperspray, um, thingy.), then what’s the point!

After many fruitless thwacked to the keyboard whilst concurrently shouting a combination of “No” and “Shit,” I relented and was forced to redo a whole slew of chapters. Thankfully my memory is like a steel trap – the only way out is to chew your own leg off. (Isn’t that what the expression means?)

So let me say it once, on behalf of everyone everywhere: Fuck word processors. These clunky, bloated bits of code do nothing but make our lives more miserable. Abandon that sinking ship, don’t be like the band that went down on the Titanic (how you can play when your strings freeze in the arctic water!), instead be one of the rats that jump ship early. Those rats are awesome because they don’t use word processors to type up their memoir of their travels (while on a lifeboat made of a frozen Leo Decapprio). I don’t know what they used (though maybe it was a streamlined text editor or something) but they didn’t use a word processor.

The Parking Lot Movie

Documentaries rock.

I hate to take the reactionary approach because it feels cowardly – but it’s refreshing to watch something interesting unlike the formulaic trash churned out for a conditioned consumer culture.

The Parking Lot Movie is almost exactly about what it seems – it’s about a parking lot, but it’s more about the attendants that work there. The attendants are all overeducated slackers, and consider their job a “daily battle with humanity.”

This is something I can totally identify with, as a fellow over educated slacker working in the service sector. This winter (and by the way- what the hell happened to winter? Every Game of Thrones character kept saying “Winter is coming” but that didn’t pan out…), I’m picking up odd shifts at a local gym that caters to an upper-crust crowd – sometimes it feels like a battle, there, except they tote overinflated egos and a sense of entitlement instead of guns and bombs. Spittle flies like bullets, though.

Striking a similar note as the comedy Clerks, the documentary celebrates downtrodden existentialists everywhere – again, something I totally get because there’s little else to but sit around and think – oft bitterly and malevolently – about life and such.

Or, they’re overcome with ennui from handing out towels all day and decide to write that novel they were kicking around for a few years. (Yes. I mean me.)

This is what happens when I’m underpaid and bored.

Riding the Groove

In my last post, I mentioned that Eureka! moment, but there’s another awesome feeling I didn’t talk about. And that’s what I call “the Groove.”

The Groove is that liminal state where you don’t notice anything around you whether it’s time or the plethora of distractions clamoring for your attention – the Internet, a growling belly, the army of undead scrabbling at your door.

It’s the state of mind they call the zone. You can’t talk about it without using tired clichés like that – when you’re in the element and it feels like nothing can stop you, when you’re completely wired into whatever you’re doing.

I think everyone knows this feeling. Athletes, I can imagine (but I really can’t say because I have about as much athletic prowess as an arthritic platypus – which of course of all the animals always gets picked last for dodgeball.) doing the things that athletes do. Cocaine junkies definitely know what I’m talking about. What was I saying? Oh yeah. The Groove. Everyone’s familiar.

But there’s a slightly dark undertone to the Groove – as its somewhat of a constructive blackout. It’s uncanny, unsettling even. You never really know what you’ll find when you come to. Some of what I figure as my best writing manifests from this state of mind – but at the same time I always half expect to find mysterious cuts or bruises or – maybe a dead hooker.

Finding the Groove is tricky – like discovering sunken gold (mermaids are awful about sharing, just FYI) or smuggling shivs into prison. The conditions have to be just right. And when all the pieces are in place and you put the ax to the grind – there’s nothing else like it.

You Know That Eureka Moment?

It can happen anywhere, that sudden leap of insight that makes you pull your hair out and shout “eureka!” For me, it strikes like a thunderbolt upside the head and I can suddenly put together the pieces, whether it’s the crossword puzzle or the Riddle of the Sphinx but more often than not it’s a new lead in my writing – mostly because crossword puzzles are freaking hard and make my head hurt if I think about them too much like now… ouch. All those checkered boxes, cultural references to TV shows long since gone to dusty reruns – they give me nightmares

That moment is why I write. Or one reason at least. Usually, it hits me when I’m driving or showering or trying to hang a clock but slip and hit my head on the toilet bowl and wake up to draw a Flux Capacitor.

Maybe not that last part, but it’s the mindless repetition of a long road with nothing to look at except fluffy clouds, deadfall and bracken, and the ashen road that seems to set my mind into overdrive. It’s infuriating that I need hands to drive, because I’d rather be scribbling notes to myself. Voice memos are good for this – and I’m experimenting with transcribing software to convert that directly into text. But that presents its own problem of requisite editing because turning in a story peppered with expletives aimed at inept drivers around me would less than beneficial. Quite the opposite, in fact.

I’ve gone on and on about how much I love keeping a notebook on me at all times (actually always in my front left jean pocket because my OCD knows no bounds), but I’ll keep talking about it because well this is my blog, nay, KINGDOM and I am its tyrant-king and all-powerful and all naysayers and troublemakers will be executed on sight by my pet rabid honey badger. (Don’t tell me I’m a naysayer because I just said “nay” in the last sentence, it doesn’t work like that. It was meant ironically – don’t look at me like that, badger.)

Um, as illustrated above, my mind is somewhat of a cross between the protagonist of Memento and a magpie – after a few moments, something shiny grabs my attention and whatever awesome thought I was having sinks like the Titanic until drowned in what I imagine is a black hole at the bottom of my skull. There’s no other way to explain my inability to remember anything, unless I write it down. (But of course it’s further complicated because my handwriting defies comprehension somewhat like the Voynich Manuscript.)

One day I’m hoping to share some of my funnier or enlightening thoughts. One off the top of my head: “Does time have a color?”

Yes, that’s what goes through my head. This is what I have to deal with, daily.

Storm of the Century

Last night, some friends and I finished watching Stephen King’s Storm of the Century.

The key word here is finished. As a 420 minute miniseries, watching it end to end is something of an epic journey akin to The Odyssey. Yes, complete with sirens and cyclops and hubris and all. But we couldn’t manage it, as there was dissent in the ranks and revolution in the air, so we ended up tabling it until movie night round two. (When deciding on which movie to watch, a buddy and I really lobbied hard for this one, clandestinely skating around and disguising the length until another friend looked it up on IMDB (damn their tenacious skepticism!) and almost derailed the whole gambit – luckily we were able to convince them anyway.)

I’m pumped we finished it though, because that way I can jot down some thoughts here without having to pretend like I finished it! It’s like English class all over again. (Except with a movie, instead of a book report on Slaughterhouse Five in which I talk the entire time about the bombing of Dresden and how it was the RAF (Royal Air Force i.e. Britain) and not the U.S. Army which really is kind of beside the point but I managed to get away with anyways because I’m a great bullshitter. Ahem.)

Storm of the Century is about as Stephen King as you can get: small town Maine + dark paranormal = mob mentality and people’s real self exposed. Which is part of why I love King – you know what you’re going to get. And in particular with his movies, that it’s going to be cheesy. And this one was no exception – this miniseries must have pulled some Ocean’s 11 burglary on the Cheez-It factory to supply the gratuitous amount of overdramatic dialogue. It was clear where they spent their money – the few main characters had some real talent, but there was a whole slew of minor ones that – erm, didn’t.

Overall, while I could have gone without the atrocious attempts at Mainiac accent that ends up sounding either A) Bostonian or B) Nothing or C) (almost unbelievably) Italian, I enjoyed the movie in all its epic cheeziness. “Epic cheeziness” makes me picture Homer writing an ode to, like, Wisconsin (America’s Dairyland!). The protagonist was a little too much of a golden boy for me, making me wish they humanized him a bit, at least naming a few of his prior sins along with the rest of the townsfolk during the iconic townhall scene. The antagonist is where King shines as always though, as Andre Linoge, or Legion, sold the movie for me.

Also, it made me think. (Which is good, because as you can ask anyone, I probably need to do more of that.) It got to the root of how people tick or interact and how fear can drive people to do the unthinkable. To which I can relate – fearing a mob of my dear readers at my front door, I’m missing my bedtime to crank out this bloggity! The things I do for you all… NIGHT! *snooze*