I have in the past been complimented on my writing—especially stories that explore things in a relatively truthful setting. That is, stories that stick to the verisimilitude of real life. But for my longer pieces, and recently some shorter ones, I’ve been writing speculative fiction—or science fiction.
I wrote a book—part of a longer science-fiction series. I’m writing the second of that series now—neither is published. I’ve also started long “ideas” and sketches of novel-length pieces that are more traditional pieces. But even as I add more and edit my traditional work, I always go back to my genre pieces because they are so much more fun to write. I love being in this other world where I get to dream up new technologies, new worlds, new alien races, but at the same time tell stories about real people—stories that have something to say to the world I live in now. It’s one of the things I always love about good sci-fi—how you can read or see something fantastic but that it speaks to you. An example would be from Star Wars. The heading of this blog is a quote from Obi-Wan Kenobi: “You’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.” That has stuck with me more than anything Faulkner ever wrote.
But then again, I’m a sci-fi fan. I watch things like Firefly and read Robert Heinlein stories. I can debate the merits of starship captains featured in the many Star Trek incarnations. From my point of view, writing in this genre is more fun. And part of why I chose writing as my career path is for that every reason.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
something I'm working on
Snail
There was only one place to sit down left in the room: a beat up grey computer chair sitting in front of the black and silver guitar amp and next to the window. Tedd had left his watch on the nightstand in the room next door, but having one last cigarette before he left, he guessed it was half-eleven. Smoking out of the window like all those nights half a dozen years before, Tedd could see where posters used to display his tastes in music and films all over the walls. Now, as an adult called home to remove the last traces of himself from his parent’s house, he was only allowed to smoke outside or sitting there in his old room, gutted save a chair, an amp, and his guitar.
Behind the amp hanging on the wall, his Gibson Les Paul Classic hung by its headstock, a thin cover of dust scaring its proud features. His room, the room in his parent’s home, the room where he had slept comfortable and alone for sixteen years, still smelled of Camels snuck out the open window by starlight. The red-brown carpet was warm and easy under his bare feet, thinning on a path that once led around the foot of his bed, long ago taken north.
The reflection in the window had changed since he last stood before it. Tedd inhaled facing a fatter version of himself with shorter hair that he’d ever featured at Fauquier High. That morning he had shaved too quickly, and he watched as his reflection ran a small pale hand over its burning face. It seemed to move more sluggish that the simple action felt. The window displayed a flickering nickelodeon image—the film slipping of its tracks and gears.
Standing in front of his amp in the corner of the room, phrases from film and television struggled to gain the purchase they once had—a ritual finding unsteady footing after years of lethargy and neglect.
You know what the difference is between you and me?
He carefully lifted the guitar out of its wall-stand and felt its comfortably familiar weight as the strap slipped over his head and around his shoulders. The end of the cable had snaked under the speaker cabinet, and he kneeled reaching for it and feeling only carpet. Finally contact was made, guitar was connected to amp, power was shaking through, strings were quietly and swiftly re-tuned.
Tedd pulled the desk chair closer to the amp, taking his seat with the Gibson across his lap, rubbing a breath of dust off its body with a sleeve-covered hand, exposing the Gibson Wine-Red finish he had waited for all those weeks as a special order. On the floor next to his ashtray and pack of Silk Cut, a guitar pick waited. The reflection in the mirror stared back as he ran the edge of his finger along the volume knob, hearing the buzz of patient potential melody. Like the Ramones before him, he only ever needed three chords.
I make this look good.
A to D to G with a little overdrive running lean, and he was back at the Second Street Café, the only place you could hear live music without leaving the city limits. The stage was too high, the lights too bright, the crowds too small, but on those nights when a band was hot, the cigarettes were fresh and plentiful, and the dance-floor was saturated with your friends, epiphanies fell to earth.
It had been after a particularly bad show, walking the stage boards to gather equipment, that Tedd had decided to go to college after all, abandoning the vision of a crowded touring van, empty night-clubs, and long empty stretches of American highway. On the dance floor while another band covered Weezer’s My Name is Jonas, Tedd discovered the beauty of musical simplicity, swearing off the complicated prog-rock that had dominated his headphones for so long.
It had been on the fire-escape leading from the Café down to the alley behind, while the rest of the guys packed their stuff into Tedd’s Toyota that he’d finally kissed Mary Adkins. Mary, who had drawn eyes to her like starving strays to abandoned sirloin just by walking the hallways between classes. Mary, whom Tedd had known and silently worshiped since Middle School. Mary who had teased, and promised, and stood him up for years until the night he played her request, and was waved through to the mouth and hips and serenity so many others had already claimed.
In his room, repeating the chords of a Smashing Pumpkins song to which he long ago lost the words, memory pressed his lips.
…
The nostalgia lived short that night, and the Gibson and cable were carefully placed into the hard-shell case with the red faux-satin lining. The amp was left as it stood, Tedd reminding himself yet again to tell his mom that he’d lowered his asking price another fifty dollars. He had plans of getting a little two-by-twelve Fender Twin or an old Vox—something small that would fit into his apartment quiet enough not to cause the neighbors to hammer the walls with angry fists at 3 A.M. Guitar in hand, shoes on feet, day-bag packed, he turned off his battered half-stack for the last time and left the room—only to come back five minutes later for his cigarettes and his watch.
Tedd glanced at the Fossil’s face outside, surprised to find the sun not rising so early in the morning but then remembered that he hadn’t yet adjusted from GMT. It would be a long while before returning to the West End, and he was making every English cigarette last as long as possible, almost afraid to turn his watch back. He carefully placed the guitar among the other knick-knacks and clothing from a life time before on the folded seats, and closed the rear hatch of his Mini. The engine rumbled to life a moment later, and Tedd caught a glimpse of the old grey house as he adjusted his rear-view. Some invisible something pulled at him as he pulled down the long gravel drive, and when he reached the main road, he for a moment couldn’t decide which way to turn.
What I really should do, Tedd thought, is revisit some old friends.
The small car followed a familiar path to the dark and twisty roads he had driven everyday coming home from school. The route through the back-ends of the county took a few minutes longer than the more obvious way, but Tedd had found serenity in two-lanes cutting lonely fields in half, trailing along side grandfather trees, lifting up and down ridiculous hills. So many miles flipped had over, the cassette deck blasting mix-tapes, on these roads. Tedd followed them on autopilot, letting his hands and feet remember their old patterns, living in memory just long enough to get somewhere.
That somewhere was the Frost Diner, that slice of grimy silver America that had beaconed him and his friends when the weekend crashed to earth. Pulling off the street into the small lot Tedd found himself checking for cars he’d recognize before remembering that six years had passed, his friends all vanished into the big bad nothing of Real Life. From the outside the diner looked the same as it always had, the small enclosed porch leading up to the front door, the Airstream Silver exterior, the sign always with a letter or two burned out. Tonight the R and N were blinking weakly, casting Morse-code silhouettes on the roof of Tedd’s hatchback.
He stepped lightly up the steps carpeted with indoor-outdoor grass, once immortal green, now browned with use and weather. Inside the porch an ATM had replaced the cigarette machine where Tedd had bought his first pack of Camels. He fed his check card in with a weary head shake, and took out some cash for a late dinner and the road home.
Seeing the same high-school kids smoking the same cigarettes, drinking the same far-too-sweet coffee, Tedd remembered his Mark Twain:
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
There was only one place to sit down left in the room: a beat up grey computer chair sitting in front of the black and silver guitar amp and next to the window. Tedd had left his watch on the nightstand in the room next door, but having one last cigarette before he left, he guessed it was half-eleven. Smoking out of the window like all those nights half a dozen years before, Tedd could see where posters used to display his tastes in music and films all over the walls. Now, as an adult called home to remove the last traces of himself from his parent’s house, he was only allowed to smoke outside or sitting there in his old room, gutted save a chair, an amp, and his guitar.
Behind the amp hanging on the wall, his Gibson Les Paul Classic hung by its headstock, a thin cover of dust scaring its proud features. His room, the room in his parent’s home, the room where he had slept comfortable and alone for sixteen years, still smelled of Camels snuck out the open window by starlight. The red-brown carpet was warm and easy under his bare feet, thinning on a path that once led around the foot of his bed, long ago taken north.
The reflection in the window had changed since he last stood before it. Tedd inhaled facing a fatter version of himself with shorter hair that he’d ever featured at Fauquier High. That morning he had shaved too quickly, and he watched as his reflection ran a small pale hand over its burning face. It seemed to move more sluggish that the simple action felt. The window displayed a flickering nickelodeon image—the film slipping of its tracks and gears.
Standing in front of his amp in the corner of the room, phrases from film and television struggled to gain the purchase they once had—a ritual finding unsteady footing after years of lethargy and neglect.
You know what the difference is between you and me?
He carefully lifted the guitar out of its wall-stand and felt its comfortably familiar weight as the strap slipped over his head and around his shoulders. The end of the cable had snaked under the speaker cabinet, and he kneeled reaching for it and feeling only carpet. Finally contact was made, guitar was connected to amp, power was shaking through, strings were quietly and swiftly re-tuned.
Tedd pulled the desk chair closer to the amp, taking his seat with the Gibson across his lap, rubbing a breath of dust off its body with a sleeve-covered hand, exposing the Gibson Wine-Red finish he had waited for all those weeks as a special order. On the floor next to his ashtray and pack of Silk Cut, a guitar pick waited. The reflection in the mirror stared back as he ran the edge of his finger along the volume knob, hearing the buzz of patient potential melody. Like the Ramones before him, he only ever needed three chords.
I make this look good.
A to D to G with a little overdrive running lean, and he was back at the Second Street Café, the only place you could hear live music without leaving the city limits. The stage was too high, the lights too bright, the crowds too small, but on those nights when a band was hot, the cigarettes were fresh and plentiful, and the dance-floor was saturated with your friends, epiphanies fell to earth.
It had been after a particularly bad show, walking the stage boards to gather equipment, that Tedd had decided to go to college after all, abandoning the vision of a crowded touring van, empty night-clubs, and long empty stretches of American highway. On the dance floor while another band covered Weezer’s My Name is Jonas, Tedd discovered the beauty of musical simplicity, swearing off the complicated prog-rock that had dominated his headphones for so long.
It had been on the fire-escape leading from the Café down to the alley behind, while the rest of the guys packed their stuff into Tedd’s Toyota that he’d finally kissed Mary Adkins. Mary, who had drawn eyes to her like starving strays to abandoned sirloin just by walking the hallways between classes. Mary, whom Tedd had known and silently worshiped since Middle School. Mary who had teased, and promised, and stood him up for years until the night he played her request, and was waved through to the mouth and hips and serenity so many others had already claimed.
In his room, repeating the chords of a Smashing Pumpkins song to which he long ago lost the words, memory pressed his lips.
…
The nostalgia lived short that night, and the Gibson and cable were carefully placed into the hard-shell case with the red faux-satin lining. The amp was left as it stood, Tedd reminding himself yet again to tell his mom that he’d lowered his asking price another fifty dollars. He had plans of getting a little two-by-twelve Fender Twin or an old Vox—something small that would fit into his apartment quiet enough not to cause the neighbors to hammer the walls with angry fists at 3 A.M. Guitar in hand, shoes on feet, day-bag packed, he turned off his battered half-stack for the last time and left the room—only to come back five minutes later for his cigarettes and his watch.
Tedd glanced at the Fossil’s face outside, surprised to find the sun not rising so early in the morning but then remembered that he hadn’t yet adjusted from GMT. It would be a long while before returning to the West End, and he was making every English cigarette last as long as possible, almost afraid to turn his watch back. He carefully placed the guitar among the other knick-knacks and clothing from a life time before on the folded seats, and closed the rear hatch of his Mini. The engine rumbled to life a moment later, and Tedd caught a glimpse of the old grey house as he adjusted his rear-view. Some invisible something pulled at him as he pulled down the long gravel drive, and when he reached the main road, he for a moment couldn’t decide which way to turn.
What I really should do, Tedd thought, is revisit some old friends.
The small car followed a familiar path to the dark and twisty roads he had driven everyday coming home from school. The route through the back-ends of the county took a few minutes longer than the more obvious way, but Tedd had found serenity in two-lanes cutting lonely fields in half, trailing along side grandfather trees, lifting up and down ridiculous hills. So many miles flipped had over, the cassette deck blasting mix-tapes, on these roads. Tedd followed them on autopilot, letting his hands and feet remember their old patterns, living in memory just long enough to get somewhere.
That somewhere was the Frost Diner, that slice of grimy silver America that had beaconed him and his friends when the weekend crashed to earth. Pulling off the street into the small lot Tedd found himself checking for cars he’d recognize before remembering that six years had passed, his friends all vanished into the big bad nothing of Real Life. From the outside the diner looked the same as it always had, the small enclosed porch leading up to the front door, the Airstream Silver exterior, the sign always with a letter or two burned out. Tonight the R and N were blinking weakly, casting Morse-code silhouettes on the roof of Tedd’s hatchback.
He stepped lightly up the steps carpeted with indoor-outdoor grass, once immortal green, now browned with use and weather. Inside the porch an ATM had replaced the cigarette machine where Tedd had bought his first pack of Camels. He fed his check card in with a weary head shake, and took out some cash for a late dinner and the road home.
Seeing the same high-school kids smoking the same cigarettes, drinking the same far-too-sweet coffee, Tedd remembered his Mark Twain:
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
“a beer before Latin”
There are a few advantages of taking classes at a city college. Because I live in a comparatively small city, I see my classmates buying groceries, shopping, just walking the streets—not just during class time. I get to know a few of them in their lives outside of classrooms; I offer rides home, we eat at the same restaurants, we use the same post office.
A few advantages:
1. I see people outside of class and talk to them. We can discuss the books we’re reading for that week, someone’s short story discussed in class, or something completely unrelated. They become something more than just a “class-mate” or “that-guy-who-sat-next-to-me-in-History-of-the-English-Language,” and in cases of writing workshops, I get to know and appreciate their writing better.
2. So long as I don’t wear school colors or something with a University logo on it, I can blend in with everyone else in the city unrelated to the school. I heartily value blending in to a crowd.
3. Historic buildings replace those useless, empty stretches of lawn found at other schools, which only ever attract the kind people who want attention.
4. I can eat at restaurants—real restaurants between classes, not in a cafeteria filled with students. Also, as I’m old enough to drink, I can grab a beer before Latin if I have the need.
5. It is often cheaper to live off-campus that in the dorms. Having your own place has the obvious charms, but in terms of University living, you can avoid almost everyone if you want.
Before I moved here, when I was still deciding where to finish my B.A., a friend already living here warned me that because it was a small place, people got into your business. Yes, she said, the small-town feel was nice, but the person you most want to avoid will pass you on the street. It’s one of the reasons I hated living in a dorm, going to school on a designated enclosed campus, where the classrooms, offices, dorms, and other buildings were all separated from the city around them. My school’s campus covers four or five blocks, with mostly University buildings around them, but I walk to class on the same streets other people walk to work. One of my classes is in a converted townhouse—the workshop meeting in what was once a dining room, complete with fireplace and chandelier.
One giant disadvantage has nothing to do with a city-campus in general but more with this city. There is no decent public transportation, and as I live two miles from campus and was not built for walking, I’m forced to drive back and forth.
A few advantages:
1. I see people outside of class and talk to them. We can discuss the books we’re reading for that week, someone’s short story discussed in class, or something completely unrelated. They become something more than just a “class-mate” or “that-guy-who-sat-next-to-me-in-History-of-the-English-Language,” and in cases of writing workshops, I get to know and appreciate their writing better.
2. So long as I don’t wear school colors or something with a University logo on it, I can blend in with everyone else in the city unrelated to the school. I heartily value blending in to a crowd.
3. Historic buildings replace those useless, empty stretches of lawn found at other schools, which only ever attract the kind people who want attention.
4. I can eat at restaurants—real restaurants between classes, not in a cafeteria filled with students. Also, as I’m old enough to drink, I can grab a beer before Latin if I have the need.
5. It is often cheaper to live off-campus that in the dorms. Having your own place has the obvious charms, but in terms of University living, you can avoid almost everyone if you want.
Before I moved here, when I was still deciding where to finish my B.A., a friend already living here warned me that because it was a small place, people got into your business. Yes, she said, the small-town feel was nice, but the person you most want to avoid will pass you on the street. It’s one of the reasons I hated living in a dorm, going to school on a designated enclosed campus, where the classrooms, offices, dorms, and other buildings were all separated from the city around them. My school’s campus covers four or five blocks, with mostly University buildings around them, but I walk to class on the same streets other people walk to work. One of my classes is in a converted townhouse—the workshop meeting in what was once a dining room, complete with fireplace and chandelier.
One giant disadvantage has nothing to do with a city-campus in general but more with this city. There is no decent public transportation, and as I live two miles from campus and was not built for walking, I’m forced to drive back and forth.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
"why does it cost so much?"
It’s a thought that continually pops up whenever I buy books, whether for class or just for me. I just saved an ass load of money buying my texts for next semester from Amazon instead of the campus bookstore (recently bought out by B&N and therefore will not be frequented by yours truly unless I’m desperate or for some reason absolutely need a sweatshirt with my college’s name on it). There is this one privately owned bookstore near campus where I usually shop, but Amazon even beat them for once. Shame.
But that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t really know where my money is going when I shell out $25 for a book. I read recently an article describing J. K. Rowling’s (Harry Potter) book-deal, where it said she gets between 10 and 13 percent (don’t remember which) per book. So basically when some kid coughs up the $40+ for Goblet of Fire, Rowling gets about 10% ($4). Which means if she sells 100,000 copies, she makes $400,000. Great for her, authors should be dreaming of that many people reading their stuff, and making such a living off it.
But who gets the other 90%? The publisher? The printer? I know the agent gets 10% (15% if overseas), but that comes out of Rowling’s cut, right?
It would be harder to swallow, but then I remember all the advertising that she gets, how every time a book is released (I suppose was released as there are no more) there were midnight readings, parties, giant spectacles going on, and that someone has to pay for that, even if it brings in book buyers and their parents.
But that doesn’t change the fact that I don’t really know where my money is going when I shell out $25 for a book. I read recently an article describing J. K. Rowling’s (Harry Potter) book-deal, where it said she gets between 10 and 13 percent (don’t remember which) per book. So basically when some kid coughs up the $40+ for Goblet of Fire, Rowling gets about 10% ($4). Which means if she sells 100,000 copies, she makes $400,000. Great for her, authors should be dreaming of that many people reading their stuff, and making such a living off it.
But who gets the other 90%? The publisher? The printer? I know the agent gets 10% (15% if overseas), but that comes out of Rowling’s cut, right?
It would be harder to swallow, but then I remember all the advertising that she gets, how every time a book is released (I suppose was released as there are no more) there were midnight readings, parties, giant spectacles going on, and that someone has to pay for that, even if it brings in book buyers and their parents.
Saturday, August 9, 2008
"quotation marks."
Serving as an introduction, this “whatever-it-is” will be extremely boring. It will be an attempt at capturing that “something” that can only be exorcised in words. More specifically, it is the continuing ethereal narrative of my thoughts as a soon to be Undergrad, hope to be Graduate student, and continual, irrevocable writer.
As of today, I have nothing published outside of those art magazines universities and colleges put out that no one reads except the people who have something published in them. I write fiction, dabble in poetry, and prefer reading to most other things.
I imagine most people start these things because the feel they have something to say. Something to share with others. Some unique take no one else can capture just the same. I imagine that it’s for a similar reason a lot of people take up the pen, or the typewriter, or the word processor, or the paint brush, the clay knife, the drawing board and t-square. But it’s been my experience that artists create because they can't not create.
There is some unnamable thing inside them that needs to be walked around the page, around the canvas once in a while. Some devote their lives to it; a lucky few make their living at it. They see the struggle to create as worthwhile, and they revel in the setbacks, the disappointments, the rejections. And I guess I’m kind of one of them.
As of today, I have nothing published outside of those art magazines universities and colleges put out that no one reads except the people who have something published in them. I write fiction, dabble in poetry, and prefer reading to most other things.
I imagine most people start these things because the feel they have something to say. Something to share with others. Some unique take no one else can capture just the same. I imagine that it’s for a similar reason a lot of people take up the pen, or the typewriter, or the word processor, or the paint brush, the clay knife, the drawing board and t-square. But it’s been my experience that artists create because they can't not create.
There is some unnamable thing inside them that needs to be walked around the page, around the canvas once in a while. Some devote their lives to it; a lucky few make their living at it. They see the struggle to create as worthwhile, and they revel in the setbacks, the disappointments, the rejections. And I guess I’m kind of one of them.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
