And then there was Strange...
So after a long venting session last night with the best housemate on the planet about my fears that I would never write anything good again I finally quit "dickin around" and broke out my Clarion West story box. I spent the last few weeks living -- kayaking, blogging, working, gardening, all the things I missed while I was away. I was collecting stories -- and I have another twenty post its full of ideas, but I WAS starting to worry if the dreaded BLOCK had set in.
I couldn't help smiling, flipping through manuscripts and deciphering Ada's illegible script -- even BJ got into the action, scanning through critiques and adding "wow, that's HARSH" or "I can't believe everyone put that much work into their critiques."
I found it impossible to explain that harsh and detailed were good things -- especially when she got to Swanwick's crit of Strange and her jaw dropped.
"What are all these X's?" She asked, holding up a page where nearly everything but a sentence was completely obliterated.
"The things he thought I should cut." I said.
"And the word 'Brick'?" She flipped through another page and held up the page with the crudely scrawled word beside an enormous chunk of text.
"Its an info-dump," I tried to explain. She stared at me, apparently I still wasn't speaking English yet. "sorta. Like there's just too much information there all at once."
"So are you going to do it?"
"Well, maybe." I shrugged. "He was right about a lot of that opening, its just clunky and awkward and doesn't go anywhere."
She put down Swanwick's crit, genuinely alarmed. Did she think the edits were wack, or that I was -- who knows... Next she picked up the manuscript with precise, penciled notes on college bound notepaper.
"Is this Octavia Butler's handwriting?" Her voice held more than a touch of awe.
"Yeah," I said, "she liked it pretty much. Don't change too much. Isnt' it funny how two great writers can fundamentally disagree on the same story. But there are obviously a few things that need to be tweaked."
"She didn't understand why Mara slept with Ben." She flipped through the pages, obviously looking for an explicit sex scene.
I laughed, grinning with the memory. "Nobody did. Its called a Clarion ending. Its what happens at 3 in the morning when you have a story due by 9 and you're three quarters of the way through and have yet to edit. Eddie ex-Machina."
Finding no sex, she put the manuscript down. She has no idea how hard it was for me to even IMPLY two characters got it on in my story -- I didn't even attempt the Lesbian Vampire Erotica call for entries that had everyone else on fire the last week of CW. When the phone rang she hopped off the couch to answer then returned to top off my glass of wine.
"Hmmm?" I heard her voice, but I was deep in manuscripts.
"Are you gonna work on it now?"
I looked up blankly. A few minutes ago I was feeling morose, like there wasn't a story left to be told in the world. At 8:30 I contemplated going to bed and starting the DaVinci Code. But with my hands full of manuscripts of my first CW story everything changed. I reached for my laptop. Maybe it was the yerba mate, sipped between grimaced gulps of a barely passable merlot. Maybe it was just looking at the first story I'd turned in -- written hastily in 24 hours because the first week at CW, though I was content to coast on my submission story, Octavia Butler set me on fire when she asked "Don't you have anything else to turn in?" The resulting crudity with potential and all the bad grammar I could muster was the best draft yet of a story that had been "stuck" in my head for years.
Yes, I was going to work on it RIGHT NOW. And every night till I got the damn thing ready to go back to the CWers for the re-grilling of its little 30 page existence.
"Not ready for bed just yet." I started sorting crits, making mental notes about what needed to go, and what could stay. She drifted off to her book and bed.
I didn't look up again till 12:15...AM. Ug. I have to work in the morning. HAVE TO WORK.
Shit, I have to be in the dentist chair at 8...Might as well crank out another graf and tighten up that conversation between Manny and Mara. Thank god the battery in my laptop finally threatened to die or I might still be working.
As it is, I can't wait to get back to it.
In other news, I am sleeping much better on the inflatable mattress than even I anticpated. Its not as bad as I thought it was: at least my back doesn't hurt half as bad and I don't wake myself up rolling over on the squealy old box spring. Now, the search for a proper futon begins.
I have found the proper kayak, however. She is beautiful and I love her -- now I just have to break the news to Betty. When T comes back, I'm sure he can comfort her better than I by finding some other kayaking newbie for her to teach the ways of the river to. My new lady is a Dagger Juice 6.9...she is a red hot mama and LOVERLY...now I gotta find a better paddle.
No new cabbages to report but the fall crop of collard greens is finally coming up -- yippee!
I couldn't help smiling, flipping through manuscripts and deciphering Ada's illegible script -- even BJ got into the action, scanning through critiques and adding "wow, that's HARSH" or "I can't believe everyone put that much work into their critiques."
I found it impossible to explain that harsh and detailed were good things -- especially when she got to Swanwick's crit of Strange and her jaw dropped.
"What are all these X's?" She asked, holding up a page where nearly everything but a sentence was completely obliterated.
"The things he thought I should cut." I said.
"And the word 'Brick'?" She flipped through another page and held up the page with the crudely scrawled word beside an enormous chunk of text.
"Its an info-dump," I tried to explain. She stared at me, apparently I still wasn't speaking English yet. "sorta. Like there's just too much information there all at once."
"So are you going to do it?"
"Well, maybe." I shrugged. "He was right about a lot of that opening, its just clunky and awkward and doesn't go anywhere."
She put down Swanwick's crit, genuinely alarmed. Did she think the edits were wack, or that I was -- who knows... Next she picked up the manuscript with precise, penciled notes on college bound notepaper.
"Is this Octavia Butler's handwriting?" Her voice held more than a touch of awe.
"Yeah," I said, "she liked it pretty much. Don't change too much. Isnt' it funny how two great writers can fundamentally disagree on the same story. But there are obviously a few things that need to be tweaked."
"She didn't understand why Mara slept with Ben." She flipped through the pages, obviously looking for an explicit sex scene.
I laughed, grinning with the memory. "Nobody did. Its called a Clarion ending. Its what happens at 3 in the morning when you have a story due by 9 and you're three quarters of the way through and have yet to edit. Eddie ex-Machina."
Finding no sex, she put the manuscript down. She has no idea how hard it was for me to even IMPLY two characters got it on in my story -- I didn't even attempt the Lesbian Vampire Erotica call for entries that had everyone else on fire the last week of CW. When the phone rang she hopped off the couch to answer then returned to top off my glass of wine.
"Hmmm?" I heard her voice, but I was deep in manuscripts.
"Are you gonna work on it now?"
I looked up blankly. A few minutes ago I was feeling morose, like there wasn't a story left to be told in the world. At 8:30 I contemplated going to bed and starting the DaVinci Code. But with my hands full of manuscripts of my first CW story everything changed. I reached for my laptop. Maybe it was the yerba mate, sipped between grimaced gulps of a barely passable merlot. Maybe it was just looking at the first story I'd turned in -- written hastily in 24 hours because the first week at CW, though I was content to coast on my submission story, Octavia Butler set me on fire when she asked "Don't you have anything else to turn in?" The resulting crudity with potential and all the bad grammar I could muster was the best draft yet of a story that had been "stuck" in my head for years.
Yes, I was going to work on it RIGHT NOW. And every night till I got the damn thing ready to go back to the CWers for the re-grilling of its little 30 page existence.
"Not ready for bed just yet." I started sorting crits, making mental notes about what needed to go, and what could stay. She drifted off to her book and bed.
I didn't look up again till 12:15...AM. Ug. I have to work in the morning. HAVE TO WORK.
Shit, I have to be in the dentist chair at 8...Might as well crank out another graf and tighten up that conversation between Manny and Mara. Thank god the battery in my laptop finally threatened to die or I might still be working.
As it is, I can't wait to get back to it.
In other news, I am sleeping much better on the inflatable mattress than even I anticpated. Its not as bad as I thought it was: at least my back doesn't hurt half as bad and I don't wake myself up rolling over on the squealy old box spring. Now, the search for a proper futon begins.
I have found the proper kayak, however. She is beautiful and I love her -- now I just have to break the news to Betty. When T comes back, I'm sure he can comfort her better than I by finding some other kayaking newbie for her to teach the ways of the river to. My new lady is a Dagger Juice 6.9...she is a red hot mama and LOVERLY...now I gotta find a better paddle.
No new cabbages to report but the fall crop of collard greens is finally coming up -- yippee!
Labels: Write Yourself Out Of This One
posted by Eddie at 5:56 PM
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