March 30th, 2006
OK, so it has been mentioned by some people that my rants have been pretty dark and depressed / depressing the last month or so. This is undoubtedly true, and I think that the boring nature I talked about (maybe it's no true, maybe it's a harsh self-assessment?) in my last rant has a lot to do with my perception of the uniformity and steady heavy-handed darkness of my thoughts.
I started work on a novel a few days ago, and though I don't want to talk too much about it here, I thought I should explain myself a bit. I thought:
Let's not write another 100,000 words of boring exposition about how we are helpless slaves to our own censure and others' assholery. Been there. Done that. (Repeatedly.) Instead, let's write something exciting ... interesting ... something people would like to read and can't put down until it's 3:00 in the morning or they've reached the last page.
So up sprang ... well, maybe not a plot, but a beginning that I thought would keep me and everyone else satisfied: My main character walks down the street and catches, out of the corner of his eye, a struggle high up on a building under construction. As he turns to look, he sees a man fall 100 feet to his messy death, practically at my protagonist's feet. And thus the novel would open.
"Oooh," I thought, "This is a departure in my writing. Not only does something happen, but it happens at the start, not at the agonizing end when the point of it is practically moot." And then I realised that I have been going this way anyhow. The excitement isn't in the actions. I have lots of stories I've written where things happen, but not a lot of stories where there is excitement about it.
And I suppose that is why I stopped myself and thought about this story that was shaping up in my mind. I don't want to solve my fears by writing yet more well-written boring shit that nobody wants to read. Now I want something exciting. And the story, though a very good (and probably the only) start, is just part of it.
In piano terms, which are more familiar to me: I can play my scales. Now I want to make it sing ... and you don't get there by continuing to focus on the mechanics, do you? No sirree, Bub. You get there by feeling and rhythm. If the mechanics are sound and solid, you can forget them somewhat and focus on what you are actually doing with your hands.
So the guy falling to his death from a half-completed building is not enough. Howzabout:
From out of the rows of identical unlit concrete cave mouths came an image of a flailing man, even in its final few seconds trying vainly to hold onto its spark of life, limbs windmilling and reaching in vain for purchase. And then, in a most brutal insult to the mind and body formed and controlled by their owner for the years of its existence, a short messy ending so quick that even the dignity of pain was denied.
Yeah, that's better. Well, for me ... not so good for that guy ...
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