And so it comes to pass that resolutions fail, and fail quickly, no matter how lofty or open-ended they may be. I lasted all of three days, and what did it get me? A few words, a few search results, another blip in the annals of history adding to the clutter: unessential, unloved, unmourned.
Okay, so I guess it's no secret that I was feeling kinda down today. Granted, I had my reasons: the job search is as frustrating as ever, and it is (was) Monday after all. Earlier I couldn't stay awake, and now that night has come I find sleep nearly impossible. Thus the cycle is set to repeat itself, and I'll wake up feeling tired again tomorrow to prepare for another sleepless night. It's not that I dread falling asleep, really. I guess it's more that I dread getting up with so little to look forward to.
I don't think I'm the kind of guy who's defined by his job, but a job fills the time, gives it structure. In fact, I feel as though I could accomplish more here at home if I actually was working during the day. The trick is finding work that doesn't feel like a waste of time, which is harder than it sounds (though right now finding any job whatsoever is pretty darned hard to begin with).
Also keeping me up are thoughts of death, as usual. It's not that I fear the great unknowable of What Comes After, though. It's more that I'm terrified of leaving this earth without having exercised my true potential. But does that feeling really happen to people? That sudden etherial voice saying, “You did good, kid,” and making it all worthwhile? If it does, it can't possibly be the kind of thing that happens too often. So why should I expect it to happen to me? I guess deep down inside I have this compelling need to believe that life isn't arbitrary; it's the only thing that keeps me going, really.
But high standards are a good thing in the long run. They're no good without discipline and perseverance though, and that's where I need to start picking up the slack. How does that work? You can't just say to yourself “Self, be more disciplined!” and have that be the end of it. It needs a shift in perspective, a reason to hope. But I have plenty of good things in my life; shouldn't they be enough? Is this all just selfishness and vanity (which I guess would explain why it's appearing in a blog)?
All I know is that I can't depend on outside forces. That's a lesson I started learning a long time ago, but it's still sinking in. My biggest crutch is still the Internet. How truly unfortunate it is that my greatest source of productivity is also my greatest distraction! I've spent far too much of my days sitting right here, staring at this screen, but at the same time I can't see a practical way out of it. Computers are my world now, for better or for worse. Surely there are more destructive vices in the world, but it's still something I've got to overcome: the sooner, the better.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Running
And I run as fast as I can, but it's never fast enough. I'm not good at this. But I'm better now than I used to be, surely. Back in high school I couldn't even go a quarter of a mile without needing to slow down and now I've got two half marathons under my belt. Granted I still tend to finish towards the back of the pack, but not too far back. In fact it looks like I do better when compared just to other Staten Islanders; maybe it's the pollution, maybe it's all the smokers. Maybe we're fatter down here from all those big Italian meals like the ones that assaulted me during the holidays and which I'm back in the gym now to counteract. Not that it isn't great food, mind you.
The madness all started in the fall of 2007 when my on again off again love affair with the YMCA became on again... again. I was particularly drawn in this time by the notion of what they called a “fitness coach”. A fitness coach is something like a personal trainer, except he's not around all the time and instead is just responsible for setting you up on all the machines with programs that match your ability, then checking in every few weeks to see how it's going. This process repeats for about three or four months, and then you're on your own again. It wasn't very intensive, but it was enough, and it got me using the treadmills, which I hadn't really tried much before (I was more a fan of the elliptical machines, but since they've gotten in the newer models I've lost interest). Running on the treadmill led to running in the park, which in turn led to joining the New York Road Runners so that I could finally try my hand at some competitive racing. That's when I learned how far I had to go: those folks who do three miles an hour while they read a magazine in the workout room don't tend to sign up for this kind of stuff.
But still, it helped me build up my endurance. The real world is always harder than the treadmill, what with the wind resistance and the small but important shifts in the surface that end up slowing you down just enough to make you wonder what went wrong after coming from the perfectly flat and stationary simulation. The scenery changes though, which is nice, and the park is obviously a lot prettier than staring at a wall (or more specifically, at a window that looks out onto a wall).
One thing that changed since I started running is that I don't listen to music anymore. In the beginning it was the only thing that got me through my workouts, and I couldn't imagine going through the long, repetitive slog without it. But as I started to work myself harder I found that it was starting to become a distraction, making me dizzy at times, and it certainly didn't help that earbuds are phenomenally bad at staying in place while your body is constantly bouncing up and down and your arms keep threatening to snag on the wires and rip them out. My iPod also seemed to have a habit of turning itself upside down in the pocket of my shorts, and while I know that there are accessories that prevent this kind of situation I never had the desire to pursue them.
I overdo it sometimes, and it worries me. I've thrown up more times now from exercise than I have from drinking, and while the overall total is still pretty low it's a feeling that I can do without. When I've overdone it (and there doesn't seem to be any way to know when I've overdone it until it's too late), I start to feel about the closest I've ever felt to dying, save perhaps that one time at summer camp when I nearly drowned. It's like there's an intense pressure building up inside me, and I don't have a way to release it. Sitting down helps. Closing my eyes and pressing my palms against them to shut out all possible light helps. Vomiting definitely helps, if and when it finally comes around. I've never passed out from this sensation; in fact, I've never fainted in my life: I wonder now and then what it feels like. The sensation's only happened to me a handful of times, usually after using the weight machines, so I guess I should be glad that I need to wait for an appointment to set my FitLinxx account up again on the new machines now that they've been replaced.
In a way, I've always been a runner, or at least a sprinter. As a kid I had a tendency to break into a run at odd times, just because I found the energy for it building up inside of me; I especially loved to do it in crowded places like malls. I'll still catch myself doing it every so often, but now more because I'm in a hurry than just for the pleasure of feeling everything whipping past me. It's weird... normally I'm irrationally self-conscious about the opinions of strangers, but somehow that never seems to factor into the equation when I'm running (unless I'm around other people who are running, in which case they sometimes shame me into running faster).
As of right now I probably won't be running for a day or two. I think I twisted a calf muscle on the treadmill tonight, so even just normal old walking is a pain in the ass (a.k.a. leg). The strange thing is that it happened during the cool down phase, after I'd been running on it just fine for forty minutes. At least this time I was sane enough to end my workout and go home instead of just trying to work through the pain and probably screwing it up even worse. I've got to take care of this body... I'm finding out for the first time that it has hard and fast limitations that are probably only going to increase through the years. No complaints, though: it's had a good run.
The madness all started in the fall of 2007 when my on again off again love affair with the YMCA became on again... again. I was particularly drawn in this time by the notion of what they called a “fitness coach”. A fitness coach is something like a personal trainer, except he's not around all the time and instead is just responsible for setting you up on all the machines with programs that match your ability, then checking in every few weeks to see how it's going. This process repeats for about three or four months, and then you're on your own again. It wasn't very intensive, but it was enough, and it got me using the treadmills, which I hadn't really tried much before (I was more a fan of the elliptical machines, but since they've gotten in the newer models I've lost interest). Running on the treadmill led to running in the park, which in turn led to joining the New York Road Runners so that I could finally try my hand at some competitive racing. That's when I learned how far I had to go: those folks who do three miles an hour while they read a magazine in the workout room don't tend to sign up for this kind of stuff.
But still, it helped me build up my endurance. The real world is always harder than the treadmill, what with the wind resistance and the small but important shifts in the surface that end up slowing you down just enough to make you wonder what went wrong after coming from the perfectly flat and stationary simulation. The scenery changes though, which is nice, and the park is obviously a lot prettier than staring at a wall (or more specifically, at a window that looks out onto a wall).
One thing that changed since I started running is that I don't listen to music anymore. In the beginning it was the only thing that got me through my workouts, and I couldn't imagine going through the long, repetitive slog without it. But as I started to work myself harder I found that it was starting to become a distraction, making me dizzy at times, and it certainly didn't help that earbuds are phenomenally bad at staying in place while your body is constantly bouncing up and down and your arms keep threatening to snag on the wires and rip them out. My iPod also seemed to have a habit of turning itself upside down in the pocket of my shorts, and while I know that there are accessories that prevent this kind of situation I never had the desire to pursue them.
I overdo it sometimes, and it worries me. I've thrown up more times now from exercise than I have from drinking, and while the overall total is still pretty low it's a feeling that I can do without. When I've overdone it (and there doesn't seem to be any way to know when I've overdone it until it's too late), I start to feel about the closest I've ever felt to dying, save perhaps that one time at summer camp when I nearly drowned. It's like there's an intense pressure building up inside me, and I don't have a way to release it. Sitting down helps. Closing my eyes and pressing my palms against them to shut out all possible light helps. Vomiting definitely helps, if and when it finally comes around. I've never passed out from this sensation; in fact, I've never fainted in my life: I wonder now and then what it feels like. The sensation's only happened to me a handful of times, usually after using the weight machines, so I guess I should be glad that I need to wait for an appointment to set my FitLinxx account up again on the new machines now that they've been replaced.
In a way, I've always been a runner, or at least a sprinter. As a kid I had a tendency to break into a run at odd times, just because I found the energy for it building up inside of me; I especially loved to do it in crowded places like malls. I'll still catch myself doing it every so often, but now more because I'm in a hurry than just for the pleasure of feeling everything whipping past me. It's weird... normally I'm irrationally self-conscious about the opinions of strangers, but somehow that never seems to factor into the equation when I'm running (unless I'm around other people who are running, in which case they sometimes shame me into running faster).
As of right now I probably won't be running for a day or two. I think I twisted a calf muscle on the treadmill tonight, so even just normal old walking is a pain in the ass (a.k.a. leg). The strange thing is that it happened during the cool down phase, after I'd been running on it just fine for forty minutes. At least this time I was sane enough to end my workout and go home instead of just trying to work through the pain and probably screwing it up even worse. I've got to take care of this body... I'm finding out for the first time that it has hard and fast limitations that are probably only going to increase through the years. No complaints, though: it's had a good run.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Movies of 2008: The Show So Far...
I'm kind of a movie buff, so I'd like to think I have a relatively well-informed opinion on the subject. That's not to say I'd ever want to be a critic; my interest in movies has thrived mainly on my luxury of being allowed to only see movies that actually interest me, and even then a stinker slips by every so often. (My Netflix account is overrun with 4-star ratings, which I guess is a good sign that I've been picking the right ones all these years)
But like everybody else my taste is subjective, and I try to keep that in mind when I give my opinions. Nothing pisses me off more than a critic who talks about a movie in absolute terms, like saying that a director “deliberately made a movie that no one but him could possibly want to see” (in reference to Mister Lonely – a film that I thought was flawed, but infinitely more interesting for being so). Of course, I get pissed off a great deal more when I disagree with the person, but a bad argument for the right cause offends my sense of justice in a way that probably isn't entirely appropriate in the grand scheme of things. Bad writing is bad writing (again, subjectively), regardless of its intent.
Let's focus on the positive for now. The list of my favorite movies from 2008 isn't complete yet, since there are still plenty that I haven't gotten around to yet (although being here in New York certainly gives me more of an opportunity than most folks across the country). I have, however, seen enough to at least get started on the subject.
Iron Man: Robert Downey Jr. has finally found the perfect outlet for his oily charms here, and it's about damned time. Who knew that it'd turn out to be worth over $300 million? After all, it's not like Iron Man is everybody's favorite when it comes to Marvel comics superheroes. Heck, I never even touched the title back when I was a collector, and the good folks at Marvel would routinely end up with a good portion of my weekly allowance during my junior high and high school years. (They'd also end up taking a great deal more of my money later thanks to Ron “The Billionaire Asshole not the Awesome Character Actor” Perelman driving them into bankruptcy after I'd bought some of their stock – the first stock purchase I ever made, for that matter) Jeff Bridges also brought a fair amount of awesome by playing against type, and Gwyneth Paltrow actually surprised me with the amount of personality and vulnerability she brought to a role that some other actresses might have seen as an easy fat paycheck.
Wall-E: Pixar can do no wrong. I'm convinced of this now. Even their second-tier stuff is wildly ambitious, and the chances they take never cease to pay off. But even in such rarified company, I think Wall-E stands out. To take a situation where your cast consists mostly of robots with extremely limited vocabularies in a post-apocalyptic environment and transform it into a heartwarming family film should be impossible, but sure enough I was practically moved to tears at the end. That's honestly something not many movies can do for me, regardless of who made them. There's so much emotion in these characters and they're expressions, though, that you'd pretty much have to be dead-set on hating the thing going in if you end up not feeling SOMETHING in the way of empathy (and even then, I don't think there are any guarantees).
The Dark Knight: Okay, so these choices are starting to look obvious. There's nothing I can say about this movie that hasn't already been said: it takes superheroes to dark new territory, poses devastating ethical questions, and is a hell of a thrill ride to boot. What's amazing though is that you'd expect a movie that goes through so many different emotional tones in such a short period of time to feel jarring or false, but this one just plows right through and comes out feeling like a pretty satisfying whole when all's said and done.
Doubt: From the man who brought you Joe vs. the Volcano! Actually that's not at all a slight, but I can't think of two more drastically different movies that have come from the same writer-director (especially when the man, John Patrick Shanley, only directed two films in his entire career). Where Joe was lush, colorful, expansive and exotic, Doubt is bleak, grey, confined and reserved. That's by design though, and as a result the focus ends up squarely on the performances, and folks like Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams aren't in the business of disappointing people. There are certain Christian-themed movies, like The Passion of the Christ, that I have a powerful reaction to but can't easily recommend to people who haven't spent a fair amount of time hanging out in churches. This isn't one of those movies. I think Hoffman could've afforded to add a little more ambiguity to his performance in the early going, but Streep showed both sides of her character (the stern, terrifying bully and the exhausted older woman with a dark sense of humor) very effectively; I was surprised that others considered it to be over the top.
Slumdog Millionaire: I just saw this one tonight so it's still swirling around in my head, but I think it deserves a place here (in fact, it's a big part of why I ended up talking about movies for today's blog). It's a difficult movie for me to place: on one hand it's a story about improbable luck conquering all; on the other, it's a bleak depiction of the desperation that fuels an overwhelming number of Indian lives. (No matter what this film's merits as art are, no one will ever mistake it for an enticing travelogue; I'm pretty sure that India's tourism industry isn't happy about that) But I can easily overlook the clash simply because it's a story about the kind of people most of us never think about, wrapped up in a package that's easier for mass audiences to digest. It's characters aren't simple, and while it may not make any profound statements it at least leaves the viewer with plenty to think about.
Okay, so that's five off the top of my head. I'm sure I'm forgetting some, but I've got plenty of space to discuss them another time. I still need to see Milk, Revolutionary Road, The Wrestler, The Reader, Frost/Nixon and others that haven't made their way to Staten Island yet. In fact, I'm planning on heading into the city to catch Steven Soderbergh's Che as soon as possible, since I've got a feeling it might not get down here at all.
There were others, like Synecdoche, New York and the afore-mentioned Mister Lonely, that were fascinating but not completely satisfying, and there were some interesting barely-released finds like Expired (or maybe this is all just the Samantha Morton fanboy in me talking). In documentaries, Man on Wire was compelling but maybe a little too cute, and Standard Operating Procedure went pretty deep into the minds of the torturers at Abu Ghraib, but still not quite far enough.
Overall I think it's been a real step up from '07, and I'm interested to see what happens with the Academy Awards (the only televised awards show that I can still bring myself to care about). Hear that, 2009? Don't let me down!
But like everybody else my taste is subjective, and I try to keep that in mind when I give my opinions. Nothing pisses me off more than a critic who talks about a movie in absolute terms, like saying that a director “deliberately made a movie that no one but him could possibly want to see” (in reference to Mister Lonely – a film that I thought was flawed, but infinitely more interesting for being so). Of course, I get pissed off a great deal more when I disagree with the person, but a bad argument for the right cause offends my sense of justice in a way that probably isn't entirely appropriate in the grand scheme of things. Bad writing is bad writing (again, subjectively), regardless of its intent.
Let's focus on the positive for now. The list of my favorite movies from 2008 isn't complete yet, since there are still plenty that I haven't gotten around to yet (although being here in New York certainly gives me more of an opportunity than most folks across the country). I have, however, seen enough to at least get started on the subject.
Iron Man: Robert Downey Jr. has finally found the perfect outlet for his oily charms here, and it's about damned time. Who knew that it'd turn out to be worth over $300 million? After all, it's not like Iron Man is everybody's favorite when it comes to Marvel comics superheroes. Heck, I never even touched the title back when I was a collector, and the good folks at Marvel would routinely end up with a good portion of my weekly allowance during my junior high and high school years. (They'd also end up taking a great deal more of my money later thanks to Ron “The Billionaire Asshole not the Awesome Character Actor” Perelman driving them into bankruptcy after I'd bought some of their stock – the first stock purchase I ever made, for that matter) Jeff Bridges also brought a fair amount of awesome by playing against type, and Gwyneth Paltrow actually surprised me with the amount of personality and vulnerability she brought to a role that some other actresses might have seen as an easy fat paycheck.
Wall-E: Pixar can do no wrong. I'm convinced of this now. Even their second-tier stuff is wildly ambitious, and the chances they take never cease to pay off. But even in such rarified company, I think Wall-E stands out. To take a situation where your cast consists mostly of robots with extremely limited vocabularies in a post-apocalyptic environment and transform it into a heartwarming family film should be impossible, but sure enough I was practically moved to tears at the end. That's honestly something not many movies can do for me, regardless of who made them. There's so much emotion in these characters and they're expressions, though, that you'd pretty much have to be dead-set on hating the thing going in if you end up not feeling SOMETHING in the way of empathy (and even then, I don't think there are any guarantees).
The Dark Knight: Okay, so these choices are starting to look obvious. There's nothing I can say about this movie that hasn't already been said: it takes superheroes to dark new territory, poses devastating ethical questions, and is a hell of a thrill ride to boot. What's amazing though is that you'd expect a movie that goes through so many different emotional tones in such a short period of time to feel jarring or false, but this one just plows right through and comes out feeling like a pretty satisfying whole when all's said and done.
Doubt: From the man who brought you Joe vs. the Volcano! Actually that's not at all a slight, but I can't think of two more drastically different movies that have come from the same writer-director (especially when the man, John Patrick Shanley, only directed two films in his entire career). Where Joe was lush, colorful, expansive and exotic, Doubt is bleak, grey, confined and reserved. That's by design though, and as a result the focus ends up squarely on the performances, and folks like Meryl Streep, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Amy Adams aren't in the business of disappointing people. There are certain Christian-themed movies, like The Passion of the Christ, that I have a powerful reaction to but can't easily recommend to people who haven't spent a fair amount of time hanging out in churches. This isn't one of those movies. I think Hoffman could've afforded to add a little more ambiguity to his performance in the early going, but Streep showed both sides of her character (the stern, terrifying bully and the exhausted older woman with a dark sense of humor) very effectively; I was surprised that others considered it to be over the top.
Slumdog Millionaire: I just saw this one tonight so it's still swirling around in my head, but I think it deserves a place here (in fact, it's a big part of why I ended up talking about movies for today's blog). It's a difficult movie for me to place: on one hand it's a story about improbable luck conquering all; on the other, it's a bleak depiction of the desperation that fuels an overwhelming number of Indian lives. (No matter what this film's merits as art are, no one will ever mistake it for an enticing travelogue; I'm pretty sure that India's tourism industry isn't happy about that) But I can easily overlook the clash simply because it's a story about the kind of people most of us never think about, wrapped up in a package that's easier for mass audiences to digest. It's characters aren't simple, and while it may not make any profound statements it at least leaves the viewer with plenty to think about.
Okay, so that's five off the top of my head. I'm sure I'm forgetting some, but I've got plenty of space to discuss them another time. I still need to see Milk, Revolutionary Road, The Wrestler, The Reader, Frost/Nixon and others that haven't made their way to Staten Island yet. In fact, I'm planning on heading into the city to catch Steven Soderbergh's Che as soon as possible, since I've got a feeling it might not get down here at all.
There were others, like Synecdoche, New York and the afore-mentioned Mister Lonely, that were fascinating but not completely satisfying, and there were some interesting barely-released finds like Expired (or maybe this is all just the Samantha Morton fanboy in me talking). In documentaries, Man on Wire was compelling but maybe a little too cute, and Standard Operating Procedure went pretty deep into the minds of the torturers at Abu Ghraib, but still not quite far enough.
Overall I think it's been a real step up from '07, and I'm interested to see what happens with the Academy Awards (the only televised awards show that I can still bring myself to care about). Hear that, 2009? Don't let me down!
Thursday, January 1, 2009
The 1,667 Project
It's nothing short of a ridiculous resolution. Right after making it I'm already in danger of not sticking to it. (Not to the strictest letter at least: I've always been a late night writer)
So here's the deal: for two years now I've participated in National Novel Writing Month (a.k.a. NaNoWriMo for short, or just plain NaNo for shorter), and each time I began the month feeling as though I was just beginning to exercise a muscle that had atrophied from severe lack of use. Granted, the goal of writing 50,000 words in 30 days is no small undertaking, but it seemed as though it'd be simple enough to get myself to write just 1,667 words a day: that was the average I needed to maintain in order to finish up and “win” by the end of November, and of course I ended up failing miserably at first.
Part of the reason for this was that I'd chosen a premise that I didn't realize I wouldn't enjoy fleshing out until it was too late. It was a science fiction story (which should have been my first clue that there'd be trouble) about a man who wakes up in an empty apartment with memories of having been a space marine, with no idea how he ended up in his present location. The story was told in first person present tense for the apartment scenes, which were broken up by past tense chapters describing his space marine exploits as his base on a distant planet was gradually overrun by a zombifying virus.
Almost as soon as I began talking in this man's voice I started to hate him. He was whiny, and wasted far too much time bemoaning the improbability of his ending up in the bare apartment (though such delaying tactics in truth existed mainly to pad my word count: a common tactic for NaNo). He even started to develop superpowers after a while, and he STILL continued to complain!
During the course of the story I introduced a secondary character: a peppy young woman named Joy, who had an abusive boyfriend. She immediately became more interesting than my so-called hero. In fact, I even made an abrupt change to turn HER into the space marine, eliminating my main character entirely and explaining away the situation by framing it as the act of a displeased god taking the form of a seven year old.
But I still faced the larger problem that all of my situations seemed to be devolving into cliches, no matter how seemingly interesting they were when they started out. So, more than halfway through the month and still only 15,000 words in, I took a deep breath and I started from scratch. Suddenly I was telling a relatively conventional story about a lifetime loser who ships off to join the space marines and make something of himself.
Of course it wasn't quite as plain as that. The space marines in my story (all versions of it) weren't exactly the most venerable branch of the military, and had acceptance standards so low that they started to become outright suspicious. Plus, it was all framed in a world where a totalitarian government had decreed that everyone needed to thoroughly document every single day of their lives. My main character had opted to do this by writing blogs of no less than 5,000 words per day, which meant that I could reach my 50,000-word goal if I managed to get through describing a week in his shoes. Right away the story got easier to write, and I found ways to incorporate everything from flying monkeys to cat churches to giant aliens to coffee sandwiches into a narrative that became gradually more deranged as it went along. I even managed to work in references to the earlier drafts, including an extended conversation that my main character had with Joy when she appeared to him as a possibly space madness-induced vision.
Even with that sped-up pace I still found myself having to climb an almost impossible hill of words over the Thanksgiving weekend as I traveled to visit family. When all was said and done I ended up writing 7,000 words on that fateful Sunday of the 30th (up from 5,000 the year before), and 1,667 started to look like the easiest thing in the world. If only I'd been able to keep that up from the start...
So that's what brings me here right now, writing this blog entry: I decided that my new year's resolution would be to write those 1,667 words a day every day of the year. I'm allowed to write about anything that strikes my fancy, just as long as I'm putting thoughts together into the kinds of descriptive sentences that seemed to elude me at the beginning of this past November. I have no idea who's going to read it, and I can't possibly expect them to enjoy something that by design will no doubt be rambling, random, and have very little bearing on anyone's life besides my own. But at least I'll be writing, which is more than I was doing before.
Hmm... Only 861 words so far? I was hoping that story would take longer to tell... I guess 1,667 isn't such a breeze after all, especially now that I'm worried about whether what I'm writing will be interesting enough for other people to read all the way through, even though I just pretty much stated that I don't care whether anyone else reads this. Funny how that works out, isn't it? Still, I'm past the halfway point, so I might as well barrel the rest of the way downhill from here.
One thing I noticed about my writing during NaNo was that the words go by a lot faster when I'm writing dialog than they do when I'm trying to describe situations and move the plot along. Heck, even monologues can eat up a lot of words, especially if they're being given by psychopaths in a pure stream of consciousness fashion. But then again plot is usually the hardest part, especially if you want that plot to have a satisfying narrative arc by the time you're through.
In that respect I've been lucky: both of my NaNo plots so far have managed to end almost exactly at the 50,000 mark, even if they've had to do it by veering into incongruously bizarre and/or dramatically unnecessary territory. I know a number of other people who usually end up never finishing their stories, neither during NaNo nor long after the month is over. Granted, I still don't have a satisfying draft of my novel from 2007, but it's a story with a beginning, middle and end, which is an accomplishment in itself.
It occurs to me now that I'm not a person who enjoys talking about himself all that much, and that may be another reason why cranking out all these words right now is so hard. I usually try to be humble in everything that I do, because I fear verging into insufferable egotism if I ever start believing myself to be inherently interesting or eloquent. I'm a know-it-all by nature, but life has a way of punishing me for being too assertive about it. The second I open my mouth with too much pride I end up putting my foot in it, though it seems no matter what I do I end up having trouble relating to people a lot of the time.
But that's what this is all about, right? Improving communication, expressing my ideas in a way that other people can at least attempt to understand, instead of hoping that they can somehow psychically read the emotional waves I try to send them silently. Maybe print isn't my ideal medium, but I'm willing to give it a shot. At least it's active, not passive, and I could use some more activity in my life right now, on several fronts. Will I look back fondly on writing stuff like this? The odds are certainly better than doing the same on the time I spent playing Word Twist on Facebook.
Here's where things start spiraling into “crazy dream” territory: what if what I'm writing, or at least the fact that I'm writing, inspires somebody else to write? Somebody with a unique voice, who has a story to tell that would otherwise go unheard? Again, this isn't an expectation. It's just a wild, improbable hope I have, combined with a continuing belief that doing something, as long as it's not destructive, is better than doing nothing. At the very least I may cure myself from writing too many run-on, comma-strewn sentences in everything that I type, which would be a benefit to people who have to read my stuff for other reasons in the future.
Unfortunately, I can't expect to both write this much and edit it to the point I'd usually be happy with. As a result the flow of all these words may end up being hopelessly jumbled, occasionally to the point where they make sense only to me, and perhaps not even that once I go back and read it later (IF I ever go back and read it later).
I can at least promise that I won't be writing about writing every day: I think I've already exhausted a lot of what I wanted to say about the subject already anyways. There'll probably be plenty of pop culture references and dime store philosophy to come, and I guess there's a chance that it'll end up being seen as more internet pollution by the literati who wish only the best and most relevant work out there showed up in search results (which I must confess would put me among their numbers more often than not).
Maybe I'll cut out some stuff sometimes too, if I end up going places too personal or dull while I'm writing. In that case I may not end up posting a full 1,667 words, but at least they'll exist somewhere. As it stands, it looks like I've finally reached my goal for the day, so I guess I'll sign off now before I waste any material that I might need later.
So here's the deal: for two years now I've participated in National Novel Writing Month (a.k.a. NaNoWriMo for short, or just plain NaNo for shorter), and each time I began the month feeling as though I was just beginning to exercise a muscle that had atrophied from severe lack of use. Granted, the goal of writing 50,000 words in 30 days is no small undertaking, but it seemed as though it'd be simple enough to get myself to write just 1,667 words a day: that was the average I needed to maintain in order to finish up and “win” by the end of November, and of course I ended up failing miserably at first.
Part of the reason for this was that I'd chosen a premise that I didn't realize I wouldn't enjoy fleshing out until it was too late. It was a science fiction story (which should have been my first clue that there'd be trouble) about a man who wakes up in an empty apartment with memories of having been a space marine, with no idea how he ended up in his present location. The story was told in first person present tense for the apartment scenes, which were broken up by past tense chapters describing his space marine exploits as his base on a distant planet was gradually overrun by a zombifying virus.
Almost as soon as I began talking in this man's voice I started to hate him. He was whiny, and wasted far too much time bemoaning the improbability of his ending up in the bare apartment (though such delaying tactics in truth existed mainly to pad my word count: a common tactic for NaNo). He even started to develop superpowers after a while, and he STILL continued to complain!
During the course of the story I introduced a secondary character: a peppy young woman named Joy, who had an abusive boyfriend. She immediately became more interesting than my so-called hero. In fact, I even made an abrupt change to turn HER into the space marine, eliminating my main character entirely and explaining away the situation by framing it as the act of a displeased god taking the form of a seven year old.
But I still faced the larger problem that all of my situations seemed to be devolving into cliches, no matter how seemingly interesting they were when they started out. So, more than halfway through the month and still only 15,000 words in, I took a deep breath and I started from scratch. Suddenly I was telling a relatively conventional story about a lifetime loser who ships off to join the space marines and make something of himself.
Of course it wasn't quite as plain as that. The space marines in my story (all versions of it) weren't exactly the most venerable branch of the military, and had acceptance standards so low that they started to become outright suspicious. Plus, it was all framed in a world where a totalitarian government had decreed that everyone needed to thoroughly document every single day of their lives. My main character had opted to do this by writing blogs of no less than 5,000 words per day, which meant that I could reach my 50,000-word goal if I managed to get through describing a week in his shoes. Right away the story got easier to write, and I found ways to incorporate everything from flying monkeys to cat churches to giant aliens to coffee sandwiches into a narrative that became gradually more deranged as it went along. I even managed to work in references to the earlier drafts, including an extended conversation that my main character had with Joy when she appeared to him as a possibly space madness-induced vision.
Even with that sped-up pace I still found myself having to climb an almost impossible hill of words over the Thanksgiving weekend as I traveled to visit family. When all was said and done I ended up writing 7,000 words on that fateful Sunday of the 30th (up from 5,000 the year before), and 1,667 started to look like the easiest thing in the world. If only I'd been able to keep that up from the start...
So that's what brings me here right now, writing this blog entry: I decided that my new year's resolution would be to write those 1,667 words a day every day of the year. I'm allowed to write about anything that strikes my fancy, just as long as I'm putting thoughts together into the kinds of descriptive sentences that seemed to elude me at the beginning of this past November. I have no idea who's going to read it, and I can't possibly expect them to enjoy something that by design will no doubt be rambling, random, and have very little bearing on anyone's life besides my own. But at least I'll be writing, which is more than I was doing before.
Hmm... Only 861 words so far? I was hoping that story would take longer to tell... I guess 1,667 isn't such a breeze after all, especially now that I'm worried about whether what I'm writing will be interesting enough for other people to read all the way through, even though I just pretty much stated that I don't care whether anyone else reads this. Funny how that works out, isn't it? Still, I'm past the halfway point, so I might as well barrel the rest of the way downhill from here.
One thing I noticed about my writing during NaNo was that the words go by a lot faster when I'm writing dialog than they do when I'm trying to describe situations and move the plot along. Heck, even monologues can eat up a lot of words, especially if they're being given by psychopaths in a pure stream of consciousness fashion. But then again plot is usually the hardest part, especially if you want that plot to have a satisfying narrative arc by the time you're through.
In that respect I've been lucky: both of my NaNo plots so far have managed to end almost exactly at the 50,000 mark, even if they've had to do it by veering into incongruously bizarre and/or dramatically unnecessary territory. I know a number of other people who usually end up never finishing their stories, neither during NaNo nor long after the month is over. Granted, I still don't have a satisfying draft of my novel from 2007, but it's a story with a beginning, middle and end, which is an accomplishment in itself.
It occurs to me now that I'm not a person who enjoys talking about himself all that much, and that may be another reason why cranking out all these words right now is so hard. I usually try to be humble in everything that I do, because I fear verging into insufferable egotism if I ever start believing myself to be inherently interesting or eloquent. I'm a know-it-all by nature, but life has a way of punishing me for being too assertive about it. The second I open my mouth with too much pride I end up putting my foot in it, though it seems no matter what I do I end up having trouble relating to people a lot of the time.
But that's what this is all about, right? Improving communication, expressing my ideas in a way that other people can at least attempt to understand, instead of hoping that they can somehow psychically read the emotional waves I try to send them silently. Maybe print isn't my ideal medium, but I'm willing to give it a shot. At least it's active, not passive, and I could use some more activity in my life right now, on several fronts. Will I look back fondly on writing stuff like this? The odds are certainly better than doing the same on the time I spent playing Word Twist on Facebook.
Here's where things start spiraling into “crazy dream” territory: what if what I'm writing, or at least the fact that I'm writing, inspires somebody else to write? Somebody with a unique voice, who has a story to tell that would otherwise go unheard? Again, this isn't an expectation. It's just a wild, improbable hope I have, combined with a continuing belief that doing something, as long as it's not destructive, is better than doing nothing. At the very least I may cure myself from writing too many run-on, comma-strewn sentences in everything that I type, which would be a benefit to people who have to read my stuff for other reasons in the future.
Unfortunately, I can't expect to both write this much and edit it to the point I'd usually be happy with. As a result the flow of all these words may end up being hopelessly jumbled, occasionally to the point where they make sense only to me, and perhaps not even that once I go back and read it later (IF I ever go back and read it later).
I can at least promise that I won't be writing about writing every day: I think I've already exhausted a lot of what I wanted to say about the subject already anyways. There'll probably be plenty of pop culture references and dime store philosophy to come, and I guess there's a chance that it'll end up being seen as more internet pollution by the literati who wish only the best and most relevant work out there showed up in search results (which I must confess would put me among their numbers more often than not).
Maybe I'll cut out some stuff sometimes too, if I end up going places too personal or dull while I'm writing. In that case I may not end up posting a full 1,667 words, but at least they'll exist somewhere. As it stands, it looks like I've finally reached my goal for the day, so I guess I'll sign off now before I waste any material that I might need later.
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