The Writing.
So a couple of good ideas came my way. The ones I'm using: A laptop fund jar -- don't write, a dollar out. Write, a dollar an hour.
Write before bedtime. Get mucho help from spouse if bebe is still up.
Result: progressing at the average rate of a page a day, as desired.
I'm going to give the first set of pages (about nine) to Lee and see what he thinks. Er, the last time he read the first draft of this, he thought it wasn't any good. To paraphrase. Anyway. A good kick in the (insert tender area of choice), and necessary.
1.07.2003
Dream. So I'm wandering through this museum looking for someone. The harder I look, the harder it becomes to look, and the more I need to find this person, until I'm walking on a hanging bridge about a foot wide without handholds, and whoever it is I'm looking for (I don't know) is going to die unless I find him or her soon.
1.06.2003
Saga of the Weight Bench.
Once upon a time, there was a man who lost the bar to his weights. God knows where it went; probably it disappeared during his recent move across town. Possibly the bar was abducted by aliens, who unsuccessfully attempted to get ransom from the new residents of the apartment, who spoke Spainish and were unable to give them (the aliens) a forwarding address. Also, his weight bench was damaged, although the damage was suffered prior to the move.
In the interests of his continuing health and mental stability, the man went on a quest.
Hither and yon he searched. The not-so-soft side of Sears had a sale on. Woo Hoo! However, the weight benches on display in the store were the only weight benches available in the store, or any in town. Kmart had crap. The man's child wept, and his wife gnash-ed her teeth. But Lo! There was a Gart's Superstore, shining in the darkness, and they indeed did have a good supply of weight benches.
This did not solve the matter of the bar.
For no-one sells a bar without the damn weights, even if you don't want the damn weights. Except for maybe those one guys on the east side of town, eh, what are they called anyway?
The man drove home with the weight bench, prepared to delay until another day. And then a miracle occurred! His wife, much-beloved but not normally the most observant of wenches, noticed an excercise equipment store but a few blocks away from their home. A quick phone-call confirmed that they did, indeed, sell bars solo, without the damn weights.
And then he realised he had no clamps.
And he said, "I'm sick of driving around today."
And so the faithful wife said, "Hell, I was going to go to Target anyway. I'll look around." She wandered around Target, viewing the many post-holiday sale items with glee, but did not find any weight clamps. But she did buy a tree base for a buck fifty, so it wasn't a total waste.
Then she drove up to Gart Sports, looking for weight clamps. She asked for assistance and was assisted. Voila! Two sizes of weight clamps! She tried to remember the size of the weight bar previously used, and selected the clamps accordingly.
Alas!
They were the wrong size!
And Lo! She was wroth! But managed to keep her mouth shut. Damn not tell me two sizes bars...mrrph mrrph...wrong size...driving around in the dark...mrrph mrrph..."Thanks for trying"...mrrph mrrph...
And that night, she went to bed, and dreamed that the cops had pulled her over for running stop signs. She got up, went to work, and returned home.
"Guess what?" sayethed her spouse.
"What?" sayethed the wife.
"There were clamps in the box with the bench," he sayethed. "Now all I need is a four-inch bolt. The one they packaged in the box wasn't long enough..."
And truly she was a good wife, for she did not scream.
Once upon a time, there was a man who lost the bar to his weights. God knows where it went; probably it disappeared during his recent move across town. Possibly the bar was abducted by aliens, who unsuccessfully attempted to get ransom from the new residents of the apartment, who spoke Spainish and were unable to give them (the aliens) a forwarding address. Also, his weight bench was damaged, although the damage was suffered prior to the move.
In the interests of his continuing health and mental stability, the man went on a quest.
Hither and yon he searched. The not-so-soft side of Sears had a sale on. Woo Hoo! However, the weight benches on display in the store were the only weight benches available in the store, or any in town. Kmart had crap. The man's child wept, and his wife gnash-ed her teeth. But Lo! There was a Gart's Superstore, shining in the darkness, and they indeed did have a good supply of weight benches.
This did not solve the matter of the bar.
For no-one sells a bar without the damn weights, even if you don't want the damn weights. Except for maybe those one guys on the east side of town, eh, what are they called anyway?
The man drove home with the weight bench, prepared to delay until another day. And then a miracle occurred! His wife, much-beloved but not normally the most observant of wenches, noticed an excercise equipment store but a few blocks away from their home. A quick phone-call confirmed that they did, indeed, sell bars solo, without the damn weights.
And then he realised he had no clamps.
And he said, "I'm sick of driving around today."
And so the faithful wife said, "Hell, I was going to go to Target anyway. I'll look around." She wandered around Target, viewing the many post-holiday sale items with glee, but did not find any weight clamps. But she did buy a tree base for a buck fifty, so it wasn't a total waste.
Then she drove up to Gart Sports, looking for weight clamps. She asked for assistance and was assisted. Voila! Two sizes of weight clamps! She tried to remember the size of the weight bar previously used, and selected the clamps accordingly.
Alas!
They were the wrong size!
And Lo! She was wroth! But managed to keep her mouth shut. Damn not tell me two sizes bars...mrrph mrrph...wrong size...driving around in the dark...mrrph mrrph..."Thanks for trying"...mrrph mrrph...
And that night, she went to bed, and dreamed that the cops had pulled her over for running stop signs. She got up, went to work, and returned home.
"Guess what?" sayethed her spouse.
"What?" sayethed the wife.
"There were clamps in the box with the bench," he sayethed. "Now all I need is a four-inch bolt. The one they packaged in the box wasn't long enough..."
And truly she was a good wife, for she did not scream.
Kiwi-birds and Hobbits.
New Zealand, if you didn't know, is where they filmed The Lord of the Rings. SCA, if you didn't know, is the Society of Creative Anachronisms, a group of like-minded folks who try to recreate the more tasteful parts of the middle ages (not enough shit for accuracy).
I have a friend at work who's a SCA-buff. She's the only person I know that's sexually attracted to Elijah Wood. (Except Joe, but that doesn't count. Hi, Joe!) Her sister's working in New Zealand.
So, of course, that's where she went for Christmas.
She had little to say about the state of the short folk there, but did mention that NZ children do not eat--and find disgusting the idea of--peanut butter sandwhiches. In fact, for breakfast, they eat a kind of salty meat spread on toast. Drug use and cigarette use are shrugged off, but the commercials for "drink" driving are so grotesque that everyone screams, "Turn it off!" One of them involves a pregnant woman who's rear-ended by a drunk. Ugh.
The roads have few stoplights and many roundabouts. There are lots of Asian people who, according to a friend of the sister's, "can't drive." Apparently, emergency vehicles have terrible problems getting around because none of the immigrants know to pull over when they see the flashing lights.
She brought back a chocolate banana marshmallow fish for Lee.
He said to say, "Thanks."
New Zealand, if you didn't know, is where they filmed The Lord of the Rings. SCA, if you didn't know, is the Society of Creative Anachronisms, a group of like-minded folks who try to recreate the more tasteful parts of the middle ages (not enough shit for accuracy).
I have a friend at work who's a SCA-buff. She's the only person I know that's sexually attracted to Elijah Wood. (Except Joe, but that doesn't count. Hi, Joe!) Her sister's working in New Zealand.
So, of course, that's where she went for Christmas.
She had little to say about the state of the short folk there, but did mention that NZ children do not eat--and find disgusting the idea of--peanut butter sandwhiches. In fact, for breakfast, they eat a kind of salty meat spread on toast. Drug use and cigarette use are shrugged off, but the commercials for "drink" driving are so grotesque that everyone screams, "Turn it off!" One of them involves a pregnant woman who's rear-ended by a drunk. Ugh.
The roads have few stoplights and many roundabouts. There are lots of Asian people who, according to a friend of the sister's, "can't drive." Apparently, emergency vehicles have terrible problems getting around because none of the immigrants know to pull over when they see the flashing lights.
She brought back a chocolate banana marshmallow fish for Lee.
He said to say, "Thanks."
1.03.2003
Brain Yoga. Not only is philosophy a comfort through the vissictitudes (did I spell that right?) of life, but it's also...Brain Yoga!!! I should design a Discovery Store package. But no Plato. I hate that m@#@&&$%. Sure, one side of his mouth is all about platonic friendships, but you check ou the other side of his Republic-an (heyyyyyy...) mouth, and it's all "brainwash the children in order to make good citizens."
Read no more if you value linear order.
Reading Foucalt's Language, counter-memory, and practice, I'm about to get my brain fried. So back up a little...Nietszche is like reading The Illuminatus! Trilogy. One big mind-fuck, designed to erase the programming society's laid on you--for its own benefit, not yours. Fine. I get that. Foucalt, Christ, I don't get it. I finished the first essay again. I've read this essay maybe four times in the years that I've had this book. It means something different every time I read it. Do the words change when I'm not looking? I don't remember any of this at all--and I know I've read this essay four times.
I'm going to sum up. Maybe someday, after reading the essay again, I'll come back and read my little summation and realize that the aliens have been spiking my jellybeans again.
Texts used to have authors. The author came up with the ideas, wrote them down, and had them published. People read them. Wow, what an outdated concept. Texts, from our perspective, don't have authors. Authors have texts: it isn't so much a process of giving births as a kind of disease. (This is my own metaphor, by the way.) Something, perhaps Jung's collective unconscious (again, just a guess by me), has the idea. The idea finds its way to a suitable target, i.e., author. The author produces the text as if in a state of possession. Her eyes do not, themselves, see. They roll up in her head (this is from Foucalt), seeing only darkness. But wait! There's another eye behind that eye, and that eye is less material and more the process/state of vision itself. That eye, too, rolls up and sees nothing--the more it tries to examine itself, the less it can see. Again, in a recursion of eyes, each eye that tries to examine itself 1) rolls up in its head, sees nothing; 2) is seen by a more visual, less material eye. Finally, there isn't a see-er at all, no material eye, but only a state of vision, of see-ing. This is what happened to the author. The more the author examines her ideas (through the process of post-modernism, perhaps? Stepping outside the text (often to make fun of it, like the two geezers/critics in The Muppet Show), the text analyzing itself, etc.) the less the author the author, herself, exists with relation to a text, and the more the writing process itself comes to dominate: possession. The sign of the times writes its own billboards.
But wait! If that's not confusing enough...
Language is about limits and boudaries: what can we say? There are limits placed on ideas by language itself, and limits placed on language by the ideas we have about the world. One of the most telling areas about this is sex. We can only say about sex 1) what the language itself permits us to say, and 2) what our ideas permit us to use language to say about it. Foucalt then gets to the point (ha! Too tricky to have a, that is, if you limit yourself to the idea of a, that is, if you limit yourself to the idea of numbers, lists, organization, a, that is, a point) by saying that (and he presents it as if this were a logical progression, mind you) now that God is dead, the only thing that remains that tests the limits of language is sex. Take Sade. The point is not that he transgresses the limits of sexuality, thus destroying the limits, but that his transgression of the limits of sexuality (though language) defines those limits. Foucalt uses the example of a bolt of lightning: here and gone again, but boy, does it light things up for a minute.
After Sade came Freud. Freud defined another limitation. I'm not sure how--I missed that. Anyway, now we talk about sex as if there were nothing limited, nothing forbidden about it: as if it were a natural thing. The sin of sex itself has been destroyed, just as God has been killed.
But here's the thing, stuck in the middle of a paragraph: You can't destroy God any more than you can destroy sex. What's left when everything is "normal" and easily explained away is a void. What's a void? Limitlessness. --And maybe Foucalt's just using a trick of language here to make his point. Mabye Void and Limitlessness don't mean the same thing, which might be the, a, whatever, point of the essay, buried under all the other stuff. Anyway...limitlessness. To cross from the limited (normal) definitions into the limitless (transgressive) places...I don't know. But what is limitlessness? God.
Without destroying God, we've destroyed God.
Without destroying sex by normalizing it to death, there is no sex.
Without destroying the author of a text, there is no author.
--The rules build up until everything permissible is compulsary, until someone comes along and transgresses, sins, crosses the borders into limitlessness.
Foucalt points out that Nietszche went mad, as did several other persons I've never read. Language broke down, limits broke down, and he went into the limitlessness and didn't come back.
---
I don't think Foucalt is meant to be read as straight philosophy. He's also meant to be read as a programming/deprogramming tool. To what point, and do I trust him, I don't know. But I don't feel so blindly involved with the world: there are ideas out there, just waiting to be thunk.
And the thunking to be thunk about.
Read no more if you value linear order.
Reading Foucalt's Language, counter-memory, and practice, I'm about to get my brain fried. So back up a little...Nietszche is like reading The Illuminatus! Trilogy. One big mind-fuck, designed to erase the programming society's laid on you--for its own benefit, not yours. Fine. I get that. Foucalt, Christ, I don't get it. I finished the first essay again. I've read this essay maybe four times in the years that I've had this book. It means something different every time I read it. Do the words change when I'm not looking? I don't remember any of this at all--and I know I've read this essay four times.
I'm going to sum up. Maybe someday, after reading the essay again, I'll come back and read my little summation and realize that the aliens have been spiking my jellybeans again.
Texts used to have authors. The author came up with the ideas, wrote them down, and had them published. People read them. Wow, what an outdated concept. Texts, from our perspective, don't have authors. Authors have texts: it isn't so much a process of giving births as a kind of disease. (This is my own metaphor, by the way.) Something, perhaps Jung's collective unconscious (again, just a guess by me), has the idea. The idea finds its way to a suitable target, i.e., author. The author produces the text as if in a state of possession. Her eyes do not, themselves, see. They roll up in her head (this is from Foucalt), seeing only darkness. But wait! There's another eye behind that eye, and that eye is less material and more the process/state of vision itself. That eye, too, rolls up and sees nothing--the more it tries to examine itself, the less it can see. Again, in a recursion of eyes, each eye that tries to examine itself 1) rolls up in its head, sees nothing; 2) is seen by a more visual, less material eye. Finally, there isn't a see-er at all, no material eye, but only a state of vision, of see-ing. This is what happened to the author. The more the author examines her ideas (through the process of post-modernism, perhaps? Stepping outside the text (often to make fun of it, like the two geezers/critics in The Muppet Show), the text analyzing itself, etc.) the less the author the author, herself, exists with relation to a text, and the more the writing process itself comes to dominate: possession. The sign of the times writes its own billboards.
But wait! If that's not confusing enough...
Language is about limits and boudaries: what can we say? There are limits placed on ideas by language itself, and limits placed on language by the ideas we have about the world. One of the most telling areas about this is sex. We can only say about sex 1) what the language itself permits us to say, and 2) what our ideas permit us to use language to say about it. Foucalt then gets to the point (ha! Too tricky to have a, that is, if you limit yourself to the idea of a, that is, if you limit yourself to the idea of numbers, lists, organization, a, that is, a point) by saying that (and he presents it as if this were a logical progression, mind you) now that God is dead, the only thing that remains that tests the limits of language is sex. Take Sade. The point is not that he transgresses the limits of sexuality, thus destroying the limits, but that his transgression of the limits of sexuality (though language) defines those limits. Foucalt uses the example of a bolt of lightning: here and gone again, but boy, does it light things up for a minute.
After Sade came Freud. Freud defined another limitation. I'm not sure how--I missed that. Anyway, now we talk about sex as if there were nothing limited, nothing forbidden about it: as if it were a natural thing. The sin of sex itself has been destroyed, just as God has been killed.
But here's the thing, stuck in the middle of a paragraph: You can't destroy God any more than you can destroy sex. What's left when everything is "normal" and easily explained away is a void. What's a void? Limitlessness. --And maybe Foucalt's just using a trick of language here to make his point. Mabye Void and Limitlessness don't mean the same thing, which might be the, a, whatever, point of the essay, buried under all the other stuff. Anyway...limitlessness. To cross from the limited (normal) definitions into the limitless (transgressive) places...I don't know. But what is limitlessness? God.
Without destroying God, we've destroyed God.
Without destroying sex by normalizing it to death, there is no sex.
Without destroying the author of a text, there is no author.
--The rules build up until everything permissible is compulsary, until someone comes along and transgresses, sins, crosses the borders into limitlessness.
Foucalt points out that Nietszche went mad, as did several other persons I've never read. Language broke down, limits broke down, and he went into the limitlessness and didn't come back.
---
I don't think Foucalt is meant to be read as straight philosophy. He's also meant to be read as a programming/deprogramming tool. To what point, and do I trust him, I don't know. But I don't feel so blindly involved with the world: there are ideas out there, just waiting to be thunk.
And the thunking to be thunk about.
The Smoking Project.
So every day Lee makes it through without smoking, he puts three bucks in a jar to go towards computer equipment.
(I wonder if I could do that with writing? Well, sure. But--?)
And every day I ask him: How did you do today?
If he made it, I'll say, "Thank you."
If he didn't make it, I'll say, "I know you tried hard today. I know you'll try hard tomorrow."
So every day Lee makes it through without smoking, he puts three bucks in a jar to go towards computer equipment.
(I wonder if I could do that with writing? Well, sure. But--?)
And every day I ask him: How did you do today?
If he made it, I'll say, "Thank you."
If he didn't make it, I'll say, "I know you tried hard today. I know you'll try hard tomorrow."
Heh. All ye English majors, check out the Tolkein parodies here.
Here's an example:
Eowyn felt her heart flutter when she saw him. His raven hair flew in the breeze off the plain, and his piercing eyes caught her gaze as if by magic. He bore a kingly attitude; surely he was a prince. Her mind turned to forbidden things, things which would be forbidden to the King's niece, but surely allowed for a free shieldmaiden. She knew that she was made to love this ranger.
-Mark of the King, Danielle Steele
Here's an example:
Eowyn felt her heart flutter when she saw him. His raven hair flew in the breeze off the plain, and his piercing eyes caught her gaze as if by magic. He bore a kingly attitude; surely he was a prince. Her mind turned to forbidden things, things which would be forbidden to the King's niece, but surely allowed for a free shieldmaiden. She knew that she was made to love this ranger.
-Mark of the King, Danielle Steele
1.02.2003
Down with the...bloooork! Lee had food poisoning over New Year's. Well. Turns out it's not food poisoning if your daughter has it, too, and she wasn't with you at the all-mite Nexican place. There are actually a couple of clean blankets left. No pillows, no sheets, but one lovely (and mostly naked) daughter who feels much better now. I meant to rent a wet-vac for the floor anyway. No problem.
1.01.2003
Writing Stuff. Here's the resolution for the new year:
Finish the first draft on one (1) novel.
I know, this isn't too impressive for those who've finished their novels during the November NaNoWriMo project--one novel, one month (why November, I'll never know). Nevertheless. Hm...this ramble can wait. Something smells suspicious, and I'll bet you a dollar it's not the ham in the oven.
You know, when your child eats pieces of styrofoam, you get the nastiest poops this former nursing home CNA has seen.
Euuuuugh. Gross. Wait! Come back here...
Later.
Ok. So the goal is to finish the novel this year.
Problems: This is the first novel I've written, and I don't know how to do it.
Right now, I'm spending a lot of time analyzing everything I do, breaking it down into chapters, into parts of chapters. What do I want to accomplish now? How about now? I've made a map. I've done little character sketches.
I have two months of work in the damn thing already, and nine first-draft pages to show for it. But I'm excited about reading it, when I re-read it. That doesn't happen very often, for me. I hate re-reading what I've written.
Problems: I have trouble staying motivated over a long period of time doing anything except staying married and raising my bebe.
I need to average out a page a day to complete the novel. I can write a page a day. I don't write a page a day. I do planning, plotting, and research, take a break, and write three pages. I hope. I've asked Lee to help me stay motivated on other projects, but he sucks at staying motivated as well, so he isn't motivated enough to keep me motivated. I think.
Maybe the best way to keep myself hyped is to show what I've written to other people. If they're excited about it, want to read more, I get a huge lift. If they don't like it much, I'm discouraged but determined to re-write it so they do like it.
Maybe a calender, to mark off the days?
Maybe a reward? One spoil myself reward a month? Hm...I don't think that'll work. Rewards don't motivate me; they're just nice bonusus.
Maybe strict breakdowns of deadlines?
Maybe a certain time every day that I can set aside to write? --Maybe I have to stay up after the bebe's in bed and write until I'm done, if I haven't done my writing yet for the day.
Problems: I need a couple of objective voices to read this thing, so I know if what I'm doing is working.
As always, Lee is the prime guinea pig. On a very few occaisions, what I've written is good, but so outside his realm of enjoyment that it doesn't apply. Even on those occaisions, if it really is good, he'll say, "This isn't what I normally read, but I kinda liked it anyway." I wrote the first three chapters of this story once already, but he didn't like them. Bye, chapters. I'm still using the ideas, and the chapters were very useful to have written (I don't feel LOST), but--buh-bye.
I have a couple people at work that I'm going to hand the story off to, one's a writer-in-training like yrs. truly and the other's someone who likes fantasy novels and is SCA. I might be able to get Joe to read parts of it, but we'll see. I might ask a couple of other people to read it, but I'd like to save a couple of people for when I have the damn thing finished. Like Doyce. Heh. Not to mention my brothers...eh, you know what? I think I might ask Jackie later on, because this might be the sort of thing she likes better than Doyce would. Not that they're two sides of the same coin or anything.
"It's been a real preasure...it's been a real preasure and a pliviledge to work with these gentlemen..." Tom Waits.
Finish the first draft on one (1) novel.
I know, this isn't too impressive for those who've finished their novels during the November NaNoWriMo project--one novel, one month (why November, I'll never know). Nevertheless. Hm...this ramble can wait. Something smells suspicious, and I'll bet you a dollar it's not the ham in the oven.
You know, when your child eats pieces of styrofoam, you get the nastiest poops this former nursing home CNA has seen.
Euuuuugh. Gross. Wait! Come back here...
Later.
Ok. So the goal is to finish the novel this year.
Problems: This is the first novel I've written, and I don't know how to do it.
Right now, I'm spending a lot of time analyzing everything I do, breaking it down into chapters, into parts of chapters. What do I want to accomplish now? How about now? I've made a map. I've done little character sketches.
I have two months of work in the damn thing already, and nine first-draft pages to show for it. But I'm excited about reading it, when I re-read it. That doesn't happen very often, for me. I hate re-reading what I've written.
Problems: I have trouble staying motivated over a long period of time doing anything except staying married and raising my bebe.
I need to average out a page a day to complete the novel. I can write a page a day. I don't write a page a day. I do planning, plotting, and research, take a break, and write three pages. I hope. I've asked Lee to help me stay motivated on other projects, but he sucks at staying motivated as well, so he isn't motivated enough to keep me motivated. I think.
Maybe the best way to keep myself hyped is to show what I've written to other people. If they're excited about it, want to read more, I get a huge lift. If they don't like it much, I'm discouraged but determined to re-write it so they do like it.
Maybe a calender, to mark off the days?
Maybe a reward? One spoil myself reward a month? Hm...I don't think that'll work. Rewards don't motivate me; they're just nice bonusus.
Maybe strict breakdowns of deadlines?
Maybe a certain time every day that I can set aside to write? --Maybe I have to stay up after the bebe's in bed and write until I'm done, if I haven't done my writing yet for the day.
Problems: I need a couple of objective voices to read this thing, so I know if what I'm doing is working.
As always, Lee is the prime guinea pig. On a very few occaisions, what I've written is good, but so outside his realm of enjoyment that it doesn't apply. Even on those occaisions, if it really is good, he'll say, "This isn't what I normally read, but I kinda liked it anyway." I wrote the first three chapters of this story once already, but he didn't like them. Bye, chapters. I'm still using the ideas, and the chapters were very useful to have written (I don't feel LOST), but--buh-bye.
I have a couple people at work that I'm going to hand the story off to, one's a writer-in-training like yrs. truly and the other's someone who likes fantasy novels and is SCA. I might be able to get Joe to read parts of it, but we'll see. I might ask a couple of other people to read it, but I'd like to save a couple of people for when I have the damn thing finished. Like Doyce. Heh. Not to mention my brothers...eh, you know what? I think I might ask Jackie later on, because this might be the sort of thing she likes better than Doyce would. Not that they're two sides of the same coin or anything.
"It's been a real preasure...it's been a real preasure and a pliviledge to work with these gentlemen..." Tom Waits.
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