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First word: His
Last word: now
Random sentence: He hadn’t for a couple days, and he was looking pretty rough, his beard was almost as long as his hair, but it was something he made a mess of at the best of times, and as tired as he was, he’d just end up looking like he’d been beat up again.
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First word: His
Last word: forth
Random sentence: A tall guy with a laptop briefcase shoved his way between them, muttering something about getting out of the fucking way.
I promise to make these entries a little more interesting for my loyal readers, should I have any, once I get finished my week. Mon-Thurs is a blur. For now, just know I am doing this. (Yay, me.)
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First word: He
Last word: you
Random sentence: He didn’t reply to that, because well, that was the kind of empty platitude people mouthed all the time with no intention of making good on the promise.
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First word: Assaulted
Last word: Jonah
Random sentence: But instead of throwing it away, his mom carefully gathered all the pieces, sat down at the kitchen table with toothpicks and epoxy, and glued it all back together.
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First word: Jonah
Last word: air
Random sentence: Maybe because it kept him on the radar, somewhere between getting the Beemer serviced and which client he’d deign to offer the 4th in his weekly golf game.
Have I mentioned how insane I am to be thinking about doing this? (At this point, it’s still thinking. The doing is yet to come.) It’s November. November, people. This is the month when I must, at the very least:
Ahhh! Nevertheless, I’m still going to give it a shot. To that end, I’ve got all the subs sorted & ready to read, already, before the end of October. Yay, me. I’m going to finish w/ my non-law-review journal assignment (reviewing essays) this weekend. Have outline for paper done. Almost finished with bibliography. Will finish this weekend. Have good start on outlines, some more so than others. And on the plus side, actual *studying* for exams and writing of final draft of paper can wait till December 1. Ah, yes, the bright side. We’ll see how I feel about that in 2 days.
I think I mentioned that I scheduled NaNo writing time into my calendar as my first appointment of the day, in lieu of my usual morning activity: reading blogs / forums. See? I think it’s really possible to do this, if I just skip that little time suck. I won’t be giving up blog reading entirely, because of my paper. And of course, I’ll want to know how others are making out. But it will have to wait till later in the day.
I think that’s it. Oh, yeah. A first scene came to me one day on the bus. I was sitting way at the back and I “saw” (imagined) something (apple or something of that ilk) rolling up & down the aisle as the bus braked and accelerated. And I’m like, yeah, that’s a good image to start with. So I have something to get me started Monday morning. We’ll see where it goes from there.
Have you noticed the newest spate of home improvement programs are all these “house doctor” things? You know, people who want to sell their house, but can’t, so they have some consultant-type come in and tell them what they need to do to make it sell. Then they do some stuff (paint, declutter, rearrange furniture) and it sells. Okay, clearly it works, but I don’t get it.
I mean, obviously you should fix anything broken, and clean the place up, remove fugly wallpaper or icky carpet because it’ll save the buyer the trouble. (Although why you haven’t removed it already, I have no idea.)
But inevitably, they show potential buyers walking through the house admiring the furniture arrangement or the curtains or the accessories or the color of the walls. This is what I don’t understand: when you buy a house, you don’t purchase all the previous owner’s furniture, junk, etc. along with the building. Do people not get that? Who cares what’s *in* the house? What you care about is it the bones of it: is it solid (falling apart, leaking, electrical hazards = bad) and does the space have potential? If the sellers have the worst taste in the world, so what? It’s not going be there when you move in. And it doesn’t matter what color the place is, I’d repaint anyhow, so that’s irrelevant to me.
I guess it just surprised me. If this is the standard way of looking at things, seeing only what is there in front of you, then clearly I see space much differently than most people do. I never look at rooms as they are; I always look at what they could be. Whenever I enter a new space, I immediately start rearranging, painting, constructing in my head. I know a room is well-designed when I realize I’m not changing things around in my head.
Where am I going here? Oh right. I wanted to mention this because I thought it might end up being relevant in some story or either. Just to remind me that people see physical space very differently. That not everyone has the ability to rotate things, change out colors, knock down walls all in their head. That most people can’t do that. And I don’t think it’s a lack of imagination, I think it’s something much more analytical than that, an ability to see how things could fit together. Like, erm, you know those puzzles that are like 15 or so different shapes, and you have to fit them into a square, and there are multiple ways to do it, and it seems really simple, but it’s not necessarily so? Well, I’m quite good at those things. I think it’s a similar sort of seeing. It’s not something I do on a conscious level, it just happens. Which probably explains why it’s not something I was really consciously aware of before.
When reading subs for TC, sometimes I come across a line like, “Bob, a 40-ish black man, walked down the street whistling…” I’ve always disliked this style of description, but I couldn’t pin down why exactly. It isn’t that these writers are being (overtly) racist; the descriptions themselves aren’t negative. I thought maybe I didn’t like it because it was too police-blottery: Robert (Bob) Smith, age 40, height: 6’2″, etc. But I’ve been thinking about it off and on and I realized that wasn’t it (much as that is irksome). No, its because people NEVER write: “Megan, a 20-something white girl, opened her guitar case…” Characters are never generically described as white. It’s the underlying assumption that, if you don’t say otherwise, they are, that bugs.
Now, it’s true that kind of thinking may be appropriate with certain first person narrators. But in third person? No. In third person it’s just lazy writing. A short-cut, rather than taking the time to look at your character and *see* them. Is it even necessary for us to know that the character is a particular race/ethnicity? And if it is, how else could you reveal it other than bonking the reader on the head with it? Plot? Dialogue? Names? A more nuanced description of the character’s appearance? There are so many other options.
Jam pointed out that we both have characters named Calle/Calli. I meant to mention that. It was completely unintentional, therefore I have to take it as some kind of sign. Of what, I have no idea. As mentioned, my Calle was an old character pulled out of hibernation. Kali & variations thereof has long been one of my favorite names, ever since I first read The Arm of the Starfish, probably. Even though I didn’t know the significance of that character having that name at the time.
Also: I just wanted to make a note… on the slim chance that this NaNo does get written and published, Jamly gets the dedication.
So I actually registered for NaNo. My username is yeah but (original, I know) if anyone is looking for me. Not that I’ve posted anything there yet. The forums (especially the YA boards) seem to be dominated by teens & sf/f writers and I haven’t really found a happy niche. I looked at lit fic and it’s mostly “what’s lit fic?” or “how do I know if my novel is lit fic?” so that’s not terribly inspiring. So mostly I check out the local board. They’re planning a get-together: bowling. Hrm.
I was going to say something else, but I forget. Oh, yeah. After the first “chapter” of the NaNo, I’ll probably filter the entries. I have a TC filter for actual writing, as opposed to blithering about writing. If you’re already on my friends list, you’re already added. Anyone else, just ask. If you don’t have a lj, well, then you have a little problem, don’t ya?
Anyhow, I think I’m set for this thing. I’m registered. I don’t plan to do any more in the way of outlining. I scheduled in writing time for every day in November. My earliest class is 10:30 T/Th, so I really should be able to manage an hour in the morning. It’s not like it means getting up godawful early or anything. Seriously, if I wrote instead of reading blogs & visiting TWoP, I’d be done already 😉 So no blogreading or TWoP-visiting until I’ve finished my quota for the day. (Yeah, I say that now…)
The Remainder Table 