Musings on Writing

This morning on my way to work I thought some more about the book I would eventually write. I thought maybe a non-fiction, serious book, about migratory patterns and traffic of the human race over the eons. A silly idea, but then I tried to get it published, in my mind, and publishers were asking where I went to school. To the first few I replied that it was my own stuff, but after a number of chuckles and refusals, I pretended to be from one college or another, Berkeley I think, and they would then, instead of taking myword for it, make a phone call to verify, since they had never heard of me. I would eventually wind up with a smaller publisher, with smaller distribution, and smaller lump of change, but then I consoled myself with the fact that I hadn't shelled out for 6 years of school, this was to be my opportunity cost, and that after a few books, and several people picking them up and recognizing their value, I would eventually be sought after and well paid for my efforts.

I thought long and hard about something that I would want to read about, something that would catch me enough to drive me to read all about a topic, making copious notes, so that eventually it was a book. I remember trying to talk my sister into publishing her material which she'd accumulated by scratching together curricula for her various teaching jobs. i couldn't understand her reluctance.

This little blog is my start. I am writing for everyone and no one. I wonder how many writers write a book, and send it out like a litlte handmade boat onto the water.

More on Greenlanders

I find myself drawn into the story, now that the stage is more than set, and the previous generation has all but died off. It's a tiny thrill to be so anxious over characters described in such a plain narrative style.

In my own writing I notice how I try to trim the deadwood more and more. Mostly because I've transitioned from young'n to adult, with responsibilities. Where I used to struggle for a Subj line in email, there's now almost always a purpose or topic for each one. Especially at work, I'll compose a couple of paragraphs, and upon re-read I find I can get the same information from a couple of sentences. This process, isn't really comparable to writing a novel, but in a way, I notice the clear, spare, straightforwardness in language has good in it, where before, I wanted more words wherever possible. I used to list possilities in threes at least, if not more, and sometimes I would struggle to come up with possibliity number 3, i.e. in this situation a person will do several things: think about it, write down his thoughts, and ... eliminate the outliers.

Over and out!

The Greenlanders

Latest book: The Greenlanders by Jane Smiley.
I'm really enjoying the writing style, very plain, and matter-of-factly, which adds to the feel of the story. Main characters have been killed, with one or two sentences. Rather sudden, but then again the style is spare and abrupt. I'd like to write like that.

Old Joke

There's this deaf man, has a little trouble with the mafia, and the mafia, they catch hold of him. The deaf man apparently had their cash, and now they wants to know where it's hid. He doesn't talk very well, so they get a sign language interpreter. The interpreter signs to the man, they want to know where the money is.

The deaf man signs back "I'll never tell."
So the mafioso pulls out his pearl handled piece and says, "I'll shoot ya if you don't tell."
The deaf man gets scared so he explains where the money is hid, all in sign language.

The interpreter watches the deaf man, and then turns to the mafioso, and says, "This guy says you don't have the guts to shoot him."

Random Reading

This morning I had to grab whatever was handy. What it turned out to be was a paperback of collected folk tales from all over the world. On the way to work, I read some Scottish folk tales, which were pretty short, and this one was funny, and short, so easy to copy here (:

The Minister to his Flock

Aye ye're enjoyin' yoursels noo wi' yer drinkin' and yer women an' yer nights oot at the pictures, and never a thought given to the Word of God, and his great an' terrible laws.

But ye'll change yer tune when ye're doon below in the fiery pit, an' ye're burnin' an' ye're sufferin', and ye'll cry: 'O Lord, Lord, we didna ken, we didna ken.' And the Lord in his infinite mercy will bend doon frae heaven, and say 'Well, ye ken noo.'

My Vox

My wife knows about my Vox account, and thus far it's still not down. I want to use it, because I think it's more blog friendly to a guy like me who doesn't know anything.

I need to start changing my blog to look like waxy or rfjason. Subdivision of discrete posts is big for me.

http://tobyo.vox.com
Check it out!

Mor Books

Finished Bend Sinister, and yes we knew he would die, only didn't know how. The how was good, the author fantastic. I'm (vaguely) intersted to know what he was like in life.

Yesterday day read Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf still haven't looked up Virginia Woolf, will do so today probably, in wikipedia, the source of all usually correct knowledge, provided the persons talked about don't find out there's skinny on them... I read half coming in to work and half going back, and it really did work well, I finished maybe 10 min before I got off the bus to trot home.

I've now accepted from my wife Roald Dahl's The BFG and funny enough the reading isn't quick. For one thing, I'm savouring as I read, it's a different genre. It didn't occurr to me until I opened the cover, but it's the same author that wote James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He also wrote Charlie and the Magic Glass Elevator, which I suppose is why at the end of the Chocolate Factory movies, there is a glass elevator. I suppose the author took it a little further in the follow up book. I knew Roald Dahl sounded familiar

More Nabokov

I'm really enjoying this book, Bend Sinister, it's another dystopian novel, ficition, and yet fearsome. It's amazing and horrifying what happens to Krug's son after Krug is hauled in. I'm breathlessly awaiting Krug's fate, and only about 10 pages to the rest of the book. Nabokov hasn't let me down so far. In his foreward, or introduction, Nabokov disses Orwell's dystopia, and I can see why. In some ways Nabokov's delves into the real psychological throttling of a society by an idea, the idea wringing such acts as just mentioned, Krug's son's fate, or Krug's friends disappearing for the sole purpose of isolating him and removing his support. By being more myopic than 1984, Bend Sinister acheives a more directed attack, that of society against an independent thinker. As we follow Krug along his turn for the worse, the incredible, disgusting, and out-of-control society is seen along the way like glimpses of a larger madness.

In other news, how about something of a personal nature?

My wife and I are going through some growing pains, together, and I wrote her this today:

one thing that i have realized is that many people are wrong when they
say that the problem in most marriages is communication. the people
who say the problem is communication are not being specific enough.
the problem is that a new couple will communicate quite a lot, because
they are convinced that the problem is communication, but that won't
be a problem for them, they will communicate as much as possible.
what happens is the other person hears everything that the spouse is
saying, but realizes that the spouse doesn't understand at all. then
slowly, both of them feel like they can't say what they really think
and feel. they are committed to the marriage however, so they stay
together, but the whole time, they are feeling less and less like
expressing themselves. short bursts of conversation will take place,
and they spend the next few days trying to clean up the mess, which
causes them to feel cautious the next time around. and so on. so the
real key becomes, how do we break this cycle?

Book Quote 2

from Bend Sinister also:
p. 58
"I must confess I admired you, Professor. Of course you were the only real man among those poor dear fossils. I understand, you do not see much of your colleagues, do you? Oh, you must have felt rather out of place---"
"Wrong again," said Krug, breaking his vow to keep silent. "I esteem my colleagues as I do my own self, I esteem them for two things: because they are able to find perfect felicity in specialized knowledge and because they are not apt to commit physical murder."
Dr. Alexander mistook this for one of the obsucre quips which, he had been told, Adam Krug liked to indulge in and laughed cautiously.

=====
That last paragraph describes well the reaction I get from people whenever I stray into what I would actually like to say, or even more tempting for me, something that I find ironic, or amusing. I feel, unfortunately, that real appreciators of me are few.

Settings - I found it <--written post post

I need to change some settings on this blog, I'd rather have a title to each post, rather than a date, thus a nice little recap for the 'Recent Posts' list, but thus far I haven't fished through the handy UI to get my blog looking as it should.

If anyone stumbles through here, could you be kind enough to point me in the right direction?

Book Quote 1

I had a brainstorm, that went like this: all those times I wanted to share what I was reading and couldn't because my wife would only nod her head in deference to my obviously superiour contribution to the verbal Christmas tree between us, I could write them here, for everyone and no one.

For the history buff, and I'll probably send to deffy, the following from my current reading, Bend Sinister by Nabokov:
"I disagree with you there--with both of you, " the Professor of Modern History was saying. "My client never repeats herself. At least not when people are all agog to see the repetition coming. In fact, it is only unconsciously that Clio can repeat herself. Because her memory is too short. As with so many phenomena of time, recurrent combinations are perceptible as such only when they cannot affect us any more--when they are imprisoned so to speak in the past, which is the past just because it is disinfected. To try to map our tomorrows with the help of data supplied by our yesterdays means ignoring the basic element of the future which is its complete non-existence. The giddy rush of the present into this vacuum is mistaken by us for a rational movement."

All punctuation, grammer etc are [sic] except the last close quote, which was absent in the text.