Trying To Bring The Funny Back
So it would appear as though I have taken to writing in uncomfortable places since my laptop decided it needed a bit of a spa vacation. And I don't mean the back of a Volkswagon ("Mallrats" forever!).
No, yesterday night after taking a flier to watch the election results (the silent majority of left leaning independents have spoken!) and to see "Marie Antoinette" (which convinced me that no matter how much my NANOWRIMO sucks, it will never be as bad as most anything by Sophia Coppola), I started writing again just after midnight yesterday at 24-Hour Laundromat in Bucktown.
I was hoping that I would at least hear some interesting (albeit scary) dialog from other people who regularly do their laundry in the wee hours on a weeknight. But it was more me sitting in a hard-floored corner with my laptop actually plugged in (something I can't do during the day at the same laundromat) and enjoying the fact that there were no screaming children. The discomfort came in the fact that the place was quiet except for some "700 Club" ripoff blasting on the television instead of the election results I'd rather be seeing.
If the constant thought of getting mugged in the parking lot wasn't disconcerting, I think I might do my laundry when all good people are asleep and dreaming more often.
Today is even less comfortable than that as I'm at a sleezy extended stay motel in Dallas on the ground floor watching people walk right outside the window. Hey, I guess getting mugged at gunpoint will make for interesting writing, right?
But at least I'm writing again. Not that it was anything good. I really need to have things actually start happening now that I'm 10,000 words in or so. I think I've introduced the characters through introspection enough now and it's time to have them start battling zombies in the streets of New York City.
That one was for Kim. ;)
I did slip back into a little bit of the comedy novel I was supposed to be writing from the beginning:
---
“You’re bad, Muriel” Beth said again punching him in the arm. That motion was really starting to bother Anthony as did the movie that Beth had just quoted. I mean sure he was a gay man but there were certain limits that he didn’t cross and Abba was one of them. He thought it had something to do with the last girlfriend he had before he came out who dragged him to see “Mamma Mia” on Broadway. The headache still lingered when he thought about it. Muriel’s Wedding made all the pain and agony come rushing back.
Beth didn’t wait for any further response before she pushed open the fire door that led to the stairway and walked into the darkened hallway. The stairwell had been dark enough only being lit by a combination of small flashlights but all the flashlights had to do was light the next step up. The hallway proved a very daunting task for the souvenier flashlights shaped like the Statue Of Liberty. Beth had been quite glad that she had found a use for such a kitschy item a couple of years after she and Steven had picked them up for their very kitsch value.
The problem with kitsch is that once the novelty wore off all they were left with was a pair of crappy, useless flashlights with small pen light beams. The odd thing was that she didn’t even like kitschy objects – unless you counted Barbra Streisand.
Though the flashlights were coming in a lot more handy in climbing the stairs that Barbra Streissand. Beth chuckled a bit, she thought softly, at the thought of “Babs” providing accompaniment on their climb to the top. But she chuckled loud enough for Anthony to hear.
Anthony asked her, “what’s so funny?”
“Oh nothing,” she said, “I was just thinking about how useless Barbra Streissand would be in this situation. She’s be freaking out if she broke a nail or something.”
“Yeah,” Anthony agreed, “she’d probably have that millionaire ex-husband of hers buy her some slaves to carry her up the stairs or something. But you know who’d be really useless in this situation?” Anthony asked.
“Who?” Beth responded.
“Abba,” Anthony smirked.
“You are the absolute gayest gay man that I’ve ever met,” she quipped, punching him in the arm again, “because only a gay man could think about Abba at a time like this.”
---
Sure it doesn't really advance the story and it's slightly offensive (though I'm not going to write p.c. characters since that can be seen as a weakeness of mine) but at least it made the writing enjoyable again to get into the "The Breakfast Club" aspect of my novel - where the people who are going to be depending on each other for survival also can't understand each other - and made me want to write again.
And write I have to because Toronto is talking more crap than ever in the Word War. I kind of liked St. Louis better because we were the aggressors of taunt. Now we're like the victim.
I did write something over the past couple of days. In the Literary Fiction forum, there's a thread called "You know you're writing Literary Fiction..." in which I came up with the following:
---
YOU KNOW YOU'RE WRITING LITERARY FICTION WHEN:
When in your story a gunshot is not the signal for the beginning of an action filled chase scene but instead is the prompt for two character to discuss city noises in New York City in a post-9/11 context; as well as why people in cities always say, "it was probably a firework" when they know full well that it was a gunshot.
When a character has spent every time she has the P.O.V. examining the movements of her cat looking for a deeper meaning.
When which floor of an apartment building your characters inhabit has a direct relationship to how detached they are from the events around them.
When you've come up with two or three of your central metaphors before you've come up with even one subplot.
When you ignore descriptive paragraphs because they just distract from the conversation taking place in the novel at a given point.
When your characters live inside of their own heads more than even you do in your real life.
When you think you may have discovered the meaning of life on page 16 but by page 25 realized your theory was b.s. and have a character knock it back down to size. And the counter theory takes up two or three pages.
When you say to yourself, "it's not that my novel is too dense, it's that people are too dense," because you already know you're going to get upset when no one understands your metaphors.
When you find yourself grabbing your old Philosophy 101 text book more than you find yourself grabbing the dictionary or thesaurus.
When your reference books weigh more than your CPU because you worry any deviation from reality might take you into a different genre.
When you get into arguments with your fantasy writing friends about why a sword to them is just a sword and in no way Freudian.
When the first time you used a quotation mark was word 3,500 and you're actually a bit proud of that fact.
When you start incorporating the family back story of all of your characters that might or might not have anything to do with the plot just so the reader can figure out each character's psychoses by name.
When all of your characters are dead on the first page and have yet to find out the whole story is told in flashback.
---
The last one isn't actually the plot of my novel. Because giving away a twist if that was a twist, that wouldn't be funny.
---
CURRENT WORD COUNT: 10,686 words
No, yesterday night after taking a flier to watch the election results (the silent majority of left leaning independents have spoken!) and to see "Marie Antoinette" (which convinced me that no matter how much my NANOWRIMO sucks, it will never be as bad as most anything by Sophia Coppola), I started writing again just after midnight yesterday at 24-Hour Laundromat in Bucktown.
I was hoping that I would at least hear some interesting (albeit scary) dialog from other people who regularly do their laundry in the wee hours on a weeknight. But it was more me sitting in a hard-floored corner with my laptop actually plugged in (something I can't do during the day at the same laundromat) and enjoying the fact that there were no screaming children. The discomfort came in the fact that the place was quiet except for some "700 Club" ripoff blasting on the television instead of the election results I'd rather be seeing.
If the constant thought of getting mugged in the parking lot wasn't disconcerting, I think I might do my laundry when all good people are asleep and dreaming more often.
Today is even less comfortable than that as I'm at a sleezy extended stay motel in Dallas on the ground floor watching people walk right outside the window. Hey, I guess getting mugged at gunpoint will make for interesting writing, right?
But at least I'm writing again. Not that it was anything good. I really need to have things actually start happening now that I'm 10,000 words in or so. I think I've introduced the characters through introspection enough now and it's time to have them start battling zombies in the streets of New York City.
That one was for Kim. ;)
I did slip back into a little bit of the comedy novel I was supposed to be writing from the beginning:
---
“You’re bad, Muriel” Beth said again punching him in the arm. That motion was really starting to bother Anthony as did the movie that Beth had just quoted. I mean sure he was a gay man but there were certain limits that he didn’t cross and Abba was one of them. He thought it had something to do with the last girlfriend he had before he came out who dragged him to see “Mamma Mia” on Broadway. The headache still lingered when he thought about it. Muriel’s Wedding made all the pain and agony come rushing back.
Beth didn’t wait for any further response before she pushed open the fire door that led to the stairway and walked into the darkened hallway. The stairwell had been dark enough only being lit by a combination of small flashlights but all the flashlights had to do was light the next step up. The hallway proved a very daunting task for the souvenier flashlights shaped like the Statue Of Liberty. Beth had been quite glad that she had found a use for such a kitschy item a couple of years after she and Steven had picked them up for their very kitsch value.
The problem with kitsch is that once the novelty wore off all they were left with was a pair of crappy, useless flashlights with small pen light beams. The odd thing was that she didn’t even like kitschy objects – unless you counted Barbra Streisand.
Though the flashlights were coming in a lot more handy in climbing the stairs that Barbra Streissand. Beth chuckled a bit, she thought softly, at the thought of “Babs” providing accompaniment on their climb to the top. But she chuckled loud enough for Anthony to hear.
Anthony asked her, “what’s so funny?”
“Oh nothing,” she said, “I was just thinking about how useless Barbra Streissand would be in this situation. She’s be freaking out if she broke a nail or something.”
“Yeah,” Anthony agreed, “she’d probably have that millionaire ex-husband of hers buy her some slaves to carry her up the stairs or something. But you know who’d be really useless in this situation?” Anthony asked.
“Who?” Beth responded.
“Abba,” Anthony smirked.
“You are the absolute gayest gay man that I’ve ever met,” she quipped, punching him in the arm again, “because only a gay man could think about Abba at a time like this.”
---
Sure it doesn't really advance the story and it's slightly offensive (though I'm not going to write p.c. characters since that can be seen as a weakeness of mine) but at least it made the writing enjoyable again to get into the "The Breakfast Club" aspect of my novel - where the people who are going to be depending on each other for survival also can't understand each other - and made me want to write again.
And write I have to because Toronto is talking more crap than ever in the Word War. I kind of liked St. Louis better because we were the aggressors of taunt. Now we're like the victim.
I did write something over the past couple of days. In the Literary Fiction forum, there's a thread called "You know you're writing Literary Fiction..." in which I came up with the following:
---
---
The last one isn't actually the plot of my novel. Because giving away a twist if that was a twist, that wouldn't be funny.
---
CURRENT WORD COUNT: 10,686 words
posted by incendiarymind at 6:47 PM
1 Comments:
okay so i guess i am writing "literary fiction" (oops quotation marks!) but am jealous, quite jealous of your word count...go chicago!
Post a Comment
<< Home