22DEC17 Found while Dreaming

The working title for my novel. It's about a man adrift. Aren't they all? I mean my characters,not men in general. While searching for his purpose he gets caught up in an old chase for a ghost ship. eventually he finds the answers he needs, well, most of them.

He is a black man with African roots trying to come to grips with being a citizen of the galaxy while maintaining a link to his own culture. he is also a pacifist forced to do violence on occasion, in fact he has chosen a violent way of life for some reason.

full disclosure, i have been toying with the idea for a couple of years now, but i get about fifty pages in and it kind of falls apart. I am at an integral action scene and i just kind of mentally say "eh," and move on to something else. I have the ending, even ideas for the next story, i just can't move the damn thing forward for some reason. but I'm doing it now.

I'm fifteen pages into the re-write and it feels like it's gonna get done finally. it is good for me to have something to focus on. I don't do well with down time and i have way too much of that now.

16Dec17 novel?

Well, the school thing is essentially over. Next semester consists of studying for the comprehensive exam, that and figuring out what to do with myself.

The last couple of weeks have been a struggle. I'm coming to grips with the reality of having more free time. My school journey mostly consisted of complaining I had no time to write what i wanted. I  have the time now, I just don't know what i want to write anymore.

There are several old short stories I thought sound structurally, but poorly written. I am breathing life into them with the goal of eventually sending them out. Was never confident enough to do that before. Hooray me. But that is more editing than creating.

School made me a better writer but changed the stories I read and now want to write. I'm actively looking for deeper meaning in things now. I mean I always have, but now, shit, its all about levels and layers of meanings. A damn story can't just be a story anymore.

What the hell is that?  I was warned school might change me, (Jason)

My ideas occupy this weird zone of wanting to write deeper but without all the pretentious bullshit sometimes present in what is considered literature. My ideas for stories now are mash ups of various genres with no clear place anywhere in fiction. In addition to this, I concentrate on short stories when the original goal was novel length works.

My muse casually asked over lunch why i wasn't working on a novel. I realized I hadn't even thought along those lines. Of course this is exactly what i need to be doing. She's good like that. (smile)
Its a task that requires focus and commitment and perfect for the guy with time on his hands. I have become so concerned with writing a good short story I missed the big picture.

Now i just have to come up with an idea that is suitable for the novel form. I have several re-occurring characters i want to see do other things. I just have to decide which one i want to spend the next year with.

I'll keep you posted. as always.

18NOV17 update

So, have to be registered next semester to retake the test. Had a long talk with my advisor who was very sympathetic to my situation. Turns out I only have to take one class and its designed to allow me the time needed to study for, and pass, the test.

Things are mostly back on track. I'm still working the dwarf story and its progressing. Funny, you feel like it's going nowhere and want to quit it. But I find by just powering through you get to the light, so it's slowly getting there. Patience is the key. I am more of that than I used to be.

I read a little story of mine yesterday I'd for gotten I wrote. I was surprised to find it pretty good. I usually cringe when reading the old ones, seeing only the huge mistakes. But this one seemed as good, or better than more recent works. Maybe I'm too hard on myself. All these years and I still question the quality of the stories I put out. But I am proud to have written anything. I used to read and think that an impossible goal.

Waiting 11Nov17

Updates.

In the interest, as always, of keeping things real here, have to talk about school.

First off, I failed the comprehensive exam.

 I know, surprised me too. I was brilliant, dazzled with my responses put my own flair on everything. Bad move. Apparently I should've been thinking more like a professor than a writer. "Too casual" was the major complaint along with numerous grammatical errors. 

Grammar,the bane of my exsistence! 

I'm not sure what this means for my masters. I have to take it again,probably next semester.

On the upside. I successfully defended my thesis. The little story came through! I am going to be a published writer! Yeah, yeah, it's a university press. Fuck that, I did it.

This whole week has been a seesaw of anger and elation. I want to jump for joy and kill. I am one failed overall exam from finishing. How the fuck do you pass all the classes but cannot graduate. Even the assholes who decide on this pass/fail fiasco should realize the flaw in this process.

Done venting. Now it's on to the next story.

"Hang the Hunter" 05NOV17

I've been working this grieving Dwarf story for a few years now. He's gone from short story to novelette and back. Right now he's existing in a series of shorts. I've studied so much of the form that i think it serves the character better, that and i don't have the patience for long form works.

That's not the issue so maybe I shouldn't have brought it up, but this is going somewhere,

The real issue is time itself. Hang, was one of the ultimate challenges for me. I wanted to do a fantasy story that was my take on things. He would live in a world i created, without all the things i find boring or common. Its a nice enough little story but I'm hitting the wall this week.

My taste in reading and writing has changed some since he came about. I haven't read a fantasy piece in years and I'm not sure i can get to that place again. The words used to flow. I could see his little ass stompin around shootin stuff, just owning his world ya know? Now I'm questioning and micromanaging everything he and the others do. Normally that's the fun part. Now it feels like work, like i should shelve it. There are other projects i could give attention to. Joba my retired space medic and his less than honorable friend Chaos. There's pieces closer to reality like the man who's touch shifts a person's luck towards good or bad, but Hang and his cohorts are next. I am tasked with him and i must finish. I guess i just needed to vent a little.

His first story is complete, the bones anyway. I just need to put flesh to them. Make you care about their collective fates. I'll get it there.

Damn near the end 26Oct17

It is, and I am acutely aware of this. Every drive across the river, every comment made in class, the faces. Everything, reminds me my schooling is near the end.

I completed the comprehensive exam Saturday and submitted my final manuscript yesterday. Al that's left is its defense, and a final paper,

I shelved the idea of a doctorate, I cannot read one more critical article or tear one more writers work apart. My goal all along was to understand the literary concept in order to become a better writer, not critic.

freedom is on the horizon,but  I've done the sitting at home thing. it can be maddening. The desire to teach isn't really there either. 

As in the past, all that's clear is I must keep writing. So that's the plan. I have the tools now. Time to apply them. I have many previously written works I always thought solid, idea wise, but poorly executed skill,wise . I'll fix them, then shop them.

Updates 07Oct17

Received feedback on my manuscript finally.

It was good overall which is nice, but I knew that. What I was really waiting on was her pointing out the little things I'd missed.

 As a writer you wouldn't complete the work if you didn't think it good.  I knew the story was solid enough. My concern was missing the little something that could be really big.

Shout outs to my professor Dr. Johanna Leake. Others questioned my choice but I know her,  Dr. Kuchta and dr. Bryant, to have the eye. They never sugar coated their critique of my previous work and more importantly, every instance pointed out they were correct about.

So, I'm about twenty pages into the rewrite and up against it. About a month to get it straight, study and pass the comprehensive, write a final paper and defend my manuscript. 

All that and I'm still confident, still determined. 

23Sep17 Pre birthday blues i'm guessing.

Yes!

 Deep in the throws of several beers. Yet even while softly held in their arms the darkness laps at the edges, patiently waiting for the chance to  press its advantage.

Begone vile demons I cry.

I deny not your power only your presence, here, now, tonight.

Where is the too fleeting peace found in conviction of purpose so clearly evident just a few days ago?

Where is the smug comfort of knowing you trod the right path?

 Self doubt is never silent long. Its voice only grows louder with age.

Will there ever be answers or only more questions?

 You run run run in your mind searching but for what? an out? some direction? Who is this madman that now occupies the space of one who was so confident just two days ago?

Calm yourself. No more wandering on the planes of speculation where reality is neither solid or palpable. Grab what you know to be solid. They form your reality, they are your firm earth nurturing, providing the sustenance you have forgotten.

updates 29AUG17

Submitted my manuscript for my thesis project yesterday. Seventy two pages but probably a few more before it's finished. I had to force myself to stop thinking about it last night. As a writer like i mentioned in previous posts, its necessary to let the work rest, see it with new eyes before messing with it again. Still the mind wants to list all the things you believe need fixing. I managed to ignore that urge, instead i started working the one I'd let rest while working on Jordan and his problems.

Its about a loner spacer type, brokenhearted, they all seem to be brokenhearted; who joins a mercenary expedition to deep space in search of a fabled lost ship. I have the structure of the thing down but not the body, that lumpy thing that needs molding and shaping to become a real story. It's nice to be poking around in different peoples heads. The constant working on Jordan's tale has made me hyper aware of problems with Cornelius and how his tale must be told.

Its amazing rereading your work and seeing the progress, and where you need to improve. Then you read something written by Mark Twain a couple hundred years ago and are completely floored. Just a handful of pages but the layers and depth of characters! i am humbled. Not discouraged mind you, just...realizing how much more there is to learn. So i put the head down and get back to work.

14Aug17 the summer

Looks like it's damn near over. I'm sure i promised to keep this page updated and running after the spring semester, a toast to how successful that has been (sarcasm).

No, no updates over the summer, but i was busy. My thesis project for my Masters begins this fall and the goal was to have something presentable to begin with, something so refined there would be little for my professors to seriously critique. The result is seventy one pages of material sixty of which i consider well done. Or did, and there lies my problem.

I didn't take into account the need to let the story just rest for a while. This gives me the writer the equivalent of a new reader as later i approach the thing with fresh eyes. I needed this break and didn't take it. I should have worked on other stories. My other major mistake was failing to read it out loud. Now i can't count the number of times I've told fellow writers to read it out loud. But ego is a powerful drug as i'm sure you as fellow writers know. When you're in the flow, hearing it so well in your head you're just plowing through you just do. You never break the magic! I mean you lean back and look at the damn thing and it even looks good. But when you hear it? Out loud? Try speaking the thing in the voice you hope the reader hears? Its not the same. Not a complete mess, but not as good as envisioned.

That's been my last three days folks. All the elements are there, my theme is present, i'm making the points i want. but the whole thing feels muddled, i'm not eliciting the emotional responses i want from the scenes and other readers are confused.

I know its good. I know i'm being overly critical on a piece that's still months away from true completion but i still hear that voice back there saying you suck. Those last three days and today, i remind myself this is normal. This is the dark night before the light of dawn, that i am so much better than when i started so many years ago.

11Jun2017 putting the work in,

I am in the bowels of the rewrite for my thesis work "Serengeti on the Bayou," and I'm wrestling with the thinness of a scene.

When I wrote it a year ago I imagine me leaning back at the time with a huge smile at the completeness of it all.

(Almost assuredly not true, but nice imagery.)

Reading it now all I see is what it lacks.

The dialog flows but there's too little. The depth of the characters must be deeper, and the overall theme is not even hinted at. The result is little more than two guys sitting around talking about a murdered woman with nothing underneath.

So I go at it, One paragraph at a time, one line at a time. I'm reminding myself to go deep, to put little stories in to enhance background, to breathe, take my time so that later I can truly say I did my best.

It's a good story. I mean it was always a good story but it's better now, more focused, it finally has something to say. I guess in a way, I have something to say.

I went to grad school to learn how to write but not just how. I needed to know why, if what I said even mattered. I found it does. Just for the thing itself, to find a point, an issue, and expound on it.

I am all over the place emotionally today. Hurling mentally from happy to sad and back all within the confines of an hour. The writing harnesses all that, focuses that emotional energy into the work and I am stable again.

I am watching Tom Selleck playing Robert B. Parker's "Jesse Stone," on lifetime. Good writing and great characters make for a perfect Sunday and I am better.

30May2017 summer vacation

Two months since the last posting. School demanded I stop pissing around and concentrate. The good news is I passed. The bad news? Three months till more school. I hate down time. Worse news is next semester is my last semester. That will mean even more down time.

I get its not really a problem, others wish that was their only concern. I'm just at this stage in life where motivation is hard to come by and self confidence is hanging out with motivation.

So I've resolved to spend the summer working on the story I plan to submit for my thesis. The issue is settling in on a theme that feels solid. The work is an adaptation of three short stories I wrote.

 A familiar event that occurs when revisiting old material is how bad it is. You see not only grammatical errors but characters you under developed and some that took over. The core of the story is solid, it's the subtle nuanced stuff I'm struggling with like the opening and who to delete. I'm at that point every writer get to, the "my god you suck at this!" Point. I'm questioning every decision I've made so far and this fifty or so pages in. 

Then you get a glimmer of the answer, but it's out there, a blur teasing you just out of reach. The answer of course is to just plow through. That's where motivation comes in. I start finding other things to do instead of plowing through, like updating my blog.

Little things to be sure. First world problems as my friend is want to say. The story will be written.

02Mar17 update

God, has it really been this long without one?

Once school got into full swing the idle time seemed to dry up along with the postings. Studying the Harlem renesance, pre 1865 American literature, and a short story class.

The 2865 is mostly on travel writing, foreigners first look at America and America selling its merits to the world. Surprisingly interesting stuff. A heavy read/work load though.

The short story thing is always fun. While not being able to write precisely what I want I am learning the crafting of any tale is just as important.

I wanted to embrace the the Mardi Gras spirit this year but ran into difficulties. It fell right in the heart of my dark cycle, when nothing can lighten my mood but time. I went across the river for Lundi gras but left pretty soon after. Just wasn't getting the usual contact high/good vibrations I used to get there. Watched the whole of Mardi Gras at home, on tv, SOBER!

Eh, I'm better now.😎

04Feb17 I picked up my guitar today.

Haven't done that in years. 

Once I decided to focus on writing I felt music would get in the way.

I love Patti Griffin. Specifically the album (album lol) "Living With Ghosts," There are two songs that constantly run through my head, well they all do but "Moses" and "Forgiveness" are the main ones. I hear the simple chord changes under the powerful vocals and I find myself struggling to not sing out loud.

So I'm learning them. The fingers are all fumbly, stiff, and unsure. My voice the same, but I'm on it LOL.

Not sure how this fits with a mainly writing blog, I guess it falls under the me sharing more part.

Recieved a B for my angel story slong with a lengthy list of problems needing to be addressed. I paraphrase here but I'm pretty sure the professor said 

"it needs a little more time on the stove."

Unintended Shifts in character perspectives at the start, and more focus on the main character is required. Who's story is it? Then don't let someone else dominate.

I introduced people then they disappear. all the usual things you miss on the first seven rewrites.

But Her main beef was my grammar. She expressed disappointment that a graduate level student was producing so many errors. 

I have been hearing this from the beginning. I swear I must have a block when it comes to this.

I was angry, hurt, in short all the emotional states I used to experience oh, twenty or so years ago.

Then I looked at her corrections. Everything was there. She was right. I'd been sloppy. 

So, I allowed myself a couple days of sulking. Now I'm back into the guts of the thing smoothing it out.

All the suggestions were good, some I might even apply. I resubmit the piece 28Feb. Could lead to a better grade, certainly a better story.

21Jan17 There's always the work.

After approximately one month of chipping at my stories, bitching on my blog about being stir crazy from a lack of things to do, school is back. But there was always the work.

Hello one hundred thirty five page reading assignment and critical review along with a journal write up.

Hello short story review complete with suggestions on improvements, several Claude McKay poems to be conversant with by Monday, and start of the "homeless gentlemanl's" story for my next project.

These are of course variations of the work.

I haven't even touched on the execise routine still in the early planning stages. LOL 

I am occupied mentally and physically therefore content.

I am Beefless! Meaning I got no beef with anyone or thing.

I live too much in my mind always. Things are constantly being weighed, decisions questioned, guilt imagined before any act performed. Unfulfilled longings that can never be. They all push at each other, demanding to be first, to be addressed.

It all disappears in the work.

My mind focuses in on the one thing it can control, the fate of my characters. The "is she thinking of me?" Becomes, "how can I make this scene feel real, make the reader feel what I want them to feel?

After all this time im starting to see glimpses, tiny fragments in the flow of my writing along with the occasional line i'm actually proud of. 

The work is a refuge for me, a world i crawl into and put defense satellites around. I've done so many other things but always there was, is, the work.

16Jan17 Bitchin but only a little.

I checked my mail today to see if the professors had posted any additional instructions.

Of particular concern was my writing class. As mentioned here recently, I finished a short story about a mother's struggle raising a child. At the end angels appear to discuss her fate. The issue is the appearance of the Angels. Technically they constitute a supernatural element.

The professor states emphatically there is to be no genre work.

This isn't my first creative writing class so I suspected this could be the case but wrote it anyway, my first mistake. I guess I figured the overall thrust of the story was literary in essence and I could argue the piece was more that than genre.

The frame of mind encouraged in graduate students is one that your opinion, your view is as valid as the professor's. We are urged to see them as equals, as kind of friends trying to help you be the best writer you can be. 

With that in mind my I initially wanted to argue my case and see if she changed her mind. But I think she can't allow me to break her rules and I should be considerate enough to not challenge her.

I could alter the story which is the heart of my post. 

It would be a small thing to remove the Angels. The old me would've gut the thing and moved on, mission accomplished.The story would still be effective.

The new me is refusing to do this for some reason. Some reason ha. The reason is it would lose something. This new me bristles at that thought. I sweated over this, to get it like this for a reason.

It remains as is, on to the next story. As vane as I'm loathe to say that sounds it is what it is. Still, the idea of me not changing it is interesting.

15Jan17 the blog challenges

I started them in an attempt to share more of me, The idea being people who blog more about themselves, reveal more, and thus connect more with readers. It was part of a long range plan to establish a fan base

I realize now i'm of a certain mindset. This is not to say i'm not open to new things, more that my personal private life is mine and i am loathe to share pieces of me with the public.

There is also the fact the topics suggested felt mundane,pedestrian even, near the end. I fail to see how knowing what my favorite song or color is will increase my readership.

Maybe I was too literal with the whole thing. Possibly the goal was for me to loosen up mentally, to get my mind on things worth sharing. In any case i'm back to the more personal week to week updates with the occasional sprinkling of segments from the challenge that feel worth the effort.

School starts next week. The now familiar pattern of getting into short story writing only to have to stop and put on the critical hat is here. I'll get it done.

The short story No Souls Left is finished. Now the cool down before submitting it to class. Prior to that i'll take another swing at rewriting, see how it flows, check for grammar errors, repetitive words, and things of that nature.

I have the rough outline for the Homeless story which is next short project. I decided to go with a first person perspective. its one i haven't done in a while, since I got away from writing detective stories.

I've been chipping away at "Found While Dreaming," too. It's my science fiction story about an aged African warrior in the midst of a life change. The last couple of semesters i've had it on hold while focusing on school. Now i plan to work it daily, even if its only a couple of pages a day. I need to get it done!

09Jan17 blog project #10

Your favorite song and why.

Too many songs. This is a silly task!

Due to the sheer volume of tunes ima have to go wit...

"All I do" (is think about you,)" by Stevie Wonder.

Of course pretty much anything off of "Songs in the Key of Life" would work but I had to pick one and this is the one I'm feelin right now post shower, anticipating the restart of school, and generally feeling joyful.

Stevie to me always sings with reckless abandon. I feel like there's no separation between thought and action, kind of like when Jimi Hendrix plays guitar. No hesitation concerning the right tone or note or turn of phrase. He just channels pure joy.

07Jan17 blog project #9

Ten little things that make you happy.

1. Movies

2. Reading in any of its mediums.

3. Eating

4. Drinking

5. Sex (It should note here these are not in order!)

6. School or learning in any form.

7. Non conformist! Stay crazy, be different!

8. People! for looking at or living vicariously though.

9. New Orleans. It's a mad mixture of magic and old south in the end as Wierd and crazy as the people who live here.

10. Writing. Listed last but the most important. Never have I had a more love/hate relationship with something. It tasks you, demanding you give your best each time. Only to find upon rereading it needs work!

02Jan17 blog project #8

The movie that most reminds me of my childhood.

For me the movie is "The Learning Tree," written and directed by Gordon Parks.

It's the tale of a young black boy living in Kansas coming of age. It's an old film, came out in 1969 but ibis world is much like my childhood growing up in rural Ohio.

I don't remember the story line truth be told, I just recognize the terrain, I walked similar roads.

We called our space "The Country" growing up. Any relatives living in the city laughed at us and our Green, rural life. But those dirt roads? it felt like they could lead anywhere.

I remember wandering the back acre of our piece of land, building forts, hunting for wild dogs or monsters with my cousins and neighbors. 

I remember cutoff jeans and bare feet and working in the small garden behind our house on the hill just below the watch tower.

the locals and people in the film immediately takes me back. I'm eleven again and sad at the news I'd have to leave all that for the uncertain life of the city.

The saying goes "You never knew how good you had it," but I think I did. The city turned out not to be the horror story I feared, just another mystery to crack. 

But the country? That will always be Oz, or the great forest James Fennimore Cooper describes at the beginning of "Deerslayer," breathtaking and magical.

01Jan17 blog project #7

Name your favorite movie and why.

The first to leap to mind is "The Last Emperor." Of course there are hundreds of movies that could be named, Casablanca, braveheart, Heat of the Night, many John Wayne, yes John Wayne movies, but...

Only The Last Emperor moves me to tears every time I watch it.

There is something about that little boy, an infant, literally becoming Emperor before realizing what a burden it is. He resents it as he finds himself manipulated by various court factions then finds he is Emperor in name only. What follows is a descent into decadence and the loss of family and faith. The final insulte is him being used as a figurehead for the Manchu movement.

It is the end that always gets me though.

long after he's been overthrown and re educated he takes a tour of the forbidden city like any other communist citizen. Underneath his old throne is the cricket he played with as that lonely child all those years ago. still alive. It's an impossible thing of course that moves him and in turn me to tears every time.

I'm such a wuss!