Day Three

12:00 AM - 5,773. Sidetracked by the necessary planning that I’ve now adopted as a pre-chapter ritual. Get a rough outline down then just go for it. Seems to be working.

12:26 AM - 5,776. Slow going. More internet distraction. Much time spent pondering new word: hadn’tve. Had not have, being the intended contraction, though I’m not even sure had not have makes any sense as a phrase whatsoever. Decide instead to go with “wasn’t”, which cleans up the whole issue nicely. Was getting lost on some deserted, past tense backroad there. Not sure where it was leading...

12:31 AM - 5,807. Have probably used the phrase “down the hall” at a hundred times already. Wonder what percentage of the total word count those three are responsible for.

12:40 AM - 5,929. Learned the difference between eloquent and elegant, then spelled black without a ‘c’. Is this irony? I know not.

12:47 AM - 6,043. Decided to stitch the last half=page onto the end of chapter five instead of using it to start chapter six. Ideally, to increase the tension. Or something to that effect. Copped a line from Fear and Loathing, too, to end the chapter: there is no way to describe the terror I felt. Always liked that line.

6:46 PM - 6,086. Really can’t figure out, due to the whole present-tense thing, if I should be using ‘run’ or ‘ran.’ This one has always stumped me, and, of course, I never bother to look it up. I think it’s run, am pretty damn sure it’s run, but for whatever reason ran just sounds right.

6:47 PM - 6,094. Just used ‘down the hall’ again. Shit. Need to find a better way to say this.

7:11 PM - 6,301. Break time.

11:04 PM - 6,328. Almost done with tomorrow’s quota. Would like to be at 10,000 by the end of day five.

11:22 PM - 6,586. Invented new word: somehome. Was trying for ‘somehow,’ but just went all wrong.

11:24 PM - 6,593. T2 reference: check.

11:35 PM - 6,676. Starting to lose it a bit. The writing, I mean. The words aren’t coming out as effortlessly as they sometimes do. Feel like I’m working harder to find the right thing to say.

Day Two

9:28 AM - Set to work, this time on the bus. Carsickness in t-minutes five minutes and counting.

9:43 AM - 1,819. Writing on the bus sucks. Very bumpy.

10:54 AM - Got the whole story-arc thing mapped out in math class. I’m very confused, but I think I know what I’m doing now. Or, at the very least, I know where to go with it. Hardest decision so far: yes, time travel is absolutely necessary. Also, got the characters pretty figured out. Their roles in the plot, at least.

11:43 AM - 1,933. Really getting the ball rolling now, plot-wise, but for some reason one of the characters has started to speak like Gandalf. An interesting development...

12:25 PM - 2,445. Getting close to fulfilling today’s quota, but alas, I must detour down the road of scholarly responsibility. Just when it was getting good, too. Somehow this chapter’s turned towards the mystery/suspense vein. Oh well.

1:23 PM - 2,469. In class, trying to sneak words out between the professor’s powerpoint slides. Making the chapters way too short, substituting them for the *** I’m so accustomed to using with short stories. Need to learn how they work together; when the break in action is big enough to constitute a whole new chapter or just a small pause. Or maybe *** just indicates a scene change within the same time period? Kinda like all the “meanwhile, at stately Wayne Manor”s in the old Batman. Four chapters in five pages is a bit ridiculous, I think.

1:30 PM - 2,469, still. Realizing now that I’ve completely trapped myself in first-person narration. Need to have action away from protagonist, but can’t make it work within the narrative confines I’ve established. Balls!

1:47 PM - Yes, still at 2,460. But now I’ve solved the whole first-person prison thing. And I figured out how to do the critical POV shift from protagonist to protagonist’s clone. Much rejoicing.

3:44 PM - 2,467. Back at the empty Yellowhouse. Alone, mostly terrified to be alone in the house after seeing Paranormal Activity yesterday. Drown out the terror with volume and brownies.

4:13 PM - 2,784. Just wrote my favorite line, so far: “Doug had an eye for good hedge-work...”

4:30 PM - 3,076. Narrowing in on today’s quota, though I plan on overshooting, working my way far into tomorrow’s count.

4:36 PM - 3,196. Couldn’t resist Ferris Bueller reference: “This place is like a museum: very cold and you can’t touch anything.”

4:46 PM - 3,379 and rolling. Boosh! Reduced to air-drumming along to Baroness in celebration. Psych is high. Also, just described a bowling alley with a black floor instead of the usual hardwood. Now I want one.

5:02 PM - 3,614. Requisite Bill Murray reference: check.

5:46 PM - 3,886. Took an extended break to write out a brief overview of the next chapter. Have been writing with black Fisher space pen. I usually favor roller ball pens, but I’m growing rather fond of this, a ball point. Learning its intricacies, its secrets.

6:33 PM - 4,664. Again, very confused with the tense of the narration. Really I have no clue how to manipulate these things; I just go for whatever sounds right.

6:50 PM - 5,058. Got tomorrow covered, but if I keep going maybe I can finish this thing early. Or at least keep my mind off of every shifting creak of the floorboards or hiss of the radiators, which aren’t creaking floorboards or hissing radiators, they’re the footsteps of some unseen demon, the hiss of its breath hot on my neck...

7:26 PM - 5,727. Chapter five in the bank, ready to get out of this cold house and grab some dinner. Made significant progress today; nearly at my quota for day four already. Think I’m finally getting the hang of writing long fiction, finding the right length to extend scenes without having them drag on for pages and pages. Ridiculously loud music helps. Would like to keep going but I’m struggling to spell words now, having to stop mid-word and think for a second. Fingers are moving slow, too.

11:47 PM - 5,729. These grapes I’m eating, they must have some kind of invisible mold on them, for they are disgusting. Tomorrow I will search out the best snackfood available, and make a cache. A snack cache.

Day One

12:24 AM - First word written

12:34 AM - 87 words in. Not sure what pace that puts me at, but it probably isn’t good.

12:44 AM - 188 words in. ‘Wolf Like Me’ comes on the shuffle and i crank the speakers, since I’m the only one here in this house. Not sure what tense I’m writing in, which is troublesome, but I’m sure that’ll get hammered out, forgotten, and rediscovered over the course of the month. Volume up a few more notches, then hit repeat.

12:54 AM- 297 words. Getting bogged down in thought, distracted by random things, though I have no internet to waste time with. The desire to make everything sound perfect right away is keeping my pace slow. Must learn to get past that and just go go go. The sooner I get to 1,667 the sooner I can go to sleep.

1:04 AM- Still 297. Had to run back to the apartment to shit. A weakness of mine, not being able to shit in foreign toilets. Debating whether or not to get into the bottle of wine in the cupboard over the stove. Pro: being mildly drunk is fun. Con: will probably get drunk enough not to focus on noveling and instead run around apartment until passing out.

1:30 AM- 357. A very fine caliber, but a very poor wordcount. The internet is my enemy. At least the wine has stayed corked...

1:56 AM- 606. Finally escaped the first scene. Focus is in short supply, and I think I might have passed out for a minute or two. Feel like I should have more of an outline; like I’m running ahead at full speed with my eyes closed, only not in a good, exploratory way, but in a bad, going to set up lots of problems later way. Nevertheless, I’m on chapter two, which is good, I think.

1:05AM - 687. Moment of total confusion before I realized there is a time change tonight. Thought I had somehow gone back in time, yet was able to keep the progress I’ve made since the last time it was 1:05. Like I was given a second chance to make better use of the 1-2 o’clock hour. But, yeah, I’ll probably just waste this new hour like I did the last.

1:27 AM- 1,008 words. Maybe, just maybe, I have a shot at finishing this whole thing. Calling it a night to the rhythms of Neil Young and Crazy Horse, this time at a reasonable volume.

10:14 AM - At it again. Been up for a while now, but couldn’t even get the documents opened until now. Rooibos helps.

11:27 AM - 1,699 words in. At the quota for today, and calling it quits for a while. Finally got some momentum built up; gears are turning, wheels are spinning, and such.

Preview: II

With his own television tuned in to the same station, he would watch through an expensive pair of Bushnells for the duration of the half hour program. Her strokes were ungainly and she never mixed colors in the proper proportions, leaving her canvas covered in a thick insipid mess. Inevitably, at about 2:25, she would become supremely frustrated with her failed attempt to duplicate the work of the great master of coniferous companionship. For the next five minutes she would mouth curses and pace around her apartment, often times knocking over her easel or tossing the lackluster canvas in the trash. However, as soon as 2:30 came along and the program ended, she would calmly turn off the television and close the blinds.
This went on for several weeks, her painting, him watching and laughing. Then the skull appeared. Slender and anemic, in place of the easel, propped up by some sort of tripod. Definitely not human and too big to be deer. Probably a horse, he thought. Through the Bushnells he scanned the room but never saw her. Just empty eye sockets and a mouth full of incisors and molars grinning a lipless smile. The curtains stayed open for their usual half hour before being drawn shut by the unseen tenant.

Mathed

Exponent,
associated with ten and to the right moved
positive, notation not quite scientific. Then,
negative decimals, leftward multiplication and
the first non-zero number, raised to some power.

Perspective estimation--
a broad range of values,
one quantity compared to
another. Thinking methods,
magnitude orders and the weight
of a year's newspaper.

Imaginary Apostles

The 2:01 bus, as usual. Seventh row from the back, right side, window seat, as usual. Three stops, four. The bus fills but no one sits next to me. Fifth stop, people are standing in the aisle, still no one sits next to me. Maybe I smell or maybe nobody can see the empty seat or maybe I just have a look, unknown at least to me, that screams ‘don’t sit next to this guy.’ Sixth stop though, somebody approaches. Small and roundish, dark skin covered by a faded teal sweatshirt, curls of wire-y grey hair stuffed under a tattered canvas bucket hat. Various bags of various sizes clutched in one gnarled hand and a cup of coffee in the other. Steam whispers upward from the thick papered walls of the cup.
“Mind if I sit down here?”
“Not at all.”
“Thanks.” He slides into the seat, carefully marshaling his bags and coffee. His eyes are old and watery. Pale corneas that have somehow lost most of their opacity, pupils that long to be vivid with youth. Nestled into his seat, he thanks me again. I convey my response with a shrug of my shoulders and return attention to the book in my hands.
A minute passes. Another. Again he strikes up conversation.
“I tell ya, there’s nothing like a plain cup of joe. None of this decaf business. Sugar-free. No, straight joe is my beverage of choice.”
I nod, mumble mock interest.
“Some guys, they go to a bar after work. Not me. I’m a busy man, but I’d rather go to a coffee shop and sit down with a good newspaper. Yep. But it’s all about moderation. That’s my motto. I had a coffee in the morning, this one in the afternoon, and I’ll probably have another this evening. No more though.”
“Yeah,” I say, my head half-cocked towards him. I notice he is looking directly at me and not off into the distance as he chatters on.
“I can understand why women would avoid the caffeine, but us guys, no problem. I mean, a young guy like you, and I can tell you’re young and active, can drink a Coke or Pepsi every now and then, cause you’re going to work it off. It just gets dangerous when you’re having as ix-pack a day. Same goes for beer.”
Slightly troubled and mostly annoyed I look at him, say “yeah, you really gotta be careful about that stuff,” turn back to my book.
“Now, do you go to school up here?”
“Yes,” and I’m being as curt as possible in hopes of squelching his curiosity. Instead he doubles his efforts, engaging me in an intense series of questions that ends with a detailed explanation of the decline of a mall in the suburb where I live. Then it’s back to my status as a student.
“What do you study?”
I surprise myself by telling the truth. English, creative writing, and not architecture, the usual response to bus-borne queries.
“Oh, yeah? I’m a minister now, but I minored in English Lit back in college.”
“Weird coincidence, huh?” There isn’t a shred of sincerity in my response. He continues on about his days in college and how they led him to a successful career in scriptwriting and I’m just waiting for the religious sales pitch but he never gets to it. More talk of college and how he majored in English Theatre and how he moved to L.A. to write for film and television before he was called away to be a minister.
“Well, I majored in English Lit and English Theatre and went to L.A. about a year after college, to work on film and television scripts. I bet you’d be surprised to know that writing for television and writing for the screen, which is film, are very different.”
I’m about to say that I’m not surprised and that I actually have quite a bit of experience writing ‘for the screen’ before I’m distracted by what he just said. Earlier he had mentioned a minor in English Lit and now, not forty-five seconds later, it’s reversed. Probably just misspoke. Then it gets worse.
“Yeah, I had a major in English Lit, European History, and Philosophy, and a minor in English Theatre. Yeah, I had a double major and a double minor.”
I let him run with it, egg him on. “Wow, that sounds like a lot of work.”
“Oh, it sure was. And I had grades too. 3.7 for my minors. 3.5 for my majors. No, 3.6 for my majors. But you know, I also worked. I put myself through college. I had two part time jobs and one full time job. While my friends were on summer vacation I was working.” He finishes his coffee and I notice the tattered pages of an atlas in his other hand, the kind you’d find in a high school geography textbook.
“That’s cool though, that you did all that yourself.”
“Sure is. Oh, and I had another minor. You’re not going to believe it. Can you guess?”
“Uhhh, architecture?”
“I also minored in Pre- Law.”
“Wow, you sure were busy,” I say, though it’s almost “you’re right, I don’t believe it,” except at the last second I decide not to call him out but to encourage him. I want to know how far this will go.
He rambles for a few minutes, recalls his decision to move to Los Angeles some more, tells me all about his successful, rich industry friends, and again mentions how he was called away from film to be a minster. Except, he doesn’t say minister. He says apostle. A record scratches, the needle bumped out of the groove in my head. Static hiss, confusion. Before I can recover, put the needle back in the groove, he’s moved on, deep into an explanation of why so-and-so is the most accomplished cross-over novelist slash screenwriter and why his name will be the one we’ll be talking about in the universities years from now. Too startled by the apostle comment, I fail to catch the author’s name, though I can’t imagine it belongs to any actual human being, alive or dead.
“But you see, the Lord called me away from all that. He made me an apostle and what I do as an apostle, see, is I have authority over nations and countries and people.”
“Really?” trying to sound as authentic as possible.
“Yep. I work with prime ministers and congress and presidents. And I go to these countries and nations and I work with their leaders and provide protection, if they acknowledge my authority.”
“Protection? From what?”
“Pestilence, plague, famine, drought. Those things. But only if the leaders choose to accept my authority over their nation.”
“I see. How do you communicate with these leaders?” Now I’m trying to stump him, probing him to see how though out his delusions are. His response is pure verbal lightening, fast and precise.
“Correspondence. And telephone. I work directly with the prime ministers, so I use the telephone with them.”
“Wow.”
“Yes, sir. You can read my license here.” He hands my the atlas. Across the bottom of the pages, scrawled in an impenetrable cursive, are words and sentences that I could never hope to understand. The map itself is a world political map and I notice many of the countries are highlighted. Maybe he notices my eyebrow twitch and anticipates my question or maybe he reads my mind, but either way he offers an answer before I can ask.
“These are the countries I have authority over.”
“I see.” The United States, Canada, Greenland, Australia, New Zealand, North Korea, many others too small to see. One stands out. “Antarctica?”
“Yep. And up here, too,” he indicates the top of the map, where the entire Arctic Ocean is a mess of blue map ink and yellow highlighter. “That’s the Arctic. I’m recognized there.”
“By the polar bears?” I try to sound genuine but I know some sarcasm must have bled through. He’s unfazed.
“You know it,” he says, and I want to ask if he communicates with them via correspondence too, but decide to ask him if any countries have denied his authority. Again, I hope to catch him or throw him off guard, but his reply asserts the kind of confidence one can only have if they believe they are telling the truth.
“Well, the U.S., of course,” he laughs. “And New Zealand. Australia too, at first, but then they saw what I did for all these other countries and changed their minds. And the U.S., that’s just a racial thing, because I’m Afro-American. That’s all Congress there. And that George Bush Jr.”
When I ask him how he provides protection from pestilence and the like, the bus comes to a stop The driver announces the stop and my mystery apostle tucks his atlas away, stands up.
“Well, good talking to you. Good luck with school. Remember, you just have to put yourself out there.” And he’s gone, down the aisle and out the door and into the anonymous sea of people boarding and de-boarding. I spin around to the two kids sitting behind me, my eyes wide.
“Did you guys hear any of that? What that guy was saying?” They just star back, their faces blank mirrors reflecting the same look I must have had when the apostle initially spoke to me. “Okay, I guess not.” I turn to a girl across the aisle, but she’s engaged in a cellular conversation and isn’t paying attention. Nobody is in front of me. “Anybody hear that guy? He was crazy!” I say as loud as I dare. Almost a yell, but not quite. No one even looks at me.
Two stops later I get off the bus and walk to my car. I open the door. I get in. I drive home.

Preview

Soft at first, then louder. Hard hoof-falls echoing down the dim hallway. Click clack. Click clack. Four doors away, maybe three. Each step accelerates his heart rate by twenty beats. Click clack. Click clack. Two doors. Click. Clack. The hooves slow as they draw near their destination. Click. The impact is heavy enough to rattle dishes in the sink. Clack. A long shadow slides under the door...

That Girl In Class--You Know The One

Patches of skin peeked through tattered denim and
bleach-blonde locks splayed over obscure
necklines, a belt of rainbows, wrapped waist,
thin, pelvic bone pushed against taught skin--opposing mountains
and a tattoo, crawled and curled over lean
shoulders. She makes a fist around a pen,
writes like she's etching stone.

Visuals

Hot Off The Grill

I was the Tin Woodman. Or the Scarecrow. Or whichever one of those Oz fuckers didn’t have a heart. At least that’s what I’ve been told. But that isn’t really the issue here, at least not now. The issue is that if it weren’t for an overwhelming desire to have a yellow tee shirt I would still be breathing, still be narrating from the realm of the living. Instead, I’m in this weird, pseudo past tense disaster of a novel, trying hard to keep my verbs in order. And I still don’t have a yellow tee shirt. Or a heart.


Literally the first paragraph I've produced in two months. The start of something that I can feel slowly working its way to the surface. Something big, something fast, something like a shark or a whale or whatever. Not sure where it is going, and it seems like there or three of four separate ideas swimming around in these sentences, butthat'll all get worked out later. Hopefully.

Patience

Continuing with the theme of archive emptying, here is a storyboard/plotline I wrote up for a story I never even started.

* time is a closed, repeating loop
* the number of human lives on the planet is fixed
* no new lives are ever created
* when a person dies, or reaches the end of one life cycle, they are reincarnated as another person and follow that particular life cycle until its end. And so on
* somehow, the main character is made aware of this situation
* he continues to kill himself until he cycles through every possible life cycle in the hopes that he will eventually be reincarnated as himself and use this 'second chance' to make right some wrong (probably something to do with a girl/lover)
* the time loop always ends with total destruction and then starts over
* by being aware of the loop and altering it (by continually killing himself) he eventually reduces the lifetime of every person on the planet, causing a catastrophic breakdown of time
* he realizes thus and is forced to live out every life in its entirety, essentially on autopilot
* after he explains this to the girl, he is reincarnated as her, and while living her life on auto pilot he realizes she is in love with someone he understands is better for her than he is
* he accepts that she will never love him fully and is doomed to be a self-aware automaton

perspective: after-the-fact narration? Or after-the-fact until he is reincarnated as her? Probably after-the-fact; a memoir of everyone who ever lived.

the train metaphor: time is a train track that is a giant loop. There are many trains on the track. Every time a train reaches the end of the loop a new conductor takes over and drives the train for the duration of the next loop.



Looking back on this, I now find that last part, the train thing, most interesting. To the degree that if I ever summoned the motivation to re-visit this story, it'd probably just be about train conductors on a fixed loop.

Dear Jayne

Sometimes I write fake letters. For fun, or something.

Drunk, and writing this to you instead of my journal, which is probably a mistake but I guess I can always read this in the morning. I don't know, but either way words are qued up at the tip of my pen and it is best to get them going as soon as possible. I was thinking about the sun and how much I'd like to see it close up. If I ever found out I had a terminal illness I'd steal a spaceship and fly into the sun. Cremation and spaceflight all in one package--very appealing, no? I feel the need to write as quickly as possible, while my fingers still tingle, to capture the precise nature of this state of mind. This is all non-sense, but at the same time it's all that I am--words and ink and flesh and bone and hair. Naked, cold, hungry. I'm not sure I have a firm grasp on vocabulary now, but the first sentence of this page should be a reasonable excuse. Strike now, while the iron is hot! When we die we will exist in ink and paper--a history of thought and intention. Everything sounds epic when you're inebriated and I apologize for the grandiose ramblings of this letter. But as I said, I'm ink and paper and intention and can't be held responsible for late-night self-expression, can I? Not sure...if it were raining I'm sure I'd feel even more introspective ----- I think it is important not to censor yourself. I feel like the more I ramble the closer get to some truth, unknown or obscured by my conscious mind. Stoner poetry, for sure, but I'm not stoned I'm just tired and full of echoes or shadows or reverberations of former lives. Strike while the iron is hot! Capture these ghosts and spectres and imprison them on a page within an ink cell. Midnight cats make the night easier, their calm demeanor's are comforting, soothing. But I will not be soothed. I will rage on into the depths of the night content with the absence of others. The more/higher walls I can build the better. Now I'm just being ridiculous. I should go now--sleep--dream about things more exciting than reality, which isn't too hard. Really all I need is a flying car.

Super Random

Seriously more random than anything yet posted here. Strange things recently found in a notebook:

I remember the days, snow packed, across two streets that separate school and home. Quiet, walk around old brick building, alone, though fresh footprints suggest others are here, inside, waiting. Those same wet footprints navigate hardwood hallways, glisten under lights suspended a bit too high for precise illumination. The classroom is cold. Ancient radiators spit and hiss as they try to counteract the windows above. The lights in here are closer; they provide more modern light. I remember blood blisters in kindergarten, lies and tickets in first grade, burnt hands in second, glasses in third, static water fountain shocks in fourth, snowy halls in fifth...


This page, already tainted by the first--
And on the table I find a single hair. Long, brown. With the proper technology I could make a clone of whomever left his hair here. Would they be the same? How well an automobile runs depends on the quality of gasoline used to power it. Or, you can make the same machinery operate differently by using different circuitry. Or, a brain can be physically identical but I can't imagine it would work the same, have the same thoughts.
How did I get here? This class, a drone, to infinity by way of every rambling backroad imaginable, never changing pace or intonation or randomness. Hidden fidelity. Who is this woman in the rowboat? An image of peaks and valleys; just find me the girl. Minimality is a factor, L.A. riverbed longshot. Perfect apex -- dry lake -- salt flats -- slowly tilt -- water and energy -- an ocean filled with plastic

Random

One from the archives (maybe parts of this found their way into other things):
Forgotten cats outside the window. Wrappers from many teas, assorted on the linoleum. Remembered cats stretched across circular dinner tables, creating curved meridians. Another cat prowled back into the light, from the dark between chairs and couches. The sole desire, the primary mission: cashews. Cashews and Nut-thins, and maybe the delicious background flavors of Goldfish crackers. Sudden cats, spiraled up and down. Lips thick with salt, such a good time to be had fainting for the orange and red keys, fuzzed together, a sort of plastic melted over as a cover

Different Keys for Different Locks

His voice, pinched off at the end of sentences / Revolutions Two through Eight / And walk through the clutter, the dead automation / Circuits bled electricity until nothing was left, no power just silent snowflakes, the buzz and hiss of high tension lines conspicuously absent / Bare walls and hardwood floors and cold rooms. Oppressive empty space / You need to see the timing, like Tetris blocks locked in place / Serpentine vibrations that pass through flesh walls, while in the corner stacked journals tell dusty tales of imagined possibility, dry ink flaked off yellowed pages / Frightened by the speed of his tonal recognition / Wet reflections / wild lights / cloud passed electricity / Lightning is cloud feedback / This storm is a song, thunder chorus and lightning verses, rain fell like liquid percussion on glass ears / All of the songs in the world play at the same time and I try to decipher them, individual melodies like cells in ether / Planets and cells suspended in ether, the sound of a compressed spring / Burnt tongue coffee, like a swollen piece of sandpaper between my jaws / Yellow-tipped power cords and quarter-inch input jacks; again, in the empty cold room. Cracks in the floor, wide / Cracks the floor wide, like veins in the marble or rivers bisecting themselves on graph paper / Everything ends with a g / Golden maple floor, cracks wide in the marble, veins or snakes or / rivers / Little skeleton fingers make a fist around a pen / The floor is basement cool in front porch heat / Perfect cylinders / gears in motion.