Second Post in Row with My Face

Posted on August 26, 2010 by bukkhead

Posted a story. It’s called “Sucks To Be You.” I don’t know what to say about it other than you should read it.

Wrote it a bit ago, towards the end of the writing glut. The glut has sort of come to an end, and I’m trying to get a new glut going. Until then, I’ll probably only post one story per week, or every other week, or whatever. I don’t seem to have much energy these days. Easier to do rote things.

Found this website called 750words.com. It was inspired by some writing book that suggests you start each day with just writing, undisciplined, brain-dump writing, for three pages. The website guy figured 3 pages is about 750 words, so he made a tool to capture your daily writing exercise. Then he tracks your consistency for you, with points– one for writing, another for hitting 750, another for writing nonstop, another for consecutive days, etc. So it’s very much a Don’t Break the Chain type thing.

I have done three days in a row now. I’m not content to just brain-dump, though, not content to put down my thoughts. I’d like to think I think in narrative form anyway. My mind seems to naturally lecture, as opposed to muse. Anyway, so far, three days, three potential short stories. I don’t see the possibility or usefulness of writing 365 short stories per year. No one will read them all, least of all someone with a discerning eye who can filter out the good ones to offer the rest of the public. So I can’t promise I’ll keep this up. Maybe I can cycle through stories, so that on any given day, I’m either starting a new one, continuing an unfinished one, or finishing an old one.

At any rate, it’s good practice for NaNoWriMo. But it’s also sort of clipped my writing scope, by which I mean, I was sort of averaging 1800 words or so per story, and now I find myself trying to wrap things up around 700 or so. I don’t know if that’s any good. I don’t know if people would like to read microstories or not. Heck, 1800 itself might be considered too short.

Speaking of words, the website keeps track of how fast one writes as well. [note: going from memory here, as the website seems to be down right now] So far it’s taking me an average of 20 mins to get my 750 words in, fully twice the speed of the average of all users. Don’t know if that’s valuable at all to anyone. But by NaNoWriMo’s standard of 50k words makes a novel, that’s a novel written in 22+ hours.

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Accidental Test Picture

Posted on August 19, 2010 by bukkhead

New story posted. (‘An Amnesiac Does the New York Times Crossword Puzzle.’) Just a few left, and if I want to keep it up after that, I’ll need to get writing again. Bah. Productivity comes in waves. This one is about crossword puzzles, but not really, inspired, sort of, by this one time when I did a crossword puzzle in the only pen I could find, a day-glo green, and then I went back over it with regular black ink later, and I thought it was kind of pretty. So then I got this idea. And I have sort of stolen the title from Rex Parker‘s blog title.

And you’ll notice it just ends. I have moaned many times before about how I am horrible at writing endings. More than once, I’ll be writing along ar full-bore, really churning, and all of a sudden I’m done. The brain is empty, and I didn’t even see it coming. And as many times I re-read and re-write parts of the story, the ending feels like the end. So, t’heck wit’ it, that’s the end. Get out of it what you want.

Anything else going on in my life? Not as such. Which is not a bad thing. Got some trips planned. Got some actvititees planned. Saw some movies, read some books. Also, I might be going insane. Not sure about that one, will have to check in with ye later on that.

Later!

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New Story, New DBTC

Posted on August 16, 2010 by bukkhead

I’ve written a sci-fi story for you to read, called “The Sleek Silver Robot.” This one’s longer than my usual, almost twice as long. Also, it’s sci-fi, and I don’t usually go for that. Not that I’m opposed to it in the least. I’ve written a few before. But this one was a long time coming. Started it literally years ago, and as usually, got stuck. Had no idea where to go with it.

Originally, if you care, it was called The Slick Yellow Robot, and was obviously inspired by a comic called SCUD, about a yellow robot who is also a disposable assassin. I tried to get away from that idea as quickly as possible, however, and in the end I changed my robot from yellow to silver. I don’t think anyone reading both would accuse me stealing in any capacity– the only similarity is that assassin angle, and that’s been done a thousand other times.

Finally pulled it out of the folder a few months ago and just went for it. The hard part of is getting the same voice going as before. Hopefully I achieved that (can you find the seam?). Towards the end I started really getting carried away with the “fi” part of the “sci” with making up words and technologies and what not. I hope it’s at least readable. It’s not meant to be “figured out” in that there’s no “out” to “figure.”

Publishing this story leaves me just two more to publish, unless I write or finish more in the meantime. I have one I am working on now called “Lemons,” which will probably be done by the time the other’s are posted, so more stories through the end of next week, at least. Then we’ll see what after that.

On the DBTC side of things, I completed 50 days of writing, so now I’m moving on to something else: trying to make sure I don’t break the chain when it comes to recording my Weight Watchers points. I have about 11 pounds to go to hit my “goal” weight, although I think if I do that I may end up looking more sickly than healthy. Weight Watchers works if you stick to it, and that means recording my points everyday, something I can never keep up for more than a week at a time.

But I don’t know if I am really supposed to weigh only 165. Maybe I’ll post a picture if ever do. Of course, if doesn’t happen before Thanksgiving, I don’t think it will happen at all this year.

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Ten Things to Do Today

Posted on August 13, 2010 by bukkhead

Posting this Friday but writing it Thursday, yesterday. Part of a new thing  I’m trying, where I write down 10 things I need to get done and just do them. Wednesday went pretty well, but I got so much done I couldn’t think of ten house-hold things to do (which didn’t also recquire a larger time investment than I could afford while also working). So pre-posting this entry, and the new story, is/was on the list.

The story, called “Addicted to Running but Didn’t Realize it until He Got a Bad Cramp and Had to Stop” is another novel excerpt, but this one from the failed NaNoWriMo attempt of 2008. My first NaNoWriMo attempt, and I’m going to plead “India” for failing, since we left for India two-thirds of the way through the month. Not much of an excuse, since I had my laptop with me– but I just couldn’t keep up.

The novel was supposed to be about a guy who gets into running only long enough to get a really bad cramp, and doesn’t know what to do about it. The cramp just won’t go away. This chapter is him looking for ways to relieve the “running addiction” he thinks he has. I wrote most of it long-hand, at a meet-up of other NaNoWriMo writers. Don’t know if it’s because I got there late, or because they already knew each other, but when I rolled into the cafe where they all sat, they were not very inviting. A bit stand-offish. As, who knows, maybe they were just into it. So I sat down on a nearby chair and scribbled out the chapter now offered up.  Enjoy.

It just now occurred to me that last Wednesday’s story offering, also from a crap novel, was also about running. Over at Rife With Typos I’ve divided stories by subject– I wonder how many I’ve written about running? I should check. Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll put that on my list of Ten Things for tomorrow.

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My Writing Embarrasses Me

Posted on August 11, 2010 by bukkhead

New story posted: “Cougars, Tigers and Milfs, Oh My.” Was supposed to post this on Monday but didn’t have the gumption. Probably because this story has sex in it.

Not that I’m suggesting sex is what the story is about. Just has some in it, is all. And I know there’s more than a few how-to-write books out there with chapters on writing about sex. I’m not really all that interested in writing about sex well. Or writing about sex at all. I don’t know if the details of a sexual act are necessary to furthering a plot or furthering a particular character’s development for any kind of thing I write. The fact that sex occurs might be needed, but that’s an opportunity for “telling” as opposed to “showing.” Any kind of stylistic development I need can be done with euphemisms and synonyms.

*”He was still mad at her, but they screwed anyway. He didn’t feel better until, after they were done, they ordered a pizza. He screwed that too.”*

This story is a chapter from the NaNoWriMo novel I wrote in 2008. It’s not very good– the novel I mean. I consider it a failed novel, and don’t really count it as my “first.” Maybe someday I’ll see if I can fix it. It’s about a privileged high school kid who feels numb, thinks he hates everything, and decides to kill someone to see if that will make him feel anything at all. Sort of like the very worst of Bret Easton Ellis’s Less Than Zero and American Psycho. The idea was that I would divide chapters with his blog entries on ephemera, things he hates. But in the end, it was just too hackneyed, too trite, too worn out.

So why publish this chapter as a stand-alone short story? I don’t know. Read it and you tell me. I think partly I want to force myself out of my comfort zone. Although it took me a few extra days, putting this out there gives me a chance to work through some of the shame that might be otherwise holding me back. OR, I’m rationalizing, fishing for compliments, and really just making excuses for being simultaneously a megalomaniac and too lazy to keep up to my own self-imposed schedules.

Friday (since Thursday would be too soon) or Saturday I’ll post a different chapter from a different failed novel.

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Dragon Behind the Gates

Posted on August 5, 2010 by bukkhead

New story posted, has really nothing to do at all with this picture. The story is called “Cowboy Coffee.” The picture is of some Heroscape knights. I’m trying to sell my old Heroscape set but I need to take pictures to do so. Trying to make them look arty. The camera I’m using is not best in the world– good for the price, great for vacations and occasions– but I’m severely limited in accomplishing the look and feel I’m going for, especially when it comes to controlling depth of field. Then again, my absolute ignorance when it comes to photography is the true limiting factor, so maybe I shouldn’t blame the camera. And whatever the camera can’t do, I should be able to achieve with proper lighting and pre-frame composition, right? Or in Photoshop? Maybe. The reason the dragon is in there is because at first I had the castle door closed, but the camera wanted to focus on that, not the knights. But opening the door allowed in way too much back light. So I tossed in the dragon to block some of that, and achieved a cool kinda silhouette thing. I’ll take it.

The new story, like I said, has nothing to do with knights, dragons, castles, photography, or table-top gaming. It is, in a sense, a genre piece, in as much as it has a cowboy in it. But it’s a silly story, more Robert Coover’s Ghost Town than Zane Grey’s Riders of the Purple Sage. Then again, that’s like saying the Pope is more basketball player than slug.

And it’s old one, too, resurrected and re-written for your pleasure. Wrote it a long time ago in anticipation of writing a kind of sequel to a sort of novel I was kind of working on with this guy I know. The idea was we would write something Terry Pratchett-esque and include all of the people we knew and worked with. Then we thought we do the same thing again, but with a goofy western. That sort of fell off the tracks, and then I was working on a kind of pastiche called “Real Men” about a bunch of losers and the fictional heroes they worshipped (“Dex Boulder” was also a piece from this work). But that went nowhere either. So, here you go.

Not sure how to segue, but this writing-a-novel thing has been on my mind lately. I think that if, instead of working on individual stories, I were to work instead on novel chapters, I could write one pretty easy. What I have churned out, something like, 40,000 words since I started getting back into writing this year? And I have every intention of getting full-bore into NaNoWriMo, which is 50,000 words in 30 days. You’d think I just switch to writing a novel. You’d think. Maybe I will. Maybe I’ll get enough of a short-story back-log built up that I can still satisfy my ego with bi-weekly story posts, and then get to working on some novel writing.

Oh, god, but what to write a novel about?

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Hunt n Peck

Posted on August 2, 2010 by bukkhead

New story posted. “Special Delivery.” File this one under “Started one night when I was desperate to get some words written to fulfill my Don’t Break the Chain daily quota, and then it turned into a story.” Not unlike “My Illegal Aliens.”

For what it’s worth, and just so you know, it is indeed another Zombie story. I am not at all opposed to glomming on to a trend. Zombies are still pretty hot, thanks to the internet. This is, once more, my attempt at an off-beat, atypical zombie story. Maybe some day I’ll have enough and put out a self-published volume of them. So far I have 7 of them. Need about 10 more. And I am getting some serious deja-vu typing this, like I said the exact same thing the last time I posted a zombie story.

I don’t know what else to report to you, bloggy style here. Ran 10 miles yesterday. Writing output has dwindled recently, which is either a very bad sign, or just the natural ebb and flow– last month was just too productive to expect one could keep that up. Well, maybe, but not at the same as playing WoW, Words with Friends (username: Bukkhead), watching “Persons Unknown,” and trying to photograph and sell my old Homies, Heroscape, and Rokenbok toys.

Reading… I’m currently reading The Terminal State by Jeff Somers, and trying to decide what to read on my e-reader: Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson, or Solar by Ian McEwan, or Nation by Terry Pratchett, or Boneshaker by Cherie Priest. I am particularly nervous about that last one, because I kinda sorta wanna take a stab at writing a steampunk zombie novel this November (for NaNoWriMo) but I don’t want to end up stealing. Then again, I need to read something from the steampunk genre, if only to get a feel for it… meh, I’ll let you know what I decide later.

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Write What You Now

Posted on July 29, 2010 by bukkhead

They say write what you know, which I used to consider rather flimsy advice. What’s the point of writing if you’re not making stuff up? And most people, all they know is the same boring stuff. Of course, some people like to read the same boring stuff. It has something to do with catharsis, and metaphor, and compare/contrast, and bunch of other stuff I allegedly learned in school.

As a result of write what you know, I think a lot of writers end up writing about writers. My latest is a case in point. Go ahead and take a gander at “Tooth and Nail.” The first sentence was my way of sort of invoking the muse: “An average, every-day sort of guy walks into a coffee shop with the intention of getting a cup of joe, opening his laptop, and writing a perfectly normal story.” I really was desperate to write a boring, simple story. The result, alas: magical realism.

Go over to Wikipedia to see if this is, actually, magical realism, or just a cheap facsimile thereof. Suffice it to say my goal, once I got into it, was to make it real. I didn’t want it to be just an extended metaphor– I wanted all of those fantasy elements to be part of the story, not just in the main character’s imagination. Not sure if I achieved that, although I think it’s more or less obvious by the time he talks to his mom on the phone. Of course, one could point out that any fantasy story is just an extended metaphor. Ah, shaddap.

Maybe “write what you know” is not advice, but sort of a description. You will end up writing what you know, regardless, so you’d better start knowing some pretty interesting stuff before you write. Thanks to the internet, though, we can all become instant experts, so we don’t have to guess our way through esoterica in order to achieve verisimilitude.

At any rate, in this story I think I accidentally ended up meeting my original goal, having tricked myself by the distractions in the main character’s world. So, if you want, you can read the story he wrote, as a stand alone document, by clicking on “An Average, Everyday Story.” Actually, that was the original title of “Tooth and Nail” before I decided that, ultimately, I didn’t want an “ironic” title afterall. And, while we’re on the subject, I have also posted a version of Tooth and Nail that sets the main character’s writing in italics, just in case you want to keep them separate. Personally, I wouldn’t want it that way, but that’s the opinion of a reader, not a writer, so consider it with a grain of salt.

Finally: no, I did not spell “know” wrong in the title of this post.

FAT PS! I popped “Tooth and Nail” into a silly little analyzer called “I Write Like” and this is what it told me:

I write like
Margaret Atwood

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

So that’s one robot’s vote for the Magical Realism thing!

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Stand Still, Dog

Posted on July 26, 2010 by bukkhead

Not nearly enough blogging of late. Dedicated to making that change. I’d like to say it’s because I’ve been busy, but that’s not a near enough truth. The truth is, once again, I’ve set my “standards” too high: always have to have a picture, have to have something relevant to the the writing I’m working on. Got to either prepare better, or be willing to free-blog.

Enough minutia. Here’s what been going on: got a new short story in a few days ago, called “The Secret Red Book.” I’ll tweet that today. It’s a bit of meta-fiction, if you want to know, and once again, one of those stories I started a long time ago, forgot what I meant to do with it, so decided to just finish it. Also, I think it was inspired by a dream I had, once. Or a vision. Or some kind of false memory. We’ll consider it exorcised, more or less.

Because I’ve failed to tweet that said story was posted last week, I’ll have to wait before posting the next one, longer than I wanted to, but probably for the best, as I am already posting them too fast and will burn out if I don’t slow down. But, as a teaser, coming up: some magic realism, a story with sex in it, and one with zombies.

Otherwise, life lately has been the Ragnar Relay, Inception, Tilth, the New York Times crossword puzzle, “Happy Town“, “Person’s Unknown“, Stan Helsing, The Eternal Prison, and my mega-hot wife.

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Whattup, Homies

Posted on July 19, 2010 by bukkhead

I’m trapped in a vicious cycle. I get it into my head that I need to drink more water. So I drink a ton of water. This result sin frequent trips to the bathroom, and I flush a lot of sodium out of my body. Then my body starts craving salty food. But I interpret that as a craving for food, in general. I binge till I’m bloated and depressed, and think I think: I know, I should be eating less and drinking more water!

Etc.

Binge/purge, that’s me. I don’t know how to quit anything except cold turkey. I don’t know how to be into something without being really really into it. Finding a balance is key, I know, but in order for me to find a balance, I’ll have to end up really really into the balance. We’re talking Wikipedia articles on acrobats, type of a thing.

Would really like to find a balance with this writing thing. That’s why I’ve been holding back, not publishing stories as soon as they’re written. Trying to actually finish a few of the old ones, not just let me self go hog-wild with a new blank page every 30 minutes. Is it tough? I would not call it tough. Just foreign. Maybe a bit unsettling. But, I think, necessary. We’ll see– who knows, by this time next month, I might be saying the same things about guitar practice.

At any rate, here’s a new story: “When the Tough Get Going.” This one is all new– not an old one resurrected and polished off. This one started because I was thinking about that writing exercise, the one where I steal the dialog from a comic strip and write a mini stories around it. I was thinking of doing that again, trying to come up with a way to describe the dread a character was feeling, and that turned into the first paragraph. The rest just happened. I sort of like it like that– just happening. Hoo boy I’m a lazy fart.

Anyway, enjoy.

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