I’ve managed to write something for 23 days in a row now, but all else has suffered. Don’t blog as much. Don’t read nearly enough. My pledge to finish a book a week? Dead dead dead. Alas and alack. Maybe what I’ll do is try to get back on the reading horse, via DBTC. Maybe I’ll log my 50 days of writing, the way I did 50 days of blogging, then dedicate my self to 50 days of reading– all the while hoping I keep blogging, keep reading. A pipe dream. But not a dream differed, yet.
Wanted to tell you about a few things. I am finishing stories faster than I can publish them. Okay, this is not strictly accurate. I can publish as many stories per day as I care to spend hours on the internet, but I don’t want to inundate. I should keep it down to one per week. Certainly not one per day. But a few days ago I finished and posted ”Microwave Popcorn.” And there’s three more in the bag. Including a long one. One of those is even a story that was not merely an old one finally finished: it was started and finished all in one sitting, just a few days ago. Is it any good? Does that even matter?
Finally, (and I’ll end with this) last Monday, I was e-mailing a friend, and jokingly suggested he write a novel based on his corporate IT experience. I suggested he basically mix Dilbert with Cormac McCarthy and William Faulkner. Then I gave it a go. Had so much fun, I decided to call it a “writing exercise” and asked some friends to try it out. Maybe you’ll want to try it. (WARNING: foul language in high use…)
The exercise: take a comic strip, and rewrite it as narrative prose, mimicking the style of a writer or multiple writers. Try to conserve all dialog as is. Feel free to quote directly from the mocked author’s work. As this is an exercise, over-explaining your intent and execution is not only allowed, but expected.
Square-top head, manbag on his shoulder. Sweat leaking down the crack of his ass, stepping out of the fuck-you-in-the-eye-hole Idaho sun, entering the freezing, gelid car-rental cubicle. Approaching the counter, eyes six inches to the left of the counter-man’s face. The name’s Dilbert. “I reserved a mid-sized sedan.”
Counterman stares, thinks about college. Easy tail. One of them knocked up. Kid with cerebral palsy. Bus ticket, and this fucking job. “We don’t care what you reserved. We’re in the business of selling car insurance and overpriced gas.” He stabs his finger at an invisible keyboard, reluctant cunt, acne scarred computer screen.
Dilbert doesn’t have a mouth, can’t frown, can’t smile. His best friend is a dog, an asshole. “That’s refreshingly honest.”
Counterman scratches his crotch. “I can get you into a clown car or an ashtray on wheels.”
Dilbert decides refreshingly honest is not so refreshing. He’d rather go back to comfortable lies, tactful obfuscation. He slaps counterman across his face. Counterman’s hand drops from his crotch, shocked. Then he hangs his head in shame. Dilbert’s eyes are empty and blue and serene again.
-Jason Edwards
In this example, my goal was to blend Cormac McCarthy with some William Faulkner. McCarthy’s style, at times, uses short, clipped sentences of noun phrases without verbs, evoking a harshness, an existential hostility. I tried to further that hostility with blunt language entirely antithetical to a comic strip, but still appropriate to Dilbert’s “loser-chic” aesthetic. The slap, and the line “[his eyes were] empty and blue and serene again” are taken from the ending of The Sound and the Fury.*
