Monday, April 9, 2012
Monday, March 12, 2012
An open thread while we wait for Chapter 21.
Yo! I know that several of you are waiting for more of the story, and, as always, I really do appreciate your interest and enthusiasm. Wish that I thought a new chapter was imminent -- this stretch really is a monkey on my back -- but after putting down a few thousand words, I kind of don't like what I have, so it's going to require some more thinking and work.
In the interim, you can leave any questions, complaints, love letters, etc., in the comments. I can't promise that I'll respond, but I'll definitely read them.
Here's an e-mail I just sent to a somewhat demanding (if complimentary) e-mailer who aggressively asked me why the hell I'm not updating more frequently:
Dude! You have to understand that I'm a just a guy with a demanding job, an active social life and lots of interests that tend to demand my time, too. Working on the story is a really cool activity that I enjoy, but it's not like I'm getting rich or famous from it -- I'm just some guy doing it because I like it. I also try to resist the urge to post a chapter just to meet demand. Last chapter, I had several thousand words written before I decided that it sucked and went back to square one. Something similar is happening with this one. I've got a plan and structure in place for the whole story, but there are certain sections that I knew were going to be kind of hard. This is just one of those things. I'm not a professional; I have to do the best that I can with my time and my ideas.
That said, thanks so much for your interest and enthusiasm. I really appreciate it, and feel very lucky that people take an interest in what I'm doing. I've got to think that by the end, we're all going to have a better time if I just try to enjoy the writing and do the best that I can, and not rush it just to put a new chapter out there.
Friday, December 16, 2011
W.H. Auden was very, very dirty.
Who knew? I mean, whoah.
If you're bummed that I haven't written a crazy-hot sex scene in awhile, here's The Platonic Blow by W.H. Auden.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Friday, October 28, 2011
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
Seriously, I've been writing.
Just not the next chapter -- more like portions of the final five chapters, and some sequences in between that I really like.
I mean, I don't want to oversell my stuff. I've got my own criticisms of aspects of the story, and the fact that I like where it goes doesn't necessarily mean that you will.
Anyway, as of now, the too-long-awaited Chapter 20 still has about 5,000 words down, which is long, but I have more to write before it all ties together. Time should free up after this weekend, so I'll have no excuse. By the time it goes live, we'll probably all be disappointed and mildly frustrated that it took so long for that, and it will seem a little anticlimactic. Thanks for your comments and e-mails and sticking around. And if Chapter 20 does, in fact, seem anticlimactic, further down the road we're going to have fireworks and special effects and we're all going to go kind of crazy, I think.
I mean, I don't want to oversell my stuff. I've got my own criticisms of aspects of the story, and the fact that I like where it goes doesn't necessarily mean that you will.
Anyway, as of now, the too-long-awaited Chapter 20 still has about 5,000 words down, which is long, but I have more to write before it all ties together. Time should free up after this weekend, so I'll have no excuse. By the time it goes live, we'll probably all be disappointed and mildly frustrated that it took so long for that, and it will seem a little anticlimactic. Thanks for your comments and e-mails and sticking around. And if Chapter 20 does, in fact, seem anticlimactic, further down the road we're going to have fireworks and special effects and we're all going to go kind of crazy, I think.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Enjoying expectation
Hopefully you guys aren't too frustrated by my failure to post a new chapter, or even give an update on here. No, I probably haven't replied to your incredibly thoughtful e-mail. Summer is busy; fall will be busy; life's just fucking busy and sometimes it's hard to write a massive story for the internet when there's so much other shit to do.
I was thinking about this today and feeling slightly guilty. But there's a time when this will end, and then I'll look back on this experience fondly, and wonder why I was in such a hurry to finish it.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Friday, April 1, 2011
On Dead Poets Society and writing Chapter 18
My relationship to Dead Poets Society is exactly what I attributed to Joe. I never cared for the movie. But I get restless late at night, and end up watching a lot of HBO, even when I'm trying to work on this project.
Dead Poets Society happened to be airing. It was probably ten years since I'd seen it. What struck me right away is that the Robert Sean Leonard seemed very plausibly gay, for all of the reasons that I put in the story. By the end, it seemed blazingly obviously, and the only coherent explanation for the movie.
It also hit me that this seemed like a movie that a person like Chris Riis would love. Chapter 18 was extremely difficult to construct. There were plenty of scenes that I'd been working through my head for at least a year -- Matt's embarrassing speech performance, Joe's walking away, the ensuing fallout, the farewell e-mail and Joe's reaction. The party with Kevin Berger: that actually was going to be its own chapter. At various points, I thought about constructing it like The Hangover, and for most the planning, I thought that Joe and Kevin would hook up. But that no longer seemed consistent with the characters' motivations, and you might have noticed that this story is a little protracted, so another long party sequence at this point in the story probably wouldn't have been a good use of our resources.
But for having mapped all of this out, writing it in a way that built tension, and where the characters' emotional peaks and valleys felt credible, was very, very difficult. I found myself omitting information and buildup because it was unwittingly taking the characters too far. As articulate as Joe and Matt are, they're not going to be at ease in confronting and talking about their emotions for each other. Trying to pull that off: extremely difficult.
I'd had in mind that I was going to alternate passages about The Divine Comedy with Joe's narrative, and then Dead Poets Society clicked. Poetry became the chapter's unifying thread. When I finally had a finished draft, I was watching James Franco's Howl, and threw in an Allen Ginsberg line. Did anyone catch it? Then it hit me: What I should have done is bury all kinds of lines by gay poets -- Michelangelo, Whitman, Frank O'Hara, Ginsberg, Auden -- throughout the chapter. If I weren't writing this in a serial format, I could have moved on to the next chapter, and over the course of months, tracked down and inserted suitable lines. Having waited so long to post a new chapter, though, a plan like that seemed self-indulgent.
I've floated my Dead Poets Society observation to a couple of friends (both gay) who immediately dismissed it. I'm going to guess that's only because they haven't watched it as adults. Here's a wonderful write-up on the theory, which goes beyond the movie to touch on how we're haunted and affected by the formative movies of our adolescence. I didn't grow up with that kind of connection to the movie, but I have something like it now.
Dead Poets Society happened to be airing. It was probably ten years since I'd seen it. What struck me right away is that the Robert Sean Leonard seemed very plausibly gay, for all of the reasons that I put in the story. By the end, it seemed blazingly obviously, and the only coherent explanation for the movie.
It also hit me that this seemed like a movie that a person like Chris Riis would love. Chapter 18 was extremely difficult to construct. There were plenty of scenes that I'd been working through my head for at least a year -- Matt's embarrassing speech performance, Joe's walking away, the ensuing fallout, the farewell e-mail and Joe's reaction. The party with Kevin Berger: that actually was going to be its own chapter. At various points, I thought about constructing it like The Hangover, and for most the planning, I thought that Joe and Kevin would hook up. But that no longer seemed consistent with the characters' motivations, and you might have noticed that this story is a little protracted, so another long party sequence at this point in the story probably wouldn't have been a good use of our resources.
But for having mapped all of this out, writing it in a way that built tension, and where the characters' emotional peaks and valleys felt credible, was very, very difficult. I found myself omitting information and buildup because it was unwittingly taking the characters too far. As articulate as Joe and Matt are, they're not going to be at ease in confronting and talking about their emotions for each other. Trying to pull that off: extremely difficult.
I'd had in mind that I was going to alternate passages about The Divine Comedy with Joe's narrative, and then Dead Poets Society clicked. Poetry became the chapter's unifying thread. When I finally had a finished draft, I was watching James Franco's Howl, and threw in an Allen Ginsberg line. Did anyone catch it? Then it hit me: What I should have done is bury all kinds of lines by gay poets -- Michelangelo, Whitman, Frank O'Hara, Ginsberg, Auden -- throughout the chapter. If I weren't writing this in a serial format, I could have moved on to the next chapter, and over the course of months, tracked down and inserted suitable lines. Having waited so long to post a new chapter, though, a plan like that seemed self-indulgent.
I've floated my Dead Poets Society observation to a couple of friends (both gay) who immediately dismissed it. I'm going to guess that's only because they haven't watched it as adults. Here's a wonderful write-up on the theory, which goes beyond the movie to touch on how we're haunted and affected by the formative movies of our adolescence. I didn't grow up with that kind of connection to the movie, but I have something like it now.
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