All access pass

So, I said in that last post (which at some point will appear behind the post of a vidblog because I'm gonna post that in a draft I've already started from a few weeks ago) that I wanted to really open up and document the process of writing this novel, Mythic Structures. And I'm within striking distance of the end of the first act, of which they'll be three. As you can see by the giant time jump between now and the last post (or the post before the last post depending on when yr reading this), I have been remiss in my intentions to document the creative process here on my blog or really anywhere else.
I have started twittering, god help me, and I can see how addictive it can be. I do want to do instant miniture flashes of the process as it's happening, which you really can't do here. Here you have to actively stop work on the novel and then write a blogpost about what you remember or recognize from what you've just done (write, concieve, edit, reconcieve, or my fav. storytelling [which is the absolute essence of art, even the plastic ones]). So they are two different processes, and it'll be interesting to watch and compare the process of documenting the process of writing through these various forms. So, just for the sake of shiites and giggles, here's my twitter link.
How did I get here? I keep asking myself that question, and my mind just goes blank, emptying out of anything resembling useful information in regards to this so basic of questions. I have no freaking clue.
Anyway, I've also started to explore other multi-media stuff. I got a vidcam for Christmas, and I've done several vidblogs and a reading of a chapter of the novel and general miscellaneous, nonsensical ramblings. I just gotta get my vimeo shasta in effect. I think I need to go ahead and pay the sixty bucks, because I gave up on the last video I tried to upload. It wasn't that big. Like two hundred megs, and I was getting nothing. Maybe I'm just way too impatient. That's probably it, but I'll join anyway cause I dig their scene. And I can see myself going way over the free upload limits. I've got a bunch of stuff to post there and here and over at AHUAM and even maybe some stuff for The Dancing Fool, which we'll have to see about.
Over there at The Fool I'm going to be documenting the process by which I lose the extra twenty or so pounds I've put on since last Oct, and get my dancing chops back into tight formation. So far it's a little sad and very embarrassing. I think I may have to post accompanying embedded audio commentaries where I shred on myself ruthlessly because that's the only way I'd feel good about putting that stuff out there. Now once I get back to my dancing weight, get my flexibility back, my stamina, and my cardiovascular strength...Yo, if I can get back into that effect, well, I think you'll be impressed. I do have the skills, even as they're as rusty as an old metal fencepost right now.
Okay, let's see, other stuff I wanted to say. Oh, I just got an upgrade for my digital voice recorder, and so once I rerecord my readings of the novel chapters, I'll post them. Basically have a podcast of the chapters of the first act of Mythic structures. I also want to start recording brainstorming and conceptual workouts for the novel (it is all and everything about the novel right now, as you'll see) and then posting that stuff.
Basically, my plan is to obsessively document as much of the process as possible from as many different media angles as I can, and then after it's all done, well, I can see just what a complete and utter waste of time the whole thing had been, and I can relive in the most minutest detail all of the blood, sweat, and toil that went into a novel that probably has very little chance of getting published because of the wierdness factor, the complicatedness factor, and the ultimately unresolvedness of a good bit of the stuff factor. Sorry to be vague there about stuff, but I'd hate to give away too much, too soon.
So, lots of multi-media stuff coming. And, well, I'll just call it for now.

the current project

Many of the projects I set for myself this summer were themselves requiring of individual attention, and of course I had planned to work on all of them at the same time. As things would have it, I just finished the one screenplay, and that took most of my time. In the procrastinations between work on Eddie the Grouch, I did however begin to develop a novel idea.

It started as an extension of the work on the memoir, which had become big and complicated enough for me to have to actively stop work on it so that it didn't take over from finishing the screenplay. It really became one or the other, and I went for the quick and dirty over the long and drawn out. I then thought about trying a more straight forward autobio fiction, reimagining my time at Spottswood Square in Memphis, TN. Briefly I was distracted by the idea of writing a collection of short stories based on characters professions starting with a minor league baseball Umpire and working from there.

Again, I had to shelve this idea if I was to have any hope of finishing the screenplay, which became wierder and more complex as I went along. In the final breaths of the script, it hit me like a ton of bricks as I wrote a section of the novel Eddie is writing. I wanted to write a novel about a writer trying to write a screenplay. It was perfectly synched with the Eddie script, as it was a screenplay about a character trying to write a novel. They would complement each other in a lovely way. Of course I knew in the back of my head that this was a much bigger undertaking. A novel is no small thing, and I've yet to complete one, although I've got a couple of novella length things that are incomplete. I do know that it's not as easy as writing a screenplay. Not necessarily easier but exercising different writing muscles, and as Murakami says novels are a grind.

Still, I was committed to it being my next project for the next year or so. I still have 9 undergrad classes to finish, which take only time not effort. So, it's all just a question of time management. Still I did want to get started before school, but I was having trouble. The idea had to be filled in more before I would be ready to write. I had to do much, much more conceptual work, which I have been doing over the past several weeks, really for longer but just intermitently. I go wander around Boston trying to find inspiration in the architecture, which I have. It's freeing to be out walking, surrounded by people and business and life.

I began to see how I wanted to weave the real beauty of my city in with the fantasy of my story. I began to stake out real places to have in the story, and transplanted my Memphis story to where I actually live. It's been an amazing process, and I do want to document it all which, of course, won't happen. I'm already skipping a whole lot, but let me say this. I do hope to write this project openly here at this website. I want blogging here to be a document of the process of writing this particular novel. Hopefully as a way to maintain focus on this particular novel, as my mind has a tendency to wander. I try to keep focused.

The ultimate inevitability

It was an undoubted inevitability that blogging would become a responsibility and lose the sheen of offhandedness. The approach was all wrong from the beginning. While I had, in my head, been true to the notion that blogging was just a form of digital journaling that happened to be accessible by a wider audience, in the end it was that wider audience that I sought; not surprisingly unsuccessfully. I've always craved a wider audience, even as I refuse to do anything in the way of compromise on the 'integrity of my artistic vision' to satisfy anyone outside of my own head; read: I can be a real asshole when it comes to blowing smoke.
The problem was bound to come to a head as work, school, more structured creative projects, etc. began to interfere with an increasingly wide range of blog forms and the mania of inspired first moments waned. There was no possible way to maintain that kind of fiery pace indefinitely. It had to burn out. In the end, I was lucky that the landing was as smooth as it was, and I'm able to come back to this at all instead of a total abandonment of the persona, the Brown Dog Affair. So, I'm trying to reground this project in it's original intentions; return to form, as it were...just tighten up a little bit.

Drawing a straight line

Alright, so as of that last drunken post, it's clear that I'm running in circles a little bit, and I've got get my head right. Coincidentally or perhaps omenly, my crappy old computer has finally had a major hardware malfunction. So, it occurred to me that some non-wired time might be just what the doctor ordered. Take a month or so to clear the old head and get out in the sunshine. Try to get a grip on directions and steps towards goals and all that kind of nonsense. It's good to unplug once and a while.

the update

I've got fragments of success with the once again probably too many irons in the fire process, so I thought I'd do a quick rundown of what's the what.
To start I've just finished the first act of Eddie the Grouch, which actually went fairly well. There was a roundabout comparision of Hemingway and Chechkov, and it ran fairly deep while still remaining conversational. Eddie blows up at Harold, the director of Lilly's play The Seagull, over his lack of appreciation of Hemingway. Well, actually we need to build the psychology of that a little more. Somehow maybe the Harold/Lilly, director/actor, relationship should be made more explicit. Maybe she is not necessarily awed of him but respects him, and Eddie of course feels she just pities him. The blow-up, as did Sal's in The Coffee Shoppe, feels forced and just a way to have something happen, which in a sense they both are. So little action occurs in either of these scripts, but...
I reactivated Darwin's Child last night with great success. I brought in a quick car chase in which the French Canadian Woman, who is completely unaware of the shadow conspiracy, then has to evade a bunch of goons in black audi's while pissed as hell at the American Man for getting her into this shit. It's a good scene, and I brought forward all of the characters that were introduced in the last act of the first draft of the script. I'm not sure if I now want to have two twin pregnant women because of the babysitter twins from Planet Terror or not, but it's a cool idea, so...I've written a fairly good little expository section before their safehouse is attacked and we get the first taste of the AM's genetically superior strength and agility. I can't decide if their should be another quick car chase before they make it to the cargo ship headed for Japan.
I've got some good ideas for FCW too. I've said here that I really want to make her a mythic character, well all of them, but especially her. Over the course of the three films she ultimately comes forward and takes the leading role in not saving the world from the apocalypse but helping to give (I want to say the forces of good here, but that's way too manichean) the survivors a chance to start over.
I could spend all day running out the storylines on some of this stuff sometimes, but given that I'm feeling the writing bug, I should continue to push on those two just now.

There is just one other little thing, and I'm just gonna start it here and get more on it in el futura. I've been thinking about the Masters program I want to get into, which is an interdisciplinary program called Critical and Creative thinking. It has the unique feature that they have a design yr own degree option, which...well, to be fair that can be a dangerous concept for me because when I did that in undergrad the project got so far out of hand that there was no way the whole thing wouldn't blow up in my face, which it did as in enough credits to graduate with a triple major but no degree because yr senior project was a fricking PHD dissertation. Every advisor I ever had as well as almost everyone I even knew casually told me I was nuts, and as it turns out they were all right, but I've gotten away from myself here.
Here's where I'm trying to get. I'd been offhandedly putting together a program in my head. The triangle I was originally looking at was art, spirituality, and mental health and illness. These were essentially the corners of my undergrad project. Hold on, just to prove my insanity sometimes and then I'm gonna break off this rambling nonsense for another post, I'm gonna post what was tentative title of my undergraduate senior project. Your gonna laugh.

A neuropsychohistoricosocio-cultural and philosophical look at the relevance of spirituality and art in efficient human cognition and it's relation to the extremes of neurochemical variability

and I wasn't being ironic at all.