Editing Process: Draft #9-16? of “Anori: The Cx Trilogy”

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I am amidst another edit of Anori, which is been smooth and terrible, satisfyingly angst-ridden? Anyway, I have dumped another couple of bits I previously adored. This is small bit of dialogue which did nothing in the end.

“I’m the captain.”

“Hubris, Pax, That’s what gets captains killed.”

“That’s what what makes them captains.”

“What happened to Cook and Bligh?”

“They didn’t kill Bligh.”

“I think you’re missing the point.”

The second is a scene that took the narrative sideways and just didn’t even work.

Nico offered her his hand. “I’m trying to understand who I am.”

“How did you get up here?” She went past him and looked out at the empty expanse. The sky had gone dark, the clouds coming in low. Dee crossed her arms. “Where did Pax go? Seriously, where the hell is he?”

Nico walked ahead. “You know, I was on the football team in high school. Middle linebacker. We won the city championship.”

“Congratulations.” He stopped suddenly. “I raped a freshman at a party.”

“What the fuck are you telling me this for?”

“I got her totally drunk. I was drunk too, but I knew what I was doing. I just did it mechanically, like it was my right, took off her clothes, stripped her naked, and, yeah, went at it. She was so goddamn beautiful. I was King Kong. That’s’ what I thought. And I loved the girl. I think I did. Evelyn. She never looked at me again.” He zipped his jacket up and then back down again. “I never had to face what I did. And I wish I did.”

“I’m going to call bullshit on that.”

Dee Sinclair: Everything Alone

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Dee Sinclair did everything alone; it was how she walked, how she drove, how she sat on the subway, looking to be in her own empty pocket, as far as possible from everyone else.

She didn’t like people. They were selfish and greedy, yes, everyone like that, which was why the world would have to come to a bad end. In the end, she knew that there was little more than approximations of anything she hoped to find.

A Writer. Not a Writer

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As I mentioned, I am in the midst of the tenth draft of Anori.

Which means that I go back and forth between feeling like a writer – at the exact center of a marvelously spinning wheel with moments and experiences flashing out in wonder – and a monosyllabic imbecile who blathers on about nothing. Or both at the same time, the wheel spinning out blather.

Well, at least I wrote this. It feels like something, even if it isn’t.

Anori Scene Expunged: Explication of Servals

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Now on my tenth draft of Anori, I have gone through many renditions of how to give the reader background information on Apollo’s breed of wildcat: the serval. This heavy-handed version has been expunged:

The dusty glossy edge of Wild Cats of the World stood out black and orange. She reached up for the book and let it drop hard on the floor, making Apollo jump. “Let’s see what it says about you. Maybe you’re just some mongrel cat with a complex.”

Dee leafed through to the section and examined the black and white head shot. “Your face looks right. The serval is a tall, lightly-built cat with a small, slim face, dominated by very large oval-shaped ears. Relative to the rest of its body, the serval has the longest legs of any cat species.” She watched him approach from across the room. “Long legs. Check. Serval coat…speckled and spotted. Like the cheetah, the serval is among the more specialized cats. Its long, mobile toes and strong, curved claws also help it hook a mouse hidden in the grass or extract a rat from a burrow.” She looked at him over the book. “But you’re supposed to eat them, not leave them dead.”

Wait for What?!? What Am I Waiting For?!?

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Watch and wait until end of reels. Why exactly?

The truth is that it is not worth the wait. Except that I always seem to scroll to another asking me to wait for it. Again.

Well, these might be a little more predictable. A little scary though how they all fall in line.

But it is an endless looping thing. And I need to sleep. Oh, by the way, I am writing Anori again. Draft nine, ten or eleven, something like that. My next blog is on that. Wait for it!

Mediocre Films Rewarded

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What do the 1993 film Scent of a Woman and this year’s Triangle of Sadness have in common – aside from my viewing them back-to-back this weekend? They are both highly praised (Multiple Oscar nominations for Scent of a Woman & Winner of the Palm D’Or for Triangle of Sadness) and yet both incredibly long-winded and deadly dull in the end.

The premise of both films is solid – blind man on the verge of suicide and the Uber rich getting annihilated – none of which is fulfilled. They meander off into the corner at the end – picking up toys or running through the woods – essentially admitting that there was no story to tell in the first place.

But the titles have to be the worst. I won’t bother explaining the triangle of sadness – it just isn’t worth it – but scent of a woman? What the hell is that? Is she sweaty? On her period? Or heavily doused in perfume? I still don’t even know.

Change is God

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Who Am I? Am I the sum of my days? My work? My words? My realizations? My nerves breaking apart?

The only thing I know is that I will never realize anything about inner peace. I won’t do that because it does not exist. It is nonsense. Just look inside and see what a bag of nothing it all is. We are fighting for racial justice today? How is that possible? Why was that not solved a hundred years ago? Pick any social issue and think about it. Why does that problem still exist? Principles of love, family, truth, all of it is nonsense.

My existence is nonsense. But I still have a brain and I can process light and heat. And so I am good – as long as there is cold beer and the promise of sex at the end of the day.

Generational Goat Unicorns

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It seems that we are looking for the next superlative. Not it seems.

And so, yes, there is this obsessive aspiration for someone who is better than the rest. But can’t we do better than all-time? There’s always Steve Martin’s bit, The Master All-Being of Time, Space and Dimension?

But less that. Obviously. The Essential? The Omni? The Fucking Fuck One? Or what about good old Prometheus. The Prom. Let’s bring it back to that.

Miserable? Don’t Talk About it.

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“How are you doing?” Yeah, well, I have this thing with the night sweats and being unable to stop my brain and not knowing what the hell is going on with my life and thinking I’m just not where I should be. But aside from that, well, yeah, all is good.

No one wants to hear about it. I sure as hell don’t. Nobody does. Not even the Facebook algorithm. (They blocked my previous post about the Anti-Wilhelm Grunt, implying that I was suicidal. Got to think about that one.)

I knew a guy from Croatia named Milan who complained about everything.

“How are you doing, Milan?”

“Well, I’ve got the rash on my arm. And my knee is a little tight. And my digestion. Never been worse.”

I never asked him again. It’s just a pleasantry and we should just all get it together and move on. It’s a new day. We’re alive and the sun is shining. Even if it isn’t.

Post a lovely picture of food and talk about an exciting new series. And what about getting laid! There’s music and dreams and amazing new things to come. And what about getting laid?!?! Who cares if we all sound like cows in the field waiting to get slaughtered? Relax. Look on the cud side.

So, yeah, it’s okay to be down. It’s okay to talk about it. Just nobody will listen. Including me.

The Anti-Wilhelm Grunt

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The Wilhelm Scream, a stock sound used over many years in Hollywood action films, became an insider joke for sound engineers because it was an exaggerated comical sound. It fit the genre because it was silly and fun.

I suggest a much more harrowing thing be done for the grunt. An involuntary sound, it is primal, a release of terror, pain or pleasure. I will suggest one for each category:

Stevie (John Savage) unleashes a ghastly, breathy grunt waiting in fear for his turn in Russian Roulette in Cimino’s The Deerhunter.

Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) panicked yet controlled release while piercing his hand in Scott’s Blade Runner haunts me to this day as does the death grunt of The Ugly (Lee Van Cleef) from Leone’s The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

The pleasure grunt is a little more broad, but a simple porn grunt search might suffice. Perhaps try Tanner Mayes?