The story has to be simple. That’s all there is to it. Kill all extraneous characters. Kill all unnecessary settings. Kill all musings. All of them. Kill them all, Kurtz! Get to the point. What is the bloody message? Stick to that and only that. Don’t muddle with drivel! Nobody cares. That’s the only mantra of the edit. And so Uncle Ralph is gone. He does not exist anymore in this book. The Dakota Roadhouse has been trashed too.
The trip down the west coast has been dumped. No visit to the Devil’s Churn. No game at Dodger Stadium and no climactic scene at the porn house up in the Hollywood Hills, as good as I might have dreamed it was.
The thing that I love about this scene from Anori is the senseless of it. Dee takes Apollo out for a walk in Lower Manhattan three days after a hurricane has ground the city to a halt and is stopped by a lone police officer for not having her exotic animal license; she is arrested and Apollo impounded.
The problem with the scene is that not only does it not help develop Dee, but it doesn’t move the story forward. And at page 10, that is a major issue. And so her release from custody, another baby of mine, is dumped too.
It is almost painful to have to kill a scene. Actually it is painful. It’s a damn shame. I mean, to have made something that works so well, and then to kill it? What a complete waste. That’s how it seems. And the book is the thing.
It’s one thing to face the blank page. It’s totally another to face a page that has been edited for ten years. A conservative estimate would be thirty versions, with hundreds of edits and switches. And so, yes, the blank page is nothing compared to that.
I began Anori in 2009. It was my leap into the world of speculative fiction, a challenge to myself. The initial first scene – which lasted over the first few drafts – was of a rocket ship launch, establishing theme, tone and perspective. I mean, the story was headed into outer space. So here we go. But it didn’t work. There was no hook. And so I moved that scene into a snippet on the television in Dee Sinclair’s living room. The book now begins like this…
The perspective remains distant but it is now Dee’s point of view, revealing an deserted world, a place from which she is clearly removed.
The prose are terse. Hopefully ominous too.
Dee, akin to the police car, is isolated and alone.
Immediately upon entering her world, her pet serval Apollo appears, who is the key to the story. Servals are felines from the African savannah. They are meant to be wild but have been domesticated as exotic pets. Apollo is a rescue animal who Dee spends much of her life with alone.
The story carries on: Dee takes Apollo out before the worst of the storm and meets the mysterious Och. It’s how it all begins. I’m just trying to get past all of this and continue on to page three. Fingers crossed.
Why so much outrage about Tuesday’s debate? Was someone expecting a sensible discourse on policy? Really? Moderator Chris Wallace expressed his own surprise. “I never dreamt it would go off the tracks the way it did.” How could he have forgotten all the staking and name-calling in the Clinton/Trump debates?
No matter what the format, no matter what the rules, Trump will insult, badger and bully. That’s what he does. (“Don’t ever use that word smart with me. Don’t ever use that word.”) His strategy is clear: put a phrase on repeat – “far left radicals”, ” three and a half million dollars”, “Antifa” – like an angry Alzheimer’s patient.
In other words, it isn’t hard for Biden to beat Trump with words. All he has to do is shake his head at Trump and deliver a zinger or two. Not “clown” or “shut up”, but “Behave, Donald” or “Your wall is a swamp.” Trump’s racist rants will do the rest.
Hassidic Elder: In the street! Even in the street.
Middle-aged Non-Hassidic: It will pass.
Hassidic Elder: Next they’ll be strip searching us.
Middle-aged Non-Hassidic: All things will pass.
Hassidic Elder: I hate it.
Middle-aged Non-Hassidic returns to reading his paper.
It’s a half-crowded train on the AM rush hour. Everyone wears a mask. The train pulls into Fulton Station where more people get on, masked except for a slight black woman. A policeman comes to door of train. She looks up, ready to argue. The policeman offers her a mask. “Would you like this?” She smiles sheepishly, takes it and puts it on.
Rosie Perez comes on the intercom as the train pulls out. Wearing a mask shows respect to others. And it’s the law. Come on, New York, we can do this.
I was in the bath, almost in that place between sleep and wakefulness, my book drooping close to the water, when the thing drifted into my periphery. I thought it was a clump of hair (a small one) and wondered where it had come from, but it wasn’t that. It was worse. It was a bug – a giant hairy bug.
I contorted away, dumping the book to the floor, thrust my hand in the water and watched in horror as it twirled around lazily, drifting deeper. It had to be dead. I waved at it from below, trying to get it to the surface, but it slid away, its hairy body grazing my fingertips. I was on the verge of losing it – my brain and the giant hairy bug – as I tried to catch until I had the thing and flipped it into the sink.
I tried to settle back into the half awake world and think about nothing, but there wasn’t anything but visions of that horrible hairy bug. I tried to read. I tried to play Fishdom, all in vain, and finally got out of the tub to examine the dead hairy thing. But it wasn’t there. It had vanished, back into the pipes, waiting for its next swim in my water.
Looking for writing work is a disappointing muddle. Posted positions are as follows: Digital Advertising Technical Writer, Principal Regulatory Writer, Direct Response Writer, Shoppable Content Business Writer, Security Technical Writer, Content Writer for Real Estate Professionals, Customs Entry Writer, Order Writer for Food Chain and Legislative Bill Writer.
In other words, no postings for novelist, screenwriter nor poet.
Entropy is defined as “lack of order or predictability, and hence a gradual decline into disorder.” In other words, entropy presents the disquieting idea that no matter what system is put into place, it will eventually disintegrate into chaos and randomness.
I hate entropy (even if it doesn’t care about being hated). I love order. Everything is about organization for me, not just in the streets and society, but in my home. I can’t focus on what I need to do unless my desk is in order, emails sent and a plan is set. Nothing is better than that.
And yet the forces are out there – discrimination, environmental decay, laziness, etc. – which underscore the impossibility of humanity ever working out. My goodness, we can’t even agree on pandemic protocols. What chance will we have when the stakes are raised? (Nil.)
Surrounded by the tight streets and towering spires of Downtown Manhattan, it is more accurate to say that 70 Pine is under-looked. It is almost impossible to see it at close range.
As the plaque outside states, 70 Pine is an Art Deco building from the late 1920s and was, upon construction, the tallest in Downtown Manhattan and the third tallest in the world
The Art Deco details, prevalent inside and out, give residents of the 612 units with visual justification for their rent – ranging from $2,300 (studio) to $13,000 (three-bedroom).
This residential building also houses a couple of restaurants – Blue Park and Crown Shy – as well as a physical therapy studio where I am working on my new knees.
Sadly, the observation platform has been closed during the pandemic.
It’s not that good a film. It’s unnecessarily gory, the fight scenes are comical and the jump scares predictable. But Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man film does succeed in one area: the use of empty space.
The justification for all of these shots is that the evil invisible man is probably there watching Elizabeth Moss and hence us, and that’s what works so well, what makes it so creepy. It’s akin to Hitchock’s shower scene in Psycho where the shower, the safest place of all, was made dangerous.
Whannell’s film makes every place dangerous – every room, hallway and corner of anywhere you can go. He might be there watching, ready to fuck with our heads.
