Tag Archives: a spark to the writing process

Anything But What I Have To Write

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I will clean and organize. I will rearrange again. I will watch the cows intently and see if they are grazing or lying down. I will think about what it must be like to have only those choices. I will clean and organize again.

I will look at the clouds and seek out brightness on the horizon. I will plan the rest of my day and the days to come. I will think of what it is I must do except for the thing I must do.

I will write other things. I will work on bits of dialogue. I will outline a new idea. I will edit that. I will write this thing. I will do anything if it’s to keep me from the thing I know I have to do.

And then I will strike in a moment! My confidence will be true. But brief. I will look at the cows again. I will organize again. I will realize all of the things I could have done if I had only known better. I will realize I am too tired to get it into now and wait for the coming day.

I will be fresh then. I will be ready to really go at it. Of that I am certain.

Climax of “The Cx Trilogy: Em”

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Something of an ode to the finale of Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, combining archival imagery of atomic explosions and Vera Lynn’s We’ll Meet Again, the film version of Em is to feature an onslaught of missiles coming after Em and Dee on the final ship off the planet.

Final images of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove

As they rocket out of the bombardment, Fast and Furious style, explosions everywhere, in the air, on the ground, The Partridge Family’s That’ll Be The Day will play at My Bloody Valentine levels.

When the chains around me no longer ground me
and my soul can sail away to a better life –
That’ll be the Day

And when the silence is broken and words unspoken
can finally have their say, then we’ll all sing out –
That’ll be the Day

Hopefully Cx Trilogy: Em is little more engaging than Transformers.

And when those feelings I’ve hidden are no longer forbidden
and our love is here to stay
Then we’ll all shine on –
That’ll be the Day

Writing Process: Writing in Tongues?

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It’s just a half-realized thing. I can see it. Or feel it. That’s a better way of putting it. The thing is half obscured but there. I look the other way and pretend I’m thinking about something else. Something mundane. And then it flares out, a word or phrase or image, or just bits of those things. And so I continue to pretend to think about dinner, even think the phrase “Nothing going on here.”

It pops out, suddenly in the clear, an image, dialogue too, but’s it’s slippery and goes off again. I can’t chase the thing. I can’t think about it, not directly. I just have to sit and think about not thinking. And then it’s there, electric and brilliant, and I write.

It’s strangely intense, like I’m no longer me. I stay with it as long as I can, hammer away, even if it’s turning into nonsense, because maybe it isn’t, until it’s no longer and my brain only wants to think about dinner.

Fuck Pedagogy: My Life in School

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My autobiographical writing on teaching practices, Fuck Pedagogy, has been a challenge to because a clear through-line is needed for the reader to follow along. The point of the book is to emphasize teaching with knowledge of content and engagement with students. The following bits didn’t make the cut: I fell from the jungle gym and my Kindergarten teacher split her head open on the same bars when she came running to help me. She was young and beautiful and they took her away in an ambulance. She never came back. An old bitter woman took her place.

I found a stack of old Playboy magazines down the block from school and was crazily delighted by that. I couldn’t look inside, fearful of the nude women I might find, and instead shoved them all into a post box, thinking the postman would like that. Principal Fair told me what I had done was a crime and made me promise to never do it again.

I skipped Grade Three. I didn’t understand why, but they told me to get my things and move to the next room. And there I was, suddenly in Grade Four, taking a spelling quiz along with all of the other Grade Four students. It all seemed fine until I couldn’t spell the word “sheep”. I think I put an ‘a’ in there somewhere. Anyway, that was the end of that. I was solemnly walked back down the hall and returned to Grade Three. It’s an experience that has confused me to this day.

Writing the Perfect Chase Script

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I began a script many years ago with the idea of having a chase sequence from very beginning to the end, the very first shot to the last, nothing but a chase.

Nicholas Winding Refn’s Pusher films and The Safdie Brothers Good Time took a shot at the chase script, as did Ilya Naishuller in Hardcore Henry.

Ilya Naishuller’s Hardcore Henry

But they all fell short of the concept, getting lost in an excess of violence and drugs, always killing and stoned out of their heads. That’s what the world has raced off to apparently.

Nicholas Winding Refn’s Pusher I

But that wasn’t my idea. I just wanted to explore the idea of waking up in a strange place and being chased from then on. Like life, someone always after you.

The Voice in Cuckoo’s Nest

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The crazy-not-crazy voice of Chief Bowden in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest shunts straight into a place we forget about because we’re scared: That ain’t me, that ain’t my face. It wasn’t even really my face then; it was just being the way I looked, the way people wanted. It don’t seem like I ever been me. I was seeing me do things that didn’t fit my face or hands, thinks like painting a picture or writing letters to somebody in a beautiful flowing hand. (140)

And defines happiness as best as any: We’d just shared the last beer and slung the empty can out the window at the stop sign and were leaning back to get the feel of the day, swimming in that kind of tasty drowsiness that comes over you after a day of going hard at something you enjoy doing – half sunburned and half drunk and keeping awake only because you wanted to savor the taste as long as you could. I noticed vaguely that I was getting so’s I could see some good in the life around me. I was feeling better than I’d remembered feeling since I was a kid, when everything was good and the land was singing kids’ poetry in me. (202)

Ken Kesey’s Cuckoo’s Nest

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The magic of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is in the point of view, Chief Bromden sharing his thoughts on the insanity of life.

The Big Nurse is able to set the wall clock at whatever speed she wants by just turning one of those dials in the steel door; she take a notion to hurry things up, she turns the speed up, and those hands whip around that disk like spokes in a wheel. The scene in the picture-screen windows goes through rapid changes of light to show morning, noon and night – throb off and on furiously with day and dark, and everyone is driven like mad to keep with the passing of that fake time.

But generally it’s the other way, the slow way. She’ll turn the dial to a dead stop and freeze the sun there on the screen so it don’t move a scant hair for weeks, so not a leaf on a tree or a blade of grass in the pasture shimmers. The clock hands hang at two minutes to three and she’s liable to hang them there till we rust. (71-2)

Writing Process: No More Speechifying

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I have a tendency towards giving my characters speeches, or speechifying, as Tommy calls it. And it’s no good. It slows the narrative and, in the end, offers very little about the character. It’s really just me using them for my soapbox.

“To the mighty and fine Apollo.” Fitz raised his glass. “I look out at that river of ice out your backyard and think about those giants of millennials ago pushed off into the Davis Strait and into the great Atlantic, some of them the size of city blocks, whole towns, buildings and all, tankers, battleships, luxury liners, the works. They’re an impressive fleet, an impenetrable flotilla at the outset, only to gradually break apart, one from the other, going out into the bay, the strait, the ocean, down past Twillin’. But then they all come apart, not just one from the other, but the thing from itself. These mighty giants go out on their quest, out into the great unknown, just to dissolve, become bits and pieces, and then the water, gone like that. Seems to me that they might have a fate more suitable than that.” He opened another beer. “We’ll have another drink with you, and then we’ll be off.”

Writing Process: Knowing the Story

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You think you know something and then you don’t. All stories are only that. He wakes up to some party or hands held out and then he has to do something alone not because he believes in life or strength but because he was lost.

It is as simple as sitting on the fire escape or the corner that he knows and remembering that no one was there for him but paid for her mistakes. She tried. Or she didn’t. But he just has to carry on and become something new from that.

That Awkward Topic of Self Abuse

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I recently received this email from Jessica Howard:

Your wank was filmed using my application. I’m not going to explain in details how that occurred. I’m going to give you a tip – steer clear of questionable websites. Do not attempt to reach law-enforcement agencies, they will not be able to fix the situation. I am an alien. If you defy these requirements, I’m going to send your disgraceful vid to your buddies and loved ones, screwing up your public image for the rest of your life!

Rhythmic gymnast Jessica Howard

Within 48 h pay me for my silence, and I will destroy all dirty laundry. It’s useless to beseech me. It is not for me to criticize your predilection, even though it’s a sin in any religion.

I clearly don’t know Jessica Howard. Nor to even what she is referring. Perhaps it’s my inconsistent dedication to writing? My lack of focus in this blog? It’s all so confusing. Let me know if you receive this disgraceful vid, and I can go from there.