bITS 'N CHUNKS
I told y'all I didn't mind making a spectacle of myself, see above. Anyway. Thanks to many years of data entry & not properly taking care of my hands even before then, I have the grip of a child and the hand strength of an even weaker child. In other words, bullshit. Yes, it's joint pain and it's actually not that bad and fixable, but it's made me pretty possessive with what I spend my time doing. If I don't hold something heavy for you I'm not trying to be rude but likely I literally cannot. It doesn't take very much humidity for me to go from Feelin' Fine to Charlie Horse in Every Finger. Naturally, you can imagine how this has affected my writing choices. I noticed over time I cut down on a lot of purple prose not just because my preferences changed but also I was eager to get to the damn point before my hands started swelling up. This was back when I was doing half/half paper writing and digital; then I switched to all digital and the habit carried over. I find myself over embellishing a lot because I feel bad that I can't do long stretches of inventive writing anymore. I take frequent breaks to do some thumb exercises. The pain and frustration of my lack of mobility in my hands and fingers crops up quite a bit as a theme for me too. Pain just kind of pisses me off. I love the feel of writing on notebook paper and filling up a big journal or five subject college rule with my tiny ass cursive and ludicrous stories to type up later. I love being able to get my ideas down immediately. But as I work in increasingly secure & paper free places, that becomes less of a reality for me. And I was spending more time rotating my wrists and rubbing them than scribbling. So after a while I was told about Evernote. I think I've detailed my relationship with Evernote. But anyway, being able to write on my phone was great. It was essentially the same thing as paper for me and I could use a stylus on my tablet. I got pretty good with my thumbs. Until I wore my thumbs down by typing on decidedly un-ergonomic tablets and phones not suited for that purpose. Not very punk. So I've still been largely computer writing when I can but I would like to get back to pen and paper because I still feel like it just worked for me, despite its inconveniences. They do make writing tools and aids for people like me that have a hard time. And, a lot of the options aren't terribly expensive either. The one I'm most interested in is the ring pen model, which takes a different approach to finding ways to shove the barrel of the pen or body of the pencil against soft fleshy parts that probably already hurt. Sitting versus standing is a big part of it, too. Surprising no one, from working at office jobs with often inconsiderate and uncomfortable chairs (and only doing so much to remedy it myself), my back and legs aren't in too good condition these days either. The main appeal of paper & pen writing is I could comfortably lay down and still do a little work. Mobile writing is the same way, but not quite as comfortable or flexible. You might wonder, why not try out the voice to text software? I do use those but not for complete writing, not even for drafts really. If it's accessible for you I do recommend trying it. But as for me, I'm like two notches below Truman Capote and I do not like the sound of my own voice even in my own head, so I would just rather not.
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My template for titling thing probably comes from cryptic anime OVA titles from the late-80s/early-90s and industrial music. Not lurid because a lot of them were pretty self-explanatory (although yes some look like straight giallo titles), but some of the more "poetic" translations of titles not easily rendered into English. Nowadays when it's like that, we just call them by their Japanese title. But back then, boy did we try it. Come on, how many of y'all thought that man's name was actually Tenchi Muyo?
Manga and video games got this a lot too. I didn’t really get the art of titling even when I started writing my own things, I kind of got that they had to be descriptive of what was going on in the story but I had no template for it. I wasn't sure how to render it. When I looked at the writers I loved, especially in the fantasy genre, I wasn't sure how as to pick their minds on why they came up with The Hellbound Heart and not Hellraiser for example. So I had a lot of pedestrian and cliché story titles that weren't really evocative of what was going on. When I started reading doujinshi I kind of got a template. Now, mind you most of the doujinshi I read was pornographic in nature so the titles were an indicator of what kind of porn you were getting into. Some were Japanese, some were translated to English or another language I could reasonably understand. But I got it. Titles like Lascivious Mother told you exactly what was going on, who the main character was, and something about them. It reminded me of the quaint old timey titles you'd see on 15th-18th century literature which basically told you the whole story on two lines. So I started doing that in so many words. I also learned about parody titles and as I wrote mostly comedy at the time, that worked out fantastic. I got cryptic sometimes too. I learned how to use SEO and clickbait to ensure my stories never made it to general search but at least a handful of people would read them. Titling didn't finally click for me until I was writing and reading essays in high school. I learned how to summarize my own subject matter and describe it in so many words so that it looked inviting but kind of standard to protocol. Nothing too wild. I was introduced to the concept of using a quote from yourself or another author that invoked the subject at hand. My favorite part of the story is the reveal of the title - what it really meant this whole time, what it related to. Blogging also helped a lot. People don't have a lot of time to spare and blogging will make you frank. As I'm often inspired by movies and music, one thing I did to differentiate my professional writing from my fannish stuff was use movie quotes and snippets of song lyrics. I tried not to be terribly obvious about it. I still do this to an extent I just don't rely on it as hardcore as a I used to. I got a lot of hits with Duran Duran… When I switched over to short stories permanently (seemingly), my titles got about as abbreviated as the content. Usually now it's reduced to the antagonist, a main character, whatever is at stake, a location, or something just plain ol' cryptic for the sake of being cryptic and interesting. That’s where I draw my titling inspiration from these days. I've been trying to broaden myself out lately because titling is still one of those things that is innate for me, so I've been checking out this, this, and this. (PDF) Okay fam,
So last week I heavily implied that I would be running these Halloween skreets with a boatload of content and then...not so much. Technically I have been over here at Global Comment (y'all like Halloween countdowns?) but I wanted to get a little more ambitious with my blogging space! Unfortunately, the malady known as D E P R E S S I O N took me down through there and I had to focus my energy on my professional work otherwise I wouldn't be getting shit done. Well, I'm not really better per se but I feel good enough to share the things that I literally wrote months ago in case of just such an emergency, so FINALLY here we go with the writings again. As I said previously, I started a self-imposed flash fiction challenge that went from "flash fiction" to "what can i finish with minimal editing in a day" to "regular short story writing". I wasn't feeling any prompts so I decided to do a play list. I'm really no good at making play lists but I like writing to music, as you may have heard. While I'm getting my other posts together, I'll be sharing a few stories. Most of these will be me clowning on myself, but good or bad the purpose of this challenge for me was just keeping the pen moving/keyboard clacking. And I don't really mind making a spectacle of myself; I mean, come on. That being said, here is my curated play list: Welcome to Halloween everyone!
Now, somewhat ironically I can't stand fall -- I hate being cold, I'm sleepy all the time because DST has me fucked up, the trees and most of the flowers are dead, and I live in an area that doesn't even get snow so there's really nothing worth my while until spring gets here. Ahh, spring... Well, anyway, for the upcoming spooky months I figured it was time to finally get back to what this site's all about -- writing! Yes, I've been posting about writing and some clips of projects in the works or dead things I'm tryna necromance, but it's time to but the "author" back in author. I'm not saying these are good stories or anything I'm just saying there will be some. In addition to my regular degular posts, by the time you read this I will hopefully be done with my self imposed 12 Day flash fiction challenge. I'll talk more about my struggles with that as they go up. Oh! And Halloween themed DIYs. Make skull bows with me! Ooh-ooh, and more lifestyle blogging as I attempt to get out of the house and do things like a normal peoples do. And at some point I'll be discussing influential occult/mystic/esoteric literature! Some of those may be NSFW/NSFL but I'll warn y'all ahead of time. I think that's about it for now...anything else will be a surprise! So I've started becoming more sensitive about where I take inspiration from and why. I've admitted several times out loud, to myself, workshop guests, my cats my writing is a little overly theatrical sometimes. Like I'm just begging for a movie adaptation one of these days. It sucks because it makes things hard to transcribe from a very lucid visual point to a very literary point. Simply put, you're not going to see exactly what I see nor am I interested in you having the exact same interpretation. Now, there's things we have to agree on. When I say a character is a black female, she is. When I say someone has red hair, they do unless I forget continuity and suddenly they don't. What I'm saying is this… In my fiction class in college one year, I introduced myself with stating I'm a film student and I hadn't read a book in a long time. That was pretentious but it was correct -- up to that point I hadn't really read any books, much of my college course material was books I'd already read and did not need/want to read again, and I'd taken more to watching a lot of Japanese cyberpunk and New Wave. I think what happened was I needed a new template. At some point literally all I did was read, read two to three books at a time to the point where I was literally getting behind on my coursework because I was too busy doing other things (this became a thread of my life). When I decided to write, until I figured out my own style I realized I needed a template. The books I was reading served as that template, but it was a weird time because I was reading a mix of Victorian literature, Russian modernism, and the young adult assignments I had to read in class. So looking back, of course I was finding my way but I don't really feel like I was writing as a real person. I was inhabiting various historical figures and writing as they would. A myna bird, basically. Then what happened was I got mighty pretentious about it. I was shy in real life but on the internet I definitely got the big head. At this point I was writing almost exclusively fanfiction and people were praising my work and I was getting massive views. It was hear I learned to…monitor my activity. That's right folks, writing fanfiction will teach you a few things. While keeping my dashed together "style" I also started catering to my audience. But instead of making connections I was snickering at other people's writing because I didn't think they were as good as me. Look, I'm classically trained! These other punks sounded like amateurs. I got humbled when I started branching out to original fiction and I realized nobody was really following me there. I was reading other people's works and wondering why they were so much more successful. Well, there's a few reasons young me -- being able to put together a cohesive story, good dialogue, character development, plotting and pacing…I had to sit down and figure it out. It wasn't just enough to copy Alexandre Dumas but the point was to learn from him. At some point in my wayward youth, I drifted into something pretty hardcore: the underground movie scene. Now, I've been watching b-movies my whole damn life but I didn't realize there was an actual internet community for them until I was like maybe thirteen or fourteen. Then I was obsessed. I was in a place where biker babes were good and you said "feelm" with as much irony or gusto as you dared. Also, the people were funny and had a similar sense of humor. At that point I was Misfits horrorpunk trash. I read a ton of reviews and I wanted to write my own, too. In doing this, I made new friends, gained some damn people skills, and more importantly found a new template. Yes, I started copying schlock movies. Except better this time because now I understood the principles of writing. As I watched more underground movies, that became my template for writing. It kind of worked for a while because at least I was new and fresh again, but it got a little stale and I started struggling again. I couldn't figure out what was wrong. Recently, I did a little comparison on myself. I compared what was essentially a songfic to something I'd written channeling a movie more or less. The songfic flowed so much easier without revealing it's obvious influences, it was subtle and dare I say kind of good. The other piece…well, it was trying but it was too wordy. Too emotive. I had a hard time getting to the point. You know what that means… I need to get out of my own head and stop overanalyzing. |
Ia! If you've come this far, you're either looking for weird or you know you've found it... TRESPASSING
September 2018
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