Results of Ruminations

I went to Paris this weekend. This is unusual, in that I don't normally do things involving lots of money or going overseas. It was really great. So I've posted the results of ruminations (see what I did there?) on my time in Paris. It includes the thoughts I have for the tour I'm taking in January, so if it seems somewhat disjointed, that's why. In other news, I finished my read-through of Act 1 scene 1 of  The Merchant of Venice, as I mentioned in the last post. It's all rough, first-draft stuff but I thought I'd follow up with that. Now, Paris: Day 1 First thing first: Our bus driver is crazy. I think it's normal for the people to drive like that, but he seriously just trundles this 3 ton bus around like he's the only one on the road. It's hilarious. Our tour director is incredibly fluent. She has an accent, but it isn't bad or distracting. It's one of those French accents that's more of a shading than anything else. As fo...

On a whim, I decided to begin responding to one of Shakespeare's plays with the same thoroughness and attention to possibilities as I give my students in the Shakespeare class I'm teaching this year. I haven't seen anything like this--all other work on the Bard comes in the form of fully formed essays, assembled into a book. These are a delight to read, but they end up feeling the same if only because they copy one another's format so diligently. I thought it might be interesting to have a commentator on a play, someone to give some sort of response for the reader to consider. What I have to say is not necessarily worthwhile nor profound, but it's an exercise in analysis that I enjoyed. I'm pasting the first couple of pages of work here. I've not bothered to put any sort of formatting on it, so it may be a bit hard to read. Enjoy! ACT I SCENE I. Venice. A street. Enter ANTONIO, SALARINO, and SALANIO ANTONIO In sooth, I know not why I am so sad...

In the summer of 1993--at the crisp age of ten--a movie came out that I loved: Last Action Hero . Being enamored of action movies and Arnold Schwarzenegger, I enjoyed Last Action Hero immensely. I watched it again a couple of years ago and found that it's an even better movie than I had thought. Subversive, self-aware, satirical, it has all the earmarks of a great work under-appreciated in its time.* The reason few people remember Last Action Hero is because of one major monster movie that came out one week before it: Jurassic Park. The dinosaurs were eating up the box office reviews, ticket sales, and summer blockbuster buzz. Even Arnold can't walk away from going toe-to-toe against a tyrannosaurus rex. Perhaps ten is when my memory truly began to coalesce. I have manifold and distinct images in my mind of that time--and most of it comes from Jurassic Park. I can vividly recall how confused (and excited) I was to see the McDonald's cups that depicted moments fro...

I have exulted many times on this blog that I am finished with Writ in Blood . Every time I've kind of meant it. But it's stuck in me, like a hair that I've almost swallowed but haven't been able to get out of my mouth yet. No more. I am officially done with all that I have to do this side of being picked up and published. I can't really explain how I feel about this. I've commented a few times that this is the story that I felt had the best bet for publication (I no longer think that). I've also said that I wasn't as scared of/dreading as much the revisions of this book. Well, by the end, WiB  was feeling just like everything else I had done. I was finished with it right around chapter 20. But I pushed on, just like I'm supposed to. (If I can't act like a professional when I have very little time to write, then I can't really expect that I'll have the discipline to act like a pro when I do  have the time. At least, so the theory go...

I've been 'finished' with Writ in Blood  for over a year now, but I'm not done with it yet. I spent the last year reading, revising, rereading, revising, and now going through a "final" edit of the book. This will be the last time that I touch the book until I get an agent, as I am ready to vomit with weariness every time I launch yWriter5 and work on the beast. But things are happening. The book--despite all of my earliest efforts--is actually shrinking . I'm losing a couple hundred words every time I sit down--which usually entails a chapter each time--which, if I keep this up, will put my total number at 280,000 words or so. Why is this good? Well, I'm glad I asked. I did submit (as I mentioned earlier) to an agent, but was rejected within a couple of weeks. Part of it has to come from the size of my book. Retailers (who still matter a great deal in this business) aren't eager to give an untested brand--which, in publishing, is one's n...

As rain began to patter across my windshield, I listened to a teacher in New York who was fired from his job because he has Tourette's Syndrome. His distress and grief came through and I felt for him. What , I thought, a story. Obviously, it isn't a good story, in that it isn't a story about good things. But it was a good story because it had merit. It had worth. And I thought that it'd be so nice if my life had that, too--a story of worth or merit. That isn't to say that my life is bereft of anything dramatic or interesting. It's just that my life is so simple, so padded, so convenient that I hardly notice the bumps as bumps--they all feel like mass potholes when, in reality, they're mostly just pebbles. I guess a large part of it is that I spend so much time talking about writing and teaching others about writing and thinking about writing that I never sit down and hammer out sentences, putting one letter after another until the page is blank...

Thus ends the second draft of Writ in Blood . Oh yeah. Three years ago this month, I had an image come into my head of a man dressed all in black, standing in the middle of a Grecian street, like a stone in a river. He was a Poet, and a killer, and I had no idea who he was. I never found out. Instead, Nicomachus took a decidedly more introspective and (to me) interesting turn. With the idea of a fantasy story that mashes up a Mediterranean milieu, a Shakespearean speech pattern, and a Lost -inspired structure, I embarked on Writ in Blood, completely unsure of where I was going or what lay ahead. After three varied, interesting, and fantastic years, I can proudly announce that I have finished my third reading of the book and its first major revision. Of course, I have to wonder how "done" I really am. I don't feel like it's perfect yet, that it's ready for submission. But I also had a goal to get the manuscript into the hands of an agent by 2013. Well, it...