Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

I am large...I contain multiples.

I love that quote by Whitman, shot back at someone who accused him of contradicting himself.  It was a great big "So what?" and done as only a poet could do it.  Of course, small wonder I like it; I contradict myself all the time...and in my work.

Whoo...going through LD this time was a journey in self-discovery.  Especially as regards inconsistencies and being overly explanatory.  Sometimes it's best just to let things reveal themselves as they wish.  So even as I added more words and expanded upon some moments that felt constricted, I cut back on others that felt too explicit.  And wound up with 62,000+ words and 301 pages.  And here I was saying I couldn't add to it without making it crap.  HA!

I wonder if I'm too old to be tested for dyslexia of the thought processes?

Well...I'm in NYC beginning Thursday and staying till Monday, then I have a packing job to pick up and pack and get to a courier service by 5pm Tuesday.  Then comes returning to Buffalo.  I'll be staying in SoHo and meeting with an ex-cop who wants me to make his story into a book.  I'd already written it as a script but no one wants it because they feel it's been done before.  It's all about corruption and drug dealing in the NYPD ("Serpico", anyone?) but in this case it helped drive him to a nervous breakdown.  Which may have been another stumbling block on getting people interested -- the hero doesn't blow away the bad guys in the end; his brain just blows up.  But it'll be interesting to put a face with the script I'd already written.

The recent vote for gay marriage in NY has made me wonder if "Dair's Window" is no longer relevant.  If I should now do it as a period piece of a sort, having it end about three years ago, after Prop 8 is passed.  I don't know.  The story is timeless -- learning to move on after severe loss -- and I can still see there being a huge backlash by the radical homophobes like there was in California, though I think (I hope) the Mormon Church will stay out of this fight.  They got beat up good after the last one.  But you never know with religious fanatics; reality has so little to do with their view of existence.  Michelle Bachmann is proof of that.

Problem is, the freaks're close to taking over the world and leading us to WW3.  What a fun prospect.  Reminds me of a story I heard once, about rats being kept in tight quarters -- when there got to be too many of them to be comfortable, they turned on each other and killed those they'd been sharing space with.  Maybe that's happening now with people.  No place left to go but up and that ain't happening soon, so...CRUSH, KILL, DESTROY!

There's also an old Chinese curse -- May you live in interesting times.  Looks like that's coming to pass, fer sure.

2 comments:

Writer said...

The problem with reality...erm...well, rather, the problem with the what Bachmann and her ilk call reality is that it can so easily be spun so that Bachmann is a victim being made fun of by a liberal elite.

It means she will always be in good with the bulk of America. You know, when they aren't too busy throwing back cheap beer, shopping at WalMart and watching Nascar.

JamTheCat said...

Part of the "It's all about me" generation.