writing

Blog posts: easy. They flow off the keys to be released unto the internet, without a care in the world. What's the internet, but a place of noise, regardless of quality.

Also, I've assured myself this blog is an exercise in writing. More a matter of getting something done than doing it to perfection. Of course I edit and try to ensure some clarity but I don't hoard. Instead, writing gets released to the world and I get over my sense that it's too precious to be shown. Hold everything close, bide your time, and eventually sell it all for millions. I think that's how the logic went. (Past tense used in the most hopeful manner.)

Possible reasons for the dearth of posts of late:

-Shouting into the void was starting to wear.

-I simply wanted to escape my digital shackles. As a rule I'm in front of computers far more than I want to be.

-There's also the possibility that any benefit the blog as a writing exercise gave was being usurped by the less healthy blog as place to attempt expression of my personal value, self-worth and existence in the world. In short: self-worth defined via blogged experience and thoughts, where doing it counts for nothing until it has been shared.

(Note: I'm not commenting on blogging generally, just personal tendencies)

Forest for the trees kids! I never considered it consciously but maybe taking a step back from relating individual instances of being might allow the whole self to be revealed. Or something.

Maybe.

(Note: and after writing this post and re-reading it and editing it, maybe the effort I put into these doesn't match the reward, which I'm sure is directly tied in to what I consider the value of a blog post. Maybe because I dismiss my blog posts of holding any "real" value even before starting to write means the results will inevitably be dashed off and of lower quality? Heh, I'm going to stop thinking about the value of blog posts right now.)

Short stories: of late they're alright provided I sit down to do them. The ideas come and I write, but this is a recent phenomenon and it's pretty exhilarating. Instead of having to contemplate where everything is going before I start, I've started to just write. If the story takes a page, great. If it starts to grow, also great. Now that I have mostly removed the expectation of immensity these are more relaxing and fun. I can play around with words, narrative and narrator and lose nothing if it's a disaster.

I'm not churning them out every day, but I'm not a professional writer so whatever.

Poetry: I don't do this much and it's not a huge concern at the moment. I guess the odd tweet could still be considered poetic but I've certainly not made a concerted effort. There are a few I did write during the week of poems that I quite like. I've even had some feedback. What I haven't done is take that feedback and look at it alongside the poems in an attempt to improve and solidify my poetic chops. Eventually? Hope so, because poems are fun.

Non-fiction/essays: Eeeeeeeeee. As a recovering grad student there should be something more here. I guess this is what I was doing with some of my blog posts. Once or twice, not recently, I have tried to start a paper based on my thesis research. There has been no success on this front. Part of my dilemma is that I like to be right. If you put out an opinion, people might tell you that you're wrong. If you don't put out an opinion, there's no way to be wrong. Right?

I also like to take everything into account...read: EVERYTHING. If I start a position piece I often find myself wandering hither and yon, laying out opinions on too much. I also start to consider possible counter-arguments. Sometimes they make me doubt the entire premise I'm working from and other times I'm left with so many dragons to beat to death that any concision in what I was writing is lost. I guess my main problem with this type of writing is when I do do it I'm too scatty and unfocused, but that's indicative of my brain as a whole.

Personal essays from life are something I haven't done much of (certain blog posts, maybe?). Although I did write a piece while in France about a lady on plane. I talked to her in the most casual fashion and mulled over all sorts of tactics to further engage said lady in conversation. I didn't and in frustration wrote up the incident, with humourous asides and commentary, instead. That piece has subsequently been fictionalized and incorporated in the latest attempted novel.

Real life essays are something I'd like to try more of. The narrative and character(s) are already in place, so I'd get to invest all my energy into crafting words. That can only be good.

Scripts: I'm working on a short film. Not much to say about this. Periodically I find a story I think would be suited for such treatment but I haven't tried it enough to know where I'm at from a skillZ perspective.

Novels: SO BIG. I started writing this post because I had yesterday off. It was a good day. Arose at a reasonable hour, made breakfast and ate it while making soup (gingery butternut squash from Simply in Season for those interested). After lunch I proceeded to set up shop in U of T's Robarts Library to write the afternoon away. NOTHING HAPPENED. I wrote a little, but more importantly I sat a lot. I stared. I mulled. And slowly, over the course of the afternoon my mood became foul. There was also a nerd crush on a map librarian, but that was so clearly going to happen it barely warrants mention.

The day was still a good one. I'm always interested when I note a change in myself when it happens (mood, behaviour, etc.) because so often the changes pass me by. If I notice though, next time a similar situation yields similar results I'll know to avoid or enhance as required.

The personal personality puzzle, solvable one piece at a time.

And after the library some walking and talking with Daydream in the glorious night air cleansed my head and left me pleased again. Also, I rediscovered jumping over park benches. Hurdling is fine, but a two-footed leap, that is how we SOAR!!! The best is when the launch spot is slightly higher than the bench and the landing pad. When I do this at work over the rail fence while wearing my Inverness I feel like Batman.

But this is about writing, right? Novels!

Because a novel is substantial and has a long way to go, the characters' actions now will have repercussions down the line, everything I write feels weighted with meaning. Decisions on direction and scene crush my being and what ends up on page suffers as a result. I get too tired and frustrated before I get to the actual scene, then write something that skims and skips over what I'm trying to say as a result. The world I create is shallow and blah, not immersive and YAH!

I want to be able to write novels with the freedom I have when sending an email. Stream of consciousness wonder that is practically barfed from my fingertips. It's important to have goals, and mine happen to include fingers that puke.

But, at the same time, one must remain positive lest the darkness swallow you whole. A novel is a big thing and I'm learning to write the form while learning to write the write. Or learning to write as a writer more advanced than I might say. Slowly, creepily, things will get done and then I get to type it all up and commence the editing process. And that ladies and gentlemen is gravy, because even if you need to rewrite a whole scene, it's a whole scene in context of everything else, rather than the current case of scenes in a swirling void that contains only hints and intuitions of the universe I'm trying to create.

I've started novels before, but never finished. If I look back I probably stopped writing them around this stage of the process. The opening is there, the characters are fleshy, but the real guts of what needs to happen hasn't been dealt with yet. I'm at this wall again but pushing forward instead of wandering off.

I've been thinking of my thesis writing experience recently and how it compares to the novel process. That was a big thing. There were lots of ideas that I needed to pull together to lend coherence to a whole, and I got there. Eventually. When the writing was done I remember days of editing from printed sheets, rewriting sentences and whole paragraphs, rearranging the puzzle pieces until it all fit and made sense. To a degree of course.

A MASTER'S DEGREE. See what I did there? Without editing the world would have been worse for lacking that joke.

Writing, huzzah!

I could have written all this in a book and never revealed it, but if I did that chances are it never would have been finished.

Full circle: blog.

urban thoughts

I'm not sure what I was trying to achieve with my thesis but it's nice to know other people are thinking similar things. These quotes are taken from an article on Torontoist. It's an interview with Mark Kingwell, author of Concrete Reveries: Consciousness and the City.

Two bits that really jumped out at me, mainly because they repeat things I said (and by said I mean rewrote and struggled over a million times).

"The cityspace is so often about function - the movement of goods and services, desires and bodies, from node to node - that anything that disrupts the function is at the least interesting and at the most liberating."

This comment is similar to something I said, but in terms of the Lefebvrian spatial triad. I think using Lefebvre made my words a lot more confused. Look.

"If something must exist in space to have effect, contemporary society’s emphasis on work and consumption finds spatial form through representations of space and the resultant built infrastructure of the city. Skyscrapers dominate most cities today and are perhaps the most widely visible demonstration of the dominance of the city by capitalist work; their size and solidity leave little doubt of their importance...These buildings extend into the ground, connecting directly with a city’s arterial systems of transportation, communication and resource distribution. In this way, places of work are integrally tied into the core of a city. People flow into the buildings during the morning rush, and out at the end of the day, when they become work sites for cleaners and maintenance personnel who keep the buildings running and usable."

Heh. Who knows. I guess comparing an answer in an online interview to a paragraph from a thesis is a bit silly too.

But, do you know what isn't silly? Comparing both to a music video.

Röyksopp - Remind Me
Uploaded by hushhush112. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

And then this comment from the interviewer.

"You talk about the playful city, and the importance of play, and how play in cities can extend beyond the stadiums and other sanctioned heterotopian sites through the transformative power of carnival. Would you agree that graffiti, like skateboarding, longboarding, urban exploration, geocaching, parkour - or any of the other forms of independent repurposing of the city and its infrastructure for play that exist - are like carnival without end?"

I'm only posting this quote because longboarding caught my eye. As far as I know, and I could be wrong, longboarding is riding a longboard down the street. There aren't tricks and kickflips and grinds on cement ledges like there is with regular skateboarding. I'm not suggesting one is better than another, but if you're just using it as a mode of transportation it lacks a transgressive depth. Something that comes about once a space is re-imagined and used differently. To include it in the list I ask myself why bicycling isn't on there? They go along roads and aren't cars too. And if bikes were there, should all types of cycling be included? Similar questions could be asked about walking fer crimminy's sake...and on and on and on.

So what is considered as transgressive in urban space? That's the 20 million dollar question. Does it require intent behind the act? Is anyone on a skateboard transgressive or is the kid in it purely for the look something less? Can a person only be transgressive if they seek out the opportunities? Do we get to call them mindless automatons if they don't?

Questions without end.

As I said at the start, it's nice that others have considered similar issues and topics I invested so much effort and time in (but why didn't they publish their books before I was writing?). I'll leave the discussion to them for the time being because whenever I try to get involved I ask more questions than I manage to find answers.

And that makes me dizzy.

To end the discussion I'll simply say, make sure you PLAY at every opportunity and as far as I'm concerned the city will somehow become a better place.

Playing makes me dizzy too, but in a good way.