Wit, Soul, Brevity

First, allow me to post a link to something that I have, regretfully, only just learned about this week: the Dyatlov Pass Accident.

Fascinating, yes? I'm of two minds about this story--on the one hand, it's a tragedy; it sounds like the people involved in that expedition died cold, frightened, and in some very deep sense, alone, and like the survivors have unanswered questions that will probably go with them to the grave. But at the same time, I can't help but be intrigued by it; I can't help but wonder exactly what sort of mystery it was that those explorers found, which corner of the map they wandered off of into the realm of dragons and sea monsters. Sad at the loss and yet anchored by the fascination; this right here is why I don't have the same bravery Tim Powers does, and have to touch on real history in only a cursory manner. That, and I am irritated enough by ripping fiction to rags on the grounds of historical accuracy when I have to watch it being done to someone else--I can't imagine how I'd react if I was the one who got something wrong.

Now then, that said: I have a question.

Why is flash fiction more difficult than normal fiction?

I admit that I'm wordy; sesquipedalian, even. But this week (admittedly, only four days in) I have written around 1,000 word where there should be 4,000. To be fair, I have probably actually written about 2,000 words, but half of them count only in my darkest moments, because they were, not to put too fine a point on it, terrible.

Why so few words? Because I am trying to work with so few words.

It is, of course, the brevity of the medium that is the problem, but it is an issue on more than the patently obvious levels. Not only does the flash fiction form demand a verbal economy that it's hard for me to muster in my grocery list, but there are stylistic constraints that I can't even begin to describe. It's as though I expect the same mass of meaning, but at a greater density; I want all the meaning and twists and questions you find in 7,000 words to come across in a mere 500, which means I either borrow a page from the dearly departed James Joyce and invent my own words dense with meaning (a sort of depleted uranium vocabulary), or I write an evocative prose poem that still winds up having an extra ten words that are absolutely crucial to the piece. (If you're wincing or shaking your head, you're not alone; I too know the great folly of falling in love with a sentence you've written. Think of it as psychic incest, maybe that will make it easier to deatch.)

Which is why my efforts to enter the Weird Tales spam headline writing contest (yes, you read that right) have been thus far stymied. I am currently tapping my fingertips together, furrowing my brow meaningfully at the screen, and hoping for one of the two things writers desire most: Inspiration, or feedback.

I'll be submitting one of the pieces I've written either way; it's just a matter of what I think my chances are, which I suppose is proof that I should never be encouraged to play poker.

But, I've been masturbatory lately, and there isn't a movie to review that hasn't been beaten to death. (My summation of The Dark Knight is the same as my summation of Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog: "My God, this is mesmerizing; and I will never look at superheroes quite the same way again.") So rather than keep looking inward, I'm going to look outward, and try taking the "self" out of "self-indulgent".

If you have a question, ask it; even if you just have a topic you want me to cover. My only restriction is that it not be a deep intrusion into my personal life--this is a blog, not Truth or Dare. Or, if you're nasty, this is Blogger, not LiveJournal.

Now then, read on, and ask away.

All the News that's Roughly about Me

There is something lately about Thursday blog posts, and their tendency to occur while my kitchen is filled with the scent of potatoes and beets. Perhaps it's a new pattern of eating (sort of) healthy? Perhaps I just happen to pick Thursdays as the day I attempt the more difficult culinary ventures.

Likewise, there is something about Thursdays that relates to creative endeavor switching from "trickle" to "pour"--for today, after a week of steady trickling, the faucet opened. I suspect seeing both The Dark Knight and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog this weekend (two very different takes on very similar genres, and both fantastic productions despite their totally antipodal budgets) may have done something jump-start my creativity, but here is an outline of my past four days.

Monday: I finished "The Boys of Summer" at around 16,000 words (?!), and had the sudden, shoulder-dragging, thought-icing realization that yes, it really was done, and it was too late for me to go out and get a drink to celebrate it. Ah well; it's "just" a novella, it's not as though I missed a major and intensive bout of revelry.

Tuesday: I didn't get any actual writing done that day, in the literal word-count, skill-honing sense; running on the story completion from the previous day, I traded word count for career momentum, and broke my two-week inertia by turning my attention to one of my short stories. Having finished nursing the piece back to health, I kicked it out of the nest for the fourth time in the hopes that perhaps now it will sprout wings. I don't want to jinx it by saying where I sent it, but if you're the finger-crossing or thumb-grabbing sort please do send a little of that my way. (The story thus maltreated is "The Marvellest Sight", for the edification of those kind editorial friends who have helped me give this one a ray of hope.)

Wednesday: This was intended to be one of my planned slacks, one of the two days each week where I do not have the promise of one thousand words hanging over my head. It was the birthday of one of my very best friends, and I figured that was a night I should be focused on the wholly non-fictional world. And that's just what the night was--until we got to the restaurant and were delayed, at which point my good, dear, kind and wonderful friend turned to me, and said "So there are two anthologies I'm planning on submitting to..." Naturally, my ears perked up. One of these anthologies is looking for stories about the Morrigan, which is not a subject I am generally that enthralled by, but I filed it away in my consciousness. But when he talked about the other anthology, I heard approximately this sentence: "there's this other publishing company that is looking for short stories about zombies that I was thinking about..."

To say I love zombies is to understate the matter. Last year my birthday presents were entirely zombie-themed and I was beyond pleased. For Christmas last year, I received Last Night on Earth, and was ecstatic. But stories--stories about zombies are nearly impossible. Where was I going to get ideas for a story about zombies?

Thursday: And here I again eat my own words. I had to stop reading on the train (two words you rarely hear together in my vocabulary: "stop reading") to pull out my notebook and start scrawling ideas for my story about the Morrigan. Discovering that I had not gotten the full instructions set me back only slightly. This one is sitting in the back of my mind and building up energy for a charge through the front of my skull. But the zombie story is due in August--where am I going to find an idea--

While standing at the office's kitchen sink filling up my water bottle, apparently. The first scene smacked full-force into my brain, followed by the inevitable despair that I only had an image, not anything to put into it--and then an old story idea dredged itself up out of my mind, something that I could absolutely rework to tell the tale of the years following the rise of the undead menace...

And now, it's Thursday night, and I have ideas caroming around my skull. I'd intended to give you something a little more poetic tonight, something scintillating, something...well, something more like an essay, to be perfectly honest. But the truth is, and you may have noticed this, last week's essay felt a bit sudden and forced, and much as I don't want to turn this into a surrogate LiveJournal, I also don't want to let this descend completely into pseudo-academic wankery. One of the cardinal rules of writing (I seem to have a lot of those) is not to mistake force for inspiration, and while I have the first lines or cute word-plays of about three or four more erudite posts, what I have today is the desire to write about roasted potatoes, and busy brains, and the future possibility of triple goddesses and zombies. And so, that is what I have. I hope you enjoy it--I mean, hey, at least I'm not copping out and doing a movie review.

My First Pimp

This was too amazing not to put this out here.

For this weekend, and this weekend only, you can see--absolutely free--Joss Whedon's latest project, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog.

It's a musical about a super-villain. It's by Joss Whedon. It stars Neil Patrick Harris as Dr. Horrible, along with someone else who should be seen rather than announced as his arch-nemesis. And perhaps better than that, it is Joss Whedon's attempt to start changing the way things are done in show business: Seriously, he has a Master Plan.

So please, enjoy it--act three goes up tomorrow, July 19th, and is only free until July 20th. This is Whedon at his best; I encourage you not to miss out.

Delightful Dilemmas: Scents, Details, and the Troublesome Opposite of Writer's Block

From where I'm sitting, I smell roasting beets and potatoes that I chopped and seasoned myself, and the gummy, chalky smell of moisturizer on my skin. The sun is setting behind me, the sky is flossy gray; I have had a week full of good food and good company, and it promises to continue on through to Sunday. And for once, I'm sitting here with the urge to write, and half a dozen blog posts moving through my mind, and I am contemplating a dilemma that is the absolute opposite of the one I usually face: I've written too many words.

A bit of secret insider knowledge: short stories, in most magazines, run to about 7,000 words, with the majority of magazines preferring 5,000. The story I am working on currently, (very) tentatively titled "The Boys of Summer", has just passed the 10,000 word mark, and while I'm wrapping up, I'm not positive that I can prune this beast down to the point where it is the "right" length to be published by someone I'm not related to.

While writer's block is any writer's nemesis, its supremacy is rivaled and occasionally surpassed by another insidious pair of words: "word count". Talk about style, talk about substance, talk about how you're revolutionary or ironic or postmodern or whatever buzz word you want to slap on your manuscript—if you don't find a way to jump over the hurdle of word count (or the less common but equally intimidating page count) you will be like every other schlub counting his rejection letters and reminding himself how Elvis was told to give up singing. Magazines want two to seven thousand, publishing houses want around ninety thousand, agents want to see your novel explained in a page: getting published tests not only the quality and dexterity of your words, but their capacity to shrink down and hide when it comes time for roll call.

I suppose I could scream about "my art" and the myriad ways in which the publishing industry is keeping me "down"; but the truth is, I consider this another challenge to be met. "The Boys of Summer" feels like a ten, maybe eleven thousand word story—but how much of that is extraneous? Surely some of it can be set aside. But when I look at it, from the very beginning, I'm not sure how to find it. I see some loose language, but more than that, I see, colorful and mournful, that quality of a story which most often has to be thrown out when it needs to be downsized: the details.

A book I read on the art of writing fantasy, back when I thought those were a good idea, suggested that knowing the details and hidden lives of your characters is everything: that even if it never comes up, you need to know whether your main character prefers light mayonnaise to regular. Good advice, but it's very easy to lose track of the most important clause: "Even if it never comes up". Good use of detail is a pair of wings holding your story aloft; poor use of detail could ruin the next Slaughterhouse Five.

Detail is powerful; detail can tell the reader secrets in ways that broader actions and speeches never could. The magic of detail can come down to a single word: the difference between "he said" and "he drawled" and "he spat" is a sledgehammer of an example. I've read stories where the entire drama played out in one small series of descriptions floating just beneath the surface of the narrative. If I had the time I could spend hours searching for the perfect way to describe the color of this character's eyes or the curve of that character's mouth. I could waste a night striving to make the motions of a sunset into a typographic Sistine Chapel.

But is it worth it? Is it acceptable for me to write the most amazing description in the world, and shove it into a story as full and three-dimensional as an envelope? Can I get away with hanging pretty drapes over the holes in the walls and pretending everything's fine?

See, there—I'm trying too hard to be clever. No. The answer is no, I cannot. Prose poems aside, people don't open a literary magazine to watch me make adjectives dance. Beautiful detail can accent a great story, but it can't make up for a poor one.

This isn't a diatribe against detail—far from it. But the truth is that, especially in short works, detail has to be used carefully. The word I want to use is "acrobatic": detail needs to blend without effort. Hair color isn't always important; eye color is mostly good for poetic license; preferred mode of dress can send a signal or can bog the story down while you describe the way the ruffles hang out of their sleeves. Description needs to be kept up in the air with all the other pretty scarves you're using to tell your story. Play with your words, but don't ever let word-play become all you do: if you can make mention of someone's hair color and keep the story flowing, go to it, but unless it's plot-relevant, don't try too hard.

And yet, for all this advice I spout, I'm in love with detail. I love finding the perfect word, and if it's grammatically incorrect in context that just makes me edgy; I find pretty and flowing ways to describe someone's perfect indie boy haircut or the starved-crow hang of their clothes, and I latch onto my cleverness and I don't let go. And God help me when I invent a mythos to hang in the background of a story—I find myself straining and wheedling to get just a little more detail about my Fantastic New World out in the open, where people can see it and say "My God, this man's a genius! At last, a home for this useless pile of money that's been holding down my paperwork!"

This is why "The Boys of Summer" is over ten thousand words long; this is why I can't seem to make my novel synopses fit on one page. I plunge my fingers into the minute cracks and contours of my stories, and I cling for dear life and insist that no-one, not even me (especially not me), can take them away. I sit here, contemplating the end of "The Boys of Summer", and wondering how much of the drama and the important choices can be distilled down—and how much of the backstory for my main character doesn't need to be there.

It's frustrating work, trying to trim a story down to size; and yet, when I look at it, it's frustrating work because it seems like every paragraph has some gem in it, some great twist of phrase that I don't want to consign to oblivion and forgetting. It's hard work because I put a lot of words onto paper, even just digital paper. And really, I just sat back and thought about that, and that is the exact thing I keep telling myself isn't happening. I claim it's not enough, I claim it's terrible—but even when it's like pulling teeth, I seem to produce something I treasure too much to throw away.

So instead of fretting, I'm going to let "The Boys of Summer" sit for a night, and enjoy the company of friends from out of town; and I'm going to be thankful that, if only for this week, the biggest problem with my writing is that I've produced too many high quality words.

Raining vs. Pouring (no, this isn't the weekly post)

Irony follows me everywhere, like a dog with glowing, all-seeing eyes.

After the initial thought that morning was like being punched, and the rising consciousness that comes only once I've brushed my teeth and stepped into the shower, my first real, coherent thought was "Oh no. I have to post today. What the hell am I going to write about?" The next coherent thought was the constant pounding beat of "Nothing. Nothing. Nothing." and that awful mental clench that precedes true writer's block.

Of course, that meant that as I got dressed, I surrendered to having nothing good to write, and got through the wincing realization that that meant another apology post, of the variety I expressly promised I would not write.

And of course, that meant that on the way to work I was flooded with ideas for posts.

There will be a real post later today, I assure you; but I had to share this latest episode in the ongoing comedy that is my brain. And now, to work.

Review: Hellboy II: the Golden Army

I know, I know, I just wrote one of these not two days ago; that one had robots, this one (sort of) had robots, why won't it end?

The truth is, I wasn't really going to write a review of this one, not this week, anyway; I try not to fall back on writing reviews as a way to exercise my pen, and this month is a constant rain of sledgehammer blows to my pocketbook as far as the cinema is concerned--between having to delay my viewing of Wall•E and the release of Hellboy II, the X-Files movie, and of course The Dark Knight. However, I really think this one deserved a review--on some strange level I feel like I owe Guillermo del Toro that much, because the truth is, I think he's an amazing director, but I'm not sure I really liked this offering.

My review, spoiler-free, in 100 words or less: Middling good, but that's an average. It was visually stunning, and Mignola and del Toro's respective visions of the occult world hiding beneath our own blend into a wonderful cinematic soup. It captured the flavor and essence of the Hellboy universe and Hellboy's character, and it asked questions about magic, morality, and belonging that I found very resonant. However, its pacing was uneven, and many of the twists and turns in the plot were abrupt in a wrenching, armrest-clutching sort of way.

Now, it's time to bring up the



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The central questions of this movie are easy to pick out, as they are embodied in the primary antagonist--who also, helpfully, asks them of Hellboy right at the end of the film. Simply put, it's a story about choices: personal desires or the greater good, on the one hand; and the world of magic and the world you know, on the other. Hellboy II poses these questions elegantly, and sometimes painfully, but it is, unfortunately, not very good at answering them.

Now, let me say the things that were wonderful about this movie. The story was excellent as a backdrop for the sorts of problems and questions it poses, though I did not like the flensing del Toro gave to Celtic mythology, given Mignola's general policy of adherence to at least the corret names (Balor was the one-eyed king of the Fomorians--if you were going to make him Nuada's father, you could have at least acknowledged it was we lowly humans who got the names wrong!). Ron Perlman was, as always, a stellar actor, bringing complex life to what could easily be a cardboard role, and I also have to give major points to Luke Goss and Anna Walton as Nuada and Nuala--Nuada was a superb villain, and Nuala had a certain quiet grace, though she was not given much screen time with which to advertise it.

And again, the visuals were stunning; del Toro's cinematography is top-notch, and he brought in all the things about Pan's Labyrinth that should have been in a Hellboy movie (I speak here as a rabid fan of Mr. Mignola). The fight scenes were some of the most fantastic things I have ever seen, and he brought an original vision to his Troll Market that both evoked what the words "fairy market" or "Goblin Market" bring to mind for me, and also put a whole new, alien, disturbing face on them. During the final battle with the Golden Army, I thought to myself that this was the movie del Toro was born to make (I'm sort of hoping At the Mountains of Madness proves me wrong).

Now, that said, the bad things. Let me open up with the words "Tom Manning". In the first film, Tom Manning was a great foil for Hellboy and Professor Broom, providing a harsher father-figure and enforcer of rules for Hellboy, someone who serves to magnify both Hellboy's flaws and virtues. He was comical at times, but he provided something like serious narrative weight. In this film, Manning is a comic husk of the character he was; he stutters, he stammers, he's totally unable to enforce any kind of punishment. And to add insult to injury, during the discussion of how to deal with the problem of Nuada and the mortal wound he's dealt Hellboy, he responds to Liz Sherman's reminder about Hellboy saving his life with a simple, blunt "I know". Nothing dramatic; nothing major; no hint of the fact that he and Hellboy seemed to have come to something like an understanding at the end of the last film. It happens, and the plot moves on, and that's it.

In fact, this last statement could be used to sum up my primary issue with the entire movie: major, character-affecting decisions are made, and they don't affect anybody, least of all the characters making them. Hellboy sees that people are afraid of him and find him repulsive, and he sits in his room and wonders what he's fighting for; but the next time he fights, it is without hesitation. Johann Krauss insists things be done by the book, and is willing to let Hellboy die because those are his orders--until suddenly he's rebellious without precedent. Liz is asked to choose between Hellboy's life and the possibility he will end the world, and there is no hesitation in her answer, not even a dramatic musical chord. This could be forgiven if it was a mindless smash-fest with some pretty occult dressing on it, but the movie is clearly trying to be a bit deeper (see the scene with the elemental for a hammer-between-the-eyes example), and it could have succeeded if it had only taken the time to let these questions and conflicts play out on screen.

There's that key word: time. The movie doesn't have enough of it. By the end of the second act, such as it is, the film has asked enough questions to keep it going through an entire two more hours: there's Abe's emotionally-stunted romance with Nuala, and the possibility that Hellboy is wasting his time fighting for humans when he could be fighting for the side of magic, and the mentor/rival relationship between Hellboy and Johann Krauss, and on and on. All of this is sewn up with sudden personality swerves and not one, but two, dei ex machina (the creature in the underground city, and Krauss's mysterious wedding rings that he never had in any scene before that); it feels as though del Toro wasn't given a time limit until partway through the project, and realized he had painted himself into a narrative corner. Whatever the driving reason behind it, none of these issues is given very much time on the screen, and the result is a lack of grace and a sensation of the film being unfinished.

Take the battle with Mister Wink--I could have a field day with the symbolism here. Hellboy fights another hulking brute with odd-colored skin and an artificial hand; at the turning point of the fight he shatters his opponent's hand, and then is given an opportunity to save that opponent's life. He chooses not to, and the way that Mister Wink dies, I would argue, is more brutal and cold than any other death in this Hellboy film or the previous one. This could be a major moment; this could have been a moment like the one that the elemental fight succeeded at being. Instead, it's just a fight scene, and the movie it's contained within is just a movie.

I wish this weren't the case, because the central choice Hellboy has to make this time around--save the humans he's been defending all these years, or preserve the magical and the bizarre in the world--is a choice that really resonates with me, as a nerd and a fantasist. The battle with the elemental was as tragic and brutal as del Toro meant it to be--I hold that as one of his major successes. Nuada's final lines hurt me to listen to, especially his decision that he absolutely had to keep going, even though it meant he would be killed. And the decision of the main B.P.R.D. team (even, bizarrely, Johann Krauss) at the end of the film was one that I cheered for inwardly, but only because I understood the target del Toro was aiming for, not the one he actually struck.



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In short, Hellboy II: the Golden Army is a beautiful movie with a few wonderful narrative moments, and it asks a terrifying question that has, unfortunately, been asked many times before. I heartily recommend it, especially to Hellboy fans, but I do have to say that I think you can wait for DVD. And for God's sake, be prepared to discuss the movie afterward--it's not action-packed enough to turn your brain off, and I think it's the only way you'll feel it did your brain justice.

Review: WALL•E

I'm well aware I'm a bit late on this one; I am but one man with but one paycheck, and have a tendency to fail to see a movie on my own until everyone around me has already seen it. Blah blah, cultural void, blah blah hubris, blah blah spoilers to follow, please feel free to read me or ignore me as you see fit.

It's no secret that I'm kind of an enormous softie. It's not something I really feel the need to change; if I was worried about my masculinity I'd be writing Tom Clancy novels. That said, I want the world, or at least my small segment of it, to institute a new warning for movies: "Do Not See This Film Alone". Subdivision by reason for bringing someone along is perfectly acceptable, in this case I would put it into the category of "Will cause excessive sniffling back of tears".

Now then, WALL•E in less than 100 words: I loved it, and I think that calling it a movie about the environment is an extreme injustice, though that message hit hard enough that I caught myself picking up abandoned recyclables on my walk home. Nor do I think is just a movie about adorable robots. More fascinating to me was the all-too-probable future where machines are smarter than we are, the amazing non-verbal storytelling skills employed by Andrew Stanton and Pixar, and the message about continuing to strive for success no matter how hard it is, and what fascinating things can happen when you let your life get knocked off-course.




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Let me first say that this movie was a masterwork of storytelling. I suffer from excessive detachment from most media--I love a good story but it doesn't take too much for me to start wandering off to think about what I want to make for dinner that night. Usually symbolism hits me hard between the eyeballs and I just wind up being pissed off at the ham-fisted narrative, rather than engaged. At the end of WALL•E, though, it was all I could do to not beg out loud for everything to be alright. From the first ten minutes onward I was enthralled, and I never once stopped to reflect that it took a good half the movie for me to hear more than about twenty seconds of human voices. Even after the humans showed up, the most powerful moments in the movie were achieved through purely visual means--the Captain's determination and heroism are entirely displayed through extended shots of his feet, and a meaningful glance in the direction of a globe.

Further, the visuals are stunning. I found myself several times trying to figure out if a scene was computer-animated or actually filmed; and while Iron Man taught me to wait through the credit sequence in case something sublime occurs afterward, WALL•E had the first credit sequence in quite some time that I have simply sat back and enjoyed. The slowly-evolving visual storytelling of the recolonization and re-greening of Earth showed a real storytelling genius at work, and it echoed the reliance on visuals that made the rest of the film so strong.

Now, because I'm a nerd, I have to unpack the rest of this movie. Because I don't think it's just about the environment--that was a topical hat to cap off a much more complicated narrative outfit, which is the simple truth that all the best things in life are bought with the willingness to be brave and try something a little new and a little scary, and that quirks and flaws and little obsessions are the things about a person that we appreciate most. It is a condemnation of becoming too addicted to routine.

Look at the state of affairs throughout the movie. Wall•E is the last vestige of an attempt to clean up our planet after we've allowed it to become overpolluted, a plan which, we learn late in the film, was abandoned when the Wall•E robots started to cease functioning. Humanity, as represented by the CEO of BuyNLarge (a company whose name I could unpack the meaning of for hours), simply gives up at this point, and tells the autopilots of the starliners to "stay the course". Humanity's fate is placed entirely in the hands of machines--machines who, though they are characterized as villains, are simply carrying out their programming, in some cases living out existences which consist wholly of endless repetition. Humanity remains blissful and oblivious, and they fail to learn--as the trash compactor scene shows, all they've done is upgrade to the bigger, more impersonal Wall•A robots, and start ejecting their garbage into the space instead of into the dirt.

But then there's Wall•E. He's still obeying his programming, certainly, compacting trash into cubes; but he's doing it while listening to the soundtrack to Hello, Dolly! and collecting little curiosities that he thinks are visually exciting. Unlike the other robots of his type, he's managed to keep himself in working order by continuing to replace his parts rather than giving up (a move which, when it is mimicked by EVE at the end of the film, will save his life). His colorful and amusing existence stands in glaring contrast to the bright, white, clean, and totally mechanized existence onboard the Axiom. It's a symbolic bludgeon that his friend and apparently lifelong companion is a cockroach that is tough on a level approaching Herculean, whom he rewards with shelter from the dust-storms and the occasional Twinkie--they're both proof that good things come through working at it, not just staying the course.

In due course, WALL•E makes his way onto the Axiom, and creates havoc; but those little jolts to routine are precisely what the Axiom's population needs to actually experience life. The characters of John and Mary are one of the more obvious examples, but really, every triumph any protagonist has is in some way inspired by WALL•E's willingness to go a little outside the norm. The primary conflict of the film is inspired by WALL•E taking a break from his mindless routine to rescue a plant; every solution to every conflict in the film is involves doing something strange and unexpected with one's self or surroundings (the Captain's final battle with AUTO is a smorgasbord of creative thinking besting rote dedication); the happiest moments occur in wholly unorthodox situations (it's no coincidence that John and Mary's scene in the pool requires rebelling against robotic authority, and visually resembles two huge babies discovering the joy of water for the first time); and in the end, it is mimicking WALL•E's quirks and ingenuity that allows EVE to save his life.

I have to admit that the life the humans wind up living must be incredibly tough (and I can't help but imagine that the first generation or three of recolonizers is going to have a hellish time of it). But I think that, hard as it will be, the looks of pleasure on the quasi-mythological drawings in the credit sequence sum up the reward to be gained through hardship. As the captain puts it, "I don't want to survive. I want to live!" WALL•E isn't just a movie about the environment, or just a movie about adorable robots--WALL•E is a movie about the great things that one can do, if one is willing to step off the beaten path and endure the possibility, even just for a second, of being a freak. The look on MO's face when he slips off the preordained track to pursue WALL•E says it all--there is satisfaction, real success, and joy to be had in stepping out of your normal bounds.



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One Page, and More

This started out as a jejune little rant against the synopsis, an idea for a post which hit me last night on my train ride home and has not aged well. One of the cardinal rules I have developed for myself when writing: if it started out feeling good and feels bad around the middle of the story, then that's just your inner critic setting up shop; but if the first few paragraphs are like pulling teeth, it either isn't ripe or was ripe last week. So I curtailed that, and I think that on some level, you're thanking me for it.

This may sound like a cop out, but I think today might be one of the days that the best thing I can do for my writing is to not try to write anything.

Okay, that definitely sounded like a cop out. The truth is, it's hard to tell the difference between writer's block and burnout (especially since a lot of times the latter is a subset of the former). For all that John Q. Cultural Stereotype likes to claim that writing is easy, it's really not (I won't get deeper into it than that), and sometimes, what feels like writer's block is really just your brain telling you that you need a break.

This is a dangerous edge to walk on: after all, how long is a break?

For me, that answer is simple--it lasts until I feel bad about it going on, which is usually about three days. Then I'll try to write, and I will find myself thrown up against that big, inky wall in my head again; and I'll try to push through, and I'll try to push through, and then I'll slump and I'll sigh, and I'll go over and I'll write a blog post about how I can't seem to write right now, swear words optional.

At which point, I will have a sudden surge of inspiration and write something that feels like cocaine for my hands; something that sets all the machinery in motion and leaves me feeling like I'm behind the wheel of something huge and powerful and older than the stars, something that leaves behind tread marks that will leave people gossiping and trading photographs for years. I will look down at that story and the words will sear themselves into the meat of my brain, and I will say, probably in another blog post, some variant on the words: "This is why I'm a writer."

You think I'm mocking myself, but really, this is how things play out in my world. It's not quite like clockwork, from what I can tell, but it is regular enough that I almost count on it; it's only some semblance of sanity and a desire to be more rational than the worlds I create that keeps me from running over and bemoaning my lot on the Internet every time things are flowing a little roughly. Hey, previous writers used heroin and absinthe.

So, to make a long story short, I don't have something deeper or more insightful for you this week. I won't wave excuses, nor will I self-flagellate; it's just not how I do things. However, I said I would aim for Thursday, and without greater waves of inspiration in my mental forecast, I felt that something was better than nothing. Provided that said something is not also nothing.

But I will take a little break tonight, and perhaps tomorrow and this weekend; and maybe come Monday there will be a trickle of ideas. Or maybe I'll get a total downpour on Saturday and spend the entire thing inside, blinds drawn and a beer in my hand as I pound out words and beg my brain to stop. It's happened before; maybe I'll get lucky and it'll happen again. For now, though, it is almost no longer Thursday, and so rather than be late, I bid you all goodnight. Goodnight.

The Mythology of Cities

There are some levels on which I really, truly miss living in a big city.

It's not that Mountain View is bad, by any stretch of the imagination. My friends are here, I'm close to mass transit, I can walk to the grocery store and any of numerous wonderful restaurants, and the city really is just a train ride away, albeit about an hour's train ride. The problem is not that I cannot get to the city; the problem is that I am not in the city, and so I am lacking the vitality that the city brings to me.

I don't know what it is about cities. They're crowded, they're dirty, they're often polluted. And yet somehow, I think they're beautiful. Other writers have spoken about cities having lives and personalities of their own, and I used to think that was just an interesting take until I lived in San Francisco for five years.

San Francisco, as a city, was truly alive. At all hours of all days there was something happening. There were entire cultures and subcultures inside the city, strange shows and weird stores and ingenious little pockets of the human drive to invent and circumvent that kept me from ever being anything but surprised. The part of San Francisco where I actually lived was hilly and a bit desolate, its shops too small for me and its options too limited, but the rest of the city grabbed hold of me and never let go. Riding Muni to work was almost a religious experience for me; something happened on my way from West Portal to Powell that left me chilled and invigorated, and my greatest regret in working where I did was that I spent my entire day underground and in the blocks just off Union Square, where I couldn't see life happening. When I lost my job at the bookstore, I went surfing through interview after interview, and one of the selling points was always my ability to look down on the street: my ability to see the city.

A lot of stories talk about magic and civilization being somehow incompatible; the war between magic and technology is well-trodden, some might say eroded, ground, and the idea that logic and advancement hedge out the power of magic is certainly not fresh and new. Yet somehow, I feel like cities have a magic of their own, and when I write I have to speak to that: to the weird patterns in our buildings and behaviors, to the strange things I imagine happening in the dumps and shadows. Like any huge structure, there are things happening in a city's cracks, events too microscopic for the larger entity to keep track of or even notice. If San Francisco can host Ambrose Bierce, Bondage A Go Go, the Hip-Hop Chess Federation, the Living Dead Girls, the Grateful Dead, and the bartenders at Zeitgeist all inside seven square miles, why can't there be something even stranger lurking in the cracks? The city is alive even when humans aren't there to see it, and it's all too easy for a secret to get lost...

I love Mountain View, and I love Palo Alto and San Francisco and I love being somewhere that I am able to go to all these places. But as much as I felt hollow some days in my apartment in San Francisco, I feel stripped of something elemental when I walk by the shops on Castro Street. One of my first nights I was here, I walked down to Castro and El Camino as part of a bid for exercise, and I felt odd, off, somehow disrupted. I realized, as I stopped and wondered, that when I looked up and left, I could see the sky.

I'm here for now, and it's where I belong. But the city is calling; and I'm sure that when money, time, and fate all intersect, the city is where I'll live.

Bookkeeping and Promises

Instead of one of my pithier posts, you get something that is sadly inevitable, and long overdue: announcements, proclamations, and general bulleted noise-making.

Item 1. Site Design: I apologize if anarchy breaks out on the site any time in the next week or two; my Photoshop Maven and I are working on adding a bit of much-needed spice to this two-toned web experience. I'll be vigilant about not making the experience atrocious, but if you simply disagree with design elements, please wait until I've posted to say I've completed my renovations; I'll happily accept input and criticism then.

Item 2. Posting Schedule: This hasn't been entirely clear, partially because it hasn't been entirely clear in my head. So here goes: I try to post weekly, and have been since I really got the site off the ground. From here on out, the weekly post will be aimed at or around the area of Thursday (I'm running on Pacific Time, for those who need such a warning), with super bonus content here and there without warning, as dictated by the need to announce matters literary, link to something topical, or just generally to bibble and whine about something you might actually be coming here to read.

Now, that said, I won't apologize (too much) for missing a posting date; while I'll try to keep you abreast of things that will prevent a post from hitting when it should, and will definitely alert you if I'll be away from the blog for a significant period of time, I have no more interest than you do in seeing post after post that just says "I fail. I'm sorry.". I'd rather spend that time focusing on getting through whatever is delaying me out of the way and moving on to the business of posting again.

There, all that's out of the way. Now, onto issues of content.

What You Will See Here:

Thoughts about being a writer; updates on my life as a writer; movie reviews; book reviews, when I get around to reading newer books; snippets of fiction, here and there as the mood strikes and contracts allow; musings on current events; Internet-based oddities and curiosities, if I think them so excellent that they should go here instead of just sharing them over at Google Reader; occasional fits of bad literary humor; moaning about writer's block.

If any or all of these bothers you, that's why there's a comment function, and I encourage you to tell me what needs to go--I don't publish things on the Internet just for my own benefit.

What You Won't See Here:

• Macros: Cherie Priest can pull this off, but I lack the panache.


• Memes.


• Internet shorthand. Barring irony, leetspeak makes my teeth hurt.


• Posts about my personal life. (I make an exception for marriage and death.)


• Political humor: I get it. Bush is stupid. Hey, Barack Obama doesn't have political experience. Oh gosh, politicians sure do lie a lot! I'm not The Daily Show, and they're one of about three entities whose political jokes aren't flogging a dead horse.


• Posts that do nothing but link to someone else's post, followed by the textual equivalent of smiling and pointing excitedly.


• Any attempt to tell you how to cure writer's block. If you think you have a cure for someone else's writer's block, you're either not a writer or you think everyone thinks the way you do.


• My grocery list.


• Other peoples' fiction.


• Twitter posts: I don't have a Twitter account. Barring one or two decent parodies of the medium, I can't stand Twitter. No-one needs to know which utensil I'm picking up now. No-one needs to hear that I'm on my way somewhere and hear that on my way back. Anything that important is reserved for your closest friends or 911.

That's a solemn promise, down to the letter. Some bloggers can pull those off; sometimes irony can override my distaste for those items I consider mistakes; but I'm not some bloggers, and I prefer to direct my irony to other exercises. Again, if you want some of that, that's why there are comments. (But don't ask for Twitter posts. I won't do it.)

So, after all that content-free content, I don't know if I have another post in me. But soon--no later than next Thursday.

I swear.