Well in this case, it just made me miss a whole lot. Posting, for one, since the last time that happened was right when I decided to launch Hypothetically Speaking. And shortly thereafter I wound up getting a job.
Ah, work, the killer of dreams.
So where was I? Virginia. A little place called Montross. Beautiful place, you should visit. But can I admit something?
I hated it.
See, I got spoiled. After two years of substitute teaching for some of the best schools in PA, I wound up moving to a rural area which had a struggling school district. To say the least. I worked hard for two years, learned a lot, and then...decided to come back. Back to square one for the most part.
So what have I been doing since being away? Well, I'll reveal it when the time is right. It's time to get back to this blogging thing. So look forward to more posts in the future faithful readers. If any of you are still out there.
It's been a while, hasn't it? Life is crazy. More on that in the near future.
I thought I would share what I found while googling myself. An always healthy activity. Thanks, to those of you who have read the book. Expect more in the future.
Chapterella 7 is up and I couldn't be happier. This chapterella came about as I was sitting in a class, and suddenly I got the tune to Jack's lament stuck in my head. I started inserting lyrics about the tree, and one thing led to another until suddenly I had a chapterella with a musical interlude. Originally chapterella 7 also had time marks so that those members of the audience unfamiliar with the Nightmare Before Christmas could sing along as well, but I nixed that idea.
You'll also see at work some foreshadowing, which I don't do often but...well it's there. As always, enjoy.
David Foster Wallace, author of books such as Infinite Jest, and known for his absurd yet brilliant humor, is not surprisingly an inspiration of mine. Like many of my inspirations, he's one I've only read one book from, but I loved Infinite Jest and will gladly read more Wallace in the future. But that's not the point.
The video above was created from an abridged version of his famous speech "This is Water," which he gave to a graduating class in 2005. I'm going to let you watch it, and then we'll talk it.
Finished? All right. Let's begin.
The video begins with one of my favorite stories, which is the one about the fish, swimming along, when the older fish swims up and says "hey boys, how's the water." The boys ignore the older fish and swim away, until one of them turns to the others and says, "what the hell is water?"
This simple story leads into the rest of the video where Wallace discusses the water of our every day lives, that is, the default way we view the world. I won't retell the brunt of it, that's what watching the video is for. Instead I'm going to tell my own "This is water" story. Which I'll then end with a poem about said experience.
If you didn't know or just forgot, I grew up in Michigan. There's a million different ways that growing up in Michigan is exactly the same as growing up anywhere else, but here is what is different. It snows there. A lot. It not only snows it gets cold and it stays cold. All of which were things I was tired of at about age high school. I spent most of my high school and college years hating the snow, hating the cold, and wanting nothing more than spring to arrive.
My junior year of college I started taking poetry classes. I took them because I needed a third creative writing course, after fiction and non-fiction writing. At the time I was planning on being the next Steven King so poetry was just the better alternative to play writing, which I had no interest in. But something strange happened. I loved it.
I not only loved it, but it changed the way I looked at the world. Suddenly I realized there were people out there looking intently at their lives and writing about it. Not just making up stories, but painting beautiful interpretations of things which I had always thought just were.
Well it turned out that wasn't the case. Things not only were, but they could be viewed. And so, after my first poetry class ended in the summer of 2007, I made a decision. I couldn't wait for winter to arrive. I couldn't wait to see the snow with new eyes, to see the world in a different way. I waited, and waited, and that winter I got my wish. Winter came.
I'm not going to tell you about how I viewed it differently, like I said, I'll show you. Here's the poem.
Snowfall
Past the second month of sunlight only
during working hours, past the slush-mucked crosswalks
darkening pants just trying to do their
jobs, past asthmatic walls.
So to hell with the potential wet cold and to hell with the known
cold, there is nowhere to go that isn't cold so there is a field and
there is something across it so might as well walk through the, of
course-
Untouched white
reflects the black,
holds up the night.
Exhalations linger,
static between the self
and cold.
Ground absorbs the sound.
Each step
crunching out your
firstness.
When I finally got out of my "I hate winter" mindset, I realized it was a hell of a beautiful thing which is going to give me a lot more poems in the future. And it's a mindset which I've adopted through most of my life as well. Which is the weirder part of my life I think. What my normal mindset is. And this part begins with a question a student asked me once.
It was after I had established myself as a sub at one of the high schools I work at, and a student asked me what I thought the meaning of life is. And I gave a simple, one word response.
Happiness.
And it is what I believe the meaning of life is. Happiness is my static state, except when I'm in the car which is a different story. But I view the world through a different lens then being frustrated by the normal grind of reality and it lets me have the experiences like the poem above details. It feels damn good.
So I encourage you to take a moment and try to see the water around you. Maybe your water is fine, but maybe it's a little murky and you might need to find a different view. Who knows, maybe you just might see the snow for what it is if you do.
For those of you who've never written a novel (I know that this is my first) one of the biggest parts of the process is editing. Now I'm sure this is true for many other forms of art, but I'm going to stick to novel editing because it's a particular type of monstrosity, so let's jump right into it shall we.
I'm often asked if I've finished my book by people who I've told I'm working on it. This question is so tricky to answer both because I suck at answering questions, but also because it's a multilayered question. Have I finished writing it? Technically yes. I finished writing it in January when I pumped out a rough draft in a month (not counting the previous rough drafts and the five years it took to get to that first draft.) But judging by the fact that there is no novel up on this site, nor is it for sale anywhere, can I say that it's done? Oh no. Probably not by a long shot.
And the reason for that is editing. And editing doesn't just mean fixing the typos.
Just yesterday I posted what has to be the 10th version of those first two paragraphs, and I wouldn't be surprised if it's still not the final, final version. The reason for this is because those first two chapters need to be strong enough to convince someone to read the remaining forty two give or take chapters in the novel. They simply have to be the best.
And as they get edited, so too do things need to change later in the novel. Things reference those first chapters, as they reference things later on. Phrases are repeated. Introductions that are cut need to find their place elsewhere. And the more things change...the more editing.
So how does editing work on a novel? I don't think I really clarified above. It sounds tough, but that's just the first two chapters right, followed by some touch ups? Ah, if only.
At this point in time I have read through this novel at least four times, and each time there are a lot of small one to two line changes, but occasionally there are huge sections that get rearranged, cut, or added. Each time I read through the novel I'm getting a different perspective, and while I fix the little typos, I'm also getting a better sense of how everything fits together, which is important for a novel like this which can occasionally get off track. Of course, with each read through the earlier chapters also get more solid, but it also means I've read the first twenty chapters far more often than the last chapters.
Now for the biggest issue though. I've just told you about the small edits, and the larger edits, but the hardest part about editing?
I can't do it and then go back and do it again. There has to be time between each edit. The problem is that if I just read the whole novel front to back and then go through and do it again, I can't give an honest look at things. I might just say "this is good enough" because I just read it two days ago and can't stomach it again. Or I might cut something really good because I just edited it and decided that it's still not good enough, only to find two weeks later that it really was good enough and now I'm back in a corner (which is one of the disadvantages of digital.)
But with all of that beings aid, don't take this to be anything near a complaint. I am loving this editing process. Each time I read through the novel I marvel at some of the things I've written, and at how the whole thing is coming together. Which leads me to my last part of this post. Getting the damned thing published.
Obviously right now I'm writing to a small audience, and sometimes I doubt that any of that audience would stick around to buy it, but I'm researching methods of publishing the novel digitally, and it seems like going through Amazon and Nook will be easy enough. I can't give you anything more than that about where it will be, but I'm pushing to release this book sometime before the end of June, if everything goes according to plan. And as it comes closer, I'll be going into further detail with my experiences using these services. What will happen, I don't know, but expect an official announcement day soon.
As always thanks for reading you crazy people, and look for Chapter 7 to be up as well soon. After all, the more I get up here, the more I can entice you.
If you look above you, you'll see that the Forward Slash Introduction has now been included, though again this is a second draft of that part. We're on to at least draft four of the first two chapters, but they are up as well. I hope they are a little clearer, and welcome any input as to the changes which have been made.
There will be a longer post on the state of the novel forthcoming, and Chapterella 7 tomorrow. In addition, look for a new beginning, and by that I mean I've revised the beginning of the novel to be clearer. So yeah, there may not be much from me today, but tomorrow there will be presents. Presents the likes of which you've never seen!
