Time: 4.45 a.m.
I am four words short of a first draft, but the short story is for all intents and purposes done. I just need to find out what the parts of a coffee-making machine are called, and whether 'motor functions' is what I mean.
I'm fairly happy with the draft, especially since it's not really a first draft. More like third draft on this story, considering the back editing I kept doing, and seventh or eighth draft since I started writing about coma patients and weird neural developments.
There's still work to be done, but - I think I can savor this moment for five minutes.
And so he did the dishes, swept the floor, got his mail, fired off the remaining pieces of correspondence, made plans with some people, and, lo, it was all good.
I'm suffering from it.
Work 10 hours, go for a midnight movie after, and what happens to me? I oversleep the next day for a nine a.m. wake-up alarm. I am clearly an Old Man.
Also: Cloverfield is good. It is not, however, a redefinition of film. Get a grip, people.
That, and this? "It's not a movie; it's an experience"? Has got to go down as one of most annoyance-inducing things I never want to see in a film review.
I went to see a play yesterday, and J. J. Abrams's latest movie today. There aren't many similarities between the two, but there is a striking one: both use rambling openings to motivate the rest of their respective stories.
The difference between the two openings, though, is that the one in The Sea Farer vastly overstays its welcome.
Practically the entire first of the two acts is given over to establishing the background of the characters. It's necessary to know that the two brothers in the play share an uneasy relationship. It's necessary to know that brother A's wife has left him for another man. There are many other things that are necessary to know. But the way The Sea Farer pushes out these bits of information is to have long talks between the characters, talks that have nothing to do with the central engine of the play, which is the arrival of a Satan figure that will bring these tensions to a boil.
It's obvious by now that I did not particularly like The Sea Farer. I thought it could have been done a lot more efficiently, especially since the exposition was so painfully long. Two-thirds into the first act I was already annoyed by the aimless repartee, which was at times clever but at no times 'angled' in any particular direction. The problem with something like that is that it could potentially go on forever: it stinks of the playwright needing to get this and that information out, and so the progression of the story feels inorganic; by the time the actual story starts what follows seems almost divorced from what came before.
It would be like if I info-dumped about the chronological history of a couple for 100 pages, and then started the next and last 100 pages with one of them dying, and the consequences of that death. Wouldn't it be more streamlined to locate the history within the aftermath of the death? That was the question I had the entire time I was watching The Sea Farer: wouldn't it be more polished if the Devil came in at the beginning? It would certainly have made the play more cohesive.
And then, of course, today I saw J. J. Abrams's Cloverfield, which had the exact same problem. Except in the movie it was excused by two reasons: whereas in The Sea Farer the arrival of the Devil was predicated on certain things that happened in the characters' pasts, the introduction of the monsters in Cloverfield was in no way connected to anything in the characters' pasts. This means that it's more formally appropriate to the story being told to have the monsters appear from nowhere - because they really do appear from nowhere.
The second and more important reason, however, is that the frigging opening is short.
I think these two comparisons have given me some useful tips:
1) When your opening has nothing to do with your main story, and is primarily a way to shove in some backstory, it's probably best to keep it short. Clever writing will only buy you so much time.
2) It's probably best not to use a disconnected opening to begin with. But then again this could be my personal preference; for a story to be a cohesive, inevitable whole.
The novel has completely stalled, while short story A is, at last count this evening, at an even 2,600 words.
In other news, I was rejected by one literary agency; I'm not sure why, but the facts that I overslept, and turned up late and shivering and stuttering to the interview, may have something to do with it. I'm in the running, however, for another internship, one which is a damned sight better than the one now out of my reach. I don't want to jinx it, so details when I get / don't get it, and let's hope I don't do anything silly this time.
I'm a little intimidated by how sleek Leopard is. Seriously. Nothing looks the same; everything has taken on this new sheen. It's very impressive. Some days I even think that I'm using a new laptop.
The past few days have been a whirlwind of moving. I'm typing this in my third living space in two weeks. First I was crashing at a friend's basement in Brooklyn; then it was the living room of another friend's apartment in Chinatown; now I'm in the office of a third friend, located in the East Village just opposite where my main school building is. All this moving has really taught me what is essential to me: my laptop and a working Internet connection. And that's really about it.
In other news, I've stopped writing the application for the fellowship. It's not happening, I don't think. I've been trying to write my way into the story for some time now, and I think at this point I just need to give it some time and distance. That being said, I've made headway in the first of two short stories I'll need for the Clarion workshop, so this holiday has not been completely unproductive.
What else, what else...
Not much else to add, really. I'm moving back to my apartment tomorrow, which is good. And hopefully as the days pass more and more people will start coming back, and I'll be able to meet up with some people before school starts up again.
I don't know why, but it seems I have designated the go-to guy for people with relationship problems. This mystifies me, seeing as I
a) Have never had a boyfriend (nor a girlfriend, for that matter), and
b) Haven't even really dated.
So how I'm supposed to be qualified to give advice I'm not really sure. I'm going to assume at this point that people just like telling me their problems because I'm a good listener (hey, you over there, stop snickering!).
Seriously, though: if you're one of these people, thank you for trusting me enough. And I hope it works out for you and your boy/girlfriend / crush / [insert object of affection here].
Myself, I'm just seeing what's out there, heh.
So the 2007 awardee for the David T. K. Wong Fellowship - the same fellowship I will be applying to by the end of the month - is a Singaporean.
Good for her and Singapore and all that, but - fuck. I'm probably being paranoid, but I hope this doesn't affect my chances in any way.