of argument.
Without argument, all that is left is mindless force, which is the only way stupidity can win.
Learn to argue. Please.
Author: Jinx
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THE SHARDS “The Shards had none of the dark lushness of the western forests. Even the trees, most of them pine, seemed pale with thirst, and the tall balls of brush edging the road were harsh tangles of whip-like branches and dusty leaves that buzzed with insects.”
The brothel, the Broken Bottle tavern, the whipping post, and the poisonous well called Deep Gertie are in the Shards.
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My main vocation has been writing. I began on typewriters as a teenager, continued on them into my twenties. For years, changing even one sentence or paragraph in a manuscript could mean redoing the whole thing. This meant justifying every single word to myself because I was going to have to retype every single word. The result, I think, was more lean, succinct writing.
Word processors came along, and with them, novels, stories and screenplays that often had weirdly shaped plots with not one, but several climaxes and oddly extended denouments. Creating a manuscript was now so easy it took a while for writers to relearn editing. And for years after home computers and printers became widespread, we would still have to send hard manuscripts off using snail mail, carefully edit and format them, make sure there were no typos, put them in envelopes with SASEs. When they returned with rejections, as usual, I often had an envelope and SASE ready for the next editor.
Now it’s all blogging, email and document sharing, which, without question, makes sending out one’s writing easier. Unfortunately, this fosters the illusion that writing is easy.
It’s not. It’s hard. Even when you are a fast and accurate typist. Even when you can format a manuscript instantly, and send it to an agent or editor with the press of a button.
Constructing a readable, interesting story takes as much study, practice, and passion as does learning to play a musical instrument.
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Everyone said I had to go. You’ve got to check out Bondi Beach I was told, (not Bondee, remember. BondAI) and so after Michael left for the conference I walked to the train station, purchased my ticket, and rode to where you caught the bus to the beach. A rather long, cluttered bus ride along cluttered streets, and finally to the road along the beach, like many other popular sea-side places, crowded with cars, one side white beach and blue water, the other stores and pedestrians, all of it, brick and flesh, smelling like sand, sea-water, and lotion. I got out and bought a cloth hat and sun block in one of the shops, then walked down to the beach.
It was — a beach. Sun, white sand, blue-green water, swimmers, waders and surfers. If it was different from Manley, it was only in being more high powered, crowded, and upscale. I kicked off my shoes and rolled up my jeans on the broad pavement curving around the beach, listening to the young men in bathing suits on the bench behind me pointing out and criticizing the surfers on the water. As I hopped barefoot down from the steps into the sand, I’m happy to say that I spotted more than one middle-aged, slightly pear-shaped man in a wet suit carrying a board. Another difference with Manley. Not every male surfer had a washboard stomach.
I walked at Bondi Beach. I walked barefoot along the edge of the shockingly cold, wonderful water, occasionally getting splashed up to my knees, and I smelled seaweed and sunblock and ocean and watched kids plashing past me and surfers angling along the waves. And after I did that, I walked back. And then I sat down at a pale, cinderblock, slightly pricey eatery on the beach and had a chicken schnitzel with chips with a delicious, ice-cold mango lassi.
No, I did not walk along the cliffs, and I’m sorry for that, but my feet were already sore and blistered from walking for the past two days. I was just happy to be at the beach. After I ate I walked in the water some more, feeling a little sorry — but not too much — that I hadn’t brought my bathing suit. This was the Pacific — cold and rough, no matter how green and pretty it may look. I’m an Atlantic and Gulf-Coast gal when it comes to swimming in the ocean.
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CHEF AMADEO ROSELYN
I have a distinct image of my main character of All Is Lost. This is as close as AI can get to him, which means it’s less my image of ugly, small, belligerent Amadeo Roselyn than it would be a casting director’s for the filmed version of my novel. Filmed versions almost always balk at realistically depicting characters described in books as “ugly.” I’ve yet to see Marian Halcombe depicted in movies as Collins describes her in The Woman in White, and Peter Dinklage, as great as his performance was, does not fit the image of Tyrion Lannister I got from the books. My Amadeo is not as square-jawed, and certainly not as humorless as the slightly Byronic image AI came up with.
There’s a lot of talk about AI online these days, and justifiable controversy over AI art possibly supplanting the paid work of artists. All I can say is that subtlety doesn’t seem to be its strong suit, and I find it fairly easy to spot. If I were to ever have the option of an illustrated version, I’d entrust the work to a human being who can understand things like “nuance.”
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Daily writing promptHow often do you say “no” to things that would interfere with your goals?
When I worked in telecom, I said “no” to a transfer to another state that would have offered a rise in pay and enabled me to afford a house. When I worked in real estate, I said “no” to an offer to work five rather than four days a week. At the Mechanics’ I said “no” to taking a course in marketing.
All of these things would have interfered with what I wanted to do. Which was not only to write, but to spend the bulk of my days doing something I considered interesting and worthwhile.
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Yesterday, I threw together a rosemary olive bread. The final packet of instant yeast, the last of the bread flour, the remains of a jar of black olives, the fresh rosemary Michael brought home a few days ago… I chopped the olives and rosemary, threw them and the rest in a bowl with salt and water, covered it with plastic wrap, and it’s been sitting on the dining room table since, bulging nicely. At about 9:00 am I’ll put it in the oven.
That’s about as active as I got yesterday, which was mainly spent typing, critiquing, writing. By the end of the day I felt as if my backside had flattened completely. After five I rode my stationary bike for half an hour, then walked softly about on the roof, pausing to wave back at the woman down the street who opened her third floor window and waved at me. (“HI” was written on the glass in blue post-its.)
Today I’ll have to re-enter the world of working from home. I’m finding my feet there to the point where it’s going to be a re-adjustment when it’s time to literally go back to work.
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I took French in college, and made an effort to keep up with it because I wanted to read Rostand, Zola, and Camus in the original. Once I’ve limbered up my vocabulary (which is actually similar to English) I can read French tolerably well, but I have a hard time understanding spoken French beyond a few scattered words. And my accent is atrocious.
There are other languages I think are more beautiful to hear. Russian, for one, and Italian. In my daydreams, I am accomplished in both.
The first, the language of Tolstoy and Chekhov, sounds to me like the thunder of a waterfall. The only drawback is that some people seem to respond viscerally to it. My mother-in-law, whose parents fled the Ukraine in the early 1900s, told me her own mother would shudder if she overheard Russian being spoken, and a relative who grew up in Eastern Europe told me last night she had a similar reaction. The legacy of a powerful, and bellicose country. I bet there are plenty of people in the world who react that way to hearing English.
Italian, the language of opera, always seems to have music behind its rise and fall, its light syllables, but getting beyond “Grazi” has always defeated me. I’ve visited Italy twice, and both times I usually dried when put on the spot about speaking the language. All I could remember were lines from Tosca. “Sospetti di spia!” and “Ti soffoca il sangue?” which are not easy phrases to slide into a casual conversation.
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Michael had another busy week where he was out almost every day. On Monday night he went to an event at the Lumiere.
The Lumiere is a tiny, single screen theater on California, which sepcializes in independent and foreign films. A few months ago it held a sort of “Coming Attractions” event which became a nightmare of boredom. The MC, a thin pale man with a shaven head and a thick-lipped, poignant face that made him look like a character from City of Lost Children, stood in fron to the audience and read down the list of what would be playing for the next three months, describing in longwinded monotone the plot and stars of each and every movie. I can remember leafing through the calendar and staring down at it in disbelief, unwilling to accept that he was going to read through each and every movie listed, while around me other people turned over the pages of their own calendars, exchanged glances, and shook their heads. The only thing in my life I can compare it to was the time an elderly coach (retired) was brought back to address the assembly at my high school and spoke for three hours.
The publicity agent wanted no repeat of this, so this time he asked Michael to do the honors. I didn’t attend Monday night, but perhaps I should have. Michael came home looking slightly deflated. The audience had been huge. The place was packed. He’d done his best, but he felt his jokes had fallen flat. (Whatever Michael may say about himself, he is at heart a showman.)
Another lost San Francisco venue. The Lumiere closed years ago. It’s now a clothing boutque. Every time I pass it I’m saddened by the sight of the closed-off, now dusty and derelict ticket window.
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They don’t happen often in California. We get some good wind-storms, but nothing like the tempests of the Gulf Coast, with weirdly-lit mountains of clouds rolling across the sky like a religious procession. Thunder never crashes here. It just sort of burps faintly.
Pam Troy 