I’m in the mood for a little free association writing as a warm up….

I’m thinking about the word of the day (delivered to my email).  This week’s set of words come from the French.  Word today is: pur sang, means someone or something that is genuine…”pure blood”….I’m thinking of genuine in terms of people “free from pretense, affectation, hypocrisy, someone who is sincere.”  Hypocrisy I stumble with a bit when thinking of others because people are complex…in a way I think we can all be hypocrites at times.  My beef is with pretension most of all…with people who are pompous ….who think, and more importantly try constantly to prove a certain air of superiority.  They think they’re smarter, wittier, more attractive, more experienced, more put together than the rest of us.  Theyhave it all figured out don’t they? Everything they seem to take an interest in seems plotted….a stage for grandstanding or prepping themselves for a future grandstand moment.  They are fakes.  They are often insincere.  Sometimes, they even go so far as to be completely cocky…..The worst part of all is how obvious it is but how often people fall for it.  Of the truly wealthy people I’ve met in my life, none of them made a boast about what they had.  In fact, if you saw them on the street you wouldn’t really know they had money unless you had an eye for shoes or you saw their car…but even that could be subtle, though expensive.  The same can be said for the truly intelligent people I’ve known. They don’t really seem to care, or need, to show how much they know.  They don’t have to take an interest in what society deems appropriate or the right stance for “intelligent” people…If the don’t like Joyce, they don’t…if they do, they do and they don’t need to quote him to the right crowd to prove it…some pretensions stem from underline insecurities …but I have an issue with people who wear mask, who work at building a persona, who wear their personality like a cheap polyester suit and sweat buckets of narcissism while they try feeding me lines of bullshit.  But they sure make fantastic inspiration for characters to kill off in stories.

Humm…didn’t know all that was lurking there today.  Funny what a word will inspire. Now I’m going to go off and work with developing such a character in my fiction writing today.  Happy writing/readings today y’all.

Today I thought I’d try a new writing exercise.  Write for roughly ten minutes each day on my blog just to get the juices flowing. This might be the only WWU post I do…hope not though…Nothing formal.  Imperfection action.  Just to refocus my thoughts.  Some mornings I spend probably too much time doing the whole social media thing.  It’s fun and it’s the perfect procrastination tool because I can convince myself that it’s also very useful (unlike say playing Peggle…which I’ll do later today to avoid working).  Once I’ve spent so much of the morning tweeting and responding to emails etc, I usually feel a greater distance between myself and the creative work…I feel distracted by other thoughts and other “to do” list.  But I also learn helpful/motivational things…today i read an article on typos. I think i’ve gone blind to spelling errors and typos…i read past it…I need to work harder on this.

So today’s goal is to write around 1000 words on my novel in progress.  But before I begin, here’s my writing exercise which I’m borrowing from an online source,http://www.poewar.com/fifteen-craft-exercises-for-writers/ :

Pick an author, one you like though not necessarily your favorite, and make a list of what you like about the way they write. Do this from memory first, without rereading their work. After you’ve made your list, reread some of their work and see if you missed anything or if your answers change. Analyze what elements of their writing style you can add to your own, and what elements you should not or cannot add. Remember that your writing style is your own, and that you should only try to think of ways to add to your own style. Never try to mimic someone else for more than an exercise or two.

When I was in college (500 years ago) I was assigned to read Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha by Roddy Doyle.  I loved it.  I was later introduced to more Irish writers and took a course in Scottish literature.  What I loved about Roddy Doyle and most of the Irish and Scottish writers were how they worked (work) to capture their dialect and how the dialect is such a part of who they are.  They didn’t want to give into the notion of writing in the Queen’s english I suppose.  Roddy Doyle writes strong first person narratives and is heavy on dialogue…as an American Southerner with a strong accent of my own, I admire how he captures his culture….

Now that I’ve written this I googled him… seems he is often criticized for not portraying the best in Irish culture..”The author’s own view is that his job is simply to describe things and people as they really are.  In Doyle’s world, the lives are tough, and the language is rough, but beauty and tenderness survive amid the bleakness.” (http://english.emory.edu/Bahri/Doyle.html)

YES…that’s what I LOVE about Doyle.

Ok…NOW that I’ve warmed up and been inspired by thoughts of Doyle I’ll get to work….ciao

1959 version

Most recent Netflix streaming flick was this classic, Imitation of Life.  I liked the title and I like old movies so I picked it really not knowing anything about it.  Quick search revealed that there was a 1934 version staring Claudette Colbert (who you might have seen in It Happened One Night with the always adorable Clarke Gable)….Also learned that the movie is based on a novel.

I am working my way backwards…started with the 1959 version, which I have to say was really great.  The beginning felt dated and slow, but the dynamic between Sarah Jayne and Annie really broke my heart.  I actually teared up a few times. I give it four out of five stars.  I think if the film had been more from the Annie/Sarah Jayne focus or perspective, I would have given it five stars.

Now I’m watching the 1934 version, also streaming.  It’s only an hour and a half, whereas the 1959 version is just over two hours.  I’m just hoping I don’t have to cry again.

I suppose after I watch the 1934 version, I will try reading the book.  It’s such a great title….they should rename Facebook with this title…

I think it’s time for another remake…it’s a story that should stay with people.

I’ve heard tales of people wearing all the same color (like black) so they don’t have to think about what to wear or having only bowls (no plates…no glasses) or owning only what is functional.  (This is a bit challenging because I also love things for their useless attractiveness–and this gets into deep philosophical territory over words like “useful.” so  I should say, its usefullness is more a question of what it adds aesthetically, and not its function in a utilitarian sense and therefore its “usefulness” is subjective.)

Regardless, I want to plug my ears and throw out everything …I’m tired of all the shameless, desperate self promotion everywhere –people selling their life on facebook (“look at me, I’m funny and have lots of friends and do amazingly adventurous shit, have big parties, an adorable family–just look at how we are hugging each other with love) ..People selling their website, book, blog, music, videos (I’m guilty of it myself …it’s part of the game…don’t hate the player)….

….I’m tired of writing emails and seeing ads in the right hand margin relating to something I’ve said in the email…can’t I have any privacy?

…I’m tired of my In Style magazine which I PAY for, just to have other people tell me what I should wear and smell like…the whole thing is really one big ad.

…I’m tired of Google and Netflix and Amazon knowing me better than I know myself, like some cyber Cronenburgesk subconsciousness sending me messages through my pc about what I should do/want to do-read-buy-wear-morally or immorally represent (Angelina and Brad save Elephants…fuck..I need to save elephants too because I want to be just like them).

…I’m tired of being a demographic.

..of being a part of a system of consumption…

…of things being watered down for saleability ..

…of being convinced, one week, that we MUST (if we give a fuck) put an END to grocery store plastic bags and use reusable bags, then the next week having my hand slapped for such efforts, told what little difference it really makes AND how completely carcinogenic the reusable bags are…

..of constant health controversies like take vitamins, but not too many, but then again don’t take vitamins at all because its a waste of money, or maybe what you really need to do is take ten times the recommended dose of vitamins to really see benefits–but then again, that might kill you but who knows really and we’re not about to take time to find out for sure because we’re too fucking busy selling you shit you don’t need like wrinkle cream and if we cured diseases like cancer, where would we make our $$.

I feel like I’m trapped in some barbed wire double dutch and I can’t see a good, safe, way to JUMP THE HELL OUT….Jigsaw is running the show, man.  You better believe it…and the only way out is to saw your fucking foot off.

So I started (sawing, if you will) by cancelling my In Style magazine subscription.  It’s cluttering my house and my brain.  I’ve decided I absolutely hate it and it represents all that is WRONG with society today…well, maybe not ALL, but a lot of meaty issues….I’ll keep the Paris Review.  It feeds my brain…

Even though Netflix and Google and Amazon are sadistic tools of “the system,” I’m way too addicted to them to live without them.  So for now, they stay.  I’ll work on donating my plates and glasses instead.  Bowls only.

Speaking of donating, do you ever step into a Restore and just want to take a chainsaw to everything?  Slap on the goggles, jerk the starter cord and go ape shit?  Oh…just me then…oh well…could make some great pieces of art with the fragments …art that would feed the cogs of advertising I’m sure….Aren’t donation stores depressing as hell?  ALL that stuff we were so convinced we needed, replaced by the newer things (future junk) that we think we need today.

If you are not sufficiently worked up and anti-consumption right now, head over to youtube.com and check out the NEW way network television is advertising…building ads into Soap Opera plots…granted, you can’t really do much damage there, and with the right cunning it could actually IMPROVE those shows, or at least make them funnier (take notes SNL)…

Check out this built in ad for MIDOL on Days of Our Lives (click here)

Lila Azam Zanganeh: How does one write so much? How do you do it?

John Updike: By not doing much else, is the key. I didn’t want to be a teacher, and didn’t think I’d be very good at it or very qualified so I did not choose teaching, either at the college level or even at the high school level. My father was a high school teacher. But I wanted to avoid duplicating his life. So I said I’d rather be a hack professional writer than no writer at all. My approach has been to, you know, treat writing as a sort of profession like dentistry or financial investment and putting in regular hours, not maybe as long as 9 to 5 but say from 9 to 1:30, so even if you write rather slowly you do accumulate a lot of manuscripts by doing it every day.