Columns for May, 2003
(more
archives here)
| HELLO HOORAY
May 20, 2003 Oh, yes, this is The Teddybear Sawdust Show, hosted by yours truly, Trapdoor Spider (there's a theme here and I'm sure you've caught it by now) and this is the new online journal of moi. The url is big and ugly. Use it once and bookmark. Distribute widely and advise others to do the same. Yes, I mean both bookmark and distribute. Am now accepting applications for links. If you think it likely anyone's coming here instead of your place, I can send folks there next. By the time you read this there will be more BAKER'S 12 available, which should please the B12 fan. It was dead for ages, but now it's back, and more on that later. March 13 and 14 were added last week; now there's also Week 11. More on many other things later, as well. I'm
off to go do some formatting.
So what exactly is The Teddybear Sawdust Show, anyway? Simple: It's a device to draw attention to my writing. It's where I toss out some of my ideas, report my progress on various projects, discuss writing-related topics, etc. What you can expect not to find here:
You know, I thought this description would be
much longer than it is. I guess that's a sign things here really are as
simple as I'd like.
May 24, 2003 So you may be asking how often this thing will be updated, and the answer is: Every day, more or less. For example, I have a wedding to go to today and an RPG plus a meeting I'm chairing tomorrow, so this is it for the weekend. But daily is the goal, for now, as I have many different things I want to discuss here. It isn't likely, though, that I'll post more than once a day, as there are also many different things I also want to write. I'm not quite sure how I managed to miss two days in a row just now, though. I was supposed to write yesterday, but I was downtown and I noticed the Blood Drive, which I've wanted to do ever since the accident but only seemed to find out about after the fact, so there was me and the ambulances and since my morning card told me to dance yesterday, I finally gave blood. (You should have seen my veins inflating themselves for the nurse, "Oh, pick me! Pick me!" practically throwing themselves at him, the brazen hussies.) The guy bottling me asked if he could take an extra to drink on his coffee break; I answered that some of my friends were into that, too, so no problem. Then I thought to ask him if he uses that joke on many donors: "No, I don't." What does becoming a blood donor have to do with me or my writing? Well,
they both make me feel good about myself for giving to others, so there.
May 26, 2003 I am writing this from The Batcave, which is where I go when I want to write, these days. I tried to set up an office in my (unfinished) basement, and some days during the winter it was so cold my fingers were numb, not good if you want to type. Now the seasons have changed, and the basement smells like a sewer, which is quite natural given the sump (I think that's what it is) seems to go into an uncovered pit consisting of our drain water. Maybe I'll try to cover it up or something, but right now I'm writing, you see. From The Batcave. I keep the location a secret, more or less, just because it makes me feel cool. Like, who writes in an Office? Accountants? Lawyers? I want my magical space to be a bit more inspirational than that, like The Lab or The Lair, y'know? So I have... The Batcave. And you have another full week of Baker's 12. THE SPARK THAT BLEDMay 27, 2003 So what is this thing called Baker's 12? Back in January I was reviving my website (which you can go to if you want, but the only new stuff since November is Baker's 12), and I decided it would be a nifty hook to update daily, at least on weekdays. (Non-updated websites stop being visited, yes?) Also I needed a writing exercise, something short to get me to write every day. So I chose an old idea of mine about a group of (how to put it without givng anything away?) specialists who have dangerous adventures in a genre setting. Or something. The story so far has turned out NOTHING like I'd imagined. Seriously. I think of what I wanted to do, and none - wait! one! - thing I'd envisioned has come to pass. The rest of the story has developed very differently. Because, you see... It was an exercise. So let's impose a few limitations. An exact word count. Okay, what's a good number? I'd been into the number 8 lately, so 640 it was. 640 words daily. Another limitation: No swear words. I love swear words. The Appetitte For Destruction album has great use of swear words. A well-placed "fuck" can make all the difference between good dialogue and compelling dialogue. Clint Eastwood says "fuck" for the first time about three-quarters of the way through In The Line Of Fire; it's a big moment in the movie, and that word nails it perfectly. (Oh, is this becoming an essay?) No swear words. Xerox does not make this easy. So with limitations in place I decided to open things up a bit, give myself room to play around. What's the point of an exercise if you sit down and don't want to write what comes next, but there is something you do want to write? So I decided I didn't have to. Chaos ensued; I love the results. <by the way, I've currently been listening to lots and lots of Gary Numan (whose monniker I only just figured out); he's amazing. As in: He amazes.> Then what happened? I missed a day. Then a few more. Then (ha, ha) I decided to do TWO installments a day until I caught up. Note: 640 words a day is high for an exercise. Plus, if you plan to edit each time for a total of exactly 640 words, lower the target. Please. I fell apart, wrote nothing for over a month. But then I discovered The Batcave, and now I write Baker's 12 piecemeal, but in bursts I try to do five installments, one week's worth, 3200 words (each "meanwhile" is counted individually) at a time. This has helped the story a great deal, I think. Certainly I'm better able to keep track of it. And I've settled into a nice little format/style (not sure what you'd call it; it's both really), that I think old readers will appreciate has added to the comprehensibility without really increasing simplicity. Now it's updated not daily, but weekly, making it another project that started as one thing but became another. (More on The Serial and SRS anon.) You can start (re)reading it here. I recommend beginning with Week One, but it might be more interesting if you didn't. I'M CUSTOMIZEDMay 28, 2003 It's official: I hereby declare myself to be in the best physical shape I have ever been in my life. Remember Canada Fitness? Six events, as I recall, but I only really counted in five, because of the flexed arm hang. My best time was six seconds; it was too low to even count for the bronze. So, when I started going to the gym (after my car accident), the first thing I wanted to do was improve my upper body strength. I set a milestone, and hit that milestone a few days ago: I can bench-press more than my weight. I've never weighed more than 230; currently I press 255. <Let's digress a mo, shall we? What, you may ask, does physical health have to do with writing? Absolutely everything. Try this test: Get yourself a nice smoked meat sandwich. Don't skimp on the french fries. Eat your plate clean; wash down with a tall cool root beer. (Hey! Count the double letters!) Now, you're sated. Sit in a chair. Stare at a computer. Try not to doze. Your body wants to; it's digesting. But you are trying to concentrate on intellectual and creative levels. Get the picture?> The weight room is a fun place. Odd contraptions to fit your body into, racks of heavy metallic objects along the walls, sweating people in various states of agony. What's the difference between the Y and the Inquisition? The workout actually is for your own good. During: "Urgh! Jesus Christ!" (Sound like the Inquisition?) After: "I'm so healthy I could die." (That last line will be inspiring an entire scene in Baker's 12 (sometime before Week 20).) So I was enthused about the bench press, and I decided there was only one milestone left: Running. Before I moved out of Dorval, I had been going to the gym daily without fail for almost half a year, and I could run 4miles in 30minutes. Today I tried that again for the first time in several years. And succeeded. So it's official: I am mighty. Plus I gave up every food I enjoyed (cuz they're all unhealthy), along with caffeinated beverages. (If you drink coffee or tea, you have no idea how much sleep you need, nor why you're often so tired or unable to think clearly.) Amazing, really, how the brain is better able to function when its container is up to snuff. I finally have the type of body my brain has always deserved.
<Argh. Except for one thing: I can't remember the six events in Canada
Fitness.
May 29, 2003 Let's talk about self-praise for a bit. Because I just do not understand this Tortured Artist thing. I've been one; I'll probably be one again (say, tomorrow night). It does not inspire me to write... "Alas! Woe is me. Life is a hopeless morass of self-loathing and disappointment. What is there to do but write, yes! some story where Love Conquers All and Good Wins Out In The End." No. Some angry article, maybe, but not a story. I have to happy. Or at least not tired, frustrated, angry, despondent, so forth. And that begins with myself. Remember Don Music, the Sesame Street Muppet who would ram his head into his piano screaming "Oh, I'll never get it never get it neverrr!" Some writer ex(e/o)rcising his demons with the good ol' keyboard metaphor? I have legions of words written down that were abandoned because I didn't feel they were good enough. Each time I did that, I died a little without even knowing it. Who was it that insisted the artist must have an enormous ego? Possibly Dali. (He certainly never tried the alternative.) But that person was absolutely right. How do you submit a story you hate? How do you even finish it? This weekend I am submitting a story for a contest. But until this week I had no idea which of my ideas I wanted to develop and submit. "What do I feel like writing? What can I finish in time?" Now I've decided what it's going to be, but self-doubt is easy: I was developing an idea for an RPG character, and I thought this story up as a character study. You see? This thing I'm submitting to an international contest (and paying $18 to do so) is an in-joke, a piece of trivia likely to be meaningless to all but a subgroup of my friends. Who else could possibly be interested in such a thing? Well. The most appealing aspect of this story has always been how I'm going to present the main character's inner conflict. It's a gimmick, yeah, but it's my gimmick, and a gimmick that works is called a device. There was no plot, just an event, but now I need to make this event the plot; I need to turn this story from something personal into an idea with general appeal. And I think I can do that. I mean I'm definitely the greatest.
- Alice Cooper
So I'm off to write; no updates until Monday. Next week on The Teddybear
Sawdust Show you can look forward to:
1. links (thanks for your support - and patience - folks) 2. the confirmed list of Canada Fitness Test events (no pushups, no rope-climbing) 3. answers to the question: What have you been writing lately? Until then, here's another five installments of Baker's 12. |
back to The Teddybear Sawdust Show!