I haven't been blogging because... eh... I don't always have something to say. I have been writing though. I'm proud of myself for re-writing "Silent Blue" (which, after a consultation w. Hobby on Monday, I intend to send out into the ether) and "The Catskills (which I will be reading at Malaprops tomorrow at 3 PM). Come see me read! Ten years from now, you can tell people, "Yeah I saw Jeremy Rice back when he was still playing the local Indie clubs. Before he sold out."

I decided to work on "Silent Blue" rather than "The Catskills." The revision is going nicely. It's funny: just a couple months ago I felt as if I had revised this story about as much as I possibly could. But already I feel like my writing has improved so much that I have to re-write it again before sending it out. And I think as I do this current (and hopefully final) revision, the story is truly drastically improving yet again. The content is fixed; I'm just tightening every paragraph. making sentences shorter and more clear, removing unnecessary adjectives and details. This part of the writing process is a lot of fun for me; I love working meticulously with language. To give you an idea of what I'm accomplishing with this revision, here is an excerpt from the last version and then an excerpt from the new version.

Steve watches himself on screen—eight years younger, the NCAA championship game, he the starting three guard, in wolfpack red, hot blood red, so young, a mop of brown hair mushroomed by a white headband. The game is alive. The crowd breathes its roar in and out, in and out. The players move together, stretch and constrict, flex and tremble like muscles. Steve is the heart controlling the flow. The game pulses out of him, bends back toward the steady beat of his dribble, the sudden gush of his drive. He watches himself slap the ball away, web it through his legs, around his waist, make it dance like a marionette. Watches himself razor down the backdoor cut, flick lay-ups like beads of water, launch passes like a bowstring, wrestle away rebounds like a graceful Goliath. Alone in his home office, he stares at the TV/VCR combo perched on his desk, socked feet tapping the carpet to the rhythm of the game, the dance he choreographed. It’s late. Papers—newspapers, half-crumpled typed drafts with red-penned edits, notebook pages ripped and ink-battered—litter the floor. Threatening to topple off the desk and faded couch cushions are stacks of Carolina Sports, the monthly magazine for which he writes features and editorials and has an editing hand in most everything published. He can feel his sleeping wife underneath him downstairs sunk into the bed like a hunk of ice, silent and rigid, facing the wall. Here’s the part of the game where he breaks the spell, smacks stupidly the point guard’s wrist, an angry, awkward move that earns him his fourth foul, a seat on the pine. Steve leaves the tape playing and wanders downstairs.

And...

Steve watches himself on screen. NCAA championship game, NC State and Arizona. He, eight years younger, is the starting three guard. Blood-red Wolfpack jersey, fierce black eyes, a mop of brown hair mushroomed by a white headband. The crowd breathes its roar in and out, in and out. The players move en masse. They stretch and constrict, flex and tremble like muscles. Steve, the heart, controls the flow; the game pulses out of him. Opponents bend toward the beat of his dribble, are carried by the gush of his drive. He weaves the ball through his legs, makes it dance like a marionette. He flicks lay-ups like beads of water, launches passes like a bowstring, wrestles down rebounds like a howling Goliath. Alone in his home-office, his socked foot taps the carpet to the rhythm of the game.

It’s late. His wife Cassie is downstairs, directly beneath him. A silent, rigid, slab of ice frosting the sheets of their bed.

The TV’s flickering light tosses frail shadows around the dim room. Sections of newspaper, half-crumpled drafts with red-penned edits, and ripped, ink-battered notebook pages litter the floor. Threatening to topple off the faded corduroy couch cushions are stacks of Carolina Sports, the monthly magazine for which he writes and serves as editor. A whistle shrills, marking the part of the game where he commits his fourth foul, an awkward wrist-slap that earns him a seat on the pine.

I think the difference is significant.... More later.

Being that it's Spring Break, I have taken a few days off work to catch up on my drinking. But now I'm ready to write again. For this next week, I'm turning my focus away from the novel and onto two concerns: one, my malaprops reading on the 16th; two, trying to get "Silent Blue" published. The other day I spent some time poring over websites and I found seven interesting journals I'd like to submit to. I was going to send the story how it is, but after I re-read it a little, I decided it could use another quick revision to sculpt the language a little more. So that's one thing I'm working on this week. The other is revising and rewriting "The Catskills" which I am planning to read at Malaprops. I think today I will work on the latter project.

The Cat

Excerpt:

What’s this? Something gray is crumpled against the wall. It looks like a wadded, dirty sweater. I walk over and freeze: a cat. At first I think it’s alive; it seems to be twitching. But no, it’s just its fur rustling in the breeze. I bend down close. Its eyes are black slits. Its mouth hangs open, revealing jagged teeth and a pale, pink tongue. Brown patches of dried blood circle its scruff. I can’t stop staring at its front teeth, so still and violent. Could I touch? I want to caress the tip of the sharp, jutting tooth. It seems necessary. I reach forward, brush my index finger against the tooth, and jerk away. It’s dry, sharp and cold. For some reason I felt it would be hot. I look around me; the alleyway is deserted. The fur fans stiffly in the breeze. I stuff my hands back into my hoodie and quickly walk away.

I don't know what compelled me to throw a cat into the narrative. I haven't really been planning much as I write; I just kind of try to enter the world I'm creating and allow whatever to happen. I found myself wanting to encounter a dead cat. I'm glad it happened. The narrator is obsessed with connections and the cat becomes something to which other images and impressions can be linked. Particularly significant is his original perception of the cat as a "wadded, dirty sweater," as he obsesses about the soft, white sweater worn by Joni. Thus, the sweater becomes a symbol for both fear and desire and the paradoxical emotions become more and more entwined. Here he first encounters Joni:

"Hello stranger," her voice is like a purr. I think of the dead cat; its eyes jerk open. Glowing green, like the Heineken bottle, like Roky’s eyes shining with a strange, internal light. Shake the image away. Her lips are reddened and sticky from the bottle of Tropicana fruit punch.

"Hey. How many bunnies did you have to kill to make that sweater?" She laughs and I can see her tongue: red and sticky and sweet.

"Actually it’s polar bear. And it only took one. It’s really soft… see?" She holds her arm out for me to stroke. It is soft! I can feel the warmth of her arm beneath the sleeve. Why so warm?

Joni and the cat are instantly inseparable. As the object of the narrator's sexual desire, Joni is prey, but, because of her relationship to the cat, she is simultaneously a predator, with fruit punch blood around her mouth and an image of her murdering bunnies. The dead cat is also both predator and prey-- predator by nature and by violent appearance, prey by virtue of the fact of its bloody death. Also, like the cat, Joni confuses the narrator by defying expectations: he is surprised by the coolness he feels touching the cat's tooth, and by the warmth he feels touching her arm.

That's it for today.

Back from paradise. The weekend was not devoid of literary pursuits. I found a great used bookstore downtown Charleston and treated myself to birthday novels/collections from Doestoevsky, Gogol, Kafka, John Kennedy Toole, Harold Brodkey, Jose Saramago, Jeffrey Eugenides and Jonathan Lethem. Then I was able to meet one of my favorite artists, Bill Callahan (!), and discuss literature with him. According to Bill, he was into Doestoevsky at my age, enjoys Knut Hamsun, is unimpressed with David Foster Wallace and thinks Milan Kundera is "sleazy." Currently, he is reading Christopher Hitchens's God is not Great. Amen.

Anyway, I still don't have much to post. I'm revising today and tomorrow, still hoping to have 15-20 pgs for Wednesday. Today I'm revising the first scene involving the narrator's romantic interest "Joni." I'm focusing on recording a dizzying accumulation of images that comes from the heightened state of awareness the narrator has speaking to someone whom he has the screaming desire to fuck. I'll probably provide an excerpt tomorrow.

More revision. It's coming along. I inserted a dead cat into the story, partly as an homage to Witold Gombrowicz, partly because I want cats to be a motif throughout the novel. Like these characters, kitties epitomize hedonism. They live for food, comfort and cat nip. But mostly, they just want love. Awwwww!

I won't write or blog again until Sunday or Monday. We're leaving early tomorrow for Charleston and spending the weekend there in drunken celebration of my birthday.

I'm revising more today so there's not much to discuss. One thing that is coming to the surface as I continue to work on this story is the complex relationship between the narrator and his roommate Dylan. Maybe even a little homoeroticism there. Okay... definitely a little homoeroticism. Sometime this week or next I'm going to switch my focus to "The Catskills" and perhaps this other story "Am I Dreaming?" and I will blog about them at that time. But for now I'm just shoving ahead with the novel. I hope to have about 15-20 pretty good revised pages by next Wednesday when I next meet with Hobby.