Post-September 11th Hilarity

The writing output has slowed these past few days. I've just been feeling dull and uninspired. I'm not really that concerned; I always have creative peaks and valleys, and I was extremely productive the two weeks before this lull. At these times I tend to focus on revising rather than producing more text, and so I'm beginning to rewrite a little of the beginning of the novel. What I'm thinking now is that I want to deemphasize the "realism" of the writing. With the rough draft, I'm writing a continuous monologue in the voice of the character. I mentioned in an earlier blog that this style distresses me a little because it doesn't allow for more "writerly" sensual description, etc. Well, I'm thinking as I revise that I can add those descriptive flourishes without sacrificing my stylistic vision. I'm just going to try to have my character "think" more in images and analogies than just language. And I'm going to give him space for detailed description of images, emotions, etc. That might not realistically approximate consciousness; we think more in abstract, fragmented flashes than fully realized and describable images, but as I mentioned in an earlier blog, I am not concerned with approximating consciousness. I'm just trying to write this story in a new, intensely interior style. To demonstrate what I'm trying to do with the revision process, here is the first paragraph of the rough draft, followed by its first revision.

There’s no sugar or milk in the house so I have to drink my tea straight. The tannic taste makes me grimace but the warmth and the kick of caffeine make me melt with gratitude. What would I sooner give up? Tea or beer? I look around the kitchen: a battlefield of corpses from three different armies—Heineken, Sierra Nevada, Busch Light in the can. Who the fuck was drinking Busch in the can? Ah yes, Cabe. A quality cunt, but lousy taste in beer. I rolled with the Heinekens last night. I can almost taste it. My stomach churns. Feels like death down there. A beer would probably kill me. Still, they say, don’t they, that the best cure for a hangover is a beer itself. Lift the grime right out. Ah, fuck that, I couldn’t even. Still, beer gets the nod over tea in the end. Couldn’t live without it. And there’s always coffee for the caffeine kick. I’ll have to teach Cabe how to drink like a connoisseur. There’s no excuse for Busch Light. And in the can! At least get the bottle man! Pour it in a fucking glass if not that! Ah, this tea is just the thing, just the thing. But we’ll have to spring for some sugar and milk to make it the true thing. Some half and half at the least. Don’t know if we could drink up the milk anyway before it expires. I won’t have it with anything except my tea. And Dylan? Don’t know that I’ve ever even seen a drop of milk touch his lips. But what was I thinking? Ah—Cabe. A good cunt. Would be better if he drank like he knew what fucking time it was. Perhaps I could spring for an education. Three beers. If he doesn’t like any of them, fuck the cunt, he can go back to Busch.

There’s no sugar or milk for my tea. I grimace at its bitterness; I have the impression that dry black powder is collecting in the back of my throat. But the warmth splashing down, and the ache of caffeine awakening my senses make me melt with gratitude. God it’s gloomy in here; a battlefield of beer corpses is scattered around the kitchen. Three fallen armies: Heineken, Sierra Nevada, Busch Light in the can. Who the fuck drinks Busch? Light? In the can? Oh: Roky. A quality cunt, but lousy taste in beer. I can see his opaque green eyes. Like the thick glass of the Heineken bottle in the window sill illuminated by the morning sunlight. With those eyes, he should drink a green bottle beer. Half-crushed cans all over the countertop; Ragu-crusted plates packed into the sink; beer stains on the gray carpet; this sticky film on the lacquered table top. God I feel dull, dull, dull. Dull as the black powder in the back of my throat. Dull as the putrid nausea churning in my gut. Clumps of moist black powder. Like the ash tray on the porch railing filled with rainwater. Dull as this numb headache. Like a bent wire frozen in the center of my brain. This tea is thawing the freeze. We need to spring for some sugar and milk to give this tea the dignity it deserves. Half and half at the least. Does Dylan drink milk? I imagine a swath of cream above his always-chapped lips; it doesn’t fit. Half and half, then; I wouldn’t use milk for anything but the tea anyway.

I think the writing of the revision is far superior, if only for the images: black powder in his throat, Roky's eyes, the green bottle shining in the sunlight, the sauce-crusted plates, beer stains, sticky film on the table, rain-filled ashtray, bent wire, the cream over Dylan's chapped lips. The first paragraph has none of this vivid imagery to engage the reader. I already spoke about how I'm trying to focus on the character's distorted inner logic; here I have another example: Roky should drink green-bottle beers because he has green eyes. Another thing I'm trying to do is have images occur repeatedly throughout the text. I think this happens in our brains: certain images, arbitrary or significant, flash into our mind's eye over and over again until those images take on new significance apart from their original context. For instance, our hero could keep thinking of the black powder he imagines in the bitter tea. It could become one of many personal symbols and its meaning could evolve. Or he could become obsessed with Dylan's chapped lips, etc. The revision process will allow me to discover a lot of these types of possibilities.

Another major change I'm thinking about concerns the dialogue. When discussing an excerpt with Hobby, he mentioned that the dialogue is boring compared to the inner thoughts that the reader receives simultaneously. That's because I've been going for realism with the dialogue. And I think it's pretty realistic, but why am I going for realism? Realistic dialogue is boring; there's nothing stopping me from making it more stylized and absurd. I had an idea when hanging out with a group of people smoking weed. The conversation jumped from ominous topic to ominous topic. One person talked about how one in ten people on earth are part of the Chinese army (!) and how the US army literally does not have enough bullets to shoot them all. Then someone else talked about our government's "Star Wars" missile-defense program, all the secrecy, corruption and waste that's gone into it, and how it can't tell the difference between a missile and a weather balloon. I thought about how all my, my fiancee's and my friends' stoned conversations revolve around all the terrible, terrifying and cruel shit that's going on in the world. As awful as it all is, it's all hilarious because we've all developed black senses of humor in order to cope. I'd like to put these apocalyptic conversations all through the novel to establish a strong sense of paranoia. And more than that, but a reveling in the absurd horror of this post-September 11th (haha, couldn't help myself) world. Perhaps even an irreverant discussion about sept. 11th will go down. For instance, what were you doing when you found out? I remember being with my friends making jokes like "I hope they don't preempt the Simpsons because of this." And then I visited my mother in a psychiatric hospital that night and we sat in the TV room with a group of drool-encrusted psychos and watched footage of the planes smashing into the towers over and over and over again while my mother sobbed. That's just the sort of humor I need in this novel!

One final tentative decision I've made about the novel concerns names. I always like my characters' names to have some sort of significance, so I don't want to have this novel peppered with regular Jessicas and Timothys. I think I'm going to name my characters after musicians who are important to these characters' lives. Music is going to be all over the novel, as it, along with drugs and sex, is one of the greatest means of significance in our existences, and so I thought using it in my naming would be appropriate. Each character's namesake will have some sort of relation to the character. I already have a "Dylan" and a "Roky" (after Roky Ericsson from the 13th Floor Elevators) and I'm going to name a drug dealer "Beefheart."