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Archive for December 2010

The Prayer Tree of Wiltshire

December 17, 2010, 4:44 pm

London was amaaaaazing.

The British SF writer Roz Clarke – my Clarion classmate and dear friend – decided to take me off the beaten path and show me the English countryside. Specifically, the ancient tomb of The West Kennett Long Barrow, and the stone circle at Avebury Henge. Both of which are AWESOME and searchable on the internet.

This, not so much:

A tree tied with prayer flags, which sits along the path to the barrow.

I don’t have much info on this, other than it’s a local thing and very much in tune with the pagan groove going on this part of the world.

Roz commented that my appearance in her London world was like I’d stepped through a mirror. It definitely had that magic-portal quality considering how much my image has been formed by brutally funny TV shows, and it felt like spending nine days on the other side of the screen.

So going here was pretty amazing, setting foot in a place of deep resonance – one that happens to be on the other side of the planet.

Unexpected and delightful, the surprise of finding yet another powerful dreamscape to run off to when life is being too much.

Seriously, Roz, thank you for the utter gift of sharing this little bit of real-world enchantment with me.

The raggedy, mistrustful, Bella-like sheep deserve a special mention. LOVE THEM.

Other fun moments:

Chatting with members of Annie Lennox’s band on the flight over.

Cornish pasties.

The utter Black Sabbath magnificence of Highgate Cemetery that had me running to a bench and immediately starting to outline my next novel.

The retail dance party of Camden Market.

The Hobgoblin drawing pentagrams in Guinness foam.

Grave/Misery Index/Arsis/The Last Felony/The Rotted at Underworld and how compliant British moshpits are when told to start a circle.

The National Gallery.

The absolutely breathtaking cast court collection at the V&A.

The Crobar.

Driving past Stonehenge with a contemplative, reverential scream of “OMG, THERE IT IS!!!!”

Sin City at the Electric Ballroom, copious amounts of air guitar (and three Metalocalypse lookalikes kneeling at my feet, banging their heads and lip-synching “For Those About To Rock, We Salute You.”)

Dreadfalls and elevator soles in full 90’s effect at the labyrinthine Slimelight, and stupid amounts of fun dancing along to an aggro-synthpop act whose entire lyrical output was profanity.

Vegan bangers.

(Yeah, my idea of a vacation is pretty much art museums and metal bars.)

Tags: green, london, witchcraft
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Eight Things I Learned While Writing My First Novel

December 14, 2010, 10:29 pm

Manuscript is DONE. I feel like crying, drinking wine, and then throwing the glass into the fireplace. Is that too Kathleen Turner of me? Whatever. I dig Kathleen Turner.

So not only did I end up with a sizable chunk of fiction, but a process for how to do this all over again when it’s time for Novel #2. For me, the goal is to get to the deep pool quickly, and I took notes on things I noticed were speeding me up or bogging me down.
Here’s what I learned:

- It’s a lot easier to start with grandiose spectacles and atmospheres and other such razzle-dazzles and then fill them in with the characters, rather than start with the characters with no idea where they’re going. This is probably because I find emotional nuance a lot easier to tweak than points of payoff. I feel a lot stronger going forward with the first draft knowing that whoever’s adventure this ends up being, it will involve a ghoul-infested graveyard, a high-end department store, and a blazing wreck on a lonely highway.

- Alternating between quiet scenes and loud ones works your atmospheres, by having different places draw new angles out of the characters. It keeps things lively.

- Don’t worry about having everything outlined down to every last detail before getting started. It’s good to have a sense of where the conflicts are going to boil along the way, but you don’t necessarily have to know how they’re going to happen, at start – just that there’s going to be a breakup, or a riot, or whatever. I keep finding over and over again that the story I start out writing is not the one I end up with. Leave room for things to take off in unexpected directions that are much closer to what you really want to say. For the thing I just finished – while the concept of demon groupies sounds ridiculously fun to play with, getting into a loud, ridiculous fight in a midwestern hotel over playing 70’s schmaltz in the piano bar is much closer to who I am as an author.

- Don’t read someone else’s reality and get distracted out of your own. Whoa, Hunger Games. Not only was this hundreds of pages away from my own writing time – well, OK, I read each of them in one night – but the arena’s a pretty potent world that took my mind over for a couple of days afterward. Best to keep lighter fare on hand while novellating.

- Spend as much time as you can with your imaginary friends. The most wonderful thing happened about halfway through writing the first act: my characters felt like real people around me. This has happened countless times through so many good books; it was incredible to get lifted up on that same suspension of disbelief, by my own work. It was amazing, getting really wrapped up in a good story – that I was still writing! Ending still unknown! Whoah! And hearing the characters’ voices, a feeling of greeting when getting back to the keyboard, and a definite feeling of sadness that my time with them was going to last only so long. (see Kathleen Turner tears, above.) Like a vacation, or a friend coming to stay for a little while, best to make the most of it while it’s happening. And get richer characterization for it.

- Abuse your music. I have a treasure trove of really good, evocative songs that immediately paint pictures in my head while I’m listening to them. Excellent for brainstorming: cueing them up on repeat, and then playing them over and over, like hitting a pinata until everything I can possibly bash out of it is lying in a heap of notes. In my iTunes, I’ve used the Genre column to put the “like” ones together – songs that seem like they’d belong in the same reality. Five different ways of looking at a cemetery, twenty things that are great for building forests, stuff for fight scenes, stuff for sex scenes, stuff for party scenes, etc.

- When describing music (I did this a lot, my novel’s all about bands), pick a theme and stick to it for the whole scene. Cooking, storms, fighting, outer space, etc. – giving it a set of monkeybars to smooth down the metaphors, so when you’re done describing percussion, you have something similar to reach for when getting to the bass.

- Real life ending up in the story is like a secret diary beneath the narrative. Remember, all is grist – bad dates, devastating arguments, opportunities for all kinds of growth can all be made fodder for gripping drama.

As always, please take all of this with the disclaimer of “this worked for me, it *might* work for you.” Now. Off for some celebratory whiskey.

Tags: writing
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Two Wildly Different Approaches to Low Budget Videomaking

December 11, 2010, 6:41 pm

…which are also pretty representative of wildly different sides of my personality.

LA Vampires feat. Matrix Metals – How Would U Know from Not Not Fun on Vimeo.

First, holy 80’s! A pair of neo-Nagel women come to life and beautify themselves over dreamy synth waves. There are sunglasses. There are cheap camera effects. There are no backup dancers in sight. And somehow so much more superglam for that. (seriously, doesn’t everything on VH1 look totally the same these days?)

On the other side of the spectrum, a totally different kind of fun: rampaging around a junkyard on a forklift, breaking all kinds of shit to heavy, screaming, headbanging metal. Yay! The song’s good, too.

(Via Not For Resale and MetalSucks, respectively.)

Tags: la vampires, low budget, mixed metals, nylithia
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Stay Classy, Criss

December 3, 2010, 1:22 pm

Spotted today at the B-burg Walgreen’s among the impulse purchases by the register. I’m at a loss for words, only because I don’t know where to begin. The sexyface look, smoldering out from within a wreath of neon-green price tags? The assured abuse of the word “platinum”? I’m almost curious to see what the playthings are inside, but I’ve seen his show. Self-absorbed melodrama cast in bits of shiny plastic, I’m guessing.

I’ve said it before, and it just keeps getting ever more true: Hot Topic did way, way more to yank the fangs out of dark rock than the PMRC ever did.

Tags: criss angel, eep
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Two and a Half Minutes of Retro-Flavored Synthpop Glory

December 2, 2010, 3:56 pm

GAMES – shadows in bloom from weirdcore on Vimeo.

I must have listened to this about twenty times already. That great big soaring clean sound, soooo 80’s in all the right ways. I am LOVING that fuzzy underbass coming in and out. Please, dark DJs of NYC, please please drop this into your set instead, the next time you’re tempted to reach for New Order. My bedroom is not big enough to give this the full-body groove it deserves.

Here is it on Soundcloud, somewhere in here there’s a link to go listen to/buy the whole album:

Games – Shadows In Bloom by A Future Animal

(Via Not For Resale)

Tags: earworms, synthpop
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Quote of the Day

December 1, 2010, 8:30 am

People look at an oil painting and admire the use of brushstrokes to convey meaning. People look at a graffiti painting and admire the use of a drainpipe to gain access.

–Banksy

Tags: art, banksy, quotes
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