In my opinion, one of the most productive (not to mention fun!) writing exercises the the Stream of Consciousness one. You know. That one where you write in a stream of...uhm....something. Or other? I don't know. Whatever.
So as I was saying, I love the stream of consciousness exercise; it's proven itself time and again to be quite fruitful for my writing. Now, I've never come upon a fresh idea for a story. I've never had some amazing breakthrough with a story in progress. Never have I unearthed some mindblowing clarity on a long lost story I gave up on years ago. So why's it so friggin awesome? Here's the rub: this exercise has been my Giant Killer. The Giant?
Writer's block. UGH.
Something about SOC gets the creative juices flowing. Not having to worry about grammar, misspellings or typos, allowing myself to be nonsensical and silly, shooting from the hip and, in the end, allowing myself just to...well, GO! There's is something so fruitful about this that it just breaks through writer's block (or, at the very least, busts a few bricks).
I'm not suffering through writer's block right now, as taking two writing courses had pretty much forced me not to (ha!). But on the way home today I felt the urge to take a few minutes to just...GO! To just friggin write something!
So here's what I'm gonna do: Come Halftime, I'm gonna start writing and I won't stop until the second half starts. I'm clearing my head until the clock hits 0:00 and then I'm just gonna go beserk. It's funny; the last time I did this publicly it was posted on my MySpace blog and my friend Scott commented that if he didn't know any better he thought I was drunk or high when I wrote what I had written. A few years later, I've had more than my fair share of drinks - and a few of those drinks lost me The Good Life -- but tonight I'm stone cold sober and ready to....
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GO!! ( 10:07pm)
So here's what I'm thinking for Deposed Kings: it's not about the Western, it's about race and reconstruction; think Ford's The Searchers, right? But here's the thing. Ford didn't really succeed with The Searchers in his attempt to portray racism as a terrible thing, he made Wayne, the protagonist, the racist, so you have all of these racist butts thinking their position is justified. So here's the problem: you can't be heavy handed in the approach. Clearly, the antagonists (the former confederate mercenaries) are the evil folks preventing forward progress. And clearly, Alex and his fellow townsfolk are the physical representation of a Utopian society - race, gender, age, and all that - it's all relative when it comes to society. Wow...pretty deep? or not. It's hard to get deep when you're pumped full of diet coke and worried about getting your yellw legal pads in order. Seriously....yellow legal pads. I have tons of them now. Every time we send an archived file to be "destroyed" (you know they just throw it in the dumpster) I go through it and take out all the binder clips, legal pads, paper clips and folders i can find. i save all the stuff except for the yellow legal pads for the firm. why? everything else gets re-used....no one ever uses a legal pad with three pages in it so they told me i can just take them. so i do. so now after the move i have a fartload of them in my room. i asked jason and lauren if they wanted any but they said no, their loss. i just took a sip of diet coke to eas my nerves this feels like a PG rated Hubert Selby novel. wow. who gets that joke? and how lame was it? very. whatever, you kids need to read Selby so you don't end up drug addicts. anywho
i have this idea. (well a few) for my emf 222 class but i don't know if my partners will go for them. here's the thing. in intro to film (now film/video) you're warned that you won't make your masterpiece - i heard this twice!- both times i listened. back before i fucked everything up with school a couple years ago i was well aware that i wasnt some great artist, but i was just a student. at 28, i still think that way. i still think i'm learning. so anyway, my partners have had lackluster responses to my comical ideas for short films ( all shorts are sposed about 1 minute except for the last two) They have these very serious ideas....mine are funny. lame, but funny. but the important thing is: they provide ample opportunity for execution of basic film techniques. and thats the point, right? meh.
i have to get my transcript from CSM so towson no longer thinks i'm a fuckup.
imean an educational, institutional fuckup. not like a whatareyougonnadowithyourlife kind of fuckup. meh. i'm working at it. atheism? forget it. agnosticism? psh. honestly there HAS to be a GOD if i'm still alive. there had to be a GOD. there's a reason i'm still around. sure, sure, all ya atheists will come out and say something about survival of the fittest and i'll say: look at me? ya think i'm the fittest?
and then they'll get all cute and start talking science talk so i'll quote charlie from It's Always Sunny in PA and say "what's with all the science talk" and they won't get it so/
/i'll flash a little hog and be on my way, not really caring if they like me or not because damn it it's sorta fun to be living.
(10:27)
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That little slash is where my alarm went off. I finished the thought. I'll be completely honest; I wish I could place that backslash so that my post-alarm verbage read:
it's sorta fun to be living.
But alas, that was not to be. It would be almost fitting, wouldn't it? I had once convinced myself I wanted to die. Had convinced myself that no one loved me, that no one cared. I had myself convinced that I was alone. Well, I still feel pretty lonely at times, considering at this point last year I was screaming as loud as I could "I'm in love! She's The One!" and yet having no faith in myself or anyone else which led down a dark road and, well...we all know how that turned out....
I've found faith. I've found God.
And so I may be lonely here on earth, but I know I'm not alone in the end.
(P.S. I cut this blog short before it became too preachy.)
