I really am a nobody at the moment. As such, whenever I see in my Webstats that someone was obviously looking for information about me and came to here because of that interest, it always gives me pause for thought. Why would any one give a shit about me?
Did they notice some stray comment on my part on Twitter and wanted to know more about me?
Anyway, I’m a nobody and it’s quite flattering to me if just one person wants to know something about me. Though, I have to admit, when someone is obviously doing “due diligence” on me I get a little uneasy. It’s like being forced to go on a first date with someone via a double blind.
I always fail any test anyone gives me and, as such, whenever someone does do due diligence on me — usually some Blue Check Liberal that doesn’t want me to know of their interest — I always get the feeling that they come away with the belief I’m just a loudmouth crank that they can’t take seriously.
Something I see a lot on Twitter from the so-called “writing community” on the service is a lot of preening about how many words someone has written. I don’t think in terms of words written, but rather scene count. Each scene is usually, on average, 1,000 words so I still have some sense of how much I’ve written.
Because I’m not getting any younger and writing these six (!) novels is very existential to me, I’ve decided to pause writing until the end of August. I’m going to shift back to development. I really want to improve my storytelling before I get back to writing.
I’ve been feeling a little burnt out. I’ve been running hot, if you will. I have been so focused on this first novel for so long, and it’s changed so much since I began working on it, that I’ve decided to chill out for a little bit. I keep telling myself I’m going to stop writing about the novels altogether, but I can’t help myself. Sometimes, like now, I want to write something, anything, and the novels continue to dominate the focus of my attention.
So, what I hope to do is, focus on developing characters and to make my storytelling more cohesive and compelling. I’m old enough that I just don’t want to waste my time producing crap. Or, if I’m going to produce crap in the process of writing something better, I want to at least start from the best point in the process than I can.
I keep thinking about Stieg Larsson and how he dropped dead of a heart attack just as he sold three novels. I think about this so much that if I should happen to sell my six novels, I may turn into something of a hypochondriac. I just have to stop screwing around and focusing on just the first novel. I need to begin to bounce around the different novels so I don’t get so wrapped up in just one story.
I also keep thinking to myself that one day my life is going to change in a rather dramatic fashion because of things out of my control and I might find myself pivoting to something like fashion photography because I will be able, at last, to afford the equipment.
I finally finished Lightyear. But I’m drunk and lazy. So, this is going to be a “review” as done under those conditions. So, the key thing that pops out at me about this movie — which looks gorgeous — is how dull it is. It’s boring. I just didn’t feel any emotional connection to the story or the characters.
It was only because of that that I noticed how “woke” it is.
It was very, very woke.
Now, let me give you some context to all of this relative to me. I’m writing six (!) novels that I’m using as a creative outlet to rant at the top of my lungs about how much I fucking hate Trumplandia and, as well, the “woke cancel culture mob.” A pox on both your houses, as they say.
But I’m going to use subtext. I’m not going to deconstruct the white savior trope. Or have characters be gay just to make myself feel better. I’m not going to bang my political views over you, the reader, in other words. But the whole thing is designed to, at the end of six novels, layout why I fucking hate extremism from both sides of the aisle.
Anyway, back to Lightyear.
If it wasn’t so dull, I wouldn’t care how woke it was. If it had a good story that was compelling and didn’t have me thinking in the back of my mind, “Ahhh, of course, this is supposed to teach White People A Lesson About Relying Upon Brown People” because it was so dull, then that would be a whole different situation.
And, I’m sheepish to admit, I found myself rooting for Zerg. I agreed with his motivation. But, then, that might mean more about me not being the kid audience more than anything else.
Lightyear is not a bad movie. But it’s very much more a movie you might want to see on Disney+ as opposed to in a theatre.
I’m drunk yet again. This time off of some very nice whiskey. Anyway, even though I’m An Old, I continue to idly daydream about how well I might do in a big city like NYC or LA.
As I keep saying, I think if I was forced to chose between the two cities, I would have to pick LA, even though in my heart I’m New Yorker. The only reason is, well, if you want to get all crass about it, I’m far more likely to get laid as a broke ass writer if I’m living in LA as opposed to New York City.
The question I have is, of course, am I giving myself too much credit? Am I’m making a mistake in reasoning when I extrapolate from my success in Seoul and try to apply it to a major city in the United States? I think the answer is yes to both. Yes, I am assuming more than is real AND, sometimes being delusional can go a long ways — especially somewhere like LA.
Even though I love, love, love, NYC, the metric for success there is VERY STRICT. You have to be wealthy, successful, powerful and, for men — have a huge fucking cock. I’m just a freaky little weirdo who is very extroverted and “colorful” when I get drunk.
As such, I think LA would probably be the place I land if I fall into a little bit of money at some point before I drop dead. I still believe that I have a career as a fashion photography lurking somewhere in me and, I think, a lot of the haters who grow very frustrated with me will be shocked at how I might spring out of “nowhere” at some point in the future, if not from selling a pretty good novel, then by becoming a reasonably successful fashion photographer.
But, for the moment, that’s all very much being delusional — the very type of stuff that makes those of you playing the home game very frustrated and angry with me. “If you think you have such talent, just get a fucking job and buy the equipment!” you say, etc. I’m an eccentric. When the time comes and I can afford the photographic equipment I need, then I’ll get it.
If I end up just dropping dead before then, oh well.
I like to be creative just for the sake of being creative. And, so, even though using the metrics of a “normal” person, I should just, well, lie in bed all day and worry about how I’m going to die alone — I’m going to continue to work on these six novels.
I’m too old. I’m too weird for traditional “literary types” to take me seriously. I have the wrong background. I’m probably not a good enough writer. The list goes on.
But, I can’t help myself. I really do love to write and working on these six novels gives me something to think about other than my eventual, inevitable impending demise.
And, yet, and this is the whole point of everything — I have to stop writing about writing and daydreaming about what I’m going to do and actually do it. I have been on pause the last few days for personal reasons. But that pause will end very, very soon.
I hoping to use this “pause” in development and writing to work on character development for some of the people in these novels, if nothing else. But Trump’s most recent run-in with the law has made this a lot more difficult than I thought.
Anyway, I’ve got enough whiskey and rye to last me for sometime and that’s the secret juice I use to get all this hard work done.
The same dynamic that led me to start this planned six novel project in the first place is back in place — I’m enraged by MAGA. I’d kind of calmed down the last few years because of the Biden Administration being very normal. But the reaction on the part of MAGA to the FBI simply holding Trump accountable has so enraged me that I find myself focused again.
Let’s get writing!
That’s the whole point of this novel series — to have a place to vent about how much I fucking hate the extremes of Trumplandia and the “woke cancel culture mob” (if you will.) I’ve set up the universe of the novel on an existential basis so if you read all six novels you will not only know way, way, way too much about me, but you’ll also get (through subtext) me preaching about how fucked up the extremes of both sides are.
Of course, I hate MAGA way, way, way, way more than I hate the “woke cancel culture mob.” The woke mob is illiberal and destructive and I hate it. But that’s all soft power. The fucking MAGA cucksuckers want to use hardpower to, well, uh, “solve” the problem that is ME.
Anyway, the point is, I’m going to spend the next few days recharging my batteries and then hopefully jump out of the gate to start working as hard as I can to finish six novels that conclude with a very unique, interesting universe for my characters to run around in.
Now, of course, there is the issue of timing. It’s very possible that I could do all this hard work and, lulz, in the end, there’s either a civil war or the autocracy gets so bad that I can’t even publish the novels.
And, it’s not like all six novels would be published all at once. They would be staggered, so I’m kind of flying blind. Things could have changed so much by the last novel comes out that it will see very, very dated. It’s just taken me a lot — and I mean A LOT — longer for me to figure out this first novel than I originally imagined.
And then I turned what was supposed to be just two novels telling one story (with a cliffhanger in between them) into a sprawling six novel epic that explains how things got so fucked up (in America and in the fictional place I’ve come up with.)
Of course, there’s the issue of me.
I not only (apparently) come across as a crazy nutjob from my social media output, but I’m also not exactly getting any younger. So, if you factor in I have to get an agent, then sell the first novel then stagger the release of five novels after that, well, I could be Really Old in Real Terms by the time that process is finished.
But I really love this universe I’ve come up with. I do need to work on some short stories and I also need to have a few back up novel worked out as I go forward.
Anyway. I know I keep saying this and then months and years slide by and I really haven’t gotten anything done that can be published. But I have learned a whole lot and I’m getting a lot better as a writer and a storyteller. These things just take time.
I just hope I live long enough to see everything come to a successful conclusion.
I don’t think anyone appreciates how much I live in oblivion. But I do. I really do. I totally live in oblivion to the point that the tiniest thing is interesting to me — if it’s about me.
So, I was looking at my Webstats and saw “l.instagram.com” as the referring link for someone from Queens to visit this site. The only reason why this is of note is that Instagram is the first link about me when you search for me via Google. So, logic would suggest that if you had heard about me in some way you would search my name, go to my Instagram account….then use my link from that site to land here.
This is unusual because it means that someone who probably didn’t know me from my drunk Twitter ranting but heard about me from a third party and wanted to know more about me. This is even more interesting given where they were from — NYC.
Anyway, lulz, nothing matters. But it is an interesting late summer mystery in my Webstats. It’s shit like that which makes me so obsessed with my Webstats to begin with. There’s only been one time when someone mysterious in my Webstats actually told me who they were — a person on vacation in Greenland of all places.
Regardless. I suppose the rest of this month will continue to be just as boring as it has been so far.
I’ve found that pausing thinking about the novel I’m working on for a few days — no more than 2 or three — does wonders. The worst thing you can do is overheat creatively and “run hot.” It’s too easy to lose focus on what’s going on and, also, to lose your creative flexibility.
Another thing I’ve learned is there comes a point when it’s better to re-write scenes instead of move around finished ones as blocks. You can make some really dumb structural decisions because you want to avoid having to re-write a scene.
It’s hard earned advice like the above that I would put into a how-to-write-a-novel book if I ever was in a position to write such a book. But I have to finish (and sell) a novel before I can do that. Though I’m so absolutely desperate for money at the moment, that I might look into being a beta reader of some sort. The idea being, that if I’m a beta reader for other people, then maybe it will be easier for ME to find a beta reader for MY novel(s).
Anyway, I don’t know how much of a pause I’m going to actually going to undertake at the moment. Maybe more like a few hours than a few days. I just need to re-charge my batteries some, do some reading.
One of the things they tell you when you’re growing up is to “be yourself.” And, yet, here I am facing something of a paradox. On one hand, the only way to get literary types to take me seriously is to produce a quality novel. But to produce a quality novel I feel as though I need some help from…literary types.
That’s probably been one of the most aggravating aspects of developing and writing these novels — literary consultants are surprisingly judgmental. You would think given how weird creative people are, they would be a bit more accepting of weirdos like me.
How all of this usually happens is they look me up on the Internet, look at this Website and are taken aback by how weird they think I am. It’s something of a “Kook Tax” as I call it. You sometimes, you have to take the L. Sometimes, you have to just accept that “normal” people with stable lives and relationships and jobs just are unwilling or unable to accept you for who you are.
All I can say is, I can’t help who I am. I’m “different” and I’ve been “different” my entire life. When it comes to creative, if you can overcome the Kook Tax, then you’ve accomplished even more than than you might have otherwise if you were normal.
It’s not like I can change anything about it one way or another.
I’ve written about this before, but I’m bored and tipsy and I find the subject fascinating. What interests me is celebrity interaction with people who write (or whatever) about them online.
My general assumption is celebrities are too busy doing “dope shit” in the real world to worry about what any one person is saying about them online. However, as I’ve written before, I suspect there is a spectrum of celebrity awareness.
On one end there are celebrities who are so famous and so busy with having a Real World Life that they have no idea what any particular random blogger or Twitter user might be saying about them. They have people for that, as they say. Meanwhile, on the other end of the spectrum are those celebrities who are — no matter how big they are — so insecure that they troll Twitter using burner accounts, etc.
I really am a nobody. I may be pretty interesting, but I’m living in oblivion and there’s no reason any celebrity would have any interest in me whatsoever. The only notable exception to this general living-in-oblivion happened when I was living in Seoul.
I’ve written about all of this before, but, in general what happened is way back when, in the Before Times, I had a strange affinity for picking on the then-New York Times reporter Jennifer 8. Lee and her strange byline. Now, being much older, I doubt I would care at all that she went by “8.” as a middle name. So what.
Jennifer 8. Lee
But this was a different era of the Internet and I was in Seoul, so when she visited South Korea while working on a book, I find myself having dinner with she and her friend Tomoko. (Who worked for the Asian Wall Street Journal, if remember correctly.)
The thing about Tomoko is she was a stereotypical Blue Check Liberal (well before those were a thing) to the point that she, right in front of me, went on at great length about how people who taught English in South Korea (that would be me) were, essentially the fucking scum of the Earth. I don’t think it registered at the time to her what she was saying and who she was saying it to.
But, lulz.
Anyway, I’m much older and much wiser now. It takes a lot to get me excited when it comes to celebrities. I check my Webstats obsessively and occasionally I’ll write some random thing about this or that celebrity and someone from NYC or LA will look at it and I pause and wonder if it’s someone connected to the celebrity I wrote about.
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