The Strange Case of Dr Me-writer and Mr Me-logician

So I have this peculiar problem. I spend an afternoon typing up fiction, and it's all good, I move the plot along, increase the page and word count appreciably, yadda yadda yadda, fun and games, etc. Good news.

Comes five o'clock--generally it's five o'clock--and I'm not written out, but I choose to quit. Usually I choose to quit due to the encroachment of this living colors thing. The parts of my life with realistic commitments attached, like eating, peeing, and socializing. The stride that I feel like I've hit in the afternoon doesn't feel strode out yet, but I decide that "quit while you're ahead" is a good strategy. Take a break is a good strategy. Come back to it later is a good strategy.

Around then the logician begins to push in on my creativity. After these encroaching, living color commitments are all took care of and all, I think to myself, "Hey, I've got some stride left. Why not go back to fiction land and play for a while? I haven't messed up the lives of these imaginary characters yet. It'd be fun, and further my whole 'want to be a novelist' outlook on life. Make me feel professional, and justified."

But I remember those times when the writer in me ran dry. The logician in me remembers those times the writer got confused and the goat in me pushed through the muzzy eyes and produced unpleasing prose, which the critic in me got bored of, and the cynic in me used as justification to stop writing altogether for quite some time. Telling the lamb in me that I obviously had written myself into a corner, that I no longer had inspiration, and I should wait for the artist in me to rejuvenate and reassert itself.

Such multiplicity. I'm so confused.

Recently, the craftsman in me is stronger than the artist. Artistry, to me, has come to be so much unimaginative, feel-good morallity, important because it provides the gut reaction to the living colors trying to screw with my opus, but useless as a driving force or a forming ideal or any kind of well of invention. The craft of the thing is of greater, more interesting, and more potent reality....

And the logician says, "That is so much over-impassioned hash."

Thus most of my evenings are spent quietly waiting for the dawn, when the circumstances will again be right for the writer in me to assert itself once again over the mathematician, and rise to create those things which will be my legacy.

In the meantime, I'll be writing blogs as if they were monologs by various characters from Andromeda. Go me. Woot.

Batman: The Dark Knight. A Joker Phenomenon

Feel free to read this only after you've seen the movie. If you haven't yet, you should. It was awesome.

So in the middle of the ocean, on an ocean liner, in the pool, on a floaty, a man chokes on his cocktail and dies.... This shouldn't be funny.

Watching The Dark Knight I kept experiencing a similar phenomenon. Joker--SPOILER ALERT--was in this movie. And he--SPOILER ALERT--did things. It kept happening that these things were really quite funny. But it was hard to laugh at them. One wished to--one saw the humor. But, you see, he is, the Joker--especially this one--such a sick, twisted, psychopathic bastard, that everything he did just seemed too dispicable for any half-way decent human being to find any humor in it. So I sat there, they had Joker do something on the screen, and the laughs were sort of half-assed, because we audience members were clearly embarrassed to find these things funny.

Remarkable, awesome phenomenon.

Anansi the Movie

Mark Knopfler gets to write the sound track for Anansi's movie.

I'm thinking about three things in the context of the Anansi story--aside from the actual writing parts, three things. I'm thinking of what I'm going to change Anansi's name to. I think mentore made a good point when she pointed out that people, even if they didn't make a point to, would powerpointpresent/make connections between my Anansi and other Anansi depictions. The reason I chose that name originally was because I was introduced to stories of Anansi wherein he was most emphatically described as a storyteller, and I wanted to write a story about a storyteller. Thus far being a storyteller is a big part of Anansi's character, as I see him, and it plays on his decisions a great deal through the story as far as I've written it. However there hasn't been a lot of depiction of the storyteller aspect of his character.

I'm going to change his name. Until the end of this first draft, however, it'll stay the same. But I've started thinking about it. I'm thinking Diego at the moment.

I'm also thinking about the title of the story. Originally, the title of the story was Anansi the Fringe King, which, again, is a big part of Anansi's character in my head. But, again, not heavily depicted. Which was something, I don't know, but I must have thought of that early on since I changed the title to what it is now. But I keep saying the title and tripping over it. There's insufficient flowage. I think flowage has something to be said toward catchiness. I like catchy titles. But, again, I'm keeping the title how it is until I finish with the draft I'm on. I want something, eventually, that evokes claustrophobia, wanting to break out, and dampness, and darkness, and sadness, and hope, and glimmeringnessousness, and Graffiti's character at the same time.

The other thing that I'm thinking about is Anansi. I haven't put much of any physical description of him in the story so far. I have a pretty clear image of him in my mind, and because there haven't been, really, any complaints about me leaving out physical descriptions of him from any you pirates I suppose you folks must have an idea what he might look like as well. And I'm sort of curious how you do see him, because even if it doesn't really play into the plot, if you're totally going in the wrong direction with him then the next go-round I'll have to make something to see.

I'm hungry...

Personallity

Hey everybody in the world! Find somebody between the ages of nine and fifteen and remember how people are supposed to act! Yegawds. I've had it up to here--this high--with adults. You're a bunch of stinkers.

And when I say "somebody" I mean one somebody. Not some group or another. Sheeshers.