Author: jkonrath

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Death of DIVX

Summer Rain is almost done. I shouldn’t be saying stuff like that, but I now have one of the most complete drafts of the book I’ve ever seen. There are still many small problems, and I’m not really into a lot of the writing in the final third. But there are no major holes in the story, and you could read the entire thing from start to finish without hitting a major construction spot. Now I’m going to sit and read the thing from start to finish a few times and try to iron out any small mistakes I can find.

I’m thinking of publishing a few dozen copies of the book and either giving them away to the people who helped me, and/or selling a few of them in some sort of limited, numbered run. If you think that sounds cool, let me know and I’ll think about it more.

The big thing on the horizon is Rumored to Exist. I’m trying to figure out a way to attack it, become immersed in it, and get rolling with it. I looked at all of it the other day, and I’ve realized that I really, really like 20% of it and the rest of it isn’t that great. And the current draft is only half as long as it needs to be. So there will be major cuts, major revisions, and a lot of new material. I’m excited, and I think this will be my big mark on, well whatever I’m trying to leave a mark on.

DIVX is dead! Can you believe it? I am getting into this DVD thing, especially the director’s commentaries. I just ordered a few more, but I really wish I could get a copy of Slacker with commentary. Or Naked Lunch.

Okay, time to start my day.

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Final SR push

I guess it’s been a few weeks. A lot has happened, but I still find it difficult to regularly update my journal. I’ve been finding it hard to get anything done lately. I’m hoping to turn that around this week, but I can’t really predict or control my work output. At least it isn’t 100 degrees anymore – it’s actually a little cold and rainy today, which might make it easier for me to stay inside at the computer.

Summer Rain came to a halt about a week ago, but I’m slowly picking it up again. Book two has been impossible in places, mostly because of dialogue I can’t write. I tried to get back on Rumored to Exist for a bit, but now I’ve realized that I absolutely need to finish this thing this summer, or it will stagnate forever. So yesterday, I took a bunch of notes and tried to divide up the work as much as possible, so I’ll be able to clean up everything unrelated to this pain-in-the ass dialogue that’s giving me such a bad case of writer’s block.

(The dialogue has to do with a very brief relationship with a woman. I can’t write for her well, and it makes me think I should somehow change her or drop the whole thing. It’s very easy for me to write for some people, but with her, it’s almost impossible. It’ll happen, sooner or later.)

I bought a DVD player. I haven’t been playing with it non-stop, so it’s not the cause of my problems. It’s fun, though. I have about 13 movies and I’ve got about 10 more on the way. It’s pretty incredible, especially on the movies with a bunch of extra stuff, but I’m somewhat disappointed with the selection of movies currently available. I hope more cool stuff comes out eventually.

It seems like there’s much more to tell, but I really need to get back to work…

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1992

It’s still hot here. It is amazing how many times I had to deal with much worse heat than this in my past: the factory jobs, the Indiana summers, my top-floor, no AC apartment in Seattle during the August crawl of 90 degree weather. I’m a complete wimp now. Either I’m getting old, or I have no sense of perception.

I “finished” book 1 of Summer Rain. I “say that” because there are still pieces I don’t like and I’m sure I’ve made some bonehead spelling errors in there. But I’ve messed with these 15 chapters so much, that I don’t want to touch them anymore. The next 15 chapters are watching their intestines spit out of a gaping hole in their abdomen while I’m giving the first 15 a pedicure. I need to go where the real work is needed. And I need to finish this book, and go on to the next.

(If you want to critique or read the book, email me. I can always use another opinion.)

I want to finish Summer Rain, but I want to spend the summer doing it. I enjoy working on this little opus (little – it’s 1200 pages) and it’s a very dear part of my history. Many others from that era need to read the book, to rememberthe times we had together and to see Bloomington in 1992 again. But I know it would never sell, and it’s a first book. So I need to get it done and go on to something which will wow the agents and the publishers and satisfy a greater cross-section of fans. I don’t mean selling out or anything. But Rumored to Exist, the second half-done book in the queue, has satistfied many more fans who think it is genius and funny. I think when it is done, and its sister book is halfway done, some publisher will think it’s the next big deal and get it out there for people to see. I’m not 100% confident, but it’s a decent view to hold when trying to figure out what to work on and how to ration my time.

If anybody ever asked (nobody has, as I’m never on Charlie Rose or NPR or whatever) what my favorite year was, I would say 1992. Everything went wrong that year. I lost a scholarship. I lost my car. I lost three girlfriends and two other women who were mind-numbingly incredible sexual partners, but not girlfriends. I lost a walkman that was like my only child. I lost my first CD player. Me and Ray Miller lost all of our money to a crack dealer in a bad part of Chicago. I lost my mind, many times. But it was my first real year of living. For all of the lows, the highs were incredible. Every one of those problems I mentioned had a flipside that was unsurpassable. I had a scholarship, a car, three girlfriends, two other women into mind-numbingly incredible sex, etc. And I wrote about this whole thing in Summer Rain, or at least the summer part of it. It’s hard to explain, but 1992 was sort of my default year.

And I’ve babbled about 1992 a lot in my writing, and in here. So I’ll stop. It’s still hot as hell. I was going to stay up and work on SR for a few more hours, but maybe sleep is a better option.

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Phantom Menace

It has been hotter than hell here. And the top floors of old buildings aren’t conducive to rapid cooling or anything. I shouldn’t bitch, because it’s starting to cool off now, and I’m sure things will be peachy. Nothing like last summer in Seattle, where I had to get drunk every night just to get any sleep.

I saw Phantom Menace twice over the extended holiday weekend, and you’re probably expecting me to say that I loved it and I have been waiting since I was a kid, or that it was completely stupid and that George Lucas should shove Jar Jar Binks up his ass, along with his fucking ewok-esque charaters obviously added to the movie to market to 8 year old kids. Well, it’s a little of both, and it’s the biggest and most disproportionate list of pros and cons that I could even list for a movie. Let me try:

Pro

The joy of watching a new Star Wars film. the fact that i had all of the toys when i was a kid. the music. the sound. the design of some of the new cities. a lot of the lightsaber dueling. the characters that were in the other 3 movies that appear in this one. the way ewan macgregor sounds and moves very much like a young alec guiness. the silver SR-71-looking ship. a lot of the pod race. saying pulp fiction lines during samuel l jackson’s parts. the part where yoda makes a “mmmmmm” sound and it almost sounds like he’s going to imitate homer simpson. natalie portman, when she doesn’t have on all the makeup. there’s probably more, but i’ll stop here.

Con

The entire movie is marketed toward eight-year old boys. Jar Jar Binks. Anakin Skywalker. The killer droids. The pacing. The length. The somewhat cryptic governmental subplot. Anakin Skywalker flying in space and destroying the space station, allegedly by accident. Darth Maul’s total lack of personality. (Darth Vader was a prick, but at least he talked to you during the duel.) The utter predictability of certain plot points. Almost every animated creature. The lack of more personal combat, instead of huge combat scenarios. (A bunch of one CGI character against a bunch of another – who cares?) Natalie Portman with all of that shit on her face, acting like she just overdosed on quaaludes. Anakin Skywalker.

Okay, enough about that.

I am still writing, working on Summer Rain. I shouldn’t say that, because I didn’t do anything over the weekend. But I’m very close to finishing the first 15 chapters and putting them out there for review. If you’re interested and you can give me some feedback, let me know and I can set you up.

I finished HST’s Rum Diary, and it really hit the spot. I’m now reading Slaughterhouse Five, or at least I pulled it down from the shelves, and the next time I get a chance to read, that’s what I’ll pick up. I saw the movie on Bravo the other night, and it got me interested in it again. My third book, which I’ll work on when I finish Rumored to Exist (which I’ll work on when I finish Summer Rain) is about time travel, and involves part of a premise from SH5, although I didn’t realize it until later. Writing a time travel book is a bitch, because you need to come up with your own entire set of rules and stick to it. And everyone will tell you that your set of rules is wrong, because there’s no perfect set. But here’s a little trade secret: IT’S FICTION! If you don’t like my set of time travel rules (and most SciFi types won’t), then go fuck yourself. Write your own book, and make everyone at your Harlan Ellison fan club proud.

I’m buying a DVD player. I already have three movies: Pulp Fiction, Blade Runner, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I have the player picked out and everything, but I have a temporary financial logjam involving a couple of check deposits in transit. I could order it now, but I should do the right thing and let everything settle, just in case something stupid happens and I don’t really have the money. (Sounds dumb, but a few weeks ago I mailed a deposit, and forgot to put a stamp on it. Fucked everything by about two weeks.)

Tired. Hot. Got a chapter to fix before bedtime. Sweet dreams.

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Leyner panel

I went to a panel discussion at NYU tonight, mostly to see Mark Leyner. It was supposed to be about blasphemy, and what you can’t say in America anymore. However, it was moderated by this idiot law professor, and everyone on the board, except for Leyner and Todd Solondz, the director of Welcome to the Dollhouse, were completely stupid. The moderator kept asking these dumb theoretical questions about legal situations which had nothing to do with the greater ethical situation which we were led to believe was the topic. When they opened the floor for questions, one person had the balls to say that the whole thing was stupid and explained that they should have discussed the censorship methods really used to dumb down America “for the children”, like big corporations and unneeded legislation. He was immediately attacked by one of the idiots on the board for being an anarchist. After that, the whole thing fell apart, and the people asking questions were clearly outpatients from a schitzophrenia clinic who had lost their medication. It was very cool to finally see Leyner, but it would’ve been much cooler in different circumstances.

I was going to write more, but I have a splitting headache.

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AfterStep, AfterSeattle

I have been editing Summer Rain. That means I am reading every chapter about a million times and trying to find the most minute of errors. I figure if I can do about a chapter a day, I will be okay. I also figure there’s no way I will keep up that pace for more than a week.

I went for a long walk today, about two miles round trip. I live vaguely near 181st and Broadway, so I headed south of there for about 20 blocks and then back. During the trip, I listened to the Henry Rollins album Come in and Burn in its entirety. Although this album never caught me that much when it came out about two years ago, it made more sense while actually walking the streets of New York City. The whole album is about the desolation and confusion of the big city, and I guess it never hit me while I was driving from Denny’s to Denny’s in Seattle.

Speaking of Seattle, I was watching the show Frazier tonight. I know it isn’t really filmed in Seattle, and in general TV writers don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about, but it felt strange to hear all of the vague references to Seattle geography and instantly know where all of them were. They didn’t throw any tough ones out – the U-District, Fremont, etc. but it reminded me that I’m not there anymore.

There are many times when I don’t really realize that I have left Seattle, or at least times when I think I’m still on some kind of extended vacation and my apartment will be waiting for me just the way I left it, even though everything from my apartment is here. Sometimes, there is the overwhelming feeling that I am in New York – it’s hard to be standing in Union Square or Penn Station and think anything else. But when I’m staring at a computer screen and listening to the same old CDs, it’s possible to enter this stateless feeling where I’m working hard and I think “after this chapter, I’m going to hop in the VW and go to Safeway.” It doesn’t happen so frequently that it is dehabilitating, but sometimes it freaks me out.

I’m still having trouble finding a writer’s group or any other writers around here. I realize that’s as stupid as saying “I’m having trouble finding any skyscrapers around here” but seriously, all of the things I’ve found on the web or in free catalogs are the 10-week beginner’s course thing. It’s the same deal everywhere – the teacher spends a couple of months telling you what to do and how to write an outline, blah blah blah. I want to meet with other writers and critique chapters and stuff. I guess if I look around enough, I’ll find something. Besides, I’m getting a lot done working on my own.

Ever mess with the AfterStep clock? It’s pretty neat, I like it. I’m too chicken to go with the whole AfterStep window manager, but the clock is neat.

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Raining, editing ‘Rain

It’s raining today. I slept in, and now I’m having throuble getting my day started. I don’t really feel like doing anything, but I should get motivated and write. Some projects are slowly getting finished, leaving me with only a couple of major things left. I wrote my column for the next issue of Metal Curse, and finished a user guide for a company, plus that big trip essay is done, so now it’s just down to another freelance client, and Summer Rain.

I’ve begun a full edit of Summer Rain. I’m starting from chapter one, and moving forward at a crawl, to find all of the problems. The biggest problem is that the three books are stylistically very different, and I need to smooth that over. There are also some holes in book 2, and there are still structural problems in book 3. After some recent reviews of the last 15 chapters, I’ve realized that things need to be greatly restructured to make the story interesting and believable. And the dialogue in book 1 isn’t as great. So there’s lots of crap to be done. I’ve been pecking away at it, mostly reading and reviewing stuff, and there are parts of the book that I really like. I hope I can make the whole thing like those favorite parts.

I’ve temporarily given up on reading Henry Miller. I’ll probably get back to it, but his sometimes long-winded style is not what I need to be reading while I work on this. I’ve switched off to Hunter S. Thompson’s _The Rum Diary_, which is a long-lost novel he wrote back in 1959. It’s an autobigraphical fiction piece, which has the same first-novel feel as my book, or Michael’s Sunclipse novel. It’s helpful to see how he did a few things, like how he handled pacing and time problems. I just started, but I will probably finish the thing in a day or two.

Thinking about buying a laptop. If you have any tips or leads, please let me know. It won’t happen for a few weeks, but maybe I’ll go to the newsstand and get a Computer Shopper to salivate all over.

It’s almost 12:30 and I haven’t even showered yet today. I better get moving.

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Rosy Crucifiction

I’ve decided that if I ready Henry Miller’s Rosy Crucifixion trilogy, many of the short-term wrongs will be righted in my life. I’ve been looking for something to make me think about writing and somehow think about where I’m at right now. It’s hard to explain beyond that, but I’ve read the first 30 or 40 pages of Sexus today, and it makes a lot of sense to me. Miller starts as a person who has written but who doesn’t write, but is told that he should. It’s in the context of a torrid love affair, and it makes him analyze what writing is, and why he should or shouldn’t proceed. It’s a good dialogue for me to ponder at this point. Plus, reading someone else’s prose for a while usually helps mine. So we’ll see – I might give up by page 47.

I got the three books as a present for being in Bill Perry’s wedding. That was the summer of 1994, and I read them over the last half of that year. I got started on Miller with Tropic of Capricorn at the beginning of ’94, around my birthday. It was when I was starting my transformation from whatever I was to writer. I guess it’s good to get back into his stuff, because I feel another major transformation will be required to get all of Seattle out of my sytem and really become a full-time writer.

I’ve been dealing with a strange depression, which partially has to do with me never leaving the house. I guess I had that when I was in Seattle, but I was so burrowed into my apartment, it felt good to stay in all day surrounded with my books. Part of the depression also probably has to do with not having a car. Because in Seattle, when I never left my house, I would make the 3am run to 7-Eleven for a Slurpee and then drive for 20 minutes or an hour, just for the sake of driving. Now that I am a pedestrian and deathfully afraid of getting lost or mugged or both when I do anything other than walk to the McDonald’s or Radio Shack down the street, it has begun burrowing away at me.

I have been busy – two clients, the book, the trip story, the journals, reading, and assorted cleaning/straightening/organizing which I never seem to get done. But it’s not like when you go to work for 8 hours, and then sit at home for x hours. I guess I’m just whining and babbling about all of this, but it is really starting to take a toll on me. I’ve been waiting for that magic transition period to end so everything is correct and I can do what I planned on doing before I left, which was write full-time and spend the rest of the remaining time enjoying myself. Right now, I’m not writing or enjoying myself, and that’s the problem.

I feel better today than I did yesterday, but I still feel like I was hit by a car. I’m hoping that 12 hours of sleep will knock more of this out of me. Until then, I’ve got a ton of mail to answer and I should do some more reading.

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Two clients, two books, no waiting

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this, and my medium-term memory is completely gone, but I’ve taken on a second tech writing client. It’s a sort of whirlwind project, writing a manual in the next two weeks. I’m still getting started with the software and everything, but the framework of the thing is zipping along. The reason I mention this is that with two clients, I have virtually no time to think about other stuff. It’s good that Summer Rain is currently resting, as I will be very busy for the next few weeks.

I’m at a state where everything I touch breaks. This happens here and there, but it has been fairly constant since I arrived here. I’m still waiting for this to go away so I can… so I can something. so I can complete my sentences. This journal project is useless at this point. I can’t compose my thoughts when I have to pre-guess what I’m typing over a delay that ranges from five seconds to five minutes per character. I can’t compose my thoughts, period. My paper journal has gone completely south – I’m lucky to update it weekly, and then it is a maze of confusion, wondering if I’ve added some certain daily activities event in the story. And my writing on the trip piece of shit has been mostly “I was x” “I did y” “I drove more” kind of shit.

I honestly need to stop writing, period, until the desire to write comes back. I need to do nothing but sleep and play nintendo for weeks, months, years, until my journals and my other work become creative again. But I can’t do that. I have work that needs to be completed, and I know that if I stop writing, I will just beat myself up for not writing until I return. And if I stop, I will feel that I have absolutely no purpose in life, and I will spend the remainder of my savings on some idiotic hobby to give myself purpose. And I can’t do that.

So maybe I need to do some exercises. Write something different. Read some books about writing. I don’t know. I’ll figure it out eventually.

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Fermenting Rain

I have completed a draft of the last third of Summer Rain. It took a lot of stalling for me to type that sentence, at least wouthout qualifying it somehow (“mostly completed”,”shitty draft”,etc.) I’m not happy with the writing in the third part of the book – it’s very repetitive, simple, and I don’t think it has as much significance. But the third part of the book has never been written entirely. While the first chapters have been written and rewritten a million times, there were holes in the ending that were left in a skeletal state ever since I started this disaster back in 1995. Maybe with time and further refinements, I will be more comfortable with book 3 and its problems. Maybe I will have to completely rewrite it, or at least add some new plot elements and scale back the stuff that seems to drag on forever.

I should mention that Summer Rain in its entirety is available for review and comment to discriminating readers. I say that because the whole thing is 237,000 words long and I can’t throw it on a public web site and let the world read it if I ever try to publish the thing. But if you want to read it and let me know what you think, drop me a line and I can give you a password to download everything.

Work is beginning to pile up. I have two freelance tech writing clients, and a couple of other leads. Summer Rain can sit and ferment for a bit, but I’ve still got this damned trip travelogue thing. I think it’s 4 or 5 days into the 14 total, but it’s still going slow. At least I got the pictures scanned, thanks to Marie, so I can plug those in once I get the thing on the web. Soon, soon.

I just read an excellent bio on Bukowski – I would tell you the author and title, but I already put it away and I don’t want to get up. It’s the new one that just came out in hardcover – I found it at Tower, so it shouldn’t be that obscure. It’s the best bio of him I’ve seen, considering all of the half-ass attempts made. It’s the first third-party Bukowski book I’ve seen that was longer than a pamphlet, and it’s very well written. The problem with Buk is that his stories and poems were about 90% accurate, and the other 10% has been very elusive. Everyone has speculated on details of his life like finances, and it’s good to see a realistic account of this stuff.

I just started a 12M download and typing is not an option anymore. I guess it’s time to go do some other work.