I went to work, I came home. Nothing much was done except some reading, and taking of notes. Nothing further with "Love Stinks". I cannot get warm.
Almost forgot about going to Payless right after work. The lentils had too bitter a taste, so I got a can of creamed corn.
I did talk with the attorney about Dad's trust, and there was to be something in the email this afternoon. Instead, there was nothing. I am annoyed.
The crock pot seemed to be taking forever. I did not notice the cleaning crew had unplugged it. No lentils, just hummus and pita bread.
Items read on Thursday from The Times Literary Supplement:
The dark poem of antiquity: A new translation of a ‘baffling and brilliant’ Greek tragedy by Matthew Ward
This wonderful translation will bring Lycophron’s poem to the wider audience it deserves. It is the great account of Cassandra (in many ways a defining voice for our time), offering a powerful depiction of a mind broken by, but nevertheless attempting to speak, its certain knowledge of the future.
Murder will speak: The author of the first Hamlet and the real-life assassination of the Duke of Urbino by DENNIS MCCARTHY AND JUNE SCHLUETER
Moreover, if the author of the source play originally wrote “The Murder of Gonzago”, then one does not have to posit further improbable scenarios for how Shakespeare came across the story. It seems unlikely that some garrulous traveller met Shakespeare in a London tavern and recounted to him all the details of the duke and duchess of Urbino, including particulars about the duke’s murder and burial, but then never discussed the murder with anyone else. But it truly strains credulity to suppose that this traveller went so far as to describe the painting he saw in Italy, Francesco Maria’s suit of armour, the truncheon he was holding and the helmet behind him with the beaver up. Since we know that Shakespeare used a source play, isn’t it more likely that the traveller to Pesaro we do know about – Thomas North – was the one who wrote it?
Queen of the frontier: How people and the land shaped each other in Willa Cather’s fiction by Maria Margaronis.
Setting aside the complex question of whether Cather was an antimodernist in practice as well as by profession, I would say that what was most real to her was the world of the senses, people and the land, and how they shape each other. At the heart of The Professor’s House is a first-person narrative by Tom Outland, the professor’s former student, about how he found a way into the heart of the Blue Mesa in Cather’s beloved southwest; his months spent exploring the ruins of the ancient cliff dwellings there; his bitter disappointment at the Smithsonian’s lack of interest and his partner’s deceit; and the peace that he eventually finds alone on the mesa’s top, “a close neighbour to the sun”. I agree with Benjamin Taylor that this may be the “mightiest” thing the author ever wrote. But to me it’s not an expression of “the essence of Cather’s far-reaching humanism: a reverence for the conquest of barbarous existence by beauty-making civilization”. It’s a far more mysterious tale about how landscape shapes our inner and outer lives; about the archaeology of memory and what remains unfathomable; about loss and the power of writing as both a tool for discovery and a ritual of return.
Little woman: Shedding light on Louisa May Alcott’s remarkable life by Alison Kelly.
When I walked down to McClure's, I saw a car and a trademark I had never seen before pulling out. Equus was the brand. This is running around Jay County (if I saw the county number correctly - it was 36)?
The rest of the night was spent addressing Christmas cards.
Saturday:
I overslept. When I did get up, I ached and was still tired. Since I wanted to get a cake for the Christmas party, I had to go downtown. The downtown post office is closed on Saturdays, so I will put off mailing my cards until Monday. I decided not to go to the main post office - it is too far off of the bus routes, and Saturday's routes are not all on the half hour.
I ate my way through the downtown, sort of. At The Bird Dog Café, I had a brownie. Then potatoes and oatmeal at another place (its name escapes my memory!) I stopped at The Downtown Stand for garlic and cilantro and pita bread; this saved me time by not going out to Payless. The food at both restaurants was excellent.
Back here, I still had no pep. I wrote my ride and begged off church for tomorrow. I wrote two blog posts, political stuff. This alleviates my temper.
I started adding notes for this post.
From PC Magazine, Game Over: The Tech That Died in 2023. I only used the lite Gmail, most of it I had not heard of. I am not sure what that says about me.
Uncanny Magazine Issue 55 Cover and Table of Contents!
I have put off reading several things, including Uncanny Magazine's winning stories. I chose Chelsea Sutton's End of Play. Now, I have a crush on Ms. Sutton. A story of love and ghosts and vulnerability and writing told with single-line paragraphs and stage directions. It points out to me how little I do write openly about emotions.
From Write or Die's best, I came upon Like Saline and Sugar by Suzanne Grove. A creepy story of better living through chemicals and nostalgia as sedation, and a past that is too ugly for a return.
I notice both use the present tense. Both are told in the first person.
Speaking of Write or Die, I got a rejection from them:
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to read your work. Although your story is not the best fit for Write or Die Magazine at this time, we hope you will submit your work again soon.
As writers, we know how hard this process can be. Remember that a rejection is not a reflection of your work—there are so many circumstances that contribute to a rejection or an acceptance. Keep doing the work. Keep submitting!
Please note that due to the volume of submissions we receive, we cannot provide feedback as to why a story was not accepted.
Cheering you on,
Suzanne Grove and The Write or Die Magazine TeamFiction Editor & Editorial Consultant
Atticus Review #6 is out. There I read Dry Bed by Alexis Macnab. I suppose it is to be classified as a weird tale. The pacing sets up a mystery, told by a narrator pretty much in the first-person, sets the emotional stakes.
Lol - my monitoring software will not let me read The Baffler's article on AI smut, but did let in to read No Sex for You. The former may be a solution to the problem that brought me under the supervision of monitoring software. Such dangerous things to keep me safe from. May you do better. Of the latter, I found little of interest or as much interest as I have in Zuckerberg's Meta and its ilk. Then I ran into this paragraph:
Zuckerberg, in his attempts to build a metaverse as sexless and banal as possible, appears to be trying to break Rule 34. His vision of the future has no sharp edges, no dark places, no erotic frisson. Supposedly, Meta is working on photorealistic faces, but for now, the avatars available in Meta’s environments are soft and Pixar-like, with big, childlike heads. They sit smiling at each other across a conference table, or they blast off into space on adorable rocket ships. Everything is nauseatingly cute and childlike, and yet it’s not meant for children. Nothing is truly funny or weird, or potentially dangerous in any respect. The sample animation Meta released suggests that it may be possible to someday customize yourself into a giant robot, if you like, but only a cute, funny robot, not a spiky, scary one. The robot sits in a conference room and does his work because he is an adult.
What is the result of such a thing? A more malleable workforce? Fritz Lang's Metropolis is my head. A return to Victorian morals and Victorian hypocrisy? That our billionaire tech geniuses may also be underdeveloped and socially deficient persons comes to mind, too.
THE ATTICUS REVIEW READING LIST has also been updated.
I moved on to Five Things Your Characters Need by Melissa Donovan (Writing Forward). These are five things I need to struggle with:
1. Goals
What is the point of any story if the protagonist isn’t working toward a goal? It can be a simple goal, like getting into the best college or falling in love. It can be a meaningful goal, like making a deep and lasting personal transformation toward becoming a better person. It could be a momentous goal, like saving the planet...
2. External Conflict
It’s only interesting to watch characters work toward a goal if achieving it is a struggle. The external conflict might be the cause of the goal (aliens are invading, so we must save the planet). But external conflict can also interfere with the goal (the protagonist wants a promotion, and her best friend wants the same promotion). External conflict can also change the goal (a high school graduate was about to study engineering at college, but now he must fight in the front lines of a war, and he wants to survive)....
3. Internal Struggle
An internal struggle pits personal values, goals, conflicts, or challenges against each other. A scientist developing a cure for a devastating disease stumbles upon a formula for a virus that would cause a pandemic. The company she works for is actively working to produce biological weapons. Her goal is to cure this disease, but her moral compass urges her to keep the formula secret, lest it be used as a biological weapon....
4. Strengths, Skills, and Assets
In order to survive the challenges that a story throws at its characters, they must possess strengths, skills, and assets. These can be personal strengths like fortitude or loyalty, or they can be skills and abilities, like hand-to-hand combat or hacking. Material assets, such as personal wealth, are also useful in many situations....
5. Flaws and Weaknesses
A character can’t truly be human (or human-like) without flaws and weaknesses. As the saying goes, nobody’s perfect. Characters must reflect this truth. But more importantly, characters’ flaws and weaknesses often provide essential story fodder in the form of setbacks. In a political thriller, a senatorial candidate’s weakness might be a secret from his past, which, if exposed, would destroy his career. In a romance, if the protagonist’s flaw is that she’s indecisive, she might let the love of her life get away because she can’t make up her mind....
Southern Humanities Review issue 56 no. 4 is out. I skimmed the opening of Rachel Talbot's Wild Animals of Las Vegas.
Again, there is the first-person narrator, and there is an emotional cost in the story.
Craft also had a contest and “Blackbird” by Chinonyelum Anyichie was one of the winners.
A second-person perspective, but once more emotions are on the line from the first paragraph. Oh, and the danger of words, I would say.
The Sun is publishing material on the Palestinians. Around noon, the local Socialists were having a protest on the city hall grounds. Too anti-Israel for me. I say a plague on Hamas and on Netanyahu. The Palestinians deserve better than what they have gotten, the hostages should be home, and Israel needs peace. All of which is more complicated than what can be handled by the students of Harvard, or American politicians. Do follow the above link to The Sun.
The Library of America's year in review is here.
And about story structure, I find relief in Lincoln Michel's Structure and Its Discontents:
For writers, I think is useful to think about different structures to remind yourself that there isn’t just one way to think about these things. Hollywood screenplay guides can at times be ludicrously prescriptive, but other conceptual structures like kishōtenketsu exist around the world. The real question is what structure is generative for you in any given project? If you want to decenter conflict and thinking in terms of “development and twist” instead of “rising action and climax” helps you do that, that’s great. If a given project is better thought of as two acts, or three, or four, five, or more, go for it. And if you’re feeling your work is getting stale relying on one structure, ditch it and try a new framework.
***
Structure is only constricting if we let it be. I think it is quite helpful to learn about different story models from around the world—and even more useful to read widely and deeply from across cultures and time periods. Take what interests you and is productive for your work. Cobble together your own structure idea from various parts. If it’s not working, ditch it. Try something new. Read some more. Find something new to try. That’s all we can ever do.
It is 7:24. I have eaten lentils twice. I have to say, the teriyaki sauce did more than the corn. Barbie is on HBO, I will take time to watch some of it, and may listen to more. I am too tired to do anymore with my email. My eyes do not care much for more reading this computer screen,
No idea where the cat is. One day he will not come back. I suppose this may be that day. So it goes.
Sunday morning.
I fought the alarm again. Still, up early to attack email. I replied to a message from Charlie Gibbons. Read two book reviews.
The cat showed up last night, and is here now. It is damp and chilly, and I am not going to Fishers. I feel marginally better than yesterday.
Barbie was immensely fun. Rather more complex than the reviews led me to believe. There is a mother-daughter story here, maybe two. Rhea Perlman was a wonder. Will Ferrell was a valuable asset. It is much of a critique of capitalism and politics than I expected. Even a perfect place can be oppressive; those who are enlightened despots, remain despots. Which I do not think detracts from its feminist message - it is the women who repair their own polity. I thought of The Star Wars franchise - what if someone were to take it on in a less reverential manner? Probably more interesting than the last trilogy. (I do think Rian Johnson was onto something with his cranky Luke Skywalker.)
I finished the night reading Carlos Fuentes. He remains amazing.
The goal today - a trip to McClure's for more caffeine, more lentils, attacking "Love Stinks", maybe start reorganizing my papers, and laundry. It is a long day. I am not optimistic.
I still have not recorded my story of the schmuck from Wednesday night. Maybe, I will try to get to that.
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