Tag: short story

Posted in Uncategorized, writing

Two Books and a Bad Drawing

Posted on by alidware

Keeping to my promise from days ago, I read some more of both Hollow Kingdom and Modern Ethics in 77 Arguments. Here’s where I stand:

Dear God, someone burn Hollow Kingdom.

Dear God, someone give me more of 77 Arguments.

Let me explain.

Hollow Kingdom

I’ve started editing this book as I read, crossing out extraneous sentences and verbose explanation, things the readers can infer while we read the book. That is the area which most infuriates me about reading this. Because, the thing is, were that taken care of by the editor, this book would have been close to groundbreaking. There aren’t really any books advertised that describe the apocalypse from the animal’s point of view, and I haven’t read any, so this could have been a very new, very intriguing topic.

For example, instead of saying “he blinks” or “his blinking” or “he blinked”, she says “his nictitating membrane licking his eye.”

Now, I understand the need for varied vocabulary, but not when it takes away from readability and believability. Some advice: just because the ‘dictionary word of the day’ is relevant to your writing, doesn’t mean you should use it.

S.T also calls the crows he doesn’t like “ass trumpets” and I’m just over these silly little names. I would have laughed at ass trumpet when I was 14. I won’t at 25. This isn’t advertised as a kids’ novel or a YA novel either.

I did get a tickle our of the bear cubs being called fuzzy potatoes. If she’s stopped there for that whole chapter and not said ass trumpets or any other silly names, I would have been okay. Fuzzy potatoes passes.

So far I’m only on chapter 8. S.T and Dennis the Dog are embarking on their own travels to seek the wise Onida and find the reason why the MoFo’s (humans, remember?) are acting so strangely. S.T wants to find the cure for his beloved Big Jim. Dennis went after a bear that came out of the library and got side-swiped by a huge claw. Other crows and birds came to their rescue, and S.T has a bit of an attitude with them; we learn that S.T’s wings are clipped and he’s been more of a human pet than a wild crow. The other birds refer to humans a The Hollow Ones, and S.T doesn’t like that either. There’s a whole conversation about S.T going to find Onida and then he rides off on Dennis’ back like fucking Clint Eastwood or something.

I don’t know what Chapter 8 will bring, but if it’s any more silly names, I’m flipping a table.

Modern Ethics in 77 Arguments

I read two essays, but the one that sucked me in was How Should We Respond to “Evil” by Steven Paulikas. The line ” . . . the notion that evil can be ‘destroyed’ is an ethical version of a fool’s errand.” is what caught my attention.

The subject of this essay, although written in 2016, is the Sept. 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. This goes for both sides when I repeat, “how can we be sure something is evil and not simply opposed to our interests?” For example, the tragic 3,000 death in the 11th attacks were countered with 460,000 deaths in Iraq, and that includes more American soldier deaths than civilian deaths at the WTC. We are tying to “make order out of chaos”, as Paulikas puts it. What did we solve in meeting murder with murder? What did we prove? Paulikas asks, “can evil ever fully be destroyed . . .?”

He describes Paul Ricoeur, another philosopher who suggests the solution isn’t to identify evil, but to “respond to it appropriately”, that the real pain of evil isn’t the act, but “the experience of the victim.”

I would agree.

And so to bust down the doors on evil’s house, to ransack his place, to steal his jewelry and kill his dog isn’t honoring the experience of the victim, it’s creating more victims; It is, in itself, evil, to respond violently to evil.

We consider these types of responses as justified. When someone murders three people and we put them to death, we consider that justice for the victims when in reality we’ve only created more; the family of the murderer who may not have known that side of him/her, mourn their loss as well. We’ve circulated loss. Congratulations.

That’s not to say punishment isn’t needed. But that’s exactly Ricoeur’s point: we need to respond appropriately. We must focus on the victims. Help them, support them, lift them up, and let the one who perpetrated the evil live within his perpetrated evil. If that means life in prison or banishment or whatever, then fine, but let’s not put the focus on the evil committed. Let’s put the focus on the victims who suffer. And if the punishment is indeed death as in many places, let’s put the focus then on the victims we’ve created, the family, and know that we can mourn loss with them without feeling sorry for the murderer.

I think this is a touchy, uncomfortable subject for some people because we’re raised behind the mythological versions of good and evil: angels vs demons, good gods vs destructive gods, and we think these things are black and white even when, time and time again, the world shows us the blurred lines. And so friends, I implore you, look beyond what you’ve been taught. People are not simply good or evil, they are an amalgamation of sinful, prideful, grateful, decent, destructive, beautiful–and much more.

I also implore you to read this book. Some of the essays are a little wack, but most of them are quite enlightening.

Until next time.

Don’t forget to hit that follow button and join me on Instagram @alilivesagain or twitter @ThePhilopsychotic. I appreciate you.

Posted in Community, Late Night Thoughts, Uncategorized, writing

Late Night Show: Let’s talk about cliche characters.

Posted on by alidware

Hey everyone, welcome to another rendition of “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing up so late.”

I do know, actually. I got three hours of sleep the previous night because of a bad dream, went through the day normally, worked out, came home, and fell asleep at 5pm. I awoke at 2am, refreshed, to find the dark world at my disposal, and I must say I’m not disappointed. There’s a quietness in night and early morning that swells my soul sometimes, in the same way one swells when the smell of good food passes by.

What do you enjoy most about working on your manuscript or short stories or poems or whatever it is you pour your heart into? Sometimes for me the editing is tedious, and then I read little snippets of my work that make me say “damn, I wrote that?” and the process feels worthwhile.

I’m trying to figure out how to sum up my work-in-progress without sounding cliche. I’ve purposefully chose to write with a typical character base in mind for irony. Eventually I want some beta readers, so I’ve finally decided to come out of the writer’s closet and tell people I’m writing a novel. The first question out of everyone’s mouth, with their stupid, curious little eyes twinkling, is always “what is it about?”

I don’t know, stuff happens, people exist, what more do you want me to say?

That’s going to be the description on the back. I’m obviously brilliant.

If you’ve written a book, or are writing one, how do you give people a synopsis without giving away too much or sounding too typical? We all want our work to be unique I guess, and maybe the fact of the matter is there’s no such thing as a unique idea anymore. We’re all just building off of each other, and that’s kind of the running theme in my work, hence the necessity of cliche base characters. But you tell people that and they lose interest.

This is why when people ask me what I write, I say “nothing much, like some short stories or whatever” because I don’t want to get into everything else I work on. I suppose I mirror my protagonist a bit, or he mirrors me; I’m not quite sure which one of us came first.

I didn’t really base it off of my life, but I pulled from some experiences because they were necessary to a few characters, basic traits like shyness or arrogance or unwavering personalities. Some characteristics of our characters have to be relatable, under stable, and predictable, or else the believability falls short and, again, people lose interest. That’s the struggle with writing a protagonist who you anticipate people won’t be fond of: you need to show that their despicable characteristics are flaws any of us could have, but do it in a way where they aren’t do despicable that they’re irredeemable. That doesn’t mean the character needs to be redeemed at the end, that’s actually more cliche than anything, but it does mean there needs to be some understanding for why the behavior or thoughts of your character are as they are.

There are very few people on Earth who would be considered horrible and nothing else. Even child predators and murderers have come from backgrounds that make you say “well, I get it but that’s no excuse for their behavior.”

Because there quite literally is no excuse for their behavior and you quite literally do get it.

There were two particular subjects I hated reading about because they always followed the same steps: murder and mental illness. The murderers haven’t always been mentally ill, I mean those categories to be separate from each other.

With murderers, the cliche is always a detective trying to find them, or a murderer narrating their sick desires.

With mental illness, the whole focus of the story is always on the mental illness.

I got tired of that.

If a character has a mental disorder, I’d prefer it’s not even mentioned. Just show it through characteristics and wrap the story around a different plot line. If you don’t have the disorder yourself, you’re going to be hard pressed trying to describe it, no matter how many lived-experience interviews you do. Sorry. And, for the love of God, don’t interview a psychologist for that. They’ll be incorrect 99% of the time.

If a character is a murderer, I’d prefer they not be driven by something like “I hate the world” or “mommy was mean to me” or “look at me being a vigilante and all.” It gets boring. There are so many other motivations besides drugs, lifestyle, trauma, abuse. Those things can be included, but they don’t have to be the reason. They could just be part of the puzzle.

I guess my book is intent on using cliches to get rid of cliches. I feel like that’s been done before, and I’m okay with that because again, we’re all building off of each other. My protagonist gets mixed up with a person who’s been following him for a reason I can’t share, and upon learning more about this stalker, he learns he will never not be stalked. No, he doesn’t die at the end. Jesus.

I guess that’s a good, quick summary.

What’s your WIP about lately? Anything juicy? Let me know.

Also, I’ve always wanted to read “John dies at the end” or whatever that book is called. Does he really die? Hollywoo stars and celebrities: What do they know? Do they know things? Let’s find out!

If you don’t know what show that’s from, we can still be friends, but like, you need to step it up.

Don’t forget to hit that follow button and join me on Instagram @alilivesagain. I don’t have friends IRL so I need internet buddies to help my depleted self-esteem. K, thanx.

Posted in Community, Uncategorized, writing

World Book Day Lies

Posted on by alidware

Serious question: is World Book Day today, March 4th, or Friday, April 23rd? Google and social media are conflicting sources of information right now. I guess they kind of always are.

Whatever day it may be, we’re going to talk more about Hollow Kingdom. I read another chapter. I’m really going chapter at a time here, guys, it’s hard. I’m stuck somewhere between absolutely despising every single word that comes from the narrator and absolutely loving some–SOME–of Butxon’s descriptions. This certainly is a book that showcases today’s type of modern fiction. A lot of contemporary authors who I’ve read, like Carmiel Banasky (The Suicide of Claire Bishop) and Dan Vyleta (Smoke) have intriguing plots with lackluster storytelling. What bothered me about The Suicide of Claire Bishop was the severe lack of understanding how delusions break. What bothered me in smoke is Vyleta could have went in so many different directions yet he went in the one he chose.

Ugh.

I’m a fan of Toni Morrison, John Steinbeck, John Irving, Tom Robbins, Louise Erdrich. I look for writing patterns, for dialogue development, for Easter eggs in the plot, for motifs, for meaning. I don’t much care for stories that just tell a story. I’m along for the ride, yes, but I’m also here for the art.

Back to Hollow Kingdom. I love some of her descriptions. For example, a crane fly with its “gangly legs and drunken flight” is simple but beautiful imagery. We all know how creepy those things look when they fly. In my house, we call them “Mosquito Eaters.” I have no idea if they eat mosquitos.

Some of S.T’s narration is entertaining. Take, for example, “I was in the basement, spitting pills down Big Jim’s gullet. How long did this go on for? Can’t say for sure–I’ve never fully grasped the concept of time–but I can tell you that I tried to follow Big Jim’s Big Boobs Hot German Girls calendar and that we got through one month (two whole German boobs).”

The problem I find with the narration is that a lot of the description is too often convoluted with the urge to sound deep. Sometimes simple is better. This line irks me in particular: “Dennis [the dog] even chased off taunting college crows and the malicious squirrels intent on tea-bagging the garden gnome.”

When the fuck have you ever seen a squirrel tea-bag a garden gnome? I’ve seen them crawl on the head and subsequently its balls might hang in the gnome’s face, but it’s not humping or squatting over the gnome, laughing like frat boys or ten year old children in Call of Duty.

Those kinds of descriptions are too rampant, and the only reason I criticize it is that they sound like they’re trying too hard to be humorous or stand out. You don’t need to push things like that on your readers. Let them get lost in your story and the way you write, not what you say. I’m damn near so focused on the weird narration that I forget a story is taking place.

For world book day, or fake world book day, whatever today is, I am intent on working more on editing my friends’ memoir, on editing my own manuscript, on submitting my short story to two potential publishers, and reading yet another chapter or two of Hollow Kingdom.

We WILL make it through this book, ya’ll.

We will.

Until next time.

Shiver me Timbers! You’re not following ThePhilosophicalPsychotic? Follow now! And join me over on Instagram @alilivesagain for post updates or on Twitter @Thephilopsychotic for whatever!

Posted in Questions for you, Uncategorized, writing

Beta Readers? Beta Reading?

Posted on by alidware

Sometimes this is fruitless, but I’ve decided to put it out in the ether anyway: anyone out there in need of a beta reader? I love reading others’ works. I’m editing a friends’ memoir currently. I’m also looking for beta readers of my own for a short story I’m submitting to a competition in March. I’m looking for feedback and/or constructive criticism, as well as a fresh perspective for the content and/or any typos. I’ve had a few anonymous eyes read it already. It’s about 3.5 printer pages (word document) and is written in the form of a letter. It’s quite amusing if you ask me, but I’m the writer.

Although, I will say that not all of my writing amuses me. Most of the time I find it grotesque.

Maddening.

Irreparable.

I could go on and on.

Does any one else stay up late into the night contemplating their works’ successes and then wake the next morning only to realize it will inherently fail?

I’m being morbid. In reality, most of our writing will never be read by anyone.

Is that still too morbid?

A lot of people say that it doesn’t matter, that you just write for you, and that’s great for them and all, but I’ve never written something that I wouldn’t want read by someone else. I write as a form of communication, as a way to delve into the hearts and minds and souls of people I’ll never meet.

The point of this post is to ask for Beta Readers. So I’ll ask again: anyone want to swap writings or read mine or want me to read theirs? If so, you can comment down below, email me at alishia.dauterive@icloud.com OR reach out to me on Instagram @alilivesagain. That’s probably the fastest way. I had to erase my contact page on here to make space for other things. I’ve also forgotten how to work WordPress.

Thanks guys.