some april fools noodly before i settle in to write ~

taking the week off was good. i got all my work done, cleaned house a bit (still have laundry), and had some time to get organized. i also managed (somewhat) to keep up with my f-list even if i wasn't posting.

i didn't do a lot of creative work (was mostly finishing up work-work stuff), but i did gyre and gimble a little on various things. wrote James's introduction for Slaughter's Mountain, for which i was very enthusiastic at first, but on second read am no so hyped. i'll work on it some more, though i do (mostly) like his description of JP Adams:

I don’t think JP Adams had ever been at ease. He must have been born old or had to grow up fast. He had a look like he learned to salute before he learned to suckle. Come to think of it, I can scarce imagine him in curls and velvet knee-pants let alone as an infant at the breast. He was a flesh and blood automaton; a man cobbled together out of regulations and exigencies. A man with no imagination. Men like that aren’t born to mothers and they don't grow up as gangly adventurers on riverbanks wielding saplings for swords. No, they’re forged in firepits out of Southern clay to emerge whole, stiff, hard-baked with self-righteousness, and they are set to a single purpose. I doubt JP would have had such a rigid pizzle about ordinance if he had ever stooped to whip a top as a boy.

i also like his description of the circumstances:

...short of the war folding up and disappearing into a cabinet with all the other absurdities that properly belong behind glass, it was going to take a lot more than sliding draughts around to make something out of this morass.

James is easy to write in dialogue. not sure how he'll do carrying a narrative.

don't you hate having to write "smart" characters? because if you're not smart yourself, they never come off well. i have no problem writing the part of James that is sarcastic, vulgar, and lazy; but making him smart will be an interesting challenge.

~ * ~

i have a ton of other fun stuff to share from over the week, but for now i'll leave you with this cool research site: On Canadian Ground. it's a virtual museum of footwear over the centuries with some really cool exhibits! if you're an old shoe freak like me, you will love this. i wonder what the manolo would say. Superfantastic, no doubt!

: D

~ * ~

lastly*, this:

High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing

~ g. m. hopkins, s.j. “the Windhover”

* thanks, daregale for the reminder ~ !

housecleaning ~

john debney's tracks from The Passion that are an absolute rip off of james horner's Glory score (and yet still inferior).

if you listen to them back to back it becomes more and more obvious: same cadence, tempo, shifts, and swells. debney's score just has (literally) fewer notes and no trumpets.

it's kind of perverse, i think. like listening to hans zimmer's score on Carnivale (shudder) ~ the humanity!

~ * ~

i've been trying to organize the mess that has become my hard drive over the last few years. i've been especially horrid about squirreling away drafts of things. the James scene i posted earlier is actually written in a "review" file with film notes. hardly where it belongs!

this is compounded by the fact that i not only squirrel, but hoarde. so i have folders within folders of things i've lost track of. recently i posted about losing a critical scene. today, whilst cleansing the beastly folders, i not only found it, but a lot of other miscellany which i had forgotten about.

the most perplexing to wit:

The Day John Wilkes Booth Robbed C & R and/or Beautiful Snow (variously called)

a weird time-travel novel about John Wilkes Booth. C & R was a men's clothier back in the day and the impetus for the story was a dream i had while under the influence of paint fumes. i had fallen asleep face down on a book about the assassination of lincoln (broke the spine even) and dreamt that j.w. booth and lewis paine were robbing C & R (the manager being the character actor who used to come out on the irish spring commercials) ~ i think i posted here in lj a million years ago, an illustration that i made of this dream.

anyway this novel was lost in an infamous hard drive crash in 1991. only bits and pieces were recovered. probably a good thing since it's really wretched, but i feel a little nostalgic for things about it that are gone that i remember. all that remains is a couple of scenes, a couple of unreadable chapter files (now in the trash), and a prologue of the hanging of the assassination conspirators.

the basic premise: the lincoln conspirators (not entirely on good terms with one another) are resurrected in 1984 to save a gubernatorial (and future presidential) candidate from being assasinated. but they're squabbling over loyalties from the outcome of the last mess, and trying to cope with the modern world at the same time (insert ample time-travel-style hilarity).

the end scene was brilliant ~ they're at an antebellum cotillion fund raising banquet when the deed goes down and the candidate, whose name was something Abrahams (can't remember) is dressed, of course, like lincoln ~ and i think he's a black man (and booth, of course, is dressed like booth). it's so so silly.

this has to be the weirdest story i've ever conceived. i honestly dunno what i was thinking at the time.

it's strange that i saved these bits and pieces from a book that i lost (no hard copy exists). i was tempted to just chuck the files, but i'll save one for posterity. if nothing else it has what i think is a nice flashback from j.w.'s childhood with his brother edwin.

when i look at this lost project i realize: you know what? i did write fanfiction when i was a teenager.

anway, i also found half a dozen other drafts of things (mostly unfinished). i corralled them, and stuffed them in a folder labeled "Dead Ends". one day i'll likely purge them completely.

two finished novels ( The Dissolute Heir ~ my 700-page jack the ripper novel and Stain the Earth Red ~ my 900-page dances with wolves epic) were reformatted and likewise stored away. i tossed all the extra drafts and notes. i still may one day rewrite Stain the Earth Red, but it sure feels good to clear the hundred documents that were drafts and bits and pieces of it.

no novel ever needs to be 900 pages long. i must have been on crack when i wrote that.

i was certainly amibitous back then. i churned out a lot of words. those books were written more than fifteen years ago. if i didn't value them for what they taught me, i'd find that (and the fact of them being pretty much "garbage" that should never see the light of day) depressing.

it's all good. cleaning house is good. now if i can get my Razi-el folder under control, i'll be a very happy camper and better prepared to start doing some more writing.

it's like when i was a child and didn't want to clean my room: i crammed everything under my bed time and time again. finally one day my sister took a broom and dragged all that stuff out and it was such a huge pile of junk to clean up that i have since vowed never to put anything under my bed (and to this day haven't). maybe from here on out i'll stop squirreling and hoarding and i'll keep my files better organized.

one can hope ~ !

: D