when a story is not a story ~

there's a special rule in the land of fiction writers that they should never forget:

when all else fails, make shit up.

this morning, frustrated by two subjects i loathe to apply my brain toward but seem to have unwittingly agreed to write about ~ namely law and politics ~ i have given way to swinging more toward fiction and away from fact for this tiger's tail of a project.

i hate doing this. there's so much bad fiction on the subject already out there and i don't want to add to that particular canon, but at the same time i am most certainly unqualified to write with any authority whatsoever in a "serious" capacity. i am also far from objective on the matter.

i don't know or understand enough about law or politics to care to research it any more deeply than i have at this point. and the tangled web of who did what and when and why has got me so far off track from the story i wanted to tell that it can't possibly be worth the continued exploration.

i thought this was a good idea because of betty's "definitive" text, but through my own research, i begin to think betty's emotions (and agendas) have clouded the integrity of her findings. on the one hand i'm relieved (things were maybe not as horrible as betty put them). on the other hand, i'm sorta mad at betty. her version, of course, makes for the better story, but since i don't entirely believe it anymore, that leaves me holding an empty bag.

so i think i was trying to compensate for betty's misdirection by filling in with other stuff, but maybe the story is still a good one, even more reasonably told than betty would have it.

so: Bing, Bolt and Burn, you unholy three are relegated to the sidebar (and be grateful for that since it had never been my intention to make you characters at all, originally). you too, Reverdy (confound you). i'm going back to focusing on Poppet, Hanty, Chammy, and a consortium of outsiders (like Gat and some fictionals) to tell a narrower tale. i haven't decided what to do with Ew and Pebblehead and those guys (much less Eck and Scully). the story will prolly still have a cast of thousands, but i think most of them will just do the catwalk and vanish.

[i just had a weird image of general grant strutting on a model's runway ~ but in deference to common decency, i will restrain myself from photoshopping such a thing]

i'm too sexy for my history books.

off to remove the fifth wheel from my donkey cart.

: D


Dior or Givenchy?
Galliano could do wonders for this man

hell's turnips ~

i've been working to break down (chronologically) the trial transcript for the last two days. two days and at least ten hours of my weekend. i'm on page 123 of 400 (in a tiny-font, two column format that is making my eyes bleed at this point).

needless to say, this isn't going as well as hoped.

it's suddenly (and painfully) clear to me why no one has ever tried to do this before. how do you cram nearly 50 days of testimony (well over 300 hours of endless questions and answers) into something like a coherent, manageable plot?

i confess i am feeling daunted and frustrated (and i haven't even started on the newspaper accounts yet!)

how did i manage to complicate this so much?

farg.

the first time i read this transcript (more years ago than i would like to recall), it was while sitting on the floor in the university library (i never checked books out ~ i just read them there). i don't remember how many hours i spent pouring through it and i know there were whole sections i skipped or skimmed over. but i remember how car-wreck-compelling it was to me even then: the absurdity of some of the witnesses, the absurdity of some of the arguments. at the time i thought Mr. Poppet was out of his mind. his line of defense influenced my whole way of thinking about 19th century law, medicine, war, and justice. and even though i thought he was a perfect boob at the time, his closing argument impelled me to write From Slaughter's Mountain.

ahhhh....it's good to revisit your roots.

now i think i need a break from this stuff because i'm pretty sure it's eating a hole in my brain and i'm not sure my brain can withstand anymore ventilation.

: o p

p.s. to Mr. Poppet: i no longer think you are a boob (in case that's not obvious).



this is my favorite picture of Mr. Poppet
(taken when he was at harvard, i think ~ or yale)
he's probably about 17-18 years old here

p.p.s. another title possibility: The King Villain of Them All