Went to the grand opening of Club Sushi in Hollywood last night and hooked up with artist Rick Klu. Rather than carrying business cards around, he has a cool habit of carrying markers and blank coasters wherever he goes. Here’s an original piece he whipped up for me on the spot, with his contact info on the back.
News to me: Our book Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs By Writers Famous and Obscure is now available in a Revised and Expanded Deluxe Edition (Hardcover).
In related news, it’s also available at The Kindle Store for all the green readers out there.
On a tangent, I just discovered the Amazon Online Reader and its big sister, the Search Inside feature. Hey, I know that dude.
And completely on-topic, be sure to go grab the next volume in the Six-Word Memoirs series, to be released next week. It gets into the good, the bad, and the ugly world of Love & Heartbreak. Behold, the trailer: [click to continue…]
On New Year’s Eve I dropped by the Rothwells’ party for a plate of lasagna and some conversation. I finally met my friend Joanne; we hooked up on Facebook through its intelligent “People You May Know” tool. Joanne and I went through a mutual addiction to Wordle this year, and she sent me a megacool Christmas card that, along with a photo of her family, included a design she created on Wordle using words that summed up their year.
She’s also read some of my stuff. She asked me how I pronounce my dog Vive’s name (fyi: it rhymes with five), and explained that her middle daughter’s name is Vivi, which is short for Vivienne. The short name Vivi struck me. I love it. There was immediately something that occurred to me, so I asked Joanne:
“Is her birthday June sixth?”
Joanne’s face went white, she gasped, and she turned to walk across the lawn to get a grip.
“YES! HER BIRTHDAY IS JUNE SIXTH!!! OH MY GOD!!!”
How cool is that? When I heard the name Vivi, I immediately saw it in my head as Roman numerals: VI VI. 6/6. June sixth.
Turns out the numerical significance of Vivi and her birthdate were unintentional. Neither Joanne nor her husband Jeff thought of it at the time. But according to Joanne, the Roman numeral thing actually jumped out at her about a month ago. But she hadn’t told anybody. Not even Jeff.
Jeff, a left-brained analytical numbers type of guy, came over to see what all the screaming was about. Once he was done tripping out on it, we had a ball discussing what kind of coincidence it would take for all that stuff to line up. First, you need a name with Roman numerals, which, aside of Vivi, is extremely limited, not to mention that their numeric values must line up with months (1-12) and days (1-31). Other than Vivi, or maybe Ixi, are there even others? Multiply that by 1/365, and the odds have gotta be next to impossible.
So that was fun.
But here’s a cool little bonus to the thing, which not even Joanne or Jeff know about yet. I just realized something:
Vivienne’s birthday is June 6th, 2001. 06.06.01
Joanne opted for the French spelling of Vivienne, instead of the English Vivian. Let’s break this down:
VIVI + ENNE = VIVIENNE
VI = 6
VI = 6
And according to some quick research, it appears that the word “enne” is Estonian. One of its definitions:
ENNE = ONE
Reviewing this site’s reports for 2008, which, among other things, shows which pages have been visited most. Several of them are stumbled into from simple Google traffic.
24. The Five Pirates
23. The Guy with the Big Round Bright Orange Head
21. Changing A Bongo Or Conga Head
20. Metallica, The Forum in Los Angeles, 12.18.08
19. Forming Possessives of Singular Nouns
18. Lizzie Widdicombe of The New Yorker
17. Yard-a-pult
16. Crazy Google Interview Questions
15. Online Aspberger Test (AQ Test)
14. The U2 Riddle
13. The Golden Ratio in Lemon Slices12. San Pedro High School Class of 1987, 20-year Reunion, October 6, 2007
11. The worst rendition of O Holy Night ever recorded by a human being
10. Pair of vintage Levi’s jeans sells for over $36,099.00 on eBay
9. The Face of Mae West Which May Be Used as an Apartment (Dali)
7. 623 East 68th Street, New York, NY
6. Find the 75 Bands4. Hyphens with Phrases Containing Numbers
3. Take this sinking boat and point it home. We’ve still got time.
My siblings and I do a Secret Santa thing every year. We throw all the names into a hat, and then draw a name in private. You get a name, and somebody gets yours. You don’t know who anybody is until Christmas.
This year we came up with a rule for gifts: YOU MUST MAKE IT YOURSELF. It could be a piece of art, a fruitcake, a sculpture, or whatever you choose. But you can’t buy it.
The kids turned out some good ones this year. Jonny made a walking stick for Luke. Luke sketched a cartoon for Micah. Dianne did a watercolor piece for my mom. But I got the best one of all, from my bro Jed.
It’s a lightbox, made by hand out of wood. By laying out a grid of 3/16″ squares and using six sizes of drill bits, Jed created a halftone of my dogs, based on this photo.
It’s framed, with swappable colored bulbs inside it. The the wood panel on the front of the lightbox has holes in one of six sizes, with every hole’s center on a point of the grid. The larger the hole, the more light you see, and vice versa.
Here’s it is in action, on the end of the bar:
A real treasure. Thanks bro. Love.
Hey, I have an idea. Go figure.
For 2009, I will be revisiting a story I’ve been developing for almost three years called Under Angels. A dark fantasy slash mystery slash thriller. It originally came out of my mind as a screenplay in 2006, but I’d always intended to rip it out as a novel. You know what they say about the movie and the book: the movie is never as good as the book.
Writing for screen differs significantly from prose writing. In a screenplay, you’re writing what people are seeing. Nothing more. It’s a unique form of storytelling, and I enjoy it very much. But there are other aspects of a story that cannot be seen, and therefore cannot be told through the vehicle of a screenplay. Namely: what a character is thinking. Under Angels is a considerably cerebral thing, a bona fide mindfuck, a story that cannot fully be told on film. There are many layers to the piece; it demands to be told in traditional prose.
Once I finished the screenplay in 2006 — which was a great exercise for me as a storyteller — I walked away from Under Angels for about a year and a half, quietly promising myself that I’d get to it some day and see what it really wanted to be. What it really needed to be.
This past summer of 2008, I felt drawn to the story again. During the first two weeks of June, I hashed out a rough draft of what ended up being a 15,000-word novella, 26 chapters, with an Epilogue. The purpose of the exercise was to tell the story to myself. Like an attendee at a lecture, I transcribed notes from my imagination, focusing on getting the story on paper, not spending much time editing or fiddling with the mechanical aspects of the prose, intending to revisit my notes later to try to make sense of them.
It’s quite a bizarre experience, writing a longer than short story. Here’s what happens: when you’re finally done with your first draft of a major piece of storytelling, you’re so close to the material that you can’t see it anymore. You’re numb. Blind. The masters tell us that what we need to do in that situation is walk away from the material, and separate our mind from the story with a solid chunk of time. Shelve the thing, and let it collect dust. When we can’t remember what the story was about anymore, it’s safe to go back to it. The fresh perspective will be there.
I’d printed out the first draft of Under Angels and read through it one day back in June, when I was done. I hadn’t seen it since. But last week, while cleaning out the back of my truck, I found a few loose pages. It took me several seconds to realize what it was, and who wrote it. That indicated it’s been enough time, and I’m now ready to go back in and kill it once and for all.
But here’s the thing: I don’t particularly want to dive in and devote 100% of my energy to Under Angels for three months, since the idea of doing a novella is just too monumental and mentally tasking. But I do want to revisit the story. Not only to tell it, but to actually read it. You see, while I told myself the story back in June, I still haven’t sat down to listen with the benefit of distance.
So here’s my new year’s resolution:
It occurred to me that there are 26 chapters, and 52 weeks in a year. Hmmm. Felt like the muse was saying something. So as an experiment, I thought, why not blog a novel? I’ve never seen that done. A blovel!? It could be like a serial, or a comic strip. Or even LOST, but with a resolved ending. By spreading the rewrite process across the span of a year, I could allocate a part of myself to Under Angels long-term, without becoming buried by the largeness of it. It’s also a story I need to get out of my system in some fashion. I don’t want to be sitting on this thing for the rest of my life waiting for something to happen.
I hereby assign myself the following task for 2009: BLOG ONE CHAPTER EVERY OTHER WEEK. That means take the rough draft and rewrite it, one chapter at a time, tightening it up.
A chapter of Under Angels every other week, starting New Year’s Day. Yikes. But it’s a pressure I need to accept if I’m ever gonna finish the thing. If I’m diligent, I’ll have something to show for it in a year, and will have a clearer picture of what Under Angels is. I’m not sure if it’ll be a final product, but it will be a lot closer. If nothing else, it’s better than having it collect dust for another year.
Telling the story will be good fun. But I’m probably more stoked to hear the story, because, quite honestly, there is much that I’ve forgotten. In certain abstract ways, I don’t know anymore about it than you do. It’ll be a process of discovery, one letter at a time.
With that, I now descend into the dark twisted world of Under Angels. We’ll start on Thursday. See you down there.
=j
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UPDATE 08/27/2011: Under Angels the novel is now available at Amazon!
The original 2009 blovel was proudly jammed out on the Thesis Theme Framework for WordPress. Get Thesis here!
