Style Journal #1
Reading
about food will never lead to boredom?
Seems to be a pretty bold statement for someone who isn’t
exactly offering any sort of sustenance. Reading about food as it is - as
if what it is is just colorful surfaces and juice - does not fulfill you.
Food is meant to be eaten. Sure,
let’s just assume that what you meant is that the food is going to give to us a
personal satisfaction in our own creative core to the way a piece of bread
might feel to an empty stomach. Food alone is not the meal of the
heart. The main course is the motivation
of that food. I for one don’t see much
excitement jumping out at me from the description of a piece of melon. All that does is make me want to eat melon.
Give me drama, give me stakes and not steaks.
My writing needs to have dynamics. Just as in life,
I don’t care much for food. It’s something that needs to be made, and
needs to be consumed on a very basic human level. Food is science. Writing is art. Yes, you may go on to tell me, “Does the
chef not see his food as art?” and to that question I might reply - since I
have in my time been a chef of varying skill - that yes a chef is an artist.
He is making something to be consumed by others. Sounds familiar doesn’t it. I write
for my own personal enjoyment. I don’t enjoy looking at the food for very
long because I want to eat it. What purpose does a description of food
do? Does the food have urgency?
Let’s suppose that I am going to write about food, and I
am going to provide it with some urgency. First off what is something
that food will do if it sits out to long in the world not properly heated or
cooled. It will rot. Now, I am
going to talk about that. Now, that food
has urgency. Let’s give its inner
workings those human qualities: that peach skin like a frail rotting flesh of a
newly dispatched human. If I’m not going to consume it, here is my
arc: a piece of food rots. Still not
that exciting, unless I take a closer look at all the microscopic little shits
that are eating it away. Those little
shits being the microorganisms that start feeding on the dead flesh. With
this new outlook I am one step closer to the drama. It is a battle now inside that peach. No need to pick a side, or if you have to,
pick the invading microorganism because at least they are going to win. If our protagonist is the existing organisms
they are screwed, the shits from the outside air are coming to take their home.
This is still lacking a dynamic. Why?
Because the other side has laid down and died. They couldn’t help it. It was nature. Evolutionary aspects of Darwinism at work. Survival of the fittest. There are no grand battles to be fought. It’s like if the British were like, “Hey we
lost at Dunkirk, better just let them German’s stroll inside.” You could
have last stands but then that ending is a bleak inevitability.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Style Journal #2:
imitation of Dave Barry
To write about food is to never be bored.
That’s what the suggestion said to me as it laid there in front of
me - in black ink - during my three in the afternoon class. The rational
being that food is colorful, and full of texture and that everyone vividly
remembers the perishables they insert into their gullets on a day to day basis.
Though, I’d be hard pressed to find someone who would say, “These
chicken nuggets deserve an ode written about them,” for they are more likely to
be bothered by the fact that said chicken nuggets have sent them to the john
only hours later.
My argument then as I began was that food is not dynamic. Food offers no drama, food in and of
itself is not art. Here we enter onto a slippery slope because who was I
to determine what art was. Certainly a pastry chef might be partial
to calling their creation artistic, but I alone am but a humble college student
who cooks and eats not for artistic merit but for basic consumption.
The food I am making is less advert worthy and more likely to be
pictured in the dictionary next to the words “charred” or “arson.”
Then as I embark on this impromptu endeavor I happen
upon a thought, “Can I indeed inject food with some sort of drama?”
The average man may say that the only think you can inject food with is
chemicals. This led me to an idea, what if I wrote about the rot of
food. On a very biological level rotting
food must have some inherent drama. It is an invasion of bacteria and
other chemical reactions that result out of the death of the mother melon. As the Nazi bacteria invaded the Poland of
the surface of said fruit, they would have no choice but to throw their hands
up and surrender. In this way drama has surely begun but it is not as
satisfying as real drama. There was no
fight. What we have now is a full on
tragedy. There was a never a chance
from the beginning
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Style Journal #3:
Mini-Analysis of Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens appears to enjoy employing several
consistent stylistic tendencies as observed through the works “A Christmas
Carol,” and “Great Expectations.” It should be noted that the point
of view of each story are told in different ways, the prior one is a third
person narrative, and the latter a first person narrative account.
However, both share some commonalities that may point to stylistic
approaches such as his use of interrupting commentary, long winded sentences,
low to mid-range vocabulary, and allowing for a very approachable style for an
easier read.
In a passage near the beginning of Chapter 9 of “Great
Expectations,” Dickens - through the voice of his narrator - gives a straightforward
interpretation of feeling misunderstood but then in the middle of it he breaks
up the sentence with an interruption and commentary on the statement
being written by saying “- which I consider probable, as I have no particular
reason to suspect myself of having been a monstrosity -” this is a very Dickens
thing to do. Another passage from that
same story reads, “In the terror of seeing the figure, and in the terror of
being certain that it had not been a moment before, I at first ran from it, and
then ran towards it,” this also involves a minor narrative intrusion.
Dickens appears to have a love for the long-winded
sentence. “A Christmas Carol,” is filled with many passages of lists that
seem to go on far too long. Dickens enjoys his uses of commas, and
semicolons as he crafts the twists and turns of his narration. Aside from
the lists of “A Christmas Carol,”
Dickens also incorporates this long winded approach to “Great
Expectations,” writing ninety-one words that run on in a non-run on sentence.
Carefully and precise use of punctuation accentuate the enjoyment Dickens
seems to get out of playing with the words at his disposal. There is a strong iconoclasm involved with
Dickens, and its shows off in his sentence structure, but not to the point of
being overwhelming.
Dickens appears to keep his long-winded sentences filled
with low to mid-range vocabulary. Descriptive words like foul, narrow,
wretched, drunken are used to offer an approachable narrative in “A Christmas
Carol,” and “Great Expectations,” with its even loftier ideas still keeps the
words relatively approachable with frosty, coarse, incomprehensible, and
treacherous. It would appear he can’t help but sneak some loftier
language into the latter work such as ignominiously, and adamantine.
The low to mid-range vocabulary allows Dickens to offer
his audience a chance to comprehend the piece. His descriptions are
fairly spot on, not spending too much time - especially in “A Christmas Carol”
- on allowing the reader to form their own opinions of the environments they
are entering. Phrases, and words like, “infamous resort,” “low
bred”, and “mountains of unseemly rags,” help say exactly what Dickens thinks
the reader should think of the place being seen. “Great Expectations,” offers a very generous
play-by-play of its story, allowing the reader to easily follow along with the
flow of events. He is an emotional writer, and opinionated, but very
solicitous because he still makes sure his reader is oriented, and guides them
to what they should be thinking.
Style Journal #4: My Influences
My earliest
literary influence has to have been Charles Dickens. I read A Tale of Two
Cities and Great Expectations early on in High School. Yes I read a lot
of other books, but it was until that point that I was like “Man, these
sprawling, contrived stories are the bees knees,” and I was thinking with all
that description and all of that character was the epitome of a great a writer.
Then I read some Victor Hugo, and I was annoyed with delight. How else do you explain the beautiful and
long-winded, almost infuriating forty some page explanation of the battle of
Waterloo, or the Jean Valjean battle of conscious chapter that goes on
For-ev-er. It was extremely fascinating how much attention of detail he
had, and it was one of the first novels to physically make me cry.
There were a lot of required reading in high school like
To Kill a Mockingbird, and Lord of the Flies that also influenced me a great
deal. I thought the stories were beautiful and it was never a chore for
me to have to read any such stories at all.
There was never any argument on my part to have to read them. But
they told simple, if even violent stories, with symbolism, confrontations,
beautiful and tragic characters.
I was writing before this. Ever since I could read,
I was writing stories. But those books in particular got me to see story,
plot and characters for what they could be. But, my writing was
completely influenced yet, and it wasn’t until I was out of High School that I
discovered two of my all time favorite authors. Nicky Hornby and
Chuck Palahniuk. They wrote with
surprising brevity for being stream of conscious, with incredibly diverse
character voices in that first person point of view. And I began to
discover all of their collective works, and I realized this, this first person
POV, stream of conscious genius was what I wanted to do. Not only that but I could be other
characters, I could be anybody. I was also allowed to ramble and find a
story through associations, and it was a wake up call. I didn’t realize that you could do that for
some reason. There was always this strict
story structure, and strict forms of writing that we studies that it was refreshing
to be like hey let your mind be free, try on different shoes. And I did,
and I still do.
Style Journal #5:
Writing Process and Preferred Tools and Preparations
Just give me a computer keyboard and let me ramble on a
little bit. I’ll write out what I need to say but maybe about 5000 words
over. Maybe I’ll scale it back a little
bit, editing whole pages, but the point is to say it as much as I can and as
many ways as I can. I have a habit of worrying whether or not I am
getting the point across. It is a very
stream of consciousness sort of thing. I
don’t have to write with a keyboard, but it's easier to get the thoughts out
because they flow a little too fast. If I’m writing poetry I might
pick up a Bic click pencil, and it has to be .5mm led, the smaller the
better. I prefer to write tiny until my
hand starts to cramp up or if I get too close to the end of a page then the
words start to balloon out and gather some fat on them.
Word processors have to be set to Times New Roman
12-point font. I feel like when I was in school that was the default that
Word went to but for some reason now it starts on Arial, and it’s 11-point.
It doesn’t seem as slick to me to write that way. I’ll have an idea then, and like I’ve already
stated that’s when the words begin to pop out.
I don’t take copious amounts of notes. I
can’t. It doesn’t all come out, but I
have a collection of ideas stuck in my head from years and years on. Some
of them may have been formed in elementary school if I’m honest and I’ve simply
added and added to them.
I hate writing for class, like academic stuff. I do
see the value in it but it is so restrictive and I try to flourish as much as I
can but they tend to be frowned upon. Keep it concrete the academics
demand, but they mine as well have told me to keep it boring, and lame. What’s the point of writing if you don’t get
to play around with the words and make it sing. There has to be a rhythm
to everything, and usually that's how it comes out.
I guess I used to fret over each page. Used to sit
there, and be disappointed that a certain sentence wasn’t coming out as liquid
gold, but eventually I realized as the Hemingway quote went that, first drafts
are shit, so I just write to write. Maybe I’ll end up deleting most of
it, but it's about getting it all out as best I can. It feels more natural to how I think and the
closest I’ll get to properly voicing the ideas that are in my head.
So that’s how I approach writing. I like the sound
of the keyboard, like machinery, because it makes me feel like there’s a
machination working towards some kind of forward momentum. I will say
that yes of course if its academic writing I have to have some kind of
preparation because I have to use specific terminology, and provide the proper
quotes, but even then, in that first draft, I try to remember the things that I
have read, and the notes that I might have taken and the quotes that I have
collected, and I try to remember what it all meant and I will stream of
conscious the shit out of that paper, and then go back and plug in the quotes
otherwise I am not writing as myself.
Style Journal #6:
Imitation - Stein
If writing about food will never lead to boredom then why
am I bored writing about food. The writing that I am doing when I’m
writing out of boredom about food is bore from my boredom that food is not
enticing. Enticing is the opposite of boredom and I cannot be enticed to
write boredom into an enticing manner so it is with boredom that I write about
food. Food being boring and not enticing the boredom to feeling does not
give me excitement that food can be personal.
Excitement is personal and if I were to write that the food were not
boring then the boring food would be a lie and lying is not the way I lay
myself to sleep. Sleeping is enticed out of boredom because it is the
only way to escape the food that I am forced to write about. But if I am sleeping out of boredom and not
eating the food for having to write about it I cannot be satisfied that I have
written anything of importance.
A chef may be an artist with a knife, a knife the pen of
the chef that the writer might use had he been a chef who chose to write with a
knife but the chef writes his meal not with ink or lead but with food.
Ink or lead may poison the eater but if the artistic chef were artistic
chef because of the knife pen that he might use to cook then his cooking would
not elicit boredom, and the boredom that I am eliciting is not my own for I
care not for the food for it bores me. The chef may be boring to the
writer and the writer will be bored with the chef for the preparation is
drowsy, and sleepy and we cannot be what we are not if what we are not is
enticed. If we are not enticed then we
are bored and I cannot write about food and be enticed for I am not cooking and
writing with a knife nor am I a chef.
The only way to think about being enticed by food is to
think not with boredom and in boredom not think of food in its usual way for
enticing it is to pretend and assume that if you were to write about food in an
interesting way you would have to give food life. Giving food life is
good for the garden but I am not a farmer just as I am not a chef. Not a
chef or a farmer is who I am. Who I am
is not a chef or a farmer but writer enticed
to write about boring food. Boring food to be enticing must be made to
come alive, and not alive in a way that it comes to be boring, but alive in a
way to be enticing to a me that supposes that food is enticing. But the
me that supposes that food is enticing is not a real me but made up me and if I am made up then I am not
enticed to be enticed by the enticing enticement of food that is boring bored
and bore out of me. Out of me is the thought to write food so
that it seems enticing and not boring, and not enticing but boring is how the
non-supposed me views the food that is boring.
So food will be bore to be boring to me, and to me food
will boringly bore the boredom from the enticing idea of writing, and I will
suppose myself to sleeping.
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Pure stream of consciousness and play on words that lead
into a new thought but also repeat the same thought, but also make it new and
say the same things in a similar way. Just good word association, and a
tripping up of sounds that play well together.
STYLE
JOURNAL #9
A
Vow of Cataclysm
What I am saying now is
a lie, because there is no way to explain myself in the most truthful of
manners. I am a good person and I have never tried to hurt anyone ever
before. Did you catch the lie? Good.
Now I am going to tell you a truth, but not the truth because I am not a
monster. Hurt is a word with some positive connotation, at least
that’s how I choose to look at it, because if I saw hurt as the end all be all
of terribleness I would be less than good and we have already established that
I am no good. This is the contradiction of me. When I was nineteen years old I had the
chance to marry the girl of my dreams, and she was ready but I was unwilling. I did not touch her, not with a fist, but
with a tip of a finger along the arch of her back. I did not touch
her with my knuckles, or with the bottom of my pendulum swinging foot. This is a truth, this is not the lie. But, she wanted me more than I wanted her and
what was there to do but break her heart.
I took it between each hand and wrange it out like an old rag filled
with sweat and then when it was properly dried I rang it out some more till it
twisted and tore, and then I dropped it in the trash. I made some
promises to this girl, promises that I meant at the time, and I meant them, but
maybe I didn’t. It could have been that
I just wanted her to let me inside, but I was blinded by the way she wore her
hair. What I am saying now is a lie,
because there is only one way to admit the truths of myself and that is by
saying exactly what is not the truth.
Truth is, I’m a liar by nature, force of habit, cliched in my lexicon on
how to describe the monstrosity of my bullshit. When she said, “I want
you to give me your life, to share, to cherish,” I told her she could, I told
her it was so, and when she said, “I love you,” I took them only as words
necessary to keep my bed full. What
happens next is the absolute truth, I ripped her to shreds. A raggedy old towel, I had broke and beaten
until she couldn't stand up without her crutch, her crutch being me, and her
physical body was fine of course but I feel it almost would have been better if
I had hit her. Because then she would not have been surprised by the
homicide of her soul as I left her crippled on the floor.
STYLE JOURNAL #10
Small Expectations
During the course of the blind date set up by some friends
of mine - whom I would rather not call my friends- I came to the
conclusion that my well being was not at the heart of the choices they were making
for me. The girl across from me at that
moment at the local diner lovingly referred to as “That Diner” was dressed to
the nines. A purple cocktail dress that hugged her frame, and as I bit
into my burger for the second time I was continuously aware just how
underdressed I really was. It was the
catchup - that spilled from the front of my undercooked burger and splattered
onto my black t-shirt - that really made me take notice of my ridiculous state.
They didn’t tell me this girl was going to be caked in makeup that she
had expertly put on or that I should have been prepared for the effort she’d
put forward. I showed up in jeans and
short sleeve shirt because that was the attire that I was most comfortable wearing. Far be it for me to assume that my friends
might stop and think for a moment and possibly set me up with someone who
better fit my style of dress and who did not hold the weight for dates that
this girl obviously had. No self respecting beauty queen like the one in
front of me was going to find potato chip grease stains attractive. I hadn’t even shaved that morning if I’m
going to be completely honest. So,
there I was with a five o'clock shadow wishing to God I could be smited where I
stood because there was just no way in hell that I was ever going to pull the
miracle of impressing this girl. She
took a bite of her chef salad, which consisted of a thick piece of poorly
sliced lettuce and a dripping tomato, and she chewed with her mouth closed, a
muffled crunch trying to escape the suffocation of her lips. She
dabbed at her face with her napkin even though there was nothing left to dab
and her head hung low attempting to avoid eye contact with me, but I knew for
damn sure that her eyes had made eye contact with the very obvious glob of red
tomato paste that now plastered my greasy stained t-shirt.
“So, what is it you do for fun?” She asked me.
If I told her the truth that I preferred to sit on my ass
at home and hunker down into my gaming chair for over sixty rounds of Halo she
probably would have pushed the plate of lettuce forward and demanded a refund
of her time, which obviously since I am not some celestial being I was not
going to be able to provide for her. Instead I say, “Stuff,” and
move on from there to take another bite from my burger. At the back and front of my mind I know I
should attempt to reconcile the stain present on my clothes, but I don’t. If I rub it in it’ll just make the affected space
larger and then I’ll just look like more of an ass.
“Stuff?” She inquirers.
“Stuff, you know,” I talk with my mouth full because at
that moment it didn’t seem like it mattered if I made a good impression or not,
“like I play video games, and I write reviews for video games, and I watch
Let’s Plays, which you know is people playing video games, and I guess I just
video game for life, you know what I mean?”
“That’s so cool.” She said in this geeky pixie girl
voice. And she beamed and leaned in toward me, cupping her chin in each
of her palms like a pedestal for a statuette. “What’s your favorite
type of game, personally I play a lot of first person shooters, because I’m
kind of busy at work teaching all these preschoolers how to count to five and
shit, but sometimes you just want to go home, and relax and nothings more
baller than blowing a bunch of space marines too hell with a tectonic multi
orbital ray cannon that you just stole from some frost giant on the planet
Nimbu-lock. Because the sound of the explosion coming out of your
surround sound is so boss it shakes the whole living room.”
Another glob of catchup drips on my shirt but not from my
burger itself but the burger sitting mushed in my mouth as I sit slack jawed
and awe inspired. “I need to marry you.” I say out loud, and I’m not even halfway
kidding.
She then leans back into her chair and stabs some more
salad with her fork and chews on it with mouth closed, and a smile spreads on
her face like she’s pleased as punch. I still stare on as she points at
me with her fork and says, “Cant marry me with all that shit on your shirt
though, probably should wipe it off handsome.”
She winks, and all I can think of his how fucking cool she is.
That was how I met my first wife.
Style Journal #11: Something I should Regret but Don’t
Harsh Language
I’m not one for harsh language used in the spur of the
moment, during some heated altercation that might elicit a problematic
vocabulary. So when I used that word in reference to a girl that I had
confessed to be in love with you must understand that it came from a place of
utter black. A void in my heart of the misery caused over the course of a
month, or maybe several, in retrospect that is probably more appropriate to
say. She was a manipulative little
snake, and I do have to say that I enjoyed being manipulated, at first.
Those of us who are easy targets for leeches are accustomed to being
toyed with and lied to, we tend to lend ourselves like doey eyed little guinea
pigs to the eventual slaughter. The
blades are apparent in the hands of the killer and yet we follow them anyways.
I loved her, as much as I could. She was fun, and
mysterious and sort of broken, and there wasn’t much that I liked to do more
than try and fix broken things, but there she was kissing me and loving me, and
telling me that she wanted to escape. There are details left out because
they are not appropriate to reveal here, but what led me to using that “C” word
was a culmination of all of this bullshit.
She was trapped in a perpetual hell of her own devising, one that she
had built up and caged herself in and that she possessed the key to escape
from. Yet, somehow she spoke sweetly in my ear and got me to go
along with her imprisonment, and I all too eager to help her.
Some time passed then, and we had a bit of a falling out.
I was attached at the hip, sewn into her thigh with a poisoned needle and
thread, and she was all too eager to escape being stuck with me. She had
other men she wanted to invite into her cage, and thus she tried to tempt me
with acquaintances of hers, and said to me that she had a single friend who
might just be what I need. But, i pleaded with her and said no, no dear,
you are the taste in my mouth and the hearing in my ear, but she dumped me,
left me alone, and I ended up meeting this friend she tried to pawn me off
upon.
This friend turned out to be more of a daffodil than the
weeded garden of former queen B, but not “B” as in babe, bee, or boss, but “B”
as in bitch for that was what she’d been. A month since departing
the caged relationship and i started to like this friend, she was sweeter than
I’d thought, but then “C” word got it in her head that she wanted me back, that
she had a right to be jealous, and rather than come straight up to me and tell
me this herself, she went to her friend, whom she had known longer than I, and
she pulled her shoulder down so as to get closer to her ear, and she vomited up
blasphemy about me, and then my phone rang.
I picked it up, and new girl said she didn’t think what we
were doing was right, that what we were doing seemed awfully fishy, that what
we were doing was just me trying to dive my way into her pants, that i’d simply
been spending time and talking about life as a precursor to unbuckling, and
unzipping but that was not the method of my flirtations. But then I could
hear my sweet little “B” my maggoty little “C”, ex-B, ex-C, saying more to get
me to falter, to get me to hurt, inviting me to fall for someone else, just so
she could stab me with a few sharp pricks from her stinger.
She got on the phone eventually, when she realized I would
succeed possibly at explaining my real, and good intentions, of wanting to get
to know this girl, and she put me on speaker, unbeknownst to me and she said
what she needed, and she had a tone in her voice to rival Satan’s laughter, and
the amusement held then made me shout out the “C” and when I called her that,
and had no intention of “Seeing You Next Tuesday” she had caught me in a trap.
I sounded like a mad man, a wolf, shouting an abusive word over the
phone, and that’s when she beat me, whipped me, killed me, and when I realized
she wasn’t human, but a tiny little “C” word.
I think about regretting it, I think about healing it, but that wound
she gave me was deep, and my vocal rebuttal a defense, that I was never worried
I overstepped a line, because I just stood plenty away from that line and spit
a loogie in her face. And that felt good
for me, then.
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