Writing, papers, and projected survival of summer
First off, I'm in dire need of a job. I've started looking, and I know I'm not the first to say this but trying to find a job really sucks. I need something to help me survive the summer as I've just figured out my finances, and I probably have just enough to help me survive through June. Then I'm dead in the water. Not a good feeling. So, I'm trying to find a job with the limited time I have to actually look for one. And living in Stockton doesn't help one iota.
I've been working (well, when I can) on a new set of short stories. One is a humorous police procedural ("I got the call at 2 am; somehow I always seem to get the call at 2am....") about a private eye who gets hired to follow this woman's husband who appears to be seeing "someone" behind her back. The other story I'm working on is "The Situation Room" where the president and his cabinet are arguing a nuclear strike against a country that has taken hostile action against the U.S. Both stories have the signature Duane Gundrum slant to them, meaning that what you're reading isn't what you're really reading, that there's definitely a story hidden within the story itself that doesn't reveal itself until the end, and then sums up the original story better than if you'd known the story beforehand. I don't know how I came upon this style, but it seems to be working for me. I think I may have adopted a pseudo-Dorothy Lessing (Briefing for a Descent into Hell) stylism that is more working to redefine my own style of writing. Someone during a writing class once told me that I had a "moralistic" style of story-telling, and I think I took that to heart and instead of write the usual morality stories, that involve the action leading to the moral ending, I've managed to integrate the moralism into the story itself so that when the end is reached, we're not talking about the same story that began when the reading began.
Which brings me to papers. I'm currently doing a ton of research on the August 1991 coup in the Soviet Union that was pretty much stopped by Boris Yeltsin in Moscow. I'm doing this research as a rhetorical criticism of Yeltsin's counter-narrative of the coup perpetrators' narrative that they attempted to sell to the Soviet people about a return to the glory days of a great Soviet Union. It's an intersting project, and I'll probably have it completed soon.
However, the reason I chose this particular project is that I have been trying to rewrite one of my earlier novels called To Touch the Unicorn, about an international agent for a corporation who devotes most of his life to disrupting the economies of other countries. I originally placed him in Russia for a mission during the time of the Soviet Union, but then the Soviet satellites fell, leaving only the Soviet Union, which forced me to have to rewrite a whole bunch of scenes involving a clandestine trip through East Germany and Poland. Then the Soviet Union fell, and that kind of ruined the second rewrite of the story. So I tried rewriting it again, and it just never really rang true for me. However, when latching onto the August 1991 coup, I realized exactly where and when this story belonged. As soon as I finish with this rhetorical criticism, I am going to be focusing on the final rewrite of this book, and I'm thinking of changing the title to something along the lines of 72 Hours in August. The reason this is so important is because the character I created is a brilliant character, and I've so wanted to use him in future novels, but it's hard to work a series character when the first book that introduces him continues to be incomplete. Personally, I just love the idea of integrating real world events with my fictional events so that someone with a passion for history can read the novel and say "Wow, that could have actually happened, and no one would have ever suspected."
One last thing: For reasons I can't explain, I'm still having problems with the flu or whatever it was I had a few weeks ago. I don't have the flu anymore, but I get huge coughing fits that I can't stop, and last weekend was really bad. Sometimes, it hurts when I speak. I'm going to see my doctor tomorrow, to see if maybe some logical explanation can be ascertained, but something needs to be done because this has been going on way too long, and I really want to get back to feeling normal again. Well, as normal as one can, I guess.
Stumble It!
I've been working (well, when I can) on a new set of short stories. One is a humorous police procedural ("I got the call at 2 am; somehow I always seem to get the call at 2am....") about a private eye who gets hired to follow this woman's husband who appears to be seeing "someone" behind her back. The other story I'm working on is "The Situation Room" where the president and his cabinet are arguing a nuclear strike against a country that has taken hostile action against the U.S. Both stories have the signature Duane Gundrum slant to them, meaning that what you're reading isn't what you're really reading, that there's definitely a story hidden within the story itself that doesn't reveal itself until the end, and then sums up the original story better than if you'd known the story beforehand. I don't know how I came upon this style, but it seems to be working for me. I think I may have adopted a pseudo-Dorothy Lessing (Briefing for a Descent into Hell) stylism that is more working to redefine my own style of writing. Someone during a writing class once told me that I had a "moralistic" style of story-telling, and I think I took that to heart and instead of write the usual morality stories, that involve the action leading to the moral ending, I've managed to integrate the moralism into the story itself so that when the end is reached, we're not talking about the same story that began when the reading began.
Which brings me to papers. I'm currently doing a ton of research on the August 1991 coup in the Soviet Union that was pretty much stopped by Boris Yeltsin in Moscow. I'm doing this research as a rhetorical criticism of Yeltsin's counter-narrative of the coup perpetrators' narrative that they attempted to sell to the Soviet people about a return to the glory days of a great Soviet Union. It's an intersting project, and I'll probably have it completed soon.
However, the reason I chose this particular project is that I have been trying to rewrite one of my earlier novels called To Touch the Unicorn, about an international agent for a corporation who devotes most of his life to disrupting the economies of other countries. I originally placed him in Russia for a mission during the time of the Soviet Union, but then the Soviet satellites fell, leaving only the Soviet Union, which forced me to have to rewrite a whole bunch of scenes involving a clandestine trip through East Germany and Poland. Then the Soviet Union fell, and that kind of ruined the second rewrite of the story. So I tried rewriting it again, and it just never really rang true for me. However, when latching onto the August 1991 coup, I realized exactly where and when this story belonged. As soon as I finish with this rhetorical criticism, I am going to be focusing on the final rewrite of this book, and I'm thinking of changing the title to something along the lines of 72 Hours in August. The reason this is so important is because the character I created is a brilliant character, and I've so wanted to use him in future novels, but it's hard to work a series character when the first book that introduces him continues to be incomplete. Personally, I just love the idea of integrating real world events with my fictional events so that someone with a passion for history can read the novel and say "Wow, that could have actually happened, and no one would have ever suspected."
One last thing: For reasons I can't explain, I'm still having problems with the flu or whatever it was I had a few weeks ago. I don't have the flu anymore, but I get huge coughing fits that I can't stop, and last weekend was really bad. Sometimes, it hurts when I speak. I'm going to see my doctor tomorrow, to see if maybe some logical explanation can be ascertained, but something needs to be done because this has been going on way too long, and I really want to get back to feeling normal again. Well, as normal as one can, I guess.
Stumble It!
posted by Duane @ 11:50 AM
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