Barkerburgh

In response to popular demand, here is the Word document version of my 2002 novel, The Word in the Box.

From the Barker Reviews, May 2003:” It is about a boy named Martin who is given a quest; to find a magical word in a box, and that word, when spoken, will make everything perfect and everyone perfectly happy. He’s never been on a quest before, and never met any magical creatures, that he is aware of, and so this quest promises to be both interesting and educational. For him and the reader.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

I won’t finish by midnight November 30, but I’ve made such great progress (for me) that I can’t imagine not just-keep-on-goinging (sic).

The last time I entered, which was what, 2002? - I finally finished the story the following May, I guess. I never did a lot of after-draft rewrites on it, just a little tweaking here and there, but it proved to me that I could do it. My personal circumstances were considerably less than ideal at the time, and I still managed to pull it off.

This will be a better story.

I’m really kicking along with it.

There are tricks to increasing word count without (I’m thinkin’) compromising quality too much.

First, don’t use five words when ten will do. But choose those those ten words judiciously.

Next, if you’re stuck or stricken with “writer’s block” when you’re writing, perhaps when you make a reference to an event in the past, make more than just a reference to an event in the past. Remember the 6+6 Rule, which I just made up (and which like Christianity and Communism should be, isn’t really a rule, it’s more of a suggestion…): Run a check list that looks like this in my head.

1. Touch?
2. Taste?
3. Smell?
4. Sight?
5. Sound?
6. Feel?

And:

1. How?
2. Who?
3. What?
4. Where?
5. When?
6. Why?

Why? Well, since I write in the first person a lot, the character’s emotional state is the main filter to record the action, whether in the present or in a flashback. One or more of these will trigger an idea or even ideas that will get you through your block, and raise your word count. Works for me all the time. Caffeine helps a lot too.

C) If you have a list of suggestions/ideas from your friends and you can’t seem to integrate one or two of them into the story (as you promised you would when you solicited those ideas in the first place) just take that idea and make something up out of the blue sky. Then do what humans have done with something new ever since the Pleistocene, and just shoe-horn that new concept into the storyline wherever the hell it will fit, and damn if you don’t find out you’ve got something that really gooses the rest of the story along, like the discovery of fire, the Silk Road, or General Relativity.

Then, keep in mind (and put a sticky on the monitor if you have to in order to keep it in mind), the reader will not - ever - have in their head the same exquisite picture of the scene that you do, all the background noises of the alien bazaar, the rushing of the river by the bridge, or the hum and whoosh of the bowels of the space-station access tunnels, not necessarily even early 21st Century office sounds. Provide lots of details while respecting the reader’s own imagination. The alien bazaar will simply not look or sound the same to the reader as it does to you in your own imagination, no matter how much detail you provide. Balance the desire to fit and fix them right then and there, where and when you want them to be, with the absolute fact that they wouldn’t be reading science fiction if they didn’t have a functioning imagination of their own.  But keep that word count climbing.

Finally, you are - that is to say, in this instance I am - in charge, and if the reader stays with you - me - then they’re going where I say they’re going. Period.

Oh, and pander to the base.

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Edited for typos and fine-tuning, Tuesday, November 27, 2007, 12:31pm

I’ve basically used the same password on all my accounts for years. It’s clever, idiosyncratic and medium strength, according to the analysts.

I recently went using from ****** to using *********, which is good and strong. But I haven’t remembered to change it on all my accounts yet, and I forget which ones I’ve changed and which ones I haven’t.

So I keep having to ask the system to email me my forgotten password, and then I forget which email account I used as an alternative address, or even what my secret question was. Did my mother have a dog when she still had her maiden name? Or was it the one about the angles on the head of a pin. (I get too clever for my own good sometimes, and I suspect you already know that and are just too good a friend to actually tell me.¹)

I have to resort to the absolute wrong thing to do to remember my passwords, which I can’t mention in this post, obviously, for security reasons.  I wouldn’t want my life hacked by people even more clever for my own good than I am, now would I?

Avoid the film ‘Cradle Will Rock’!

The well-known radical leftist Tim Robbins wrote and directed this sensationalistic and overblown paean to Communism, anti-Fascism and creeping Trade-Unionism. Only somewhat fictionalized, it is inspired by a particular period in 1937, when the House Committee on Un-American Activities was young, and when labour unrest was rising, the former being demonized while the latter is praised. One does not expect objectivity in films like this, from people like this, and one is never disappointed.

Set in the lead up to WWII, among the actors and artists, magnates and industrialists of New York City, populated by the rich and the poor, the wicked and the kind, the clever and the canny, the story is based around the character of Marc Blitzstein, a left-wing composer, and the production of his pro-union musical, ‘The Cradle Will Rock.’

He is played by Hank Azaria, who, curiously, only ever uses one voice – although I am certain I heard Moe Szyslak in one crowd scene.

The producers managed to reconstruct Diego Rivera’s fresco commissioned for the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center in New York. Then, appropriately, on camera, as in real life, they destroyed it as part of the movie’s action, of course, but also as a subtle warning to Communists and trade-unionists. Fictionally, the destruction was moved from 1933 to 1937, and the scenes of its destruction were intercut with scenes of the impromptu opening night of Blitzstein’s play.

I will admit the casting was quite fine, even including Susan Sarandon’s bad Italian accent. John Turturro, Vanessa Redgrave, Bill Murray, John Cusack, Cary Elwes, Emily Watson, many others, all did a fine job, while revealing their left-wing sympathies, and making sure their names go on secrets lists in Washington and under Cheyenne Mountain (a wholly owned subsidiary of the Dupont Corporation.)

All in all, very enjoyable, for a left-wing, subversive, anti-establishment, hippy, yippy, People’s Republic, beatnik, Tommy Douglas in Ho Chi Minh City out on a Saturday night, kind of movie.

But don’t let it sway you.

Well, you’re not going to believe this, but the Pope of the Red Space Lizards has been messing with my noggin again.

Not quite as bad as last time (remember that?) but enough.

I thought I’d misplaced my dataspud (my USB jumpdrive, if you’re uncool) and knew - in the way that Jerry Fallwell knew he was correct - that it was right in front of me somewhere.

Well, it wasn’t. It seems it had fallen out of my pants pocket when I hung them up and was precariously close to falling down behind a piece of furniture it would have been a Jovian task to move (the planet, not the god). Obviously, the Pope of the Red Space Lizards had been redirecting my karma to try and confuse and mess me up. Nice try, Pope, but NSL.

I use the dataspud all the time, it’s got my resumes on it (all backed up, of course, but still) and I felt lost and naked without it.

Now I feel found and clothed.

All hail Xenu! Hail Xenu! Hail!

Courtney Cox in ‘Dirt‘. Bravo, Friday at 10:00 Eastern.

It’s about things I wouldn’t ten-foot pole in real life; tabloid scandal gossip rags and the people who make them, feed them, love them, perform for them, and buy them.

Excellent character work, visuals, acting, story…we’ll have to see, of course, but as far as the pilot goes, I was hooked within the first five minutes.

Woo hoo! (more…)

Here’s the thing. And it’s the same thing that bogged me down last year. I spend way too much time tweaking, massaging, improving and otherwise editing what I’ve already written, rather than just writing the story, then coming back later to fix things up, and otherwise edit.

Here’s your task: keep me hoppin’. I’m a little bummed on this, so you be my Jacob Marley (and three spirits). Text, email or comment me to remind that, as in all things, time is short, life is shorter, 2006 was over a long time ago, and I’m on the downhill slide to who gets to pawn my bed-hangings and candlesticks. It’s all up to you now. And me. More me than you, really, I suppose. You’re like maybe 30%, 35 at best. But 30% of a success is certainly better than 30% of something less succcesful, isn’t it? So you hang in there. I’m counting on that 30%. Maybe 35.

(I suppose you could be my Clarence, too. But that’s a whole ‘nother life.)

And y’all keep wishing me luck, now, just like y’all have been!  If you do, I promise I’ll stick my head out the window on November 30 at midnight to shout “You there, boy, what day is this?!”