The Stupid 365 Project, Day 2: Manual Transmission
October 2nd, 2010
Second day of the rest of my life, or at least the rest of my year.
Those of us who write for a living possess manual transmissions where words are concerned. We learn almost mechanically to shudder our way into motion each day in first gear, caffeinate and twiddle the keyboard into second, and then hit our stride in third. At that point, on good days, we can go into cruise control and allow the material to arrive, going straight from the bright cloud of unwritten possibility through our fingers and onto the page. Sometimes it barely seems to pass through the mind.
(That’s a pretty accurate representation of my relationship to the story material I put on the page. It actually does seem to exist somewhere outside me, in already-complete form, and it arrives like yardage, in bolts –at least, when the Muse is feeling helpful.)
But of course, when you’re writing a novel you have the advantage that the pieces are already in play. Every day when you sit down, Tony is just about to jump off the ledge and Dahlia is trying to get the gun out of her purse and little Duane is painting the puppy red. They’re right where you left them the night before — or (ideally) by the time your fingers hit the keyboard, they seem already to have moved beyond the point at which you signed off the previous day, and the first stage of writing is catching up with them.
The problem with this potentially suicidal project is that I’m going to be starting from zero every day. I can envision a blog, and not too far in the future, either, in which I describe home movies to you.
Back to writing a novel for a moment. The discovery that your characters are already in motion by the time your laptop has booted happens (for me, at least) only when I write every day. If I stay away from the book’s world for any length of time, it turns into a crummy little diorama with dusty, miniature-railroad trees and cardboard buildings and weensy, crudely-formed action figures that I have to reach in and move around by hand.
Which, actually, is sort of how this feels. The fundamental equation for the year to come is bp x a(squared) x 365 = E, where bp stands for blank page, a stands for anxiety (squared), and 365 = well, we all know what 365 stands for. So, blank page times anxiety squared times 365 equals E, which stands for eeeeeek.
My family’s home movies, by the way, were largely made up of a large, fuzzy pink area representing the tip of my mother’s index finger, which fit almost perfectly over the camera lens. There — I’ve already gotten to home movies.
And the picture at the top of the page actually is a wooden laptop, built by some inspired Japanese steampunks. I would LOVE to own one.
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12 Responses to “The Stupid 365 Project, Day 2: Manual Transmission” -
EverettK Says:
October 2nd, 2010 at 6:15 pm
You’re lucky your family HAD home movies. All I have are stills. Home movies, for us, didn’t start until the early 80s when OUR kids were born about the same time as home VCRs. Damn that first portable VCR and camera combo was expensive …and big! (and heavy!)
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Sylvia Oliver Says:
October 2nd, 2010 at 6:25 pm
I decided that Im going to follow this…I want to see what you have to say on day 362….or if you have words left….Love your work, love what you say and also that you dont confuse the reader by putting toooo much information.
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Sharai Says:
October 2nd, 2010 at 6:44 pm
Whew! Two notches nicked! Aren’t we having fun? I love to read your thoughts on writing, but I’m hanging in to at least day 150 because when you get desperate you get REALLY funny. I can’t wait.
pineizzl olphar!
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
October 2nd, 2010 at 9:31 pm
Everett, if you remember what the tip of your mother’s index finger looked like, just imagine it, and you can use my home movies, at least on the fantasy level. We saw Hawaii past my mother’s finger, Yosemite – you name it. Anywhere your family ever went, anything you ever did, just imagine your mother’s index finger in front of it — voila! home movies.
Sylvia, if you’re still around for day 362 (and I am, too) I’ll write it just for you. And if I were to confuse the reader with too much information, I’d use up everything I know by the end of the second month. My God, I’d have to learn something.
Sharai, two down and, ummmm, 363 to go. Boy the time is just flying. Oh, and I should tell you that my rules for this thing say NO STOCKPILING — no sitting down some day and writing 12 of these things and then doling them out. They all have to get written on the day they appear.
I’m doing this again, why?
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Gary Says:
October 3rd, 2010 at 12:16 am
Hang in there, Tim. It’s going great so far.
Hey, how about blogging 300 words per day about Poke and Rose and Miaow for the next 363 days? And at the end of the year, there’s your next book.
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fairyhedgehog Says:
October 3rd, 2010 at 5:42 am
No stockpiling? You’re being very hard on yourself. It’ll be interesting to see how your relationship to blogging develops when you’re doing it every day.
At least you have a sympathetic audience!
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EverettK Says:
October 3rd, 2010 at 8:15 am
Tim, are you a “morning person” or an “night owl?” Your method of getting yourself in gear in the morning sounds like you’re a “night owl.”
When I’m working on a new game, I’m best first thing in the morning. I get up, and I’m ready to start right in, and work feverishly until about noon or early afternoon when hunger and tired butt drive me from the keyboard. When I was 25-35, I could work all day at my day job, then come home and program until midnight, no problem. Now, I’m lucky to keep my brain from fuzzing on me by mid-afternoon, so I HAVE to get my work done in the morning and not waste any time about getting started. But then, I’ve always been a “morning person.”
Of course, programming is a little different than writing prose, but as I mentioned on another occasion, I suspect that it’s not ALL that different in terms of habits, work ethics and methods.
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Laren Bright Says:
October 3rd, 2010 at 8:18 am
Tim –
You really screwed up this time. You covered 2 subjects in one blog (writing & home movies). What were you thinking? Oh,. wait, I get it, YOu had one subject in blog 1, two subjects in blog 2, and by the end of the year you will be writing one word each about 365 subjects. How cool.
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fairyhedgehog Says:
October 3rd, 2010 at 9:28 am
“by the end of the year you will be writing one word each about 365 subjects”
Laren, that’s brilliant!
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
October 3rd, 2010 at 12:04 pm
I should hand off this blog to one of you every week. You’re better at it than I am.
Gary — I responded to your comment in Blog #3, “El Sombrero, and I also commented on Laren’s very funny note there. (Might as well use you guys for material, since I’m going to need all I can get.)
Everett, I’m a whenever writer. I actually embarked on this blogging project because I thought it would be a good way to get me started in the morning rather than wandering around changing perfectly good light bulbs as a way of dealing with the anxiety of the empty page. And it’s working, pretty much. It’s getting me to the keyboard earlier and keeping me there longer, and that’s all to the good. As long as there’s coffee, my mind doesn’t know what time it is.
FHH, Laren is a very, very funny guy and a good friend. I’m fortunate in that respect.
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Beth Terrell Says:
October 10th, 2010 at 3:34 pm
The only home movie of ours I remember shows me in a frilly blue dress and my new “baby’s first steps” shoes toddling after and playing with a pet rabbit in my great-aunt’s yard.
Tim, the cool thing about yours is they can be ANYTHING. “Oh, that was taken on Mars right after my father converted our old Cadillac to FTL travel.”
I have no idea what the captcha says…
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
October 10th, 2010 at 6:14 pm
It’s true — new and previously unseen worlds could be on the other side of my mother’s index finger. In the few shots of me that are actually visible, when I was seven or eight, I seem to have developed an unfortunate mannerism of saluting the camera. The kind of thing that can make me blush decades later.
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