A sort of writing meme

Minx is desperate for links (linx?). How else to explain her pouncing upon me within moments of my reopening the blog to tag me with a difficult writing meme. My blogbody was barely warm again. Oh, I link you, foul Minx, but I also have a surprise in store for you in the next couple of days. (chuckles to self) Get ready for some day-rueing, my friend.

*****

On with the meme...

What is the last thing you wrote?
Clever to put this one first, so my answer isn't "the answer to the previous question." I wrote an email. Does that count? It had no symbolism, though. Very little conflict. Even the characters were crudely drawn.

Was it any good?
By what standards? It conveyed the information I needed to convey.

What's the first thing you wrote and you still have?
Hmmm. Bad fantasy stories from 8th grade, I think.

Write poetry? Angst?
I write poetry sometimes. I'm not sure what you mean by angst, though. Are you offering me angst? No, thank you.

Favorite genre of writing?
I seem partial to word writing.

Most fun character you've ever created?
Aside from myself? I find secondary characters to be the most fun, because they can go a little farther out.

Most annoying character?
Protagonists. They just refuse to do what you tell them sometimes. Also: characters with shrill voices.

Best plot?
I'm not particularly plot-driven. For me, it's all concepts and characters.

Write fan fiction?
For a writer's meme, you sure have included more than your share of sentence fragments. And, no. That story in which Mulder and Buffy team up to defeat the Borg was not mine. (shudders) OK, that's maybe unfair. I don't actually read fan fiction, either, so I shouldn't be saying snarky things about those who do.

Type or write?
Proficient in both. Is this a job interview? Am I doing well?

Ever go back to an old idea?
Absolutely. The current novel is the one I tried to write when I was 19.

Favorite thing you've written?
I'll answer this when I see a parenting meme that asks which child is best.

Do you show people your work?
Sometimes. I'm a bit weird about it, and it makes me terribly anxious, but I understand that it makes me better, so I force myself to do so, among a selected group of trusted folks.

Did you ever write a novel?
Yup. Did you?

Favorite setting for your characters?
Low. So they simmer.

How many writing projects are you working on?
I assume we can have the definition of "working" be somewhat fungible? If so, somewhere between three and ten.

Do you want to write for a living?
Makes sense, since I seem to live for the writing.

Ever written anything in script or play form?
Moon Topples: (to self) Nothing presentable. (sighs)

Five favorite words...
You have completed this meme.

Which character most resembles you?
Of mine? Uh, many of them, in the right light. Of other folks' stuff, I get Eeyore a lot.

Where do you get your ideas for other characters?
Is "people" a suitable response?

Ever write things based on your dreams?
Sure, but more often I get ideas when I am just on the cusp of sleep. I create much better if I am nearly asleep. Works for songs, too.

Do you favor happy endings, sad or cliff hangers?
What a weird question. I'll ignore the implication that there are only three ways to end something. The story goes where it goes. I suppose "sad" is probably the one I lean toward, but you have to give the story the ending it wants, or there is no point.

Ever written anything based on an artwork?
No, but a friend of mine said he might do some artwork based on one of my descriptions of a painting. Which is the opposite of what you asked, I suppose.

Are you concerned with spelling and grammar as you write?
I took out all of the superfluous "u"s from the silly Brit spellings in this meme. So I guess I am.

Ever write entirely in chatspeak?
OMG! No. lol.

Entirely in L337?
I made a calculator say "boobies" in third grade. I assume that counts.

Does music help?
With what? I understand it's handy for beast-soothing.

Quote something you've written.
"...there was no fan in the bear's head, and there should have been."

*****

I tag Signs, because she told me to.

Groundhog

Once again, woodland mammals had no effect whatsoever on the tilt of the Earth in relation to the Sun. Imagine me slackjawed in stunned disbelief.

Winter continues. It always does.

Snow fell here over the last few days and nights. I had heard the word "blizzard" bandied about a few times in the days and hours before the actual snow arrived, but it was merely a snowstorm. The difference between the two is an important one for those of us who live in areas prone to either phenomenon.

Thursday night I bundled myself warmly and stepped outside around midnight. So I guess it was Friday morning. I was out hoping to take pictures, but mostly, I think I just wanted to soak in the bright hush a big snowfall brings to Chicago.

I walked around for maybe 15 minutes, and in that time I noticed only one lone automobile shushing by me. It was nearly as quiet out as if I did not live in a city at all. What sounds there were were absorbed nicely by the layer of snow. It was easy to feel like the only soul in the city.

It is never dark in Chicago, not even deep in the night, but a fresh snow makes the whole place glow with refracted light. It's like the light cannot escape. I absorbed as many lumens into my eyes as I could, but it had no effect that I could discern on the overall brightness.

My sluggish camera found enough light bouncing off all the new white to hold focus in the night, even if all the resultant images were heavily tinged in yellows and golds. They were nearly sepias already, so it was not a giant leap for me to finish the job myself when I processed the results.

Here are a few shots from my midnight creeping:




While it crunched satisfyingly under my boots, the snowfall was a little disappointing in terms of actual accumulation.

In the shots, the lights are all severely blown out, which I guess is technically bad photography, but I love how they turned out nonetheless.

*****

And I guess, if you are a bad blogger and stop posting regularly, Blogger will take away the stripey backdrop of your banner at the top of your page. Just another thing to be wary of, Blogwriters. Hope you guys can still enjoy the site without the friendly stripes until I can remember where that thing was in my code and fix it.

Maybe it's a punishment not for the lack of posts so much as that I think it may have been longer than six months since I posted about children or animals, in clear violation of the Blogger terms of service. I think my last post that counts was probably "Sphinx," in which I recounted my difficulties in teaching my cat to quiz me with riddles in our idle time.

The cat, of course, has nearly nothing but idle time. His schedule is clear. I left out the classifieds not long ago, in hopes that he would show some interest once more in computer programming, as he did when he was young. To show his contempt for my plan to get him to start contributing to the household, he or his sister urinated on the pages.

Does this qualify as a cat post now? Can I have my stripes back?

*****

I think this blog is open again, Blogreader. Soon enough, you might find Monday Morning Haiku (often before Tuesday afternoon) and buzzing about a fiction contest sometime in the future. Maybe even the reinstatement of the ill-fated "Ask the Moon" advice column.

But smaller steps are necessary. I feel unreasonably skittish about blogging lately, and I don't want to spook myself right back into the darkness.

In the meantime, as I find my feet again, feel free to drop me a comment, tag me with a meme.

Foodie

Scholars, of course, tend to disagree on many things. That's why I can pluralize "scholar" and not confuse you, good reader. If they all agreed on everything, there would really only be a need for one. This bickering among experts is their bread and butter.

So it is a little surprising to find that all the experts are in complete agreement as to what constitutes a perfect meal: Kraft® Macaroni and Cheese Dinner.

It has to be Kraft®, obviously. The proprietary faint orange glow of their cheese powder is enough to set any learned gourmand to salivating. It is the only boxed meal of its kind with any right to the title of "cheesiest." The ease with which such a meal is prepared only helps it retain its status as king among foods.

But even in the universal acclaim for the dish, experts still find ways to split into various camps. Some cite the macaroni itself as the reason for greatness. Others, more predictably, say it is in the "cheese sauce," a creamy blend of powdery packet, half a stick of butter or margarine and a quarter cup of milk. Within this camp, the butter vs. margarine debate alone is enough to fill a textbook.

Obviously, to a foodie such as myself, the real joy is not in either aspect alone, but in the merging of the two. The alchemy that somehow makes the whole far greater than any of its parts, like a fine musical performance for the tongue. Sometimes I add a spoon or two of sour cream to the mix, but it is impossible to really improve on perfection itself.

And it isn't even necessary to chew it.

*****

Oh yeah? Well, what did you have for dinner that was so special?

Moon

I was driving east, back into the city from spending time with my mother on Christmas, when I saw it, low on the horizon. It bobbed out from behind a building and disappeared before my brain could verify it, fat and orange.

Soon it appeared again, and stayed longer. It was what it seemed: a low, large, colored moon. Flushed, sullen, uncommunicative.

Like me, I thought. Low and uncommunicative.

Even as I drove, it grew paler and raised itself in the sky. Each time geometry allowed it to appear, it was a different experience. Once it hid unsuccessfully behind a water tower—almost white now, smaller, and weirdly beautiful.

Within the short drive, it transformed completely from alien planet looming angrily in the corner of our sky to our friendly moon, normal, soaring and cold.

Not like me. My transitions take far longer.

Besides, nickname and blog titles aside, I know I am not the moon. I have never even seen an ocean, much less changed it with the constant tugging of my neediness.

Gravity, sure. Or neediness.

Dear Johnny Marks (repost)

Some holiday fun from last year, while I try to figure out how to write blog posts again...

Dear Mr. Marks,

Let's assume for a moment that I grant your initial premise, and that I admit that I know (or know of, as you seem to mean) Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen, as well as Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen.

If I can then truthfully answer "no" to the question you pose, is it logical to assert as you have that this Rudolph is "the most famous" reindeer?

The others you present as a given. Of course you know them. Everybody knows them. You aren't denying this. It's the very first thing you say, in clear and unambiguous terms.

But do I recall this other one? The very question suggests the possibility that I might not. In fact, the entirety of your song after posing the question seems predicated on the listener having no recollection of this particular reindeer or the details of his life, else the singer would simply be rehashing a story familiar both to himself and his audience.

Are you simply trying to create buzz about this Rudolph character? Are you, perhaps, his publicist? Is it not possible that he is, at best, the ninth most famous reindeer, assuming that no others of his species have attained fame greater than or equal to either Rudolph or the eight reindeer mentioned previously? You provide no criteria for measuring reindeer fame other than name recognition, and it seems clear that he fails to achieve "most famous" status by this measure.

In an instance where the initial premise is not granted (i.e., the listener is unaware of the initial eight reindeer you name), does it not then fall to the person performing your song to provide some background data, perhaps biographical information or anecdotes which illustrate the characters and qualities of the reindeer? Where is this additional data? You included neither footnotes nor endnotes, and your bibliography is also missing.

I would recommend you delete this opening section entirely, if only because it is terribly unwise to begin a song about a single character with a recitation of eight other, possibly unrelated characters. Are they the bullies mentioned in your second verse? You never specify.

And who is this Santa person who mysteriously appears in what I can only assume (although the structure is never repeated) is the chorus? Is that his first name, his surname, or some sort of nickname? Is he some sort of communal task-master? All you divulge is that he is in possession of a sleigh, and has somewhere to be on the night in question.

From there you skip some crucial plot elements. One assumes that Rudolph indeed accepts the question posed by Santa. And then you leapfrog your story again, concluding that Rudolph will "go down in history" for some reason, even though you haven't told us why this might be true, or even where the sleigh was headed.

This is all without even addressing a central flaw in your tale. You tell us that Rudolph's nose is red, and then provide additional detail indicating that it "glows." Assuming that the night is perilously foggy (which you seem to be indicating) putting Rudolph at the front of the sleigh could only hope to provide enough luminescence for someone very close to the light source to be able to see at all through the fog. The nose, as you say, glows. You have given no indication that it shines or functions in a manner similar to the headlights on an automobile. Is Rudolph himself supposed to be guiding the sleigh through the darkness or is Santa? Santa would be too far from the light source, and Rudolph too close. If you put a light four inches in front of your eyes in the dark, all you can see is the light itself.

Since the Santa character never reappears, and there are no details of the sleigh ride itself, it is possible that Rudolph has purposefully led Santa to his demise in the dark, and the other reindeer reward him because they no longer have to work. But it seems your aim was to write a song for children, and this subject matter is a little dark, especially as you haven't established the Santa character as evil. He appears only once, and from all the information we are given, may never have even received a response to his request for Rudolph to guide the sleigh. The fact that he phrases his need as a question seems to deny the argument that he is the villain of the piece, and yet I have already established that the light from the nose could not possibly have been adequate to guide either Rudolph or Santa on a sleigh ride of any distance.

It is also worth noting that a sleigh is a hopelessly outdated mode of transportation. Modern children will likely not know what this is.

At present I can find no place for your song. The tune itself is acceptable, but only by a very slim margin. It is awfully short to have three distinct melody lines. And your narrative is quite obviously a shambles. Should you retool it to rectify some of the egregious errors discussed, I would be happy to take another look at your work.

Sincerely,

The Moon Topples

Um...

I did not mean to be gone so long. I did not mean to be gone at all, in fact. And now enough time has passed that I feel ridiculously self-conscious putting up a post. Best just to get one up so that the bubble is burst.

I was uncommunicative to the extreme for a little bit there, and then, when I had intended to start posting again—perhaps a fun "Ask the Moon" about what to do when a blogger disappears—I got an abscess in my tooth and lost another week to fever and such.

And so, I suddenly find December has fallen upon us. My play has completed its run. Time has passed and I have shared nothing new with you, my promise of stories untold in the last post now sounding nearly funny in light of the time in between.

Some of you have expressed hopes that I am well, and I appreciate that. I have not responded to the comments on the previous post, and I may not, but I wanted you to know that such missives were touching to me.

Anyway, enough maudlin wailing. I am back. I hope to remain back. Thank you for coming by and reading.

Open

Tech week and opening weekend are finally past. I got home last night and promptly fell asleep for many hours. I've been sleeping poorly lately, and I think I really needed a good chunk of slumbery bliss to clear out my head.

The end result is that I woke up in a pretty good mood today. I feel like I'm actually just myself for the first time in days. All the stress and doubt, even from the things that are not show related, seems more manageable right now.

So how did it go, the opening weekend (I pretend to hear you ask)? There was some general clumsiness (physical and mental) on all our parts, a result of feeling a bit under rehearsed, but the feedback seems generally positive. I don't know if there were any reviewers in the audience for either of our performances, but if there were, it seems unlikely that we'd be taken to task for anything major. My personal feeling is that the show is somewhat disjointed, but contains some pretty nice performances by all six of us on stage.

A friend who attended last night, and who had last seen me on stage in 1990, said that he didn't feel I was acting. He sounded a little disappointed. I imagine that he thought I would be playing a 90-year-old British man in one scene, a teenager in another, and so on: that there would be costumes and makeup and some real chameleon work going on. And I can do some of that stuff, but the reality is that most acting roles require an actor to find a way to play it more or less as themselves. The casting process is usually such that they are responding to your personality as much as your monologue, and deciding based on how they perceive you as a person. That's the essence of typecasting. This is especially true with this particular director, who wants every scene to feel natural and unacted. I wish he had been at the table when my friend said that. He would have been pleased.

The trick, I told my friend later, is being yourself and believable in the scene regardless of how you are actually feeling. There is a scene in the show which ends with me more or less in tears, having kissed, fought, and courted the other actor and finally having confronted some truths inside him. Roughly two and a half minutes later, I take the stage again, in an overtly comic monologue which requires me to be genial and energetic. I have to erase the previous scene and become a completely different aspect of myself in that time period, or the monologue simply does not work. And while both characters contain more than trace elements of my actual self, the work is making both of them believable to an audience in this short span of time.

Anyway, I took my friend's remark as a compliment, however it may have been intended.

It probably helps, for feedback purposes, that I don't really know any actors in real life anymore. One of my friends seemed impressed simply by my not breaking character during the show, which is not the kind of thing another actor would think as occasion for praise. Still, his enthusiasm seemed genuine. I'm lucky to have friends who are so supportive.

The biggest thing about this show, the thing that will last after all the bad luck and problems have become amusing anecdotes, is that I've awakened some part of me that really enjoys acting. I have reminded myself that this was, for quite a while, the only thing I had ever considered doing professionally. This was the art I dropped out of college to pursue, and I think I'm still good enough at it to get some work, even though I suspect I'm no longer as good as I used to be. But that's just rustiness.

*****

Although I've missed two posts, disqualifying myself from NaBloPoMo, I still think there'll be plenty of posts coming up soon. I have some more Ask the Moon questions to answer (keep emailing those in), those pictures I took out at Rich's last weekend, and some stories to tell that now, free from the rehearsal schedule, I may actually have both the time and the inclination to get done. One of them is about the roles of acting and writing in my life, and why combining the two is sometimes difficult. I mention that one specifically so you guys can nag me if I haven't done it by the end of the week.