TDG CEM Day 5
Sep. 19th, 2011 01:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greygirlbeastChilly and mostly sunny here in Providence.
Gods, I slept almost eight hours. Not good.
Yesterday, fourth verse same as the first. Pretty much. It had skipped my mind, day before yesterday, that The Drowning Girl: A Memoir – like The Red Tree – contains fictions within fictions. That is, whereas The Red Tree contained "Pony," The Drowning Girl: A Memoir contains "Mermaid of the Concrete Ocean" and "Werewolf Smile." Which, essentially, turns reading through a ten-chapter CEM into reading through a twelve-chapter CEM. Plus, there's the long "Back Pages" section at the end, which is sort of like...I don't know. It's not an epilogue, not in any conventional sense. It's almost like end notes that continue the story. Anyway, we managed to reach the end of Chapter 5, before Geoffrey arrived yesterday evening. Today we start on page 146 – the beginning of Chapter 6 – out of 277 pages. With great luck, we'll make it through chapters 6 and 7 today.
When this CEM is in the mail and on it's way back to Manhattan, I've promised a three-day break from work for me and Spooky. Out of this house, that's the most important part. No house, no fucking internet. I think we may just pick a direction and start driving. I have hardly taken a break since...never mind. Best not to think about that.
We were sitting on the stoop about 5:30 p.m. yesterday, waiting on Geoffrey. I was having a cigarette, and we were watching these four little boys across the street. And they were little boys, say eight to ten. And one of the younger boys was so adept with profanity that even we were taken aback. We heard one of the others say, "That boy sure swears a lot. Damn." And then Geoffrey arrived, bearing some volume of lost Derrida. Something like that. I never really found out, because when it comes to deconstruction and post-structuralism, I still have enough scars from college, and I don't touch the stuff. But, I knew Geoffrey meant well.
And I should go. Pages and pages.
But first, because all things on the internet vanish and I'm trying to make a permanent things, I present our evidence that Nicolas Cage is a time-traveling vampire:
After while, crocodile,
Aunt Beast
Gods, I slept almost eight hours. Not good.
Yesterday, fourth verse same as the first. Pretty much. It had skipped my mind, day before yesterday, that The Drowning Girl: A Memoir – like The Red Tree – contains fictions within fictions. That is, whereas The Red Tree contained "Pony," The Drowning Girl: A Memoir contains "Mermaid of the Concrete Ocean" and "Werewolf Smile." Which, essentially, turns reading through a ten-chapter CEM into reading through a twelve-chapter CEM. Plus, there's the long "Back Pages" section at the end, which is sort of like...I don't know. It's not an epilogue, not in any conventional sense. It's almost like end notes that continue the story. Anyway, we managed to reach the end of Chapter 5, before Geoffrey arrived yesterday evening. Today we start on page 146 – the beginning of Chapter 6 – out of 277 pages. With great luck, we'll make it through chapters 6 and 7 today.
When this CEM is in the mail and on it's way back to Manhattan, I've promised a three-day break from work for me and Spooky. Out of this house, that's the most important part. No house, no fucking internet. I think we may just pick a direction and start driving. I have hardly taken a break since...never mind. Best not to think about that.
We were sitting on the stoop about 5:30 p.m. yesterday, waiting on Geoffrey. I was having a cigarette, and we were watching these four little boys across the street. And they were little boys, say eight to ten. And one of the younger boys was so adept with profanity that even we were taken aback. We heard one of the others say, "That boy sure swears a lot. Damn." And then Geoffrey arrived, bearing some volume of lost Derrida. Something like that. I never really found out, because when it comes to deconstruction and post-structuralism, I still have enough scars from college, and I don't touch the stuff. But, I knew Geoffrey meant well.
And I should go. Pages and pages.
But first, because all things on the internet vanish and I'm trying to make a permanent things, I present our evidence that Nicolas Cage is a time-traveling vampire:
After while, crocodile,
Aunt Beast
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-09-19 05:32 pm (UTC)I have manticores. Manticores that are closely related to sphinx, but prefer dead baby jokes over cryptic riddles. This part is making me smile.
You really do deserve a couple of days off. You work so hard.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-19 05:37 pm (UTC)You work so hard.
I think I passed that about three years ago.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-19 05:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-20 02:15 am (UTC)Although I've no idea at all of what you are actually writing, that part is making me smile too. I have spirited
I have manticores. Manticores that are closely related to sphinx, but prefer dead baby jokes over cryptic riddles. off to my personal commonplace file. I hope you don't mind.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-20 03:30 am (UTC)It's called Grimly Frostgate and the Exploding Chesticles. It's part queer fable, part pop culture lampoon, mostly juvenile humour and excessive violence. Lots of swear words and fart jokes and people getting punched in the crotch. It started life as a joke, turned into a creative pressure valve, and then became my primary writing project.
The original draft of the first few pages is on my LJ
http://opalblack.livejournal.com/100249.html
It's very silly.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-20 04:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-20 07:53 am (UTC)Other things you don't see in JK Rowling are angry dwarves punching people in the crotch for sport, jelly babies that don't stop screaming after you rip their heads off, transgender teenagers, morris dancers with enormous genitalia, pneumatic stoats, and, of course, manticores telling dead baby jokes. And, you know, pretty much everything else in the entire story...
But, as I say, for all the silliness, it's a queer fable. What it's *about* is gender and sexuality. I'm most pleased that I have been able to combine the different elements effectively so far. Somewhere near the end, Grimly will find out that he isn't under a curse, and being a boy who was born a girl is just something that *happens*. He'll also come out as gay to his friends, and when asked why he didn't just be a girl will tell them that's not how it works. But I'll find a funny way to do it, because tortured, literary, self-referential queer exposition scenes are SO not my thing right now.