2002-07-19 12:07 p.m.
what goes on

a stray e-mail I sent to a friend today:

"anti-work, anti-work...

all I want to do today is bake cookies and other insane things...I'd love to be at Coney Island right now (I was hanging out with a friend there topless a few weekends ago -- well, me topless, not the girl)...I'd love to curl up in a cold movie theater with a warm movie (if you haven't seen Sex and Lucia yet, as I'd not only recommend it, I'd see it again)...I'd love to still be in bed, though with something cool to eat (Greek salad maybe) and something langorous to read...

I'd love to be on a plane or a train heading across the countryside with my digital camera and REM's "Little America" playing loud and proud on my headphones.

how about you?

One of my two writing workshops started last night. The teacher isn't insanely impressive, but if nothing else, it's an excuse to produce and a space for feedback. He asked us to write five sentences, exploring the difference between showing and telling in prose.

Here were mine:

• Pat planned the stock takeover from the day he signed on.

• Danny recited, "I pledge allegiance to the flag," his voice a dull, slow monotone, his left hand barely touching his chest.

• The airbag deflated, leaving Jess slumped over the steering wheel.

• The magician's hand slid to his back pocket as the crowd watched his eyes.

• Rami picked his nose with fervor as the clubgoers fogged up his cab's back windows.

Yes, I have too much time on my hands...but at least I've got imagery.

Bob (the teacher) mentioned that, even in one sentence (I read the third one to the class), I write from the senses...a compliment, in my eyes. D and I always talked about ways to keep fiction/comics visceral. I guess I'll see this summer if I succeed.

My other workshop, a playwriting seminar with my coworker Scott (through the theater company he's a part of), will be a very different challenge. Writing for stage requires very specific choices...what you say, when you say it, intentions vs. actions, making sure that the actors do more than just talk.

My big projects for both workshops are obviously my novel and the play I started using D&R&S as my characters' physical/emotional templates. I told Scott the broad strokes of the play over lunch, and he said I'll be hard-pressed to pack all of that into a one-act ("a full-length without intermissions" is how he described it). We'll see. I really want it to take place over the course of one evening; maybe a few scene breaks, but no great jumps in time.

I'd be amazed if I found myself, by October, living by myself with a finished first draft of the play in hand.

(I have to move again. The roommates, all freakin' three of them have decided they want to live elsewhere...Jason's moving back to Boston to be near his girlfriend � go Nostradamus for foreseeing that one � and the Wonder Twins want to get a place on their own, probably in Greenpoint.)

Like never before, I want to get to know this city's history...I need to understand the very early 70s for two characters in my play, the music scene around that time, housing and politics...but I think the story I'm just starting in Seth Tobocman's War in the Neighborhood, the squatters' fight with NYC real estate developers (which gets paralleled with similar troubles in Amsterdam, fictionalized by the Pander Brothers in Triple-X, another great graphic novel), is fascinating...all of it enriches my view of the city (and gives me extra fuel for the book...you know, the one about homeless people?).

(Why is this important to me? Well, I'd like to step out of the Time Out New York mode of thinking, drink up some of the city's history while I'm still here...good preparation for when next year, when I hit the road.)

I was actually thinking about becoming a real estate agent for about five minutes a few weeks ago. It still makes me shudder.

what I'm reading:

War in the Neighborhood by Seth Tobocman