Hallways - Tumblr Posts

Traditional Dining Room Phoenix

Huge elegant light wood floor kitchen/dining room combo photo with beige walls and no fireplace

So I'm writing a book. It's called "Hallways." I hope it turns out to be good because pretty much my whole self-worth is riding on it.

That's probably unhealthy but w/e, in terms of relying on things for self-worth "writing a book" is probably better than "starting relationships" or "having health insurance."

I spell out "whatever" when I use it in the book btw.

So I'm working on this book, it's called Hallways. I wrote six chapters of it then didn't write any more if it for a year, because the seventh chapter required me to figure out a bunch of stuff about the world and history and, um, the sociological underpinnings of various organizations and blah blah blah. So it's a year later and I think I've figured out most of those things, only now it means most of the beginning doesn't make sense.

I set out today to rewrite the prologue, which consists of one single-spaced page. I managed to rewrite four lines.

I also didn't make any yam fries.

I went to a rollerskating rink for my little cousin's birthday. It has 70s-era orange carpeting, 70s-era tan and orange skates, and a general sense of needing to be vacuumed. Like most entertainment venues in the area, it's run by high school students, and everything is subject to their caprices and abuses of power. My book that I'm writing has a bunch of high school students in it, and I want them all to work in entertainment venues: roller rinks, miniature golf courses, public swimming pools. I have a character who secretly harbors a dream of being the next Jeff Buckley, and it would be awesome if he had to spend his weekends at a roller rink, DJing Black Eyed Peas songs and announcing kids' birthday parties.

I managed to skate without dying. I used to ice skate and rollerblade, but I haven't in years, and anyway roller skates feel weird compared to in-line skates. I was acutely aware of my status as a grownup the entire time, because as I watched little children fall down and bounce back up, all I could think was "if I fall, I'll probably injure myself, and I don't have any health insurance." Goodbye, carefree days of youth!

Also, the book I ordered finally arrived in the mail:

I had ordered it back at the beginning of January, and I was starting to think it had gotten lost in the mail, but it turned out to be shipping from Belgium. Who knew? I'm thirty pages in, and so far the prose is just as lovely as The Vintner's Luck, but I'm still finding Xas a little inscrutable. It's keeping me at arm's length from the narrative, but there's still a lot of book left, so I'm not worried.

Abattoir Blues was awesome, a question though: is Nick Cave Tom Waits-y, or is Tom Waits Nick Cave-sy? Now listening to Abbey Road by some band called The Beatles. These dudes think they're so great just because they got a Rock Band game named after them, like Green Day. Another question, can you play "Octopus's Garden" on Beatles Rock Band? Like, for completionists who don't mind the scorn and taunts of their friends? In the book I'm writing (it's called Hallways) there's time travel, and one of the people from the ~future~ is totally into the Beatles. I think that's probably been done before and is verging on cliche, but what's he going to be into instead? The Rolling Stones? Green Day? Maybe he should be into Tom Waits. No artist is more appealing to the youth of America than Tom Waits. Actually I like that idea a lot. "Hey guys! I may be from the future, but I'm still totally relatable to you guys and your time!" (plays 'Earth Died Screaming')

Took a break from my epic iTunes adventure to listen to eighty hours of The Ricky Gervais Show. I don't understand how or why anything on that show happens. How does Karl not punch Ricky in the mouth? How does Karl's...unique point of view still flower and blossom underneath the constant scorn? Whatever, I won't question it, it's amazing.

This morning in the car I had an idea about something in Hallways that I'm excited about. The plot's been stuck in a logjam forever and this is the first sign that the...logs, I guess...are splintering. Although I'm still very pleased with my earlier idea that the time traveling character loves Tom Waits, because it indicates that the only music that survived from our time to the future was, like, the contents of one maladjusted hipster's iPod.

All right to be honest that probably won't become canon, but I still take great satisfaction in thinking of what kind of music he'd be excited about. "Oh my God you guys it's the twenty-first century!! Let's go see what Kathleen Hanna's up to!!"

I got one hour of sleep last night, drank an energy drink, then proctored final exams for seven hours straight. Proctoring is awesome, because you sit in a small room reading a book with your shoes off, and other people sit there with you and have to take difficult tests, and meanwhile you're the one getting money for doing it. I wouldn't finish half the books I start if it weren't for finals week.

Unfortunately with three hours to go, I finished reading The Ghost in the Little House: A Life of Rose Wilder Lane and had nothing to fall back on. So I pulled out the tattered sheaf of papers that represents My Book Thus Far: six chapters of uneven prose grouped uncertainly under the title Hallways. I had printed off a copy three months ago with the vague intention of editing it; now it was either edit or spend three hours mentally playing Name that State Capital!

Three hours later my students were done, but I still had two chapters left to go over; I staggered out to my car and sat in the 7 o'clock twilight, reading and listening to Brian Eno's Ambient 1: Music for Airports. I respectfully listened to the whole album first, then put "1/1" on repeat because let's be honest, that's where the gold is. The campus is surrounded by pine forests and everything was glowing in that sideways sunset light, and the weedy beds that separate rows of parking had started to sprout yellow flowers, and I had to keep hitting the ceiling of my car because I can't write love, I just can't, and every time I found a sentence that hinted at it I wanted to strangle the girl who wrote it. Not me, of course, I know how to write love, I'm awesome, but that girl from last year, the one who didn't know anything, who was just stacking words optimistically without a thought to the sensibilities of her temporal betters. That girl didn't know how to transition between scenes and she didn't know how to write love, and God knows how long it's going to take to clean up her mess.

So I'm writing a book, right (it's called Hallways). Six chapters of it exist, out of the eighteen chapters planned. As I started writing chapter 7, though, the terrible looming problems of writing a book about time travel avalanched onto my head all at once. Why were these characters doing anything? Who was causing what to happen? How come the major villain didn't have a name yet? I'm a grown woman with a college education, and for months I'd been referring to the villain as "Evil Time Travel Guy." And why were some of the crazy coincidences in the book due to time travel, while other crazy coincidences were caused by a mercurial universe and nothing more? How was that satisfying? Things have to be internally consistent to be satisfying! Never forget the sins of LOST!

So after several weeks of sighing, whining, free-writing at 750words.com, and eventually talking to myself in my car, I've managed to punch my plot into a fresh new shape. You know how you can punch a limp pillow back into shape, so it properly supports your head when you rest on it? And then you feel very calm and satisfied for ten seconds, after which you roll onto your side and ruin the effect entirely? That's what I've done. Tonight I've finished the punching; tomorrow I launch into the rewrite with the calm, blissful assurance that I know what I'm doing. We'll see how long it takes me to start weeping in despair.

My monitor wheezed its last breath a few days ago, so I've been relying on my laptop over the weekend. I love my laptop; it's an ancient ThinkPad that used to travel the globe as a company computer, and after it was decommissioned my uncle rescued it from recycling, swapped out a few components, and gave it to me for Christmas. Now I use it to avoid writing. The battery holds a charge for maybe thirty seconds, and sometimes the fan stops working, and I have to unscrew the panel on the back and give the spokes a little push before it'll power up. It's a scarred, sickly little thing, and I love it to death.

But yes, it is my partner in not-writing crime. In the last 48 hours I've written maybe a paragraph.

I'm working on a prologue-y bit for the book I'm writing (Hallways is the name of it) and I'm writing EXACTLY like L.M. Montgomery. Apparently reading eight books by the same author in one month does something to your brain. I haven't mentioned any flowers, forests, or sunsets, though, and I haven't compared any female characters to dryads or nymphs, and NO ONE has been described as "bewitching" or "slender." But I have been describing time travel energy as "blooms on a map," so the shame is still there.

ckck:

Control panel at IBM. San Jose, California, circa 1958.

Photograph by Arnold Del Carlo.

 This is how I imagine the future, but with holograms.

traversetwilight:

hallways:

 This is how I imagine the future, but with holograms.

This is now PRECISELY how I imagine the future!!!