Right now, the Olympics are on (Women's Hockey), I just did the dishes, and food's a cooking. There's been a lot of little stuff going on, but not much to report. I do however have some complaints about my workshops. While one of my workshops was fantastic and really great (even though the whole class thought I was still writing for
When the Wolves Quit and kept commenting on how these pieces have better titles--
Wolves titles are all stage directions: Enter Stage Right, etc--and how they're really commenting on the town's destruction. Towards the end of the workshop I said, "These have nothing to do with my earlier project." For one, I had real titles; two, there was a lot more of "i" and "we" within the poems (something that is only seen in letters and dreams in
Wolves); and three, these poems were mostly unconnected. There were two pairs of poems connected only to each other. I even wrote a poem about the Wire--or inspired by the wire--and people thought it was about an apocalypse. That said, I totally know what my next is about. It will be called This is the Way to Rule and it will be about a apocalypse/post apocalypse landscape. People are tying to find this city. Though, no one is really dead and dying like in The Road but everyone is just living with the wreckage. I knew my poems were going in that direction, so i guess connections could be made that way, but there's nothing in the poems that linked it back to Wolves. I think people only read stuff once and comment, just to get it done. That was sure true in my fiction workshop. Ugh. Don't get me fucking started on that! Anyway, the poetry workshop was great and while I had some frustrations, I ultimately got some really good ideas and a push in the right direction.
Speaking of fiction. I got about three good sets of end notes. That's it. I feel like no one even read the story more than once. I read poems and stories at least three four times, sometimes more. Especially, if I think I'm missing something. My end notes are between 3 and 6 pages (single spaced)...there are some exceptions...I'm glad I'm not studying fiction here. I've got too many issues with things and people/a person or two. Haha. I got one end note that wanted to explain fiction rules and info to me "In fiction, you have to set the scene..." "in fiction your dialogue tags can't get in the way of the dialogue...." "in fiction your dialogue has to move the story forward..." THANK GENIUS. I ONLY HAVE FUCKING MASTERS IN FICTION! Everyone looks at me weird (not everyone, everyone who doesn't know me) because I'm a poet in fiction workshop. First of all, anyone of you who know me, know I know a lot about fiction--not everything--but the above quotes are frankly insulting. There's this weird divide here, where everyone puts poetry in one corner and fiction in the other. Fuck that noise. They should blend...am I right? I think I'm right. That's what I want to do anyway...they should at least fucking talk to each other like friends or work buddies. There's also an aversion to genre...yeah...I think I've said it, but one of my comments was "This is a revenge story." "It's noir." "It's like Pulp Fiction." My professor told me there's too many at stake and I needed to tone down the tension. Here's the thing. There's truth in all of that. I know it's noir and revengey (not like Pulp Fiction though) and I know it's tense, but I was trying to blur the genre, and it seemed like everyone was so concerned with the "danger" of what I was doing, they didn't want to dig in and talk about ways the genre is bent, or maybe ways to bend it further. I was just told it was "too bloody" "they all shouldn't die" and "tone it down." Wow. I guess taking risks in workshops are too dangerous. OK. I'm gonna stop ranting, because I know the story needs a lot of work (and yes Ian, I used waaaaayyyy too much dialogue...something I'm going to cut down my more than half in my next story and in The Story Thief...) and it'll probably end up being a short novel...there's a lot to explore. But the resistance wasn't so much that the story wasn't working it seemed that it was trying to do too much (and the dialogue made it really script-like...damnit..) and people apparently didn't want to read that. I had some of the rudest comments ever by one guy. He didn't even care. He was just interested in being an asshole. But it's OK he's a douche bag and I just read his story and it sucks ass. Like real bad. So I'm fucking laughing about it.
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Oh, my Magical Realism class is fantastic. Robin Romm is a great teacher and we're reading some cool stuff and she's asking us to write cool stuff. I'll report more on this later.
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I'm always scared someone is gonna stumble across this and confront me. My poetry professor Richard Greenfield found this and said, "Fuck all you do is bitch about Las Cruces." I said, "What else is there to do?" But he's cool. I don't care if he reads this.
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OK. I just watch GI JOE the rise of Cobra. Once again, my youth was raped. I loved Gi Joes and this took everything good about it and turned it into a fucking stupid-ass 2000-era action flick with no depth, no imagination, no magic, just a bunch of fucking hi tech weapons that are stupid, bad acting, bad plot lines, stupid love interests, horrible tacky dialogue and an ending that says, "Let us know if you want more." Well, let me tell you: I WANT NO MORE. I'D RATHER EAT A PILE OF INDIE'S SHIT! I'D RATHER SHOWER IN GOAT HEADS (the plant...they're all over Las Cruces).
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Started the Wire season 2. Oh McNulty, you're the meaning of Good Police.
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Dexter Season 5. I await you.
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Fringe Season 2 (spring episodes) I await you.
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I just got news that the sound for Do You See Colors When You Close Your Eyes is almost done. Next week it will be mixed and mastered. For those of you who don't know, or forgot. This is the film I wrote and Caleb directed (though it's credited as written and directed by Caleb Young and Joshua Young). I watched it a bit ago and I've been thinking about it. I like it. I want to wait though, watch it a couple more times. After a handful of let downs (cinematically) watching our films do nothing really besides small festivals, and not turning out the way we wrote it to be, the way we envisioned them, being made on shoe string budgets and feeling the constraint of lack and time and extra money, I feel like, finally, Caleb and the crew took my script (my baby) and made a great film. You can't tell there was no money. Watching it I forgot that the budget was the smallest to date. It looks great and sounds great and the acting is great and it's not saturated with too many indie pop songs and trite, clever dialogue. It's real. It's powerful. I'm proud I even wrote it. I hope festivals see the work in this. I hope these see this as something worth showing.
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I'm hungry. Speed skating, dinner, and later the Wire.
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Love
Joshua
