discussion

Edit Before Zod

~ Bon Steele ~ 4 Comments
A title and post in which my geekiness shines like a beacon in the night.

As a student and a writer, I love TextPad so very, very much. Not because of its amazingly functional versatility or anything like that.

No, I love it because it is where I store my poor, lost sentences that I edit out of my writing.

Ha! You didn’t know I edited things, did you?

I make the pages BLEED.  In a figurative sense, of course.

 

 

 

I do. A lot.

I snip out unnecessary or repetitive sentences.

Sometimes, I can reuse them in other places. Other times, the phrases are just left there. Abandoned, the poor darlings; shivering in the bare confines of TextPad’s white space and pale framework.

The problem is that I often like the sentences that I have evicted. I don’t want to simply delete them. I want to keep them, love them, call them George. However, you have to be brutal with words. They’re slippery and treacherous. They can turn on you, without a moment’s notice. To effectively deal with them, a writer must be willing to do what is necessary.

For me that means consigning them to what amounts to the Phantom Zone. A folder full of these snippets, living so close to the full works – and yet denied the ability to join their brethren.
Bereft, they will wait there until I have use for them again.

Call me Zod.

Moo ha ha ha.

 

 

 

 

So, I am curious fellow word-dictators: what do YOU do with your prisoners of war? Do you simply execute them? Do you keep them?  Does your tax base support the long term support of them? Have they ever attempted a coup?

 

Longing for a Bungalow

~ Bon Steele ~ 11 Comments
Thanks Eddie, for the title.

“Why does my house always look like this?” She stood with her hand resting on the crumb-covered counter. Kook-Aide dribbles trekked across the tile from the sink to the refrigerator. A stack of syrupy plates leaned precariously against an almost empty Mrs. Butterworth’s bottle. Sighing, she turned her back on the chaos and surveyed the living room. Ecru walls, mocha sofa, beige carpeting. Things were far tidier, but the whirlpool of brown sucked the life out of her.

I can recall my teenage self: resentful and wondering WHY teal paint and pictures of horse skulls with rose eye sockets was a bad idea. It may1 have been hideous. But, it is what I wanted.

And because she is awesome, my mother let me paint my walls a dark teal color and hang pictures of various morbid objects d’art in my room. I am sure she looked in there as little as possible. I loved it. My room was my realm, my bastion, my Fortress of Solitude.

Perhaps not as chilly, though.

As an adult, I crave my house to be a reflection of me; my tastes, personality. In this fantasy, my house is also always sparkling clean.2

Why can’t I have a house that looks like it does in my head?
Well, part of the reason is that I cannot afford it right now. But another part is because I live with other people. It cannot be my Fortress because Solitude means throwing out the other folks that live here. I’m fond of them, so obviously that isn’t the answer.

What we should – and probably will, once we get our finance’s teeth kicked back in – is sit down together and come up with a plan. Paint and furniture and Bon! Put that sledgehammer down RIGHT NOW

…fine. Paint and furniture and no major changes to the structure of the house. New flooring though, please? Yes. Yay! Death to carpeting!

So, we’ll come up with a plan and whirlwind through the house and make it less generic. I can’t wait.  My house will have color and art and lots of technology and maybe a Tardis and dear, gods SO MANY BOOKS and no fucking brown, anywhere.

What would YOUR house have, given your druthers?

1 – Or hell, may not. Maybe my teen self was simply ahead of her time.
2 – Of course, for that last to happen, the people I live with would also put away the things they aren’t using anymore. TV time done? Then the controller should go back into the basket o’remotes. Not stuffed between the couch cushions. 

Stream of Consciousness

~ Bon Steele ~ 3 Comments

Yesterday, I posted one of my short stories. I thought long and hard about doing so. It is one of my few non-genre pieces, so it theoretically has a wider appeal base. However, it is difficult to read, what with the jumping around in time and being inside the head of someone experiencing a drawn out psychotic break.

On the one hand, I could have kept sending it out to various places. On the other, it seems to be such a polarizing1 story that getting it placed was proving difficult, at best.

I made the decision that I’d rather put it out where people could look at it and come to their own conclusion what it was about.

The decision has engendered a whole bunch of snowglobe swirls and flutters inside my head. Because, why do I continue to write if I am just going to give it away?
Well, the $s aren’t really that important.
But, they also are important. Because they mean an acceptance of my words in the wide-open world.
Isn’t the whole point – the getting of the words out there?
Well, yes.
And, doesn’t your website do that?
Yes. But.
But.
Not to the crowdsize that I want.
What are we talking about, here? Dean Koontz levels? Dear Abby? Stephen King? Joe Hill? Batman?
What? How many are enough?
I don’t know.
Your problem is that you want feedback.
Yes. I think that may be true.
Feedback is something that you would get from an editor. Why don’t you have an editor?
Um.
Hm.
I did!
What happened to her?
She gave up when I stopped being punctual with the words.
Sounds like you’ve got a problem, then.
I do.
…
Are you reading those books given to you? The ones about writing the words for the words themselves and not the audience?
Um.
Hm.
Look, don’t feel so beat up and blue.  It’s a process. There’s a reason we named the website thus. Keep on with words. Accept that they are good words. Let them flow without worrying what they might do.
Read that last sentence.
Read it again.
Come back to this post when you have to, OK?
I will.

Thanks y’all, for joining me in my head for a bit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 – Either you get it and really like it – or you don’t and just despise it.