Tag Archives: writing

Revising

By JustKristin Posted in JK Tagged , , Leave a reply

Revi­sion­ist his­tory is the name given by any group once in con­trol of the Story to the newly cor­rected Story. Incor­rectly done, revised his­tory cre­ates pro­pa­ganda and (fur­ther) dis­en­fran­chises with no voice in the Story. Prop­erly exe­cuted revi­sions of his­tory both widen and deepen the scope of the Story, and give voice to any­one who was involved in the Story, no mat­ter their social status.

Ask­ing peo­ple to give up child­hood heroes is dif­fi­cult, and their adop­tion of any such idea is slow, but we’ve achieved revi­sion in the cases of, say, Colum­bus or Custer. Revi­sion need not result in a 180 toward vil­i­fi­ca­tion, as is the case in these exam­ples. It sim­ply asks that we look at the sub­ject from more than one point of view. When study­ing or research­ing his­tory, mis­taken judge­ment comes from too nar­row a view­point. His­tory is, after all, the record of what many peo­ple have done, and even more have seen.

The next per­son I would like us to cast our multi-lensed his­tor­i­cal bug-eye at is Thomas Alva Edi­son. He was a great reviser, tho often of the first kind, tak­ing the ideas and ener­gies of oth­ers and sign­ing his name to the result­ing out­put. He had his own ideas, and added to them the fruits of the minds and labors of other geniuses — mad sci­en­tists like Tesla and Swann, as well as the many who worked in his labs — and ran to the patent office before they could. Lack of gov­ern­men­tal reg­u­la­tion, an almost super­hu­man amount of moti­va­tion, higher than aver­age sci­en­tific prowess, and a socio­pathic nature made Edi­son into the indus­trial power house he was, but the real Story has yet to be com­pletely told.

Here is a begin­ning foray into the life of Niko­lai Tesla, a man equally as (if not more) deserv­ing of leg­end — for both his genius and his eccentricity:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/tesla

http://www.tankriot.com/2008/046/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_Currents

This lame post brought to you by Brain­stormer, Richard Shea and insom­nia. :)

Rule 13

By JustKristin Posted in JK Tagged , Leave a reply

He’d been the first one off the tee this final day of the tour­na­ment. His caddy hadn’t shown, but ESPN and their adver­tis­ers would wait no longer than ten min­utes, leav­ing him to trun­dle his bag alone down the fair­way in search of his ball. He squinted, one hand extend­ing his sponsor-splattered visor into the morn­ing sun to get a bet­ter view of the copse that seemed to have eaten his slice.

Of course, a hang­over from the night before was not help­ing him con­cen­trate, and he wished he could remem­ber exactly what had led him to wak­ing in his now-missing caddy’s hotel room. Hope­fully the fes­tiv­i­ties that had given him this headache, and which had prob­a­bly caused Bob’s no-show, had been worth his cur­rent predicament.

If his mem­ory ever cleared, he may even find out where his nine iron had gone. Once he’d neared the trees, a gleam of white appeared in the under­growth and he headed it for it, the hum in his skull eclips­ing that of the Goodyear blimp above.

Won­der­ing how Rule 13 would effect this next shot, he picked up his miss­ing club from the grass, lined him­self up, and swung. Cross­ing his fin­gers, he hoped that the cam­eras were not as con­fused as he’d been about which arc to fol­low: that of his ball, or Bob’s divot-severed fin­ger. At least, he thought, I played it where it lay.

Red

By JustKristin Posted in JK Tagged 1 Reply

Red’s screams reached the ears of the hunts­man despite the wind that shushed through the for­est canopy. Her plight seemed to grow along with the pitch of her voice, and he made the snap deci­sion to wade through the river instead of run­ning to the near­est bridge and back. He broke through the lock on the door with his shovel just in time to see the wolf wrap Red’s throat in its jaws. The woods­man, though seem­ingly as worn as wet, was able to break the wolf’s neck with the same blow of blunt edge that had opened the cabin door. Red’s sigh of relief was lost amid the sobs and gasps that shared the same throat, and she pressed on the rips in her neck as she looked at her sav­ior who stood uneasily gaz­ing back at her. He seemed older now that he was unmov­ing, more wrin­kled than his agility would lead one to think. The smell of wet dog seemed to cloud the air. Ter­ror melted from her face to be replaced by post-shock exhaus­tion; even her pony­tails seemed unable to stand. She held out her arms in a word­less plea to be picked up, and wrapped them about his neck when he was low enough for her to reach. Under the pull of the weight of her he aged fur­ther, wilted and fell upon her, the skin of a man that hid the fur of a far clev­erer wolf underneath.

 

Lack of coherence

By JustKristin Posted in JK Tagged , 1 Reply

I have signed up for NaNoW­riMo every year since the mid-noughties. This year is sup­posed to be (just like all the rest, mind, but this year for sure) the year I actu­ally “win”, that I suc­ceed in Wri-ing 50000 words of No. Here I sit, tho, despite the friendly coax­ing of Malkin­son and Rus­sell, with no words done, 4 days in to the thing. Almost 7000 words in arrears.

My brain feels like this right now.
By: elleinad.

I have looked at the plots up for adop­tion on the NaNoW­riMo forums and liked a few. I have also come up with a few of my own. None of them want to part­ner with my brain at the moment, tho. I sus­pect the brain’s recent per­for­mance, lin­guis­ti­cally, to be part of the issue: it is not spit­ting out words like it used to. Bas­tard that it is, the brain doesn’t want to take respon­si­bil­ity and admit that lan­guage is a mus­cle, and that it only works well when used often. No, it would rather blame the meds, or an odd kind of per­fec­tion­ism: “How can I pos­si­bly work with that plot when there will be so much research needed to make it believ­able. One month will not cut it!” Write what you know, then, I tell it, but it replies that, while it used to live full story lines when I(t) was younger, now the best it can muster is the short vignettes of a muddled-through life.

I agree because I am lazy. I capit­u­late because it is eas­ier. I proof this rather than write. This is bad. I should be forc­ing myself into a cre­ative work­out, even if the result­ing recital con­sists only of an elec­tronic note­book full of dri­vel. It will, after all, be my dri­vel, and hav­ing com­pleted it, the brain might actu­ally be able to grace con­ver­sa­tions with the appro­pri­ate words every now and again.

Too close for names? (It’s 3 a.m. Give me a break.)

By JustKristin Posted in JK Tagged , , Leave a reply

Names, to me, are mag­i­cal. I know I’ve talked about this before: about how a person’s name becomes so much more than a sim­ple noun to sig­nify their exis­tence. It sum­mons and sig­ni­fies, cures and curses. I was stymied at first when I real­ized that, despite their magic, given names are used less the more we come to love or hate a per­son. It seemed counter-intuitive, ini­tially. When you love a song, for exam­ple, you search for it on the radio. When you love a food, you learn how to quickly make or buy it. How­ever, the more inti­mate you are with a per­son — either pos­i­tively or neg­a­tively — the less you use their given name, or even pri­mary, well-known nick­names. Bar­ring the times we are engaged in con­ver­sa­tion with or around mere acquain­tances, strangers, or peo­ple to whom our rela­tion­ships are irrel­e­vant or even poten­tially prob­lem­atic, we rarely call par­ents, chil­dren, spouses or lovers by any­thing more than a nick­name. We point with pro­nouns. Our exis­tence has become con­text to our loved ones, and ours to them: each beloved per­son is some­thing under­stood with­out words, and some­thing that word­lessly defines the bound­aries of those who love them. It is no won­der, then, that names are so pow­er­ful, for they sum­mon That Which Can­not Be Con­tained In A Name.

Comfortable Funk

By JustKristin Posted in JK Tagged , , Leave a reply

It has been one of those week­ends: rain most of the time, and when not rain­ing, windy, chilly and over­cast. Some­thing about these week­ends makes me slip into a com­fort­able melan­choly. I got out the deck of funk flash­cards and drilled myself: What am I doing? What have I done? Even worse, what haven’t I done? Where am I going? Am I enough? Am I happy? What is hap­pi­ness? How come every­one else is happy but me?

Sounds pathetic, but while it is, it isn’t meant to be. The words in my head sound matter-of-fact. Seems like a waste of time, and it is that, too. Instead, I should write more. The ideas come, but I don’t grab them and shove them in here, or at least onto paper. Instead, I allow myself to work on other things, to get dis­tracted by the tech­ni­cal aspect of main­tain­ing a blog and then never writ­ing in it, of col­lect­ing note­books, none of which get filled. I did some fun things, tho, and I was sur­rounded all week­end by peo­ple I love, and who love me. Smoo was in rare form Fri­day and Sat­ur­day, D an I worked on her room today, mom is chip­per and full of March mad­ness (or at least neu­roses), and Josh is a dear. They are what make the funk com­fort­able. And, to be hon­est, the funk itself was com­fort­able in a way, but in that way that I am not sup­posed to nur­ture. Ah, well.

It is rain­ing out­side, and the sound of it on the soft­ened, rot­ting ply­wood sounds like it used to when Jeff and I would sleep out back in our tent. It was water­proof enough… that is until you touched the side — just to make sure it wasn’t leak­ing, mind — and the pres­sure of your fin­gers offered just enough [unknown physics word] to cause a droplet to seep through and down your arm. The les­son there? Enjoy the rain. Get as close to it as you need to, but don’t dis­turb the thin sheet that keeps you from soaking.

We like to fill holes.

By JustKristin Posted in JK Tagged 1 Reply

I have started more note­books than I can remem­ber. I still find them mixed in with the books, ten or so pages filled and the rest blank, doomed to a life — my life­time — of serv­ing as tran­soms thru which, if you stand on a chair, an ani­mated gif’s worth of my life can be seen. At some point, I’ll have to give some thought to why I must start with a fresh note­book, and put even more intro­spec­tive effort toward why I aban­don them so quickly… Some­day I should tear out and file away only the filled pages from each, but there is a sanc­tity to bound writ­ing, even if it is my 14-year-old own.

Still, there is some­thing allur­ing about a blank book. Some­thing that makes me grab a pen and think — obses­sively — about what to write.  I cov­ered this predilec­tion here, in what shall now be referred to as the JustKristin Back Issues. I did, over the course of 10 years, do a lot bet­ter with that blog than I ever had with any note­book, per­haps because, while it had ini­tially been empty, it was never really not com­plete, hav­ing no pages to sit unused.

Despite a gen­eral desire to do so, over the past three or four years, I have all bu stopped writ­ing. This makes me sad. I’ve decided, how­ever, that this dry spell was not caused by a lack of inspi­ra­tion or abil­ity, but by the mis­placed belief that I needn’t bother. I have, there­fore, emp­tied this “note­book”, in the hope that its newly-pristine state would goad me into want­ing to fill it with words. Some­thing about the way my mind works will not let a hole sit empty, but forces me to fill it (tho often with the worst pos­si­ble stuff). Hope­fully what I put in here will not be too bad. Here we go.