Rachel Lynn Brody's Blog, page 18

I Want To Be Writing

I want to be writing a story. I want to be finishing A Live Mind, or revising Electalytics (especially after I had such great feedback from my new writer’s group when I brought its first section as my first piece). I want to be filling in the notes I made about The Hero Mission, a screenplay (I think) about two astronauts that draws heavily from the mood of The Cold Equations and from a conversation I had with a friend on Twitter about the motivations behind heroics.

I want to be writing a blog about the fact that the House of Representatives are a bunch of twits who have, today, apparently spent their time and my tax dollars to – no, not resolve the sequester, or come up with some better ideas about gun control – vote that abortion should be illegal, with no exceptions, because somebody got the idea that at 15 weeks a fetus might enjoy jerking off. Talk about exhibiting a sense of entitlement and privilege.

I want to be handwriting letters. I want to send a letter to a cousin I haven’t corresponded with in a while, and an email to my sister (read that, it has a college photo of me) about trips I’m planning for the summer.

I want to reread the play I’m bringing to writer’s group on Thursday this week, and I want to read Cloud Atlas, which is one of the more challenging things I’ve put my mind to, and I want to read the collected works of Tolstoy in the beautifully-bound versions my grandparents gave me years ago. (See photo. I need to read those. They’re getting musty. I’d like to take a reading vacation and take these pounds and pounds of books with me to some island or sunlit hotel room, and curl up and read them all, cover-to-old-cardboard-cover.)

Instead I’m taking care of housekeeping – bills, calls, cleaning, and so on – because everything cannot and will not be done, and some things must be, and because I am not  a robot (no matter how much I like writing about them) and because in a few hours it will be time for bed.

And I may not get to write all those things – or even any of them – but I did get to write this one, and while this may only be a few hundred words, it’s something.

So for now, I’ll be grateful I had time to write anything at all, and get back to business.

Writing Inspiration Through Peer Interaction

Talking to other writers and artists about their projects can help bring up new ideas and approaches to your own pieces of work-in-progress. About a month ago, I joined a writer’s group here in the city; what I’ve found is that reading the work of my peers helps remind me of the books, plays, films and other artworks which have inspired and influenced me over time.

This week, I thought I’d share some of the pieces that have come up for me in the course of interacting with other artists this week.

Our Town. A classic American play that I’ve managed never to see; a play that I brought to writer’s group drew a comparison in a particular scene to the mood of this piece. So I’ll be on the lookout for a copy of the script, or productions in NYC, to see what I can learn from this piece my scenes evoked in my audience.

Intentionality in the use of language and symbolism. This topic came up a couple of times in writer’s group, both in relation to my play and another piece. Someone pointed out an extremely powerful image in a play I’ve been revisiting, and asked about how that image recurs later in the piece, how the theme is expressed and what it ultimately teaches the audience. 

There are also the kinds of inspiration that come up in wider reading and discussion.

This article about a pork slaughterhouse and packing plant in North Carolina has been on my mind, both because of its descriptions of how our food supply is produced and the contrast between that and my experiences with organic farming and meat production, and because it paints a stark picture of racial segregation in the US workforce. The article was written in 2000, but came to light again with the announcement that Smithfield’s, the company whose plant was portrayed in the article, is the subject of interest from a major Chinese pork company. 
The Save the Cat beat sheet, which apparently everyone but me knew about. I’m going to get addicted to this tool very quickly. Here’s a version for novels. Um, awesome.
One of my fellow writer’s group members is working on a memoir about her time in another country; reading it reminded me of the mood in Super Sad Super True Love Story in the same way a previous week’s piece from another member put me in the mind of “Parentheses” from Julian Barnes’ A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters.
Finally, by now everyone knows I love China Meiville; I was excited when one of the writers in the group brought a draft where his tumbling use of language drew me into a world that gave me the same feels as trying to pick through one of Meiville’s rich, topsy-turvy novels.

Other inspiration I’ve drawn from writers in the last week: a friend who’s written an 80K YA novel draft in the last year, another whose writing is taking off just as she’s being presented with a phenomenal career opportunity, and how discussing recommendations with her (I’m one of her references) has reminded me of some of the best reasons for being a writer: the communication, the ability to get to know oneself better. A young woman who’s the daughter of a friend of my dad – she’s about the same age as I was and to listen to her breathlessly recount her current project was like looking into a window on the past.

I gave feedback on/edited a short story for a Twitter friend who writes in English as a second language and was reminded of the spare, intentional language of a Japanese friend from graduate school. I don’t have enough French to try writing something coherent in another language, but maybe I should try. (And that notion is a reminder of the article I saw tweeted that claimed Google translate is colonizing language; I need to go back and look for that one.)

A discussion on the politics of gender pronouns led to the discovery that Google nGram can search words used as parts of speech (“female” used as a noun instead of an adjective, for example). Fascinating stuff.

And of course, no discussion of influences this week would be complete without mentioning Edward Snowden and the NSA leaks/revelations. Drawing comparisons to activist-leakers like Bradley Manning, Wikileaks and Anonymous, Snowden’s claims regarding the NSA and their wiretapping and data collection techniques have me feeling once more that truth is far stranger than fiction. Electalytics will one day benefit from all of the craziness that’s swarming through our informational technology and culture, but I also lose a little confidence every time something like this happens. Can I even imagine the extent to which the system is manipulated by these behind-the-scenes players, and do I have the skill to weave this into the story I know Electalytics could be?

Only time will tell.

Talking to your peers about their work lets you understand what else is going on out there, what people are interested, and what kind of information is currently in the zeitgeist. It’s not always easy to find a patchwork of like-minded people with whom to have these discussions, but once you do, horizons seem to expand nonstop.

Alloy, Kindle, Fanfic & E-Publishing

Some quick thoughts regarding Amazon’s deal with Alloy Publishing and the discussions I’ve read about it.

Most of that discussion seems like it’s centering around the down-the-road implications of Amazon’s deal: when will Harry Potter fans be able to write for fun and profit? If 50 Shades was so profitable, why is this deal specifically banning pornography/erotic fiction?

One thing I notice is missing from the discussion is the connective tissue played by Alloy Publishing’s role in and relationship to a multimedia experience for its properties. In this context, one sees quickly that Alloy has positioned itself in a way that makes this Amazon announcement practically inevitable.

For a start, Alloy’s advertisements and guidelines have always represented the company as a packaging (in addition to publishing) company. This is borne out by the company’s successful franchises - Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, The Vampire Diaries and so on. They existed as books long before they stalked our screens, looking sultry, via the CW. Alloy is a publishing entity that has been clear from the submission point onward that it’s also interested in multi-media moneymaking.

The Amazon/Alloy deal signals a potential sea change for legally monetizing an entertainment arena that has existed in a gray area for decades. It can also be seen as a difficult-to-replicate pairing of two unique companies with particular agility in the online publishing arena and specific interest in forging new slivers of profit from the interest and participatory nature of their active online fans.

The real question, for writers interested in this self-publishing opportunity, is how far-reaching the effects of this initial Kindle Worlds program wind up being.

The Alloy announcement concerned three distinct properties, belonging to a single division of a larger entertainment behemoth. There’s nothing in the press release linked above that signals successfully completed talks with anybody outside of Alloy, let alone Warner Bros.

Writers outside the three fandoms of Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars and The Vampire Diaries probably have a long wait on their hands, but it seems clear to me that these three fandoms represent a litmus test for the idea of formally coupling of fan fiction and corporate profitability.

 

NYC Theater Review: GORILLA by Rhea Leman (Scandanavian American Theater Company)

In the Scandanavian American Theater Company’s production of Rhea Leman’s Gorilla, five businessmen and their HR director navigate a weekend seminar on expression and trust. In what is revealed to be an evaluation that could cost them their jobs (and in some cases, far more), the characters’ relationships, personalities, histories and sex lives are laid bare, pride is chucked out the window, more than a few punches are thrown and questions are asked about the role of masculinity in the modern professional world.

We never get a solid sense of what Owen (Albert Bendix), Stephen (Oliver Burns), Robert (L.J. Ganser), Ernest (Alfred Gingold) and Lawrence (Khris Lewin) do for a living, only that for the past year they’ve been doing it rather badly. Their team has had the poorest performance in the company in a year of economic distress (the play is set in 2009), and now they’re at the last of a series of teamwork workshops designed to help them work with more trust and intimacy.

Dragging them down this path of corporate and personal enlightenment is Lillian (Jennifer Dorr White), from the company’s HR department; midway through the play, they are joined by their boss, Thrasher (Tullan Holmqvist), who makes it clear their suspicions of future firings are well-founded. Some murmurs of the role played by sexuality and gender make their way through the blend of analyses and posturing, and it’s in her sexual and animal metaphors that Leman’s play shows both strength and depth.

Gorilla never breaks the fourth wall, maintaining a setting within the walls of a single conference room in sanitized, businesslike shades (to call the pale tones “colors” seems over-ambitious). There are moments, such as one where Owen and Stephen negotiate a possible transaction, where the characters show how deeply imperfect they are – in one particularly insightful speech, Stephen describes his wife and her lack of confidence and her need for affection in a way that makes one wonder if he isn’t, in fact, projecting his issues onto her.

One nitpicky point regarding the translation: midway through Gorilla, Owen explains the meaning of the word to Stephen. Something – I’m not sure what – is missing in the exchange that takes place around the translation of “Gorilla” itself; maybe translation from Danish to English has dulled the comparison’s point? It’s frustrating that it isn’t clearer, since Leman can be assumed to have been making the connection to her play’s title in that moment. Addressing this point more clearly could have heightened the title’s impact for English-speaking audiences.

The individual characters are as specifically drawn as their roles require; while Ernest and Thrasher seem to have limited arcs, the others are more active. One feels as if there should be more weight to Lillian’s inability to make a tough choice, near the end of the play, particularly given the knowledge we’ve already attained via audience privilege.

This is a satisfying eighty minutes of theater, a naturalistic play with a story that gets you somewhere – even if, as the lights fade to black, you’re not exactly sure where you’ve ended up.

 

Rhea Leman’s Gorilla is playing at the Lion Theatre on Theatre Row, 410 West 42nd Street, www.theatrerow.org. For the curious, here’s the production company’s page on IndieGoGo: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/gorilla.

Butchery, Part III: Makin’ the Bacon

Welcome to the third and final part of my Butchery adventure. Check out parts one and two to get caught up. This blog was written in the immediate aftermath of the butchery lesson, but it’s taken me a while to up and post here.

Written: 3/29/13

A few years ago, a friend challenged me to do one new thing a month for the entire year. I think today would have impressed him, because today I helped butcher a pig.

If you’ve read parts one and two of my porcine journey, you’ll know I had serious misgivings about how I might make it through once the pig parts started to fly.

My friend and I made our way to the restaurant; we arrived a little after ten. After introducing us around, they asked what kind of experience, if any, my friend and I had in butchery. I haven’t had any; my friend had taken part in something similar with a lamb and had been studying pig butchery for weeks.

We were given chef’s jackets and aprons before being shown the pig we were about to butcher.

I’ve never been confronted with a pig’s head before. They’re not animals I’ve spent a lot of time with, and the pork shoulder that started this journey was, I now realize, probably not as high in quality as the one we were about to artfully dismember.

Before we started, the Chef was gave us some background on American and European butchery – for example, did you know that in Europe they cut pig according to its muscle structure, rather than trying to eek out every bit of a so-called choice cut? – and told us a little bit about his own journey to his present position.

Then we learned a little about the pig we were going to work on. It had been raised well and not filled with hormones or antibiotics, and just a few days earlier had been alive and in the fields. In other words, it didn’t get any fresher than this.

I could give a play-by-play of how the Chef walked us through each of the portions of the dissection, but I don’t think I could do justice to just how good of a teacher he was. Both my friend and I had questions, and the three of us chatted as the Chef explained how we were going to take the pig apart so as not to waste any of it. We felt organs and spinal fluid, removed strips of fat (set aside to be rendered), helped saw off limbs, trussed the pork loin, seasoned Bacon for curing and even got to sample a small piece of pork fresh-cooked with olive oil, salt, garlic and thyme.

A lot of anatomy was discussed. My mom used to teach at the University at Buffalo Medical School (as did my grandfather) and as a child I was once treated to a visit to the gross anatomy lab in the middle of a class while my mom spoke with a colleague. I remember things like the spinal columns in a jar on her desk, and while I was never a crack student in biology, the physiology of a human and a pig are similar enough that it made sense to hear how pigs used certain muscles more regularly than others, and how, for example, a muscle a pig wouldn’t use at all would be much more developed in a human because of how we move and bend.

Giving an example of how little pig was wasted in the dissection, the Chef at first threw a few small pieces of “silverskin” – inedible tendon tissue – into the garbage, then changed his mind and retrieved a dish that might have held a cup in volume (though I’d be surprised). When we were finished, he assured us, the cup wouldn’t be full. That’s how much of the pig gets used. It was impressive.

I also saw some first-rate knives in action, which (if you know me) I found pretty damn cool. Watching the Chef easily slide the blade under layers of fat and clean off the pork, I started trying to calculate how many years it will be before I could afford my own set. Way too many.

Once we finished the first half of the pig, which had weighed about 250 pounds when it was alive, we took a break.

Both me and my friend had glasses of water, and the chef cooked up a “snack” – which he paired with a glass of beaujolais when I took him up on the offer of a glass of wine. (What, did anyone think I’d turn down free wine with a gourmet, freshly-butchered snack?)

When it came to the second half of the pig, the Chef worked quickly. My friend and I helped saw off the legs – the ham, or what would become it (and please note that all errors in naming parts of the animal are the fault of my memory and not poor delivery!) and trussed pork loin to make densely-rolled cuts that would cook evenly.

When both sides of the pig had been butchered into parts, we took a few minutes to prepare ourselves – washing up (though the entire process was far cleaner, and far less bloody, than what I had anticipated), getting our coats back, and stashing the aprons we’d worn – authentic chef souvenirs! – into bags the Chef provided.

Then,the question restaurant- and food-lovers love to hear:

Did we want lunch?

Neither of us was about to say no. We took seats at the bar and agreed: everything on the menu looked amazing, and both of us were happy to eat whatever the Chef wanted to share with us.

It may have been the best meal of my life. We started with a charcuterie board, which featured different cured meats, head cheese, some kind of Bacon-wrapped thing, porchetta (please God let me be getting this right) and more. And amazing bread.

Speaking of bread, a couple of guys were kneading gorgeous trays of focaccia beside us, under what looked like extendable heat lamps that Hung from the ceilings. Before our eyes, they transformed a giant tray of kneaded dough into a salted and seasoned tray off carby-delicious-goodness.

The next dish – the Chef asked if we wanted to keep going, and neither me nor my friend was about to turn him down – was a gorgonzola, Apple, radicchio and Bacon salad.

Now, maybe you like bacon. But when you’ve just spent a week freaking out about whether you’ve got what it takes to butcher an animal, in the way of “not running screaming from the carcass” kind of way – and then found out that indeed, you may indeed have what it takes – the Bacon tastes WAY FREAKING BETTER. Or maybe that was because it was freshly cured by a very talented chef.

It was probably the chef.

The next course was spaghetti bolognaise, which was the best pasta bolognaise I have ever had in my life. Bar none. As my friend said, “that pasta was like a warm hug.”

Finally, the main course. Oh em jee. Butternut squash, kale and chanterelle Mushrooms, and a taste of a few different types of pork: tenderloin, pork belly and a little pork-sausage-type thing that I want to call a croquette, but I know that isn’t the name for it.

Did I mention the chef prepared each course himself?

Best meal of my life. Hands down.

Afterwards, we said our good-byes and expressed our appreciation. I think we left the restaurant a little before two. It was probably one of the most interesting experiences I’ve had in quite some time, and one I’ll treasure for a very, very long time.

Not only did I gain a new appreciation for where my food comes from, but now I know I’ll have the butchery skills I’ll need to survive a zombie apocalypse – and that if it comes down to me or a zombie, I don’t have to worry that I might be too squeamish to, as my butchery t-shirt said, “sever the head.”

Although I might get the hand saw caught on a bone.

 

Signal Boost: A Blog About Boobs

A few months ago, I heard about a former classmate (long lost-touch-with) who was undergoing a preventative double-mastectomy. And blogging about it.

Given all the conversation around Angelina Jolie’s similar decision, I thought it might be useful to share my former classmate’s blog, which she is keeping through her experience.

I’m a big believer in conversation, and Kristen’s blog is a hell of a conversation starter.

If you know of anyone interested in the topic, please let them know about Kristen’s sincere and insightful blog, “My Breast Intentions“. 

SciFi Flash Fiction: A Step Ahead

“It’s okay,” they kept saying when oil stores got low. “Science stays a step ahead.” They said it when the gush slowed to a slow-bleeding trickle, out of the scars of the ground.

They said it again in the wake of the twenty-teens extinctions. “Biological diversity? Eh, it’s fine. We’ve got DNA samples in the lab. We’re all good.” Even the species that hadn’t been sampled. “We can extrapolate. Science stays a step ahead.”

When the water dried up and there was nothing to drink, there were tiny nuclear-powered pumps sucking liquid from the air Science stayed a step ahead.

When the environment was pushed to its limits and the human die-offs occurred, late  in the mid-2020s, a void was presented. Plagues had decimated populations before; as before, food supplies and resources were at a premium. Automated service units were built for those who remained.

Finally, even those humans who remained could not extract enough from around them to continue, and they imprinted themselves into the  those automated units, and the planet whirred and clicked along like a gear through the heavens.

Science stayed a step ahead.

***

Years ago, my dad and I talked about how the human population planet was using up fossil fuels.  I was worried about a school lecture or something I’d seen on the news, and in addition to a joke about how an uncle of his used to say “if the combustion engine hadn’t been invented, we’d all be knee-deep in horse shit!”, he told me about a new technology that was being explored, which allowed gas companies to take advantage of new processes and extract new reserves of fossil fuels through the use of pressure and chemicals.  Over the years, it’s become clear that he was talking about hydraulic fracturing – fracking.

That conversation is what I think about when I think about using advancing sciences as an excuse not to worry about how we use the resources we have today. 

It’s not that I don’t believe in science – I do. Very strongly. But I sometimes don’t think much of where we’re taking ourselves when we  put it to use.

Anyway, taking a cue from the quote, “All a first draft must do to be successful is exist,” I’m posting this as is. I hope you’ve enjoyed it.

 

A Step Ahead (#FlashFiction #Draft #MondayBlogs)

“It’s okay,” they kept saying when oil stores got low. “Science stays a step ahead.” They said it when the gush slowed to a slow-bleeding trickle, out of the scars of the ground.

They said it again in the wake of the twenty-teens extinctions. “Biological diversity? Eh, it’s fine. We’ve got DNA samples in the lab. We’re all good.” Even the species that hadn’t been sampled. “We can extrapolate. Science stays a step ahead.”

When the water dried up and there was nothing to drink, there were tiny nuclear-powered pumps sucking liquid from the air Science stayed a step ahead.

When the environment was pushed to its limits and the human die-offs occurred,late  in the mid-2020s, a void was presented. Plagues had decimated populations before; as before, food supplies and resources were at a premium. Automated service units were built for those who remained.

Finally, even those humans who remained could not extract enough from around them to continue, and they imprinted themselves into the  those automated units, and the planet whirred and clicked along like a gear through the heavens.

Science stayed a step ahead.

***

Years ago, my dad and I talked about how the human population planet was using up fossil fuels.  I was worried about a school lecture or something I’d seen on the news, and in addition to a joke about how an uncle of his used to say “if the combustion engine hadn’t been invented, we’d all be knee-deep in horse shit!”, he told me about a new technology that was being explored, which allowed gas companies to take advantage of new processes and extract new reserves of fossil fuels through the use of pressure and chemicals.  Over the years, it’s become clear that he was talking about hydraulic fracturing – fracking.

That conversation is what I think about when I think about using advancing sciences as an excuse not to worry about how we use the resources we have today. 

It’s not that I don’t believe in science – I do. Very strongly. But I sometimes don’t think much of where we’re taking ourselves when we  put it to use. Anyway, taking a cue from the quote, “All a first draft must do to be successful is exist,” I’m posting this. I hope you’ve enjoyed it.

 

Cool Tweets About Robots, Writing & More

As you may know by now, my next collection is made up of short stories about artificial intelligence and robots. So here are some tweets I’ve seen about cool robot stuff over the last few weeks:

Chinese restaurant owner has amassed a robot noodle maker army goo.gl/jfs3i twitter.com/pourmecoffee/s…

— pourmecoffee (@pourmecoffee) April 23, 2013

 

How to build an artificial womb / #future #science /buff.ly/15nZobD

— Chris Osborn (@chrisDosborn) April 22, 2013

 

Many years ago, I saw the Tiger Lilies perform in London – so here’s another tweet that caught my eye:

ncwardwebb.blogspot.com/2013/04/unappr… 1 of the worlds best #bands #TheTigerLillies reign supreme on todays #Blog. Experience the miraculous ear candy NOW!

— R.W. Webb (@Snag2772) April 20, 2013

 

Some links on Self-Publishing:

Self-Editing Tips from New York Times Bestselling #Author Gemma Halliday buff.ly/Xs5RdM

— Chris Osborn (@chrisDosborn) April 22, 2013

 

How to Make Money Self-Publishing Fiction.ow.ly/kghjm #writing #indie

— James Scott Bell (@jamesscottbell) April 21, 2013

 

The theme for #EarthDay2013 is “The Face of Climate Change.” That makes me want to reread #HotMess. amazon.com/Hot-Mess-specu…

— Brian Love (@OnOneCondition) April 22, 2013

 

And a friend talked about starting a forum about women who write science fiction…

So… anyone want to start a review site for female sci-fi authors? io9.com/handy-charts-r…

— NYPinTA (@NYPinTA) April 23, 2013

 

I’ll leave you with some wise words:

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. -Confucius

— Motivational Quotes (@DavidRoads) April 21, 2013

Butchery, Part II: Start Spreading the News

Not sure WTF is going on? Track back to PART ONE of my butchery adventure before reading on.

It’s a little over a month ago, and my colleagues and I are gathered around a carrot cake that’s been brought in for a team birthday. As we pass slices around, eat cookies and make idle conversation, the topic moves toward how I won’t be in the office that Friday. I’ve been calling my trip to The Salty Pig an “exclusive cooking lesson,” for the sake of not upsetting the more sensitive souls in the department, but one of my friends decides it’s time to Ron Swanson that euphemism outta the park:

“She’s going to butcher a pig.”

The conversation may as well have been shot out of the sky, given how quickly it shut down. Staring at several levels of management as well as my teammates, I quickly sketch out how unsettled I was by trying to cook pork shoulder a few weeks ago, ending with the part about handing the half-a-shoulder I couldn’t touch off to my friend. Who then continues piping up: “She said, and I quote, its skin felt like a man’s.”

Now, for the record, what I said was that it felt like human skin, and what I actually meant was that handling the pork shoulder made me feel as I imagine I’d feel hacking into a dead human body, and the subtext was a mild reference to zombies and apocalyptica and so on, but his retelling landed with the desired effect.

The general reaction: “You’re killing a pig?!”

No, butchering and slaughtering are two different things.

“Are you gonna be okay?!”

If I ever want to eat Bacon again with a clear conscience, I certainly hope so.

”Omigod how are you going to do that?”

No idea, but there’ll be three of us so if I get too grossed out at any point, my guess is someone else can take over.

“How do you feel about it?!”

I’m looking forward to it. I think it will be a great learning experience*.

I posted more than a few pictures of adorable pigs in top hats and teacups over the next few hours. I’m not sure why, but it made me less nervous. My co-butchery-student informed me I’d get no sympathy if I freaked out, after that.

That evening, I was on the bus to Boston to meet the friend I’d be taking the butchery lesson with, reflecting on the discussions I’d had with people about the lesson since winning it. Some, like my colleague, were so excited about the idea of the experience that they were trying to find out if I could bring them home a chunk of meat. Others, like my roommate, assured me they had no desire to take part in that kind of activity, and probably wouldn’t want to look at the photos I was promising to come back with.

Riding in the bus, alone with my thoughts, I contemplated the reactions of others: my mom, who seemed kind of incredulous when I told her I’d even entered the competition, let alone won – and the friend I was going to be having the lesson with, who’d gone so far as to study up for the next morning’s teachings.

Then I contemplated something else: this was going to be one of the first genuinely new experiences I’d had in a while.

I was looking forward to it.

Stay tuned for part three…

*Pro tip: Tack “a great learning experience” onto most activities and people will think you’re less the kind of person who wants to have the experience of cutting a giant piece of meat to pieces, and more a sort of eccentric academic. Right?