Stephen Colegrove's Blog, page 13

Blog The Destroyer

I spent a fistful of hours last night writing an article on how to write better (and more better), then I thought to myself, “This is rubbish. Drivel. Putrefying cack.” So I sawed through the chain and went down to CVS at 3 AM. You need two cans of lighter fluid to burn any writing, especially poetry––one just wouldn’t be enough.

Mikey was slumped behind the bicycle rack at CVS like every night. Now here’s a man who, when you stare into his gaping maw, reminds you not of God’s Creation but a can of baked beans God took for a midnight snack and spilled on the carpet.

He felt the vibration of my footsteps and burbled awake. ”Who goes there?”

“Just me, Mikey.”

He cackled. “Hey, my name’s Mikey, too! Let’s be friends.”

“It’s not my name and we already are. I was at your bar mitzvah last week.”

Thus ensued more cackling. “What a social butterfly. So where you going, honey?”

“To CVS. To burn this article and the rest of my stories.”

He shook his head and dust or bobbins or something delicate clattered across the concrete. “No! Don’t burn it. There’s a writing competition, did you hear?”

“They won’t take articles. And it’s a bad one, at that.”

“No, they take everything.” Mikey burped. “Fiction, non-fiction, chick-lit, sci-fi, kid-fic, ero-fic, laugh-fic, nerd-fic, self-aware hipster-fic, lit-fic, screenplays, and fan-fic.”

“What about poetry? Some have said (and those some are me) that I write like a cybernetic Beat on acid.”

Mikey threw up all over my dress, then wiped his mouth. “No … poetry …”

“I was joking, it’s not. What’s the prize for this competition?”

“Three days in sunny southern California and five thousand dollars. All I need is the paper and fifty dollars.”

“Fifty?”

“I said a hundred. One hundred dollars to enter the contest. You’re practically guaranteed to win. I mean look at you––I’m blinded by your talent, and I haven’t even read anything yet.”

I nodded. I pulled a roll of bills from my tights and dropped five curled twenties into Mikey’s paw.

When I got back home I realized the manuscript was still inside the crumpled pink bag I got from Lancome last summer. I’d forgotten to give Mikey the manuscript! I asked the stick what I should do, but he’d gone to bed. Of course he had––it was 3 AM!

Self-Defense For The Self-Published

You may not be mobbed for autographs while buying goat-milk ice cream at Whole Foods, but the self-published author still needs a plan of self-defense. Anger and brute strength will only get you so far against a gang of hipster literary agents and their sardonic social media comments.

Places that are dangerous for the self-published author (hereby known as Chad):

1. Any enclosed space with more than two writers. If Chad brings up “Kobo” or “Smashwords”, he may find himself in a full-contact “SmashFace” over pbooks and ebooks.

2. The local copy shop. Chad may be printing flyers for the fifth entry in his self-published series about a woman trapped in a box trapped in a man’s body who solves hard-boiled crimes, but this may enrage someone well into her fourth year of query letters.

3. The interstate. Chad may have repainted his 1999 Toyota Corolla teal-green and slapped his Amazon URL on the trunk but this will only make him a target.

4. The street. Pbook authors don’t have to wear Beefy T’s with the cover of their book and a synopsis, why do YOU, Chad? Why do you have to push my buttons like that? Don’t you run from me.

Strategies for Self-Defense, if you or a loved one is a Chad:

1. Wear too much perfume. Yes more and higher up. The eyes of Chad’s attacker will stream with tears. Their fists will flail through the air uselessly, allowing Chad to escape.

2. Wear bright colors. Pink is very good––it calms the savage beast. Chad will need to basically wear a pink jumpsuit.

3. Carry a Kindle PaperWhite. The front-lit screen can blind most land mammals. Not Chad. He’s near-sighted from all that filthy electronic writing.

3. Don’t drive. Have you seen the statistics, Chad?

4. Don’t go outside. You like to stay in your room anyway, don’t you Chad? Shut up. No dinner for you until book six is done.

The Stick

Do things ever annoy you? I know they must, because you keep shoving messages under my door. Writing ProTip: crayon dilutes the impact of your thesis.

 

Burrs under my saddle (does not like):

1. Driving in heavy traffic while the radio plays sounds of cars honking in traffic

2. Driving in heavy traffic

3. Driving

4. People who shove notes under my door even though they KNOW the chain doesn’t reach that far and I have to use the stick to drag it over (Just TELL me what you need, friendly working person)

5. Chains

6. Sticks (apart from the stick)

What I like:

1. Coffee

2. Writing about things that are true but would shock the cheeseburger from your hand so I have to pretend it’s fiction

3. Coffee

4. Stick

I wrote 2,000 words today for Book Two. Now I’m up to 40,000 words, past the halfway point. Who knows, though. Oh, you want to know what it’s about? I really shouldn’t …  all right. There’s this evil ring, see, and if you wear it you go invisible, see, and it has to be taken to Mordor––shut up, it is not.

Urine A Lot of Trouble

If an adult beverage is strong enough to make blood leave your person, is that a good thing? From a marketing perspective, of course.

“Our vodka will murder your kidneys!”

“That’s not blood in the toilet––it’s ribbons of FUN.”

“It made WHAT spatter from your (eyes, ears, nose, genitalia)? Give me four fingers of THAT, kind Japanese hostess!”

“Drink this and end the night crawling through a pool of your own filth!”

And that old saw:

“Of course it’s free, Brenda–it’s Medicare!”

As I’m writing this post we had a small earthquake here in California. The entire building rocked back and forth. Imagine a Big Baby thirty feet tall who’s grabbed your tar-and-gravel roof in both sweaty paws and now is trying to shake you out of the building like the last Skittle in the bag. Or, that rocking could have simply been someone in white shaking the foot of my bed. I NEED to finish this post MOTHER (he’s not my mother).

Perhaps the Final Five are using this earthquake to communicate through time and spaaaaaaace. Must I completely remove the words “tween,” “pustule,” and “Charles Nelson Reilly” from my book? I must. Message received and understood! (“tween” isn’t a word anyway, stupid Final Five)

If you want to know how to write, I haven’t got a clue. You should understand by now this isn’t that kind of place, just like you should understand that a business with a name like “Cheetah’s” is not for children. Probably your first step should be to stop reading drivel like this and slam your fingers on the keys until you produce the newest, hottest, burningest flash fiction. Tweet that magic to all your friends and watch the fascists squirm in their high heels. Or “post to the door of your room” and watch the “football jocks” laugh in your face, as we used to say in my village.

I will say this about writing––it needs massive amounts of drugs Diet Pepsi. Yes, because I’m fat.

Steves Are Boring

I was going to post the first pages of chapter one but I spilled Diet A&W on it and the cat got scared and threw up. In the FAX machine of course! How do you think these posts make it to the great Internet and beyond? Clean it? Never.

Does FAX still need to be all caps? It looks more important that way. Here’s a FAX from Brenda. She wants her lawnmower back (that’s not a euphemism––Brenda, stop sending me FAXES).

I think it’s really saaaaad when someone goes to the comedy well and pulls out “FAX machine.” Probably almost as sad as using the words “comedy well.” Unless it’s at the end of the sentence, “The bishop and her minions do not handle comedy well”.

I had a theory that, due to unremitting childhood ridicule and beatings, all persons named “Stephen” are the most boring people on the planet. Then those funny guys Coogan, Fry, Colbert, and Hawking popped into my head and I threw my theory at the servants in disgust. Not to mention that side-splitting guy Stephen Covey! Come on, Fellow Steve, “habits” are for nuns.

I just discovered that the OAP (Old Alan Partridge) movie is in production and will be out next year. I KNOW everyone else had this information earlier and didn’t tell me. Mainly because I was told to “Shelter In Place” a few months ago because a “person” was “seen” in my wing of the “house” (hospital).

Alan Partridge Movie

The Itinerant

If the authorities haven’t mentioned this, I will––I have problems finding a place to write. The library is too quiet. Come on, loser––TOO quiet? Well, come on yourself …

If I chuckle while listening to The Big Lebowski on my iPod, it can jolt the very fabric of the universe for some grey-haired pensioner next to me reading “Quilts for the American Dog Magazine”. Even if I force myself into a corner of the library the vertical walls of books somehow magically amplify whatever tuberculotic material is now working itself through another pensioner’s throat. So, in the words of Mr. Ed––”Nay” to libraries.

Coffee shops do not serve me well, either. I’m forced by my own neuroses to write in my backyard, at a table outside Quizno’s, or parked behind Safeway. It’s quiet there … until the squirrels come … stupid beady eyes can see into my soul GO AWAY squirrel .

Cover is basically finished. I think I’ll upload it for this post. Still working on the second book, passed 32,000 words.

These are mine and I wrote them

Language is fantastic. We can use it to create completely unique sentences, never before uttered in the history of mankind. However, we mostly just say things like “I’m going to the store,” “Stop scratching that, it’s from the President,” or “Mother ran off with the butcher.”

Feel free to use these new sentences in daily conversation. I guarantee they are fresh. (If used in commercial work, I require a one-time payment of $9.99.)

Slap me silly, I’ve left yogurt on the senator’s doorstep.

Tad is no more and no less a man than you are, Brenda.

The camel––what was left of him––had spread over the asphalt like a smashed creamsickle.

Please accept this award on behalf of the Academy, Mr. O’Keefe.

Mad Libs are great!

September 30th Book Updates

Updates on the books. As an added treat, Miles O’Keefe! (I’m kidding––It’s actually from my year in Quiz Bowl.)

A Girl Called Badger –– Cover in the final stages. Hint: Badger is on it. Should I do a collectible foil version for iBooks? An alternate cover with Jack Palance? Free gum? Book is still on track for publication in early December. That’s what my “people” tell me. And when I say  ”people” I mean “hospital staff.”

Book Two (title TBD, but definitely not “Cave Dwellers”) –– Passed 25,000 words in the first draft. You know why it’s called a ‘draft’, right? Because you can feel the breeze through the gaping holes in the plot! Thank you, I’ll be here all week.

It’s still not too late to be a character in the book! I promise you won’t be shot in the first 1,000 words.

I Dream of Minnie

(PopSCI.com, Sept. 4, 2012)

MIT researchers have successfully reached inside the brains of rats and manipulated their dreams using an audio cue conditioned into them during the previous day. It’s a development that lends insight into the whole sleep/memory consolidation relationship. But it’s also worth reiterating that this is dream control, external manipulation of the mind during sleep. And it could one day lead to the controlled engineering of dreams.

The researchers accomplished their dream manipulation by training rats to run through a maze during the day, using audio tones to guide them. One tone indicated that a left turn would lead the rats to food, with the other tone indicating a right turn would be met with reward. While the rats did this, the researchers logged all their neural activity. Then, exhausted from a full day of left- and right-turning, the rats went to sleep.

Scientists have long known that while we sleep, our hippocampus replays many of the day’s events and consolidates what happened into memories. It works the same way for rats, and the researchers wanted to know if they could use the audio cues embedded in the day’s memories to influence the progression of a dream. It turns out they can. Analysis showed that when lab rats dream (at least these lab rats), they dream of mazes. And if the researchers played the audio chimes to the rats while they were dreaming, they would immediately begin dreaming of the section of the maze associated with that particular chime.

So the content of the rats’ dreams was altered, essentially by cuing specific memories from the previous day using a trigger–in this case the audio chime. They think this finding could lead to new kinds of dream manipulation that could also be used to edit the memory consolidation process–basically enhancing, numbing, or blocking out memories–which in turn could aid in the treatment of things like PTSD. Crazy stuff. Abstract and such are over at Nature Neuroscience.

http://www.popsci.com/science/article...