The funniest thing is I manage to make nearly everything violent in SOME way, but the core of this story is about the fear of losing your identity and being forgotten.
For me, the absolute best writing feels like a hypnosis script, where one thing leeches into another, and even if it makes no sense, it makes sense, and the brain just follows the path because it's irresistible and the Gordian knot of it all is a drug of the worst/best kind. And if it does make sense, then my mind melts, blowtorch style.
I've been developing this distinct mode since Foridecay. And yes, you can breathe now. My best friend bet me I couldn't write a whole novel at this pace, said I packed all the best sentences in a 700 pager into 1200 words with Floridecay, then like, a week later she hung herself. Oh, the Irony, Saint Evelyn. So, I'm not out here trying to just tell a story, I'm writing a panic attack.
Yes - getting to know your work and piecing together what you share, it definitely doesn’t feel like you’re just telling a story. It’s too visceral for that.
It’s a project, slow coming together, but I have the entire contour of the story in my head. I don’t believe in the commonly held (relatively recent, as in, you didn’t hear it pre-internet fanfic culture) of the pantser vs the plotter. All stories contain plot (even an antiplot, non-narrative, is a KIND of plot, just a very obscure and resistant to reductive logic one, see: David Markson) Whether you’re writing into a blind alley, you usually have some key imagery, an idea, something driving you. (In My Name is My Name, the only imagery was the final cut away, and the last sentence, then I found out it was part of Floridecay’s story) You usually have some idea of the next 30 or so pages of your story whether you realize it or not (I’ve nailed this basic sort of placement down with more than one friend and author who ascribe to the same theories as me, my clique, if you will.) I am against heavy plotting unless you’re very, very good at it, because it makes you stuff a story into a box it may not want to go in. A common mistake of amateurs I see a lot if heavy plotting then obviously coming to a point where the text should have gone left but they had insisted beforehand that it go right, so they took it rightward, and it failed because of it. All you really need for a story is an idea or an image, sometimes some key events. Natural storytellers often don’t understand why you would plot because they have an innate or learned and earned sense of the dynamics of a story, so for them something that’s natural (promise/problem/conflict/conundrum, pick whoever’s term you want, the middle, and the climax/resolution/end/denouement etc.) seems ineffable, and to claim otherwise is completely foreign. The rest of us wake up and have to eat a lot of shit. (Often even though they have this innate understanding of narrative mechanics and storytelling, they have eaten a LOT of shit as well, but if you get to a certain point, it’s hard to see where you started unless you keep it in mind at all times. Which is why I am always writing my first novel, I am always writing my first story, I am always writing my first draft, because I don’t want to fall into complacency or self parody.)
Also, if people paid attention, they’d notice things that run through lots of my stories, because everything is somehow connected and that’s just how my mind works. Read the only real descriptions I do of what a character is wearing (the protagonist) in Floridecay, then A Salton Eternity, then My Name is My Name. Yes, I’m so pretentious that there is a pattern embedded throughout everything I write, none of it committed to paper explicitly, all of it implicit somehow in the text.
Our Year took seven years to write. (countless drafts, finally I think perfected in the form it took when it hit Substack)
Floridecay took two hours to write and less than that after to sell. (what you read is the first and only draft)
A Salton Eternity took one afternoon to write. (one prompt, one draft)
My Name is My Name took 3 hours to write. (two weeks prep, one draft)
The Everett Hypothesis took two years to reach final (four drafts, one restart)
Apparently my fiction only has two speeds “it’s done right the fuck now” or “it will be done when it is done”
Jeez, wake up and write an essay for a comment on your own work Emil.
and now im shamed because my last prompt is a hot meat pie on a silver plate with a jug of gravy on the side compared to the radge packet threesome you had to thread with gold. I'll get there but im trying to rhyme 69 demons' names and you’ve got to be able to spell them backwards if you want to summon them up, you know.
i just love the rhythm and the rhymes in this. youve got a road trip motor running on the page. The detail reads like a day in your life or the life you once led. too real to be made up . well thats how it reads to me, but then im a stay at home real estate lawyer who only smoked a wee bit of red leb back in the 80s and then took law and stopped the nonsense so what do I know about real state of the USA anyway?
And then ... the Russian kids? all I can connect with is the vodka running through everything... grass to grain to bottle to brain and vein. but did I miss something deeper? the cheapness of life and the misunderstandings of crazy thrill seeking youth?
Reaping the celebration of the planting of the winter rye at the start of the story. Honestly, I didn't want to end it on the obvious lead in to "these kids are already dead" with "you're standing too close to me." And two children playing in a barley field in Russia (the world's largest producer of barley) was the first image that came to mind when given the prompt.
Me and the Oracle (nickname I steal from my mom, an English Lit degree holder, for the protagonist's mom in the piece) both also just agreed that the sentence, as a cap, "blood sprayed the barley" sang.
All of the folktales and myths are real.
The protagonist is not a cut-out, in spite of what it would appear. Look up Tom Spanbauer, this falls under minimalism and distinctly within his definitions of "dangerous fiction." Tell the truth, the deep truth, the truth that hurts, but lie, lie, lie, lie, lie.
If you notice the protagonist is a recurring face. Same guy as in Salton Eternity and Floridecay. This was an exercise in deconstructing Floridecay to see if I could recreate any of it without being more than half mad. Floidecay being my only technical pub, which, if you've not read and are interested, you can find here https://www.bodyfluids.org/issue03-floridecay-emil-ottoman But it's sort of like reading a panic attack.
There are many dangerous lives lived in this piece. And a few deaths.
I felt them all.
The funniest thing is I manage to make nearly everything violent in SOME way, but the core of this story is about the fear of losing your identity and being forgotten.
Well, I didn't want to give it away, but that's the death I felt the strongest. And it plays out almost like a twist. Well done.
Pretty impressive
Thank you.
Fuuuuuuuck.
Can I breathe now? Can I?
For me, the absolute best writing feels like a hypnosis script, where one thing leeches into another, and even if it makes no sense, it makes sense, and the brain just follows the path because it's irresistible and the Gordian knot of it all is a drug of the worst/best kind. And if it does make sense, then my mind melts, blowtorch style.
I've been developing this distinct mode since Foridecay. And yes, you can breathe now. My best friend bet me I couldn't write a whole novel at this pace, said I packed all the best sentences in a 700 pager into 1200 words with Floridecay, then like, a week later she hung herself. Oh, the Irony, Saint Evelyn. So, I'm not out here trying to just tell a story, I'm writing a panic attack.
Yes - getting to know your work and piecing together what you share, it definitely doesn’t feel like you’re just telling a story. It’s too visceral for that.
It’s a project, slow coming together, but I have the entire contour of the story in my head. I don’t believe in the commonly held (relatively recent, as in, you didn’t hear it pre-internet fanfic culture) of the pantser vs the plotter. All stories contain plot (even an antiplot, non-narrative, is a KIND of plot, just a very obscure and resistant to reductive logic one, see: David Markson) Whether you’re writing into a blind alley, you usually have some key imagery, an idea, something driving you. (In My Name is My Name, the only imagery was the final cut away, and the last sentence, then I found out it was part of Floridecay’s story) You usually have some idea of the next 30 or so pages of your story whether you realize it or not (I’ve nailed this basic sort of placement down with more than one friend and author who ascribe to the same theories as me, my clique, if you will.) I am against heavy plotting unless you’re very, very good at it, because it makes you stuff a story into a box it may not want to go in. A common mistake of amateurs I see a lot if heavy plotting then obviously coming to a point where the text should have gone left but they had insisted beforehand that it go right, so they took it rightward, and it failed because of it. All you really need for a story is an idea or an image, sometimes some key events. Natural storytellers often don’t understand why you would plot because they have an innate or learned and earned sense of the dynamics of a story, so for them something that’s natural (promise/problem/conflict/conundrum, pick whoever’s term you want, the middle, and the climax/resolution/end/denouement etc.) seems ineffable, and to claim otherwise is completely foreign. The rest of us wake up and have to eat a lot of shit. (Often even though they have this innate understanding of narrative mechanics and storytelling, they have eaten a LOT of shit as well, but if you get to a certain point, it’s hard to see where you started unless you keep it in mind at all times. Which is why I am always writing my first novel, I am always writing my first story, I am always writing my first draft, because I don’t want to fall into complacency or self parody.)
Also, if people paid attention, they’d notice things that run through lots of my stories, because everything is somehow connected and that’s just how my mind works. Read the only real descriptions I do of what a character is wearing (the protagonist) in Floridecay, then A Salton Eternity, then My Name is My Name. Yes, I’m so pretentious that there is a pattern embedded throughout everything I write, none of it committed to paper explicitly, all of it implicit somehow in the text.
Our Year took seven years to write. (countless drafts, finally I think perfected in the form it took when it hit Substack)
Floridecay took two hours to write and less than that after to sell. (what you read is the first and only draft)
A Salton Eternity took one afternoon to write. (one prompt, one draft)
My Name is My Name took 3 hours to write. (two weeks prep, one draft)
The Everett Hypothesis took two years to reach final (four drafts, one restart)
Apparently my fiction only has two speeds “it’s done right the fuck now” or “it will be done when it is done”
Jeez, wake up and write an essay for a comment on your own work Emil.
Wow. Just wow.
Also, thank you.
Yeah, but did it catch that mental breakdown panic attack on fire and a half sheet of LSD feeling I was going for!?
Yes.
Well, shit. Fuck.
Yeah this was worth the wait. I love it.
Thank you!!!!
and now im shamed because my last prompt is a hot meat pie on a silver plate with a jug of gravy on the side compared to the radge packet threesome you had to thread with gold. I'll get there but im trying to rhyme 69 demons' names and you’ve got to be able to spell them backwards if you want to summon them up, you know.
I really want to read this.
i just love the rhythm and the rhymes in this. youve got a road trip motor running on the page. The detail reads like a day in your life or the life you once led. too real to be made up . well thats how it reads to me, but then im a stay at home real estate lawyer who only smoked a wee bit of red leb back in the 80s and then took law and stopped the nonsense so what do I know about real state of the USA anyway?
And then ... the Russian kids? all I can connect with is the vodka running through everything... grass to grain to bottle to brain and vein. but did I miss something deeper? the cheapness of life and the misunderstandings of crazy thrill seeking youth?
bears reading twice. oh yes.
Reaping the celebration of the planting of the winter rye at the start of the story. Honestly, I didn't want to end it on the obvious lead in to "these kids are already dead" with "you're standing too close to me." And two children playing in a barley field in Russia (the world's largest producer of barley) was the first image that came to mind when given the prompt.
Me and the Oracle (nickname I steal from my mom, an English Lit degree holder, for the protagonist's mom in the piece) both also just agreed that the sentence, as a cap, "blood sprayed the barley" sang.
All of the folktales and myths are real.
The protagonist is not a cut-out, in spite of what it would appear. Look up Tom Spanbauer, this falls under minimalism and distinctly within his definitions of "dangerous fiction." Tell the truth, the deep truth, the truth that hurts, but lie, lie, lie, lie, lie.
If you notice the protagonist is a recurring face. Same guy as in Salton Eternity and Floridecay. This was an exercise in deconstructing Floridecay to see if I could recreate any of it without being more than half mad. Floidecay being my only technical pub, which, if you've not read and are interested, you can find here https://www.bodyfluids.org/issue03-floridecay-emil-ottoman But it's sort of like reading a panic attack.