Tonight’s update: an announcement
Later today, approx. 1900h, I will be posting an announcement that may be of concern.
Yrs truly,
Phil Miletic
Announcement: the OM is no more…
…well maybe not “no more” but if the OM does return it will be resurrected in a new light, differing from the prescribed description I had given it awhile ago.
I had an epiphany: an epiphany that hadn’t suddenly hit me, but had been smoldering in the past two weeks and grown into what it has formed into now. What is the epiphany, this sudden realization, is for me to know and for me alone.
For those who think it’s to do w/r/t financial needs: it’s not.
For those who think that I freaked out last minute: it’s not.
For those who think I don’t have enough submissions: it’s not, and the deadline hasn’t even approached yet. Even so, I would have delayed the first issue.
etc.
I apologize to those who were enthusiastic towards this project and supportive of my ambitions. I thank you, I really do. And like I said above, there is a chance I may retain the OM but not in the way I originally imagined it. So don’t be completely discouraged.
The number of circumstances encountered that brought me to this epiphany led me to the conviction that it isn’t the matter of I can’t do it; it was the fact that I don’t want to do it. And it isn’t that fact that I don’t want to do it because I’m afraid I can’t do it, and the struggles that come along w/ the project; I don’t want to do it because of what enigmas are involved which will remain undisclosed. This is not a mere whim. I have thought this long and hard.
Once again, I apologize to those who anticipated the OM, but it is such a strong conviction and the epiphany a great one that has changed my perspective on a lot of things.
To those who have submitted work but haven’t received a reply, I will respond to you in the next week or so workshoppinng your submission rather than leaving it dormant.
zrrzztt,
Phil Miletic
Grant Morrison is considered one of the greatest comic writers alongside Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman. I hate the guy interviewing him, but this interview best exhibits the themes that are found in Morrison’s work in the most simplistic manner. Here is a more revealing video of him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGG96P5P2dw. Yes, he says he was abducted by aliens, talks to other life forms, practices Chaos Magick (meaning he knows a lot about a lot of religions and takes part in what he selects out of them), and is an overwhelming character that gets some people very angered. But, he has had a huge effect on comics. His The Invincibles brought him into the spotlight. I have read only the first volume, but just in the first volume there is the Beatles, Percy Shelley, Byron, and Mary Shelley, the Marquis De Sade—all of whom the characters either interact w/ or who provide to the plot. The arcadia story arc is a famous one from this volume. He is currently working on his run on Batman (starting w/ issue 655) which has gotten him highly acclaimed praise but also people saying “worst storyline. EVER.” The biggest upset/praise comes from his “killing off” of Bruce Wayne in Final Crisis, but really he was sent back in time, and…well, it’s a complicated storyline. Batman R.I.P is another of which he has gotten much praise for. As complicated as he may get, in the end he makes sense and he forces the reader to carefully read and re-read, and re-re-read his work taking comics to a higher literary form. Other notable must-reads that have garnered him praise in the comic world is W3 and All-Star Superman. (both drawn by the amazing artist Frank Quietly.) There is much more, but I encourage you to explore on your own. He is a writer you do not want to ignore.
The Weekly Update #3 Beats and a Comic Writer
A friend of mine was inquiring about the Beats and wanted to know about them so I decided to have this update focus primarily on the Beats. The friend commonly misconstrued the Beats as a hippie movement. While similar, the Beats are considered to have jumpstarted the hippie revolution of the ’60s and there are differences of which is not important to go through here.
The main writers of this movement: Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, and Allen Ginsberg. These three had an interconnected history w/ one another, a history that is highly interesting, and they all influenced each other’s writing.
The three main works by these authors: Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road, William S. Burroughs’ “cut-up” novel Naked Lunch, and Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” (I also strongly recommend you read his poem “Kaddish”).
On the Road (written 1951, published 1957) has a little bit of a myth surrounding it. A fact is that the entire novel was written on a 37m scroll. The myth is that Kerouac wrote it in 3 weeks fueled by Benzedrine and no sleep. Kerouac often called his writing spontaneous prose which is similar to stream of consciousness; almost like a mixture of stream of consciousness and the surrealist’s automatic writing. Kerouac also attributed his writing to bebop jazz: the long sentences flowed like a Jazz composition and the dashes were breaths or quick pauses. The novel is autobiographical, but by request of the publisher he altered the names, however it is well known that Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty is Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassidy. You can also find out who everyone else is by just looking on the web. It’s a great introduction to Kerouac and many of his work follow the same familiar vein. If you get a chance, compare On the Road w/ his other novel, Big Sur. There are some interesting differences in his mood and enthusiasm between the two novels.
Naked Lunch (1959) is not for the faint of heart, but is an exemplary book of the “cut up technique” that Burroughs and Brian Gysin mastered. The book went through a trial for its content and won. Burroughs admits he does not remember writing the novel at all in Tangiers. How he got to Tangiers is a story in itself but will be summed up here: Burroughs was a junkie and dealt drugs to support his habit. After a hint that the police were going to arrest him fro trafficking, Burroughs and his Wife Joan Vollmer fled to Mexico. In Mexico City occurred the infamous William Tell Incident, where Vollmer placed an apple on her head, and Burroughs was going to shoot the apple off her head, only to shoot her in the head. After 13 days he was bailed out of jail, and Burroughs left to South America to look for and experience the drug yage. Then Burroughs left to Tangiers where in a drug induced frenzy he wrote frenetically the pages that would become Naked Lunch and the subsequent “cut up trilogy”. Since the pages were disorderly organized, the book was edited w/ the help of Kerouac and Ginsberg. The rest is history, and can be looked at more in depth on your own leisure. But it was after Naked Lunch was written that Burroughs kicked his habit, and has been kind of a reference guide for all the drugs he took and the information he knows about them, and how to get off them.
“Howl” is a long poem, like On the Road, contains many references to his own life and to the people that have surrounded him. It is said that Ginsberg was inspired by Kerouac’s Spontaneous Prose and adapted it to poetic form, also drawing from Walt Whitman’s long line poems. The first reading of “Howl” is a famous one where allegedly the crowd started cheering, and hurrahing as Ginsberg read the poem. The crowd nearly became a riot, the poem had gotten them that ecstatic. Here is a reading of “America” which shows the audience interaction (although not to the extent of “Howl”) that Ginsberg created: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEUjTpyBhOo
There are many other myths surrounding these three artists, let alone the other affiliates of the Beats. But I’ll add one more. In 1945 Kerouac and Burroughs wrote And the Hippos Were Boiled in their Tanks which is simply a murder mystery. However, the novel is supposedly to be an actual account of a murder that Burroughs and Kerouac helped cover up. A friend, Lucian Carr was constantly stalked by an individual, and so, Carr stabbed the stalker. He told Kerouac and Burroughs and they helped hide the body. Apparently, both Kerouac and Burroughs went to jail for a short period of time
This is merely an introduction to the Beats, and there are other aspects of the era I would like to get into. Note that Buddhism was the peak of interest of Kerouac (although he called himself a Catholic) and this era contains the re-interest in Haikus, and created Haikus as a common western practice.
Enjoy the following material,
Phil
- [Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
- 0 Plays
Gertrude Stein’s “If I Told Him”. Also read Tender Buttons by Stein to have a better grasp of what she is achieving through her repetition in her poetry.
(courtesy of ubuweb)
Don’t be turned off by the word Marxism! A lot of people run away from that term. Listen to Zizken. He has an interesting approach combining Marxist and Lacanian theory. The beautiful thing about theory is that it can be applied to other contexts than say, what Zizek is specifically talking about in this video. Take for example the joke he delivers around 20min. He takes the joke out from its context and applies it to his own, extending the joke to benefit his argument. I believe that that joke which he extends can be applied to many other scenarios.
I find Zizek very appealing, and although I have yet to read any of his books I suggest you all take a look at his other youtube videos. His approach to film (Zizek is a huge film buff) is very interesting, entertaining, and insightful.
- [Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
- 4 Plays
One of the most puzzling features of Finnegans Wake was (and still is) how to read the text outloud. This recording (courtesy of UbuWeb) provides clarity (for those few pages) and a better knowledge of how to read the text since it has James Joyce himself reading from Finnegans Wake. If you have your Finnegans Wake book with you, you can read along starting at 213.11 (p. 213, line 11).
The Weakly Update #1
The Weakly update is a small update that contains little introductions to the arts that is meant to broaden interest, influence and creativity. Audio and Video will be seperate from this post since I can’t shove everything into one post. This week happens to contain mostly modernist work w/ the exception of the more recent 2009 Zizek speech. So, enjoy your Monday w/ these gems:
Short Story: The Snows of Kilimanjaro by Ernest Hemingway. Why read it? What it really does on the surface is motivate a writer to write; to be unlike Harry who claims he is a writer but hasn’t written anything of worth. (despite his rich experiences)
Two Poems: The Second Coming and Sailing to Byzantium by W. B. Yeats. Why? One of the most interesting ideas that Yeats puts forward is the idea of the Widening Gyre that is well worth looking into.
Marcel Duchamp’s Fountaine.
The First ‘Pamphlet’ is…[and some tips]
So what is the first ‘pamphlet’?
Well, the first pamphlet is a…pamphlet!
Pamphlet’s have had a significant role in the history of literature so I thought it proper to begin The Oncely Monthly with the pamphlet. Since the pamphlet form does have its restrictions visual poetry, art, photography will be limited and film, animation, comics will be absent. Anything visual will be considered but for the sake of space and the sake of the quality of the visual work. I don’t want to shrink or cram in the work in such a tight space.
Fiction and poetry will be the focus and will be equally divided throughout the pamphlet. But as I have said before, don’t let this deter you from sending in other forms of work. The earlier the better, the more frequent the better.
In other news, I will update the blog weekly with articles, videos, audios, etc. of interest relating to the arts. One site I will heavily draw from is Ubu.com. The site is expansive, but I encourage you all to visit it and search for anything that may be of interest to you. For the blog I will post what I personally think is of interest since Ubu is large and can generate the feeling of not knowing where to begin. Click here to visit the site. Or click on the link I will provide on the sidebar in the next following days.
For this week, I thought of posting a few lists that authors have written for writers of fiction to adhere to (these can apply to any form of writing and not just fiction):
Elmore Leonard
1. Never open a book with weather. If it’s only to create atmosphere, and not a character’s reaction to the weather, you don’t want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways than an Eskimo to describe ice and snow in his book Arctic Dreams, you can do all the weather reporting you want.
2. Avoid prologues: they can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in non-fiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want. There is a prologue in John Steinbeck’s Sweet Thursday, but it’s OK because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: “I like a lot of talk in a book and I don’t like to have nobody tell me what the guy that’s talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks.”
3. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But “said” is far less intrusive than “grumbled”, “gasped”, “cautioned”, “lied”. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with “she asseverated” and had to stop reading and go to the dictionary.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” … he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances “full of rape and adverbs”.
5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful.
6. Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose”. This rule doesn’t require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use “suddenly” tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points.
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won’t be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavour of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories Close Range.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters, which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants”, what do the “American and the girl with him” look like? “She had taken off her hat and put it on the table.” That’s the only reference to a physical description in the story.
9. Don’t go into great detail describing places and things, unless you’re Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language. You don’t want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them.
My most important rule is one that sums up the 10: if it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.
Margaret Atwood
1. Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can’t sharpen it on the plane, because you can’t take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils.
2. If both pencils break, you can do a rough sharpening job with a nail file of the metal or glass type.
3. Take something to write on. Paper is good. In a pinch, pieces of wood or your arm will do.
4. If you’re using a computer, always safeguard new text with a memory stick.
5. Do back exercises. Pain is distracting.
6. Hold the reader’s attention. (This is likely to work better if you can hold your own.) But you don’t know who the reader is, so it’s like shooting fish with a slingshot in the dark. What fascinates A will bore the pants off B.
7. You most likely need a thesaurus, a rudimentary grammar book, and a grip on reality. This latter means: there’s no free lunch. Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you’re on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.
8. You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You’ve been backstage. You’ve seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.
9. Don’t sit down in the middle of the woods. If you’re lost in the plot or blocked, retrace your steps to where you went wrong. Then take the other road. And/or change the person. Change the tense. Change the opening page.
10. Prayer might work. Or reading something else. Or a constant visualisation of the holy grail that is the finished, published version of your resplendent book.
Jonathan Franzen
1. The reader is a friend, not an adversary, not a spectator.
2. Fiction that isn’t an author’s personal adventure into the frightening or the unknown isn’t worth writing for anything but money.
3. Never use the word “then” as a conjunction – we have “and” for this purpose. Substituting “then” is the lazy or tone-deaf writer’s non-solution to the problem of too many “ands” on the page.
4. Write in the third person unless a really distinctive first-person voice offers itself irresistibly.
5. When information becomes free and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along with it.
6. The most purely autobiographical fiction requires pure invention. Nobody ever wrote a more autobiographical story than “The Metamorphosis”.
7. You see more sitting still than chasing after.
8. It’s doubtful that anyone with an internet connection at his workplace is writing good fiction.
9. Interesting verbs are seldom very interesting.
10. You have to love before you can be relentless.
Jack Kerouac
- Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for your own joy
- Submissive to everything, open, listening
- Try never get drunk outside your own house
- Be in love with your life
- Something that you feel will find its own form
- Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
- Blow as deep as you want to blow
- Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
- The unspeakable visions of the individual
- No time for poetry but exactly what is
- Visionary tics shivering in the chest
- In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
- Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
- Like Proust be an old teahead of time
- Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
- The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
- Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
- Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
- Accept loss forever
- Believe in the holy contour of life
- Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
- Don’t think of words when you stop but to see picture better
- Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
- No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
- Write for the world to read and see your exact pictures of it
- Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
- In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
- Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
- You’re a Genius all the time
- Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven
*Note: Don’t just stick to one list. Treat all these lists like a buffet. Pick and choose what you want on your plate. And always be curious to search for more. (if you are interested)
