I recently found a pile of oversized paper. I recently found a collection of Microns and glitter markers, pastel pencils and Sharpies. Every city I’ve ever imagined hasn’t existed yet. Every city I want to live in I need to create myself.
I may as well say that one of the major projects I am working on this year is called Dark Dark Cities, a collection of stories taking place in a collection of cities – each different from one another, with different innerworkings, different street systems, different everything. Putting things together is difficult, but it’s the only way I know how to do things. I peel a city street from a place I haven’t seen in ten years and put it against a town district I can only recognize from a photograph I saw years ago.
I collect pictures of places, of skylines, of building edges for this exact reason.
I am building places we’ve never been. Places I want to take people to. I do things that way. Place comes first, the people that come up around it are only products of their environment. The city is the character. The city is breathing. Living.
I scribble and paint like a child. I have no art training. It isn’t necessary. In Cartography, Nathaniel Apple was the mapmaker, he was the one with the skill, with the vision, the entire story should have been about him.
It’s his spirit I’m pulling in these days.
He’s the boy I won’t let go.
Yesterday I finished Percy Jackson’s last quest. For now, at least. I might say that it was enjoyable, but, I think that’s doing it a disservice. Inside I’m a twelve year old with a hero complex and I can’t wait for to get my first magical staff and take it out into the world. Except the world will be mostly dust and the cities that are few and far between will be made of glass. I take my time. I think about these things.
I often talk about forgetting the things you love. I do it all the time. Getting too wrapped up in the city streets or the dirt of the abandoned wastelands. I live in a tiny spot that is overfilling with things and I forget to move things aside, peer what is underneath.
In the fourth grade I remember reading Greek myth and hating Hera because she let her husband do whatever he wanted to do. Literally. I’ve read the Odyssey twice in my life. I have copies of the Iliad and Mythology in my room. On my shelves. I’ve pulled them down and started to make stacks. Ancient wars. Heroes’ journeys. Epic poetry. The things that I based my life on as a youngster. All the things that mattered and were important to me in literature. In college I forgot about these things. I studied modern lit, I studied medieval lit, I studied Dante. But I forgot about my strong feelings towards Odysseus. I forget my interest in Medusa. My style-desire for her hair, no matter how terrible that may seem.
I find half written lists all the time. Things to get back to. Things to remember. Things you once loved. It is just another few words and titles and names on a list, but I am going through the list. I am remembering these things. I am putting them to use.
They don’t call me a genre-crasher for nothing.
Most people I know like to travel through the words of YA/Teen Literature. Pretty simple but engrossing. A fairly hard thing to do these days. Plots are cleaner, more forgiving. You can read them quickly, get through them, enjoy them. I have my own shelf of them in my quiet bedroom, hidden behind action figures and old broken cameras. Used, well read paperbacks I’ve gotten from other people, like trade agreements in the backalleys. I read them. I decide to keep them or pass them along.
But sometimes, the truth is, I like to take it a step further. I go down another notch on the ladder. I step further into the bookstore. Up against the wall of the back shelves where everything is brightly colored and the sentiments are almost exactly what you see on the page.
I read Middle Grade Fiction. Stories aimed at young boys. And I like it.
Maybe it’s my shonen manga sensibilities. The years of wading through Bleach and One Piece and all those fun, action, adventure stories. All those boys who were told they couldn’t do it and then they did. All those bits of triumph and depression and the ability to just keep on going.
Twelve year olds going on an adventure? I read the hell out of that. I enjoy it. I know I’m not alone and I’m okay with that. So, excuse me while I read through the entire Percy Jackson series while I take a break from literature that’s more age appropriate. Excuse me while it reminds me of my deep deep fascination and knowledge of Greek mythology. Excuse me while it reminds me I studied the exact wrong things in college when I was there.
These things have got to be allowed, or I wouldn’t know what else to do.
I have no words this week.
I’m more or less the most thrilled I have been in a long time. I live a fairly thrifty lifestyle. Most of my clothing is handmade, I scour the dollar store for oddities, and I keep technology long past it’s prime. None of this bothers me, living my life looking out a small window with handprints on the panes of glass. I covet ever so slightly, save my pennies and each thing I own becomes woven in with me.
The big things is, right now, what I’m waiting for is the delivery truck to pull up and drop off something special. I have gotten myself my first DSLR.
After spending a lifetime of what feels like using borrowed cameras and mostly out-of-date systems, I will finally have a tiny black box that is mine. A lens to capture the light. I can put my old Minolta SLR on the shelf for a nap, I can wash off the remembrance of the scent of developer fluid off my fingertips. I can do things simply. I can put together moments and visions in a way that is my world. I can will the things I know in my head into the outside with ease.
Pictures to match words are a necessary for the storybook that is Dark Dark Cities. When it comes together, I think you will be happy.
I.
Last week or so, Ley discussed the external, the set-up, the before-hand motion of work. It got me thinking. Thinking about all the put together things and places I exist in, the way writing happens before it actually happens. In my bed. In this desk chair. In that shower. It got me thinking that what I have right now is the best set up I ever had for writing. Better than the stark white dorm room with room for nothing or the card table set up in someone’s spare room. As much as I love setting, this is my setting. I have given myself the perfect setting.
In my room, I feel like a mermaid. Everything is tinged in teal: the desk, the bed, the ottoman. I flail around in bed, rolling with the sheets and covering my head with the pillows. It is like lying underwater. Sounds warbled, senses heightened. I keep my city lamp to remind me of the places I write about, my orange lava lamp to remind me of the dark crime syndicates I used to type about when it was the only light I had, my wall of books as my goal. My room, is in fact, filled with pictures of places first and people second. Rooftops and stairwells and trains and skyline pieces. They hover at my backside as I write.
Above all, I believe in sounds. I love music, I love post-rock. I love electronic blips and glitches, light in the form of sound. But the truth is, sometimes I can’t listen to a thing. Sometimes I have to turn the music down real low. Real, real, real low and listen to just the words as they reverb in my head. Poetry taught me to read aloud as I wrote. I stop and repeat lines. This is why I go at it alone.
I write in bed or at the desk. I write on the floor. For right now this is my dream setup. I couldn’t imagine anything else.
II.
There has been a lot of talk about a person’s ten rules of writing around lately.
Here’s what I subscribe to:
1. Find you space, make it your space. If it doesn’t work, move on and start from the beginning again.
2. Keep a notebook by your bed or in your bed. The best inspiration comes in bed. It comes when you’re half asleep.
3. Write everyday, no matter what. Write about yourself, about what you like. Write fiction. Write a letter. But write everyday.
4. Be active, stay active. You don’t think of stories on your walks, but, it clears out your brain so stories can move in.
5. Find your friends that don’t live in this world, the same way you don’t live in this world, discuss the hard parts with them.
6. Get on the floor, write by hand, write large, use big paper, write in the word processor, try not to get caught up in the mechanics of things and just write.
7. Read and watch things. Look at art books. Look at photography. Inspiration just isn’t in other’s words, it’s in other’s things.
8. Put together things how you see fit. Don’t struggle with method and constructs.
9. Learn to quell the anxiety, the need to share instantly and calm down your need to procrastinate heavily. Some days are better than others at this.
10. Don’t let yourself have any excuses. Just write.
III.
There should be concrete evidence this week regarding some projects that everyone should be getting excited about. I’ll let you all know the minute they pop.
