Top Ten Lists ('cause I was bored, okay?!)

"Invisible" is coming along, currently on Part 1 with over 6,000+ words. I'm trying to crank in about 1,000-2,000 words a day. Most of it is retyping scenes from older drafts. Whee, split screens! But it's fun to resurrect scenes with new ideas, seeing them coming to a new life.

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While faffing about instead of working on "Invisible", I came up with a definitive list of my top ten favorite books, albums, and movies. The books list is a reworking of an older list I posted eons ago.

Here you go, for your reading pleasure!

My Top Ten Books:

1. A House Like A Lotus by Madeleine L'Engle
2. Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor
3. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
4. The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
5. Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
6. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
7. Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
8. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
9. after the quake by Haruki Murakami
10. Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller
(Bonus! 11. What Dreams May Come by Richard Matheson)

My Top Ten Albums:

1. Fear of Music by Talking Heads
2. Out of the Cradle by Lindsey Buckingham
3. Hounds of Love by Kate Bush
4. The Nightfly by Donald Fagen
5. Silent Hill 2 Soundtrack by Akira Yamaoka
6. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Brian Eno and David Byrne
7. Warm Strangers by Vienna Teng
8. Security by Peter Gabriel
9. Little Love Affairs by Nanci Griffith
10. The Nylon Curtain by Billy Joel
(Bonus! 11. The Red and the Black by Jerry Harrison)

My Top Ten Movies:

1. Casablanca
2. The Agony and the Ecstasy
3. The Shining
4. Talking Heads: Stop Making Sense
5. The Silence of the Lambs
6. Brazil
7. Jacob’s Ladder
8. Monty Python and the Holy Grail
9. Vertigo
10. Empire Records
(No bonus, but I can't decide between Suspiria, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, and Misery)

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There you go. Feel free to share your favorites, very interested to see what y'all have to say. I'll keep updating about my writing as before. Until then, good night.

Update on "Invisible's" Prologue

A quick update on the progress of the prologue to "Invisible". Well, hot damn, I got to it last night and found myself on fire. It worked all in my favor. It is almost finished, so I can move onto the rest of the story.

So, in other words, I griped about something that amended itself in less than an hour? Ouch, it hurts.

Point of the entry: proof that I am ridiculous.

It's time to emerge from the shadows... Or: Good Lord, don't write parts before writing the whole novel.

Okay, something serious happened while working on "Invisible". I can't call it a derailment. Maybe a volcanic explosion. I could ponder on better ecological or mechanical metaphors to describe the failure I ran into, but that will get boring very fast. Instead, here is what happened: I wrote parts.

What does that mean specifically? Instead of writing the whole thing through, I wrote little scenes to add in later. I have read that isn't always a bad idea, in fact I dealt with sticking a part I wrote for "Blues" (last year's project) and didn't run into problems. To be cliche, lightning doesn't strike twice.

Then again, "Invisible" has been in pre-production for about ten years and I have rewritten the prologue more than three times. I discovered, while writing the prologue for the fourth time, that the best draft was written around November of last year. Needless to say, I was pissed. So I decided to finish the prologue from November, combine it with some new details, and another part of another drafted prologue. Not surprising, it all blew up in my face.

Defeated, I started working on another novella, the one I write about in this entry, the idea about the amateur spotter. Yeah, it became a novella. (I will be working on and off on this alongside "Invisible". This project will be known as "Wind".) I got to the first 2,000 words and also stopped there. I haven't written a thing since, until now.

It's simple to say that I need to get back to working on "Invisible" and tackle that prologue. Yeah, it would be. And so, I sit before my laptop waiting for inspiration to give me a swift kick in the ass. Unless I act without waiting, it'll be another age before I do it again. Sure, this time around I have bigger problems but it's what I need to know how to face. So if you excuse me, I have a prologue's ass to kick.


P.S.: I'm shocked Neil Young wrote this song. Sure, Wikipedia says that the original take was not as happy, but the lyrics don't present that right away.

Novel projects and other fantastic ideas that I never do...

Sorry for the long silence, especially since I've been back since, well, Tuesday. I was planning to write out a bit on my trip, but I've been recovering from an ass-kicking (and not the awesome kind) cold. Some other things have come up also (including a concert I forgot about), so my recap of the trip may be delayed.

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But yeah, it's that time again: the new novel project. I might start it earlier, like in an hour. It will be a longer one, no novellas this time. It is a novel, with a purported word count of 100,000.  The estimated end date likely will be September 8th.

I have a superstition about revealing the full titles of my longer works, so that was why on the last round, I only referred to my project by the last word of its title. This time, it will be the same. Y'all shall know it simply as "Invisible".

The story is set in San Francisco, the year 2000. It focuses on a group of college students, primarily on one (an Anthropology major) and she is trying to salvage a friendship with an Art History major. They have a fallout over the Art History major's decision on handling this one male student's ardent affection towards her. After a while, the male student and the Art History major drop out for no reason, prompting the Antrolopology major and all her friends to figure out what happened. Their sleuthing leads them to something different and more insidious.

Yeah, just like before, the plot doesn't sound like much. Hell, it sounds like something I wouldn't read. But I must keep it all minimal for now.

It begins now, so let's do this thing!