Building Paper Ships

Bertha: a Malone Shipbuilding Corporation project

Once I was close to becoming a naval architect. I went down to Tasmania and visited the university and thought I could see myself there. Well, instead of learning to build ships I studied civil engineering and later found myself working as a geotechnical engineer. Ships to rocks!

Not so long ago though, owing to a young Malone’s birthday party and his penchant for pirate ships, I got to build a one. Here she is—Bertha! Ok, she doesn’t have a bottom and she’s made from paper and very thin strips of wood, but I I’d like to think of her as closure!

Thanks Bertha.

Be honest now

Just today I read a blog about how to write a blog. Among the wise advice was to write honestly. I thought about this and decided that writing with honesty is the literary equivalent of skipping stark naked into a very large room full of strangers and calling out, “Yohoo! Hey guys, here I am.”

Is this a fair analogy?

Here is the blog with all the good advice: John Malone

Vienna Underground

The Vienna Underground’s station announcer speaks in a nasal and listless voice as though from too many Saturday nights at home, alone, ironing his socks. Why this glum fellow with his infectious malaise has held his post for so long (he’s been depressing Viennese commuters for years) is open to speculation. It seems somebody somewhere in those gloomy corridors of Vienna Underground power has something against happiness.  Why can’t someone like Miss Piggy announce the stations? Surely she would put everyone in a better frame of mind on their way to work.

 Seriously though, have you ever spent Saturday night ironing your socks?

Silly Stories

Perhaps you’ve heard of Kilgore Trout—a fictional character who features in Kurt Vonnegut’s novels such as Breakfast of Champions and Slaughterhouse five. Kilgore Trout is a financially unsuccessful science fiction writer whose works (over 100 novels and 2000 short stories) never made it out of the realms of obscurity. Mostly his stories were published (unbeknown to him) between the glossy pages of pornographic magazines.  In any case, Kurt Vonnegut portrayed Kilgore Trout as a writer with very unique (and often outlandish) ideas.

Reading about Kilgore Trout, I saw a little of myself in him. Here is only a small sample of the illogical ideas that I made into stories that will never be read (I hope):

• The seas have risen and Australia is all awash, but one man has been busy making islands in the south. The government decides to abandon Australia and resettle on his islands.  On the last flight off the mainland, in a fit of sentimentality, the man stays (and drowns, I suppose).

• People float about on rafts in the sky where they gather to meet God and his protective bird that kills anyone who isn’t worthy.  A man goes to meet God. Turns out he isn’t worthy.

• Two young friends build a rocket ship in one of their backyards where the stepfather has a marijuana plantation. Stoned, the stepfather climbs onboard just as they take off, blowing apart the backyard and all the plants and drawing a lot of attention to themselves. The rocket ship runs out of fuel and they parachute down and land on the road just by the fish and chip shop where the police are waiting to bust the stepfather.

• In a post apocalyptic world where dinosaurs roam (how this came about I did not care to explain) one boy, who lives amidst trees that talk meets a girl and her dad who don’t care much for the trees and the  ghosts that lurk around them.  It ends with a bushfire and a raging dinosaur and the death of the elder tree. The boy and girl like each other in the end.

• Two men set out on flying milk carton regatta from Boome in Western Australia to Melbourne. Along the way they are attacked by milk carton regatta pirates, nearly die of thirst, and are finally disqualified for cheating. There is a girl in there and one of the men is trying to win her back.  He doesn’t.

• An old man dies and turns into a butterfly.

• The rooftops of Vienna are invaded by voracious insects that look like mutant elephants under a microscope. They also roar like lions if you listen carefully.

• An overweight girl lives with her mean old father in a city in the sky. He took her out of school when she was young so she could work and support him. She gains the magical power of leaving golden coins in her footsteps. He buys her a treadmill and a bucket to collect the coins. This leads to trouble.

• At a BBQ an abusive husband explains to his guests how his obsessive wife decants everything from the apple juice to the milk. It turns out he is an alcoholic and she has been secretely decanting his blood to try and save him.

• A secretary at a very big and nasty corporation discovers very strange things happen at the core of the hollow building. Eventually it floods and the company is all washed up and she rides down the flooded stairwell on a carpet in the arms of a handsome flamenco guitarist.

All of these, I thought, were going to be winners. Another Malone who keeps close company had to endure my enthusiasm and even read them on the way to work, and then had to come up with a few nice things to say about them. I am most grateful to this particular Malone (and others more distant that were assigned a similar reading task) for putting up with it all and still continue to do so.

 Have you ever written a silly story and thought it was brilliant at the time?

Openings

Writing a good opening line is not a bad way to start a story. Only the other day I finished a draft of a new short story, and then today realised the opening sentences were about as exciting as (and similar to) a weather report. Here they are:

It wasn’t so hot now. This brief period before sundown and the horrendous cold was rather pleasant if you thought about it.

It’s hardly an attention grabber. So I played around with it and came up with this:

Savage were the days and nights of such extremes where only this golden sliver of time between could be endured or imagined pleasant.

 Is that better? I guess it has a different tone, and this might be at odds with what is to follow–a humorous piece.

Anyway, if you’re working on a story right now, why not go back and check the opening. Have you, like me, written a weather report, or have you written something so arresting your audience simply must read on?

And if you have the time, why not post an opening line (good or bad) as a comment! I’d like to see a few.

Road Hog

Last night I went along to meditation. Our usual teacher was in Sri-Lanka for a couple of weeks (he is a monk), so there were only four of us. We started with mindfulness of breathing meditation (breath is object of meditation). Then we moved on to walking meditation (footsteps are object of meditation).  The room was large and we walked its perimeter. We walked very, very slowly on the creaking wooden boards. I became aware of the person behind me: He wanted to walk faster. He was soon on my tail, perhaps thinking of a polite way of overtaking (this isn’t really permitted). If he had a horn he might have honked it. That sure would have broken the silence. In any case, it took some time for me to let go of the irksome feeling that I was a road hog. And thankfully, unlike the road where people soon flip-out at such slow-coaches, it all ended (as it should) peacefully.

My first drawing

Today I finally got around to doing something I’ve intended to do for a long time–get a copy of Illustrator. I used to like to sketch and draw and never really applied myself with any of it, but I thought perhaps with Illustrator I might reconnect with a long lost enjoyable pastime. So here is my very first Illustrator drawing–me! Now, for those that know me, you might notice the resemblance but you might also notice one or two irregularities. Call it wishful thinking, if you like. Anyone  looking for a make-over, you know where to come.

Writing Workshop in Vienna

A few of us Vienna Writers had the fortune of sitting in on a couple of creative writing workshops run by Fred Leebron (MFA Program Director, Cedar Crest College, USA), who is launching a low-residency European MFA in Creative Writing in June 2012. The first workshop was called, “Why Time Matters,” and Fred explained the nuances of time in fiction, and how resonance is created when the reader feels the story goes on beyond the story end.

The second workshop was about writing beyond what is comfortable. Here we learnt about taking a risk with one’s writing, to write with emotional honesty and balance.  Some strategies included: writing from a voice that is difficult to sustain, writing from a “red hot” moment, and writing a riff (going off on a tangent). We had a few quite moments to try a few exercises. Here’s the  riff I wrote for a story I’m close to finishing. It takes a completely different tangent from the story, and was inspired by the arctic weather here in Vienna:

 He flew the kite and felt the wind tugging at his hand, urging him across the frosty park, the woods sleeping, the city boulevard with people in winter coats like beetles scurrying, ever further,  beyond the coastal cliffs and the foaming breakers, down to those equatorial latitudes where the ocean  would reveal some palm-fringed island basking in the sun. Might the wind not set him down there?

Well, it was a fun exercise! After I thought, what kind of a lunatic would fly a kite in winter? Oh well, blow the logic!

Thank you Fred and thank you Julia Nowak from Vienna University who organized the workshop.

If you want to know about the MFA, here is the link:

http://mfa.cedarcrest.edu

Vienna Writers’ 2nd Birthday

Last week us “Vienna Writers” came together for our monthly meeting. We’ve been meeting regularly now for two years, and there have been a few achievements and milestones along the way. I’m proud to say that many of the current participants have been coming since the beginning or near enough to it. It’s a vibrant group with participants working on various writing projects, from flash fiction to novels,  from short stories to screen plays. We’re starting to see the fruits of our writing and critiquing endeavors: publications.  Just recently I had another short story accepted for publication. I’ll post more about this in coming weeks. Others are submitting stories, polishing novel chapters, screen plays, memoirs, preparing submissions, etc.

It is a long road being a writer.  There is no guarantee of success, and success itself is open to individual interpretation. If writing then is a journey, I guess my time with Vienna Writers makes for a pleasant one. Without the group it would be a rather lonesome experience. So thank you to everyone in Vienna Writers for your company, enthusiasm, and experience. Here’s to a big year in 2012!

Dinosaur Therapy Inc

Today I received a story rejection after a 127 day wait. I’ve had plenty of stories rejected (and rejected, and rejected!) so I can take it in my stride with only a few sobs. More difficult to stomach is the time some magazines hold material before rejecting it (I’ve had longer than 127 days). Naturally there are reasons: they’re swamped with submissions, the editor is ill, they’re volunteers anyway, etc. All valid. Nonetheless, I’ve come to realize that between story completion and publication it is not unreasonable to expect a year or two to pass. I guess if you keep on writing and submitting then the lag is less pronounced (since older stories are coming up for publication).

After receiving the rejection I was sitting with my son watching a documentary on dinosaurs. We watched a comet slam into the earth and wipe out all the dinosaurs including a couple of baby T-Rex who’d just lost their mother after she got into a deadly scuffle with some heavily armored dinosaur with a big ball on its tail and a pea-sized brain. I watched this devastation and I told myself, compared to them I’ve got it good. I said this a few times and it helped.  It was kind of therapeutic. Perhaps I could be the founder of ‘Dinosaur Therapy Inc’

Seriously though, if you are going to submit prose or poetry anywhere then I recommend you check out Duotrope. Here you can explore markets and also look at statistics such as response times, acceptance ratios, and pays scales.