Chaos Theory

How science fiction helped me through my grief

"At an io9 meetup, I mentioned to Annalee that I had been reading Mallett's work and that I wanted to write a novel about a physicist who wants to travel back in time to prevent her brother's death and becomes a supervillain in the process. "But it won't work," she said without a second thought. "You wrote that post about how it's a bad idea to bring people back from the dead."

And I realized she was right. If I wrote that story, the physicist wouldn't save her brother. She'd fail, and probably get herself killed in the process. That book, if I wrote it, would have to be about moving on from tragedy, and the self-destruction you can bring upon yourself when you keep your eyes focused on the past. I wasn't ready for that yet, but maybe when I was, it would mean that I was ready to move forward myself."

When lazy description comes to bite you in the ass

Scarlett Johansson is suing an author for claiming a character of his looks like her doppelganger.

"the author “also noted that he compared the main male character to Ryan Gosling and his boss to Gene Hackman in the book as an almost immediate way to invoke recognition of characteristics for readers.”

Dude, don't be so fucking lazy. Don't "cast" your characters, for fuck's sake. Make up your own!

Code character naming

"They’re not names, really. They’re actually carefully constructed codes. “Lona” is a grouping of letters, each of which stands for something. The “L,” the 12th letter of the alphabet, refers to December, the month she was born in. The “O” refers to her birth date, the 15th. The “N” signifies that she lives in the 14th sector of The Path, and the “A” means that she’s in the first quadrant. There’s a lot of information contained in her name, just like there is in her best friend Fenn’s – born June 5th, Sector 14, Quadrant 14."

Oh, Henry

"The reason for putting myself through this weekly wringer is knowing that you might pick up a copy of L.A. Weekly and read this small contribution. More than that, I hope that you might even like it. I am not one of those "I don't care what you think about what I do" types. I would much rather you like what I do than not like it or not care. "I am desperate for your attention and approval!" is what I have been saying to audiences all over the world from the stage for many years. They laugh, but I am not joking.

I try to write this weekly piece as an ongoing conversation. Any editor worth his weight in salt might call this rambling! However, my attempt is to make a genuine connection with you and Los Angeles. This is why, whenever possible, I try to reference L.A. localities, venues, intersections, etc. As much of a stucco-coated sprawl as L.A. is, I am trying to pull it all in a little closer somehow. That which separates us is, for the most part, a scam. Isolation is not necessarily safety, and stagnation definitely isn't stability.

When I go to shows or to the grocery store, etc., and meet cool people I share this city with, I know that it is this interaction, this breakdown of barriers, that is precisely the ass-kicking that fear so sorely requires. When someone tells me they dug the thing I wrote, I absolutely beam. That I did something that you liked is so cool. This is the main motivation for the 1,000-word-a-week jam session I send in to the editor.

I have been living in Los Angeles for more than 30 years. I never really felt it was a place to call home, just a place to work, leave and return to without any emotional tie. I chalked that up to the place being an artificially hydrated, baked patch of earth, full of fly-by-nighters. But I realized I was one of the aforementioned, and the only way to improve my evaluation of the place was to contribute.

Writing for the L.A. Weekly has furthered that effort. I have the publication and you to thank for that."

Awwwwww.

I guess it's been awhile since there was a theater project about a crazy person

Starcrosser's Cut:

"Inspired by astronaut Lisa Nowak's 2007 arrest for the attempted murder of a romantic rival, Starcrosser’s Cut is an inner-space detective story, a cassette symphony in the tradition of Krapp's Last Tape, and an indictment of the nihilism of the US Space Program.

Based loosely on the real-life transcript of Nowak's police interview after her arrest, a character known only as "Lisa" listens back to the tape, re-enacts her interview with the detective, and attempts to re-record it all. Through a labyrinth of tape edits and revisions within revisions, the play takes an unflinching look at the "crimes that are ours to do" - those beyond guilt."

An article on the play.

Thoughts about stories

"Video Game Confidential" TEDx Talk about stories really work.

Storyhealer.com. I downloaded the book and it's really interesting stuff.

I love this website

http://www.doesthedogdie.com/

"You're trying to spell it the way it sounds, and you're basically just guessing."

Why Stevie can't spell...as an adult professional writer...and how he went back to elementary school about it. (Washington Post).

Reading Robert Parker

"Then, as the tumor grew, crowding out her beautiful and sweet and subtle brain, and as the weekly chemo and radiation started to sap her strength and ambition, Jordis slowly realized she didn’t have much longer to live. Our Monday calls took a turn I didn’t expect.

“This is so serious,” she’d say. “It’s like living under a big dark thunderhead. I’m losing my ability to forget, to detach from myself, just to really escape this thing for a few minutes and laugh,” she told me. “Help me laugh again.”

I began to send her Robert B. Parker novels.

And she loved them. We would talk, at the beginning of each new week, about how powerfully they delighted her."

Mike Daisey on journalism

"With that in mind, here’s this journalist’s subjective opinion of Daisey’s record and of the phone conversation she had with him: He’s a skilled performer but a weaselly talker who spins like an iPod wheel."