CalvinDude.com

I’ve done a bit more on the musical work in progress, which can be heard here. If you compare it to the first one, you’ll see that the chords at the end that I used to modulate from E minor to E major have now been stylized, including a melody, and after that section I’ve repeated the main melody again only in a major key instead of a minor key. Actually, I kept all the notes for the main melody and the chord structure the same. That is, if you looked at them on sheet music it would look identical. The only difference is that E minor has one sharp and E major has four. As a result, when played in a major key, it has a completely different flavor because some notes are sharp that were not sharp in the minor key. It is interesting to listen to, at any rate.

Despite the fact that I’ve missed a few days blogging, I’ve actually been doing quite a bit. I’ve written first drafts for a couple of short stories (for use when I try to build a base to sucker some agent into representing me). Likewise, I’ve also been doing a bit on some music. You can check out this link for a current work in progress. It is, as the nature of the title suggests, nowhere near complete. But it will give an idea of how music comes to me when I compose.

The theme reminds me a bit of The Moldau by Smetana and the texture is like the beginning to the Russian Easter Overture by Rimsky-Korsakov. And at the end you can hear the chord progression that I will use (with some possible edits) to modulate from E minor to E major. (In case you’re wondering, when I compose I do work both by chord structure and by melody; for example, the opening melody I came up with fairly quickly as its own melody, but the modulation is based on chord structure so I’ll work a melody around that when I get to it. Finally, after the melody and chord structure are both sound, I turn to instrumentation.)

I.
Look over beyond what the pale mystic skies show clear
To find a purposeful knowledge, wisdom we forever impart. Near
The catacomb’s shadows and the dungeon’s darkness. Hear
With a heartfelt bitterness. Hate raging, embracing fear.

II.
Look beyond the mystic show
To a knowledge we impart
The shadows, the darkness
With heartfelt hate embracing

Over what pale skies clear
Find purposeful wisdom forever near
Catacombs and dungeons hear
A bitterness, raging fear.

III.
Look beyond the mystic show
Over what pale skies clear
To a knowledge we impart
Find purposeful wisdom forever near

The shadows, the darkness
Catacombs and dungeons hear
With heartfelt hate embracing
A bitterness, raging fear.

Note: It took me about an hour this morning to come up with this little poem. When I wrote it, I was looking more for structure than for any thematic concerns.

The structure, which some of you may have gleaned by reading it already, is as follows. The first block contains the four lines that are in A-A-A-A rhyme scheme. If you take every other word of the first block starting with the first word, you create the first stanza of the second block. If you take every other word starting with the second word, you create the second stanza of the second block. Finally, the third block shows what happens if you alternate between the two stanzas. Thus, the first line of the first stanza of the third block is every other word of the first line of the first block starting with the first word; the second line of the first stanza of the third block is every other word of the first line of the first block starting with the second word. Etc. It may be easier to say that the third block consists of the first line of the first stanza of the second block followed by the first line of the second stanza of the second block, followed by the second line of the first stanza of the second block, etc.

Of course, all of it should be easy to see if you just look at the poem itself :-P

I should note that there can be improvement with my method above. For instance, you can see that the first stanza of the second block has no rhyme scheme at all; this could be fixed if I spent more time on it. Furthermore, the poem itself could use a little ironing out. But all in all I think it’s a fairly successful first attempt at combining two stanzas into one.

So this weekend I woke up at 5:30 in the morning. Why? Because it was 12 degrees inside my room.

I exaggerate only slightly. August is supposed to be one of our hottest months, but we’ve had rain for three straight days and temperatures haven’t even cracked 80 for so long only one word can describe this:

DOOM!

We’re doomed!

The world is going to freeze!

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

“I see you’ve come back.”

“Yes, Mike. It happens every day after work. Amazing, isn’t it?” Larry stretched and glanced over at the chessboard that Mike had set up. “Another game? You can’t be serious.”

“Indeed I am,” Mike responded.

“But I beat you six times in a row yesterday, and they were all Scholar’s Mates.”

“No you didn’t. And your use of the term ‘Scholar’ there is pejorative.”

“That’s the name of the move.”

“You’re just blustering and pretending to be an intellectual elite.”

Larry sighed. “Look, Mike, I just got back from work. I’m tired. I don’t want to play a game of chess right now.”

“Because you’re a coward and you know you lost.”

“No, it’s because I don’t feel like trouncing you again.”

“You know, you’ve got a real attitude. You didn’t come anywhere near beating me. I beat you each time.”

“When I checkmate you, I win. Not you.”

“Your claims of checkmate were unverifiable. I could still move.”

“Moving the king six spaces is not a legal move, Mike.”

Mike put his hands on his hips. “Oh really? Says who?”

“It’s the rules of chess.”

“Oh, the mysterious magic rules of chess. How convenient for you that they just happen to benefit you, huh?”

“They’re the rules—”

“I can’t see them.”

“What?”

“I can’t see them. They don’t exist. You believe in this mythical thing you call ‘rules’ that you’ve never seen with your own eyes.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“You know what, Larry? You have a serious problem here. You have to win at all costs.”

Larry rolled his eyes. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t the object of a game of chess to, you know, win?”

“Yes. But not at all costs.”

“I don’t win at all costs. I win by playing a good offense and a good defense. Yours doesn’t measure up.”

“You really ought to check your elitist tendencies.”

“‘Check’ them. That’s a clever pun.”

“Pun?”

“Never mind, Mike. It was obviously an accidental pun. I should have guessed it, as poorly as you play chess.”

“Now listen here, Larry. Just because you declared yourself the winner by invoking some mystery magic ‘rule’ that floats invisibly up in the air somewhere watching over us while we play a game of chess does not mean that you play chess better than me.”

“Of course not. Rather, it’s my continual slaughtering of your defense and capturing your king that shows my chess skill trumps yours.”

“Such violent metaphors! I’ll bet you beat your wife!”

Larry looked at Mike. “Okaaaaaay.”

Mike stood and gestured angrily at Larry. “I’m not going to stand for this anymore!” He stormed out of the room.

Larry sighed and soon forgot it. Tomorrow was Saturday and he planned to sleep in. Unfortunately, he was woken at eight in the morning by a knock at the door.

“Are you Lawrence Adams?” the man at the door asked.

“Yes,” Larry said, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.

“Get him!”

Before Larry could react, he was thrown to the floor. “What are you doing?”

“Dr. Graves has informed us you’re a threat to yourself.” Larry’s arms were pushed into the straightjacket.

“What?”

“That’s right,” Mike said, entering behind the men. “It’s in my report.”

“He’s a psychology PhD,” the man restraining Larry provided helpfully.

“And I’ve made my report. Larry, you exhibit all the symptoms of a disease known as Mania. You have a narcissistic flair or ‘grandiosity’ to your personality. You are quite intolerant of others. Indeed, you have an ego-centric paradigm that means you simply lack the ability to consider the thoughts and feelings of those around you. It’s all about your thoughts and feelings. Sadly, no facts, reasoning, or logic will change you. On the contrary, arguing with you simply increases your mania, and for that I apologize. I have been provoking, perhaps envoking (I’m not sure which word to use) your illness by playing chess with you.

“The fact is, Larry, when you say, ‘I and those who play chess like me are better at chess than you’ then that’s the first sign that we’re dealing with some mental illness, and we must react with appropriate humanity. That’s why you will be taken back to my asylum and given shock treatments from now on.

“Don’t worry. I’m sure after just a few months of those shock treatments you’ll be able to play chess just as well as I can, and then you can reintegrate into society.”

Mike watched as Larry was dragged out of the house proclaiming his innocence. It was sad. The insane never realize they’re not crazy.

Yes, the answer to this question is obvious, but it still must be asked.

Does anyone believe anything Russia says?

Didn’t think so.

Today coming in to work I saw two license plates. The first had the letters NDE on them. The second had RIP.

I’m thinking it’s Bush’s fault.

I just have a quick miscellaneous thing about today. I’m sick of having to deal with computer problems at work! Yup, I’m the designated computer guy in my department since I have a decent understanding of them. But unfortuantely, we’re switching over to Windows Vista…and that’s just a downgrade no matter how you look at it.

Case in point: today I spent probably three hours of my eight hours at work trying to install a simple update to one of the programs that we use. Here’s the kicker. It installed perfectly on every single XP machine that we use. However, there are about eight people who use Vista and needed the update. The update worked on two of those eight computers, but not on the other six.

‘Splain me why.

And yes that’s a gratuitious Flowers For Algernon reference…

Anyway, moving on to better fields, I’m starting up a new novel (I told a bit of the plot to my friend Travis today in hopes that he will one day steal the plot and make millions of dollars on a movie script so that I can sue him and become rich myself). The important detail for this one is that it will have no action, no attributions, no descriptives in the text…nothing but dialogue. Yup, straight up dialogue.

Of course it’ll be difficult making this a full novel length (because face it, when you open up an average novel maybe 20% of it dialogue…and that’s if you’ve got an author who uses a lot of dialogue). Whether I will actually be able to publish this or not is not a concern of mine at the moment; I just want to be able to do it. Sort of like how I’m making sure there isn’t a single adverb in the current book I’m working on. Adverbs are completely unnecessary…just look at this sentence. :-P

It is fun, however, for me to set up little “rules” for my writing. It gives me a challenge. Language is my playground and I intend to have fun. So if I can write an entire novel (defined as 50,000 or more words) using only dialogue, I’m gonna do it. If I can write an entire novel without using a single adverb, I’m going to do it too (and by the way, that particular goal is very easy to accomplish). My natural style includes lots of adverbs, as you can tell from reading my blog. But I’ll just give you a quick example of how all the points remain the same without using an adverb.

The Secret Service Agent ran quickly down the hall after the fleeing assassin. The shooter had shot expertly, most likely killing the president. The Secret Service Agent gripped his pistol tightly in his hands, angrily vowing his vengeance. He had failed, he thought bitterly. But the killer would pay dearly.

The above paragraph is one I just made up on the spot, but it’s typical of writing the overuses adverbs. You can spot them by looking for the words that end in -ly. Now compare that above paragraph to the following revision:

The Secret Service Agent rushed down the hall after the fleeing assassin. The shooter had aimed well; it was probable the president was dead. The Secret Service Agent gripped his pistol and vowed vengeance. The bitter thought that he had failed came to mind, but he brushed it aside. The killer would still pay.

Even now I wouldn’t be finished editing this paragraph, but you can see that A) I used stronger verbs to explain the action (”ran quickly” becomes “rushed”) and, B) I got rid of extraneous words (”gripped” assumes the “tightly” and therefore “gripped tightly” is a redundancy, and furthermore what else is the agent going to grip a pistol with if not his hands?).

Of course, adverbs aren’t completely forbidden. However, as you can see, they’re not necessary at all. It therefore becomes an art as to when you would use them. And in the above circumstance, I would personally allow the use of them when it makes the final text shorter. (The first paragraph had 50 words; to avoid all the adverbs and still explain the same thing the second paragraph increased to 54 words). Therefore:

The Secret Service Agent rushed down the hall after the fleeing assassin. The shooter had aimed well, probably killing the president. The Secret Service Agent gripped his pistol and vowed vengeance. He had failed, he thought bitterly. But the killer would still pay.

This brings us down to 43 words. And, minimalistic writer that I am, I would probably continue to slash and burn and the last two sentences would become: “He had failed, but the killer would yet pay” (or something similar); and likewise I’d remove “down the hall” from the first sentence, as well as “aimed well”. And I’d name the Secret Service Agent too. In this case, John Doe. Thus, after some more cutting and reformatting:

Secret Service Agent John Doe rushed after the fleeing assassin knowing the shooter had probably killed the president. Doe gripped his pistol and swore vengeance. He had failed to protect the president, he thought bitterly, but the killer would yet pay.

This gives a total of 41 words for that paragraph. It started with 50, so I only saved 9 words. Of course it would have been a few more if I didn’t have to introduce John Doe as a Secret Service Agent. If we already knew that information we could just simply say “Doe rushed after…” and cut out another three words right there. Also, note that because I lost enough words I had no problem adding in some more clarifying remarks. Thus I explain what Doe had failed at (protecting the president). In this case, that phrase is probably redundant (after all, we should know what a Secret Service Agent’s jobt is), but it feels to me like it should be there. Finally, note that I changed the “vowed vengeance” from the repeated “v” (which in some circumstances is useful, but here I find distracting to the flow of the text–”swore vengeance” expresses the same thought without the drawback of being disruptive to the reading).

And even after all that, just to show how my mind works:

Secret Service Agent John Doe rushed after the fleeing assassin, certain the shooter had killed the president. Doe gripped his pistol and swore vengeance. The agent had failed to protect the president but the killer would yet pay.

Now it’s down to 38 words…and I managed to get rid of all the adverbs again.

I was tempted to start the last sentence with “Doe”, but the second sentence has to have the name “Doe” (to avoid the ambiguous “he” where you wouldn’t know if I was refering to Doe or the shooter, which is also why I couldn’t start the last sentence with “He” either). Furthermore, having two sentences in a row start with “Doe” is also disruptive to the text. So in this case, I think the best compromise is to use an abbreviated form of his title.

Likewise, you’ll see I made some comma choices there. When it comes to commas, I don’t pay as much attention to the rules of grammar as I do to the flow of text. Do I want the reader to have a pause there? Even if grammatically correct, if I don’t want the pause I’ll often leave out the comma.

Anyway, as you can see, there are some quick and easy ways to cut out some bloat from your writing as well as tightening it up to avoid the dreaded adverbs that editors tend to hate. Unless you’re editing J.K. Rawlings, in which case the motto is “Pile ‘em high!”

It’s been a while since I’ve had a day like today. NaNoWriMo-while, to be specific. But today I got a 5,000+ word day in writing. I finally got through a specific scene that’s been blocking me for some time in one of the novels I’m working on. This novel is now over 30,000 words long too, so it’s 60% of the way toward being a full-fledged novel (although 50,000 words is still a really SHORT novel).

Anyway, it’s been nice writing like this. Days like this are what really remind me that I am a writer. And I don’t mean that in the sense of “writing is what I do” but instead I mean that in the sense that “writing is what I am.” When a story clicks and it zooms out, it’s the greatest feeling in the world for me :-)

Now I just need to get paid (yeah, I’ve earned enough through self-publishing to buy myself a cup of coffee…but I need enough so I can write full time!).

You know, it’s interesting being a writer/musician/computer programmer/animator/etc. Basically, anything to do with the arts. There will be moments where I’ll be thinking on something that I want to write about–a story in my mind that stews for a bit, or a melody, or a visual picture of some movie shot I’d like to see. And what’s interesting is that most of the time when I do creative stuff, it exists in my mind in a very primative state.

Then out of the blue I get hit with inspiration.

A brief example will suffice I think. When I wrote The Outlaw (which I’ve no longer made available, BTW, since I’m going to work on a revision now that my writing is much more gooder), it took me a few weeks to do the first two “books” in it. Then, one Saturday in 1998, I sat down at around 11 AM and wrote non-stop until around 8 PM. During those 9 hours, I did the entire last book (which was approximately 30,000 words). Why? Because I knew exactly what I wanted, and it just shot out of me.

When I write music, it’s often the same way. I’m getting good enough to know chord structures in my mind before I even sit down to write music. I’ll be like, “I want to write something in E minor today.” And I’ll instantly think of Em - C- G - D (one of my favorite progressions) and suddenly there’s a melody there.

Today, it happened with both. I was sitting there minding my own business when a song leapt into my mind. While I currently lack the ability to record anything, I hammered it out on my guitar in about thirty minutes. The chords for this one are B5 - F#5 - A5 - E5 for the verse, and the chorus is B5* - A5* - E5* - B5* and the bridge section goes C#* - B5* - A5, which are tabbed:

Regular E-A-D-G-B-E tuning

 B5    F#5    A5   E5      B5*   A5*    E5*    C#*
----- ----- ----- -----  -----  -----  -----  -----
----- ----- ----- -----  -----  -----  -----  -----
--4-- ----- --2-- -----  -----  -----  --9--  -----
--4-- --4-- --2-- --2--  --9--  --7--  --9--  --11-
--2-- --4-- --0-- --2--  --9--  --7--  --7--  --11-
----- --2-- ----- --0--  --7--  --5--  -----  --9--

On this one I actually didn’t think up the chords first, but instead when the words popped into my mind they already had their melody and it took me about 30 seconds to figure out what chords went with that melody :-) And then the words instantly came out too (very little revision was required):

Woke up this morning at three AM
Thinking of the way my life has been
Wondering what happened to all of them
Those friends I had way back when.

Sat beneath the glow of an orange street light
Sheltered from the sounds of a haunted night
Thinking that I might’ve turned out all right
Still wondering how I got here tonight.

[Chorus]
And time marches on
Further into the past
Everything will soon be gone
Shoulda known it wouldn’t last.

Fell away for an hour or two
But I still ended here without you.
Remembered time, how it always flew
And all the chaos that would ensue

Oh, I remember waking ‘fore the crack of dawn
Never had to even stifle a yawn
Met with all of them out on the lawn
Raced toward trouble like we were drawn.

[Repeat chorus]
[Bridge]
These things I see will come again
In someone else’s day
When my memories grow dim
I’ll still know what to say.
[Repeat chorus]

Now don’t ask me what this necessarily means or why it came to me. That’s the funny thing about getting sudden inspiration….often you have no clue why it came out. Anyway, I wish I had some recording equipment so you could actually hear it. But maybe you’re glad you can’t :-)