In the Waning Hours of 2011

Perhaps waning hours is a little inaccurate, considering my time zone and the fact that it's just after morning here. Whatever. It's poetic and I like it; it's certainly better than "2011: a year in review." Oh, and hello! It's been roughly 1 million internet years since I wrote anything on this blog, which means if you're reading this, I appreciate your continued loyalty in the face of my continued silence.

So this post is going to be about 2011 and what the year meant to me. After 2010, which was a largely negative experience, I wanted to make a dedicated effort to living a better life. Also, it was the year of my "golden birthday" since I'd turned 24 on the 24 (and if you argue that 2010 was the year I turned 24 which makes that the Golden Year, eff off because that lasted for all of seven days.)

How do the years stack up in terms of personal achievement? Let's see:

Short Story: The World Below

Author's Note: As I blow off the dust that's gathered on my poorly neglected blog, it occurs to me that despite the fact that all I ever talk about is writing, you most likely haven't had the opportunity to see anything I've written. I feel like this is a mistake, one that I'm going to correct.

This was a short story that I wrote about a year ago for one of my final Creative Classes. It's one of the few short stories I'm particularly proud of, although I'm not a big fan of the ending these days. Perhaps I'll revisit it in the future. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.

-MC

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"The World Below"
By Matthew Ciarvella

           Nobody alive today remembers the old subway tunnel under the bridge on Broad Street. It used to be part of the Erie Canal, but that was an even longer time ago, or so our father told us, back during the lazy summer days of late July when the plant would close and we'd sit out in the backyard under a shady tree with beers that we weren't old enough to drink, but did anyway. First, it was a canal, he'd said, and then later, it was a subway, and then it was nothing at all, just a tunnel that ran under the entire city like an empty vein. Parts of it had collapsed over the years, and one time, it took out an entire section of Broad Street and killed an old lady who was walking her dog. Or maybe it killed a taxi driver who stopped to have a smoke, or a bike messenger, or a hundred other different people, or nobody, depending who was telling you the story.
            We grew up hearing stories of that old tunnel, even though nobody knew how to get in, or how much of it was left. The section that collapsed was filled in after the accident, but you'd still hear stories about people finding old stairways in their basements that led down into the tunnel. But nobody really knew and so it was just this place that we all knew but never saw, had all heard about but only in stories. Kids ran away to live down there, winos carved out shitty little homes there, and some people (stupid fucking idiots, my father would say) would go down there to play at being explorers and were never seen again.

For The Sake Of August

I couldn't let an entire month slip by without writing something. Well, actually, I could and indeed almost did. Which would be bad. But even worse than not writing anything for an entire month (well, actually longer than that, if you look at the last entry, but who's counting? Not me!) would be yet another "writing a post just to have a post." I've come to realize how pointlessly self-indulgent such things are, which is not to say that the entire act of blogging itself isn't self-indulgent. It's just that I think some things are higher on that particular scale than others.

Dead Tree Books

I want to have the option to own my book in dead tree form someday. Books printed on paper, in other words; you know, that thing we used to use back in grade school to write reports and sometimes print out in TPS reports (with cover sheets!) and other fun stuff like that. Currently, this is the format that books are made into. Format may not be the correct word. Let's call it a medium.

The problem is, I want to walk into a brick and mortar store and buy a dead tree book some day, and yet the world seems to think that both of these things are archaic and doomed to be as relevant as horseshoes and blacksmiths are in today's world. Everything is going to be e-books and blogs and whatever, which makes it somewhat amusing to me that I'm pondering the very subject on a blog.

Who Owns The Story?

After yesterday's brief foray outside of my normal stomping grounds, I return to you with a post that is the bread and butter of this blog: more randomly formed, barely cogent thoughts about writing from somebody hardly qualified to be so opinionated. But that's what blogs are all about, baby; you don't need to know what you're talking about to feel strongly about a thing. You just need to be convincing. Or not even convincing; interesting would probably do just fine, in a pinch.

I was looking over the manuscript for "the book formerly known as the Fallen, except there's already like a hundred goddamn books with that title, so some good friends helped me come up with a much better title." No, that's not the new title; it's just a personal anecdote that's masquerading as the title, since this new title is so good and for some reason, I'm feeling strangely protective of it at the moment. I don't know. It's also why I haven't posted any chapters or excerpts yet. I just have this feeling, like that this thing is a fledgling and if I let too many people touch it, its mother won't take it back and it will starve to death or be eaten by a hawk.

Under Fire

I'd like to talk about something different today. And don't worry, I'm totally sober right now, so it won't be a long, rambling, mostly pointless discussion about deserts, or whatever. Most of the time, I use this space to talk about writing and either the struggles of trying to succeed as a writer, or just general thoughts on the medium. Because, you know, the musings of an unpublished fiction writer are totally important and this isn't at all an exercise in my own narcissism. Nope.

Today at work, I had my first incident. By incident, I mean a situation in which I was required to take action that included calling an ambulance, relaying information to the dispatcher, keeping calm, etc. etc. I'm keeping the description vague, since I use my real name on this blog, it's conceivable that somebody could make the necessary leaps of logic and piece together the real story and I'd rather respect the privacy of others. Anyway, the details are not important. Sufficient to say, an individual needed help, I helped, and remained calm while doing so. Was it a life threatening situation? Not for me. For the other individual? Maybe. I'm not a doctor. Hard to say where the line is between actual emergency and imagined one; most of the time, you won't find out until it's all said and done, and God help you if you assumed incorrectly that it was all imagined.

The Time Between

The period of time between projects is a weird place to be. You've just come off the high of having achieved your goal and finished your novel (or whatever). You've tasted some delicious accomplishment and hopefully, the process of finishing a draft has the inspirational effect of making you feel as though you're ready to dive headfirst into your next project. But should you do that?

Yesterday felt very weird. I had already told myself that I was going to take the day off; I mean, hell, I deserve some time away from thinking about all of this stuff. In his memoir "On Writing," Stephen King advises taking a week or two off before you start the second draft, so that you can distance yourself from the whole thing and come at the work with fresh eyes. I think that this is a good idea and plan to give myself that week. But even though, for one small, brief moment, this period of "not-writing" is justifiable, even permissible, it still feels like I should be doing something. Somewhere in the back of my, ideas are already begining to faintly stir. "The Next Book" begins to loom on the horizon of my consciousness, tantalizing and ethereal. What will I do next? I can do anything!

Being Done

I finished the first draft of my second novel today. You may be wondering why I said "second novel." Well, that's because the first novel is an absolutely horrible swords-and-sorcery fantasy that I began writing when I was fourteen. I finished it and then began writing a sequel and somewhere along the way, I completely lost interest in it. Both works are sitting on my hard drive to this day and both are somewhere around 88,000 words or so. Maybe some day I'll revisit them; hopefully, that will be after I'm super famous and people will enjoy them just because I wrote them, not because either book is actually any good.

Or maybe they'll just sit there in digital space until the end of time. That's pretty good, too.

Maybe Tomorrow

I was thinking about wandering off into the desert this weekend. Now, this may sound strange to you, especially if you are not the kind of person that lives in a desert already or are not the kind of person who might wander into hostile terrain as a general course of action. Allow me to explain this desire to you, with the self-assurance and the cocky swagger of the truly intoxicated. But first, I have to change this song, because fuck, if you haven't listened to "Never Hear Surf Music Again" by Free Blood, the first two minute are amazing and the last four minutes fill me with a rage I would have not have thought possible, until this moment of my life. It's like having sex with the hottest woman in the world (I guess that's Jennifer Lopez, according to these guys?), only for her to turn into some sort of freakishly ugly shapeshifter two minutes into the act. Or something. I don't know. Look, the metaphor isn't perfect. Let's just fucking move on.

It's Kind Of Like This

I was on my way home from work when the thought came to me. I was flying along down Silverbell Road astride my bike, with the setting sun on my left and nary a car in sight in either direction. The road unwound in front of me like an asphalt ribbon and the desert around me was a brown-and-green blur of sharp rocks and sharper plants. It was a moment that makes you stop and think (not literally, of course, you and your bike keep doing your thing, together) but all the same, I thought about how to explain what it feels like, how I might describe the moment to somebody that's never had it.

I couldn't do it. Or maybe I could do it, but I think that there's somebody who already did, and better than I ever could. Regardless, I think there's too much of me in this blog (which is to say 100%) and so I wanted to take this time to share a little piece of writing that I found, that very much describes what it feels like to ride through such a moment.

The excerpt after the break.

In Which Much Is Revealed

Not for the first time, I'm rethinking my decision to purchase a desktop to replace my much beloved and sorely missed laptop. At the time, it seemed like a prudent decision and for the most part, I have been pleased with my choice. However, there are certain nights, nights such as this one whereupon I regret my decision. I regret that I cannot sit out on the porch of my apartment, illuminated only by the warm glow of a laptop monitor and the small cherry of a wood-tipped cigar and write in the proper form and fashion, the tradition, if you will, of Hemingway and Alger, a tradition and a mystique that has long since faded from the world. Simply put, we're all nerds now, without the style and sophistication of those who came before us. We play at profundity, but cannot hope to understand it, because we've had it good for so very, very long.

One Hundred

This is the 100th post on ALKM.

It's hard coming back to it. It's hard when I try to remember what it felt like, before the long silence. For months now, I have had the desire to work, but not the motivation or the means. Perhaps the desire is not pure enough? Not honest enough? Or perhaps the desire to work is subservient to the will to do so and the fact is, the will is a magnificent machine so easily corrupted by fear or sloth or perfectionism.

Perhaps it is a mistake to consider these things as separate sins. Perhaps they are brethren, each one leading into the other, each one feeding the next, an ouroboros for our modern age.