Quick request

My sister is trying to get a little extra scholarship money for college, so I would like to ask everyone to click this link and vote for her. If you have time to write a review, that helps as well. Thank you!

VOTE.

Re-writing in progress

I've begun to re-write the novel in third person. Thus far, over the past two days, I've written 1,668 words, or 1.11% of my target. I've already been able to correct a few errors and expound on a few things, so I've probably pulled the 1,668 words from about 1,200. This makes me quite happy, since I am doing more showing and less telling; I'm definitely doing better than I thought I would at fleshing some things out and staying out of the characters' heads, which was the predominant problem I had noticed after only 17 or so pages of the first draft. For purposes of ease, though, I will be referring to that original first person draft as v2.0, since this is my second go-round at the novel, and the more current third person draft is v2.1. I've also re-ordered a few things, since I got a new idea on the chapter placement a little while ago. Hopefully it will give the hook in the beginning a bigger impact, since I will be able to build up to it a bit more and make people actually care about the characters and what will happen to them. That's my main concern.

Hopefully that turns out all right. I hope your writing is coming along as well, and be sure to join me in Script Frenzy! (See below.) I really look forward to pumping something out in a short time and maybe getting my overall writing confidence up from finishing something. Hope to see you there with me.

Script Frenzy

Throughout the month of April, I will be taking part in Script Frenzy, which is a contest to see who can complete a 100-page script beginning at 12:01am the morning of April 1 and ending 11:59pm the night of April 30. There are no prizes other than knowing that you've finally written that script you always said you could write.

For those of you who don't get it, this kind of deadline-driven pressure removes the ability to overthink and overedit your work, which makes it hard to move forward. You can't stop to think about how shitty your first draft it, because you have to use that time to write.

I did this same kind of thing for my first novel (which I mentioned in my first post) for National Novel Writer's Month. If you feel like joining up and competing with me, go to:

www.scriptfrenzy.org (it's the same group that does www.nanowrimo.org).

When you get there, go to search and look for me, Hudak-Budak. I'll gladly befriend anyone who would like to write with me.

Good luck, and happy writing!

Dream Over

Here's another poem from a few years ago. When I wrote it, I had been wanting to use "Dream Over" for something. A website, a song, an album, a book...anything. The phrase really just appeals to me; that's where the poem comes in. I didn't write the poem to fit the name, but I figured it fit. This is another that would probably make my top three. I need to clean it up a little; I think it might start off a little pretentious. But here it is anyway.

Dream Over

Candles sitting sentinel over quiet lives,
lighting just enough to let us know
the other is still there. A quick flicker
and you ask, “Why ponder life?
Why give it the satisfaction of keeping us down?”

“What I don’t know about you could fill worlds,” I say.
“But what I do,” I say, “could fill my heart.”

“Don’t talk to me in poems,” she tells me.
“In fact, don’t talk to me at all. Let’s just sit.
Let’s just sit and enjoy the moment.
Enjoy the darkness and the patterns
the candles show on the walls.
Let’s just enjoy each other—we never
do that anymore.”

I give in to her—I always do
and she knows I always will. Or does she realize
this simple power she has over me?
I do as she says and watch the candlelight
make faces and sentient beings out of
the patters in the wallpaper. Wallpaper
I should have taken down or painted over years ago,
but she likes it, claims it gives the room
an old-fashioned feel I should be able to appreciate.

She doesn’t think I enjoy her as much as I do—
I can tell. She doesn’t know that I could write poems
about her hair, her smile, her scent, her soft body
as it looks in the moonlight, covered in sweat,
her breathing heavy after I’ve just taken her,
the sheets like waves around her formal outline,
and her hair in a mild disarray. She doesn’t know
that I have.

I smell the candles—lavender and cinnamon and
one called “fresh laundry”—all scents that she’s picked out
and that meander together in a domestic feast.
A thick vine of smoke crawls into the air
and she grabs a pair of scissors to clip the cinnamon wick.
“Don’t,” I say. “I like to watch the smoke.”

“Quiet,” she says. “Keep quiet. Keep quiet.”

Dance

For whatever reason, I've been going back through a lot of my old poetry. Maybe it's to avoid working on the novel; I'm not sure. Either way, the poem I present to you today, Dance, is probably what I would consider if not my best, one of my top three for certain. I remember sitting outside in Ohio on a cool fall evening, smoking cigarettes with my notebook and just writing line after line. There was a breeze through the trees, which was probably what inspired it, but once I get it going it all flowed out very smoothly. I'm very proud of this one; I just hope other people don't think it's awful.

Dance

The dreams I see script two of us
as I take your hand
and offer a dance through the cool spring breeze.
The treetops bow to us,
boughs giving permission
and offering to reach our misgivings
to an unknown heaven,
fun and fancy-free
as we jovially waltz
amongst our kindred sapling souls.

The full-bloom leaves now cheer us on
with a quiet murmur
as the warm wind blows our hair back.
Our faces unhidden,
the look in your eyes drives me
to spin faster as we dance dangerously
on the brink of sickness,
our stomaches telling us to slow ourselves
even as we push harder on
to a point from which we know
we can never turn back.

And so the leaves tire of our waltz,
a waltz which we slow
to a slow shuffle through the fallen piles.
The fallen voyeurs beg our ceasing
with a cold crackle and a crisp death-rattle
as we forge forever on,
heedless of their warnings
of a frozen future buried deep within our hearts.
We feel the cool wind begin to blow,
see it banish our fallen nay-sayers
as we stubbornly carry on that which we know
is doomed to crawl until it stops.
We remember the warmer weather,
the trees applauding their approval,
and we ignore the desolate landscape
growing among us.
There is only you and I.

What to become of this but unabashéd snowfall?
An innocence muffling our steps and begging us retreat.
Slowing us to nothing but two shivering bodies
unable to heat the other and wondering.
This long embrace, grown tired and awkward,
neither remembering how to lead with steps
that always seem one step ahead and out of our grasp.
The naked trees no longer can support
those misgivings they once held up as a sacred offering.
They are handed back to us gently but firmly,
cutting us with their brittle claws and slowing our final steps.
Buckling our minds with renewed doubt
as to where our feet can possibly take us next.
I can see your eyes again as the wind calms itself
and I can see there is no longer you and I.
Just you.
Just I.

Promise

One of the reasons I haven't been writing is because I'm trying to look at one of my poems "from a different angle, under a different light, so we can hopefully kind of see it for the first time." The Decemberists' new album, The Hazards of Love, has inspired me to take my longest poem, Promise, and try to turn it into an album. Split the poem up into different songs, change the words to lyrics, and who knows--maybe one day I'll find some people to help record it all. [As a quick aside, this album has been spinning twice a day since I got it. I highly suggest it.] Here is the poem:

Promise

1.

This smooth park bench,

wood worn through years of service

is now an afternoon home,

now mine through an unspoken agreement

with squirrels and pigeons—

the quiet keepers of a natural life—

who allow me my one obsession.

A pack of cigarettes on the bench

and a notebook on my lap—

I have allowed myself these two

barriers between her and I.

Handheld distractions to hide behind

to feign interest as she walks by.

Her child walks ahead, examining leaves

and reporting his findings to her.

She smiles and my heart smiles with her.

I throw words on the page,

meaningless streams flowing

of their own accord as she nears,

concentrating more on our

overly comfortable repartee—

niceties that would be more at home

spoken in a bed next to each other

whispered as we slowly fall asleep.

"Hello, Jeremiah," she says as she approaches.

Is this even my name? I have forgotten myself

in her. Whatever name I give her will be mine

as she speaks it. I smile and nod her

a good afternoon as I do every time, my voice

caught, trapped and afraid of her.

But it will not be able to hide for long.

Standing over me, her dominance will draw it out.

"How is the writing coming along?"

I look at the page, worthless words in her presence,

and cover it with a shy hand.

"The usual," I tell her. "I don't think

there's much inspiration left in the park."

Outside of you.

Leaves rattle around our feet and the wind—

the wind, another friend for which I am grateful—

lifts her hair in waves of dark night ocean

(an ocean I would die to swim in)

as she examines our surroundings.

"You're probably right," she tells me.

"This is a dying park. A dying city, really.

So much could happen here and never does."

A metaphor for the two of us,

but is that how she means it?

I look to her eyes for a sign

but she is looking off around the park,

finding evidence to support her statement.

I look then to her child for a recognition,

knowing no one else close to her to go to.

Our eyes meet and he tugs his mother's sleeve

in the frantically gentle way lovemaking would require.

This is her time to go, and I am bid farewell.

I retreat as I watch her to one of my own hideaways,

a cool cigarette—the only thing able to guard me

as the notebook rests uselessly on my lap.

2.

A week now since I have left the apartment.

The city bears down on me with dying breath

I can no longer help but notice.

I have given up on my daily obsession

of watching her in the park,

of exchanging our few words

and going about our afternoons—

her mind no doubt drifting to other things,

mine stuck with her through sleep and dreams.

My soul, connected to the city since birth,

is dying with it, being crushed

under the weight of a thousand failures

occurring through no fault of my own,

but mine nonetheless. A failure

to be born in a proverbial right place

and right time—a cliché even I can no longer avoid.

A failure to have known her

even seconds before the father.

Seconds. So little time needed

to change lives.

3.

Do you believe in reincarnation

a voice asks me in a dream,

my first dream in weeks barren of her.

Should I

I ask the voice,

itself as disembodied

as I am now disenfranchised.

You will be hers in your next life

the voice tells me.

She appears as I last saw her,

hair askew as the wicked wind

has his way in an afternoon dance

beneath dying trees with aching limbs.

Do I believe this foreign voice

now bringing me promise through

an icy ocean which itself promises only to drown?

To try to find logic in a situation

which requires only the opposite

is yet another promise of failure in this poor city.

I want to walk away, to shrug off

the mad ramblings of the voice of a dream,

but I find myself desperate to hold on

to this place I've come, as unfamiliar

and unknown as I now find myself.

I must make a decision before I leave,

that much is clear to me now,

but the time it will take will see

kings dethroned and empires destroyed

and begun anew. Species will become extinct,

buildings will crumble a hundred times over

as I battle with my mind.

My life to now has lacked this belief,

this empty voice of laden promises

leading me down paths I never

would have seen on my own.

Should this be god? Mine if no one else's.

Who should speak to me in such a way

in dream if not god?

This is the proof of mind I require

and this is the proof I will take.

I leave this place and head to morning.

4.

Too much coffee and too many cigarettes

guide me through early day,

but something must take my mind

from what I heard from a subconscious god.

These indulgences fail to keep my mind

from her or our next life together;

I try to drown myself in these things,

choke myself with every inhalation

because every facet of my dying

brings me closer to her.

To overdo everything to the point of self-destruction

makes me finally hers, a fate I have

gone over in my head a thousand times

in this infantile morning.

I must now make the choice which has been

holding down my thoughts and

clenching at my soul for what seems like

a slow eternity—yet another decision

to take lifetimes to mull over,

to weigh pros and cons and slowly

erode my dreams over.

What better place to mull the decision, then,

but the park where everything was begun—

the bench that sent my life

in an alternating spiral down

through love and pain and

happiness and an ultimate death.

I pass the bench without a thought,

taken by legs I cannot control

through this dying place as

the wind blows tree branches out of my path,

sentinels on either side guarding my way.

My friends the squirrels and pigeons pay

respect as I walk by, lining the path and

chattering their last farewell even

as I cannot look them in the eye.

The park end and the beach begins,

my funeral party leaving me to be,

stopping at the sand and bowing their heads.

This season finds the beach empty

and I continue on, watched but not noticed

as the cold water warns my feet to

turn back and keep me warm.

The message does not make it to my brain,

now determined to be hers at all costs.

It is hard to walk now, my breath coming

ragged with what is at hand—

a climax of inhalations laden with salt

and heavy with panic. Something feral

inside me demands I turn back, now

over my head, but I resist the urge

as the sour ocean pushes at my lungs.

I once built sand castles here as a child

and now I watch my unsteady walls collapse

at the weight of a thousand waves

never ceasing in their mission.

Through the slow rays of light

which make their way through the waves

above me, I can see her making her way to me—

her hair suspended and glistening

and a white robe floating around her.

she smiles and I smile back through

teeth gritted with salt and sand.

I am able, for the first time, to touch

her face and for the first time

life brightens around me. She kisses me

and I am now sure that I am hers.

5.

Another trip to the park to see the leaves

freshly fallen and littering the ground.

There is a beach near here where my mother,

now dawdling behind, took me this summer

to swim and build sandcastles.

The leaves on the ground display a rainbow

of autumn colors; she knows I love this.

What I love more, though, are the piles

she makes me in the front yard,

her love never tiring of building them back up

after I've scattered them jumping, crawling and wrestling.

I ignore her calls for me to be careful

as I run ahead, seeing a squirrel

pack away provisions for the inevitable winter

just around the corner. There are more leaves ahead,

and I must make sure to see them all,

touch them, throw them into the air

to prove I am carefree and to see

where and how they land.

After conducting more experiments,

I turn back to see she has stopped

to talk to a man, a man she stops with frequently.

I make my way over, a strange feeling

creeps up my spine, stirring the wind

and shaking loose frail leaves from frail limbs.

This familiarity takes hold as I see the man

for the first time up close, but this is

far from the first I've known him.

"So much could happen here and never does."

Now the metaphor once thought aimed at me

has become inaccurate—so much has happened here.

Everything has happened here and how,

or in a different now—a now I have seen

through two people. A now I suffer through again.

Is this what my subconscious god—subconscious devil—

had in mind? Is this the love for which

I fought so hard against the sea,

against life, finally giving in to let

this love take over? The heavens' ruse

has taken yet another victim and I now know

the truth about endings and beginnings.

I tug her sleeve—we must go now.

I cannot stay here and look at my

former broken self. We walk.

"What a nice gentleman," she says.

"Perhaps I should ask him to coffee tomorrow."

Unnecessary and impossible, I now know,

for I am truly hers already.

That is the poem. I think if I was able to get a female to guest-sing the female parts (and extend them a little bit to make it worth someone's time), it would end up a really dynamic effort. The first step I took is to map out the song titles and use some of the lines in the poem to show where I would kind of break up the whole effort:

1. The Quiet Keepers of a Natural Life
2. So Much Could Happen Here and Never Does Pt. 1 (This is a Dying City)
3. The City Bears Down
4. You Will Be Hers in Your Next Life
5. These Indulgences Fail
6. Through This Dying Place
7. Inhalations Laden with Salt
8. Unsteady Walls Collapse
9. To Swim and Build Sandcastles
10. So Much Could Happen Here and Never Does Pt. 2 (A Now I Have Seen Through Two People)

This is my current project (for about a week). It would really be basically taking the story and re-writing it, since there really is no meter or rhyme or anything that makes a song good. But we'll see what comes of it.

Slowing down

Since my last post, I've written 1,634 words, which is a little over 300 words per day; not very comparable to my 2,500 wpd over the first two days. While I have been writing a lot less than I wanted, I was thinking about it on Sunday while my girlfriend and I were walking through the park. With what I've got now, I've been doing a lot of telling, which goes against that super-important writer's code, "Show, don't tell." This is what made Hemingway what he was, and this is what I need to work on more.

I think the best idea for me would be for me to switch from first-person to third-person. I find that I've been trying to hard to be in my character's head, to show his thoughts, but his thoughts are just explaining every part of the story away. I think, with the story, if we're outside his head and don't know exactly what he's thinking, it would make for some better twists and turns when he does something we may not expect. In third person, I can bring that about much better; in first person I've found myself trying to do that, but using the character's thoughts to rationalize and foreshadow and explain and everything of that nature.

I'm not really sure how I want to proceed. I want to continue moving forward and not take the time required to go back and edit and change what I've got to third person, but I know I'll have to do that eventually, so why not get it out of the way? I guess if I don't have any updates to the word count for a while, you'll know what I've chosen.

While I get to that, here's a little quote for you: "There is no great writing, only great rewriting." -Justice Brandeis.

The real day two

Yesterday I decided I would forgo long-hand for the most part and type. It's much faster this way, and easier to keep track of an exact word count. Yesterday, I logged 2,498 words and today almost doubled that with 4,315 for a grand two-day total of 6,813. This is 4.54% of my (also new) word target of 150,000.

The part that excites me most, though, is that I was able to get to my main conflict in under 7,500 words and 20 pages. This was one of the main problems with my original NaNoWriMo manuscript, it just rambled on and on and took forever to get to the crux of the story. This newest incarnation has been streamlined and will get me to the conflict much more quickly.

Up next is, hopefully, some hardcore character development. Now that I can see how they act in their given situation, things will only get better as the stress and obstacles begin to pile up on them. Things are going smoothly.

Oh, also, I'm writing in just plain Word. Nothing fancy. Go figure. The point is, I'm writing. You should do that as well.

Current progress

As of today, I've hand-written about ten pages. It's not much, but it's a start. I've gotten to the point where I've almost established the story and where it needs to go. What I've written so far isn't exactly the best stuff on earth, but once I get a more written and can pare it down to the best stuff and maybe move some things around, I'm pretty sure it will turn out much better.

I am already starting to re-think the hand-writing aspect of the whole process, though. It's very time-consuming and it just seems like things would go much more smoothly if I could type.

While looking around, I found a nice writing program that basically acts as a glorified notepad that can keep track of any number of goals and counts. It also takes up the whole screen with only one way to minimize it, drastically cutting down on interruptions and time-consuming internet usage that I know I always get caught up in. The only problem is, I don't see any way to transfer what I've written to Word or any other acceptable editing program, which might be a pain.

But, if this sounds like the kind of thing you're looking for, the program is called Q10 and can be found here (it's free). Let me know if you have any suggestions for other good (and hopefully free) writing programs.

Until then, keep writing and take care.

The beginning

Currently I am working on a new novel. Well, it's not new; I wrote a 50,000-word version for NaNoWriMo 2008 entitled "The Reunion." I've decided, though, that it needs to undergo some drastic changes. These changes will alter the story enough so that the title becomes obsolete, so I need a new title. That will come later; right now I'm not as concerned with that as getting something on paper.

Right now, I've decided to write free-hand; I think this makes the first draft more intimate. It will also give me the chance to do my first edit in a way that doesn't feel like I'm editing; I'd just be typing it in and making little changes as I went along.

The goal, for now, is to have a first draft with 200,000 words and to pare it down to 100,000 words for the final draft. This way I can get out everything I want to say without worrying about what to keep out and I can go off on tangents to see what comes of it and I won't have to hold back at all. I can get everything down and then take out what doesn't fit or what isn't as good. I've averaged a few handwritten pages, and it comes out to about 300 words per page, which means I need to fill 666 or so pages.

We'll see how this goes and how this method works. Hopefully it will all turn out for the best. I encourage anyone at any time to comment with any writing tips or tricks you may have for myself or anyone else who might be reading this. Also, if you have a similar blog and would like to link to mine, let me know. We can support each other.

The most important thing, for me, is to continuously remember Hemingway's quote: "The first draft of anything is shit." Now, let's get started with our shit.