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[Nabubrush]

mets, you got some high standards.

[Fooker]

Comedians are mostly people who often sad on the inside.

I would make her happy.

Inside.

[littlefallsmets]

mets, you got some high standards.

It isn't high standards.

It is that, in person, she is way too thin and has a cliche little yippy dog.

In person, she is Basically Every Actress.

Her persona is ten hells of hot, there is no question. On the television or in the movies, as the swarthy-tomboy with Crazy Opinions, I would totally be All Up Ons too. Her persona is the rudest.

But her persona ain't her. That's all.

[Nabubrush]

[Master Thespian]ACTING!!![/Master Thespian]

[Victoria Waterfield]

Pretty much the one kind of writing I have never tried is The Novel.

I have burned and disavowed more songs, screenplays, short stories, poems, essays and stage plays than many people who are Paid for It write in their entire lives and yet... The Novel seems so daunting. So... fuckin'... BIG, you know?

Plus you have to DESCRIBE so many physical things. Evoking, extrapolating, what people say, what people think, these are things I am Pretty Good At as a writer. But physically describing what something looks like? I am for crap. I am a crap dude at Describing Physical Things.

It is for illustrators or camera people to make the things look like things, you know? I tend to deal with personalities and ideas not... stuff.

I only have one idea long enough for a novel, anyway, and if I wrote it, I'd pretty much be declared crazy upon someone reading it. It would be all a court would need to put Mike in a wrap-around-coat with locks on the back.

It is about the CIA switching which assassins they send after John Lennon and Ronald Reagan, by the flip of a coin, and what the world looks like with Reagan iced and Lennon merely winged instead of vicey-vee.

Vonnegut and Philip K Dick build a last-ditch Fantastic Machine to try and save the Second American Revolution and it works in a way they did not intend, there is a janitor who falls sideways through time, an invisible train named The Thunderchild.

It is about mourning and what comes after mourning and how sometimes there is more hope for change in bald-faced despair as opposed to the sickly sweet gloss of an Age of Tightly Supressed Horrors, such as is our time.

It would prove I was crazy, even if I COULD describe objects.

Dude, who says all novels have to describe shit? Write your novel without describing any things in it. It will be awesome.

[Muse_Of_Fire]

Oh totally. Like Marguerite Duras. Her novels were these mind-boggling cyclic things with almost no description, mostly dialogue... and frankly, mostly the same banal dialogue over and over again but with a slight difference, like he faced West once and East another time, yadda yadda. It was the birth of the New Novel movement (Le Nouveau Roman) in French literature, and everyone went ape. It was a pack of clove cigarettes in literary form.

Personally, I hate Hate Haaaaaaaaate her work. But you know, maybe I'm just not erudite enough. That said, too much description makes me want to kill people: e.g. Steinbeck. I loved the idea behind what he wrote, and why he wrote it, and why his work is important. But his work itself... all that description made me hate being alive, hate people, and seriously consider taking up cutting.

Incidentally, lfm, you've probably already heard of this but if you haven't, this may help you get over your novel anxiety: NaNoWriMo, because its focus is process over product.

And as an aside... based on the description you gave, (a) I would totally read your novel, and (b) I think I love you.

[linnea]

and (b) I think I love you.

MOF, either you've got a whole lotta love to spread around, or else you say that to all the dudes.

[theinevitable]

you hate Steinbeck? Really? Damn. I haven't read him in a while, but when I read a bunch of his stuff a few years ago I loved it to death.

[Nabubrush]

Steinbeck. I loved the idea behind what he wrote, and why he wrote it, and why his work is important. But his work itself... all that description made me hate being alive, hate people, and seriously consider taking up cutting.

Steinbeck's writing made you hate being alive, hate people, and seriously consider taking up cutting? I didn't even think he was terribly, terribly wordy. I'd say enjoy your Hemingway, but with the chance you are taking with your literature, you might want to stick to appliance manuals.

[littlefallsmets]

I love the general stories Dickens wrote, you know, the plots?

And I despite his fuckin' writing style. So... much... pointless fuckin'... description.

That is the problem you get when you are serialized and paid by the word.

"And the clouds... the clouds hung low and gray in the sky like... loosely-formed gorilla turds."

JESUS.

[theinevitable]

LFM, and you say you can't describe things?

[Lister]

I'm currently on my second life cycle.

All through high school I was convinced I would be an architect because I loved buildings and constructions and all of that, and then I take my first architecture course and find out that I fuck*ng hate drawing all that shit.  Whoops.  Luckily I went to a state college with a bunch of friends (Auburn) and not a private one further away with no one I knew (Washington U), because it was my first experience dealing with something I Had To Handle On My Own.  I ended up with a degree in Geography, because it was (and still is) fascinating to me.  I even got an internship one summer and loved what I was doing.  I was going to go to grad school and everything.

And then... I didn't.  I got a MCSE and an IT job, like everyone else that year, and made okay money doing a job that was challenging and sometimes enjoyable when I got to learn something new.  As the learning and problem solving opportunities dwindled and the dealing with angry secretaries who call me to their desk whenever Word crashes even though there's nothing I can fuck*ng do about it opportunities increased, I started hating it.  I was working the helpdesk phones and it happened.  I just decided that being comfortable wasn't worth hating my life for 9-12 hours a day.

Two months later I started my first class at a second school, learning skills I'd never even considered before, in a strange town that I didn't like, but loving every second of it.  Classwork wasn't tedious, it was a step towards Doing What I Wanted.  Working 90 hours a week on projects didn't bother me that much.  I even met someone really special and fell in love for the first time in my life.

So now I'm living in a town that costs twice as much and making half the money, and I don't know how long finances will hold up, but I love what I do.  And if I could get a loan (I have great credit but a lousy salary) I'd be buying a place.  I'm actually excited about getting into work tomorrow.

I guess what I'm saying is that life with a goal is pretty good, whether you're in school or working, and if your goal is "making money" that doesn't really count.  Now is almost always a safer time to take a risk than later.  If I'd tried what I'm doing now instead of working in IT I might very well have made a fortune.  Or I might not have, but I wouldn't feel like I'd wasted a few years in a crap job.

And also, if you have to move away from someone you love, do what you can to rectify that situation immediately, or you'll get "comfortable" living apart and stop working towards reuniting.  You don't have as much time in the future as you think you do... and sometimes a car crash on the other side of the country can change your life forever.

Regret's a bitch.  Don't let it happen.

[wombat]

Dude, who says all novels have to describe shit? Write your novel without describing any things in it. It will be awesome.

This sounds like good advice.  On the other hand, does the world really need more novels? Maybe you can have a better idea. Something people might actually read.... like, hmm, messageboard posts?  Wait, I'll have to get back to you on this...

[Charles Nelson Mandela]

It probably won't assuage your fears when I tell you that less than an hour ago I was sitting in front of my computer thinking, "I really wish I was back in Weinstein again."

And I haven't lived there since 1992.

[Charles Nelson Mandela]

Thanks for the welcome!

Sadly, things change a lot at A-CAP in a very short period of time (you can't go home again). When I was there, they had maybe a third to a half as many dorms as they do now; I had to look up Lafayette just now to even see where it was (well, where on Lafayette it was, anyway). At the time, Weinstein was the only A-CAP dorm with a soul, and you could go to the cafeteria at 7:30 in the morning in your robe and slippers when it was 15^o outside with a foot of snow and everyone else had to walk three blocks over from Brittany. And, hell, Brittany didn't even have air conditioning, the savages.

Plus, on my very first day freshman year, I had an 8:30 class in the Main Building. I overslept and woke up at 8:26. Yet I made it to class on time. That's when i knew Weinstein was the coolest dorm around.

All that "first-year residential experience" BS hadn't been instituted yet; you had "dorm-style" and "apartment-style", pick one, and stay as long as you want.

Okay, now I'm depressed.

Well, more depressed than usual.