who knows where the time goes? me, apparently
Damn, but does time fly. My time off is drawing to a close, at least what I think of as my “creative” time off. I have family coming into town Saturday and will be gone from the house a good share of the weekend, so for all intents and purposes my writing time ends after tomorrow. Then come Tuesday, it’s new job time.

I drafted an 8200-word story between Monday and this morning. It felt so freeing, to just be in that space and write, not think of anything but the writing. I finished it this morning, took a five minute-stroll outside, and went back to work, starting another new piece that I had the idea for on Monday. I knocked out 1500 words on it so far; I’ve actually had a 3k word day between the two. It’s not just the volume, though. The writing is loose, natural. I feel like I’d been losing that this winter—good as some of the stuff has been, the circumstances around the stories’ birth was bleeding into the language, making it more compressed, more constipated than I sometimes liked. Relentless and surreal, and I got some great pieces out of it, but the writing I did this week is more like what I’ve done in novel drafts, more expansive, more—well, I keep coming back to free. This will change some before drafts are final, of course, but I really just wanted to spin some yarns, maybe make them a bit more concrete than my last couple of pieces, which have been both nightmarish and surreal—in a good way. I have noticed that I’m writing a lot of ghost stories these days, even when I’m not thinking they are ghost stories. This doesn’t surprise me, somehow.

So, I raved about Let the Right One In a few days ago. The movie kept playing in my mind—the sign of a great film, one that you don’t realize how much it impacted you until several days later. With that in mind, I walked down to the bookstore the other day and picked up the novel the film was based on (same title.) A few thoughts:

• I think there were some translation issues. I’d love to read a better translation. I couldn’t shake the feeling that language was being lost, and sentences/paragraphs sometimes read far more awkward than I suspect they do in the native tongue.
• The author is competent but not a great stylist. He had a great story, but he’s not yet a great writer.
• Overall I liked the movie better, but the book was an enjoyable and fast read. A couple subplots didn’t need to be there, and the book is more straightforward. There is a haunting feeling to the movie that the book only occasionally captures. Sometimes not being able to tell a back story isn’t a bad thing. Although the character of Elie’s companion was fascinating in a way he couldn’t be in the movie.
• The book was more gruesome than the movie, which wasn’t very violent at all, at least to my eyes.
• The book was an enjoyable read, the movie was great art. Though he needed the story first, the filmmaker’s vision is ultimately more powerful. I will be buying this movie, and I will be watching it again. The book I would recommend to someone who enjoys the movie and wants a more detailed take on that world, but it’s no more than that—and no less.

I also read Elizabeth Hand’s Saffron and Brimstone this week. She’s a very talented writer. Some stories were better than others, and she often writes of a New England academia culture that I cannot emotionally relate to, which makes it harder for me to identify with her characters and their reactions. That all said, a couple of the stories were brilliant, and I’d like to read some more of her stuff. I suspect she’ll always be a little hit-and-miss with me, but she’s worth the effort. Next up on the reading list: finishing Palimpsest, and starting either Robert Aickman’s The Wine-dark Sea or Cormac McCarthy’s No Country for Old Men (which I was very pleased to find a used copy of yesterday that looks brand new.) For nonfiction, I have Lords of Chaos: The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground. Cheery stuff, that. Actually, I’ve read the book in bits and pieces at various bookstores throughout the years but never the whole thing from start to end. I already know what is good and bad about the book, but I’m much more familiar with the actual music now, so I’m curious what my take will be. Sometimes talented people are quite the morons. But as is often the case, the actual talented ones in this scene aren’t the ones who did the criminal shit. I’m glad that we’ve finally passed beyond the sensationalist aspects of this music and can listen to the best of it as simply music. That said, it’s certainly a fascinating and disturbing story.

I haven’t watched any movies since Monday. Maybe I’ll watch one tomorrow. I don’t know; it’s hard for me to sit in front of a TV when I can be writing or reading. I’m just not a guy that can watch a ton of movies in a week, no matter how many I’m intrigued to see. Also, once a movie casts a spell on me (such as Let the Right One In did this week), I find it very hard to watch another movie for awhile. I just want to go back and be in that world for awhile, you know? I can’t just consume tons of media and move on. Whether it’s movies, music or books, I need to have a deeper connection. The downside of that is I don’t get to check everything out I’m interested in. The upside is that I inevitably have a strong reaction to what I do take in. I think about it and react to it on a lot of different levels. And eventually, like everything else in my life, it feeds back into my work.

I see it is almost time to pick up the girls, and then bbq some steaks. I’m actually going try smoking the steaks with alder chips tonight, this will be a first. Oh, and did I mention that I read out on my deck, in the sun, for an hour this afternoon? I haven’t done that in several years. Do I really have to go back to work next week? Really? See, I don’t need any expensive Disneyland vacation or crap. Just time. Always, time.