13.9.06

update: untitled

just a quick update about how the writing has been going. i finally mailed off some promotional copies of desert sessions: an anti-corporate love story to the georgia straight, which is vancouver's weekly publication about news, entertainment and politics. hopefully they will be kind to it. everybody in vancouver pretty much reads the georgia straight, so i'm hoping to get a little more exposure.

i haven't done any actual writing on the second half to my currently untitled project, but some great ideas are coming through. i realized that since the first half of the book was so heavy on dialogue and action, i will be making the second half pretty much void of any dialogue except what is necessary.


i was watching easy rider the other day, which is about peter fonda and dennis hopper traveling from los angels to new orleans on their motorcycles, searching for america. the movie has very little dialogue, and what little there is doesn't make much sense because of how high (actually high in real life) hopper and fonda were when they made the film. the movie is basically a two hour music video, with long clips of them traveling to music, through the desert, down the coast, etc. and i realized that this is what i want the second half of my book to be like. i want lots of descriptions, lots of emotion through how the characters look at each other, how they touch each other, etc. i find that sometimes language gets in the way of real communication, because sometimes people will say one thing, but their true intent/meaning would reflect in their facial expressions or the way they hold themselves, etc. that is what i wanted to capture. i wanted it to be more poetic.

the second half of the book will be based partly on a two week road trip i did across canada last year with two friends of mine, and a recent trip through british columbia i did a few weeks ago. it will basically be about the large, empty spaces that i came across. and because music is such a huge part of my writing process, and because music is where i get most of my inspiration from, i will be mentioning songs throughout the second half of the book, and hopefully the reader will know the songs and it will add to the mood of the book. if the reader doesn't, though, it won't take anything away from the experience.

below are some of the songs i have chosen to me
ntion. i tried to chose some of the most beautiful, euphoric music. the whole point about the second half of the book is about the beauty in the world, since the first half is all about the ugly humanity. i think i sort of made a mistake about writing the first half so brutally straight forward and antagonistic, that the second half almost has to go the completely opposite way in order to balance out. my previous books have been depressing, incredibly so, so this one i wanted to change things up. to really give the reader some warmth to the second half. so lyrically and melodically, i wanted to capture that, hence the following songs. click the links to hear them:

elbow - grace under pressure
alexi murdoch - orange sky
pink floyd - wish you were here

the following images are pictures that i took on my road trip last year and the one just a few weeks ago. you can see the canadiana in them, but at the same time, they
really could be images from anywhere. these are the types of images that i will be attempting to portray in the second half of the book. you can click on the images for a better look.