Sixteen Permutations — that’s the name of this year’s novel, and I finally started it. Punched out around 775 words in an hour, and stopped. This is sort of the norm for me. I always just bash the first thousand or so words of a story, sit back for a bit, analyse what I’ve written, try to divine what kind of story it is that has shown itself on the page, compare it to the gut feeling the novel I have in my head should give me, and see if they match up.
This is a little easier if you know what that gut feeling is. I knew what it was the last few times and hence was either able to successfully write about it (Tale of a Thousand Savants) or cut my losses (Unfinished at the Moment) or put it aside because it just didn’t work as a novel (Polendron). This time I have, as I may have said before, only the idea for a cover, a title, and a plot device.
I’m a bit scared of the plot device at the moment, because I’ve never attempted it except in a two hundred word example I once wrote to illustrate that plot device on a forum. There’s quite a difference between a short example and a fifty thousand word novel, and hence I’m scared completely shitless.
Still, I don’t have to worry about that for the next couple of thousand words at least, I think. Right now I just have to stop Savant from rambling.
Yeah, so this is how it always starts. I put Savant somewhere either funny or strange, have him open with a typically noncomittal one liner, and then proceed from there. Nothing ever happens in my first chapters — I break the cardinal rule of writing and have the most boring openings ever.
This time it’s magnified because, truth be told, I haven’t written fiction for over two years, and it shows. It shows bad. I’m rambling and rambling, there are talking heads aplenty, and no sign of anything happening other than Savant’s Own™ sidetracking anecdotes. I’ve introduced a plot point that I just realised completely destroys the importance of something that happens in Tale, and all so I can make a joke about headless penises.
This is the most colossally bad thing I’ve written yet. Yes, it’s even worse than that vanilla cream pie thing, and I was seventeen back then — I was supposed to be crap!
But you know what, I’m loving every minute of it. I just love writing. I love the sidetracking anecdotes. I know it’s crap, but I also know that I must continue. I know that somewhere down this ramble of a novel a story will emerge, a text worth writing — worth reading — will assert itself, and that feeling will be ten times as fun as this.
I also know that it will be a wonderful experience to write from Xaria’s perspective for once. I’ve written about her but never as her, and this is the plot device that has me cowering in the corner. Still, I just know that when it does come around, that I’ll have the gut feeling of my novel.
To that point, I write.
V
Been a while since I did some macros…
Click ‘Read More’ for the rest.
I made noodles. They were good. Click on ‘Read More’ for a long story about noodles in general, and a recipe on how to make the ones pictured.
Everybody loves Ramen
Ah, the stir fry. Hallowed quick meal weapon of chefs everywhere, and what better exemplifies the style than stir fried noodles? I’ve been a noodle fan since I can remember, and have developed a taste for every kind I have ever tried, from the good old red-plate ‘Indian Chinese’ stalls around Mumbai with their volcanic Szechuan Noodles (pronounced ‘Sizwon’ of course) to proper ‘Chinese Chinese’ chopsueys and smooth, lemony Pad Thai.
When I was growing up in India, stir-fired noodles were a restaurant only dish, and the home equivalent was Maggi Masala flavour 2 Minute Noodles (I distinctly remember arguing with my grandmother that we didn’t have to cook it for 15 minutes ‘like dal’ — as the noodles continued to bubble away into an inedible paste), which always looked nice and appealing in the commercials with oodles of vegetables and generally stir-fried appearance, but at home what you got was a bunch of limp white noodles in a yellow-brown spicy sauce that was more soup than stir-fry.
(Maggi in fact tried to capitalise on this mishap in the early nineties by introducing ‘Soup Noodles’ — which was the same thing, only the instruction on the back said to add three cups of water instead of two, and it came in a particularly disappointing ‘new’ tomato flavour that they had simply shanghaied from their soup line.)
In the Middle East we had no Maggi back then, but there were a bunch of the oriental intant noodle brands like Nissin (who invented them) and Koka — more on them later.
The was the added novelty of styrofoam pot noodles which did away with the washing up entirely — some even came with tiny foldable plastic forks! — but it was still the same old soupy stuff, and usually the curry flavour was the only decent tasting one. Man can’t live on curry noodles alone, you know.
So, the restaurants still held sway over stir-fried noodles, and while Martin Yan showed up every week with his rapid fire knife and all sorts of exotic chinese dishes, never once did I see a humble stir-fry noodle.
Later, of course, with the internet I found the recipes I wanted, but they usually just called for soy sauce as flavour, so as to make the noodles a base for keeping some other meat or veg stir-fry dish on. I’m a big fan of the one dish meal — there are three bachelors in the house and I’m the only one who cooks — so an elaborate banquet is out of the question. Plus there’s something immensely relaxing about making one thing in one pot, serving it up and having less washing up to do. So I did make stir-fry noodles, and for the most part they were good. It took me a while to get some balance to the ingredients, the sauces, so as to make them moist but still retain the smoky fried flavour, how much vegetable to put in, what kind of vegetables work best. I won’t say I’ve got it down to a science, but I’m confident enough to make it well 99.9% of the time, because now I have a killer app on my side.
Enter Koka. I mentioned them before; they’re a Korean company I think (mostly because their name starts with ‘Ko’ and as anyone who has seen
‘Mongjunggi‘ will attest, their products are, um, used in interesting ways by horny Korean adolescents), and they make the most fabulous variety of instant noodles I’ve found. While their regular two minute stuff is pretty standard, they have some real gems in their arsenal like their Laksa flavour bowl noodles (hot, spicy, coconut-creamy shrimp soup with fiery dots of chilli oil) and their range of Pho rice noodles.
A recent addition to some supermarkets here, however, has been their range of fried noodles. Now, I’ve seen fried noodles before from other companies, and tried them, and they’re pretty good on their own, but somehow they’ve always lacked a certain… balance that is key to good fried noodles. Either they’re too sugary, or too salty, or the onion oil overpowers everything.
(If you haven’t tried fried noodles, then basically they’re the same as instant noodles, only after you boil them for two minutes you drain out the water, toss it in a plate and add in the flavour satchet powder and a small satchet of oil — usually sesame, sometimes with bits of onion, mix well until everything is coated.)
Maggi in India even tried to make a variety a few years ago (they called it ‘Chinese Noodles’ — what were the rest of the range, Indian?) but it was so awful I still have an unopened packet in the back of the cupboard saved for when my enemies come calling.
Koka, meanwhile has managed to make the best variety of fired noodles. They taste excellent on their own, and one packet makes enough for a light snack. They even come in two flavours; a mild, traditional stir-fried noodles variety, and a spicy Singaporean one, which I used in the following recipe.
Recipe
Look, this isn’t going to be one of those things you see in pro cook books (especially by the French) which give measurements down to the millilitre and accentuate every instruction with loud, all-caps words like SLOWLY, GENTLY and YOU STUPID COW YOU WILL NEVER GET A MICHELIN STAR BUT I’M MAKING MILLIONS OFF THIS BOOK HAHAHAHA. I’m assuming you know your way round a kitchen, and understand that moderation is usually the best way forward, especially in stir-fry.
So, first up, get your vegetables sorted. I like to use any and sometimes all of the following:
Bean Sprouts — Downright essential. You can get them in most supermarkets, or try to sprout them at home, but either way you need to get them when each shoot is at least a couple of inches long. Buy them as close to cooking time as possible, as they don’t store very well in the fridge. A medium-sized handful per person is what I use.
Carrots — Julienne these, again two inches long is fine.
Snow peas — stack them, cut in half across the length. Or leave ’em whole if they’re small enough.
French Beans — slit the big ones down the length, leave the little ones alone.
Capsicum/Bell Peppers — long strips, half a centimetre in width. Red ones are sweet, Green ones are a little bitter, yellow ones are in-between. If you can get all of them, great!
Bok Choi/Cabbage — any robust leaf will do. I’ve even got away with iceberg lettuce once (it didn’t taste like anything). Haven’t tried spinach yet, but it may wilt too easily. Soya greens may also work. Should try those out. Fine strips, same size as the peppers.
Mushrooms — do not use tinned ones (the horror!), but a few finely sliced button mushrooms are fine. Shitake is the best. Anything that can stand being tossed around.
Brocolli/cauliflower — I suggest brocolli since it’s more robust than cauliflower, which tends to crumble. Cut them up into long, little floret ‘trees’ and blanche them for a minute, refresh in cold water and set aside (you can even save time by dunking them in with the noodles when you’re cooking them rather than separately).
Celery — loads of flavour, very nice surprise to get its sweet and peppermint spice in the middle of tangy noodles. Slice the stick fine on a 60 degree angle, and don’t use too much of it. Around an inch per person.
Spring Onion Greens — as fine as you like, but usually one half of an inch is a good balance of size vs flavour.
Onions, garlic and ginger — these are more Indian touches than Chinese, and if you don’t want them you can omit them, but I think they add great background flavours for the rest of the stuff to play with. Slice the onion as fine as you can, the garlic can either be sliced or you can just crush it and throw it in if you don’t mind large pieces of it, and the ginger should be julienned a little finer than the carrot (if you’re using Indian ginger then it’s stronger, so either learn to cut it to translucent sticks or just grate it).
…right, that’s a general checklist of the vegetables. You can add in whatever you like as long as it cooks in time and doesn’t disintegrate. You can add in meats too, just make sure they’re cooked or will cook in time, and that they’re generally chunky stuff. So strips of leftover grilled chicken breast are good, while mincemeat may not be. Go for dry, delicately flavoured stuff if using leftovers. You don’t want to be tasting yesterday’s mutton vindaloo in today’s noodles!
Now the important bit: Quantities. I use a medium-sized bowl as a measure, and use one packet of noodles per person. I always use one medium handful of beansprouts, and small quantities of onion, celery, ginger and garic as these should not be overdosed on. 1-2 cloves of garlic, half inch of strong ginger, half a small Indian onion (a quarter Spanish white or brown onion is more than enough). Then I fill up the rest of the bowl with equal parts of the rest of the veggies.
It’s important to note that only the raw vegetables meats should fill up the bowl now. A full to the brim bowl of veggies/meats after frying adding noodles will result in a full bowl of stir-fry that’s a full meal. Another way of measuring might be that the veggies should be twice/thrice the volume of the brick of uncooked noodles.
Let’s get to work. Have all your stuff ready to go, all cut up, all unwrapped, and get two cups of water boiling, and on the other start heating up a wok. Timing is an asset here, as you want the water to be boiling vigorously just as the wok reaches a good heat — it should be really hot.
Drop the noodles into the water and make a note of the time. Depending on how firm you like your noodles you have between 1.5-3 minutes to stir-fry the veggies, so splash some sunflower oil into the wok and drop all your veggies except bean sprouts and spring onion greens in. Stir like mad, toss, toss, let it fry a bit, toss again. After two minutes of vigorous cooking add in the bean sprouts and green onion, then a dash of soy sauce and toss again.
Good smell, huh?
I like my noodles firm, so I take them out at 1:30, into a colander, shake off a little of the water, then promptly plonk them in the wok over the vegetables. Open up the seasoning and oil satchets that were in the noodle pack and shake/squeeze each onto the noodles. Now you need to make sure that the flavour powder coats all the noodles and does that nice semi-syrupy thing the food engineers at Koka designed it to do, so if you have an extra cooking fork around use it to toss the stir-fry around like a salad. You should be able to tell when it’s all done; all the noodles should have stopped being white and taken on a nice brown colour. Drop the forks and toss the wok a few times to integrate the vegtables into the noodles more.
Note that you’re never going to get a perfectly uniform integration of noodles and veg, so do the best you can in the wok and put it in the bowl, where you can fiddle to your heart’s content with a fork, getting all the vegetables tucked in between those noodles.
Serve immediately. That’s it.
Um, turn the stove off!
Well, how was it? Good? Good.
Afterthoughts
In case you can’t find the fried noodle varieties, then you can still make it. Just make sure you buy some sesame oil and Chinese sauces from the supermarket — sweet and sour, hot chilli, whatever you like — and don’t use the flavour packet from the noodles. Follow the recipe as above but once you add in the noodles toss a little, then add in the sauces and sesame oil and toss some more until it all caramelises a bit. If you’re using a non-stick wok then do use the largest flame you can on the highest temperature. Stir fry needs to be very quick and very hot, and as the name suggests you have to keep stirring or tossing (which, once you get the hang of it, is loads of fun). If the temperature’s too low then you’ll end up with soggy noodles, and if you use the store-bought sauces you’re almost guaranteed to have a less intense flavour. It just won’t taste very exciting no matter how much of the sauce you add in.
If you’ve looked around the noodle aisle in the supermarket you may have come across these large packs of yellow noodles with the label ‘Pancit Canton’ — these are a Philipino variety that are made with coconut oil and do not need to be boiled beforehand. Just break off a chunk and put it into the stir fried veggies, and they tend to soften after all the sauces have been added in. Pancit Canton can also be directly put into soups at serving time, or you can make a chopsuey sauce and just pour it over them. As a fan of extra-crispy noodles too, these are great and do away with the tedium of making deep fried crispy noodles yourself. The coconut-oil flavour is usually mild enought to disappear at serving time, but this depends on the manufacturer. Some are stronger than others.
Rice noodles are more delicate, and usually they only need to be soaked in hot water beforehand, not boiled (the pack usually comes with instructions). Pad Thai sauce is becoming available more readily, and it’s a great dish if done properly. You can — and should — use more delicate veggies with rice noodles (seafood is great too), but accent them at the end with some crunchy stuff like bean sprouts (tossed in after you shut off the flame), crushed roasted peanuts and spring onions. It’s an entirely different flavour set as compared to smoky, intense stir-fry noodles, but it’s just as awesome.
Hope you enjoyed this. It’s long, I know, but I trust you learned how to make a good dish. If you try it out do take a picture and send it to me (or a link to it).
V
I’ve finally got round to watching those BMW commercial short films (collectively called “The Hire“) that people have been raving about for years. Don’t bother looking for them now, because they’ve been taken offline. You can get them on DVD if you pay around 5$ shipping and handling, and for 5$ I’d say they’re definitely worth your time.
I had heard of them before but was never quite interested, mostly because the trailer I saw was for the Guy Ritchie-directed, Madonna-featured episode which seemed quite painful, squealy-tired stunt driving notwithstanding. Add to that a computer that has never quite mixed with streaming video, and I wasn’t exactly gagging to sit down and try to watch them.
Recently however, with their impeding removal from free circulation, my interest was piqued, as was the fact that I now realised the other films in the series were directed by such people as John Frankenheimer and John Woo, and even more interesting, totally strange choices like Ang Lee and Wong Kar Wai (whose work I’ve been curious about, but never actually seen).
The films pretty much follow the same basic scenario: ‘The Driver’ (played by Clive Owen) is some kind of for-hire expert — what else — driver, who has to transport someone or something in some model of BMW car. Usually bad guys show up, give chase, shoot stuff, and at the end of seven minutes or so the plot resolves itself in a tidy way. If this sounds sort of like the excellent Transporter movies, then yeah, Frank Martin from that series and Clive’s unnamed driver character have the same job description. Since the series more or less came out in the same time period (The Hire may have been a little before though) it’s hard to tell who is copying who, or if it was just a case of a two teams thinking up a good concept (that was probably ripped off some obscure Asian action movie).
Being short films, the plots are dead simple, so any entertainment will be gained from the individual director’s approach to the material, and this is definitely the case. Each film is unique in the way it handles the seven slender minutes it has. Let’s take a closer look:
Ambush
Directed John Frankenheimer (The Manchurian Candidate)
This is the simplest of the films. Driver and passenger are ambling along a dark country road in a BMW sedan (I can’t really tell my 5 series from my 7 series, especially before Bangle started making them distinctly ugly) when a van pulls up along side them, masked men point guns and demand they stop and hand over the passenger, and a car chase ensues.
In Frankenheimer’s deft hands, this converts to a white-knuckle, pedal to the metal car chase devoid of a background score. He knows we want to hear that engine roar, hear each gear shift as Clive not so much tosses as precision-manoeuvres the silver bullet about.
Newton Thomas Sigel’s roller-coaster cinematography really drives home (no pun intended) the sensation of speed using low angles and POV shots illuminated only by the BMW’s headlights. Robert Duffy’s editing is crisp and clear; unlike a million car chases I’ve seen, you know exactly what is going on and the thrill is 120%. I actually tried to duck out of the way a couple of times. Ambush is a good, old fashioned chase like they used to make ’em.
Chosen
Directed by Ang Lee (Hulk, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Sense and Sensibility(!))
Remember those videos of little French hatchbacks doing circles and figure eights set to ballet music? Well, that’s pretty much the case here, except it’s a BMW, an SUV and a Dodge Neon (Wha? Of all the cars to cast as a Bad Guy car in a chase, they get a Dodge Neon?!). Our driver picks up a kid dressed in Tibetan Buddhist monk outfit at the freezing docks, bad guys show up, lots of slippy-slidey, with a somewhat damp denoument post-chase that overstays its welcome and is awkwardly acted. Of all the films in the series, this feels the most as if the director was fully aware he was making a fluffy commercial and didn’t take it seriously.
In stark contrast to Ambush, Chosen is set to classical-style string music, and while it sort of works, the really fun part is in this extended bit set in a maze of cargo containers that could be straight out of a Looney Toons “corridor with many doors” skit. Things go downhill from here as said limp denoument overstays its welcome, then further annoys with a groan-inducing Ang Lee in-joke. It’s not a bad film on its own, but do watch it before Ambush, as it’s almost as bad as…
Star
Directed by Guy Ritchie (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Swept Away(!))
Ugh. Tantrum-throwing star tantrums her way tantrumifically into Clive’s waiting sedan, proceeds to tantrum some more until he gets a call from the star’s manager who has hired our intrepid driver to do what he does best, which is make hair-raising three point turns in no points whatsoever and a clever use of the handbrake. It’s nice to see the driver character loosen up a bit and behave in entirely stupid ways, and the post-processing-heavy camera work is interesting (lots of those computer aided ‘car always in the centre’ type shots which make it look like a video game), but there’s so little driving here that it’s all for naught.
Ritchie seems to think at we’re all here to see Madonna (uncredited, for reasons unknown), so half the movie is spent in close ups of her scrunching up her nose and delivering bad dialogue in an awful manner. Look, I understand that the whole film is done over the top, and Madonna behaving like a bitchy diva rock star is — in theory, at least — funny, but she can’t act and she’s annoying. Give us more car and more Clive! Owen’s manic expressions during the stunts tip the scales back towards watchable, but still nothing I’m in a hurry to re-watch.
Hostage
Directed by John Woo (Mission Impossible 2, Face/Off)
When this one starts up, you feel as if you’ve been dropped somewhere in the climax of a 90 minute Hollywood action movie. All the John Woo staples are there including slick, slow-motion macro shots of shell casings, well, just bouncing; revolver barrels primed for Russian Roulette spinning and dissolving to the icy-grey hubcap of a BMW Z4. Easily the most polished looking of all the films, Hostage follows the driver’s attempt to deliver a ransom and get the titular hostage back. It seems to be crammed with the most plot of all the films too, but in short films less is more, and here the more is definitely a bad thing. In a 90 minute movie you have time to get to know the character, you get to care about them. Throwing us in at the deep end only ends up giving the viewer emotional disconnection. We know what is going on, and we can maybe roll it back in our minds to see why we should care, but it’s only 5 minutes and we really don’t care about anything that happens plot-wise.
Like most big budget action movies, things just happen that don’t make any sense, all for the sake of action hijinks (if Clive delivered the ransom with a SWAT team accompanying him, why then are city police chasing him not two minutes later as he tries to race to the bridge? Didn’t anybody tell them he’s on their side?). There’s an attempt at classic film noir plotting, but like Star and Chosen the film both suffers from a slow build up and a long, cold denoument. Unfortunately the car chase in between isn’t particularly exciting either. In Woo’s attempt to make it all look slick, the stunt driving also seems cold. The good performances by the lead trio of Owen, Maury Chaykin and Kathryn Morris can’t save Hostage from being a cold — but beautiful — film that may have made a great feature.
Unfortunately, it’s a short.
Ticker
Directed by Joe Carnahan (Narc)
Ticker tries to play on post 9/11 paranoia, leading us to believe that Clive is transporting a terrorist and his bomb (that might just be going off riight… now), and for the most part it succeeds. There’s a lot of good car in this (the Z4 again) but it’s overshadowed — quite literally — by a large blackhawk helicopter that gets much of the footage.
Some lovely cinematography, especially the opening shot of bullets on tarmac, but the film is told in a melodramatic fashion that just doesn’t work for a 7 minute short. Like in Hostage, we haven’t really invested enough running time to care about what’s going on, and telling rather than showing us is not going to help just because you decided to stick a feature story in a short.
Don Cheadle and Owen are good, as always (Ray Liotta and a Dennis Haysbert show up as window dressing — and did I see Robert Patrick for a split-second?), but the lines are acted rather than said, and that’s not always a good thing. Worth it for the final shot of Clive back in the car, when, surprisingly — and only for a moment — the plot works and resonates.
But only just.
Beat the Devil
Directed by Tony Scott (Man on Fire, Top Gun)
Wowie, is this ever a weird one. I’d love to see what kind of substance Tony Scott took when he made this, but whatever it was, it worked. Beat the Devil is one of those mad, crazy films that teeters on the edge of being completely ridiculous (and hence off-putting), but manages to keep itself in check with such aplomb that you can’t help but marvel at it. The plot involves Clive, the Devil (Gary Oldman! In a leotard! Riding a motorised wheelchair!) and James Brown.
Yup.
To say any more would be pointless, because Beat the Devil is all in the seeing of it. It’s shot with amazing energy (by Paul Cameron — no wonder, he did Collateral too), oversaturated, lots of motion streaks and warm lights, and edited with equal mastery (by Skip Chaisson). While Hostage may have been the most slick, Beat the Devil is better because of its controlled chaos.
It’s also laugh-out-loud funny, which is always a good thing.
Powder Keg
Directed by Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu (21 Grams, Amores Perros)
The first thing that strikes you about this one is how it’s shot. Grainy, 16mm film on a handheld camera, desaturated, blown out …just lovely (thank you Robert Richardson. Again). Then, inexplicably, the story grabs you by the throat. It’s hard to tell a story in a short, as the other films in this series show, but Guillermo Ariga and David Carter have done it well, with Inarritu’s deft direction immediately putting you right there where you feel it.
It’s hard to pinpoint what exactly it is about Powder Keg that makes it work, but work it does, and how! You have a multi-layered plot — a truly multi-layered plot — acted to perfection by Owen and Stellan Skarsgard. The script hooks you with its emotional impact, be it the rounding up of the farmers in the field, the frantic run through the grass, Skarsgard’s dialogue about photograpy, the chase, the epilogue… all of it is just awesome, without ever descending into melodrama despite having every opportunity to.
This is one of the best films of the bunch. The other being…
The Follow
Directed by Wong Kar Wai (2046, Chungking Express)
The lyrical, moody quality of Wong Kar Wai’s short is beautiful. It’s a simple film about the driver following this time instead of chauffeuring, and it tells its story with such simple brilliance that at the end of it the feeling of overwhelming contentment with cinema is just palpable. This is how a film should make you feel.
Harris Savides’s cinematography is top notch, with long, lazy shots that make you feel as if you’re floating along on a cloud, and when he comes to a stop in the airport, for instance, the work just keeps getting better.
Magic stuff.
Well, that’s it. I’m definitely going to try and see these again if they ever show up online or someone has a DVD I can borrow. The best of the bunch for me are The Follow (for being just perfect), Powder Keg (for being like a punch to the face), Beat the Devil (for its outrageousness) and Ambush (for being a pure, meaty car chase done well). Ticker, Hostage, Chosen and Star don’t work as well, but each has redeeming qualities — they don’t suck, for instance, though Star comes pretty close.
I hope that BMW continues this series or at least comes up with a new one some day. The imposition of a subject that has to be there (in this case the BMW cars) leads to some interesting films from directors who would otherwise not be telling many short stories. Short films are an important form of expression, as valuable as their feature bretheren, even if it’s brought to you by a seemingly heartless commercial corporation like a car company. It would be a shame to have a world without good shorts from established feature directors.
Bravo, BMW. Can’t quite afford your cars yet (and seeing how ugly some of them have got these days, I’m not sure I want to), but thanks for the good movies.
V
Just wanted to point you all to this article.
All I have to say (other than, “It’s about damn time!”) is that it couldn’t have happened to a better book. If you’ve never read Watchmen, you really, really should. Now.
Not only is it a damn fine story told with awesome prowess both in the writing (I want T-shirts with half the lines of the book quoted on them) and art departments (I want many of the panels blown up and framed on my wall), but it one of the few truly influential books of the last two decades. If you’re one of those people who likes to read ‘important’ books, then there’s really no reason you shouldn’t have read it by now.
Go on then.
V
I’m doing NaNoWriMo again this year. For those who may not know, it basically means that I’ll be one of thousands of deranged lunatics… um, writers who will be attempting to churn out a 50,000 word novel between November 1st and 31st.
Yes, I know.
The sad part is, this is the fourth time I’m attempting it, and I’ve yet to finish one (My count is 34,000 words, then around 5,000, then 2,000). I skipped it last year because some some reason I can’t quite remember. Oh, I think I had a trip to India back then and couldn’t even get the laptop to start up, let alone stay on long enough to type some prolix gibberish.
I can tell you right now, this is going to be a hard NaNo. It’s quite a hard task as it is — even more so if you’re doing anything else at the time; if you do the 2,000 word-a-day average it takes to safely finish it at a steady pace you need to put aside a good three hours a day. Sure, you can sort of cheat by just typing whatever the hell you want with no plot, no coherence, and no thought, but for me the process of writing has always been one where plot and story come above all else; I’m writing specifically to tell a story rather than just write as some kind of exercise routine or competition goal.
Which means that the first one I attempted (“The Tale of a Thousand Savants“) stalled at 34K not only because I ran out of time (I wrote 24 of those 34K within the last 3 days of November 2001), but because I ran out of plot. I simply ended at the 1/3rd point of the story. I knew what came immediately after it — even started writing a bit of it — but the plot just didn’t make sense, or seem very exciting (four years later I sort of have tied up the loose ends in the story… now I just have to write it down). But I’ll tell you, those three days were some of the happiest creative days of my life. For the first time I knew that what I was doing was what I am meant to do in life; telling stories in a creative form is my purpose, and writing silly novels is one of the most enjoyable ways to do it. The rush one feels as good dialogue suddenly crashes upon your fingers like an avalanche from some part of the universe that doesn’t quite feel like its within your head, the way plot threads suddenly come together and characters starts to become people, real, alive, people you’d like to meet and know and touch and smell — it’s Mega. Reading the best novel in the universe can never compare to the pleasure gained from writing even the crappiest novel in the universe.
My second attempt at Nano in 2002 (“Undecided at the Moment“) was something I was just not ready to write. Mostly because it was the beginning of a plot that would eventually be resolved in Tale of a Thousand Savants, and since back then I didn’t have a sufficiently good resolution to my first NaNovel, the second one didn’t have one either. Undecided at the Moment also didn’t have a particularly interesting plot on its own. It would end on a necessary plot point that would affect 3275 years of Savant storylines, but everything leading up to that point pretty much consisted (and still consists) of Savant just moping around and scaring people with his hook.
Entertaining, for sure, but not yet. Lucky for me in the four years since Tale has got a good story, and because of it so does Undecided, and consequently 3275 years of Savant stories have a kickass backstory that I’m going to enjoy dropping vague hints about for the rest of my life.
The third NaNovel (“Polendron” — not a Savant tale) was something I never should have attempted as a novel anyway. The story is nice enough, but it depends so much on my perception of how it would look visually — and the plot itself is a very visual one — that it’s better attempted as a movie, or at least a graphic novel. I liked what little of PolendronI did write, however.
Since then I’ve barely written any fiction, and that’s why this NaNo will be a particularly tough one — I’m out of shape. I may have written around a few thousand words over the last year on a single project that I have not finished yet. It’s a short thing and I really should have done it by now. Perhaps as a warm up for the NaNovel, I might finish it.
Perhaps I may just go in blind at midnight on October 31. Unlike the last few times I haven’t a clue as to what I will be writing. When I wrote Tale I had the outline down a month before it started, and the others too had some early storylines in place.
This time I am faced with the prospect of either looking through my file of “Things to Write and Do” and pick something that I think I may have the chance of finishing in a month — or at least 50K words of in a month — or just going in blind.
There is one project, I’m not sure if I’ll choose it yet, but at this point it’s just a title and an image I had in mind for the cover of a novel with that title. That’s it. No plot yet.
But, as the NaNoWriMo slogan assures us, that’s no problem.
V
“When “Out of Gas” rolled around, I was faced with the somewhat disappointing feeling that I was already halfway through the series! The episode acts as a kind of cornerstone too, being a non-linear account across three time periods, showing how the ship’s crew came together…”
In preparation for the release of the movie Serenity (hopefully they’ll actually release it theatrically in this territory) I’ve been watching the series that led up to it, Firefly.
Joss Whedon’s first foray out of the Buffyverse in recent times is an odd beast: a traditional space ship drama in the style of Star Trek and Babylon 5 and countless others, but set in a distincly Old West milieu. For someone going in expecting ray guns, sound effects in the vaccuum of space and aliens (none of which appear in Firefly), the results may either be a welcome change or a jarring, perhaps even off-putting experience.
Luckily I belong to the former category, although I suspect that most people who saw it were of the latter persuasion, which eventually led to the series being cancelled. What we are left with are 13 episodes, a feature length pilot, and the Serenity movie that picks up where the series left off. Firefly joins the long, long list of SF TV series that were great — even magnificent — and pulled before their time (off the top of my head, two I can think of are Futurama and Nowhere Man). In today’s SF friendly TV climate — post Lost — one can only hope that some of these series make combacks (Futurama is getting a direct-to-DVD sequel, I hear. My inner Zoidberg rejoices. wubwubwubuwubrlaaak).
The loveliest part of Firefly as a series is that it follows the core plot structure of its distant cousins Buffy and Angel and focusses exclusively on the lead characters and their interactions rather than any convoluted external plot, unlike more traditional space-faring exploration shows like Star Trek. This might quickly turn boring in the hands of a less skilled group of writers, but Joss Whedon and Co. bring their A game to the table, and the quasi-Western setting allows them to keep things simple, keep things straight and let tried and tested archetypal stories (from both Firefly’s genres, i.e. SF and Western) be the sandbox for their wonderfully hewn characters to play.
If good writing is half the job done, then Firefly‘s cast of generally unknowns takes that finishes the job well and then some. You may have seen some of the cast before, in bit roles and small movies; Nathan Fillion who plays Captain Malcolm ‘Mal’ Reynolds was the boyfriend/husband of the titular Girl in Two Guys and a Girl for a while; Adam Baldwin played this creepy sociopath who imprisons the love of his life in his house in some TV movie I can’t remember the name of, and I can’t count the number of times Ron Glass has popped up in a TV show I’ve seen. The new faces are people I’d love to see more of (If Buffy had Willow and Angel had Fred, then Firelfy‘s resident cutie has to be Jewel Staite’s Kaley).
Only Alan Tudyk was someone I actually knew the name of going in, and that was because of his funny turn in A Knight’s Tale (“I will fong you so hard I… Pain. Terrible Pain”), and his excellent voicework in I, Robot (he played Sonny). The rest of the cast holds their own, and by the time the pilot ends you feel as if you’ve known these people for years (by the way, the Pilot ep — also titled ‘Serenity’ — features some breathtakingly good special effects, by any standard).
When “Out of Gas” rolled around, I was faced with the somewhat disappointing feeling that I was already halfway through the series! The episode acts as a kind of cornerstone too, being a non-linear account across three time periods, showing how the ship’s crew came together (those who were already on the ship at the start of the pilot, that is), an accident that cripples the ship, and a wounded Mal slowly trying to get the empty ship running again. Now, I love non-linear narratives, or concurrent back-and-forth narratives, and I’ve even tried to write them once or twice. Let me tell you, it’s a real pain in the ass. You may get everything right and the story will still be hollow and cold. Tim Minear, however, knows how to write non-linear, it would seem, as this is one of the most flawlessly written episodes of the series (I’ll admit that all the extra Chinese phrases and proprietary ‘futurespeak’ at the beginning of “Safe” rubbed my writer side wrong). It hits all the marks just right, never blowing a moment.
Visually the three stories are distinct, with the near past being Firefly‘s regular warm browns and orange glows, the present bathed in cold blues and greys, septic greens. The past, however, is awesomely colour graded, saturated and lit with lots of blacks and coloured lights. It’s a real marvel, and I wish someone would make an SF show that looked like this all the time. Further visual mastery is shown with the addition of a fourth style in the epilogue, superbly muted and evenly graded, a little desaturated but still vital.
The acting and dialogue are first rate, as always, and Mal Reynolds continues to be the kind of heroic central character other crew-em-up shows wish they had. It’s getting to be very hard to watch Nathan Fillion limply make his way through those Two Guys and a Girl reruns now, folks.
You really don’t need more to be said about this series other than a big sign that reads: WATCH THIS NOW!
I’ll be checking in with more reviews as I watch them. Hopefully by the end of the series Serenity will be in theatres here.
V
If you came in and wondered what the test post was all about (and why I’m not deleting it), then here’s the explanation. The site, and then the blog have been acting up recently. First, the site itself was deleted for a while (in what I can only assume was a Brazil-style clerical error, since even Oliver the helpul customer support person didn’t know why it was flagged as in violation of TOS). Then it came back up, I finally managed to drag myself off my increasingly heavy ass long enough to put up an “I’m Alive!” post and…
…the blog failed to load. 404 errors everywhere on everywhich browser, despite the file showing up in the FTP view. I managed to get into Pivot and the blog came back up when I deleted the “I’m Alive!” post, and no matter how many times I tried, or in how many different ways, that block of Voodoo text just continued to render the blog unreachable (I’ve saved that piece of plain ascii in the hopes that one day I may upload it to the customer service forums of an invading alien race, thereby crashing their entire fleet in spectacular Independence Day/not-so-spectacular 3001: Final Odyssey style).
Which led to the plain vanilla test post preceeding this, which didn’t crash the blog, but now it was only reachable if you typed in the entire address from http to .html — so, basically all links to the blog were screwed. Disgusted, I just decided to leave it alone for a while and concentrate on some offline work (not like there are many photos to show anyway).
Today the address link problem seems to have fixed itself and all is working, but I don’t want to take the chance of deleting the test post and having the entire thing shut me out again.
(…um, unless this post does the same… arg.)
More news forthcoming, including a hopefully more active posting schedule, some photos, some reviews, some general nonsense.
And a site redesign. Hope to get that done before November, when, as some of you know, I will be otherwise occupied.
More on why I’ll be occupied in the next post.
Hope this works, thank you all for your continued visits to the site and the blog, and see you tomorrow.
V
