Ah! Hahh..

So, turns out that the new substory didn't work at all with the botany story, so that's completely out of the picture. It made Daisy into a complete bitch, muddled up the story, made the botanist's wife act far more intelligent than she wants to (even though she's actually smart), all this stuff that just made the characters do things that I would never, ever want to happen. However, it makes for a good beginning for something, so I'll see if I can play around with it a little bit.

So, I am getting quite serious about writing every day while I am in Europe with the fam, so I was thinking I'd do it in France, too, although in the form of letters. I will be missing many people when I'm abroad, and I'm thinking that it will be a sort of part fiction/ part nonfiction thing. Because it will be in letter form, there won't necessarily be a straight narrative, but instead, little snatches and bits: I have promised myself that in each letter, there will be some sort of call back both to Paris and to whatever I'm missing from back home. Kind of like a metaphor of places, I will relate both of them to one another. Something like that.

I'm also considering, for my honors project (if it gets accepted...), to write a story about a gay couple in Uruguay, or something like that. It wouldn't be terribly political--gay marriage is legal in Uruguay, and people aren't very religious--so if anything, it would be just a cultural thing. It would also be modern-day, so there would be interesting to see what influence (and what not-influence) there is by the US within Uruguay. So, because of this, I really need to "get on it" with my writing. I'd really like to say that I've finished stuff, but for now all I've got to show is some short stories. I need to have a book written to show that I can do anything within a time constraint. So, I need to finish the botany story, or at least get 3/4 of the way through, this summer, and I seriously need to get to the Mario Benedetti translations.

So, here's what I have to do (writing-wise):

Summer:
- write 5 pages a day of the botany story (this will kill me, and will be flexible while traveling)
- every 2 days, a Benedetti translation
- 1 short story every week (or every 2, depending on inspiration)
- write-something-every-day while in Europe with the fam
- write a 'little something' everyday, more like a writing brainstorm than anything else
[I'll continue this for a while, and if I get into a good rhythm, I'll approach SOAP. All I have to do is convert into a screenplay, and it's so much like one already, that that shouldn't be so bad.]

Fall:
-every day, write a letter, while abroad (try to play around with language, bring in some French)
-edit 8 pages a day of the botany story
-make SOAP into a screenplay, 5 pages a day
-do/try out a long Benedetti translation (La Tregua, anyone?)
-1 short story every week (or every 2, depending on inspiration)
-convert stuff into manuscript format

Depending how all of this works out, we will see what happens in the upcoming future.

As for reading plans:
this week: finish Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer, start and finish The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz. Horwich isn't as necessary as before (because the substory didn't work for the botany), but if I want to make the substory a short story, I still may need to use it--so I will read it between breaks in reading Junot Diaz. I will be taking the bus to and from NYC this weekend, so I will have time to be reading.

next week: Must read Bertrand Russell. It's been too long and I love him. Also interested in looking at some Quine, because of stuff I like to do with language. So, we'll see about all that. Interesed in, fiction-wise, some Edith Wharton, Henry James... Because philosophy is heavy, I will allow myself to read something shorter by the fiction authors. Will be continuing the Horwich, most likely.

week after next: Should go back to reading a book from the botany list, most likely The Botanist and the Vintner (Christy Campbell). Will read whichever philosopher's left over from the last week, and will e-mail a few professors about stuff in the aesthetics-realm (since this will be a botany-focused week).

Europe...Among Other Things

My plan: while on vacation in Europe with the family, I will write one short story every day, or a poem--although poems usually take much longer than a day for me, but we'll see what I can do. I'll edit everything on the planeride back, then I'll be back a day, and then off to France for study-abroad. (I don't understand the logic of traveling thusly, but my parents affirm it's the best thing to do.)

I've been meaning to write a poem lately, so let's see if that happens...perhaps I will just do the Benedetti translations instead, as I had been planning to do this weekend anyway...Translations always help my writing in general, though, so perhaps I'll work on a poem and some of the botany story after working on the translation. So, this weekend, I should start revising SOAP, and do somewhere from 1-10 Benedetti rough draft translations (this is of poems--not prose).

I'm basically halfway through The Unbearable Lightness of Being, so I can probably get that out of the way soon. Metro rides make a great thing for reading. It's a touching subject, but I think that's more on a personal level than with the actual level of the writing. Too bad it's a translation, I can sense so terribly how much is lost there. Perhaps I'll learn Czech after French? We'll see how quickly I learn French. I'm advanced in the language lab and in the homework thus far, so I'm doing some outside reading from books my brother has lent me (he took French in high school and has a bunch of books). I should have known that French would consume me this way. The same thing happened with the English language, and that's why I read so much; it took such great effort for me to learn it, and language has seemed so powerful since then.

I would like to add, this blog has made a huge difference in my writing: not just how much I write (which has expanded), but just, how I feel about writing, how much I read, and how confident I feel about the whole thing. I recommend it to anyone who takes writing seriously.

I'm putting in an excerpt from The Unbearable Lightness of Being, because I've been meaning to since I started reading it:

Cemeteries in Bohemia are like gardens. The graves are covered with grass and colorful flowers. Modest tombstones are lost in the greenery. When the sun goes down, the cemetery sparkles with tiny candles. It looks as though the dead are dancing at a children's ball. Yes, a children's ball, because the dead are as innocent as children. No matter how brutal life becomes, peace always reigns in the cemetery. Even in wartime, in Hitler's time, in Stalin's time, through all occupations. When she felt low, she would get into the car, leave Prague far behind, and walk through one or another of the country cemeteries she loved so well. Against a backdrop of blue hills, they were as beautiful as a lullaby.

For Franz a cemetery was an ugly dump of stones and bones.