Jeez Luis-Jorge

Hi. I'm Chrisopher. I write and occasionally enjoy things.

[jeezluisjorge]

[jeezluisjorge]

Workshop 2

The following are my top three critiques coupled with the problems each critique identified and solutions to each problem:

Trafton successfully ID some of the influences within my story, which I wildly appreciated. My goal was to use a familiar structure (The Victorian Ghost Story) which is comfortable to discuss the unfamiliar and uncomfortable. In identifying this influence, his suggestions appeared to be inline with the structure I envisioned for my piece from the beginning. Though he observed the presence of an absent mother (oxymoron presence:absence ?) I did not feel as though he made a case as to why her absence needed to be developed. The present mother figure is the nanny, so to develop the absent mother seems to be in conflict with the most important relationship of the text. Marvin was similarly encouraging and focused in on the representation of gender in the piece. If I were to take pieces from his review and blend them with Trafton’s, I would note that Marvin’s approach to the absent mother was to focus on the Father’s comment “I hired a son, not a daughter.” This gives me the idea that matters of gender and motherhood can be represented in the binary opposite of fatherhood and masculinity. More-so, if I am to represent the main character’s fall into debauchery, it seems that roleplay and imitation are the ways in which children become their parents giving me the chance to use that scene to elaborate on the absent mother.

Matthew’s review follows up where Marvin’s falls silent, offering suggestions for the character’s motivations. Matthew’s is one of the several reviews that didn’t seem to recognize that the narrator’s masturbation was an act of acceptance, even mercilessness, in the face of a sexual confrontation. This confusion is pretty standard fair among the critiques, so I’ll make sure that the inflated language ins’t obscuring the narrator’s motivations. 

[jeezluisjorge]

Fear

My life is governed by fear. My earliest successes, (getting published in fiction, getting published in nonfiction, getting a play produced, getting a film produced, etc) were all powered by fear and anxiety. The mere act of creation gave and gives my life purpose. I wanted to be a published author since I was in the first grade and I had written my first publishable piece of fiction by the time I was 19. I’d gotten what I’d wanted and it felt incredible. For a moment. To quote Oscar Wilde: “There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.” Very witty, Oscar. Very Witty indeed. But, in my case, true. There was always a bigger magazine with more readers and more prestige and a better pay cheque. The milestones kept growing more distant and it wasn’t long before I realized that achieving them did not bring me happiness. The desire to improve was propelled by fear of being nothing and the feeling that my accomplishments were never enough, but temporarily banishing fear isn’t the same thing as achieving happiness. But anxiety and productivity exist on a bell curve. Once a certain threshold is crossed, productivity dwindles. I crossed that line this year. I’m afraid to write. I’m afraid to fail. I’m afraid to try new things and get attacked in workshop. I’m afraid that my work is inadvertently sexist. I’m afraid that my queer bodybuilding story is homophobic. I’m afraid that my first ghost-story is going to be criticized for using rape imagery for “shock value.” I’m afraid I’m not good enough for grad school. I’m afraid that my girlfriend will leave me if I don’t get into grad school by 2018. I’m afraid that I’ll have wasted my money on a frivolous degree and that I’ll be unemployable and alone. I’m afraid that I’m worthless. That I’ll never be a real artist. That I’ll stop writing.

But as I list my fears as they come to me, the darnedest thing emerges: a narrative. Maybe I’m so afraid all the time because fear is narrative writing and I’m actually good at it? Maybe I’m reaching? I don’t know, I don’t know I don’t know. It’s all so ambiguous and there’s always fear to be found in the unknown.

I’m afraid of a lot of things but those fears make stories and those stories make it to workshop.

My dad is a first generation Cuban immigrant turned bodybuilder turned doctor turned theologian. I’m just me. I’ll never ever ever be him, I’ll never be a paradigm of masculinity or a physician. I could probably be a biblical scholar, actually. I think I’d be better at it then him. but I don’t WANT to be a biblical scholar. But neither can Sergio, the anorexic, emasculated recluse who hides in his dad’s colossal shadow. My dad also can’t write Sergio’s story or even a piece of literary fiction at all, for that matter. Boom. Elio’s Gym or Oedipus Flex I’m afraid of my own sexual kinks which I’ve come to lovingly personify as the “ghost of masturbations past.” I’m afraid of perpetuating a patriarchal structure and being a colonizer or an oppressor. Push these fears together, and you have a scene of a ghostly apparition pleasuring herself in open defiance on her rapist’s bed sheets and a rich white man banishing her away with his erect penis. Push these together and you get Pudenda: A Ghost Story.

My most recent developments have been made in the domain of dialogue writing and pacing. I believe these two things go hand-in-hand in that the most novice mistakes, and indeed the ones I am now addressing, that relate to dialogue are weird dialogue beats that kill the scene’s energy. Similarly, my background in reading butt loads of fantasy growing up means I have a bad hobbit of starting stories a good distance away from the conflict, which also causes pacing to suffer.

I want my stories to be interesting! Is that too much to ask?

I’ve been working with short shorts and flash fiction a lot recently, though, to try and force myself out of my bad habits. Can’t very easily waste a lot of time on world building when your story is two-pages long, can you?

Finally, I’m writing the stories that scare me to write. Elio’s Gym is too queer and Ghost Story is too rapey for me to ever attempt to write with any degree of confidence at the moment, which makes them valued additions to my portfolio.

[jeezluisjorge]

Revision

2. Write about the top three written critiques that you received from your peers. Give the names of the authors of the critiques and give some details about the strengths of the critiques. What information from the critiques might you take and why? Victor, Trafton, Marvin. It seems like a pretty univseral consensus that my main character is being overshadowed well beyond my initial intent. The father in the text exists in the world of the mythical and extends past just being larger-than-life and into just distracting. There's also really basic details that I’ve forgotten to include such as the location of the funeral and a timeline. I’m thinking of restructuring the entirety of the piece around the final phone call. 3. Talk about the development of your writing. How are you growing as a writer? What do you want more of or what do you want to do in your writing? What are you reading or need to read to help you grow? I’m working to improve my pacing. I find that I have a bad habit of dragging and I know beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt that I was not born with the gift of brevity. In terms of improving my pacing, I’ve broken it into concision and rebalancing scene and summary. 4. What are some revision goals you want to set for yourself? I’d like to completely gut this piece. You can’t kill your darlings if you don’t have any darlings to kill, so there’s really no reservation. I’m hoping to make this structurally unrecognizable. 5. Switch gears a bit, then, and look ahead. What are you thinking about for your next workshop? How are you thinking of challenging your writing? This next piece is going to start as close to the story as possible. I’m keeping this one as concise as I currently know how to be for this sort of structure. I’m also trying out a frame device, we’ll see how that goes.

[jeezluisjorge]

Nothing but memes matters any more.

[jeezluisjorge]

Structure and Form

The central conflict in Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried focuses on the narrator's descent into dissociation from the world around him as his squad begins to die off and he loses interest in his life back home. The climax is developed by putting the characters, who have been characterized in terms of the items they've brought with them, under fire. This looming threat of death serves as a constant reminder of life's fragility as well as a catalyst for the main character to lose interest in things that have grown to be frivolous in his eyes. The story is structured in such a way that offers two, shall we say, benchmarks. The narrator's perception of the picture of his love gives us insight into the changes he experiences, while the items that the rest of the squadron carries characterizes them and offers a literal obstacle for the rest of the survivors as they must now carry portions the recently departed's supplies. The allows for the weight per person to grow steadily over time as members die and drop their packs as well as to show the narrator's psychological decay. This offers a neat marriage of the tangible and psychological to create an objective standard by which the more abstract parts of the text, things that live exclusively in the domain of "character," can be expressed in a clear and concrete way.

[jeezluisjorge]

Critiquing

I think that one of my critiquing strengths is that I have a sense of priority. I try assign my critiques into a hierarchy and figure out which areas are the most important into turning this first draft into a second draft. Perhaps there's a pacing issue during the dialogue on page 4, but I think that your time would really be better spent taking care of that 2.5 page soliloquy on the subject of cheese writing in "iambic pentameter" that is actually not iambic pentameter at all, but a limerick. I believe that writing is necessarily social and so I much prefer to engage in a discussion on writing in an oratory setting than to write a response without room for follow up or disagreement. The advantage to written critiques is that I'm guaranteed to hit all the points I've committed to hitting. During talkbacks it's entirely possible that a number of my main points will not get addressed. With regards to the Straub essay, I value the implied contract between the reader and writer that dictates that the writer WANTS to improve. Though Straub offers techniques for how to hedge criticism and present it in a pleasant way, the core of it is that we don't want an inflated ego we want progress. I know this is going to sound awful, but I forget to praise. I don't mean to suggest that I apply a deficit model in my work shopping practice, but only that I forget that the writer cannot read my mind and cannot assume that I've complimented him/her through omission. I think that by integrating what's working in tandem with what isn't , I might be able to allow the text to offer its own standards and keep my critiques rooted in specific in-text examples.

[jeezluisjorge]

Unreliable Narrators

In Rape Fantasies by Margaret Atwood the narrator Estelle attempts to find reason between how acquaintance rape is possible between two human who identify each other as humans and how her coworkers can find sexual gratification from rape fantasies. The biggest obstacle in having an honest discussion on the subject of rape fantasy is the narrator's fundamental misunderstanding of what a rape fantasy is. When asked about her rape fantasies, she offers funny situations in which she thwarts her would be rapist in a number of cartoonishly clever ways. This misunderstanding is exemplified by the narrator's black comedy tone and in the hypothetical situations she presents. it is important to note that she first defines her coworker's "rape fantasies" as illegitimate because, though the sexual partner was a stranger, her coworkers all offer consent. This confusion is further explored in Estelle's fantasies wherein not a single act of rape is carried out. It is a fantasy on the subject of rape, but it is in no capacity a rape fantasy. The narrator was charming and comically missed the point of damn near every step of the process. I think "he couldn't rape his way out of a paper bag" might be the funniest sentence I've ever read in my life. I felt the piece was held back by the implied conversational frame that resulted in a lot of the text reading like dialogue directed at some unknown individual. This was successful in producing a comic tone that directed my attention to Estelle's lapses in reality, but it annoyed me whenever I read a "you know" or the like.

[jeezluisjorge]

Workshop Reflection (Castration Edition)

Take a shot every time you read the word “castration”

1. What's your feeling about the story now that has been workshopped?

I like it a lot less. But that’s okay. I was particularly interested in the areas that were not discussed in workshop, as it gives me an indication that those themes or motifs might not have been clear enough to solicit response. I recognize it as a flawed piece, but I’m not giving up on it yet.

2. What areas do you think you will focus on in revision and why?

It’s being held back by disjointed exposition and an underdeveloped main character. I’m a bit bothered by the absence of a Freudian discussion on the subject of a piece that was fucking title Oedipus Flex, but perhaps I can do more to bring out the Freudian imagery. The title stems from a desire to kill the father, and hatred and competition with the father seems to be clear, however what wasn’t reading is that the animosity Sergio feels towards his father is now also being projected onto Hector, his half brother, who was formed in Elio’s image. More-so there was a lot of castration imagery that went unmentioned. I explicitly allude to the Medusa complex when Sergio’s earliest homosexual moment is described using gorgon imagery and his erection is described in terms of petrifaction. A common criticism was that there was a lot of individual conflicts (anorexia, jealousy, repressed homosexuality) but that they never intersected. They’re all connected to emasculation and castration imagery.

I can fix both by using Hector’s similarities to Elio to be the triggers for flashbacks and reflations 1) motivating the currently disjointed exposition 2) cementing the Elio = Hector projection. Similarly, if Elio + Hector do steroids, that’s a very easy segue into the subject of Testicular atrophy, which is in-and-of-itself an unmissable castration image. People are going to notice these castrations, dammit.

Curiously, my readers all decided that Sergio was gay. He’s certainly queer, and he certainly had a homoerotic encounter in his youth, but the majority of labeling and references to his sexuality are derogatory and unreliable. Something else to play with in revision, I suppose.

Something that was lost on my audience were the significance of the characters names. Hector was the obvious one, but I was really hoping that someone would notice that

Sergio = Sergio Oliva  & Serg = Serge Nubret Both ironic references towards Sergio’s own frailty and an implication that Elio named his sons.

3.  What are some things that went well in your workshop? Are there things you want to see happen in workshop #2, and, if so, what are they?

The best thing that happened in workshop were the themes and motifs that were absent in the discussion. If no one’s saying “castration” then I gotta chop off some more cojones.

4.  What's the main character's internal conflict in your story?

He’s castrated and wants to feel like “a man” on his own terms.

5.  How's the draft challenging your writing?

It’s making me renegotiate my subtleties. Things like using “documentary style flashbacks” or “intentionally letting Elio overshadow Sergio” were examples of me just sort of acting out to see if it would work or not. I knew they’d be problematic waaaaaaaaaay before the critiques. The fact that the word “castration” never came up once, however, blew my mind. Now I have to find a way to make a theme shine through nice and clearly.

[jeezluisjorge]

CRW Blog Entry 3

Make a diary entry of the time preceding where you think the story will start:

I finally saw La La Land. I don’t know if I get it. It was way more conservative than I was expecting (except for that opening long shot long take ❤️️). Conservative less in the political sense more in the traditionalist sense. I think I found the Film's representation of Jazz to be... archaic?

John Legend’s speech was a nod in the right direction, but then Legend's music didn't contain the Jazz influence I would have expected for it to have if his philosophy were the "right" one (or even just an equally valid one). I don’t know. The film seemed to be more about nostalgia itself than the periods or forms Gosling and Stone’s characters were nostalgic for. Not like, say, Whiplash.

Hipsters.

I got a call from Elio’s today. Yippee. They haven’t touched his office the entire time he was in Chicago. That’s not practical; makes you think they thought he was coming back. But if they called me, they must have called Hector. I’ll swing by after work.

Oh, I got a call from Hector today. A couple calls. A couple dozen calls. When will he stop?

Reflection:

As the author, write any information about the character or story that is new to you or that was previously unexplored or over-emphasized. If there is no information, explain why you think this didn't help or any problematic areas you are having developing your main character

This exercise sounds promises to be a useful tool for “getting in character” however it was not useful to me in this very specific instance. This is for two reasons

1) I’ve already written my story

2) I engage in a very specific exercise before I write my stories that is functionally similar to this.

I’m from a theatre background. I am an actor. One of the tools I use to get in character is Uta Hagen’s 9 questions. By the time I’ve answered those as the character if I’m acting or for the character if I’m writing, I’ve usually established a pretty decent context for myself to proceed to make believable choices in fictional circumstances. Cool activity though. 

[jeezluisjorge]

TFW You Turn In Your Manuscript Early

@turquoisejeepmusic-blog

[jeezluisjorge]

Characterization

What kind of characters you to typically write about?  Why do you think you are drawn to these characters?

I had a huge crush on Oscar Wilde around the time that I first started (seriously) writing. My favorite plays were the Comedies of Society with my favorite characters being the ones juuust distant enough to hold cynical opinions on Victorian sensibilities (Lady Windermere, Lord Wotton, etc). I wanted to be just. like. him. so I wrote a number of characters who spoke with their voices, but without the dialect. Needless to say this was limiting. For one, it implies a certain class and education for the voice to be applicable, restricting me to writing elites and scholars. I wrote what I knew. I knew Oscar Wilde, so I emulated him. I’m educated, so I wrote educated characters. I think the appeal is evident. Since then, however, I’ve been actively trying to distance myself from that habit. I now try and write ignorant characters. Dumb characters. Bigoted characters. Poor characters. Characters without answers or solutions. Besides, postmodern, hipster cynicism/apathy is so passé now.

What seems undeveloped in your characterization?

Physical description. It only recently came to my attention that I don’t spent a lot of time discussing the concrete, and that’s highly limiting. The same can be extended into my settings: I do not seem to like discussing the physical. I’m not sure why that is, but I think a big part of it might be that I’ve spent more time writing plays, in which you can only get so specific, lest you produce a character that is uncastable. Another explanation is that I’ve grown weary of physical characterization being a lazy stand in for actual exposition, such as making The Witch look like A Witch. Yes, (s)he looks very evil, how tremendously original. Alternatively, I might just not find physical descriptions to be interesting unless they are exceptional and, since my abilities are not current exceptional, I have permitted my own physical characterizations to atrophy.

What does creating a "likable" character mean?

You can write a likable character one of three ways: 1) Pet the dog: When your character comes on the scene, have her do something nice. If there’s a dog, have her pet it. Tada, instantly likable. I saw the movie Snakes on a Plane for my first time today. The characters are paper thin, but there was a moment at the very beginning when a woman asks her husband, who is an anxious flyer, “why would you agree to have our Honey Moon in Hawaii if you’re so afraid of flying?” To which he basically said “Because you’ve always wanted to see Hawaii.” Awwwwwww. He’s not a complex or interesting character, but I like him. 2) Make them relatable: So you’re character is a piece of shit who kicks dogs. He’s still redeemable, but you have to have something about him resonate with the reader’s experience. The show Bojack Horseman features a washed up, B-list Hollywoo actor who could easily be dismissed as a) an asshole b) a caricature of celebrity culture. But he wants to be good, and that goes a long way. So much of his terrible behavior is pathological and he wants to be good so badly that I find myself rooting for him. He always lets me down, he’s always a terrible, selfish horse, but he wants to be good. So do I. I want my achievements to be validated. I want to be successful. I want to be loved and in turn love myself. While I don’t find myself tripping balls in the Hollywoo hills, I can relate to his need to be recognized and admired. 3) Make them paradoxical: The nun who drinks and goes out bowling on Fridays is a character at odds with herself. Conflict is necessarily interesting. If the character is the conflict, the character is interesting and therefore, to a degree, likable. No dogs need to be pet. I don’t need to see myself in her. I just want to see what she does next. It’s like watch videos online of cats glitching out. You don’t really know what they’re doing, but you know it’s going to be interesting just to watch.

[jeezluisjorge]

Just read the dialogue tag "Julia glubbed."

That's enough reading for this week.

[jeezluisjorge]

I’ll believe you’ll read my manuscript once you’ve read it.

[jeezluisjorge]

First Impressions

I’m going to be honest, I’m skeptical about this whole “blogging” thing. My friend Jackson has, for the better part of the month, been on me about starting a blog, saying that all writers worth their salt have one and that if I want to be taken seriously I need to start sharing some literary memes. Boy oh boy would I like to be worth my salt. Being taken seriously would be nice too.

My interest here is to cut my teeth on blogging as a medium for self-expression. If indeed blogging turns out to be as essential as my friend claims, this will be a nice proving grounds for me to practice this bloggy-thing on a low steaks, impermanent  level. Best case scenario, this blog is the bomb dot com and I keep it alive forever. Worst case scenario, I learn more about blogging, kill this one and start a new with a bunch o’ experience under my belt. Nothing really to lose. If this blog is to be reflective, it might be nice to to have record of my thought process as I grow as a writer. I’ve often said that the greatest gift God ever gave mankind was the ability to forget what we’ve said, and boy howdy to I exercise that privilege. This could, potentially, work as a sounding board through which I can work out some of the trickier part of the creative process as well as an archive to catalog my progress.  Here’s to hoping!

[turquoisejeepmusic-blog]

😂😂 Prince + Mike Tyson = #Printhe #BlessPhotoshop

[jeezluisjorge]

My first reblog. Am I blogging right, professor?