And here it is.

A salesman is sitting in the reception area of a big corporation, waiting to give a presentation to some of the people there. He is kept waiting almost 40 minutes beyond the time of his appointment, and then he's finally ushered into a conference room. He goes in, and sitting around a big table are two Jews, an African-American woman, and a gay guy of Chinese descent. The salesman goes into his pitch, for software or a phone system or something, and it's pretty evident a couple minutes into it that these four people couldn't care less, especially the younger Jew, who keeps checking his BlackBerry. But he plows through the presentation anyway, and when he finishes, everybody shakes his hand and thanks him. He goes out to his car and starts to drive home. On the road, his cell phone rings and he answers it. It's his wife, and she asks him to pick up a couple of groceries on his way home. He says OK. She says, are you OK? And he says, yeah, I'm fine. She says OK. He hangs up, and this commercial for anti-itch powder comes on the radio, and it's got all these country-sounding old people giving testimonials about how this powder completely improved the quality of their lives. And the salesman starts crying. Big choked sobs. He shades his eyes with his left hand so that the other drivers can't see that he's crying and says, "And I don't even fucking care about this shit!"

Seriously, this really gets me for some reason. It comes from "Jokes" by Andy Richter on McSweeney's. Check out the rest of them. His other 4 jokes in the article are similarly awkward and deliberately not jokey, but this salesman one is just miserable and makes me sad, not because it's badly written, but because I feel for the pathetic salesman. Just horrible.

Funny how such a small bit of text can be so affective.

Thanks, Andy Richter. Real cool.

Now that February is clipping along rapidly, my application to Hunter is finished and submitted, and I have had a moment to think about the results of last year's theme, the time has arrived to discuss 2009 - The Year of 5000 Photos and 50 Short Stories. I know that you were all super excited for yet another text-heavy Black Laser posting in which I muse about things that matter to me but probably don't matter to you. Isn't the internet wonderful?

In case you missed it, here is my original statement of intent for 2009.

Photography.

2009 was wildly successful for my photo work. Not only did I hit 5017 out of 5000 photos, but I really do think that my photos got noticeably better over the course of the year. I've throw together a gallery of some of my favorites from the last year. There's no rhyme or reason for the selections; I just went through 2009 and picked a bunch I liked. They are arranged in chronological order, oldest first.

I took a lot of good photos and a handful of great ones. I feel much more confident with my tools than I did before. I learned and experimented and limited myself. Tremendous success. We'll see how many photos I take this year. I've hardly touched my camera since the year began because I was working so hard on my graduate school application, but that will soon change. Making photos is fun and rewarding, even if I don't make a damned dollar doing it.

Here are all the galleries I've posted on this site. Anything tagged "Year of 5000 Photos and 50 Short Stories" is, obviously, part of this theme.

Writing.

The results of my writing last year are much less clear. In one quantitative manner, it was only a partial success with only 38 of 50 short stories being written. Even once I lowered my goals in terms of word count, I was unable to get as much done as I had strived for. There is no excuse really. I missed the mark and that's it. It's disappointing too, because once I really got down to it, I was able to crank out piece after piece. Between the middle of November and the end of the year I wrote 36 of my 38 short stories. If you do the math, that works out to an average of 6 stories a week for 6 weeks. Not bad at all.

And that's the rub. More importantly than whether or not I met the quota I set for myself in December of 2008, in terms of my skills as a writer, I think that 2009 was a complete success. Writing as often and as much as I did undoubtedly helped my writing. "Duh," you say, but it's true. I believe that whipping through those short stories made me a stronger writer. It's one thing to know that practice makes you better at things, but it's entirely different to have experienced it. I am sure that the writing I did last year contributed directly to the quality of my creative submission to Hunter this year, which is quite clearly superior to the work I submitted last year. And that is awesome.

I'm still not that great with writing about myself, though.

Check out all posts with the tag "Year of 5000 Photos and 50 Short Stories" to see the work I did.

Going forward.

This year I've already written 1 of my assigned 12 Finished Short Stories. I've not yet done any real work on the music videos, but it is only February and there is time. I hope to continue the roll I started in November when I decided that all the worrying I was doing about the quality of my work was preventing me from doing any at all (stupid). I've got more writing to do and photos to make. It feels great to make something out of nothing, and I hope all you lovely readers of my tiny speck on the face of the Interwebs will continue to read and look. And if you don't, at the very least, I enjoy it all and that's really what matters.

This story is making the rounds today, but I thought it was cool enough to share.

There's no secret that substance abuse has always traveled hand in hand with people in the literary world. It's just a thing. It doesn't make it ok, but it's fascinating nevertheless. For example, did you know that Ayn Rand was addicted to speed? No, neither did I. But here she is, looking a little crispy around the edges.

It's the eyes, man.

Intense.

Life has posted a gallery of famous literary addicts. I knew that Burroughs was a junk addict, but I had no idea that Louisa May Alcott (of Little Women fame) was too. Wild!

Famous Literary Drunks & Addicts

Check it out.

Is John Carpenter's The Thing the best horror film ever made? Well, don't let me ruin the rest of your life for you, but the answer is, "Yes."

Is it, then, any surprise that the best horror film ever has inspired the best piece of fan-fiction ever? One with perhaps the greatest ending line I've read in ages? No, no it is not.

If you've never seen The Thing, go. Do so. I'll wait.

Ok. Wasn't that good? I know. So awesome.

Now, read "The Things" by Peter Watts. It's long, but worth it.

Go. I'll wait.

After much thinking, I've decided on my theme for 2010 (twenty-ten, say it with me). It's a hybrid of two themes I discussed in my previous post on the subject. I hereby announce that 2010 shall be...

The Year of 3 Music Videos and 12 Finished Short Stories

I figure that I will be better served by endeavoring on a cross-disciplinary path, much as I was this year by making photos and writing stories. It allows me not to get too caught up in just one mode. If I am feeling stuck I can switch over and work on something else for a while.

I picked music videos because it's something I've been thinking about for a long time. I think it's going to be fun and challenging and I'm pretty excited about it. It will give me an opportunity to flex some muscles I haven't used in a while. I intend to pick three songs I like and make low to no budget videos for them. The songs can be anything since these are spec videos and using them like this is covered under my fair-use rights. The videos can feature anything at all, only limited by my ability to plan and my technical skills.

Astute readers will notice a change in the language regarding the short stories between the original conceptualizing post and this announcement post. Specifically, I added the term "finished" to differentiate the scope of the short stories for 2010 (twenty-ten) and the scope of the stories for 2009. This year, the point was just to write a lot without revisions or thinking too much about what I was doing. Just getting things did. Next year is about creating things that have real thought and effort behind them. The scope is grander, so the output will be lesser, but in terms of having finished work to share, the ultimate effect is much more significant. 12 solid, finished short stories is a collection at the very least, and, if they all work together, a book. That would be a nice thing to have.

Keep your eyes peeled for the remainder of my 5000 photos and 50 short stories for this year followed by a wrap-up post in the first week of January. Then it's time to get the next year's work going.

Last night, Juli and I attended the Hunter Alumni reading night at the KGB Bar in the East Village after enjoying a meal of lentil soup and potato pancakes at B&H Dairy on 2nd Avenue. I have one word to describe the event—Wow. Now, that sounds fucking cheesy as shit, and it is, but let me explain.

But first, here's the brief.

Please join us for the Fall 2009 reading featuring, Vanessa Manko (Fiction, 2008), Maya Funaro (Poetry, 2008) and Jason Porter (Fiction, 2008).

Vanessa Manko earned her MFA in Fiction from Hunter College (2008). After training in ballet at the North Carolina School of the Arts and dancing professionally with the Charleston Ballet Theater, Vanessa returned to school to earn a B.A. in English from the University of Connecticut. She went on to receive her M.A. in dance studies and cultural history from NYU’s Gallatin School. In addition to writing fiction, Vanessa writes about dance. She is the former Dance Editor of The Brooklyn Rail, and has written articles and reviews for Dance Magazine, NYFA’s Current, Dance Teacher, and Dance Research Journal. Vanessa is currently completing her first novel. She lives in Brooklyn Heights.

Maya Funaro’s chapbook Setting in Motion was released in 2009 by Fox Point Press. She completed her MFA in poetry at Hunter College in May of 2008. Her poetry has appeared in Ekleksographia, and Ology, the Graduate English journal of Hunter College. She holds a B.A. in Visual Art from Brown University and has studied printmaking, bookbinding and letterpress printing in Providence, Bologna and New York. Born and raised in South Jersey, she currently makes her home in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

After a brief career as an online news editor and a less brief non-career as a rock musician, Jason Porter completed an MFA in Fiction at Hunter College in 2008. He has since written a short novel titled Why Are You So Sad? and is hard at work on a new novel about a fallen celebrity boxer. Despite a perfectly happy childhood in southeastern Michigan, he is even happier to now call Brooklyn his home, where he is gradually aging along with his girlfriend and their two nearly perfect terrier mutts.

The KGB Bar, as awesome and Communisty and red as it is, is a tiny little upstairs affair you'd never know was there save for the sign on the street. The windows are curtained and you have to walk into what was clearly once a tenement building that has been converted into a bar/theatre/performance space. The KGB Bar occupies the second floor with the other things on other floors. Tidy! When we got there at about 7:40 for an 8 o'clock start time, only a couple of tables were filled. Mind you that there are probably only 8 tables in the whole place. Nevertheless, it was still relatively empty. By the time the first reader went on, it was packed. Passage to the bathroom was impossible.

The turn out was incredible. I recognized a number of current and former Hunter MFA students from the two open houses I've attended. It's demonstrative of the strength of their community that they could fill this place up on a cold Tuesday night. It is certainly a good sign to me that Hunter is the right place for me. A program that inspires that sort of loyalty is attractive. I would like to be part of it. Now, I just have to convince them that I am right for them.

December is upon us and about to crest, leading us into the descent of 2009. This means the end of the first decade of the 21st century, an utterly meaningless metric, but one that has provided me with no fewer than four "Greatest Metal Albums of The Last Decade" lists. Not bad. Everyone seems to like Mastodon's Leviathan, which I've never really listened to. I'll have to give it a go.

And with the fading of 2009 another year's theme comes to an end. The Year of 5000 Photos and 50 Short Stories, though not yet through, has been a success as far as I am concerned. With the express purpose of getting me to be consistently creative and come out of the year with some work done, the year has been a resounding success. While I am not yet at my quota for either task, I am confident that within the next few weeks I should be able to make it. 50% of the stories are finished at 92% of the photos. Pretty good. I have a lot of writing to do and a few photos to take, but we're in the home stretch and I feel good about it. Let's not also discount the film I am cutting right now and all the time and effort poured into this site for my 10 readers. I love all of you.

With three weeks left in the year, it's time to think of my theme for 2010. In my statement for the Theme of 2009, I discussed some previous years and the efficacy of those choices. I'm not going into it again here, but I'll sum it all up and say some were hits and some were clear misses. Last year I described a good theme as being "broadly applicable with recognizable short term goals". I still think this is a good way to evaluate a potential theme, but I'd like to add that the theme should have demonstrable results, that is, I should be able to show something for my efforts. The best way to improve myself is by doing. All the thinking about something in the world won't make you better at it. You have to get out there and get your hands (proverbially) dirty. It's old wisdom, but true.

Another aspect of my yearly theme is that once complete the theme should continue into the next year. I intend to take another 5000 photos and write 50 more short stories next year and to keep a counter of those on the right hand side. But since they're a secondary goal, I won't be killing myself to get them done. My primary focus will be the Theme of 2010, of course.

But what is the Theme of 2010? I don't know yet, but I have some ideas.

• The Year of 3 Music Videos - In September, I wrote about building a body of motion work. Amongst my various bodies of work, my film & video work is easily the most poorly represented. I have plenty of photos to share and fewer but still ample stories, but how many pieces of motion work have I posted here that I have done? If you answered "Zero", you'd be correct. And it's clear I like music videos and the music that supports them. The only real drawback to this theme is that each video is a big project in itself and to get behind would certainly spell doom for this theme. There are a lot of steps involved though, so perhaps it could still fit the pattern of work posting I've established with The Year of 5000 Photos and 50 Short Stories which would help me stay on task and stay honest.
• The Year of 12 Short Stories - "But, Joe," you say, "didn't you just do The Year of 5000 Photos and 50 Short Stories? What's with cutting the quota down so much? Are you lame or something?" No, I'm not lame. Instead of writing 500 word chunks, these 12 short stories would be much more finished pieces, actually receiving—GASP!—revisions. These would be multiple-sitting efforts. I think the one per month pace would allow for some breathing room, and let me think about the work more. In terms of length, let's call them somewhere in the range of 5,000 to 15,000 words. This year the longest thing I've written is about 3000 words. It was the first thing I posted for this year's theme. The Biker Kills a Mexican. That one took me a few nights at the computer, but received no revisions. I'm proposing 12 stories of at least double the length. It's a good amount of work, I think, but manageable.
• The Year of the Novella - Here the idea is to write the longest single thing I've ever written. I like the novella, it's like a long short story, or a baby novel. I suppose it depends on which direction you're coming from. It would be an exercise in developing something more thoroughly than I ever have before and sticking to it. The SFWA defines a novella as a piece between 15,000 and 40,000 words, but other definitions go as low as 10,000 and as high as 70,000. That's certainly a fairly broad range and suitable for work throughout the year. Maybe this could evolve into The Year of 2 Novellas in order to keep me busy. If I wrote 500 words a day, my current per-day volume of work, then 70,000 words would take 140 days. Average in some days without writing, and we're still looking at barely half a year. Just something to keep in mind.
• The Year of 3 Screenplays - It has been a long time since I've written for screen, but that doesn't mean it's not something I still care about. Writing is writing. Writing 3 feature length screenplays of roughly 120 pages each would be a great way to get back into it. I've got some ideas boiling around the back of my brain that would be great for films. I just need to get them out and onto (electronic) paper.

I think that in those suggestions, somewhere, lies the theme for 2010 that will make the year a great one. Perhaps I combine Short Stories and Music Videos, or Music Videos and Novella, or Music Videos and Screenplays, or Short Stories and Screenplays? The cross disciplinary approach worked well enough for me this year. When I didn't write, at least I could take pictures. When I could take pictures, at least I could write.

Anyway, food for thought. I need think about this a little more. What do you all think out there in Black Laserland?

It is no secret that literature and cinema often use common themes and devices to propel a story. Some of these are very useful for opening doors for your characters or building drama. Indeed, Joseph Campbell's entire career was based on the idea that the literature of the world, myth, repeats certain key elements and structures across cultures, geography, and time. They represent the human mind seeking answers to unanswerable questions through the use of imagery and symbol. If you've never read any of Campbell's work, I highly recommend you do. It's fascinating stuff.

But those are not what I want to write about here. Instead, I want to discuss a common dramatic device so lazy, so dastardly, so woefully incompetent that I cringe and immediately lose my ability to enjoy said film or show. I've never heard it referred to by anyone else so I have come to call it "The Overheard Conversation". You've seen it before.

How about a quick example? Here's the premise: GEEKY GUY has spent the entire film trying to woo the most popular, most beautiful BABE in school. He had been successful for a while, but then they got into a fight over whatever the hell reason and he stormed off at the big homecoming party. Later, feeling stupid, GEEKY GUY tries to find BABE who has been approached by her ex-boyfriend HOTSHOT GUY. But because he's so shy, GEEKY GUY doesn't approach them and instead hears a snippet of their conversation that he takes completely out of context. Like this.

Stop me if you've seen this film before. Oh, you can't stop me? Well, then I'll continue.

From here, GEEKY GUY goes on a self-destructive/depressed/whatever bend. Eventually they reconcile when he confronts her about the night by the pool and she tells him the truth of what happened and he suddenly feels foolish and she forgives him for not just being forthright with her in the beginning and they live happily ever after through high school graduation. How romantic!

How many films can you name where some permutation of this has happened? Five? One hundred? A billion? It's basically the plot device used in every stupid rom-com piece of trash spit out by Hollywood 50 times a year. Whenever I see this used, I imagine this conversation.

"Gosh! I can't think of how to drag this Jennifer Anniston vehicle out to the bare minimum 90 minutes. Whatever shall I do?!" one writer says.

"Why not just have her walk into the room when her boyfriend is on the phone with his sister saying something she'll take completely out of context because this is the only way to inject some 'drama' into this horrid piece of trash?" the other says.

"Brilliant!" the first one says. "I'll get another Oscar for this one!"

It really must be the laziest cop out to burden the state of modern drama. It's the Deus Ex Machina of modern cinema. How do we drag this out? Add some fake tension? Perfect.

What's worse is that I cannot think of even a single time that this has happened to me or anyone I know in real life. Now, I'm not saying that all drama in films has to be absolutely realistic. Of course it doesn't. I have zero issues with the Eye of Sauron being able to see Hobbits when Frodo puts on the ring. That's awesome. Great. But if you're going to be basing your drama on real life, then at least make it believable. Are you really expecting me to believe that GEEKY GUY, after spending the whole film fantasizing and eventually attaining BABE, would not just step in and be all, "What the fuck?" He would run off without, at the very least, waiting in the shadows to see how their conversation turned out? Pathetic. He doesn't even need to be forceful, just, you know, let it play out a little. How about giving your girlfriend the benefit of the doubt? Has she betrayed you before? Do you have ANY reason to think that she'd not be faithful to you? How about asking her about it? Nah, instead you should just assume a bunch of untrue crap and then spend the next 35 minutes of screen time moping around being an all around asshole. Good plan.

Here's how the scene should have gone.

See? Wasn't that better? Doesn't that sound like a better movie? It makes you wonder how many completely awful films could have been saved from their fate as utterly forgettable pieces of fluff if the writers had just spent another 40 seconds and avoided The Overheard Conversation. Truly sad.

Last night, as many of you who keep tabs on the goings on in my life outside the professional realm know, was the open house for the 2010 applications to Hunter's Creative Writing MFA program. After the disappointing results of last year's application, I am ready and primed and pumped and revved about this year's round. It was not nearly as severe of information-overload as last year, which is nice. Many of the things I wrote about here were confirmed by faculty and student alike. I need to allow for the natural tendencies and rawness and voice in my writing to "jump off the page" as they were fond of saying last night. The Black Laser provides plenty of evidence that this is not a problem for me. On a(n almost) daily basis I write for you, my loyal legion of followers and well-wishers, in a voice that I think rather adeptly echoes the way I speak. Probably fewer "fucks", but whatever. The trick—not that it's a trick, more of an approach, really—with my fiction will be not to work it so hard that I end up neutering the natural cadence and flow of the words. I need to edit for clarity and mistakes, but not worry that something might come off as too TOO, you know what I mean? See that sentence? I probably need to edit it for clarity, but fuck it. My writing needs to be functional and raw and exciting; polish can come later.

Last year I imposed hiatus on myself and then worked exclusively on one piece for months—thinking, writing, rewriting, and revising an idea I'd had while sitting at brunch with Juli some months before. It ended up being a very limiting process for me and didn't allow me to play around with the piece as I ought to have. And I think the piece suffered for it, as I described in my previous post on the topic.

This year I intend to approach this creative submission process differently. I also have a number of things going for me this year over last year. First, I'm freelance, meaning I have more flexibility in deciding my schedule if I need to. Of course, if works comes up, I'll take it, because The Black Laser can't live off lightning and fear. Even he needs to eat. Second, I have the experience of the process last year to inform the decisions I make this year. Third, I don't have to worry about getting my transcripts and letters of recommendation again. If I have to apply a third time, I will, but let's think about that if that happens, yes? Fourth, and most importantly, I have the perfect venue for trying out ideas for my final piece—The Year of 5000 Photos and 50 Short Stories.

Oh, right, remember that? A quick check in the right hand column will show that I've made admirable progress on my photos, but my poor stories have languished. Poor stories. And, with fewer than 60 days left in 2009 (where has it gone?!), if I'm to live up to my end of the bargain, I need to get going.

From here on out, I will be writing every night, at least 500 words. If I can do more than that, I will, but 500 will be my minimum. I often get stuck thinking, "Man, I have nothing to write about. Where are the ideas?" and I get all hung up and stupid and don't do anything. For the rest of the year, if I have nothing new to write about, I will rewrite old ideas or someone else's ideas or ideas I thought were dumb, just to keep my fingers moving. If I am not working, then I will try and do two rounds of 500 words, one first thing in the morning, followed by a walk, and then another 500 hundred. Quality is less important than producing regularly. If I am able to crank out 47 more short stories this year, then somewhere within that body I will have something worth editing or turning into something more for the purpose of the application due February 1, 2010.

Come the new year I am going to turn my attention toward getting the personal statement finished and whipping the creative submission into shape. I haven't forgotten my idea of reading the first 20-25 pages of books either, mind you, but I might have to push that back until after 1/1/10. January will be a busy month for me trying to get all this stuff done, but I can do it. I can DO IT. I mean, the one student last night has two children, 3 and 6 months, a full time job, a husband, and still manages to get her MFA work done. Impressive. I'm not even committing to CLOSE to that kind of schedule. I can do it!

Don't forget that I have to fit The Frontiersman's Wife in here too. At the very least, baseball will be over soon and that time sink won't be around to distract me anymore.

We have embarked on an exciting end-of-2009, Black Laserites! Keep reading!

This is totally awesome. I definitely know some stories and films with these twists, though I'm not sure "unreliable narrator" is a twist. Unless we're considering Fight Club or something. Then I guess it works. I particularly like "Indian Legend Ignored", "Land Assaulted By Ghost Boats", and "Ancient Druids Lose Interest". Nothing quite like cynical writers poking fun at themselves.

The whole thing here:

Dresden Codak >> 42 Essential 3rd Act Twists