Here’s a tasty snippet of an interview with Ray Bradbury, one of my seminal influences.
All posts by Brad Whittington
Writing on the Air
Occasionally I am a guest on a program called Writing on the Air on local radio station, KOOP. (Listen at 91.7 FM or koop.org.) I’ll be on tomorrow, Wed 7/28/2010 from 6-7pm CDT, reading excerpts from some works in progress and talking about writing stuff, in general.I also discovered they have my last appearance in the archives. Also, I sat in on Daniel’s appearance on Jul 7.
Poncho and Lefty
When are you going to cover it?Townes Van Zandt
Willie and Bobby
Steve Earle
Hoyt Axton
I Write Like
Kelly hipped me to I Write Like, a website that applies a Bayesian classifier algorithm to the text you key in to match it to text from the 50 writers in its database. It’s mainly based on vocabulary, sentence length and punctuation and doesn’t account for style, voice or tone, so it’s basically useless, but entertaining.I pasted in Chapter 0 of my current work in progress that is in need of a good title. It came back with Stephen King. Interesting. Chapter 1 came back as David Foster Wallace. Hmm, never heard of him. I went back to Endless Vacation draft 3 and analzyed each chapter separately, all 46 of them. (Yes, I know I have no life. So sue me.) It came back with 15 authors: Arthur Conan Doyle, Chuck Palahniuk, Dan Brown, David Foster Wallace, Ian Fleming, Isaac Asimov, Jack London, James Joyce, JK Rowling, Kurt Vonnegut, Mario Puzo, Raymond Chandler, Stephanie Meyer, Vladimir Nabakov, and William Gibson. The winner was David Foster Wallace, for 17 of 46 chapters, Brown and Chandler trailing with 8 and 6 chapters, respectively. Then I went back to where it all started, Welcome to Fred, again all 30 chapters. This time only 9 authors, but a couple of good ones that weren’t on the EV list: Arthur C Clarke, Chuck Palahniuk, Dan Brown, David Foster Wallace, HP Lovecraft, Raymond Chandler, Stephanie Meyer, Stephen King, and William Gibson. But Wallace was still the winner with 11 out of 30 chapters, Lovecraft trailing with 6 chapters. Evidently a third of my work uses the same vocabulary and sentence length as Wallace. I guess I’ll have to check him out.I wish he had the list of authors in the database. I’m guessing PG Wodehouse isn’t in there, or Christopher Buckley.
Book Launch 2.0
I feel ya, dawg.
Father’s Day
A link to a Father’s Day tribute.
TheBeatlesCompleteOnUkulele.com
Seriously. Except it’s not just ukulele. The songs are arranged in various styles, including reggae, pop, blues, with the intruments appropriate to the style. Each is performed by a different artist, but arranged and produced by David Baratt and Roger Greenawalt with accompanying essays by various individuals. As of this post there are 70+ songs in the catalog, all available for free download.My picks for the playlist:
- While My Guitar Gently Weeps
- Here There and Everywhere
- Come Together
- Because
- Lady Madonna
- Blackbird
- Don’t Pass Me By
- Getting Better
- Across The Universe
- Revolution (Live)
- I Am The Walrus
- The Word
- Mother Nature’s Son
- Day Tripper
- Love Me Do
- Hey Jude
- Get Back
- Honey Pie
- We Can Work It Out
- Back in the USSR
- You Can’t Do That
- Old Brown Shoe
- Yesterday
- Golden Slumbers
- Love You Too
- Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey
- Here Comes The Sun
- She Said She Said
- Nowhere Man
Back in Action
I completed the 3,000+ pages of screenplay reading last weekend and am back to reading actual books. I’m in the final pages of three books. We’ll see which one crosses the finish line first. Also working on the novel projects, Endless Vacation and Muffin Man. And doing a lot of remodeling. And the day job. My, where does all the time go?
Distracted Again
It’s that time of year, again. I’m buried under a mountain of screenplays as first reader for a little screenplay competition of note. And also working on my latest novel project, Endless Vacation. I’ve got some good stuff in the queue to finish reading, when my time frees up.In the meantime, here’s a bit of flash fiction I wrote about 20 years ago, back when cell phones were a new thing. I call it . . .
THE CALL HOME
The cellular phone gripped tightly, he pulls his BMW to the side of the road as he hears the phone ring on the other end. His breath catches at the familiar, loving voice answering, “It’s your nickel.” Panic closes a hand around his throat and he can’t speak.”What’s the matter, cat got your tongue?” the nasal voice brays through the wires. He tries to swallow but his mouth is too dry. “Hey, Pa, it’s for you. It’s Marcel Marceau.””Ma . . . Mom,” he blurts out in his panic. “Don’t call Pa. It’s you I want to talk to. It’s me, Beamish!””Beamish! Where have you been? We’ve been keeping your supper warm for you, but after a year-and-a-half the gas bill is getting ridiculous.””I know, Ma. I meant to call but I was so busy.””When are you going to get home? Our pyramid act doesn’t get as many laughs with only two on the pyramid.””Look, Ma. I’m in a bit of a hurry. I’ve got to see a client, but I just wanted to let you know I was O.K.””What do you mean, a client?””Ma, brace yourself. You know I never did like the circus. I mean, it was O.K. for you and Pa, but it just wasn’t for me.””How could you say such a thing after all we did for you? You know Pa was going to pass the family nose on to you.””Ma, please, don’t make this any harder for me. I’ve got my own life, now.” He pauses, afraid to break her heart with the truth. Suddenly, it all comes out in a rush. “Ma, I’m a C.P.A. You know it’s what I always wanted. I tried to be a clown, but my heart just wasn’t in it. I’ve got to follow my own dream.””It’ll kill your father.”The digital clock on the dash swims before his eyes as his tears overflow. “Ma, I’ve got to go. Don’t try to call me, please. It’ll cost me 1.78 a minute and besides, I’m expecting an important fax. Bye.”
Quotes From Stuff I Read – Percy
This topic is usually called Quotes From Stuff I Like, but I wasn’t that crazy about this biography, hence the slight tweak in title. I’m pulling this quote out because of the seeming contrast between it and an earlier quote from Gardner I found interesting.Walker Percy: A Life, an excerpt from a letter:p. 223. Actually I do not consider myself a novelist but a moralist or a propagandist. My spiritual father is Pascal (and/or Kierkegaard). And if I also kneel before the altar of Lawrence and Joyce and Flaubert, it is not because I wish to do what they did, even if I could. What I realy want to do is to tell people what they must do and what they must believe if tghey want to live. Using every guile and low-handed trick int he book of course . . .The problem which all but throws me all the time is this: how does a Catholic fiction writer handle the Catholic Faith in his novel? I am not really writing to get your answer because I think I already know it–that you don’t worry about it–do what Augustine said: love God and do as you please. But this doesn’t help much. (Actually the only reason I can raise the question now is that I can see the glimmerings of an answer.) Dosteovsky knew he answer.But to show you that I am not imagining the problem: The Moviegoer was almost universally misunderstood. Its most enthusiastic admirers were preciesely those people who misunderstood it worst. It was received as a novel of “despair”–not a novel about despair but as a novel ending in despair. Even though I left broad hints that such was not at all the case.