God in all His ways

I've just finished revising the last two chapters of this section. One was about a priest and another about an old neighbour. I knew I couldn't keep them in the way they were structure and so this felt more like remixing than plain, straight forward revising.

Once again I had some pleasant surprises with the way the chapters unfolded. Writing does seem to take on a life of its own, especially when you start to believe in it even more than you think you could (or should...)

Today, while at work, I told a colleague of mine that the book was going to be more than 400 pages long. He said, cut it down... but, perhaps for the first time, I didn't really withdraw inside and worry about the possibility of doing it all wrong. It was more like, this is how this book is.

And that's what really matters.

That's why I started to write it.

I didn't write it thinking of a particular format, thinking of how it should be in formal terms. I just wanted to say something, to say it well and, above all, to actually let these things speak for themselves.

I want this book to feel alive.

And this is what I've been feeling sometimes. Through the hours where I'd rather be watching a film or reading someone else's book. Seeing time go by and this path ahead of me which, if I refuse to walk it, will never take me anywhere.

So I wrote today again amazed at the magic that sometimes happens on the page. In all honesty, I don't really feel that I'm doing it. I feel I'm the scribe more than the author. It's like looking at a puzzle. With time the pieces start to fit and make sense. But did you create it?

Anyway, two chapters that didn't seem to have much going for them have turned into something deeply interwoven into the book.

(and if I ever get an editor for this book I'm gonna have a tough time to cut stuff out...)

Besides this I read vols. 26 and 27 of Takehiko Inoue's Vagabond.
No reviews for any of these yet. I love this series so much that I'm not the least worried in doing what would probably prove itself to be a rushed review. I think I'll probably wait until the series ends (within a few years) and, from the vantage point of completion, then discuss it in some length. Suffice to say that this series has taken me through some terrible and yet very beautiful places. It all makes sense. You just gotta let it breathe...

It's past 3am. I should be sleeping. I have to wake up at 7.30am.

I shouldn't be here talking to you.

But I am.

peace.

Two girls, a gravedigger and someone that knows the dead better than the living...

I arrived home later than I expected but eager to get my mittens on those pages...

I didn't do that many pages (only 7) but i still manage to re-write 3 chapters.

The first one was about two friends that chat in Bairro Alto about decisions and the unwillingness of the past to go away.

The second one is about an old lady that spends more time with the dead than with the living. Obviously a chat with a gravedigger is more or less in order...

The third one is about the gravedigger himself, as he fills yet another grave, taking pride in his work - even if the living don't care anymore.

These are short chapters (especially the last two) but I think all of them round up the story more by giving the reader a clearer picture of the characters. I want a feeling of completeness to exude from this book. I think it is important and makes sense in the broader scope i'm aiming this book towards.

Before all this however, I read Grant Morrison's and Klaus Janson's Batman: Gothic.

I think I read it many years ago, when i was 16 or 17, quite possibly in a Brazilian edition bought in Portugal. I remembered the story only vaguely but enough to know that this had been one of those comics that had shifted my perspective about them.
Even after all this time, it was still a very powerful journey.
I wrote a review about it as well. Also to be posted in the near future...

Tomorrow may well be another long day at work but I'm determined to sink my teeth in another chapter or two as soon as I get home...

Until then...

peace

Inside a Car the World Melts

This is what happens inside the first chapter that I was working on today. A boy and a girl, inside a car, facing the sea, in a cold january night. Politics, fueled by isolation and intimacy turn into sensual overflow.

The second chapter of today dealt with another of the main character's friends. Here it's the mood enhancers and the momentum of going for a night out that carries a dialogue of quasi stream of consciousness throughout.
But there's also a girl with golden grey eyes.
Very much in need of affection.
Just like the boy.

There was a chapter in between these two but its content actually did not belong to this section and so I transferred it to the section dubbed Amigos (or Friends)

The final chapter was actually broken in two. The first part also belongs to the Friends section. I reworked it so that it could be easily included there and more or less re-wrote the other part so that it fits inside this section: Campa (or Grave)

I also read another comic. Scalped vol. 1 Indian Country. By Jason Aaron and R. M. Guéra. Quite enjoyed it even though I wasn't really in the mood for a gritty crime story... I also wrote a review for it. Also to be published on the GNRG webpage at some point in the future.

I wrote a couple of posts but one is still on draft mode. It's good to pursue one's intuitions and best intentions but, sometimes, they don't seem to take us anywhere after we jump on them...

I also wrote a first draft for another short story for the New Scientist competition. I called this one Legacy. I really like it. It's told from a time far in the future, looking back at the remnants of the 22nd century. In my head this story was amazingly powerful and clear but, as soon as I started typing it, that feeling seemed to dissolve... I guess that's just how it goes sometimes...
or somedays...
In any case, I hope i will be able to look to it more objectively tomorrow or in a couple of days. This might be a good candidate to be sent...

I had the idea last night, while in bed. I lied there, musing if I should get up and write it down or if I could just see it clearly enough to be able to write it the next day.
Eventually I fell asleep...
But since I managed to remember it today that kind of graduates it to the kind of stories that hook me from the beginning. And those are usually the best.

I also read a bit of a book that I'm using to do research for a potential project to this years NaNoWriMo, in November.
Basically there are two ideas floating about.
One is to be written in English and I don't think I'll have to do any research to write it (though I could afterwards, if only to make some aspects a bit more plausible). I've already planned quite a few scenes for it and there's even a sketch of a structure for it.
I'm calling it NUME for the time being.

The other is to be written in Portuguese and there's quite a bit of research needed. So I was thinking of reading those books during NaNoWriMo and, hopefully, write the two books.
It may sound ambitious but I think that it is possible.
I don't want them to be very long. And, in actual fact, the two books are kind of the mirror image of the other.
At least in my head it makes sense for the two to go together...

The second one is called OS ANOS PERDIDOS (The Lost Years)

And, for now, I won't say anything else about them!

peace.