Posted by Atticus on August 27, 2004, at 19:29:46
In reply to Re: fiction ... Hungry Pavement, Part 2, posted by Jai Narayan on August 27, 2004, at 14:06:00
Hi Jai,
As I wrote to JenStar, I was kind of surprised by the darkly absurdist tone of this section of the story myself when I reread it after not looking at it since the suicide attempt. There's are real mood swing evident on my part, and I do remember that I wrote the second section of this story a few days later than the first. Fulgencio's line at the end of part 1 was actually the first thing that popped into my head at my second writing session. I included it at the end of part 1 mainly because I thought it made kind of a nice cheeky teaser. I remember struggling to write "Hungry Pavement" -- the first writing not associated with the ads and press releases I had cranked out at work over the previous decade -- because I had a sense there was something seriously wrong with the way I was thinking about and perceiving things and I hoped that this exercise might help me regain some of the mojo that I'd lost in a sea of meds and booze. I was just so desperate to take pleasure in doing something, anything, again. Especially something genuinely creative, as opposed to the "pay the rent" type of writing I do at the university. The first part was a real slog (and it reads like it, unfortunately), but somehow when I came back to the piece, this whimsical character Fulgencio had horned his way into the story. It's interesting that what the unnamed narrator is trying to avoid is being pulled "down" and "consumed," even as the depression was doing precisely that to me. Maybe Fulgencio was a bit of wish fulfillment -- a case of me hoping that someone kind would come along and explain what was going on in my mind so I could somehow cope with it all better. I don't really know. But I really liked Fulgencio and felt a lot of affection for the character right away. I do like this part of the story the best, because it does revolve around the peculiar relationship between two individuals -- even if one is a ghost. That relationship angle is probably what makes the story pick up in this part. If I ever tried to get it published, I'd have to do a top-to-bottom rewrite on part 1, though, trying to match it more to the feel of part 2. Ta. :) Atticus, who snuck Jai onto a pedestal weeks ago when she wasn't looking
poster:Atticus
thread:382964
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20040729/msgs/383135.html