Hemingway's Style

Before I started the first draft I had a particular style in mind that I was hoping to emulate. As I read Hemingway's final book (published postmortem) "True at First Light," I noticed he used a very particular writing style to move the reader through the novel.  In scenes of the book that he felt were particularly important he used almost all dialogue.  Very occasionally description would fall between the dialogue but just to show the addition or leaving of characters from the scene, almost like stage direction.  When the scene was over Hemingway would switch to prose to move time along quickly and get to the next important scene.  What was very interesting was the length of his prose and dialogue was usually very consistent.  He would, for example, write one page of prose to get the characters to the next day, then two pages of dialogue for a very important scene when they are about to go hunting.  He would then switch back to prose for one page to get the hunters out to the kill and two pages of prose for them to talk about the act of the hunt.



As I got about the editing process, I want to focus not only on the gramatical changes but on the flow of the book.  Very often in the first draft you can tell if I, the author, am in a good mood when I'm writing or in a bad mood. You can also tell if I'm chatty or short.  I need to find a consistant voice across the length of the book so the reader forgets that it's my voice speaking and begins to feel like it is theirs.

Editing A Novel Day 1 - Cluttered Minds

Today, October 1st 2010 is the first day of editing my novel Fraternity of Greed.  I've never edited a novel before and I remember the pain and anguish of editing papers 1/100th in size in school and know that this task is going to be gargantuan.  Essentially, I am going to have to take this cluttered work that spat out of my head last summer and organize it into something elegant and also potentially publishable.  As I thought about this at my desk earlier I took a look down and realized that if the editing process needed a good simile it was already right in front of me with my cluttered desk.



They say that cleanliness is next to godliness and clearly I'm more human than most, thus cleaning my desk sometimes feels like an insurmountable task.  About every month or so, I go through and put everything in its right place and while the task is Sisyphean it is none-the-less rewarding.  One step at a time, I go through each area of the desk and either throw away the unnecessary or find an appropriate spot for organization. After a just a few minutes I already feel rewarded as clean "areas" begin to appear and grow.  Before long the areas overlap into bigger swatches of cleanliness and finally in a couple of hours I'm done and wonder why I waited so long to start the process in the first place.

As I start editing FoG (Fraternity of Greed), I'm going to keep a little web log for anyone the feels like following along as someone with cursory writing talent at best attempts to turn a promising piece of work into a publishable one.  For those that don't know I'm actually a math major by training and in the world of finance so my brain is beating to a different drum that most writers I assume but I feel compelled towards writing and that's what has brought me to this point.  I finished my first draft one month ago on August 31st and at the advice of Stephen King "On Writing" I took some time away from the novel to "forget" about it and hopefully will find it easier to edit now that it will not be so fresh in my mind.

So without further ado, I am opening up my first draft, printing it, and getting started.  Hopefully the process is more fruitful and less Sisyphean than cleaning the chaos that is my desk.

Technorati Tags: Editing, Novel, Fraternity of Greed, Clenliness, Day 1

Poem: God's Beach

Walking heavily through the sand,
The feet below me, heels below toes,
Betray my strength.

The suns beats down like in Houston.
Washing out all color,
Like a torturous metal slide burning
Angel thighs as they slide
Down from heaven.

The palms are white and look
Like 30 foot dandelions for the angels
To blow away.

Like some self absorbed lizard
I crawl through this playground of God's
Scaring the children as they look at me
In awe and confusion.

Haiku: The Lions on the Beach

Hemingway you ghost!
The lions on the beach are
your rattling chains.

Beyond

We pursue our own interests.
We are capitalist and happy.
We work from 9 to 5 and die
after 65, because we are no longer

needed. What are we but nearsighted?
Do you think you care about
people you can’t see or those
you don’t know? No. We do not shout

at those in power because we
believe we are in heaven,
but man is deeply evil and believes he is good.
If a man is elected to lead

he can still be evil and believe he is good.
He peruses his own interests. He is nearsighted;
delusional bad apple spoiling.
Don’t join the system.

Cheat the game and make millions only
to give it away. Make your life and
give it away. Truly love those you can’t see,
only then will you break free and see truth.

The only life worth leading
is the life driven to seeing
beyond this idyllic snow globe
and loving those we don’t know

A Letter to Brian Greene

Dr. Greene,

I'm currently reading your book, Fabric of the Cosmos and I would like to first state that I am big fan and I am truly enjoying the read!  I am just now reading your chapter on the multiple dimensions necessary for string theory and you made a statement that I wanted to comment on.  In your description of how to "visualize" multiple dimensions you say that it's pretty difficult to visualize 6 dimensions and you haven't met anyone who could.

Well I certainly don't claim to, but I had to laugh a little bit because when I was a Freshman math major at Trinity University in San Antonio in 2001, I was taking basic undergraduate linear algebra and was floored by the idea that I couldn't visualize the inputs of my equations when they were bigger than 4 dimensions.  I then thought about it a little more and I wrote my professor at the time Dr. Chapman a memo on how I imagined different dimensions higher than 3 or 4.

Assumption:  Clearly, we live in a world of 3 visible spatial dimensions and 1 time dimension.  Since man has taught History I'm pretty sure we have used the concept of a "time-line" to describe the changing of our 3 spatial dimensions across time.  By doing so we took the mathematical R3 and converted its "infinite" size to an infinitesimal point and simply gave the point a "nudge" in the direction of time and the time-line was drawn.  My assumption was that any time we were in an infinite 3 spatial dimension space we could then, for the purposes of visualization convert that space into an infinitesimal point. 

Induction:  I don't claim this to be a proof by induction but just the method at which I used to visualize higher dimensions.  Once you shrunk the infinite world to the size of a point and struck it you drew a line.  This was R4 and if you struck that line (much like a guitar string) it would vibrate showing you the 5th dimension or R5.  You could imagine this as different possible futures (maybe even your multiverse picture).  If you have now a membrane in that is R5, you can imagine that much like a drum and when you strike it, it vibrates like a drum showing you the 6th (R6) dimension or a new infinite space with 3 spatial dimensions within which each point represented a snapshot of our 3 dimensional space.  So continuing on you can quickly see that R6 can then via the assumption be shrunk down to a point and the process repeated.  Continuing you would see the pattern that dimensions that can be written as R(3n) where n is a whole number are "spaces" and by assumption equivalently points, R(3n+1) are lines similar to our time line, and R(3n+2) are membranes or planes.

Now this is for whole numbers of n.  Clearly there exists a R(0) which is the infinitesimal points in our world.  Since it can be written R(3n) is can then be assumed to also be an infinite space.  Inside this space we can then start going backwards using n as negative integers.  R(-1) is equivalent to R(3n+2) where n = -1.  So it is a membrane.  Further down is R(-2) which can be written R(3n+1) where n = -1 so R(-2) is a line and lastly R(3n) where n = -1 is a point in that space.  Now you can then use this method of "visualization" just as I did in Linear Algebra to try to imagine what different dimensions "look" like.  Clearly, this is only for the purposes of helping my 18 year-old self get through my freshman year, but I thought that now you could at least say you've met someone who tried to visualize not only 6 dimensions below ours but "n" dimensions above and below our ours.

I know you're a busy man and I don't want to take any more of your time, but thank you again for writing your book and keep up the good work, and with that I'll leave you with a poem your book has inspired.

I have written a beautiful proof
String theory is true!  No goof!
The letters are quite small
Plancnk's constant they are tall
Just trust me, I'm telling the truth.

The Land Of The Free

Have we come to an agreement;
an understanding of the word?
Anger is rising off the cement
Sweaty money changing hands

Is this the America we want?
Or do we live like puppets for Blair
As Bush sings Sweet Home Obama
Racism is replaced with a new slavery

God’s name is used not only vain
but in idiocy and in politics
How are we different from 17th
Century France?

There are no more lines, Republican
and Democrat. They are put there
to blind us from the truth
that we are just puppets of greater men.