#41
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~
it's cool that we have the same brain i guess.

this thread made me realize i'll be a terrible writer for a while though ugu~
#42
Post rating: ~

deadken posted:
Impper posted:
ken tell us more about your class. how are they receiving your writing, how are they receiving your criticisms, have you made any friends yet


i havent submitted anything yet! but the story i posted in the other lf about the book writin factory is gettin workshopped on monday. i havent been as ruthless in my criticism as id like but thats because i want to do sex on them. so just like lil negs about 'slightly clumsy phrasing,' game bro. game


please update us with what your intrepid classmates have to say about the machine

#43
Post rating: ~
i need to find more pretentious european style cafes in san francisco myself, theyre probably out there but likely a 30m+ muni ride
#44
Post rating: ~
the cafe is superior for reading and writing, right off the train line, dark decor, ample seating, a very diverse clientele, lots of douchey rich guys taking girls out on dates, rich eastern euros, poor hipsters, groups of astonishingly attractive women (a pair of girls sitting in front of me as i wrote that part were more than good friends, giving each other back rubs while talking to their gay friend; it was bizarrely erotic) open til 12:30 at night, 2 am on weekends, serves booze & wine, attractive, literate waitresses, good prices (2.70 for a cappucino, 3.50 for a mocha), and a full menu
#45
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~
i don't know cafes around here. most of them have bad hours and are too crowded with people hovering for seats or they are starbucks that are only open until 10.
#46
Post rating: ~
no 24 hour cafes? chicago has a pair of 24 hour starbucks, both of them in relatively "hip" neighborhoods. a few cafes open til 2 and 3 am on weekdays, however most places do close at 9 or 10 and that sucks. i haven't graduated to writing at bars yet, though i know a good number that would be ideal (ask me about dive bars in chicago (don't))
#47
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~
i guess there are cheap chain cafes that are open 24 hours but like homeless people and drunks congregate in them in my experience. i have done zero research into this but it probably makes sense to look into it for wintertime.
#48
Post rating: ~
oh yea i forgot about those types of places, usually greasy spoons. the main thing i've found is just to be in a place where you can focus a little bit and where you enjoy the coffee/food
#49
Post rating: ~
theres a bookstore in lincoln square (i think? along lincoln at least) that has a coffee shop and also serves booze. it's a pretty sterile area tho
#50
[account deactivated]
#51
penitent
Post rating: ~
to write i need to chain smoke & have my own music i dont think i could do it in a cafe
#52
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~
i tried writing in a bar once but women kept coming up and asking me out on dates because they saw me and thought "there is a guy i'd like to kiss on a lot"
#53
Post rating: ~

deadken posted:

to write i need to chain smoke & have my own music i dont think i could do it in a cafe




can't tell you how many times ive listened to this song while writing:



along with other assorted shitty music, muse, shitty groove/chill techno, pop, miley cyrus, beatles, bob dylan, shitty blues, haha. i write almost exclusively in cafes... but this song is what i associate most with my writing

#54
Post rating: ~

getfiscal posted:
i tried writing in a bar once but women kept coming up and asking me out on dates because they saw me and thought "there is a guy i'd like to kiss on a lot"


sounds like you should post on wddp in bars... two birds and one stone

#55
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~
actually my laptop is really broken because it is a cheap netbook. i want another macbook like i had before which was great.
#56
Post rating: ~
i write on a netbook and in 2011 people still ask me "what is that!!!"

only occasionally i tell them a lie like i mad eit myself lol
#57
Post rating: ~
pen & paper ftw
#58
Post rating: ~
yeah lots of cafes in SF serve beer & wine as well, but the problem is always finding a good environment/cool seating area for writing/reading. usually there's just not enough space to be a real hangout spot. the cafe impper describes sounds perfect.
#59
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: +
"How have you been, honey?"

"ASSHOLE."

She wasn't swearing, really. It's an old agency joke. It stands for our current mission: Area Studies, Situational History Ongoing, Language Education. You learn your region - for us it was Islamic world desk. You build your credible background - we build an online and world history as Muslims and dissidents. Language education - I'm taking Turkish, she was working on her colloquial Arabic.

I nodded to the webcam and then looked over to the dossier on the desk. We were supposed to go over the identities of the suspects we were tracking through our web forums. What was there to say? It wasn't a priority mission, the three main threats seemed absorbed in fantasies of becoming writers. Tara would inevitably write up the mundane details in flowery language to make it sound like we were building a case, but we weren't.

"Todd, I've been too sick to get to class. Will Langley get on my case?"

"No."

She knew as much herself. After years of training, arranging an intra-agency marriage that was passably loving and functional, and Langley prepared to back an unusual full decade of ASSHOLE for them both, they aren't going to sweat small deviations. Her handler would complain, but nothing would ever reach her file. She could drop out of school and she'd still be kept on. No need to lose an asset.

She leaned in after a few sneezes.

"I'm worried about getfiscal going back to wddp.org."

"Confirmed?"

"Yep."

"I'll say something to him."

"If we lose the trail on him then we'll have to shift over to new suspects."

"We can always lean on ASSHOLE."

"You don't write the reports. I do. They get nasty if we don't tease them with something. Getfiscal is good material - foreign national, psychiatric record, known violent ideations, radical politics."

"He stays in his room all day. He's a hermit."

"It's political. Don't say 'hermit', say 'dangerous loner.'"

Something about what she said didn't seem right. In retrospect, that's when I should have asked her to ditch the agency and fuck off to some boring city to build a family. Just one in a series of escalating regrets.
#60
Post rating: ~

op



murder them with your words
grind the serifs down and stab them, a thousand times, or as many as is necessary for you to "get the idea across," five pages of stabbings or maybe three concise pages. jump at the nearest hack across from you - the esteemed gentleman from lf would like to motion a table against your throat, hack

#61
Post rating: ~
I wish I had kept some of the worst stuff from my writing classes
#62
Post rating: ~
but I don't like to save my work
#63
tardy on these heaters
Post rating: ~

deadken posted:
I woke up to the honking of the horn and my head was splitting and as soon as I opened my eyes I gasped for air like a dying corpse.

The myriad of linear driftwood posts rapidly flickered past the windows.

The boar was not as fast as he was, but had the ability to wind in and out of tree trunks.

There was a long pause of silence but it was a comfortable silence and the sea to our left glittered in the rising sun like millions of flashing cameras. I rolled down my window and the wind on my face was cold yet warm.



lol you and every other CW student in the world thinks theyre soo much better than all the noob losersi n their class. stop drugtaking

#64
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~

babyfinland posted:
lol you and every other CW student in the world thinks theyre soo much better than all the noob losersi n their class. stop drugtaking

what if i think i'm a loser and that other people are better writers but that i'm still superior due to a certain x factor

#65
[account deactivated]
#66
tardy on these heaters
Post rating: ~

getfiscal posted:
"How have you been, honey?"

"ASSHOLE."

She wasn't swearing, really. It's an old agency joke. It stands for our current mission: Area Studies, Situational History Ongoing, Language Education. You learn your region - for us it was Islamic world desk. You build your credible background - we build an online and world history as Muslims and dissidents. Language education - I'm taking Turkish, she was working on her colloquial Arabic.

I nodded to the webcam and then looked over to the dossier on the desk. We were supposed to go over the identities of the suspects we were tracking through our web forums. What was there to say? It wasn't a priority mission, the three main threats seemed absorbed in fantasies of becoming writers. Tara would inevitably write up the mundane details in flowery language to make it sound like we were building a case, but we weren't.

"Todd, I've been too sick to get to class. Will Langley get on my case?"

"No."

She knew as much herself. After years of training, arranging an intra-agency marriage that was passably loving and functional, and Langley prepared to back an unusual full decade of ASSHOLE for them both, they aren't going to sweat small deviations. Her handler would complain, but nothing would ever reach her file. She could drop out of school and she'd still be kept on. No need to lose an asset.

She leaned in after a few sneezes.

"I'm worried about getfiscal going back to wddp.org."

"Confirmed?"

"Yep."

"I'll say something to him."

"If we lose the trail on him then we'll have to shift over to new suspects."

"We can always lean on ASSHOLE."

"You don't write the reports. I do. They get nasty if we don't tease them with something. Getfiscal is good material - foreign national, psychiatric record, known violent ideations, radical politics."

"He stays in his room all day. He's a hermit."

"It's political. Don't say 'hermit', say 'dangerous loner.'"

Something about what she said didn't seem right. In retrospect, that's when I should have asked her to ditch the agency and fuck off to some boring city to build a family. Just one in a series of escalating regrets.



very nice a borat

#67
tardy on these heaters
Post rating: ~

getfiscal posted:

babyfinland posted:
lol you and every other CW student in the world thinks theyre soo much better than all the noob losersi n their class. stop drugtaking

what if i think i'm a loser and that other people are better writers but that i'm still superior due to a certain x factor



congratulations youre gay and/or jewish

#68
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating: ~

discipline posted:
goddamnit donald

#69
Post rating: ~
As his head arched downwards to the earth, the Jet’s arms shot out in a violently robotic motion. Those hands, that could fold steel and grind bones, those fat, fumbling hands that had dripped mercury all over his plate at the Minamata Sushi Bar, caught his head and threw it onto his shoulders, faster than I could blink but gentle as the greasy lapping waves below us. His eyes lit up, a blinding flash. His fist shot out, and went through a man.

Punch! Punch! Punch! Three more men with portholes in their chests.
Ping! Someone shot the Jet.
Kick! Kick! Kick! Three men on the ground holding their gushing groins.
Jet Jaguar! Jet Jaguar! The remaining man unceremoniously dropped over the rail. Inobera’s bagman made a break for it. Miki slugged him in the gut, then she did something horrible with her boots. She knelt down. Spots danced in my eyes. I felt like throwing up. Some of the consultants did. The rest drew a bead on the Jet, little popguns going ping ping ping.

And there, far in the distance, shimmering on the waterfront, I saw the line of Israeli PSFs, a hungry, gnashing mouth full of rotten khaki teeth, drooling great gushes of hate waiting for us to turn back. Their words and the screams of their equipment vibrated on the air like long range halitosis, a stinking cacophony.
There was another scent on the air, a familiar, cheesy smell.
The ocean roiled.
I don’t want to say what I’m feeling.
He’s here.
He’s here.
HE’S HERE.
Clucky burst forth, the mother of all floaters in God’s own toilet, Tokyo Bay. He had no head, he had a hundred heads, no eyes but the thousand boring into my soul. He had the remains of Inobera’s toadies nestled in his sucking folds, along with pieces and Pisces from every fish school and kelp bed from here to Hokkaido. Sheets of body oil and sea water poured off his flanks, and his skin quickly began to steam under the hot sun.
I screamed, but heard nothing. Clucky spoke. Nothing.
Wup wup wup wup.
Love love love love
The Israelis were rolling down the bridge like a new coat of asphalt, giving off waves of heat and hate. Miki was holding something.
Love
Wup wup wup wup.
Clucky and the PSF, Inobera and the Jet and Miki and shouting and gunfire, real gunfire, rata-tat-tat, and gasping, gurgling Clucky, and Jesus Christ Miki was shooting people, in this jagged soup of sensory overload there was something, something, creeping underneath it all wup wup wup something riding in Clucky’s baleful wake, drawn by the sweet anger of the Israelis and the sour sweat pouring out of all of us wup wup wup wup choppers. Choppers. Coming in now, Johnny Firecloud and his Dakota Sioux Solutions, launched from their gunboat base floating somewhere in the Bay’s International Zone, they grew and grew in our minds and before our eyes, until like Tolkien’s eagles they were upon us, in their surplus Dragonfly class choppers stamped on the side with “DSS” and under that what I swear to god was clipart from the old Atlanta Braves, Johnny come to save the day from the savage hordes with his very modern military outfit wup wup wup WUP WUP WUPWUPWUPWUP
BANG
BANG
BANG
FOOM
WUPWUPWUPWUP frozen we were all frozen, I saw a man in one of the choppers, the pilot, I saw his face through the windshield and I saw him, his life, and I knew him then and just as surely he knew me and all of us on the bridge, and just as surely then it must have pained him to murder his friends, as he launched a barrage of noise and fire at the Israelis, and his co-pilots in the other choppers let loose at Clucky as he heaved against the bridge pylons.
The choppers screamed, cried tears of fire. Clucky burned. Taking a wide loop around the bridge, they strafed their rival PSF with machine guns and phosphorous. The burning smoke turned the bridge into a hazy graveyard, even as below us sickening clouds fed on Clucky’s body. What I saw couldn’t be real, it was found footage, atrocity footage, something not from here, not from now, something fashionable grainy and unwatchable. I saw men dance in the flames, like puppets with asbestos strings. I saw them as they were, mere children of flesh, and then I didn’t see them anymore, because of the smoke and brimstone. I saw what they must have seen then, in my mind, the greasy inferno eating into your brain as you flail for your comrades, for your targets, for something to place you back in the chain, and you can’t even see the gun in your hands and you can’t feel it either, because all you can feel now is the fire, the fire is all you have left, and you feed it and you let it into your head and the last thing you see is the fire coming through your eyes, blowing out your brain with a blinding pulse of white pain cherry blossoms.
Cherry blossoms. This is what all those fucking hacks meant when they say cherry blossoms.
Another flash. The Jet, staggering, gaping. His eyes a beacon in this smoky limbo, following each chopper as it spat its payload, then whirling around for the next, and back to Inobera, cowering on the pavement, and then back around to nothing. I couldn’t see Miki, and I couldn’t turn around, because then I’d miss what was in front of me. I might have screamed his name.
Choppers coming around, a final volley, and Clucky rolled, rolled, rolled under the waves, leaving a bloody bull’s-eye slick in his wake.
Wup wup wup. Wind, the smoke banished by the furies. Johnny and his boys were landing, right on the bridge. Their rotors dragged a burning stench under my nose. I knew damn well what it was.
Johnny jumping out, coming over. He shouted above the rotors. “Where’re the chips?”
Chips?
“Chips?”
“The data chips, who has ‘em?”
Why?
Wup wup. Wup wup.
“Our client needs the chips.”
Wup wup wup. Who? Wup.
“I said, our client wants the chips!”
Client? Client. Patron.
“I don’t know who has them. I – don’t know.”
Lie. I could feel them under my jacket. The Jet’s jacket? Or was Miki wearing that one? Whose jacket? It was mine.
Inobera ran, towards the virgin forest of twisted bodies and charred flesh that had sprouted between us and the mainland. You could say Johnny had a green thumb for that kind of thing, but people don’t stay green for long in Johnny’s outfit. A dozen guns snapped up, but Johnny waved they stay.
Inobera ran, a thousand miles in a hundred yards, to the cremated dead zone. His feet kicked up ash among the corpses. Johnny raised his own gun, a nasty black metal gremlin.
Inobera ran, and dodged, among the bodies and the dead hulking machines.
The choppers whined, like Cerberus on his lead.
You poor stupid bastard Johnny’s gun must’ve broken, it shook and snapped and – crack crack crack! Down the road, an ashen figure disintegrated in a puff. Inobera kept running. Crack crack! Johnny’s bullets raised tiny footsteps alongside Inobera’s own, manic micro spirits on an intercept course. Inobera dove for cover, only as it crumbled under Johnny’s fusillade. His n¥1,000,000 suit covered in abattoir ashes, his hair flecked with the stuff of the stars, he flailed in the dust, scrabbled and crawled

Crack!

Crack!!

“Jack. Go see if he has ‘em.”
Jack ran. I could’ve saved him the trip.
“You guys wanna ride back?”
The Jet was still locked in a loop. Miki was by the edge of the bridge, manically reloading, everyone else locked out.
I answered. “Who are you doing this for?”
“What do you care?” Johnny stepped up into the chopper. “Just be glad we’re here.”
The whirly birds were shrieking now, screaming to get back into the air.
“You coming?”
I waited.
Exactly one minute passed, then Johnny put his thumb up. A signal for the pilots.
The choppers whined again, slid off the bridge and wobbled out into the air. Ninety-nine knights of the air. Their bloodlust sated, they cut leisurely figures against the far city skyline. Wupwupwupwup. Everyone’s a super hero, everyone’s a Captain Kirk.
I’d been clutching the chips for so long I no longer felt them. They left marks in my skin. I took them out of the bag and tossed them over the rail, one by one. Love, love, love.
Kenny’s flock moved among the ashes, communing. Sharing their love for the damned children. They took nothing, but carried plenty. One of them bent down to Inobera, came up with his tie. His fucking tie.
I stared there awhile, until Miki and the Jet came over.
Love love
LOVE
#70
Post rating: ~

animedad posted:
theres a bookstore in lincoln square (i think? along lincoln at least) that has a coffee shop and also serves booze. it's a pretty sterile area tho



i think i heard about this place, whats it called again?

#71
Post rating: ~
let me kno in this thread if u wanna see a copy of mah second novel... its title is fuck and destroy
#72
Post rating: ~

getfiscal posted:
"How have you been, honey?"

"ASSHOLE."

She wasn't swearing, really. It's an old agency joke. It stands for our current mission: Area Studies, Situational History Ongoing, Language Education. You learn your region - for us it was Islamic world desk. You build your credible background - we build an online and world history as Muslims and dissidents. Language education - I'm taking Turkish, she was working on her colloquial Arabic.

I nodded to the webcam and then looked over to the dossier on the desk. We were supposed to go over the identities of the suspects we were tracking through our web forums. What was there to say? It wasn't a priority mission, the three main threats seemed absorbed in fantasies of becoming writers. Tara would inevitably write up the mundane details in flowery language to make it sound like we were building a case, but we weren't.

"Todd, I've been too sick to get to class. Will Langley get on my case?"

"No."

She knew as much herself. After years of training, arranging an intra-agency marriage that was passably loving and functional, and Langley prepared to back an unusual full decade of ASSHOLE for them both, they aren't going to sweat small deviations. Her handler would complain, but nothing would ever reach her file. She could drop out of school and she'd still be kept on. No need to lose an asset.

She leaned in after a few sneezes.

"I'm worried about getfiscal going back to wddp.org."

"Confirmed?"

"Yep."

"I'll say something to him."

"If we lose the trail on him then we'll have to shift over to new suspects."

"We can always lean on ASSHOLE."

"You don't write the reports. I do. They get nasty if we don't tease them with something. Getfiscal is good material - foreign national, psychiatric record, known violent ideations, radical politics."

"He stays in his room all day. He's a hermit."

"It's political. Don't say 'hermit', say 'dangerous loner.'"

Something about what she said didn't seem right. In retrospect, that's when I should have asked her to ditch the agency and fuck off to some boring city to build a family. Just one in a series of escalating regrets.



ahahaha yessssss

#73
penitent
Post rating: ~

babyfinland posted:
lol you and every other CW student in the world thinks theyre soo much better than all the noob losersi n their class. stop drugtaking



im right

#74
penitent
Post rating: ~
impper im reading ur thing now and uh. its uh. narrative. i remember you talking about Drift but lol
#75
penitent
Post rating: ~
impper that fucking owns, its awesome. are all ur protagonists called john tho. and have you kept all the stuff actually about kobe & nietzsche or got rid of them. like i think the idea of narrative intertwining with polemic & philosophy is really cool. ur not goign to like this but...... pynchonesque
#76
Post rating: ~
in what way is pynchon polemical?
#77
Post rating: ~

deadken posted:
impper that fucking owns, its awesome. are all ur protagonists called john tho. and have you kept all the stuff actually about kobe & nietzsche or got rid of them. like i think the idea of narrative intertwining with polemic & philosophy is really cool. ur not goign to like this but...... pynchonesque



protagonist of my first novel is john, villainous craven secondary character in my 2nd novel is called john, the first person narrator in this one is called john, though my plan right now is for milos to conquer the narrative, though i'm thinking not to do that anymore. the kobe & nietzsche stuff is still in there - my tentative plan right now is to bookend the novel with that stuff and rearrange it a little, corresponding basically to theory & kobechat = taking speed

#78
Post rating: ~

Impper posted:

animedad posted:
theres a bookstore in lincoln square (i think? along lincoln at least) that has a coffee shop and also serves booze. it's a pretty sterile area tho

i think i heard about this place, whats it called again?


the book cellar

#79
penitent
Post rating: ~

germanjoey posted:
in what way is pynchon polemical?



hes not i mean the interlinking/juxtaposition of various styles & genres

#80
penitent
Post rating: ~
i just wrote a 2000 word stream of consciousness from the perspective of the unrepentant thief at golgotha. what the fuck am i doing i have essays to write