words are dumb, and they arent
part of why my scrabble game has suffered this year is that i stopped studying when the battery in my laptop kicked the bucket. i used to study 100 Words a Day on my 1+ hour commute each way to work, learn 100 7s or 8s or 5s or whatever, go over them again on the way home, move onto the next set the following morning. its both an effort to improve my sloppy word knowledge and an exercise in focus and concentration, which, for me, has always been sorely lacking. just as there is sort of a time release factor with learning words - the studying benefits you in the longterm but not necessarily right away - there is sort of a halflife decomposition the other way. i slowly forget stuff. the mistakes i make in games these days almost exclusively involve missing words that I ALREADY KNEW but are no longer present in my immediate mind.
so i have vowed to study again, and i fire up the laptop on the Richmond train on monday morning, but instead of opening Zyzz i open a textedit doc and scribble:
Melanie stands amongst the rampoles, exhales amongst the wisps of smoke and the gathering fog, her long hair blown across her face by the sudden westerly winds. Barefoot in a white dress, a black leather coat draping over her shoulders. Her long red hair afire, ablaze like a red fire breathing, burning, spreading through the forest, scaling the hillside. It is this recurrent image that I have of her - alone, in silence, amid the aftermath - that dominates my landscapes of my mind. When I whisper her name, the syllables sound just slightly like the sound of the striking of a match.
where did that come from? i have no idea. i dont really care whether its "good" at this point or not, but whats more important is that, for the first time in years, i actually FEEL like creating, like writing, like crafting and telling a story.
scrabble came along to fill the void when the creative self died. it was a stopgap, a fill in. something to do. something to use to cope and to block out distractions in one of the saddest times of my life - a time filled with breakups, lost jobs, coming oh so close but missing out on book contracts and fellowships for which i'd already spent the money in my mind. it helped that i was naturally good at it, of course, but somewhere along the way that morphed into this 3-eyed monster (III - god, how many times did i draw that last weekend?) its shapeshifted and became yet another gauge by which i measure myself, another example of how i am obviously just not quite good enough.
well fuck that.
Stories all have to begin somewhere - even stories, such as this one, that end very, very badly. And trust me - this one will end badly. Of course it will be a disaster. You should expect it to be that way. Anticipate the disaster. Delight in the misery. Revel in the stench and the filth.
i've been writing this novel now on the BART train the last few days. the first thing i did today was wake up and start a new chapter. its going to be a summerlong project, and its way more important then learning the top 10,000 9s or whatever the fuck. i can always do that later. but this book needs to be written now. its been coming together in my mind now for days, weeks. years even. i have a schedule setup, a timeline, a shell that is in need of filling in. and it makes me feel alive inside, it blunts the effects of all of my recent life failings. it takes those failings and shifts them, repackages them as images and expressions on a page.
and all of these words i've learned over the years, in fact, are very helpful in this new endeavor. unlike some people, who view the words as just a string of letters that form acceptable plays, i love language and have always viewed the game as a way to increase my vocabulary. if i learn a cool word, i want to know what it means. damn, there are a lot of great verbs in English, verbs we never think to use, verbs that are WAY more expressive than 'to be' and 'to have.' as i scribble and scrawl, i find that studying for scrabble helped me more, over time, than i would have imagined was possible.
anyway, right now we need more scribbling and less studying. so this means i'm probably gonna suck when i play in tournaments, but at this point i dont really care. my heart wasnt in it last weekend, nor the weekend before. it needs to be a game again. it needs to be fun again, and its going to be. its going to be a pastime again, a pleasant day out. i was very serious about not playing The Soup memorial day weekend. i think i can handle it now. handle the emotions and the disappointments that will almost inevitably occur.
oh, i'll care in the moment, of course, because i HATE losing. but i find that the worst moments i have in scrabble, over time, become the funniest. seriously, the ABQ tournament is comedy gold. the Reno from hell is the gift that keeps on giving. and for someone like me, who delights in my heightened sense of the absurd, it wouldnt be any fun if i won all the time. well, winning would be fun, of course, but the muckups and the messups are just a little bit more interesting.
so i have vowed to study again, and i fire up the laptop on the Richmond train on monday morning, but instead of opening Zyzz i open a textedit doc and scribble:
Melanie stands amongst the rampoles, exhales amongst the wisps of smoke and the gathering fog, her long hair blown across her face by the sudden westerly winds. Barefoot in a white dress, a black leather coat draping over her shoulders. Her long red hair afire, ablaze like a red fire breathing, burning, spreading through the forest, scaling the hillside. It is this recurrent image that I have of her - alone, in silence, amid the aftermath - that dominates my landscapes of my mind. When I whisper her name, the syllables sound just slightly like the sound of the striking of a match.
where did that come from? i have no idea. i dont really care whether its "good" at this point or not, but whats more important is that, for the first time in years, i actually FEEL like creating, like writing, like crafting and telling a story.
scrabble came along to fill the void when the creative self died. it was a stopgap, a fill in. something to do. something to use to cope and to block out distractions in one of the saddest times of my life - a time filled with breakups, lost jobs, coming oh so close but missing out on book contracts and fellowships for which i'd already spent the money in my mind. it helped that i was naturally good at it, of course, but somewhere along the way that morphed into this 3-eyed monster (III - god, how many times did i draw that last weekend?) its shapeshifted and became yet another gauge by which i measure myself, another example of how i am obviously just not quite good enough.
well fuck that.
Stories all have to begin somewhere - even stories, such as this one, that end very, very badly. And trust me - this one will end badly. Of course it will be a disaster. You should expect it to be that way. Anticipate the disaster. Delight in the misery. Revel in the stench and the filth.
i've been writing this novel now on the BART train the last few days. the first thing i did today was wake up and start a new chapter. its going to be a summerlong project, and its way more important then learning the top 10,000 9s or whatever the fuck. i can always do that later. but this book needs to be written now. its been coming together in my mind now for days, weeks. years even. i have a schedule setup, a timeline, a shell that is in need of filling in. and it makes me feel alive inside, it blunts the effects of all of my recent life failings. it takes those failings and shifts them, repackages them as images and expressions on a page.
and all of these words i've learned over the years, in fact, are very helpful in this new endeavor. unlike some people, who view the words as just a string of letters that form acceptable plays, i love language and have always viewed the game as a way to increase my vocabulary. if i learn a cool word, i want to know what it means. damn, there are a lot of great verbs in English, verbs we never think to use, verbs that are WAY more expressive than 'to be' and 'to have.' as i scribble and scrawl, i find that studying for scrabble helped me more, over time, than i would have imagined was possible.
anyway, right now we need more scribbling and less studying. so this means i'm probably gonna suck when i play in tournaments, but at this point i dont really care. my heart wasnt in it last weekend, nor the weekend before. it needs to be a game again. it needs to be fun again, and its going to be. its going to be a pastime again, a pleasant day out. i was very serious about not playing The Soup memorial day weekend. i think i can handle it now. handle the emotions and the disappointments that will almost inevitably occur.
oh, i'll care in the moment, of course, because i HATE losing. but i find that the worst moments i have in scrabble, over time, become the funniest. seriously, the ABQ tournament is comedy gold. the Reno from hell is the gift that keeps on giving. and for someone like me, who delights in my heightened sense of the absurd, it wouldnt be any fun if i won all the time. well, winning would be fun, of course, but the muckups and the messups are just a little bit more interesting.