Want Some Cake?
Of course you do. You want to bury your head in a giant pan of delicious frosting and sugary flour. You’re going to tear through each layer, gnawing and munching quickly away from sadness. Yes, cake brings happiness, but you know what doesn’t bring happiness – stupid phrases.
I am focusing my hatred on a simple phrase: Have your cake and eat it too. This is just a shit sentence. Think about it, everything is a progression of time, so when you say Have your cake, you mean you have your cake at that point, then when you say: eat it too – you obviously are going to eat it. Who buys cake and doesn’t eat it? The whole point of having cake is to eat it.
Now, what the people are looking for in this statement is to say you cannot both have the cake and also have eaten it. However, the above sentence doesn’t convey that point. It is a sloppy sentence and means nothing other than the basic reasons to get a cake, to eat it.
Therefore, in order to make us better people, I propose the following: To eat your cake and still have it. Yeah, it isn’t nearly as catchy but it actually makes sense. Theo out!
You’re Doing it Wrong – Activism
Everyone’s a critic… and no one does anything right… except for me (In this case, me as in whoever is speaking, not me: Theodore Maestranzi). I think that sentence sums up the bulk of humanity. It is grating to accept someone else’s viewpoint/design/project over your own. Our insides boil, our vision blurs, and a deep rumblings of regret bubble into our mind. We try to squash it, but we eventually end up questioning everything. Eventually, we will enter a state of despondency – if lucky – we will rise from that challenge and continue down our path after making valid corrections – more than likely – we will step away from that realm of life and never return. [click “Read More” for more delicious rant]
State of my Writing: Current Catalogue of Writing
My friend began a project over 200 days ago. His goal is to write a blog post a day about an album he has never listened to before. Which means, he has listened to over 200 albums and written over 200 blog posts this year alone. After he cleared that goal, I thought to myself: what are the number of projects I’ve completed. Fun fact, I haven’t posted up about some of my projects: the screen play I wrote with two of my friends (one being the person who is doing the album blog I mentioned above, we call ourselves the Three Idiots), and a podcast thing (my co-host is also the person who is writing the blog on albums, the occasional guest is the third idiot from the screenplay) we are building a backlog (we haven’t released any yet). So at the time, I have manuscripts, short stories, a podcast, and screenplay. Furthermore, I sometimes get down on myself because I have a lot of things that have been cooked but not sold (aka everything). So, today, I am taking this blog post to flaunt my output (some things are works in progress, and a lot of them are in a forever state of revisions but being submitted to places).
Below, the total amount of words sums to 627,957 sans the blog posts (all word counts taken at the point of writing this blog – manuscripts, short stories not on the website, and short stories on the website).
- Manuscripts in order of being written (Total Words – 491,666)
- Primo Capite and the Others – 121,903 Words
- Journey to God – 72,785 Words
- Tesla’s Travels – 72,183 Words
- BlackBox Enterprises – 64,171 Words
- Ashley Pépin’s Mistake (Novella) – 23,266 Words
- Bhor’s Bathos – 106,725 Words
- WT (working title) | Gaia’s Revenge (Novella) – 19,219 (ending pending – not complete)
- Unnamed Manuscript 8 – 11,414 Words (still in progress)
- Short Stories (Total Words – 136,291)
- Not on Website (Total Words – 64,290)
- Unnamed Short Story: Job Interview – 5,697 Words (still being written, may exceed 8,000 Words)
- Unnamed Short Story: AI Project – 5,137 Words (in revisions)
- Unnamed Short Story: The Store – 3,824 Words (submitted to literary magazine) (6/22/2017)
- Stephanie Bourbon’s Lament – 1,028 Words
- 1352 MPH – 2,750 Words (3/26/2017)
- WT (working title) 9A3C – 1,313 Words (3/8/2017)
- Suburban Radicalization – 10,042 Words (2/27/2017)
- Multiplying Secrets – 5,598 Words (10/23/2016)
- Two Brains – 7,634 Words (10/18/2016)
- Filling Gaps – 3,454 Words (10/9/2016)
- Purifying the Past (two versions) – 330 Words | 410 Words (7/31/2016)
- Lamentable Climax – 498 Words (7/31/2016)
- Cherries and Blueberries – 425 Words (7/31/2016)
- Morning Glory – 494 Words (7/26/2016)
- Extrinsic Entrapment – 515 Words (2/24/2016)
- It is all Piss in the End – 500 Words (2/9/2016)
- Regulars, Parties, and High Life – 500 Words (2/9/2016)
- Twenty Two Fifty – 491 Words (2/8/2016)
- Stuck in a Loop – 2,708 Words (1/29/2016)
- Adding Inventory – 2,987 Words (10/5/2015)
- Exciting Work – 2,280 Words (8/11/2015)
- Trappist – 5,675 Words (8/5/2015)
- On Website (Going through these for this project, the works here are unrecognizable compared to what I haven’t posted (Total Words – 72,001))
- Normal Fiction (Total Words – 65,160)
- Biases – 3,105 Words (4/14/2015)
- Oliver the Orc and the Search for the Perfect Beignet – 1,299 Words
- Franks Slipstream – 2,612 Words
- Better than a Ream of Paper – 2,730 Words
- Like Laika – 4,411 Words
- Precarious Air – 2,721 Words
- Relationships – 1,212 Words
- Solution – 1,894 Words
- Last Will and Testament – 1,975 Words
- Similarities – 2,204 Words
- Redirect – 2,091 Words
- House of Bourbon – 1,476 Words
- Time – 2,219 Words
- Love – 835 Words
- Another Day – 5,074 Words
- Hope – 3,723 Words
- Gopple – 3,864 Words
- The Bohr’s Protocol – 8,344 Words (inspired Tesla’s Travels and Bohr’s Bathos – though the writing doesn’t, and the plot drastically was modified during writing)
- Clouds of Fire – 1,129 Words (Chapter 1 of a failed manuscript)
- Love’s Warrior – 3,331 Words
- The Fantastic Mister Mittens – 3,706 Words
- Tis and Orange – 1,874 Words
- Proverbial White Whale – 3,331 Words (Best assumed date for completion: January 16, 2013 | First short story posted to website)
- Flash Fiction (Total Words – 6,841)
- Please, Don’t Recycle – 449 Words
- A Little Vanilla – 499 Words
- Family Matters – 482 Words
- Allure – 965 Words
- Two Snakes – 799 Words
- Medallion – 493 Words
- Dipper – 1,000 Words
- Carbonation – 464 Words
- Arm and I – 499 Words
- Drops in an Ocean – 440 Words
- Cookies – 751 Words
- Normal Fiction (Total Words – 65,160)
- Not on Website (Total Words – 64,290)
- Blog Post – 151 posts
- Podcasts – 16 Episodes at an hour an episode (3 book podcasts – Nueromancer, Wolf in White Van, and The Crying on Lot 49)
- Screen Play – Final pass in September when the Three Idiots ride again.
How Hate Dies – Maybe
I don’t know if capitalism will destroy hate, but I can hope that a weird dynamic that has sprung up within our version of capitalism that will force hate to die out – revenue. In previous posts I’ve railed against the new structure of using advertisements to build revenue for most technology companies. I hate these advertisements because I don’t think I should be subjected to a 15 second advertisement when I want to watch a 2 minute video… however, I am beginning to see an interesting twist. This culture has given the power for choosing web content to the companies that need to advertise – not the consumer (think, who pays the bills, that’s who chooses). But more on that, let’s focus on some assumptions I’ve made in the past. [click “Read More” to dive into the twisted world of revenue]
Let’s Talk… Wage Gap
A little while ago, I saw a picture someone had posted on social media and it said: Amount a man makes (it was a dollar bill) and then it said amount a woman makes (it was a bunch of change that when added up equaled a dollar). I shook my head and removed myself from the internet for awhile. When I came back, I saw a woman had posted a response about the meme not being funny – I was exuberant. Then the man responded: educate yourself followed by a WSJ (Wall Street Journal) opinion piece on why the difference in the wages existed; the piece was the classic argument: women take jobs in sectors that don’t pay as much. So, when I decided I would jump into the public forum, I knew I needed something that was from a source that would be reputable (and luckily I had a subscription to the WSJ, so I knew they had many non-opinion based pieces on the wage gap). I came across my weapon: an infographic built on census backed data which controlled for career path. By choosing a visualization based on census data, I removed the classic argument about choosing positions that pay less. (Check the infographic here: http://graphics.wsj.com/gender-pay-gap/ or click [Read More] for my analysis).
Meet Sparkles
I own a cat… I know I am the quintessential writer; I sit in my ivory tower spitting prose and petting my kitty. I do that sometimes, only when the tower is available, but I didn’t get a cat because of some arbitrary stereotype. In fact, I got a kitten because I wanted evolution’s best weapon living in my home. Yes, she is fuzzy and does goofy things, but I’ve watched her take bats down as they flew through my apartment. I’m not kidding, multiple times my cat has taken a bat out of the air and then proceeded to “play” with it for hours (I will discuss my bat problem at a different time). So this post isn’t about why cats are great, it is why my cat is great – click “Read More” to meet Sparkles.
Not a Poet – Hiatus on Some Haikus
I believe that my strength exists in writing novels. The format allows me to really spread my wings as a writer; I am a tangented person, so it is nice not having a limit – other than the story’s needs (I believe in the writer is a medium approach to aesthetics). But, I really enjoy the struggle of writing a haiku. It is the poetry form I choose because of my love for nature and the hardened structure surrounding it. My goal is to be a novelist, mostly because I tend to like writing novels more than writing short stories. However, I write short stories as a sort of experiment – testing the waters to prove that a theory I have works and I can apply it to a novel. Now, I have begun writing short fiction to get published so I can better my chances of finding an agent.
But that is too much about me and not why I am making this post… while cruising around the internet to find some magazines who were looking for some short fiction, I came across a magazine asking for haikus. Normally, I wouldn’t share my haikus because I don’t feel they are all that magical. But then I realized, why not? If someone else found beauty in them, then I should share them (this thought is what started my push to publish haikus on my website). The issue with my submitting my haikus to a magazine… I can’t publish them on the website until they are rejected (or accepted, stay positive… stay positive… stay positive). So, there are some really good ones (that I like) but I can’t share them with you until the submission is over – which means you are going to get the ones I don’t feel are superb. I believe I will be notified of my success or failure in July. If any are accepted, expect me to plug the magazine and then post the haiku three months later.
One of my Real Fears
My process for writing fiction is probably one of those things that other writers do but something I don’t know about. For me, I need to live in my universe/world before I can create it. I visualize everything and place myself there before I begin writing about it. My short fiction tends to suffer because I don’t perform this task in as much detail as I would for a novel. However, my novels are places I’ve lived in for many days, weeks, months, and some have even been there for years. Since I was a kid, I loved teleporting myself into a world of my own creation before bed. I would live there for some of my day and then rejoin those on Earth. It was a trick, I could disappear and do whatever I wanted. Yet, that ability, to vividly create something and believe you were there also has a downside. [Click “Read More” to go on a philosophical journey]
Produce, Produce, Produce – Lettuce not Discuss Vegetables
Something is wrong with me. My brother has made this abundantly clear – though his criticism is a joke – I’ve noticed that something is “off” when I compared myself to others. I’ve come to this conclusion after multiple walks and conversations with friends that I differ from these people in certain regards. I want to create… nay, I am driven to create. I don’t write to pay my bills (it is actually a drain on my finances), but rather, I write because I love to generate something from nothing. With each dash of the pen, stroke of my fingers, key that clacks, I take my mind and provide it to you. And through that process, something that was only available to me is now available to you.
I cannot remember which philosopher discussed the two ways people create (Maybe Maron (Jean-Luc) or Romanov but they seem too contemporary to be correct). The goal of the philosopher’s analysis was to highlight that human beings are driven to create a legacy (as I read it): biological creation (making new babies) and intellectual creation (books, art, business). The point is that humanity needs to create and we choose different ways to achieve those goals; I personally am driven to leave my legacy via fiction.
So I produce and produce, I avoid revisions and move to my next project quickly. In order to publish, I have been dumping a lot of time into revisions (my most hated activity, but one I am beginning to respect (makes what I’ve pulled out of my mind less messy for the non-Theodore reader)). Nonetheless, I wish I could just be set in a room and left to create new universes and worlds to ad nausea. I don’t feel the need to be in a relationship, but I do feel the need to be writing. I don’t know what it is, but I do know this is a garbage pile of a blog post. Perhaps, I will wrestle with understanding the people who don’t feel a compulsion to create something intellectual, but I see the way they look at me, and I know they wrestle with understanding how I don’t feel a compulsion to create something biological.
Guest Haiku – Matsuo Basho
viewing a mountain moon
rarely is it seen so clear
in dirty old Tokyo
~Matsuo Basho
Taken from Basho The Complete Haiku, translated by Jane Reichhold