State of the Theodore

Posted by Theodore Maestranzi on Dec 18, 2016 in Blog Posts | 0 comments

It has been a long time since I updated the blog section of the website.  There are some contributing factors to this, but I’ve always maintained that the blog part of the website is the last priority when it comes to my writing.  As such, I’ve been focusing on revisions of existing manuscripts, reading, writing short fiction, research, and prepping the next major manuscript.  My tendentious (golfer and tennis elbow) is still plaguing me (writing eight hours a day at work and then writing when I get home is hampering the healing process) but it is getting better.  I have begun doing exercises to strengthen these tendons which is giving me decent relief.  But, sitting down and cranking away on a manuscript is still difficult – though short fiction is possible (I’ve written four new long form short stories over the last two months).

However, I feel that I need to do a stint of blog posts.  So, there should be a significant amount coming out over the next couple of weeks.  These are ideas I’ve been jotting down and wanted to focus on.  Also, I will be updating the section “My Journey to Writing” either today or next weekend – it is severely outdated.  Then, at the beginning of the new year, I will begin work on Manuscript 8 which will be a long format novel with intertwining ideas.  Also, Journey to God has been heavily revised over the last month.  The goal is to finish these revisions and submit a query to an agent I would love to work with because of her personality.  Sorry for the lack of updates!

Small Questions: Making Sausage

Posted by Theodore Maestranzi on Sep 30, 2016 in Blog Posts, Small Questions | 0 comments

It is time for another exciting installment of small questions.  Specifically, let’s discuss the packaging of sausages. Now I’ve seen sausage being made, and when it comes out of the machine, it differs from how it looks when you purchase it.  For example, when you look at the sausage that you buy from a major distributor, all the sausages in the package are curved.  So, why are the sausages curved?  Is this the natural state of the pig intestines (casings) and the sausage eventually bends to this basic structure or is something else at play?

In this case, I think I have the answer – marketing.  If the sausages were straight, the package would be smaller.  If one of the competitors had a package with the same amount of meat in it, but the sausages were curved, the package would have to be bigger to accommodate the different form.  Thus, an illusion is created.  Your eye sees something larger and you assume you get more for the same price, but you could read the packages and know that they contain the same amount of food.  Who knows, I could be wrong.

As always, Theodore asking the tough questions.

How I Manipulate Myself

Posted by Theodore Maestranzi on Sep 27, 2016 in Blog Posts | 0 comments

My arms are killing me, so, I haven’t written new fiction in two weeks.  A little bit ago, I talked about how I wrote three short stories in a week.  I’ve been editing and revising my work since I can’t write for extended periods of time.  However, I found it fascinating how I manipulate myself in order to write certain feelings.  I had to do this heavily for one of the pieces I wrote and there are two things I will do in order to achieve the feelings necessary to write a character.

The first one is simple, I think about the situation that I’ve put a character in and then I become that character.  I flood myself with the emotions.  So, if a character loses a loved one, I think of someone I love, close my eyes, and imagine they are dead.  I run through the interactions I would make with others and how I would behave.  I drive myself to actually crying, and then, I write.  My mind is back to what it was before the exercise, that way I can write, but I have created a pool of emotions to drag into my piece.

The second way is more of a high level overview.  If I am going to write a sad piece, I don’t need the emotions to be there, but I need the text to be representative of sadness.  This is done through vocabulary choices and other techniques, but I begin the process before I even start writing.  During the initial phases, I pull an acoustic album and play it.  I will find albums that have the “vibe” needed to imbue me with the necessary tone.  Then, I will start writing.  After about twenty minutes, the needle will retract and I will be left in silence.  I won’t notice the lack of music, but I will carry those tracks through me as I keep writing.  Then, after I take a break, I turn it back on so I can get back into the right mindset.  It allows me to take breaks but never lose the tone of my pieces.

I’m sure I manipulate myself in other ways, but those are two ways I consciously modify my mind’s state.

A Week of Productivity

Posted by Theodore Maestranzi on Sep 11, 2016 in Blog Posts, Short Story | 0 comments

Over the last seven days, I’ve written three short stories that comes to a total of roughly 15,000 words.  Some of these have working titles, but the three pieces are: Two Brains ~7,000 words, Filling Gaps 3,399 exactly (it is for a competition that only allows 3,400 words), and Multiplying Secrets ~5,000 words.  All three are different than my traditional short fiction, due to the fact that I applied my manuscript writing style to them.  This means, each one was heavily outlined, had a specific flow, and had research behind it.  A traditional short story for me was a way to workout different mechanisms, technique, and narration to better my manuscripts.  After four years of writing short stories with their goal of being experimentation, I have decided to apply what I’ve learned to the next batch and see what I can get published.  All three are strong and have been sent out to trusted sources for review.  One, Two Brains, is actually in the universe of my some of my manuscripts and is mostly prepped to be sent to a magazine.  The other two are still going through the “chute” to be reviewed, commented on, and edited.

Variety in Consumption

Posted by Theodore Maestranzi on Aug 31, 2016 in Philosophical Diatribe | 0 comments

Technology has exploded in my life time.  I went from playing an NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) as a child to being able to know about obscure issues in foreign lands.  My family in Italy can now participate in my life with three button clicks.  We are growing more connected every day and that is a good thing.  However, with this renaissance of communication in our era, there are some troubling issues.

The main one is the lack of diversity in our consumption.  When it comes to information, we have entered into a positive feedback loop.  Each click, each like, and every time we click next on a slideshow, we move further into a stagnant worldview.  Even if you read ten articles from ten different websites, you are probably consuming the same information structured slightly different.  The reason is simple, in order to make money with free content, you must generate analytics to show the advertisers that their website is providing their ads with sufficient viewership.

Which means, if you are on a social media website like Facebook, and it is your portal into the internet, they know what you like and are likely to click on.  They have your demographic information, what posts you linger on the most (may not click but where you stopped scrolling), which ones you click, and because you can block content from your newsfeed, what you don’t enjoy reading.  With that information, they are able to generate a personalized advertisement string with articles, products, and pictures that would allow you to become more dependent on them.  Like a drug, you type “f-a-c [enter]” into the address the second the browser loads.

Even if your portal into the world isn’t through social media, the odds are you have certain websites you enjoy visiting.  Perhaps these are institutions that exist in print and/or are trustworthy, each time you go to that website and read through an entire article, you provide them valuable data.  Each time you click a link, if the website is well designed, they will know what article you read, where you stopped reading or if you read the whole article, and how much time you spent on that page.  If the website isn’t very well designed, they will provide you with a [Read More] button, and the second you press that, they know you continued to read (a more cost effective solution).  Same thing happens with the slide shows you keep clicking in order to read the next blurb or see the next picture.  But I digressed, the important thing is that each webpage has some structure to provide analytics to the business in order to make decisions.

This decision making structure is what concerns me the most (not the data collection) and is the nugget of this philosophical diatribe.  When an analytics report is placed in front of a committee, manager, or editor, they look at it and have a difficult decision to make.  In order to generate income for their business, they need to sell advertisements (very few are willing to pay for a subscription in this day and age).  At this point, the person sees that articles focusing on topic 1 are viewed more by their readership, while articles on topic 2 are less viewed.  When it comes time to allocate resources (money, people, travel, all of the things needed to generate a story) they have to decide how to split up what they have available to them.  Depending on pressure, ethics, and desires, the decision will be tough, but often it will be to allocate more to items like topic 1.  Which means, we end up with a consolidated set of information on that website.  Now, I know the decision is not as easy as I am portraying it but this is a philosophical diatribe and not a thesis.

Now, I know I am being all doom and gloom, but someone once told me to offer a solution to the problems I see, and I try to do just that.  However, by showing you the beginnings of this issue, I assume you can come to your own constructive conclusion.  As for how I solved my consolidation of information, I moved to print and subscription based content and buy books with cash without a membership card.

By having magazines, newspapers, and other formats delivered to my door, I have cut off the analytics that come from a website.  Each day, week, or month, content arrives at my doorstep and the editors/managers/advertisers only know I am willing to keep paying for the information they produce.  They don’t know which articles I skip, what fiction I chose to read, or what advertising structure works best to grab my eye.  All they know is that I keep subscribing so they must be doing something right, and too keep me, they shouldn’t change their scope of work.  So get back into physical paper, let your eyes rest from the warm glow of the LCD panel, pay for the hard work of others, and enjoy an article without having to worry that you are being spied on.

Let it Breath – Manuscript Seven

Posted by Theodore Maestranzi on Aug 30, 2016 in Manuscripts | 0 comments

Manuscript seven, the one I had discussed in a previous post, will now become manuscript eight.  This change happened because of my process.  When I finish a manuscript, I tend to focus my energy on short fiction while I’m outlining the newest novel.  While researching, I hit a few snags in my timeline because interviews with experts were being pushed further and further back.  At the time, I was slightly perturbed about having to postpone the project because of other people’s schedules, but I am happy I did because the insight I gleamed will lead to a much better novel.

While I was waiting, I began work on a short story.  This was supposed to be a 2,300 word short story so it could be submitted to a specific magazine, but I chose an idea with such a large scope that I ended up blowing past the threshold.  By the time I noticed, I was at eight thousand words.  Now the piece is at sixteen thousand and I know it will end up somewhere between 24,000 and 30,000 words – which makes it a novella.

Looking back on my notes, I realize that this idea was already too large based on my original outlines.  I was over confident and tried to smoosh (that’s the technical term) the piece into a box it would overfill.  So I did what I do when I write, I let it breath… and boy did it take in a giant breath.

My philosophy towards writing has always been the same.  A story has a mind of its own, to a certain degree, and it will tell you what is important as you work on it.  As the writer, I have the difficult job of forcing the piece into a box or letting it grow under careful guidance like a master gardener; I shape it but let it grow at its own pace.  If I had stopped the piece, I would have something that was half baked, and I don’t believe in limiting my work if it will impact the final product.

So, now I have a new manuscript.  And to be honest, when I realized how long it was going to be, I groaned and let out: “Fuck… it’s going to be a novella”.  Why the cursing?  Simple, novellas don’t sell, no one wants to represent them as a first publication, and they tend to just sit on your computer and grow dusty (Ashley Pepin’s Mistake) is a great example of this phenomenon.  But, I like this story and I will bring it into the world, because I write for me and the story.  Who knows, I may end up posting it as a serialized piece on this website so you all can read some of my long form work.  Until then, I need to finish it.  I predict that will happen in the next two weeks if my middle finger heals, and the carpel tunnel and tendentious decides to calm down for a weekend or two.

My Middle Finger has an Unlucky Miasma

Posted by Theodore Maestranzi on Aug 27, 2016 in Blog Posts | 0 comments

My middle finger has been the subject of a tendon injury, a razor blade which cut the same tendon, and now, a new injury has appeared.  While with friends at an annual slip and slide party, a rouge inflatable obstacle course took mobility from my middle finger.  There was a section where you climb over a hill with a rope.  As I climbed with everything I had, the rope wrapped itself around my finger without my knowledge.  Once I cleared the obstacle I dove, and while I glided to freedom, I was yanked back as the rope cinched and crushed my finger.  As my finger slowly turns into a bratwurst, all I can hope for is that I can write tomorrow so I can put some distance on my projects.  Each hour it turns more and more purple as blood pools into the area.  Since I could type with a splint on my finger, I imagine I can write with an ever enlarging sausage.