Chad Hunter: April 2008

It is getting hot. Most people like it, but all it means to me is a reminder that summer is coming, how we rarely use the air conditioner, that every window in our condo faces the sun at 3pm in the afternoon and how easily my skin burns. Bummer.

It was great to see you guys this weekend. First and foremost, I would like to apologize for my temper on Friday. Living with Dad, it can get difficult to stay patient with him at times. I wish it were easier for me, but it isn't. I can actually count on my hand the number of times I've been significantly upset with him and said something about it within the last four years. I wish I wouldn't have let it get the best of me on Friday, but there's something about someone talking about me as if I'm not there that really boils my water. So, sorry about that. And as for the movie theater incident, sorry about that too. That was totally out of line and out of character. Aside from that, I hope you guys enjoyed your visit and had a safe flight home.

I'm really learning a lot from my creative writing class and I'm glad I enrolled in it. I've said this before, but writing a novel is the most arduous project I've ever attempted. It's like dumping five jigsaw puzzles out onto a table, flipping all the pieces upside-down "memory" style and trying to put them together all at once. It doesn't feel very productive, it wont make me any money, but I think about it every day and work on it little by little in hopes that someday soon it will be finished and I can be proud of it. And then I can tackle math or something more important.

Right now, I have the outline almost completely finished. I've been revising it for half a year or so trying to get it just right. Earlier this week I had the past-tense and present-tense narratives mapped out perfectly just the way I wanted them, until the next day when I had this totally amazing idea on adding a whole new twist to one of the chapters and then everything had to be revised again. I guess that's just a major factor in writing, all of the revisions and brainstorming one must do before starting or completing an acceptable work. I have brainstorms written everywhere, I've accumulated them up the wazoo. They're in between pages of my school binders, filled in journals, all over my whiteboard, about two dozen on my desktop alone and even one day i started writing them on the inside of my car door because i didn't have my notebook with me. It's been difficult figuring out where to start with them all but finishing the outline (the most basic, bare-bones parts of it) is definitely encouraging. When everything started coming together, it was enough to give me chills. It's really hard not to share with you too many of the ideas that I have or ask you what you think about certain characters, I want to keep it secret that way, if you read it, the story keeps it's momentum and velocity. But there is something I really need to ask you guys about, especially after what I've just found out about Dave Egger's sister, before I continue any further.

It's a dilemma I've been battling since I started working on this. The story is what someone might consider "creative nonfiction" as of right now. Basically, the main character is me, narrating a story about five years of his life within the present tense of three days. About eighty percent of the story is derived from things that actually happened within those five years and every character is based on someone who entered or left my life, even single fictional characters were sometimes derived from combining two or more similar living people. It would have been a memoir except for two key factors:
One, a memoir cannot be falsified in any shape or form. It takes a master writer to depict a living person to a T and an even more humble and introspective one to truly depict and disclose themselves for who they really are, including the very bad traits characteristic of most of us. Any dialog between characters would needed to have been recorded and documented verbatim in order for it to be admissible within the story's context. Some authors have fudged on these heavily (A Million Little Pieces) and others, I would assume, just fudged a little (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius). Either or, the outcomes have been nothing more than failure. AMLP was completely falsified and led people away from proven rehabilitative programs, and AHWSG, well, I already explained what happened there and despite it still being a success, I think he ultimately failed. It's a delicate subject, describing someone else and then marketing that description to an entire market of readers.
Two, my story just isn't that interesting, especially true-to-form in sequence. If you videotaped Malcom X's ENTIRE life and wrote a screenplay or book about every time he brushed his teeth or ate a bowl of cereal, it wouldn't have hit as hard. The premise behind writing my story is to elaborate on certain situations and years of my life that feel notable and significant and somehow tie them into answering the dramatic question I've chosen. An answer that justifies what makes me, me. As realistic as I would like this to be, it's very difficult to narrate five years, especially when the most significant parts happened out of order or too far apart from each other. So it will be fudged, there will be parts that didn't happen exactly as they should have or when they really happened, and the ending, as of right now, is completely false and I suspect, a little controversial. But after months and months of thought and reviewing my outlines, it finally feels solid the way I've written it. The question is, can it be appreciated written at the center of the spectrum? A spectrum spanning the range between complete fiction and absolute truth?

So I've begun changing names, changing streets, changing name brands. But the story still remains. The characters are still the people they're derived from. The things that happened, still happened. Some happened a little unlike they really happened, others happened exactly like they really happened. If that makes sense. But I want your opinions. Can you take someone's life, twist it a little and then call it a fictional story? Even if everyone knows the majority of it is based on truth?

As of right now, I will not be looking for a publisher. My friend railed me for it, about how it isn't fair to withhold it from people who might really enjoy it and take something from it. To me, it boils down to the same question I was asking myself after I read Bluebeard, whether or not an artist owns his/her own work after its completed and if they are obligated to release it. Well, this is a story based upon my life, including those of the few people close to me throughout it. I feel I'm doing a pretty accurate job of portraying it, and it's not my decision on letting everyone into it. It may not make much sense now, but I guarantee you that once you've read it, you will understand why it really doesn't matter if it's sold or not.

Here's something that might be fun. I have pretty much all of the character names. But Heidi and Daniel, if you feel up to it, pick your character names. It's been fun for me conjuring up lists of names for character's based on their personalities. A name truly has a definite impact on the reader's impression and I was wondering what names might fit your guys' personalities the best (minus your own).

Grand Theft Auto 4 comes out at midnight tonight at Walmart. And despite my xbox stopped working a week ago and Microsoft has yet to send me the prepaid postage to ship it back to them with, I feel like doing a little camping tonight :-) I guess I just got a kick out of camping the last time, I thought it was fun. Plus, videogames dont decrease in value if bought new, so I want to be one of the first to have this one too. Maybe I'll bring a notebook and an armchair and try and work on some dialog exercises while I wait. Oh, speaking of dialog, do you know how DIFFICULT it is to write believable and charming dialog between characters? Sure, using your character's word usage to further the plot is one thing, but I mean actually giving them character through their interactions is really something else. I have no idea how to make the reader love my protagonist.

REVIEW
Stranger Than Fiction
A-
I really enjoyed this movie. Will Ferrel's character was believable and more importantly, lovable. It had interesting CGI effects and the cinematography was excellent. The aspect of the movie that really took the cake for me was it's plot, and i think it was superbly written. Maybe it was just because I could relate to Will Farrel's character, or maybe i've been wondering about some of the topics brought up in the movie (the dramatic question, compromising the integrity of a work, etc), but watching this movie at the time i watched it really added to my enjoyment of it. Bravo Will Farrel, like Ben Affleck, you've made a single movie that's jettisoned you out of the turdburger bin, good for you.