Russian @ MindSay

this week has been a week of me being a total failure. i'm getting everything done, but i have NO motivation whatsoever. even my independent study, which is the nicest part of my academic workload this semester, has become a little bit annoying. which has nothing to do with the subject matter, my advisor, or my abilities- i just have no motivation to do anything. freaking senioritis.

i went home this past weekend to hang out with the fam for easter weekend. it was pretty nice, dad made a nice dinner and we had polish easter at my aunt's. this may sound weird but i fucking love eastern european food. archil, the guy who led my trip in georgia, said the two worst things in the world are British food and Belgian women but Russian food came close. i disagree because i mostly love Russian food, with the exception of the mystery meat and the one time there was glass in our pizza. my brother was home for some internety-worky things (two things i fail at understanding) so i saw him as well. watched little miss sunshine again, which is a pretty good movie though i think probably pretty overrated. though steve carrell is, as usual, awesome.

ugh. school. martyna and i are going to see rjd2 with her cousin pawel (known him since sophomore year- an INSANE kid) and a bunch of his friends on sunday. there's a bunch of sweet music coming through the valley in the next month- rjd2 at pearl street, spoon at pearl street, and ben folds & talib kweli (and ok go but i don't care about them) at umass' spring concert (our spring concert sucks- hellogoodbye, feh). also having a russian party at susanna pavlovna's house on saturday and going out for sushi with alicia, val and a friend of alicia's on friday (i think). and then lee and amanda are coming to visit the next weekend, so freaking excited. i still have to figure out where to take them to eat though. probably thai gardens in noho. then the weekend after that- georgia reunion at williams. omg so excited. i have chacha and it is going to disappear. sweet.

oh, and yeah, peace corps stuff going on but i'm going to try and not talk about it until i know stuff is for sure. but it would be awesome.

ugh, really wish the people next door would stop smoking pot on the porch. the wind blows it directly into my room and then my room stinks of pot smoke and then i get irritated. grr.

ok. time to stop being a snot and complaining. five more weeks of school.

Every artist has a certain style.  Van Gogh's paintings look strikingly different from Monet's.  It's easy to spot a Kevin Smith film in comparison to one by François Truffaut.  John Grisham has a different writing style than does John Irving.  Every artist - authors, even big-time bestsellers like Grisham, included - need to find their certain style so that they can stand out from amongst the ever-increasing crowd.  

Ernest Hemingway writes in short sentences.  He often breaks up sentences.  Puts long thoughts into short phrases.  Combines ideas.  He's a big fan of the periods.  Uses them all the time.  Must have worn out the key on his typewriter while his comma key was barely ever pressed.

Tolstoy is different; in fact, almost all the Russians writers, Dostoevsky being perhaps the most famous, are different.  They prefer long, flowing, intricate sentences; broken up by pauses, by stops, but not by actual breaks: Not finite periods that seem to bring the thought to its full conclusion, almost as if they can't commit, as if they refuse to end the sentence, because then they won't be able to get the next one started: They need their momentum to continue or their creativity will be completely drained.  

Cormac McCarthy's most critically lauded work, Blood Meridian or the Evening Redness in the West, is a combination.  He used short sentences.  But he's also very frugal with his commas and often builds long sentences made of many seemingly random thoughts and he piles them all into one sentence and combines actions with descriptions and often mixes in beautifully written paintings of nature and includes unique metaphors like comparing the sun resting on the horizon to a huge phallus or someone's murder to the horrific nature of war itself.  He'll cram anything into a sentence - like a group of schoolboys creating the most disgusting combination of food for a friend is eat for five bucks - as long as he doesn't have to use a comma.    

Scott Smith's latest page-turner The Ruins is something entirely different, existing in an odd sort of limbo between past and present tense, using commas to work almost as periods, melding many thoughts and actions together, keeping the verbs as "ing's" so that they seem fluid, always moving, always forcing the reader's eye to the right until the last word is read, ending with one deep, black, triumphant period, signifying the satisfying confusion.

These are all examples of a writer's style, and sometimes that style is dependant on the book.  Lisey's Story, for instance, is Stephen King's latest work.  And as he is trying to be more literary in it, the language is more appropriate for that tone.  The New York Times called it Joycean (as in James Joyce), which is a far cry from his preceding novel before that, Cell, about horrible zombie slaughter with gore serving as a substitute for prose. 

Take my novels as another for instance - all three are different.  The first takes on a purposely silly detective story tone, reading like a film noir spoof.  My second is narrated in the first person by an advertising copywriter who was taught to write in short sentences with quick paragraphs, and therefore does so in his story.  My third is supposed to echo two types of Shakespearean plays, switching from a sad romantic comedy in the first half to a terrible tale of violence in the second, and is written in an appropriately poetic manner.  Sure, my particular style of writing still sneaks its way out of all three of these books, but they stand on their own as well.

One of the best pieces of advice I can give aspiring authors is to write as much as possible, as often as possible, until they find their own style.  It exists somewhere.  It's almost certain that when you first start you're going to find yourself borrowing from other authors, maybe some of the ones mentioned in this post, and using their style to make you feel like you are a real writer, like your books are real books because they sound like published authors' real books.  But you don't want to mimic other writers.  You don't want to copy what already exists - you can never do it better than the original, no offense.  So find your own voice.  Use your own style.  Let your words flow out of you.  

You don't want to end up as an impressionist novelty act in Reno; you want your own original spectacle in Vegas.  

I've been meaning to correct some information that I wrote about the Russian Restaurant ages ago here on the blog. When we first arrived here, I thought that the Russians was run by a Chinese family. They seemed like family. Well it turns out that they were not a family but a business - a manager and waitresses. A few months ago, new management took over the restaurant and our favorite staff were replaced by a new manager, new waitresses and new chefs. The food continues to be as greasy as ever, with some really good stuff and some really strange stuff. We still manage to eat here way more than is good for any North American cholesterol level.

The menu has increased to include all kinds of Western, Russian and Chinese dishes, and they are pretty good at taking requests, too. The new staff still caters to the Russian pilots as they all speak Russian. We are working on improving their English. Also, it seems that the restaurant has a name - Li Zi. It will always be "the Russians" to us, however.

Here are some photos taken at a going away party for one of the Spanish Contingent members. (There were 6 Spaniards here and now we are down to 4!)

The new welcoming sign outside:


The going away party:


The waitresses and the chef:


The worst thing on sale at the Russians - Vile, cheap Russian vodka. Anyone who drinks this ends up in a mighty mess the next day. Really bad stuff, so we call it the "Anti-vodka." The Russian pilots drink it like water!


If you have any problems seeing the above photos, just visit my Flickr site to have a look at all my photos. These can be found under the set "Food & Restaurants."

August 19^th

I am tired of writing after I have written 2 messy letters.

“Fuck” is really an all-powerful word. However, I like “shit” and “shoot” better. Haha, I know many people hate Americans but like the word “fuck” such as my Russian friends. They hate Americans and English very much, but I heard they spoke the word “fuck” more than once.