Thursday 9 August 2012

Many months back ...

Good morning, afternoon, evening, night my internet friends.

It's been yonks since I've seen you — who would've thought that doing your honours year, moving house, and all the little things in life could be so big. Starting today I will endeavour to get back to you more often but for my recent absence I thought I'd give you a little present.

It's not overly easy to do this but I think it's better to than not. I know everyone goes about their writing their own way but we're always looking for new tricks to fit into our bag of writing goodies. For this reason I have decided to update once per week with a section of my thesis, starting today with the first draft of part one (it's a six part project). Yes, my writing is pretty damned terrible in this but I use the first draft to get the ideas down and to make sure that I am including everything I feel is necessary for the work.


I was going to put in an introduction to my piece, explaining the themes present in both capitalist dystopia (the first three parts) and communist dystopia (the last three parts) but this isn't about my thesis as such. This is about drafting, revision, editing — how we do what we do. For that reason here is the first (very rough) draft of part one of my piece which has the working title 'One plus one'. Over the coming weeks I will add the entirety of my first draft and my revisions. This way you can see what I do and how I do it. I will also add beneath the text the synopsis which I started with for this section to illustrate the link (or lack thereof) between the planning and execution of the work.

Part One - Quinn

Chapter One

    Your nose is itchy. Want to know how I know this? I know this because I just told you it was and because I told you this it has happened. It's the cause which is the effect. The neat little equation that needs no journey — it is its own end and its own beginning — Ouroborus.

    Another equation that contains its own result is this one:

                                             a x (tc/1,000)
                                            ———————  = x
                                            (pfe/100,000)

    In the everyday this means that age times training costs divided by one thousand is then divided by projected future earnings divided by one hundred thousand. Where x is greater than zero the result is conclusive: retirement. I have been subject to this equation my entire working life but I never gave it a thought. Not until it was turned on me.

    Things before that had grown into a loop. Since Marissa left (well, since she stayed I guess; she broke it off but kept the house) I was in a rut. I went to work, I dealt with customers crap (‘Lady, you took a bad photo. That’s not something I can help.’) and  I fulfilled my obligations to a dying industry. In fact we were all waiting for our retraining orders; no one used camera film anymore so no one needed developers. That was five days. Saturdays were poker night at Bobby’s. The other was Sunday afternoon with my daughter, Miranda.

    She’s the cherub Raphael painted on a good day. She’s warm, bright and full of good intentions. I’d take her to a park across town or to a movie. We’d sit together and watch people or characters do their things. She’d tell me about the life I no longer shared with her: ‘We have to do a project on our favourite animal but I can’t decide which one’s my favourite’ ‘You tell people your name is Blakewins but Mum calls you Quinn. Why?’ ‘Mum and Chris took me to see Disney on Ice.’ ‘I think I want to be a journalist. They get to go lots of places and tell people things. Either that or a hockey player’. These moments felt stolen and guilt pulled me from the side that said she’d be better off without me to the side that said that I should be as good a father as I could. She never stayed with me, she never even saw my flat. How could I take a bright gem and put her in the middle of all that? In the inner city the days were grey, washed of colour. The grey people pushed their way from the grey train stations to their grey office buildings, clutching coffee like a talisman against the smog and chaos. The nights, though, they were something to see. Brighter than day, louder than the sound of a clock at 4am to an insomniac; there was a fight on every corner, a hooker in every laneway and sirens rushing to revive partiers and free victims of drunken brawls. This was no place for Miranda, so I contented myself with her picture by my bed.

    Of course, nothing stays frozen and while Miranda was getting awkward about the subject of boys I was getting worse. I didn’t even know there was anything wrong at first. A headache that stayed for a couple of days, a blotch in my vision that I put down to the transition between bright shopfront and darkroom. Then the headaches and the blotches took up residence in me. I had just started to wonder if I should try to see the doctor down the street (or if I should save up to see one whose degree wasn’t from the Online University of Mexico) when life gave me the answer. What are the odds that the blotch would hide a stop sign? What are the chances that it was Sunday afternoon? Who would’ve thought that a man who drives by himself so often would be carrying his daughter when it happened? We were lucky; Miranda escaped with a cut on her neck from the seatbelt and a headache. I didn’t have a single injury. Marissa was furious. ‘How’d you miss a bloody stop sign?! How could you be so careless with Miranda in the car?! What if she had’ve been killed?!!’

Chapter Two

    From that time I saw Miranda only twice. Each time it was following a three-hour journey on two buses and a train to get to Marissa’s house. On the first occasion Marissa didn’t speak to me at all — she just opened the door and called Miranda out of her room. The second time was worse. The blotches were bigger now and I was having trouble at work. I was lucky that I had some friends on staff, so they covered for me for a little while but it couldn’t last forever. My half-yearly physical showed up what I already knew to be true; my vision was too far gone for me to work there. The doctor promised me he would make it clear in the paperwork that with treatment some of my sight would return but the company weren’t interested — they applied the formula and discovered that I was not economically sustainable. That’s what started it — when I told Marissa I couldn’t pay child-support that fortnight.

    ‘What are we supposed to do? I don’t earn enough to cope on my own. Chris is waiting on a promotion so we can all move in together. Isn’t it enough that you put her in danger? Now you won’t even help me provide for her. You never take her for nights so I can have some time to myself, you take her one afternoon a week and think you’re the best dad in the whole world. You’re not!’
    ‘You know I’d give you the money if I could. It’s not up to —‘
    ‘Yeah, here we go again. It wasn’t your fault when the christmas tree caught fire. It wasn’t your fault when you put in that stupidly beg cat-flap and we got robbed. It wasn’t your fault ever and now it’s still not your fault. Have I got that right?’
    ‘I’m being retired.’
    ‘You want me— You’re what?’
    ‘Retired. My hearing’s in six weeks. I’m so close to blind now that they won’t bother with trying to rehabilitate me.’
    ‘Fuck. I’m sorry. I— Shit. Shit!’
    ‘She knows about retirement, they cover it in economics at school. I’ll talk to her.’
    ‘We should both talk to her.’
    ‘Are you saying I can’t handle this? She’s my daughter! For fuck’s sake, Riss, it’s my problem and I’ll handle it.’
    ‘Your problem? It’s yours, hers and ours. You might be most affected but you’re not the only one who’s going to suffer from this.’
    ‘Yeah, nice one, Riss. All I heard was “You’re going blind and you’re going to be shipped off to the island but I need pocket money!”’
    ‘So because this means my daughter will have to learn to live on two-minute noodles and mince I’m selfish? Oh, and nice one on playing the blind card, Quinn, really nice.’
    ‘Don’t you EVER accuse me of using my blindness! D’you think I’m happy about it?! The fuck—‘
    ‘STOP!’ Miranda screamed from behind her mum’s legs. ‘Is it true? Are you going to the island?’
    ‘Mirry, I’ve got to go. I don’t have a choice.’ Quinn was holding himself together as though he were shards of glass that were too broken to fit together again.
    ‘Can I come and see you there?’
    ‘I’m sorry, Mirry. They don’t let people come to visit. You have to stay here with your mum,’ Quinn bit down ‘and Chris.’
    ‘But I wanna see you, too.’
    ‘I know, honey.’

Chapter Three

    There’s a couple of things I could tell you about what happened next but, to be honest, it’s hard to know where to begin. For one thing, being blind is a bitch. It’s hard to remember which part of the footpath has that crack in it, it’s damn near impossible to pour a coffee without burning yourself and porn without the vision is just a series of grunts that may as well be coming from a donkey.
    That’s not the worst of it. The worst is the way your place with your friends and family is taken from you. In a few short weeks I was no longer a father, an ex-husband, a buddy, a colleague. I had become ‘the blind guy’ and suddenly that was the only thing people saw in me. It was bad enough with people on the street but it was so much worse with my family. I would’ve degenerated slowly to hell, I would’ve welcomed the ferry to the island, if Felix hadn’t called.
    How to explain Felix? He’s my cousin but as we were both only-children we were more like brothers as kids. Despite this we really couldn’t be more different. I remember the photo that used to sit on my wall at home: I was the pudgy blonde kid with a goofy smile and a baby face who could make a computer do anything he wanted wheras, Felix with his big smile which combined with his blue eyes and wavy dark hair to make him into the man he is today. He’s a Casanova who’s got the fat wallet and the good college background to back it upF. Even when we were kids he could get anything he wanted — he once charmed a teacher out of giving the class tests for an entire year.
    The thing about Felix is his talk. Before the end of a fifteen minute phone call he had me convinced that I could stay on the mainland and provide for Miranda. His plan was simple; leave all of my assets to Miranda and go on the run. I probably wouldn’t be able to go back and see Miranda but at least she would have money and I wouldn’t end up on the island. Felix didn’t listen when I tried to tell him that a blind man going on the run sounded like a Monty Python sketch. He said he knew someone who could help me. He didn’t mention two things: that he’d been embezzling money from the corporation he worked for and that he was intending to run with me.

Synopsis:
Themes: Dehumanisation, Nature
Capitalist setting: I'd prefer giving Quinn a boss and a soul-sucking job. Perhaps something like a call centre. The money he makes there is barely enough to live on and he has to put in extra hours (unpaid) to be seen as promotion material. He lives alone - his ex-wife and child live in his old house and he visits them when he can. His place is a worn-down apartment in the outer-city - out enough so that he still has to factor in transport but close enough so that the rent is exorbitant. His area is industrial - smoggy and loud and ugly NATURE. He has little in the way of possessions as he is alone with a small income and provides child support (happily, I might add) to his wife. His small apartment is constantly having difficulties (water pipes freeze regularly, heating goes out, in fact, I think this is set in winter). He eats the same thing over and over because he never learned to cook anything (meat and three veg). He picks up his daughter every Sunday afternoon and takes her out somewhere cheap. They never go back to his place as he doesn't want her to see how he lives (despite the fact that she's only young and probably wouldn't get it).
His eyesight has already begun to go at the start of the story. Perhaps we see him poring over bills in the hope that he can afford to see an ophthalmologist (is that the right person?). He has a car accident with his daughter in the car with him. She needs some very basic treatment but the ex-wife doesn't want him to drive around with her anymore so he has to visit her at the ex-wife's house which is across town. As his eyesight continues to fail it gets to the point where he is fired because he cannot complete the tasks required of him. He is scheduled for 'retirement' under ‘the formula DEHUMANISATION.