Dream Journal #1

Before I forget. Just had a dream that a bunch of us were hanging out with Dave Chappelle (I think) and he was telling us about this health problem he has. Then that problem kicks in, hard, and he dies. Just as we're standing over his dead body, perplexed, some of his family comes in, including a very large, very menacing man. For some unknown reason, my side draws guns in panic, making us look very guilty. Then we run, knowing that this family of Dave is going to try to kill us. We split up and I go and hide among the pool party (don't ask why there's a pool party....it's a dream).

While there, I meet this random girl who says she always wanted to have kids but she wants to be able to run first (she's extremely overweight). I give her the profound advice that you don't need to be able to run to have kids. She ponders on this revelation. Then my pursuers find me. I try to explain to them what had really happened, but they inform me they have already voted to stab me in my kidney with a pencil. I get infuriated and tell them I can prove we didn't kill Dave Chappelle because we had recorded some of our outing beforehand and on some of the tape he talks about this health problem. I proceed to yank the pencils out of their hands. They agree to go and watch the video with me.

I wake here with a weird initial feeling that I need to go back to sleep and finish this 'dream' so they won't come after me in future dreams. Welcome to my mind.

I'm going to start posting some of the dreams that stick out to me. Maybe they will become inspiration for future stories. Who knows, maybe I'll start analyzing them (I invite any reader to as well). I also hear that writing them down right after helps one master the art of lucid dreaming. Eh, we'll see.

-Justin C. Key

Why You Don't Talk To Strangers

A Poem by Justin C. Key

They met on Sunday’s wife.

A Saturday—she wore black,

A color of mourning, none other than that of the cat

Ran over in the street. She’d gone to try

To save its life. Time was against her, death to cut

The feline’s string. They met under the next sun.

They first kissed with the background of the setting sun

On the balcony of The Sailor’s Wife,

A restaurant with salmon so freshly cut.

And when the day turned in to black

His feelings for her, he had to try

To say. But in the end they just kissed. Tongues went to the cat

They first fought about the cat

That he bought for her to bring some sun

In to her life and try

To relieve her guilt from that day. His brother’s wife

Agreed to help. No black,

He said. Only white could make the cut.

A month later she slipped a cut

To her finger, startled by the playful cat.

So much blood, the sink went black

He rushed to her and held her wound up to the sun

As tender as if she were his wife.

That night she asked ‘will you love me.’ He said I’ll try.

Marriage wasn’t long after his try

But tries aren’t good enough, strings of anger cut

By any little thing done by his wife

His true love was just the cat

His eyes the darkest under the sun

So cold at noon, like coals of black

That June her first eye went black

That July she stopped tears to try

To be a good spouse for August’s sun

But September came and sanity was cut

And October’s Halloween found a hanged cat

By November she knew she was Chucky’s wife

Her body is all charred with black, for she chose to be his wife

In the end he had tried to try, to bury her out of love with the cat

But it was as if the sun boiled his brain, and like this he began to cut.

The Best Job In the World

Remember way back in the beginning of 2009 there was a slight buzz over this job that paid $100k for 6-months of enjoying the Great Barrier Reef, trying out free spa services, and basically sitting on your ass all day? Oh, and feeding the fish was one of the grueling responsibilities, too. Apparently Australia's tourism industry was suffering and they came up with the idea of paying someone a ridiculous amount of money to be pampered, enjoy the high life, and keep up a blog that would ideally increase interest in visiting that continent that we love to call a country, and vice versa.

Naturally, I jumped on the opportunity.

I had just spent three months in Australia as part of Stanford's overseas study programs. It was one of the best experiences of my life--all 22 years and 4 months of it. Along with 47 of my peers, I traveled all up and down the Australian East Coast, from Stradbroke Island to Brisbane to Cairns back down to Heron Island on the Great Barrier Reef and then to Sidney. Hands down, our time on Heron Island was the most memorable. Sure, we still had class regularly (every morning at 8 am to be exact), but our days still consisted of independent morning snorkels, mid-day volleyball with the professors, evening tanning sessions on the beach, and the occasional night snorkel (those were fun, if not a bit eerie).

We spent a total of two weeks at Heron and I imagined that my experience with The Best Job in the World (aka: Island Reef Job) would be quite similar, plus 5.5 months and minus 47 peers and 5 professors. To apply, all you had to do was submit a 60 second video (not a second more) telling why you are the man (or woman, in my case it was the former, so please: no misogyny accusations) for the job. Piece of cake, right? Wrong. In my defense, I have no video editing experience and did all of this in one night, and I think I did pretty well, considering. But some of the people who applied must work for Pixar, I swear.

My mother told me about the job, coincidentally, right after I had stumbled upon it myself. It had been posted on Yahoo!, so I knew there would be a lot of contenders. I would have started on it earlier, but that time-sucking leech of a burden you may know as college was well under way. In fact, I think the deadline was right around mid-terms. So, as things like this usually do, the time kept ticking by and ticking by and soon I was in danger of missing the deadline. So I dedicated a weekend, locked myself in one of the classroom buildings with my computer, a rented camera, and some (limited) food. The plan was to come up with a powerpoint on myself and do a presentation (on myself) in a comical, in-your-face sort of way, and film it. I had done something like this before in Australia (Blubber Love Academy) with good enough result. The presentation, as you'll see in the video, I was pretty proud of but wish I had used an HD-camera so that all the little details would shine through. In the end, my hope was that whoever was viewing these videos would first be intrigued by my charisma and overall presentation and then on subsequent views be able to unravel more from the video, like a colorful ball of yarn with a present in the middle.

I shot it myself using a tripod and basically went through the whole presentation multiple times from multiple angles. The editing was the hardest part by far. They were pretty serious about the 60 second limit and I remember getting it down to 80 seconds and not knowing how I would compress anymore. It's interesting because the fast-paced on-crack nature of the final result is because I went over it many times deleting almost all the spaces in between. So there really is no time of me doing nothing. I forget exactly how I got down to 60 seconds, but I kept chipping away over and over until it meet the criteria.

I finished the video about 12 hours before the upload deadline. Then guess what happened? It wouldn't upload. The servers were being flooded. The worst part was that I'd have to wait about 20 minutes of it acting like it was uploading just to see the error screen at the end. During this time, I read FAQ posts on the site that said, despite the technical difficulties, videos that did not make it up by the deadline would not be considered, no exceptions. It was a bad 12 hours. I was already sleep-deprived and fell asleep a few times beside the computer. For about 6 or so hours it wouldn't upload and I was really beginning to think that, after all of that, I just wouldn't be able to do it. Finally, it randomly went through.

But my worries weren't over.

The FAQ also made it clear that the time limit was to be strictly enforced. Any videos that were over 60.00 seconds were disqualified. The scary part about this was that the site recognized that some video programs would record a second or more difference from what they were using in a video's length but, for fairness, they had to measure everyone's under the same standards. In other words, I could have a program that said my video is 59 seconds, but if the program the judges are using says it's actually 61 seconds, it's disqualified. So, even after mine uploaded, I was fearful of the dreaded rejection email.

In the end, I received an email saying that my upload had gone through successfully. I could tell you in detail what happened after that, but this post is about the creative process and obviously I'm not chilling somewhere in Australia right now, so you can guess the outcome. Long story short, my video wasn't short-listed as part of the 50 that viewers would vote on. Nevertheless, here is the video for your viewing pleasure...and hopefully I never run for office.

-Justin C. Key

Cross-Country Trip: Day 1, Part 1: The Drive to Chiago

We set off at midnight. I'd tried to get an ample amount of rest beforehand, but that didn't go too well. Still, on top of the one hour of napping, I had spent 2 hours laying down with my eyes closed, so maybe that would count for something? My car was already packed and all that was left to do was to say my goodbye's--see-you-later's as my grandma would have preferred. This part wasn't as hard as you may expect, considering I had left home for school in California 4 years before. In my eyes, that was when I 'moved out' and this past summer was just me visiting home again. Either way, my mother was there to see me off.

I've always been bad with directions. This little fact combined with a week old license and a car that had been in my possession for the same amount of time ensured that I'd get nowhere without a GPS. That day I had gone out and got one of the TomTom's. I set it up meticulously and then went on my way. I had never driven at night alone before, so I tried to pretend TomTom was that side-seat driver. All was going well until I took the wrong exit en route to the airport to pick up Johanna. Of course, it quickly re-calibrated and told me which way to go, but it felt like it was taking me in circles for a long time after that. Seems I had spent 10 minutes trying to get back to a mile before the exit I had wrongly taken. Johanna's flight was delayed, so it all worked out anyway.

Johanna drove the first leg. It had been her idea to start off early so that we could get to Chicago in the afternoon and spend the rest of the day there. She'll probably be mad that I told you all this, but she got a speeding ticket within the first hour of the trip. She was shocked to discover that the speed limit had been 55 instead of 65. Needless to say, she drove 5 miles under the rest of the way, but it was the first and last ticket of our journey, for both of us.

At 900 or so miles, the drive from DC to Chicago is about 13 hours, give or take a gas station and breakfast stop. The first few hours of driving in the dark was pretty uneventful, but a smooth ride going at 50 mph. Around sunrise, it started getting light outside (I promise I'm not slow for that statement) and we stopped for some breakfast at Denny's. It would be my turn to drive next so, naturally, I had about 3 cups of coffee: I was only going off of two hours of car-sleep.

While at the diner, we met a cute middle-aged-making-their-way-to-elderly couple who were also traveling to Chicago. When we told them we were doing cross-country, they said that they had before as well and had taken almost the same path we were destined upon. It was a nice little conversation, knowing that you weren't the only crazies on the open road, at 6 am no doubt. The breakfast was good, too. Honestly, I forgot what I had, but I remember that it was good.

While I drove, Johanna took it upon herself to take pictures to chronicle our journey. I tried making it so that these pictures are beside eachother, but that didn't work. If anyone knows how to, please leave a comment.

And, I swear, we came across two of these set-ups along the way, about 2-4 hours apart! From the gas station, to the Hardees, to how the huge bathroom was set-up inside (that was the freaky, I-must-be-in-the-Matrix part), these two locations were IDENTICAL. PS: Ignore the date on these photos, that's just a result of me not fixing the settings on my camera.

Soon, as heavy fatigue and road-grumpiness was starting to set in, we began to see signs of the big city. And this is where part 1 of day 1 ends and part 2 will commence.

Cross-Country Trip: Introduction

A couple weeks ago, just under 20 days after getting my driver's license, I finally set out to move to California. I decided to drive for a couple of reasons: I had just gotten my first car and the shipping costs would be ridiculous and I thought that a cross-country would be a good way to get used to driving. I felt that I needed to learn--and learn fast--since the goal is to live in LA....and I've heard LA driving ain't no joke. I must admit, I was pretty apprehensive about the trip. Just try to put yourself in the shoes of a 22-year-old who'd just finished college, had never sat behind a wheel prior to two months ago, and had 3,200 miles of unadulterated road ahead of him with the heavy burden/worry of not crashing the car that's supposed to last you the next few-several years (oh, and let's not forget the chance of dying part). Scary, huh?

I set off Thursday night/Friday morning at midnight from Washington, DC with my girlfriend. The itinerary took us to Chicago to Mt. Rushmore to Yellowstone to the Bay Area over a span of four days. I want to spend a blog post for each day--pictures and all--because I think it is deserving of such. Tomorrow will be the first, chronicling the overnight drive to the windy city and a great, if not tiring, all-day stay. This post is just a place-holder and a motivation for me to get these posts in sooner than later, so check back tomorrow!

Misery by Stephen King - Review

Am I twisted if I finish a book like this and then think: wow, that was a fun ride! Some might say that I am, but I just like to think of it as recognizing a brilliant creative mind when I see one. Throughout, this novel was classic King, with all the twists, bloody details, and character development expected from the master. It was also interesting to read this after having watched the movie in the past. I thought the Annie in that was a psycopath, but King's original character takes the insanity cake, licks off all the icing, and then spits it back out before serving it to her guests. I don't know if I have ever encountered a crazier character, written or acted, than Annie Wilkes.

King decided to present this story through the perspective of a writer, something he has done in other novels (The Shining, The Dark Half, Lisey's Story, etc) with great outcomes. Misery is no different. Throughout the novel, King explores what it means to be a writer, from dealing with motivations to writer's block to pushing past the slush and the frustration to break free into the land of the wonderful. He does this through Paul Sheldon, a famous author of the Misery books, a romance series based in pre-colonial times. He owes his fame to these books, but he is also trying to escape them and write that novel to become known as a more 'serious' author. After completing the first draft of this savior novel, he takes it upon himself to celebrate and the next thing he knows he is drugged and in a lifetime of pain in the home of Annie Wilkes: he had been in a near-fatal accident on a snowy, windy road in the dead of winter. By chance, luck, or some strange fate, Annie had been the one to find him. And Annie is his biggest fan. And Annie is crazier than a pitbull with hot sauce on its nuts.

The rest of the novel focuses on Annie and Paul's interactions. We slowly, but surely, see her psychotic nature unfold as she first becomes furious at Paul for killing Misery Chastain at the end of the last book in the series that just came out and later forces Paul to burn his new manuscript and write Misery's Return in its place. I'm not going to give away the details of her grand displays of dementia, but King does a great job of creating a desperate and bone-chilling environment for the duration of the reader's stay.

This novel only contains two main characters and one setting. And even in that one setting (Annie's house), we are mostly limited to one bedroom. This allows a greater focus on the development of these two characters. We learn what makes Paul Sheldon tick as a writer an, in turn, some insight into the mind of King as well. One thing that stuck out to me was Paul's recurring question of Can You? He uses this as motivation to get past his writer's block, to tell himself that he can create worlds and characters that people can relate to. He has a lot of time to think in this book--about life, mortality, writing, and the f'ed up situation he's found himself in--and this is one of his answers to his own infamous question:

"Can I? Yeah. You bet I can. There's a million things in this world I can't do. Couldn't hit a curveball, even back in high school. Can't fix a leaky faucet. Can't roller skate or make a F-chord on the guitar that sounds like anything but shit. I have tried twice to be married and couldn't do it either time. But if you want me to take you away, to scare you or involve you or make you cry or grin, yeah. I can. I can bring it to you and keep bringing it until you holler uncle. I am able. I can."

In conclusion, Misery is a great ride. Even if not a horror fan, anyone who has any interesting in writing should try to stomach the grotesque and the terror for some damn good commentary on what it means not only to thrive in this art but to live it to its fullest.

Three Day Novel - Metro84

Wow!

That was my first response.

Total and utter exhaustion.

That was my second.

Surprisingly, though, I couldn't sleep right after. Despite multiple times in those 72 hours where I'd be typing at a sluggish, zombie pace one second and dreaming about God knows what the next, I just could not sleep once it was all said and done. Part of that is most likely attributed to the pure fact that it is always easier for me to fall asleep when my goal is to complete some other task (like reading or writing or schoolwork--but let's never speak of that latter again: those days are over) than when I am actually ready and willing to enter slumberland. And even after a 3-day marathon of typing, thinking, and wishing that the time would go by faster but dreading just that because the story wasn't anywhere near being done yet, the adrenaline of finishing made it hard for me to take what I had been craving for so long when I drew all the curtains, flicked off all the lights, and curled up under the sheets when midnight finally came..

On top of that, I just couldn't stop thinking of the story.

Let me backtrack a little so that I won't lose you. There's this contest (3DayNovel.com) that has been going on for thirty years or so that challenges authors to write a full novel in 72-hours. You can plan all you want beforehand, make an outline, meditate, go on a journey around the world for inspiration, as long as the actual writing is done within the 72 hour time frame. How do they hold people to this little detail? Technically, they can't. They don't have anything to go on besides people's words that the manuscripts submitted were written following the rules listed on their site. Of course, they would be able to tell the difference between something written marathon-style over the course of a weekend and something that someone has been working on for the last three years. They encourage that contestants submit their work right after they are done, typos and all: it's what they expect.

The winner (announced every January after the September deadline) gets their book published (no worries, the book is edited professionally after it is picked) while the two runner ups get cash prizes. While I am not naive enough to bank on this contest as my ticket to fame, the contest had special appeal to me because of some of the limiting factors of my current work. Both of my first two novels are about 150k words in length and both may suffer from over-description (although this term is very opinionated...what may be over-description to some may be just right for others and, even still, too bland for those special people out there) at times. While there are published works out there that display these same characteristics and published authors that live by them, as an individual seeking first-time publication, these can be limiting. I saw this contest as a chance to focus on the story, get out all of my thoughts in a short amount of time, and potentially create something that is shorter, more stream-lined, and, ultimately, more appealing to publishers. In other words, even if I don't win the contest, I'd have created something that I could use towards future publication.

And, of course, I could now say that I've written three full novels.

I didn't create an outline beforehand. In fact, I didn't think about the story much at all prior to sitting down at the chair that would be torturing my hind quarters for the next three days. About a day or so before I asked a couple of friends if they could go through my short-story tweets and see which ones could be potentially expanded to something longer. People gave me a few ideas and I pondered over a few, but not much more.

I ended up using this idea that I've been wanting to do for a couple months now. Monday, June 22, 2009, my mother and me were on the D.C. metro, going to see the movie 'Up,' when the train broke down in the tunnel. We were there for maybe an hour or so and I remember the metro attendants speed-walking up and down the aisles, in between train cars, and one time even going out into the tunnel (my mother said that she had never seen them do that before). Finally, we had to be pushed to the next platform by another train. Coincidentally, later that day the fatal train collision at Fort Totten occurred. It was unrelated to our train, but we were on our way back home when it happened.

While being stuck in that tunnel my imagination went wild. What if this were the cause, or that, or if this happened when he opened the door to the tunnel, or that person went crazy, etc, etc, etc. I knew a short-story had to come out of it. But I had other projects that I was working on and wanted to not half-ass it, so I put it aside.

This is the idea that stuck with me when I sat down for the 3-day-novel. It started off with a single father, Jake, and his nine-year-old son, Thomas, who barely make the train: they are going to see a movie, a Disney/Pixar collab, no less. From then I let my memory guide the first chapter of the story, incorporating how it sounded when the train stopped, or people's reactions, or how the urgency behind the attendants' strides made everyone uneasy. Then, as I expected (or maybe hoped is the better word), things started taking a life of its own. I wrote about one thousand words per hour and, with random 1/2 hour naps, eating, and small procrastinations, averaged about 10k words per 12 hours. In fact, soon it became my goal. At any upcoming noon or midnight I'd know that I had to press to complete that 10k. With my thousand word/hour rate, if it was 10 am and I had 38k words, then I knew I'd need the full two hours to complete my goal: the break would come after noon. In the same light, if I was at 39k, the next two hours could be a little more forgiving. I'd read that the average submission for the contest was about 100 pages, typed, double-spaced, 12 point Times New Roman font. Well, that's about 30-35k words, which is more a novella. I wanted something that I could also use outside of this contest, and I knew that after the story-arc was written and compeleted, fluffing it up for the sake of more words would just mess up the flow. So, despite the nagging feeling that the unusually length of my work might raise suspicions of its validity in the scope of the 72-hour contest, I stuck with my mid-daily goals when I saw that it was achievable.

After a while (and this part is really amazing), I felt less like I was writing a story and more like I was reading one. Or watching a really long movie, or watching a regular movie really slowly. I don't know exactly when, but at some point I was writing out of curiosity of what was going to happen next, rather than out of necessity to create, if that makes any sense. I always knew that the story would be some kind of horror and deal with some kind of 'evil' lurking in the tunnels, sparked by the attendant opening the doors (bred by the what ifs I experienced when it was actually happening), but it formed itself into a story about religious faith, judgment, and the personal struggle of a man (Jake) dealing with his failures in being a father and a husband. All of the other main characters also have their own demons to deal with.

The basic plot of the story is that a group of people are stuck on a train and all of a sudden find themselves at the mercy of some greater force that will judge them for their sins. And people do get judged. And people do die. Without giving too much away, I'd like to say that some of the judgment deaths were quite disturbing, but not as much as some of the sins that went with them. There is also a lot of questioning of religion and, while I'm no expert or scholar, I try to treat these in a fair way and utilize some of my own understanding of God from my own faith. In the end, I think the characters shone through and offer very real perspective and pasts. A lot of elements I took from my own life, whether from things I've experienced firsthand or have heard or have seen happen to other people. I even include a fictionalized version of myself and my mother on the train to pay a sort of homage to the situation the story sprang from.

I think one of the things I was surprised at the most was the lack of loss of motivation. I just kept typing and typing and typing. Sure, there were times when I just wanted to sleep, or when I was unsure about where to go next, but outside of the small breaks, I was always typing and the story just unrolled itself like a red carpet. I slept about a total of 8-10 hours during the whole ordeal and by the last 12-hour stretch, I was laying on the floor in front of my laptop, pecking away, in and out of sleep. When 10 came, though, I got my 'second-wind' (which might have been my fiftieth by then) and finished the story. It was a great feeling. There were some things that I had to rush a little bit or I felt could have used a little bit of fleshing out, but I had finished the story-arc. It had a beginning, middle, and an end--and damn good ones, if I may say so myself. The final word-count was around 58k and about 180 pages. I've mailed it in and everything and haven't even gone back for typos or plot-holes or anything. I plan to do that later, but for now, that's what they asked for and that's what they're going to get. Besides, I need any proof I have that I didn't cheat on the time-limit.

For about a day afterward, my mind still felt connected to the story. You ever watch a movie that shocked you or left some kind of impression (anyone remember the ending of The Departed? yea, something like that) and it's still on your mind in a hazy, floaty kind of way for a few hours afterward? That's what I experienced after finishing Metro84 (oh, btw, that's the name of the book). I'm sure it was highly exacerbated by my lack of sleep, but I felt a deep impression for some hours afterward. It's hard to explain, but it was weird. I also kind of missed the feeling as time (and sleep) helped it to slip away.

Needless to say, I am excited about the future. I am still working on my other two novels, but I think that Metro84 may be easier for publishers to swallow, especially for a newcomer like myself. I have to wait until the January results before seeking publication elsewhere (or else I would be disqualified), but after that, if I don't win I can do with the manuscript whatever I want. Would I do this contest again? Probably not next year. Maybe not ever. But I think I would use some modified version of it for my own creative adventure and to keep this writing thing lively and interesting.