Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, . . . Eighteen?!?

As many of you know, I also have a literary blog, The T. H. Weingarten Miscellany.  Almost from the start, I would post weekly installments of a book I had been thinking about for a long time.  In fact, I may have been near the age of the protagonist when I came up with the idea, if not younger.  Every few installments would make up a chapter.  Each one was basically a rough draft.  Originally, I thought I would revise them on the go, but that has yet to be the case.  For the last month or so, I haven't been posting new installments to the book.  Many weeks, I would have no installments.  Other times, I have posted my assignments from my graduate school fiction workshop class.  Technically, I had been writing the next chapter, seventeen; I just didn't post any installments.  Here's the thing.  One night, many years ago, I had this weird dream.  I was in a movie theater, which I never do in real life.  It was so hot and the movie was so dull, that I fell asleep.  Yes, I dreamed I was sleeping.  When I woke up, in the dream, I noticed that the audience was acting strangely.  Although the movie was fairly tame, the audience was treating it as 'adult.'  And the men and women were acting in a way many people would while watching such 'adult' material.  I was so disgusted, I stood up and said something that included the phrase 'getting your jollies off.'  I knew I had to include it in the book.  A major part of the plot would involve the main character's father having made movies, especially at home.  This dream would be perfect in establishing that fact.  It also meant I had to remove a scene where the main character would go on a date with a woman he just meets when getting to New York.  It wasn't working, especially after I gave him a younger brother to take care of. I just had to change one thing about the dream.  Instead of being a completely tame movie, I made it slightly risqué instead.  In doing so, I needed to include some sophomoric language, well-known to anyone who had ever been a teenage boy.  I was afraid to post the installments because of the language.  I hadn't even used the real words, just the first letter followed by an underscore the same length as the rest of the real word.  So instead of including the real chapter seventeen on the blog, Just posted a short synopsis of the movie's plot and the audience's reactions to it, including those of the main character.  Even that seemed somewhat mature, at least more mature than what I feel most others would think I write.  Still, it sets up many further plot points, as well as the climax.    Of course, the final product will include the full chapter.  I am just conflicted about showing it now.  I want people to see it, but maybe not just yet.  It is so graphic in what happens.  Not fully so, but more PG-13 than R, if barely.

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