[Revision] Process V

Shift to past tense, omniscient narrator: allows the story to unfold immediately. No need for the non-action, the internal thought processes, & expository frivolity.
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Exploit your cuts. If it seems unnecessary, it probably is.
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The emotional deadness doesn’t work. It serves no purpose other than to deaden. Show the character’s emotional suppression, not deadness.
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How much of your language merely repeates or restates for no other reason than to repeat or restate?
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Narrative events (also known as "plot" or "storyline") must come in a particular order. Sequence. Chapters; sections; paragraphs; sentences; words. Is each word the correct word for the moment?
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An apt demonstration of your first point: the flashback: "Curt remembers the first time dad put a litter of kittens out of their misery"...Omniscient narrator can get to the point.
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An old-fashioned character is not likely to make contact by telephone. A letter makes for poor fiction unless appropriately executed. Put it in scene, in person.
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Can it go in another scene? If so, move it. If not, cut it. Forget 20%. Cut 30%, 50% if you can. The world will not cease its motion, the oceans will not dry up.
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Consider butterfly plates; a stinging bird. Consider getting dizzy.
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Consider one of the last lines in Joy Williams’s story Taking Care: "The house is clean and orderly. For days he has restricted himself to only one part of the house so that his clutter will be minimal." This is wonderful writing advice.

Flow-stoppage

A guiding idea: BOUNDARIES, LIMITS, RESTRAINTS.
Brick wall Pine thicket Body of water Canyon, gorge Security door A young child An heirloom Tracking bracelet or anklet A blizzard Flames, an inferno Exhaustion, lack of sleep, physical overexertion, worked too hard Dehydration A reef A cliff Banishment, expulsion (from a place, a town, an organization, a peer group) Lack of money Rules of a game Another person’s point of view Disguise, costume The dark Solitude Aloneness Fear Unwillingness Refusal (to do something) Hospitalization Out of contact, unreachable A magic circle Locks, deadbolts Race, ethnicity, culture, language A thing unknown to you Handcuffs, shackles, restraining bar, leg irons, gibbet, iron maiden Skin Smoke Highway traffic A moving train Held hostage Forgetfulness Allergic reaction Senility Phobias Deep embarrassment Paralysis Chronic pain Fasting Conditions applied to a contract Contractual obligations Duties, honor, codes of conduct Razor wire An electrified fence Family pressure (to take an action / not take an action) Height, weight, sex, body shape, body image, eye color, hair color A shield wall Phalanx A vast desert An incurable disease or degeneration Lack of faith Skepticism Armor Kevlar Gravity
[dirty chocolate snow]

disinterested

On hiatus. What awaits? A story about a former prostitute from East Germany, hard-boiled eggs, a retired diabetic Air Force Colonel, and a woman with cancer about a breath away from death.

Auf wiedersehen. Ich muss schreiben.

excessive at times

Too much writing, too much writing, way too much writing. Satire one could dream about, here. Of particular delight is "Rediscovering the Full Grammatical Sentence."

There are an infinite number of ways . . .

More things in life ought to be made of Play-Doh. If you disagree, then you are wrong. Look at these tools! They are made to resemble octopus arms. They cut, they roll, they impress patterns in the soft clay. Unfortunately, once a multicolored amalgation of different Play-Dohs has been created, the colors are impossible to separate.

Three-dimensional shapes are both a challenge and a delight! Imagine a green Stonehenge. Imagine a purple cityscape, complete with cellular towers. Imagine neon-blue palm trees on a dinosaur-infested beach.

And, in case you missed seeing it, here is the snow.

Jimmy-Brains

Lack of sleep. Sleeplessness. Wakefulness, restlessness, jimmy-brains. Sometimes known as Restless Muse Syndrome, or RMS. A condition in which the writer (or other artist) stays up and awake many hours into the night, well beyond any reasonable or healthy bedtime, in order to further develop a work-in-progress, or to read. Not quite insomnia, but neither is it a stubbornness, like that of a child who thinks he’s going to miss something. Symptoms of RMS float in an ether between two extremes. Creation, composition, intuition, and most other cognitive functions remain active and focused during periods of intense RMS activity.

Buy This Book Here

There is a hardback copy of Sherman Alexie's Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven at the Salvation Army Thrift Store in Mankato. I encourage someone to go and buy it. I hope someone buys it.

How does one store nothing?

Of all the items on the "Year in Review" of the Harper's magazine website, these are perhaps at once the most absurd and the most fascinating:

"New York researchers used carbon nanotubes to create the darkest material known to man. Two teams of physicists, one in Calgary and the other in Tokyo, successfully stored nothing within a gas in the form of squeezed vacuum composed of uncertainty."

I wish I could get away with that kind of abstraction.

Neue Jahr

Crappy Old Year, Happy New Year.