Hailey's Novel Diary – 3/28/17

The first step in Untitled 2017 Novel is research. This book will require some. Maybe a lot. It takes place in Los Angeles. I have been there, but I don't know the city backward and forward. The easiest way around that is to have a character that does not know the city. The stranger in a strange land trope is common for a reason. But I still have to know what I'm talking about.

Today, I looked up parks. Specifically, Griffith Park, Sepulveda Basin Recreation Area, Malibu Creek State Park, Santa Susana Pass State Historic Park and Stoney Point. I'm amazed by how much green space there is in Los Angeles. I can't say that they will all end up in the book, but at least one of them will play an important role.

Planet of the Apes
Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner
© 1968 20th Century Fox

M*A*S*H
CBS/20th Century Fox

Short Cuts
Directed by Robert Altman
© 1993 Fine Line Features

Hailey's Novel Diary – 3/27/17

Before I even face the blank page, I like to know what the story is about. I'm not Jack Kerouac. I can't just start typing random words and something comes out in the end. I want to know that I'm dealing with a complete story.

A woman walks into a grocery store and something happens.

That's not a story. You could easily get into a chapter or two and then get stuck.

A woman walks into a grocery store and finds a time portal in the wine aisle. She travels back in time, fixes the biggest mistakes of her life and becomes happy and successful. On a visit to her old home town, she stops into the local grocery store where she meets her former self, causing the universe to tear apart.

That could be a story. It does not sound like something I would write, but a science fiction writer could probably work with that.

Before I start typing, I want to know where the story goes and what happens. Does it have an ending and, more importantly, does it have a middle? Why does that thing happen? What were those people thinking? When she says this, does it mean that? I will not start until I can answer a few basic questions. I have written myself into corners before. I find that sort of thing annoying.

Hailey's Novel Diary – 3/26/17

More than a few people have asked me, “How do you write a book?” My standard reply is, “With a computer.”

I'm starting a new book. It's a novel, pure fiction, and I'm trying something new. Since I'm writing this book in a different way, I thought I would jot down a few notes about what I'm doing while I write it. That might sound highly egotistical, as if I think anyone cares about my writing process, but what about blogs, Facebook and Twitter is not egotistical? The whole point of this blog is for me to look back in the future on what I was thinking about in the past. There might come a day when I look back on this book and wonder what I was thinking.

I'm not doing it for posterity. I'm not expecting historians to pour over these words in two hundred years while analyzing one of the great works of world literature. I fully expect to be completely forgotten by then. Books can easily last a few centuries, but most are only remembered for a few years, if that. And no matter what happens with this book, I have no doubt that no one will have the faintest idea what a blog was 200 years from now.

I suppose a few caveats are in order. Since we are talking about a novel that has not yet been written, there is the very real possibility that it will never be completed. I try to finish what I start. That's one of those remnants of my upbringing. But sometimes you do something that maybe you should not have done. Some things were never meant to be finished.

Equally possible is that I will finish it, but it will never be published. There are a few people who can write absolutely anything and it is guaranteed to be published by someone somewhere. Those people have names you recognize. Even if you have never read any of their books, you have probably seen a movie based on one. I'm not one of those people. I'm not contractually guaranteed anything.

I could write a big chunk of the book and then change it. Maybe drastically. When you read the finished product, you never know what happened in between drafts. By documenting this book as it happens, I'm opening myself to a world of embarrassment. Fortunately, most of the world will never know that this blog exists. Anyone who reads both this blog and the novel, should it ever exist, might know how it all started out versus how it ended up. I don't have a problem with that.

The point of this little experiment is not to serialize the novel. I will probably not even talk much about the story. This is supposed to be a diary of sorts about the writing process. I can't say how successful it will be. I might be too busy to update it often enough, or I might just give up entirely. This is an experiment. It might be interesting, mildly amusing or completely pointless.

Let's see what happens.

Blugger

I tried to upload some videos from Disneyland. There seems to be some kind of bug with Blogger. It is definitely not the first time. As soon as Google bought them out, pictures became more difficult. It only makes sense that videos would also be a problem.

Sometimes the videos are up, sometimes they are not. Sometimes they play, sometimes they don't. I have no idea why they all have the Youtube stamp. None of them were uploaded to Youtube, unless Blogger uploads them to Youtube without my permission. I know Google wants everyone to use Google Chrome, but I'm not going to. It's like signing into a website with Facebook. If I have to join them or else, I will simply go somewhere else. It may be a small world, but it is a pretty big internet.

It's a small world after all

That it's time we're aware

There's so much that we share

Cinderella Carousel

Let the Storm Rage On

Six years after walking into the underground cast maze of Disneyland, I walked out for the last time.

I watched the park change a lot during those years. When I first arrived, there was no Toy Story Land, Grizzly Gulch or Mystic Point. With the expansions of Fantasyland and Tomorrowland, the park is bigger than it used to be, but still the smallest Disneyland in the world. In the next few years, Tomorrowland will get even bigger and there will be a Frozen Land.

I was there during the Celebration in the Air 5th anniversary and the Happily Ever After 10th anniversary. I watched four different parades and participated in one and a half. I watched the Disney in the Stars fireworks show become the Nightmare in the Sky for Halloween, as well as other dressing changes for Christmas, Halloween and Chinese New Year.

The biggest change to Tomorrowland was when it was remodeled into a Star Wars Tomorrowland, but oddly enough, the Star Tours ride was changed to an Iron Man ride. They will add more Marvel themes in the future, with an Ant Man ride replacing Buzz Lightyear, and some other Avengers ride in 2023.

Working at Disneyland was never meant to be a lifelong career. Most performers rarely work more than a year or two. Being a face character was always a temporary gig. I got too old to do it pretty fast. Fortunately, there were always plenty of stage shows, which also changed considerably over the years.

I met a lot of people working at Disneyland. Most came and went quickly. Some I already can't remember. A few are hard to forget. One became my roommate and best friend.

When you work at Disneyland, you are not allowed to talk about any behind the scenes details. Facebook and Twitter were specifically mentioned in my contract. They want to keep the illusion alive as much as possible. Talking to people who work at McDonald's can make you sick to your stomach. Talking to people who work at Disneyland can spoil some of the magic. Telling a child that Mickey is really a small Chinese woman in an itchy costume is like telling them that Santa only visits rich kids.

As a former cast member, I am now free to spill as many beans as I want. One friend told me that I should write a book about it. But there are already too many of those. I don't have any axe to grind or unique hook. I have nothing especially bad to say about the place and publishers don't want happy tails about a happy place. My experience was mostly positive and I'm sure I will go back to visit sooner or later.

The downside to quitting is that I lost that sweet free pass. Disneyland is very expensive.

Yonnies in the Wind

I'm back home. Just in time for the Lantern Festival. That is the official end of the New Year. The Lantern Festival does not really have any other significance, but is a great day to watch the sky for thousands of floating paper lanterns. I don't have any plans this year, but a few days after Lantern Festival is Valentine's Day. I have plans for that one.

Last Valentine's Day, I did absolutely nothing. My ex was long gone and there was no one new on the horizon. Valentine's Day can be cruel to single people, but living in China makes it easier. I don't know what the official statistics are, but it seems like there are a lot more single people here. Americans are more obsessed with being paired off. And also, in general, the Chinese are not especially romantic people. That will probably offend somebody, but just compare the poetry.


Butterflies in Love with Flowers
by Liu Yong

While I lean against the banister of a tall tower
The breeze gently blows
As I look into the distance
The end of Spring arouses melancholy in my mind
Surrounded by dewy grass at sunset
I wonder who is able to understand my longing
I would rather drink to intoxication
One should sing when one has wine in hand
But drinking to escape offers no reprieve
I do not mind that my clothes are getting looser
My lover is worthy of desire



i carry your heart with me
by ee cummings

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)


This year, I have someone to spend Valentine's Day with. I'm not ready to call him my boyfriend, but we are spending a lot of time together. He made reservations at some restaurant that he wants to keep secret, so I definitely have a date Tuesday night.

We also just got back from our first trip together. We did not actually go together. I went to Tel Aviv for a couple of weeks and he came for the last few days. That was also a surprise. Had I known he was coming, I could have gotten him a room at my hotel. He wanted to keep it a secret, so he had to stay at the Sheraton on the beach. That is a great location, but I thought the hotel looked like any other generic business hotel. One of the things I like about my hotel is that it has character. It never feels like walking into one of a million cogs in a giant corporation.

There are plenty of great things about Tel Aviv, but one of its virtues is how Mthandeni and I could walk down the Promenade hand in hand and absolutely no one stared at us. If you are a foreigner in China, people will stare at you. Mthandeni is stared at wherever he goes. It has nothing to do with whatever he might be doing or wearing at any given time and everything to do with how he looks nothing like a Chinese person. People stare at me often, but it is not as constant. Unless we are together. Then we can expect every single Chinese person who passes us on the street to stare. That sort of thing is not considered at all rude in Chinese culture. We have started to wave at people when they stare at us in restaurants. This only embarrasses them, which is strange. If you are not embarrassed to stare at someone, why would you be embarrassed when they notice you?

But I'm not knocking China. Everyone will stare, but absolutely no one will go beyond that. In parts of the United States, we could get shot. Or at least have horrible people say ugly things to us. In China, they do not hate us for how foreign we look. We are simply a curiosity.

In Tel Aviv, no one gives a shit. It might be the only city in the world where a man in a tallit and a man in a thawb can walk hand in hand making goo goo eyes at each other and no one would care. I vividly remember the first time I saw a demonstrably gay couple in Tel Aviv. I was shocked. Not because they were wearing short shorts and tank tops, which is not a good look for any man, but because no one else seemed to notice them. In China, they would have been the center of attention. In America, they would have been in danger.