Category Archives: writing

got gas?

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We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.
– Kenji Miyazawa, poet and story writer (1896-1933)

Personally, given this as the alternative, I’m not so much bothered by paying $3 a gallon. Yet this does remind me of a passage from Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott:

Writing is about learning to pay attention and to communicate what is going on. Now, if you ask me, what’s going on is that we’re all up to here in it, and probably the most important thing is that we not yell at one another. … “Ah! Stuck in the shit! And it’s your fault, you did this …” Writing involves seeing people suffer and, as Robert Stone once put it, finding some meaning therein. But you can’t to that if you’re not respectful.” [Bird by Bird, page 97.]

What a fine little book Bird by Bird is. I keep it handy all the time. It’s one of those books that serves as a sort of tuning fork for my creative world, and it’s in no way to blame for my stuttering, atonal FAIL. I’ve never been able to confirm the Stone quote, but it’s cool too.

In my experience, pain isn’t a good fuel. Recovery is, maybe. But pain is like a wildfire; it makes it’s own weather. It’s self-propelling, whether physical or psychic, because the stress of being in pain makes the pain worse. And the best path from pain back into recovering life is a good nights sleep, such as only comes when the pain subsides. That’s why the driving force of human advancement is as much pain relief as enlightenment, maybe more. But neither Miyazawa or Lamott are saying that pain itself is the creative groundwork. It’s the burning of it, the finding of meaning therein that serve the artist. Am I right?

Lamott goes on to call the writer, “a person who is standing apart, like the cheese in ‘The Farmer in the Dell” standing there alone but deciding to take a few notes. You’re outside, but you can see things up close through your binoculars.” Interesting. Compassionate detachment.

Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still

– Ash Wednesday

So the poem I posted earlier this evening, Shelter, is about compassion. It’s something to hope for, standing on a high place, because I do not hope to know.

surprise!

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I know, I haven’t been blogging much lately. It’s the time of year. I’m cocooning ruminating. Plus I’m trying to work on the novel when I have time. Plus I posted a poem the other day which met with unmitigated indifference, and that’s cool: maybe you guys are cocooning ruminating too, huh?

Here, you can haz surprised kitteh. No charges.

you okay?

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OK, so you’re an 8 year old boy, playing near a pond with your brother in the summertime. Climbing into a treehouse, you fall 7 or 8 feet onto dirt and leaves, landing on your back. You’re not seriously injured, just a few bruises and scratches, but you get the wind knocked out of you pretty good.

As you lie there, held by your uncle, he asks you how you’re doing.

Now, what I’m looking for is not a direct answer to the question, like “I’m alright,” or “I’m hurt,” but more of an exclamation. Here’s what I have in the draft:

        “Here, set up a little better,” Uncle Charlie said, and helped Bo sit so that Charlie’s right hand was supporting his back. “How you doing, little guy?”

        Bo said, “Son of a bitch.”

Any thoughts? Is this believable? What do you think the kid would say, assuming that he’s heard it all and the stress of the experience overcomes his inhibitions.

Leave suggestions in comments, please!

it’s hot

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No joke, kids. It’s about 90 degrees here today. I’ve got three fans running full blast, trying to move some air through the fort. Can’t wait for sundown.

I’m still working on the scene in which the two boys go swimming. It’s hard, difficult to find the words to describe the sensation of plunging into the water when you’re 11 years old. I feel like I could really use a nice glass of Merlot and a swimming pool, though not necessarily in that order. … Oh yeah, I don’t drink. Dang.

plunge

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I’m trying to write a scene in which a boy runs down a dock and jumps into a pond. Rather, I’m writing a scene in which the middle-aged narrator tries to remember what that feels like. I can’t think of a good way to do first hand research – which would otherwise be the best thing – so I’m really trying to remember what that’s like. I don’t really want to write a scene in which said narrator tries to recall said experience and fails miserably.

What in the world is that feeling, exactly?

a conversation

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I was just sitting here, thinking about my big project, and wondering what it might be like to talk to a ghost. I don’t mean the way they do it in movies and those ghost hunting TV shows. I mean, what if you could have a normal conversation – no howling medium, ectoplasmic interference or spooky ethereal music – with someone who is dead.

I guess it depends on whether you believe in ghosts. My Dad and I were checking out his TV, which is acting up, and Ghost Hunters happened to be on. He asked me if they ever catch any ghosts. I said it depends on whether you accept their premises. He said no, it’s a yes or no question. I said baloney, it’s totally subjective; if you don’t believe that ghosts exist, it’s logically impossible to catch evidence of one. If you do … well, I guess you’ll need to ask someone who does, and who has watched the show.

I have watched the show, many times, but remain a profound skeptic. Sure, they present evidence of paranormal phenomena, and it’s fun. Makes for an hour of TV distinguishable from Law & Order and House. But even if we concede that their evidence is real and empirically sound, we’re still stuck.

Let’s say I believe in paranormal phenomena. ESP, telekinesis, etc. Which is more likely, that a camera or recorder caught an event in which the physical world was manipulated by a dead person’s spirit, or that those instruments were manipulated by the unconscious – maybe deliberate – psychic abilities of the “investigators?” I mean it seems reasonable to suppose that living people have greater paranormal powers than dead ones, at least in this world.

In my novel, my character Marty claims he and his house are haunted, but that he does not believe in ghosts. He says that he is haunted by memories, and that memories have life and reality and power beyond the limitations of his recollection. Memories abide, he says, a priori, apart from direct human experience and remembering. Thus it’s possible to be haunted by someone you never met, an event outside your own life. It is a twist on the old adage that someone doesn’t die so long as he is remembered. Marty says memory lives on, even if it is forgotten. The world remembers, love remembers, in spite of us who still live. And in that way, we don’t die.

Now, if I could just get Marty’s memories to sit down with him for a cup of joe and a chat about orchard-keeping, we’ve got ourselves a story.

zoom in docs

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I like Google Docs. I use it pretty often for notes, lists, etc. I don’t use it much for serious writing because it lacks many of the advanced features of software like Microsoft Word. And usually, when I upload a document I’ve formatted in Word, all the line breaks, paragraph indents, and other formatting is vaporized. Not cool. But the whole idea of cloud computing, and becoming less dependent on files and software on one’s own hard drive, intrigues me.

Fiddling with Google Docs last night, I decided one of my least favorite things about it is that there’s no  zoom in function. I usually have to zoom in to 125% to 150% in Word to keep from going blind while I write.

I found a work-around, when it suddenly dawned on me that you can always zoom in on any Web site, and that’s what Google Docs is.

I use Firefox. To zoom in and enlarge the text on any page, you press Ctrl and +. To zoom out, press Ctrl and -.  In other words, press the plus (+) or the minus/dash (-) key while holding Ctrl.

Sometimes it’s also good to get toolbars and stuff out of your way, to concentrate on what you’re writing, right?

In Google Docs,  go to full screen and hide the g-Docs toolbar by pressing Ctrl shift F.

To full screen your browser window and get everything out of your way, press F11.

Now you’re one rung of the tech ladder closer to the clouds. And since you’re connected to it now, you can watch a bunch of geeks talk in the cloud, about the cloud.

not rootbeer?

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I guess it’s been a while since I posted, huh? I was really on a blogging kick for a while there, then not so much. Maybe I ran out of steam, or content. Both.

It’s root beer, not rootbeer? I want it to be one word. I’m writing a scene in which the characters have root beer floats in a drive-in joint in 1971. Working personal memory for all it’s worth, and more. But according to www.rootbeer.com, it’s two words. Oh well.

I’ve been working on my novel quite a bit. Over the past week, I’ve edited several chapters, organized most of my manuscript files, and some of my notes. I wrote a new outline too. Lots of work. Want to see what a novel looks like before it gets finished, when the files are just sitting in the computer? Sure you do.

click to view

33 Chapters, all nice and neat. Just under 94,000 words in Draft 5. Up until this afternoon, I had it all in a single MS Word document, with headings and sub-heads, and I used document map to navigate.  I decided to try working in singe chapter files for a while, because Vista  – on my new computer – has tagging and stacking functions that let you sort documents by tags, or labels. Keywords, in other words. That might come in handy. Besides, the file was just getting so damn big, ya know?

Each file has an abbreviation, STH, and a number, 01-33. Those are the chapter numbers and STH stands for Someplace To Hide, the working title of the book.

Want to see the whole archive, all the drafts? No. You really don’t. There are hundreds of Word files in a bunch of folders. To get my current 94,000 words, I’ve probably typed a quarter million. E’gads.

Things are always changing. For example, chapter 30 is called Military Honors, because one of the characters is a veteran. Since I wrote that, I’ve decided that guy never did get drafted for Vietnam after all. Now what am I gonna do when I get round to Chapter 30 this time? We’ll see. Right now, I’m working on Chapter 7, again.

I’m interested in how other writers keep their work – projects, notes, files, etc. – organized. How do you keep track of your themes and problems? Network with me!

Bad Beginnings: Slumdog Millionaire

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Imagine you got on an airplane and the captain said, “Ladies and Gentlemen, we plan to begin today’s flight to Dallas by crashing into an avocado orchard about two miles east of the airport. But after that, the flight should improve, and the middle will be fantastic.”

Well it’s a funny thing, art. Despite all its yawning canyons of subjectivity, we are stewing in it together. And despite knowing that our tastes are so disparate, I still hope each time to like the things that other people have told me they enjoyed. But I keep encountering movies whose directors take that crash first, soar later approach.

Tonight I sat down with a cup of decaf coffee and the DVD of Slumdog Millionaire. It is a widely acclaimed, very popular, successful  film. Highly recommended to me, personally, it was.

Visually dazzling and emotionally resonant, Slumdog Millionaire is a fim that’s both entertaining and powerful. – Rotten Tomatoes

So I completely expected to be enthralled to some extent; at least, to muddle through in a few sittings, and decide that it was a decent film at the end. Here’s what happened.

Scene 1: We see two sweaty, fairly dirty men in close-up. One man is young and skinny, the other older and fatter. The older man was blowing smoke in the face of the other.

Cut to Kyle’s house, where he sits in his chair. Setting his coffee aside, he says, “OK, right off, I’m disgusted, repulsed. Great start.”

Scene 2: The Indian version of the Millionaire TV show, a nervous guy, the young guy in the first scene, is a contestant. Cut scenes back and forth to (scene 1) him being beaten and tortured by the big guy.

Scene 3: Turns out the big guy is a cop. Another cop comes in, and it’s revealed they’re torturing this young guy to find out how he cheated on the TV show. He won’t talk. They proceed to attach electrodes to him and give him a shock. Cut to …

Scene 4, Kyle’s house. He ejects the DVD with the remote, walks to the TV, retrieves the disk. He picks up the red Netflix envelope, slides the disk into it, seals the envelope and carries it to the table by his front door, to go back to Netflix at his next convenience. Returning to the TV, he takes another film from a stack of red envelopes.

Turns out I don’t care how great other people think a movie is. I don’t care how many times I’ve done this, only to be told later, “Thou fool! It gets better! … Sure, it starts off slow, but then it gets good!”

Thanks, I’m sure that’s absolutely true. I have no doubt that Slumdoggie was going to improve. I just don’t think that’s a good reason to expect me to sit through a bad beginning. The beginning of everything matters. There are no ordinary moments. Life is too short. I’m writing a novel right now, and I’m trying really hard not to leave any vapid, bland, lousy paragraphs in it.

Any writer will tell you that you get one chance to set the hook, when you have the reader’s attention and you’d better do something for it. It’s entirely likely that the reader hasn’t even bought the book yet; she or he is standing in front of the shelf at Barnes & Noble, and is just going to read a few pages first.

Movies with bad beginnings rely on an old, and probably dying, paradigm: that of the viewer who has already paid to get in, or to rent, and is willing to give it some time before he does what I did. The paradigm is dying because increasingly, people are like me: two more Netflix flicks on the TV, 70+ channels of crap on TV, the vast Internet at hand, and a small library of books in the house. Plus a stack of unread magazines. We are swimming in distractions and entertainments, and nobody is getting a mulligan in this game, anymore.

It gets better is one thing I don’t ever want to hear about the humble things that I create with the talent God gave me. If the beginning doesn’t merit your attention, the whole thing belongs in the shredder. And if the first scene of a movie blows chunks, I don’t care how good the middle is, or the end. Maybe the director should have started in the middle or at the end, and left the asinine beginning on the cutting room floor, in Studio City, or Mumbai, and saved us all some time.

stories

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“You’re a different person when you’re at work, at home, out with your friends. Over the course of your life, your sense of self and where you belong in the world changes. In my case, it was fairly radical. I started out in a fairly poor working-class home, my dad was a construction worker. Now I’m living in a nice suburban community, and I’m a college professor. Identity is a creation that we’re all engaged in. We’re all novelists, putting together the stories of our own lives.”

— Dan Chaon, on His New Novel ‘Await Your Reply’ – WSJ.com.

Well. Can I get a plot twist over here? I can’t even seem to buy a vowel. My story is just plotting along like it’s being written by Franz Kafka, on a bad night of booze and barbiturates, with Charles Dickens and Hunter S. Thompson. Can I get Franz to pass the project off to Garrison Keillor?

I’m joking. He says we write our own stories, doesn’t he? Hmm. Turns out I might need another writing class after all.