Checking Into Myself

I had/have largely abandoned this blog since January for several reasons, but I thought I would check in with myself now and then. I say check in with myself because I’m sure that no one actually reads this thing.

I’ve read several books since the last post, including Nick Hornby’s “Juliet, Naked”, Joshua Ferris’ “Then We Came To The End”, Cormac McCarthy’s “No Country For Old Men”. I’m taking to reading a lot of short stories by Dorothy Parker, John Updike, Harry Stephen Keeler, Ernest Hemingway, and others. I started writing one short story but it petered out, and I’ve mostly been working on a new novel. The novel I finished writing last year will be resting for some time, so when I go back I can be extremely depressed and critical and tear it apart and hopefully make it work (even?) better.

The novel I’m currently writing is just starting out, but I’ve got high hopes, not necessarily pie in the sky hopes, but so far I’m happy with what’s come of it. As a way to keep my brain operating despite the lack of sleep (3 month old twins don’t cotton to the newfangled idea of sleeping through the night) I’m doing a lot of research totally unrelated to this current novel, but pertaining to the next project I imagine I’ll be tackling later this year or even next year. It has to do with the nineteen-twenties, and it’ll be my first project not to be contemporary or almost-contemporary (the last novel I wrote took place in the early nineteen-nineties). At three o’clock yesterday morning I was calming a baby and watching Douglas Fairbanks Sr in “The Thief Of Bagdad” (not a misspelling, that’s how the film and the novel it was based upon spelled it).

I plan on getting back into the swing of this little blog a bit, so consider this a stretching out of the muscles. Today at noon I plan on getting a slice of pizza at a local place and working a bit on that short story that petered out, perhaps I can get it to unpeter, maybe even make it paul its way to completion.

A Little Bit On Size

I’m concerned with size. No, not that kind. Eyes above the shoulders, please. Size of me writings, that is. Among all the other things I’m working on, I’m reading through a book of Aesop’s Fables I had as a kid, with an introduction by Isaac Bashevis Singer. It’s a printing from the late sixties, with wonderful little drawings every page or so. In reading these little paragraphs that hold so much, I’m reminded of Hemingway in a way (ho-ho), mostly the way he wrote when he was at his best: paring down his words to just the bare necessities, and sometimes even less. The iceberg method of writing, where only a fraction of the story is exposed, fascinates me and frustrates me, as I’m always tempted to wax on and off about some little detail in a Dickensian manner (“the Sofa…”). I’ve recently written a short story that came out around 4,000 words. I think it’d be a damn good piece if I could get it down another five hundred or thousand words. Like Wash says in Knocked Up, TIGHTEN.

A bit breezy in here, ain’t it?

And now, the first fable from the book. I’d like to dedicate this to politicians, past, present, and probably future:

THE WOLF AND THE LAMB
A wolf, meeting with a lamb astray from the fold, resolved not to lay violent hands on him, but to find some plea to justify to the lamb the wolf’s right to eat him. He thus addressed him” “Sirrah, last year you grossly insulted me.” “Indeed,” bleated the lamb in a mournful tone of voice, “I was not then born.” Then said the wolf, “You feed in my pasture.” “No, good sir,” replied the lamb, “I have not yet tasted grass.” Again said the wolf, “You drink of my well.” “No,” exclaimed the lamb, “I never yet drank water, for as yet my mother’s milk is both food and drink to me.” Upon which the wolf seized him and ate him up, saying, “Well! I won’t remain supperless, even though you refute every one of my imputations.” The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.

Short, simple, to the point. Well played, Aesop.

Something The Day.

Instead of seizing the day, lately I seem to be just salvaging the day. I’ve been making little headway in my novel lately, but I’ve pecked at and finished two short stories recently, written some poems that I’m not ashamed of, and almost finished planting my garden. That’s the kind of thing that keeps me going, that and my wife and kid(s).

Today I intended on going to the library and cranking on my novel, but stress from work took its toll and by the time I was on my way to the library my brain felt worn and I couldn’t shake the sense of anger and sadness. However, I saw something on my way to the library that I hadn’t noticed before, and I pulled into a random parking lot to write down what I later at the library formed into a pretty damn good poem if I say so myself. After working two drafts of it, I sat in one of their firm, purple chairs and read some Robert Frost with some humble satisfaction before heading back to my place behind the desk and monitor and stacks of papers.

I didn’t accomplish what I had intended to, but I suppose I salvaged the day, and even if that’s all I get, I can’t complain all that much in the end.

Back 'ta Woik

Last week threw me for a loop, and I didn’t write much. It began with my mother-in-law visiting (a good thing), stress at work (a bad thing), and then went into my birthday (good), and on my birthday I found out my wife is pregnant with twins (doubly good!). I’ll try to adhere to Elmore Leonard’s dictum that exclamation points should be avoided, but that last bit is an unavoidable target for a slash and a dot.

I don’t write for a living (yet… someday…) but I try to write everyday. I’m an adherent to the idea driven by Stephen King and others that writing and reading should be regular daily occurrences. I try, but last week I just didn’t have the time, and I didn’t have it in me. A pathetic excuse, but a reason as well. Last night, however, I got down to business, and had an explosion of productivity that I’m hoping to match tonight. I’m taking a small breather from the novel, just until I finish a short story that I started as a writing exercise and have since continued on towards an exciting finish line I didn’t anticipate when I first got down in front of the typewriter.

One thing I changed in my habit was where I write, which I have found to be very helpful. Before, I had been writing in the mud room of our house, not wanting to disturb the wife and kiddo, but it was a rather depressing place to write, full of junk we have yet to sort, right next to the washer and dryer, with the powerful odor of Tide and Bounce coating the insides of my nostrils. Biting insects are able to get in there somehow, possibly through the small space between the door to the garage and the floor, and I’d finish my night’s writing with several red pea-sized lumps on my hands and neck from the buggers I missed killing.

I wrote last night in the living room on our green striped couch that the cats are slowly destroying the corner of, and I finished at midnight with three solid pages from the typewriter. When typed out and formatted properly (one inch margins, 12 point Courier font) the three typewritten pages come out to roughly nine manuscript pages. I’m always tempted to obsess over what is the right or wrong way to format a manuscript, but it’s a distraction, a type of procrastination that feels like you’re doing something, but you’re not. I just followed instructions and watch my tightly typed pages become manuscript pages of 250 to 300 words each, with lots of extra breathing room.

Tonight I’m going back to the living room, with the typewriter on the coffee table that looks like the crate from Creepshow, and finishing the story. I hope to finish in time to spend a little extra time on the couch, finally finishing John Irving’s Setting Free The Bears.

The Tonys, Brought To You In Part By Xerox

As my wife was a big theater geek in high school and still tries to keep up on all things Broadway, and as my brother-in-law, his girlfriend, and my mother-in-law were all at our house last night, all being theater enthusiasts, I watched a good half or so of the Tony’s last night. I have limited theater experience, so my theater knowledge is slightly more than your average Joe Six-Pack, but not by much.

I’m not a big fan of awards shows, but the Tonys seem to be the most intelligent televised awards, a few steps ahead of the Oscars, miles away from the MTV Movie Awards, and a few light years from something I saw while scanning through the channels, the MTV Cribs Awards, which grants awards to famous people for having large houses, hosted by a woman whose greatest contribution to our culture seems to have been performing videotaped fellatio on another minor celebrity. Still, it was disappointing to see the wide array of unoriginal or iPod/jukebox shows that were advertised, nominated, and/or given awards. I’m talking about shows that are reworkings of movies (Billy Elliot, Shrek, 9 to 5) and shows that just slap together songs (Rock of Ages, Jersey Boys, Mama Mia). True, there were revivals of classic shows, and several new, original shows, but just like the movie industry, and even the book world, there is an infection of unoriginality that is deeply troubling.

I’ve got no problem with being inspired by past work. It’s impossible not to find an idea and grow it yourself. I’m working on notes for a novel inspired, in part, by A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur’s Court. It’s mostly inspired by my bizarre dreams and my often-boring day job, and my irrational fear of salesmen, and my lack of understanding of the way mattress stores can survive (honestly, how can they stay in business? Maybe everyone else replaces their bed every year, but I sure as hell don’t.), but Twain’s work does have a special place in my mind right now. But I’m not going to do a sequel to it, or a remake, or a spinoff. Stephen King didn’t photocopy the Book of Revelations to make The Stand, Neil Gaiman didn’t photocopy The Jungle Book to make The Graveyard Book, Diablo Cody sure as hell didn’t photocopy the script to Riding in Cars With Boys to make Juno, and I’m not going to photocopy Mr. Clemen’s work.

This begs the question: are we running out of ideas? We have a world with billions of people, infinite possibilities for stories large and small, and yet we find ourselves going to see a remake of an old television show (Land Of The Losing Money It Would Seem) or read a ‘spinoff’ of a classic novel (an Amazon.com search for “Mr Darcy” results in 118 books, at least 2 of which are versions of an imagined diary). Why risk an original novel about youth and age when you can just write a sequel to Catcher In The Rye? Why test the waters of cinematic fear when you can just do-over My Bloody Valentine and Friday The 13th?

I would suggest that, no, we are not running out of ideas. Shows like God Of Carnage, movies like Gomorra, and books like 2666 show that original stories are still possible. We’re just at the mercy of writers who are lazy, and producers and publishers that are scared of anything that’s not a sure thing. And that’s a damn shame, Diane.