Near Miss

Just got an email from the Vestal Review, a zine that focuses on short shorts, rejecting one of my short stories. Normally I would be down, but the editors gave me a glimmer of hope with their postscript. The email said at the end that the story was a "near miss." Kind of sad, in a way, but I can be heartened by a near miss. It says that I was close, and that is pretty positive in this writing world of near certain rejection.

I guess I'll take my email and run with it. I'll move on and try to keep writing. Eternal optimism strikes again.

Mr. Happy

I have been told that it is prudent not to consider yourself the Happiness Steward for Everyone. Truer words were never spoken. I think with writing that works, too. As a writer, you are only responsible for making yourself happy. You shouldn't write for anyone other than yourself.

Now if I can figure out when I can actually start doing that again, I can start making myself happy. The eternal conundrum, followed by the simple Nike slogan: Just Do It.

I think I'll go get my writing shoes on...

National Novel Writing Month

So November is National Novel Writing Month, and it's already half over. It's a great concept: 50,000 words in thirty days. You pledge to do it at the NaNoWriMo web site,and then crank out the requisite pages (on average, 6 typed pages a day). On November 30, you end up with a 180 page short novel.

It's a fun way to get a novel done. The organization holds no illusions of grandeur, though. On their web site they have, as a statement, the following: "Let's write laughably awful yet lengthy prose together."

That's pretty cool. I think I can accomplish that! I never remember that November is the month, though, so I never get to start on time. Maybe I'll pick an off month- say March- to get my novel done. Hmmm.

RIP Norman Mailer

So another one goes down. First Kurt, now Norman. Alas, the end of the another era. More reading for another day. I never had the opportunity to check out his work, but it seems that any man with an ego this large and the writing resume to back it up seems a good candidate for a reading. More later on what I'll start with.

Check out the NY Times article here.

And now for something completely different...

Go Sox!

And, inevitably, love...

The last post spoke of the difficulty of writing the love scene, the intimate bodice ripper. As I stated then, it is a somewhat daunting task to write a carnal scene, but the reality of the situation is that a writer can avoid the whole sex scene thing if they really feel uncomfortable. There are many first rate novelists out there who simply don't dip into the physical world. So I guess you don't have to be a Phillip Roth or John Updike to convey the sense that your characters are amorously physical, as long as you don't bend to cliche and utilize all of the old, tired, rusty idioms like, say, bodice ripper.

The much harder proposition is to write realistically about the intricacies of love. To sustain over the course of a novel, or a short story for that matter, the chemical and psychological workings of two people, can be tricky. The best advice I ever received on this subject came from my college fiction professor, who was maniacally wedded to the detail; her advice was to focus on the small details- and not the longing stares across the room. A shared water bottle, a shared activity like making dinner, a shortened name (Bri instead of Brian, for example), all can be pieces of evidence that are used to build and sustain the idea over time. The idea is to incorporate detail from the characters' daily life as a means of conveying the unusual or exceptional. Rather this than the hackneyed Theirs eyes met across the crowded room, or a shot of electric ran through her when their hands brushed, or whatever trite colloquialisms come to mind.

It all comes back to the old writing teacher mantra Show Don't Tell. Following this simple rule will save you a whole bunch of frustration, as your characters, even those head over heels in love (ha...it's hard to avoid), will appear to be at least real. Viva the verisimilitude!

Bodice Rippers

I suppose at some point every writer has to wrestle with the love scene. And I do mean wrestle, because they can be tricky. Go too light, it becomes flowery and Harlequin-like, go too heavy and it's pornography. I've been stuck on these scenes for a while now; I suppose I've subconsciously made my characters somewhat eunuch-like (oh, they have longings, but those longings are unfulfilled or just talked about). It's just easier that way, no fuss no muss, as it were.

But like the obsequious swearing issue that permeates my high school creative writing class, the concept of the love scene in all of its, ahem, glory is one that won't go away- for adolescents or adults- probably because we are sexual creatures. It's a part of life- natural and exciting-one that often shapes our perceptions and gives meaning to our existence (I know, I know...sounds like an addict's line..."Hi, my name is Brian, and I'm a...). We have to embrace that our characters, if real, will at some point be in this situation, and may or not enjoy it.

So go there and be strong. Don't rip any bodices, and don't get too graphic. Life will move on, and your characters will probably be a whole lot happier. The writer probably will be, too.

Labor Day

Here we are, the end of the summer, six Vonnegut novels down, a trip to New Hampshire looming ahead (hours away), and a mental breakdown on the horizon. Throw into the mix a trip with Don DeLillo's White Noise, and you have the surreal experience of a lifetime. DeLillo really works the whole post-modern, radar clogging background noise into his novel (which I haven't finished) by throwing lists of all sorts at the reader: commercial products, popular (1985) clothing, malls, the often foolishly myopic view academia takes of all subjects (come on, Hitler studies?), cleaning products. He virtually hammers the reader with them. This book won the National Book Award, so I was intrigued. I find it funny, cutting, and acerbic at times. Probably not the best book to read at this point in time, all things considered, but any port in a storm.

I sent out two more stories this week...hope springs eternal.

The Right Words

I love to write. Writing makes me the Alpha and the Omega, the big Kahuna (yes, I capitalized it), the man. I am in complete control. Yes, I can make my characters as angry, sleazy, teary, or grumpy (dwarves?) as I need to, and I can make them speak out of that emotion. And what they say will be, for me, the perfect thing at the perfect time. And if I don't like what they say, I can delete it and try again. Thus the power of writing, the unrealistic sense of control.

Which is much different than real life, obviously.

Events in my own life have transpired in such a way as to show that the real art is seen in conversation, the spontaneous act of discussing your emotions especially. No trickier spot than there. I have been such an emotional wreck lately, that trying to divulge my feelings has become something of a parlor trick. I have been trying to speak without saying the wrong thing, without hinting the wrong way so as not to be misconstrued. What do I get instead? Murky thoughts, misleading comments, strange conversations.

I want to apologize to all of the people that I possibly led astray, or said something to that could be taken the wrong way. Speaking isn't like writing. And when you're reeling in an emotional morass (funny word) like I am, things often fall apart at the lectern, so to speak.

Forgive me, I can't articulate well. Clarity still eludes me. I hope that all people will do is judge me by what I do, and let me work on the things I say. At least when I write I can edit.

Busted

Ah, the power of children. They can make us do things we wouldn't normally do, say things we wouldn't normally say, and feel things we wouldn't normally feel. Which is beautiful. Normally. In this case, my youngest daughter made me feel pretty bad about something I couldn't justify at all. Which is pretty good, but very hard to confront. God, I need a good rationalization.

I had taken the girls for an overnight in the Adirondack Mountains with my buddy and his two girls. We've done this for a few years now, he always gets the same cabin on 13th Lake, and we all feel pretty comfortable with the arrangement. We swim in the lake, have a hot dog roast, the girls have squirt gun wars, and, once darkness falls, we have a nice fire for smores and- for the dads- beer.

Now in years past the festivities have stopped at that, but this year we added one element to the grown up buffet: Cigars. Now, my kids know I don't smoke. In fact, I haven't had a cigar in ages, but I figured this one night would be okay. I even went to Habanas, a premium cigar shop in Albany, to purchase the smokes. These were not cheap cigars, either, although they weren't as expensive as, I learned from shopping, some of the more premium varieties.

So, fire roaring and children tucked away, we imbibed a bit of single malt and lit up. Now, I'm not sure if the sudden Adirondack storm that forced us onto the side porch played any significant role in my being discovered, but I know that my proximity to the house didn't help much when my ten year old came down unable to sleep. I held the stogie behind my back, and I thought she was groggy enough to not notice, but these are cigars, right? The smoke is enough to stun a four hundred pound grizzly. She noticed, although she didn't say anything as I gave her solace and sent her back to bed.

At ten the next morning, though, as I was battling a bit of a big head from the single malt, she called me into the mudroom for an impromptu conference. "You were smoking last night, I saw you," she said. "Mom's going to kill you." I tried to placate her by saying that my wife, in fact, knew that I was bringing the cigars. This only added to her consternation. Unable to come up with a justifiable reason for my actions, I hustled us into pack up mode and hoped for a sudden bout of pre-teen amnesia. No such luck.

In the car on the way home, my oldest joined in. Now the guilt was flying full force. "You lied to us, Daddy. You said you would never smoke," she said. And this, with the addition of tears, "Why would you make such a bad choice?" There it was- my words thrown back at me. I could almost hear myself saying "Make good choices!", and see my kids nodding gravely,big brown eyes staring back at me from the living room floor. What could I say to their accusation? I had no response other than Grown ups can make choices, and sometimes they're not always good, but as a grownup I can make those choices. Kind of lame. Kids can make you think in those ways. I have no legitimate reason to have smoked, I just did. I got caught. The kids rightly made me feel like garbage. Like I was a teenager all over again and I had let my folks down. Lesson learned. Actions and words, which are the strongest? Duh. So I taught them a pretty crappy lesson, and got saddled with a whole mess of much deserved guilt.

And, like guilt, the vile taste of the cigar still lingers in my mouth. Gross.

Just Write

One of the things I love about teaching a writing class is the energy that is created when people talk about writing. You can feel it in the air, and, for me personally, I become energized by the experience. This has been the case this week, as I have been running the Cole Summer Writers Institute, and have had the opportunity to work with some very creative young people. And the one thing I've noticed is that these kids, despite having to deal with the typical adolescent type traumas, just like to write! They come in on time, some even early, and start writing. During break time they grab ass a bit, but are soon back at the writing. No egos in the way, no posturing, just writing (and some doodling, too, but who doesn't?).

Which is a lot different from the experiences I have had with adult writing groups. Whether it was in a living room or college classroom, it always seemed that the room was too small to accommodate both the writers and their egos. Now I was one of them, too, so this little riff is a bit of self-inflicted criticism. It just always seemed that someone was trying to one-up someone else, or that the well intentioned bit of criticism had a sort of acidic barb on it- you know, too sharp, too poisonous to be misconstrued as simply innocent or well meaning. In fact, I recall one graduate fiction class that remains to his date a defining moment in my development as a writer.

In that class, oh, some fifteen men and women earning graduate credit for this seminar in fiction writing in the early 1990's, we had to produce and share a written draft. In short, we had to workshop it for the group. As the writer, you could not speak for the first bit of time (maybe fifteen minutes, I honestly can't remember) as the rest of class constructively ripped your story to shreds. My story, about a young woman who must decide between leaving her childhood home, mother, and grandmother for life with her fiance, had an opening scene in which the protagonist is putting on mascara. Now, in my early days, I had about as much experience with mascara as I do now. I was observant, so I drew on my experience of watching my wife put on her mascara in front of the mirror, and translated it to the story. But I got into trouble when I thought that a really cool visual metaphor would be to have the mascara form into little clumped balls and to have it fall on the vanity top below. Of course, I now know that mascara doesn't behave this way, but then I didn't have a clue.

There happened to be a woman in the class who either had it out for me or considered herself an expert on mascara. She lit into me like I had never been lit into before, essentially excoriating me for my lack of cosmetics knowledge, and concluding that my story lacked any real substance because of my tiny error on page one. I don't know why she slammed me the way she did- excessively- but she did, and it taught me a lesson. I learned quickly that I had to be able to weather the assaults of other, in essence to develop the proverbial thick skin that writers often talk about. Something like this never happens with students, at least not at the middle school level. I think they're so self-conscious that they may be afraid to lash out at others, but, then again, I've seen some pretty vicious middle schoolers, too, and they're really nasty when they do lash out.

The moral of the story is this: just write. Forget the critics, both inside and out, and just let it flow. In the end, the writing is what matters, not the responses. Tune them out and the world opens for you. Let them bug you and it becomes a closed, scary place.

Boredom

Funny. I find myself boring at this point, locked into my own personal tailspin.

Anyone else want a piece?

I did get a lead on a new story, but couldn't start writing it tonight. Instead, I get to listen to my foolish neighbor's son play his trumpet really loud at 10:00 pm in my quiet, cookie cutter suburban neighborhood. He must be trying to piss people off, like any good teenager will. He isn't too bad, which is a blessing, but it's still kind of late for an impromptu jazz concert (it really isn't jazz, either, but that's the closest I can get.)

Maybe my old story won't go away, and the new one isn't strong enough yet.

I tried putting all of my stories together in book format, but didn't have it in me, and abandoned it with only a few ideas found. It's like it's all some kind of illusion, and I'm not buying it anymore, but a huge part of me wants to (it would be easier).

Tomorrow's another day. I'm still bored...

See the cat? See the cradle?

I just finished Cat's Cradle, my third Vonnegut this summer and a close favorite just ahead of Slaughterhouse-5. The images in Cat's Cradle are just so preposterous and funny, but so unerringly true. The San Lorenzan puppet monarchy, the whole ice-nine apocalypse, and the dead on takes on sex and relationships all are true and revealing. In fact, it is Vonnegut's ease with symbols, the eponymous child's game of the title, in particular, that really give this book its thematic punch. He uses it a bunch of ways, but in all cases, they really hit the mark in terms of summing up the human experience as we know it. But these are just generalities, let's look at a solid cases. Take, for example, the image of little Newt Hoenikker riffing on the Bokononist religion at the end of chapter eight-one.

Little Newt snorted. "Religion!"
"Beg your pardon?" Castle said.
"See the cat?" asked Newt. " See the cradle?"

You can see him holding each hand up parallel to the other and grinning. The image of the cat's cradle, the structure composed of interlocking strings between your fingers, is pretty relevant, and testament to the genius of Vonnegut. All constructs- here he picks on religion, but love and marriage and work and organized sports, for that matter, all could fall under the symbolic auspices of it, too- are composed of these metaphysical strings and fingers. In most cases, the things we hold most dear can be melted down to this metaphysical shell game. Without faith, baby, there ain't no religion. No cat in there. No cradle. Just strings. We hold it together.

A friend told me about a woman who makes her own reality, her own happiness, out of the rather meager crumbs she has to work with. I thought of this while reading the book, because I think in some ways we all do this. It only really starts to crumble when we begin to question the reality we construct. If we let our rational sides take over, all hell breaks loose, and the cradle falls apart. I suppose the happier people are the ones who cherish the cat's cradle of their own making. I've done it. We've all done it. The question of the hour is: How long can it be kept up?

Of course that doesn't help me much now. I'm trying to work through some things, and the idea of it all being smoke and mirrors, strings and fingers, is thoroughly depressing. I guess you have to work on Vonnegut in the right frame of mind. He is very funny, but the humor cuts close to the bone, so when you laugh you kind of wince, too. At least I did- whatever that means.

Maybe I am in the right frame of mind, after all.

Life in a Nutshell

Life in a nutshell. Great song. I love BNL, but the whole concept of tying your life up into one neat little package is difficult. People are complicated.

Take for example my friend from Cambridge. Haven't seen him in years...almost an excommunication, of sorts, and yet when I talk to him or email him it's like we were before he left. Now, there are things that he's done that I know nothing about, me as well, so trying to tie us up in a nutshell would be fruitless (I mixed a metaphor, or a fruit and a nut...literary trail mix). We are too far gone to be where we were fifteen years ago, but we accept our points of divergence and move on.

I have another friend who compulsively pushes away people who are close to her, choosing, rather, to run through her own personal hell solo. Now I'm sure she's tried to enlist help from people, but, for whatever reason, in the long run she resists and spirals along alone, bombadiering down the slopes and cliffs and crevaces of her own issues. No nutshell can tie up all of her secrets or her complexities. That's life.

Strange. Yet, a nutshell, if you can get one, I suppose is handy for collecting all of your problems and anxieties and summing you up nicely. Maybe they're good for helping you put it all in perspective, too. I'll let you know when I get mine.

Last stanza of BNL's song...

I fell down
With no one there to catch me from falling
Then she came round
And only her tenderness stopped me from bawling my eyes
out
Im ok...

Those guys are optimists, too!

Summer Air

School's out. First weekend of freedom. I worked my tail off on the yard, which felt good in reality. Still in the mode, though, of work and stress and the rush towards graduation- and tomorrow still feels like a school day; I need to unwind.

I have been so narcissistic lately, which is coming back to haunt me in my personal life in some pretty drastic, unforeseen ways. I suppose this is a good start for me, getting the cards on the table. The last time I did that, getting the cards on the table, I ended up taking this delightful journey that really still has me spinning, so it really is a positive thing. I just wasn't prepared for it so suddenly.

Onward into the void. And I still have curriculum work to do tomorrow at school, anyways.

Altitude

I have been reconsidering my story. So much has happened this year, especially at the end, that the whole idea of finishing a story has been an indulgence I couldn't afford. Now, staring down the butt end of the school year with its requisite softball games and graduation ceremonies, I can unclench a bit and let the juices flow again.

It feels good, really, to get back to something so esoteric as writing. Even this blog is welcome respite from the other public venues that I have to communicate in (report cards, emails to concerned/angry parents); at least here I can ruminate on the act of writing and not feel that I'm sounding like a zealot (well, that's a risk I'll take). So, with that in mind, I've been reflecting on altitude.

Narrative altitude allows me to rise above the story. As the draft stands now, it's a first perosn confessional. Too close, I suppose. I need to give my main character a bit of room to be surprised...I want to see his reaction to events, but not necessarily from ground zero. The higher I get (3rd person), the easier it is to see him as a character, not as a person. Helps me get away from him, too. As I've mentioned before, it's tough when you get so close to a character, and I'm afraid I have. Time to float.

Of course that means a pretty extensive rewrite. Thank God it's summer. I'll have the time. No more angry parents, right?

Not Having

I am normally not an impatient man, but there are some things that just get to me, and sometimes I feel that I have to have something right then and there. It's always hard to not have what you want, or feel that you're a long ways from ever realizing that certain something. Writing, teaching (aka a job), personal life, it can come in a variety of forms, but the not having when it comes to any of these things really hurts.

Have at it again, Kurt. So it goes.

Welcome to the wonderful world of adulthood. I'm going to bed with Vonnegut and Slaughterhouse Five. Billy Pilgrim is one funny dude.

Silences

It's funny, you know, how the silences in our life just seem to build up over time. I have a character in the short story I've been writing who has to deal with an extended silence with a woman he grew up with and has had an intermittent affair with over the last ten years. And living in his skin has been really hard. He talks about the silences between the passionate moments in his time with her, and how difficult that is for him to handle. He talks about the petty jealousies and outright anger he feels at not knowing how she is, what she's doing, etc. When he finds out about her death he has this enormous sense of guilt and loss, but can't show it.

Weird.

I've never felt anything like this until I tried to live in his shoes, and boy does it suck. I guess one of the perils of writing is that you get too close to the characters you create, almost as if you're living their lives. The subtitle of this blog states "I write because I want to have more than one life."

Thank you Anne Tyler.

Sometimes many lives are confusing. And painful.

Time for a drink, I guess. Or another round of typing.

Ellie (1991-2007)

I, like Anna Quindlen's editor in a recent article, hate dead dog stories. Her recent column covered celebrating her living, but old, dog's life. In that article she commented on how his eyes were going, his ears were gone, but his tail lived on in those happy, wagging moments when he smelled food. A funny, warm, bitter sweet story about the life of aging pets.

I have a different story. I had to put my sixteen year old cat down last night. This is a dead cat story.

Elvira (Eillie for short, or Elle Bell, as we came to call her) came to us as a playmate for our then one year old buff tiger, Peanut. The little gray furball was my decision, my choice, and I picked her out with glee from the pet store window at Crossgates mall- the old one by JC Penney's. She was the wild kitten, full of play and life, that was the one jumping and rolling over her litter mates. Taking her home, stroking her eversoft fur, pulling her razor sharp claws out of my hand and letting her gnaw on my finger with those dagger-like kitten teeth, I knew at once that she would give us a run for our money. We named her that night- well, actually a friend of ours suggested Elvira- you know, the plunging neckline, large busted, raven haired hostess of late-night gross out theater- because of her black lips. The year was 1991, we were a year away from marriage, and now we had two kittens to tear up the apartment.

Marriage, two apartments, an aborted attempt to own a sweet Welsh Corgi (both cats hated him, so he went back), two kids, one goofy yellow lab, two houses later, and, finally, the present. Ellie and Peanut lived through it all. They were our time markers, family friends, companions, mousers and general vermin erradicators. And then last night came.

We got home from visiting friends late and went to feed the two. You could tell Ellie was having trouble breathing and was very weak, so I rushed her at 11:30 to the emergency animal hospital. The vet analyzed the x-rays and gave me the heartbreaking and inevitable news: she had a massive tumor that was pushing against her heart and lungs and distending her trachea. She had lost weight (we thought she was just getting old, because she appeared to be eating and drinking and all that other good stuff really well, but apparently it's amazing how animals will fool you.), and was shocky and in distress. The vet said she might make it to Monday to get an ultrasound to confirm her diagnosis, but that it would be a really hard weekend for Ellie, and the vet was still 99% sure she wouldn't make it. I called home, broke the news and allowed the family to grieve (they opted no to come down to say their last goodbyes, preferring to remember her as she was), and tried to steel myself for what would be my final moments with my little cat.

The vet brought her in wrapped in a royal red blanket, very fuzzy and warm. She was still in distress, but seemed bright eyed, and was still yapping at me like she did when she wanted a treat, or a surreptitious bit from the tuna can. The kitty heparin well was still in her front leg from the fluids they had been giving her, and her fur on her chest was matted from the fluid she apparently was trying to expel. Through it all, she never stopped looking at me: not when I cradled her in my arms, not when the vet inserted the needle, and not when I watched the life slip quickly from her beautiful green eyes. I cried. I can't help it, I'm crying now when I write this. I'll never forget that look of trust and love and confusion, and distress that she gave me, and if you've never done this thing, never been there with a pet you have made part of your family, you will probably be spared one of the most excruciating moments of your lfe.

The vet let me stay with her after she died for as long as I needed to. I know it sounds funny because this was only a cat, but I have to say that she was so much more than that. She was a family member, a friend, and she was mine. She may have been close to my wife and kids, but I picked her out, and I'll always believe that she knew in her heart that she and I had a special bond. Waiting for treats at our clandestine evening encounters in the kitchen after she had just been trying to lick the butter on the counter, running through the house with her night crazies, even as little ago as last week, or rubbing on your legs in order to get you to pick her up, she was a character whose personality will be forever etched on my family.

I miss her. I feel bad for Peanut, who will probably soon follow her now that his cohort is gone, and still doesn't really realize that she is gone. We'll cut him some slack, though. He's seventeen (that's 85 in human years). But I do miss her, and, as I rapidly approach 40 and begin to see pieces of my life change, drop off, transform, I have to add her death to the inevitable changes awaiting me in middle age. Things begin to change, and the death of pets is just one of those many changes.

So it goes...

RIP Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)

Yet another life philosophy heard from, or silenced, as it were. It's kind of funny, really. This idea seems to be front and center in my life right now, and damn it it sucks. The crushing inevitability of it all, the grinding hurt and ultimate sadness of it all...it really hurts. For the first time in my life, I can honestly say that the words that I live for (hide behind sometimes) don't help at all when faced with the human reality of life. Words for Dineson can help carry the sorrow, but I guess you have to be able to put them in a story first. Don't know if I'm ready for that, or if I fully believe that it's time to do that. Ah, the eternal optimist. Not too helpful today.

Isak Dineson and Sorrow

Isak Dinesen said, "All sorrows can be borne, if you put them into a story."

Wow...now that's a writer's life philosophy. The real bear is putting it into practice.

When You're Sick, Look to Emily Dickinson

Driving from my doctor's office to the pharmacy to pick up my antibiotics for a lovely upper respiratory infection I picked up in Florida last week, I happened to hear Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac. I love the radio spot, probably as much for Keillor's voice as the literature he showcases. Today, he read a poem by Emily Dickinson, and, in the infection weakened state that I've existed in for the last four days (Yeah, I know, guys are wimps. Quit whining. Trust me, I've heard it all, but I have the mucus and infection to prove my point, so there!), the poem hit home. Dickinson, while not a huge favorite of mine, focuses on the abstract in such interesting ways. She seems to have the ability to cut to the core of the matter and reveal it in startling ways.

Nothing new there, no major glimpses of literary criticism, just a cool poem for this raw, rainy, windy day in upstate New York.

I was saddened by the deaths at Virginia Tech., as well, as I'm sure we all were. It seems that this poem resonates within the grief I feel for those families, too. The loss of a child has to be staggering, and is one experience I pray never to experience.

Oh well, here it is:

It's all I have to bring today (26)

It's all I have to bring today—
This, and my heart beside—
This, and my heart, and all the fields—
And all the meadows wide—
Be sure you count—should I forget—
Some one the sum could tell—
This, and my heart, and all the Bees
Which in the Clover dwell.

Poetry should do that, though, shouldn't it? It should distill the nuances of human experience into a compact form. It should capture the essence of the pain and joy and love that we experience and present it back to us so we can learn from it. Some days, like today, all I have to bring is my heart and all the fields.

And some days that just has to be enough.

Flash, Again

Another flash fiction, inspired by a class assignment. I wrote this one hoping- as I did in my last flash fiction- to explain the back story elements for the longer piece I am working on. The imagery is kind of clunky and obvious, but I was trying to hit a mood here. Hope it works. The piece is called "Runway."

Normally, the Runway Diner coffee was a draw for Sean. He loved it, the bitter aroma, the thin layer of grease on the surface, the inky blackness. He loved it as much as he loved meeting her here, usually after work, mostly on Sunday mornings when he should have been- told his wife he was- at the gym. He swirled the last dregs around in his cup, bits of grounds clinging to the sides, before draining it.

He glanced out the window, low, gray clouds overhanging the expanse of the airport beyond, the rain starting again to pock the already standing puddles. The lights of the runway blared in unison a sharp red. She was slipping away towards her car, that beat up Saab she had had since college. She had bought a Jeep with money from her last big design gig, but had promptly sold it; debt and the pressure of life overcame the status of the big green machine.

It had been six months since he had seen her, a chance encounter in New York, a night at the Americana, then the crushing emptiness of returning to life at home. It had been this way before, since college really, this pattern. Her absences were crushing but her email had been an oasis, and the meetings, all clandestine and dangerous, his salvation. But it was different now. Or was it?

“More coffee, hon?” The waitress, coffee poised above cup, searched out his eyes but he didn’t turn away from the window. A brown and orange Southwest jet was taxiing onto the tarmac directly across from him, and the Saab was backing up.

“No thanks,” he said without looking, and she shuffled away before he could add his thanks. He fiddled with the bracelet he had given her in New York, now his again. The rain intensified, the jet whirred its engines, and she made the left out of the parking lot and disappeared down Aerodrome Road. He watched her two taillights until they were mere dots in the gauzy streaks of rain, and then they were gone.

It was 9:30. He told her he’d be home at 11:00. Craning his neck he held his empty cup up to the waitress, then settled in to watch the jet’s long, slow arc into the battered sky.

385 words. Harder than it looks, really, when you want to say so much but have to remain silent, so to speak. My story is up to 3,400 words and I'm not even close to being done, yet it seems that the shorter form is such a quick hit, punch in the stomach kind of a writing exercise. I guess when you're stuck saying too much, use the short form...

Yeats and Sadness

I have a favorite poem from Yeats. As I write my current story about love and loss, I can't help hearing it in my mind. It really hits the mark, and contains all of that sadness that I'm looking to capture. Life is all about this type of sadness...unrequited love, missed opportunities, failures. Now if I can just convince my character that he doesn't have to hide his face amid a crowd of stars I'll be on to something. Anyways, here it is in all of its glory...

(Man, I really dig this guy's stuff.)

"When You Are Old"

When you are old and gray and full of sleep,

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true,

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead

And hid his face among a crowd of stars.

Truth or Dare

The truth is often a weird, scary place to live. How's that for cognitive dissonance? Can you live in the truth? I think you can, but it's hard, frightening, soul baring.

Take fiction, for example. You can write a character that is very open and honest, but you better deal with the ramifications of that honesty in the work, or your reader will shoot you down with one glance. You can, on the other hand, write a character that is not so fond of living in the truth and what do you have? Probably a closer picture of what life is like for all of us who toil in the real world, with real dreams that are often pinned and cramped by circumstances, who suffer and strive and love and in the end aren't brave enough to do what must be done to fulfill the dreams that are often tantalizingly close. Those are real characters. We all want to see the happy ending, don't we? We all want our characters not to crash and burn. But only the naked optimists out there write those characters into anything other than melodrama or romance novels. Tolstoy said, and I paraphrase (badly), we don't want to read about happy people because they are boring. Instead, give us the tormented, the yearning, the twisted souls. Let's party with those characters! These are the fun folks.

Such it is in life, too. We can think about the safe, the sheltered, and the calm, or we can think about the stormy, gale-tossed little ships out there whipping around in the rain (a cliche...good God, I wrote a horrendous cliche- but it makes sense in light of the end of the post, trust me....I'm a professional, don't try this at home). Those ships sometimes make it to port, other times go down on the reef, but they were making the action happen. And if they make it, whoa, now there's a party. All those lusty sailors cavorting with wine wenches under the Caribbean sun, bodice ripping galore, and a pretty good keg of rum! Such is life in fiction, such is life in, well, life. And, with all respect to Tolstoy, those unhappy characters that make it out of the storm go on to be happy characters after all.

I mean, what's so wrong with romance novels anyway?

Flash Fiction

A new assignment for creative writing, a midterm short. Mine's very rough, but here. It's called "Shannon's Song," and provides some backstory on two of the central charaters I am writing about in "Keep in Touch."

They hit the seat so hard as they entered the cab that the whole thing rocked onto two wheels, listing dangerously close to the traffic zipping by on East 7th. Laughing, she pried open his dripping rain coat and nuzzled into the warmth of his chest. He smelled like faded Polo and stale smoke. The lights from the Venezuelan café blared into the cab’s stiff and acrid interior, casting long shadows across the driver’s neck. From his picture, Sarrif was from Zimbabwe, and, judging from his demeanor, he was in no mood for small talk.

“Where you going?” he said, craning his neck at the massed couple in his back seat.

“Americana. 69 West 38th.” Sean said, easing back and into his soggy companion.

“OK.” And they were off. As they barreled up Park Avenue, Shannon detached herself from Sean, leaning back to fuss her hair away from her eyes, both lost now in the blackness of the cab. He had always loved her eyes. He leaned into her and kissed her, only lightly, before sliding to the window.

“I can’t believe you flipped off that guy in the parade, Shan. It’s Saint Patrick’s Day, for God’s sake.”

She wrinkled her nose and chuckled. “Hey, I thought I knew that priest with him, Father Cooper, from the Art Center. They call him the painting priest. And you can’t tell me you didn’t see that guy flip me off first. It was like he thought I knew him.”

“Regardless, it’s not very lady-like of you. What would Timothy and Sarah say?”
“Leave my parents out of this, you jerk. I’ve given them enough trouble.”
Sarrif rammed the cab through a puddle the size of a small stream on the side of 37th street. David paid him and they tumbled out onto the Avenue of the Americas and quickly up to his hotel. “Will you come up?” he asked.

“Do you want me to?”

“Of course I do. I always do.”

“What will good old Sharon say?”

“Leave her out of this.” He stared at her as she stood debating, the light from the lamppost carving out the chunks of her face above her cheekbones with bright, fluorescent light, and leaving the space below hollow and black. She thought for a long moment before turning and grabbing his hand to enter the hotel doorway.

In his mind, the years between them hovered over him like a blanket, wrapping him in the warmth and dryness of shared childhoods. The rain cascaded down off of the hotel’s canopy in thick sheets now, but to Sean, it was only the incessant pull of the past dragging him back to a time before wife and family and growing up, to that time when the ghosts of our past are still living and warm and soft beside us, as she was now.

Brush with *ahem* Greatness

I find it funny when I fall into the tantalizing trap, like most people do in similar situations, of believing that I am a character in someone else's fiction. I see it every time I run a writing class. Students will inevitably assume that they are the character in their friend's story. Sometimes the student writers are open, admitting it for all to hear, and other times they are coy, but it happens every time. Some people take it with a grain of salt (they apparently buy into the writer's claim that it's only fiction), others get angry, some sulk. However you take it, I have to believe that, at the very least, you, being the flattered/angered/hurt/embarrassed model of a fictional portrait, at some point entertained the idea that your fictional doppelganger was there on the page staring back at you. And therein lies the danger.

Case in point: I remember in a writing class in college having my professor assure us all that we were not characters in her story about a college writing class. It had been published, so it was out there for us all to see, and, despite the fact that we knew it was only fiction, we all spent hours trying to figure out who was, say, the neurotic pencil chewer, or who was the slovenly, unkempt genius with a flair for description. Truth be told, and she did tell us (repeatedly, emphatically), none of us were there at all, at least not in our true forms. We were there, yes, but only pieces of us. Traits, eye twitches, mannerisms, speech tics, but not the whole package.

Another time, in another class (this time a graduate independent study with the same fiction writer), I wrote a story about a lecherous English professor who specialized in 18th century English literature. Her husband, another of my professors, happened to specialize in 18th century English literature. Coincidence? Surely. Well, maybe. I mean I liked the guy. I liked the fact that he married my writing professor. I had no reason to suspect him of any of the nasty things my fictional English prof. did at all. It just came out in my story...really! Later, in our post-story conference, she gently reminded me that even inadvertent character assassination could be harmful- to my relationship with her husband and, in the future, to my checkbook, as libel is often embarrassing to deal with. Good points, and well taken.

You see, the truth is that all fiction comes from some place deep inside each writer. Who knows exactly where, but it's deep. And what else is in there? Our friends, memories, connections with those both alive and dead. All of those potential characters just milling around in the green room of the writer's soul, waiting to strut and fret again on the stage that is our fiction or poetry or personal essay. And we need to sort that stuff out before we write.

Do I put people I know in my stories? No. Do I put pieces of people I know in my stories? Absolutely. The trick is to make sure they're all mixed up enough so that the new creation is something that is just that: new.

And when I read, I have to remember that the only brush with greatness I can honestly say I will get is when I talk to the writer of the story, not when I put myself in the story whole.

Short Short

One of the most exciting classes I am teaching now is creative writing. Despite the oxymoronic course title (all writing is creative, and this class more aptly should be called Literary Writing), I have really been energized by talking about writing. I even got off my lazy behind and started a new story, so something must be in the air.

I assigned a short short of no more than 200 words as a blog exercise this weekend, and told the class I would participate as well. Kind of a Nancie Atwell thing. But before I go into my own story, I wanted to give a link to one of my favorite writers and a piece of flash fiction she has posted on her web site. The writer is Hollis Seamon, and the her story is called "Natural Disasters." It's a very sad short about the death of a parent and some of life's little ironies that accompanied that death.

So, here it is. It's called "Lunch Break."

He had been planning this for weeks. She would drop by his desk on the way to lunch like she always did. He opened his top desk drawer and fiddled with the wrapped box inside. The red bow was getting worn.

Over the top of his monitor he caught sight of her. She seemed to float down the aisle between the desks. She stopped before his and smiled at him. “Hey,” she said, “you doing lunch?”

“Not yet,” he said, and when she seemed puzzled, he reached into his drawer and produced the box. “This is for you.”

She looked at him over her glasses and pushed her auburn bangs out of the way. “What’s this?”

“Open it.”

She pulled on the ribbon and popped up the red velvet box top. Her eyes focused on the contents inside. Her hand went reflexively to her throat. “Oh,” she said, moving her hand from her neck to the desk for support. Her eyes went to his as if to ask a question. “I can’t…”

But he didn’t hear. He was already moving out of his chair and reaching for the shaking hand that she raised at him as she backed into the aisle.

It's a lot harder than it looks. In the future, I'll post some of the cool shorts that pop up from the class in this spot. Hopefully I'll be able to continue the story,too.

Keep writing!

Keep In Touch

So it begins.

I started a story tonight,which is pretty exciting, but, as simple and stupid as it sounds, the actual act of setting aside time to write and actually doing it (read: not working on web pages or grading papers or making tests, etc.) was really very cool. I cranked out 1,300 words of text, all rough, probably crap, but it felt sooooo good.

I'm not really sure where the story is going, but I had to use a line from a friend as the opening. His line was: Feeling guilty just means you have standards. I like that, considering I have a protagonist who is carrying a secret and feels pretty guilty about it. It's a first person story, too, which makes it seem confessional, but,in reality, is based on a whole bunch of people I have met and thought about. The first person is fun, too. I can play in another voice for a while.

The next session will, hopefully, be Thursday.

God, I'm exhausted...

Lives of Quiet Desperation

Thoreau said that "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" in his homage to simplification, Walden. I fear that we are too much with Thoreau in this; at least I was. The demons and gremlins are easy to live with...heck, sometimes they're comforting. If I can blame something for my lack of effort, I don't have to change. Interesting.

When it comes to writing, I fear that my life of quiet desperation hinged a lot on fear: fear of rejection, fear of success, fear of really going out and getting something you want...I don't know. I made a decision (it's this type of confessional crap that turns me off to blogging, but I feel it tonight, so on we go), and that decision is to not let the demons get the better of me. I will put the work away, let the web sites sit for awhile, and I'll devote myself to what makes me me. I know that the soul searching can be scary. But that's what I do. Let it flow, baby.

Web 2.0, Blogging, and the Future of the Text

I've been in a funk for the better part of a year now trying to figure out what blogging means. I'm not stupid, I got the idea pretty quickly, but I was having trouble with the whole philosophical implications of automatic (push button, if you will-and now a word from our sponsor) publishing. Sites like Lulu and Blurb make actually publishing the old fashioned way pretty easy, but this whole instant gratification phenomenon has really tied me in knots.

At least metaphorically.

I mean I enjoy the fact that I can pour out the flotsam and jetsam of my mind at a moment's notice. I like that I can pontificate to the empty hall...it makes me feel better. But aside from the therapeutic effects of blogging, I guess I wonder about the democratization of publishing. If blogs are like opinions, or other, less savory anatomical areas, i.e we all have them, then do we end up devaluing the text? Are we all being watered down with this Web 2.0 business? And if we are, then where is the value in the text? I guess I'm canonical enough to still value a group of documents that somehow are the benchmarks of, say, Western Literature (although the same argument can be made for texts about gardening, or voyeurism, or cooking- I wonder if there is the canonical text on erotic yo-yo's? I have a friend who could possibly contribute!).

There is no answer, of course, just the ongoing dialogue. We all keep writing, like me, and maybe diluting the pool even more. Or will the definitive literary statement on the 21st century spring from the pages of Blogger, or Wordpress, or, perish the thought, Myspace? Anyway, the following video by Michael Wesch, a professor at Kansas State University, takes a stab at what Web 2.0 really means. It's pretty thought-provoking.

Black Swan Green

So here I am, home sick all day. After a much needed nap right after breakfast (I helped the kids get off to school, kissed the wife goodbye, and settled in for a midwinter siesta), I woke with a passion to finish David Mitchell's Black Swan Green. I was nearly done with only a scant twenty pages to go, but I was too out of it last night to even attempt the last run, so I hunkered down under a blanket, cracked it open, and finished the darn thing. I was glad I did.

I wrote about David Mitchell's mind blowing Cloud Atlas last year, as it was my summer read, and waited until after Christmas to tackle his newest offering. School managed to keep me focused, but I just had to do it once 2007 flipped. And the results, after all that build up and anticipation, are mixed; kind of like waking up on Christmas morning and finding the package you had been waiting for all year, and finding it was as cool as you thought it would be, but then losing interest in it after oh, say, ten minutes of playing. It's kind of like that with this book.

I don't mean to disparage Mitchell. I still think he is one of the smartest writers writing now, and BSW does have its solid points. It is an accurate coming of age story. Jason Taylor's year long journey through the ups and downs, goods and bads, of life in a small Worcestershire village is incredibly similar to my own adolescence in Ravena. The issues he deals with- first kisses, drugs, bullies, embarrassing personal problems (Jason's a stutterer), sadistic school teachers, and his parents' divorce- is really reflective of the zeitgeist that was in the air during the early 1980's. It's pretty cool to hear it from a British perspective, and the homey British products that litter Jason's life add a nice air of the exotic, too.

I especially liked the interactions of the boys, which, being a thirteen year old once, struck me as very accurate. The evil Ross Wilcox, the loss of Tom Yew in the Falklands, and Jason's battle with "Hangman," the moniker he uses for his stutter, all accurately depict the world of the adolescent as it is, one fraught with dangers, joys, and matters of great sadness. Mitchell's verisimilitude, though, is a nice foil to the fantasy world of Jason and his escapist fantasy life. It is a nice balance, one that I can relate to ( I took a turn at poetry as a young man).

That said, I came to BSW with the expectation, perhaps wrongly, that it would blow me away like Cloud Atlas did. It's unfair to judge a book based on its predecessors, but we all do it. And, as you can guess, it didn't stun me like that book did. But the linguistic and stylistic virtuosity that was in the earlier text did pop up in spots in this book. Jason's poetic leaning and reflections was charming, and I really did enjoy the chapter that highlighted the verbal sparring between the protagonist and Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, herself a hold over from Cloud Atlas. Martin Frosbisher's Cloud Atlas Sextet also makes an appearance. Which tells me that Mitchell, as usual, has more going on than meets the eye. The last lines, spoken by Julia, are perhaps prophetic. She states, "It's not the end, yet."

OK, overall, a good read. Worth the time, if not as linguistically dazzling as Cloud Atlas. For the "traditional" linear readers, Mitchell is a good practitioner to settle in with.

Good reading. Back to work tomorrow.

Richard Ford and Me

The Reading

I had the wonderful opportunity to hear Richard Ford speak on Friday night (1/19/07, New York State Writers Institute, SUNY Albany), and was able to chat briefly with him and get a copy of The Lay of the Land, his latest novel, signed. Quite an experience.

I ventured out alone (my wife is not as interested in listening to middle aged male writers as I am, and we had a houseful of ten year olds participating in a sleep over) to SUNY Albany, a monstrous campus nearly empty with the cold and biting wind. As I made my way into the room, Ford was there talking to the five or six other early birds, and he was congenial and affable as the group plied him with questions they had just been dying to ask. I chose to forgo joining the group (he didn't need another groupie), instead opting to purchase a hard cover of The Lay of the Land, which he would later sign. Once William Kennedy (of Ironweed fame and executive director of the Writers Institute) settled in, Don Faulkner introduced Ford and away we went. Forty five minutes later, Ford had finished and the crowd of fifty plus listeners dug into their questions.

The Writer

Ford is a funny, engaging, intelligent writer, and Frank Bacombe, the protagonist of three linked novels- The Sportswriter (1986), Independence Day (1996), and The Lay of the Land (2006)- provides him with an eloquent, introspective voice in which to reflect on what it is to be a man, a husband, and a father. Bascombe navigates the treacherous shoals of grief, love, divorce, and, yes, writing, as he moves through the many periods of a modern man's life, ending, with the latest book, in the permanent period, a kind of extended and suspended time in which legacies are made or sustained, and things sometimes fall apart.

I found Ford to be such a personable guy to listen to, erudite and funny. His text- he read an excerpt from the novel that I originally read in The New Yorker- was engaging, thought provoking, and, at times, laugh out loud funny. After, he answered questions (how do writers keep it fresh, hearing the same questions over and over again?) and signed a bunch of books, mine included.

In the end, the evening was such a positive one that I wondered, as I drove home in the chilly Albany night, if being a book geek wasn't so bad, after all. I mean, the high from hearing a flesh and blood writer surpasses most manufactured highs, hands down. And I was inspired to write when I left, which I hope I can actually transfer into something substantial. Added bonus. So, in the future, I won't be hesitant to feed my soul, as one friend puts it. The benefits outweigh the potential social problems that could arise.

Express Your Soul

I have to admit that Gaping Void is perhaps one of the quirkiest, most thought provoking sites on the web. Hugh McCloud is either a raving maniac or a highly perceptive artist. I lean to the latter. This little bit about expression really hit home recently, as I constantly struggle with the dichotomy that exists between writing and that other part of life that pays the bills. I have always struggled with multi-tasking, but the idea of just expressing yourself by doing what you love seems so self explanatory that it gives you the "duh" reaction when you read it.

Shouldn't we all be doing that, anyway?

I guess it's easier said than done. At times, just about every person I know has had that existential battle between doing what you love and doing what feeds the kids. Friends, colleagues, former students, my wife, myself, we've all been bitten by the bug. I know that writing is the way I'd prefer to go, although web design is pretty cool, too. Oh, well. I'm stuck, too.

The answer can come in the cartoon. Maybe it's all about doing what you love within the confines of what you must- at least until you make your million. By doing what you love, and incorporating your creativity into your life, you can achieve some sort of balance. I know when I'm not creative I get downright cranky. When I write, or create a unit or lesson, or design a web page, or even blog, I feel the release of all the creative pressure that just builds up. And maybe, in some small way, I'm expressing my soul. Because once you do that,all else ceases to matter.