Tag Archives: harbinger of writing

Writing Bad & Writing Good

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At first, It’s just writing down words, getting from A to B, a clunky miserable slog that makes me feel miserable and worthless, like an unkempt bug-eyed man who scurries in the room, aimlessly moving around, making loud ignorant comments about whatever he notices.

Poop has few friends

It is minimally better the next go around. Still A to B, still clunky, miserable and worthless, but there with flashes, razor thin, something, an echo, a line across the dull grey sky.

Breathing and forgetting are next, lots of that, drinking too, reflecting and reconsidering. Even this, these words now, are feeling wrong, because I should be doing the sad reflecting. And I’m not. I’m rushing it. That’s the worst, making it the same awful thing at the outset.

Mountain goat skeleton in the Italian Alps

And then – good thing I got out of that – there is the crack, a way in, that meaty spark, a thing I was after, sharp and wonderful, until I reach for it and find it gone, never even there. I was drunk or wish I was.

The animal skulks about in the shadows, on the periphery, until it’s a mania of spinning my head, thinking I have something to say, knowing I’m a degenerate. The words are there but it’s still a morass – mole asses! – too much of that, and the drinking is my friend again, and I realize it’s time to give everything up. It never made sense. The drink was to blame. The repercussions are all there is, living the straight and narrow, facing judgement, crying for meaning, needing and almost finding that clear and consistent moral code, finally done with my childish nonsense.

I will wake up hurting

Gone and almost forgotten, I stupidly think it might be time to return, peak and see if that squirrely thing was ever there. And I do. And it was. It is. There are sparks and flames now, as shitty a metaphor as that might be, because I’ve got better things to do. I race after it and can’t stop until I do and realize I was wrong and that drink is to blame.

Time is the thing now, the breathing and forgetting, the drink, yes, too. Until it’s time again, or well past, and it opens just like that, the clunky thing still there, only needing a structural fix, deleting and editing, that on repeat, until there is something, a character more real than I know, a thing with meaning, not flailing and spouting, but sharp and clear, and not so much of that as to make it copy, but the sheen and wet of heavy footsteps bounding off to an end I know not of.

On the way to a Greenlandic summit

He doesn’t follow Emily up the stairs! He’s too chicken for that. He’s pretending that he will but stops and stares blankly as she vanishes and turns and makes a run for it. He’s free! No, he runs straight into his boss who he has to escort him into the party. He’s doomed and reaches for the first glass of champagne he can lay his hands on.

Anyway, I feel better about the book even if I know it won’t last.

Writing Process: Knowing the Story

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You think you know something and then you don’t. All stories are only that. He wakes up to some party or hands held out and then he has to do something alone not because he believes in life or strength but because he was lost.

It is as simple as sitting on the fire escape or the corner that he knows and remembering that no one was there for him but paid for her mistakes. She tried. Or she didn’t. But he just has to carry on and become something new from that.

An Everything Thing

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Here is a place I know. It is easy. I know where I am. I am here. I am afraid of it. I dream of living in this. It isn’t a thing that is anything else. It is the thing, all of itself. And I am here. Lucky me. There is a sound. It is quiet and not. Oh, an abstract thing. No. It is tiny and whole. It is physics. It is a big thing. It is the everything thing. But don’t say that. Too many steps back.

It is that thing in you, that thing you hold too tight, little too much of you that you don’t want to let out, that you might say no to, that you might think that is too much and is everything. And that is the thing, tiny as it might be that is everything. It wakes you and makes you remember.

It was a while back and I was different then. But I wasn’t. You weren’t. We were there. And we remember. And that is the curse. It is love. Or memory.

Intelligence of a Disco Ball

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I sit on the fire hydrant protective pole and think about this intelligence of ours. The buildings are big and I am impressed by that. I watch the people pass, the conversations, always on the phone, that Doppler effect, remarkable, words whole and real with the smiling, angry face, shards fleeting by, almost seizing that, like music, trying to compose those notes, understand that language. Yeah, it seems like hieroglyphics now, walking sideways, feeling so smart and full of it, and then not. Intelligence. My faux mantra. Life is being in it. Intelligence is understanding that. And so then? Then is the word. What is behind the locked door? The memory as a child of something not there. The reason for addiction. What goes on around that corner?

We imbibe. We rock and deride. We dream. What else can do that? And, essence of it, is intelligence in those very things? Irony of ironies, what if that is the only thing, to be wet and erect, and that we only need to stay delighted or angry or just freaking about that. We are the intelligent ones. Who else could dream up the idea of a disco ball, something so pure as that, that has no name nor gender or race. It just spins and plays all the right music.

Impossible Script Pitch: I Am Elephant

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A Bill Murray character pitches the idea of a long-time hockey fan who comes early to his team’s games to watch warm-ups and befriends the opposing goalie before the Stanley Cup finals by talking about gladiator mentality of the goalie, the defender of the universe. He helps him sort his game sticks as he realizes an opportunity to damage his confidence and so help his team win. He takes him out afterwards to a bar and tries to get him drunk, to no avail. The goalie, Elephant, sneaks into a private club which our hero tries over and over to break in and succeeds at the end, finding friends and family inside, with Elephant. He is admonished by all, but promises that there is a plan, citing winning the lottery as the first point. No one believes him until he locks into a death stare – performed by John Turturro and Elephant – during which there is a back and forth series of accusations which makes everyone tear with laughter. 

The agent loves the pitch and commissions it to his go-to – played by Tom Hanks – who sets up his work space into a giant white room like a hockey rink to begin the process. Bill Murray’s character is devastated and sets up his massive musical pitch “I am Elephant” during which a giant King Kong set arises out of the dim with the chant of “I am Elephant” as Murray holds up a placard and high-fives a series of animals – elephants, tigers, hippos, Tony the Tiger, etc. – who come out the King Kong door and then from the opposite way, as the scene devolves into chaos – llamas, sharks, emus parading past. However, the agent is sold on the pitch of the Murray character getting to write, and Tom Hanks bows out gracefully. Murray goes on to write the story in which it is revealed that Elephant the goalie actually is using the fan as part of his routine in the championships, always pretending and manipulating opposing fans to his side. Even with this revelation, they all still love Elephant who lets in the losing goal at the end.

Bio Tuesday: The Sacred Whore

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The Sacred Whore is my first novel, the story of a group of prostitutes who kidnap a college basketball team to air their views on the dismal morality in the United States. It has its moments, mostly characters realizing themselves. But more than that, it was the dogged focus of getting those 446 pages written. And then transcribed to 706 pages, typed, double-spaced. And then edited down to 432. And again down to 365. And then adapted into a screenplay. And to have both rejected again and again. A harbinger of what writing would come to be.