Tag Archives: writing process

Malaise or Deep Vein Thrombosis?

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I have been anxiety-ridden as of late, much of which is due to writing the final book of my speculative work, The Cx Trilogy. I’ve recently written notes for the outline and even glanced through the first few pages but have mostly been plagued by inertia. Distracted by my literary angst, I packed my toiletries into my luggage for the flight to Greenland, forgetting that I needed my dose of blood-thinner.

I didn’t realize the oversight until boarding and had to accept that I would be fine as long as I walked about on the four-hour flight. I looked down at the continent and then went through the list of the films, stumbling upon Steven Soderbergh’s Let Them All Talk starring Meryl Streep as a well-known author named Alice Hughes.

I was pleasantly surprised by the film which featured literary angst, engaging dialogue and a cleverly entwined plot until I was surprised (spoiler alert!!) to see Ms. Hughes suddenly die of Deep Vein Thrombosis. I got up immediately to walk.

Of course there was no real reason for alarm. Ms. Hughes’ case was severe and her writing far more of a success. It was funny, and that was it. Another moment of me thinking the world was about me.

Living in Fear

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I’ve made a lot of decisions as of late – or they have been made for me – that have brought me to here. And so I now live in fear. Not so much of the world and death and all of that but of the person I have become and what I am to do now.

Angoraphobia is the fear of open spaces and crowds – the Italian author Alessandro Manzoni famously suffered from this – and that is what I feel like I have, not of a physical space but what is now in my head.

I have sought to find something that means something outside of sex and booze and have put myself on a quixotic quest of words to make sense of that. There are no editors, agents or publishers out there as of yet that see my prose as anything beyond sophomoric and unsellable. And that is hard. And I guess the point.

And so I will fly to Copenhagen from here (JFK, if you haven’t guessed) and on to Ilulissat where I either affirm my sophomoric drunken self or write something of worth. Or both. It is to be the end of the trilogy, a book that has been sitting in wait for some years, the arrival to another place. Not here.

This is where my mind is most often. Not here, this godforsaken place where we’ve plunged into the digital wasteland, where words and thought mean no more, but out there, another place, where others have gathered to start the experiment again and find what the hell is so precious about a species fucking hell-bent on self-destruction.

And so, yeah, I live in fear. That is, when I bother to think.

Our Unspoken Selves

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Our history is unspoken, a nightmare only the subconscious knows. Human nature is deceit, the oxymoron of how we honestly treat one another and what we pretend for ourselves. From now on, we will sleep no more.

There has never been a record of truth. That was the epiphany of the Nazis. It’s only getting worse now, where the shadows become real, and the nightmare is complete. Because, as horrible as they are, you and I are the very same.

I Have An Expiration Date Too

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I’ve been hearing the rabbits screaming at night. Have you been hearing that? I was told that it’s just the dogs killing them.

As soon as the veil goes down, that’s when I thought I would know something. But then it wasn’t that. I was just pretending, and that was it.

I’m here. I think I know that. I mean, I look back and remember most things. But I remember who I thought I would be. And I’m good. Almost.

Fuck Pedagogy: Another Scene Purged

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Maggie arrived that year, the new head of curriculum planning. She loved meetings because there was food and idle chitchat. Maggie told me that she was very excited about my plan to take a group of teachers to the Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) for workshops on film and how to apply media to a variety of curriculae. I enlisted a dozen teachers and was making final arrangements when Maggie emailed me: You will have to cancel. Next time! M.

I went to her office, which could have been a good idea but was not. “You can’t cancel now, Maggie.”

“Well, I am afraid that I already have.”

“You should have spoken to me. I’ve made all of the arrangements.”

“Next time.”

“I’ve booked our workshop. It’s done.”

“Be that as it may, the plans have changed.”

“It’s a reflection of complete incompetence, Maggie.”

She stared back, mouth open, as I left. At least I had stood my ground. That was the thought in my head. Stupid me.

Writing Process: Restructuring “Paint”

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I was never one for the story arc. While well-structured rising action, climax and denouement are certainly to be admired, the essence of story has little to do with craft.

Part Three of The Buzz Trilogy follows the rapid dissolution of the eponymous character.

The problem with much of story-telling is a blind adherence to the clever raconteur. In other words, it isn’t what the story is about as much as how it is told. “Stories” on social media have brought that to the fore, demonstrating that immediate gratification isn’t that gratifying in the end.

It’s the characters and dialogue, the little glimpses of what’s what, a truth of sorts, that makes a story worth anything. So what if the start is all wrong, the sequence of memories of the dead father askew, there is no flow and Davis is a jerk?

Yeah, back to the drawing board.

Who I say I think I am

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I try to think about who I am and what I know, but I don’t know what any of that means. It’s a thing off in the distance, someplace that I thought I might have been, even convinced myself of that, and have now lost.

I know what I want to be. No, that’s a lie too. Even if I said that I knew what I want, or that I thought that I knew that, I wouldn’t. The more I think that I know the who and what, the more I’m further from it because I think that. It’s a façade.

Confidence is the thing, believing in those lies is what makes you that you in you. The deeper you get, the further you are from the same. A gosh-darned paradox!

And so…something else. Drugs and whores! No confusion there. Or all confusion. Signs of it all gone awry. At least it’s not a façade. Or the façade of facades. Good copy anyway.

Where Am I Now?

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I’m in the Outer Banks, North Carolina. I’m sitting at my table, David McCullough’s Wright Brothers biography at my side, and looking out at the clearing skies. It’s beginning to get warmer.

I’m writing now. That’s what I’m doing because I’m a writer. I write. Not that I’ve been feeling clear on that for some time. I know that I’m a writer. I know that is who I am. I know that is how I feel most myself, doing that, writing. As Wilbur Wright said about flying: When you know that the whole mechanism is working perfectly, the sensation is so keenly delightful as to be almost beyond description. More than anything else the sensation is one of perfect peace, mingled with the excitement that strains every nerve to the utmost, if you can conceive of such a combination. That is the sensation of writing for me.

And yet, given my failure to have anything published in 38 years, I often don’t feel a writer and know that few others consider me as that. I’m a writer. I’m nothing. I’m a writer. I’m a failure. I’m a writer. I’m a loser. I’m a fucking writer. If you say so. This isn’t a series of thoughts, one after the other, but a garble of it all at once, puking through my head. And the idea of failure dominates.

That said, I’m glad to write about that. And I’m happy to be here on the Outer Banks with my view over the dunes of the greening sea and brightening skies, a triangle of pelicans flashing overhead. That’s something to write about. Which is what I did.

The Confessional as Narrative

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My creative writing teacher in college, Viktor Coleman, told me that I obfuscated too much in my writing, meaning that I put up barriers to avoid sharing my genuine voice. His analysis pissed me off. “All this guy cares about is fucking his hot students,” I railed to friends. “He doesn’t give a damn about what makes writing work.”

I don’t shy away from sharing my thoughts and experiences in my writing through my alter egos Buzz, Dee and Davis. They’ve been shamefully drunk, horribly abusive and have fucked whoever and whatever they could, including a bean bag chair. They just don’t dwell on what they’ve done. There are no revelations. These things happened; they accept that and moved on. Like real people do.

Which Coleman and others might argue is where the artifice comes in: the arc, denouement and lessons to follow. I don’t agree, Life isn’t like that. Life is a teacher fucking his student and nobody giving a damn, including the students. There is no Me Too. No clever point of view. It’s just things that happen, and that’s it. The characters are still alive and looking for the answers in all the wrong places.

Things happened and here we are. That’s my narrative. That’s what I see in our world. My heroes – super or otherwise- don’t save the day. They takes care of themselves first and then whoever suits their needs. Nobody’s buying that yet. I just need a couple more years of scrolling and we’ll be there.

Writing the Perfect Chase Script

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I began a script many years ago with the idea of having a chase sequence from very beginning to the end, the very first shot to the last, nothing but a chase.

Nicholas Winding Refn’s Pusher films and The Safdie Brothers Good Time took a shot at the chase script, as did Ilya Naishuller in Hardcore Henry.

Ilya Naishuller’s Hardcore Henry

But they all fell short of the concept, getting lost in an excess of violence and drugs, always killing and stoned out of their heads. That’s what the world has raced off to apparently.

Nicholas Winding Refn’s Pusher I

But that wasn’t my idea. I just wanted to explore the idea of waking up in a strange place and being chased from then on. Like life, someone always after you.