A few ‘g’ words from the Newfoundlander dictionary:
Gallnippers (n): Mosquitoes.
Gatcher (n): One who swaggers.![Businessman-Green-Forest-Environment-10003200045[1]](https://i0.wp.com/mcphedranbadside.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Businessman-Green-Forest-Environment-100032000451-e1386174481491.jpg?ssl=1)
Gommel (n): A simpleton.
Griny (n): Dirty
Gulching (v): Having sex outdoors. 
And so…The griny gatcher was more of a gommel as he swiped at the galnippers instead of gulching like he’d planned. 
I thought this was a good scene because the character, Tony was clear – his mannerisms and irritating tone – the dialogue moved, and Dee showed who she was…and then I realized that none of it helped the story. Therefore it is dead.
“I don’t do camping.” Tony cornered me. “Ever been to Fenwick?”
“Never heard of it.”
“It’s in the city.” He was lean and cocked his head in sickening confidence. “Big money thing. Fenwick.”
“You’re from New York?”
“It’s jacket and tie. I wasn’t into it, but it’s this big money thing, right?” He picked at his beer can tab, nodding to himself. “Augustine’s not like that.”
“It’s not a big money thing.”
“You know Marky? He graduated Augustine last year. He lives in Chelsea.”
“New York?”
He tried to put his arm over my shoulder but I ducked away. “We did a bit of pre-game and then we’re driving through Chelsea. Marky likes to drive fast, right? He makes this turn and then another. He thinks this car is following us. And he wants to lose it. He was crazy like that.”
“Why were you driving? It’s New York.”
“Marky’s got this beautiful Beamer, man. Series Three, right?” 
He put his hand stupidly on my arm again, like he was hanging onto a subway pole. “Anyway, he runs this stop sign, a fucking stop sign in Manhattan. Chelsea, right? And this car really is following us, right? And I’m telling him to relax.” He was bending down, trying to find an angle to kiss. “It’s the cops. The cops, right? And we have like a case of beer and a 40 of vodka. Marky is freaking out. I tell him I’ll handle it.”
The cons of writing on a train: limited leg room, loud people and the occasional sway.
Leaving Milan
The pros of writing on a train: the sense of movement, the landscape flowing past and the occasional sway. 
And then of course there’s the getting there too.
Giudecca, Venice
What’s with hue? 
Is it some kind of color politics statement?
Bathroom vent in Chelsea
MFA Programs for Creative Writing all require a 20-30 page writing sample; this is the key to the application. And so I am editing a chapter from my bad side for the purpose.
We drove through the iron and brick gate, past the soccer fields and distant trees to a long quadrangle, yellow brick buildings going down the sides like a prison. 
An old man and woman stood on the wide concrete steps of the white-pillared building at the end.
“Good afternoon, Headmaster Hostler.” Nani looked like a corpse in her fresh lipstick.
Headmaster Hostler was badly shaped, fat in his stomach and legs, and then pinched up at his shoulders and face; it made his blazer come out like a dress. 
“Thank you so much for coming, Mrs. Keynes. You’ve met my wife, Mrs. Hostler?”
“Welcome to St. Augustine’s.” Mrs. Hostler shook Nani’s hand.
Headmaster Hostler bent down to me, his thin hair hung over his giant forehead in thick greasy lines. “Perseverare Conantur.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
“Perseverare Conantur.” Mrs. Hostler indicated the gold cursive writing above the doorway. “Do you know what that means?”
“It’s Latin.”
She had a tight face, her skin bright and gluey. “And what does it mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Endeavor…”
“Endeavor,” I repeated.
A tall girl came up behind us. “Endeavor to Persevere.”
“Thank you, Miss Bocklin.” Mrs. Hostler said. “This is St. Augustine’s Head Girl, our very first.”
“Yes, Mrs. Hostler.”
“Quite a responsibility, isn’t it, Miss Bocklin?”
“Yes, Mrs. Hostler.”
“We are sure you are up to the challenge.”
Lately I’ve been trying to figure out how to be an actual writer, whether it’s using the right words, or it’s a sensibility or a devotion to craft or just being in the right place at the right time. I mean, I know it isn’t just writing. I’ve been doing that for over 30 years and I have yet to feel the part. 
I do sometimes tell people that I’m a writer, but not the customs agents because I don’t make money doing it, with the exception of a brief stint as a sports columnist and my current job writing copy about toilets.
I know that writing means something to me. I have a clear sense of me when I write. It’s just me and the words coming out of my head, a long wavering stream that I sometimes catch, and feel clear when I do. And so I’m writing. I know that I’m doing that.
I just don’t know about the being a writer part. I doubt my ability to be as open as Richard Blanco or as honest as Darin Strauss.
I doubt my cleverness, wit and sense of denouement. But more than anything I doubt being able to enunciate what it is I doubt without trying to make it sound too much like what I think I should and then I’ve just missed the point.
I have been told that I have an ear for dialogue and that I seem dedicated to my work. I’ve also been told that part of my problem is that my narrative tends to be too fast-moving, a frantic thing that doesn’t breathe and therefore is opaque.
But still…I know that my writing makes sense to me – even these few words; it gives me solace, a moment where life isn’t just chaos and missteps. That’s why I’m trying to do it, so that it’s not me just chasing words, but crafting and binding and offering my thoughts on that. I’m attending conferences and workshops and orientation meetings for MFA programs. I’ve even thought of growing a beard.
Henrik Ibsen
But I’m still not so sure. I have my doubts that, even after whatever comes next, I’ll even be a writer then, that I’ll feel like I should, or I’ll even want to because it seems that maybe there’s nothing like just chasing words, nothing as pure as that. 
At least that’s what I tell myself.
I’ll be standing there thinking I’m faking it, just staring ahead, and I’ll feel like I’m just pretending, waiting for someone to rush to me, the poor lonely kid with no one to love. 
I feel like that when I’m doing anything, eating, walking, crying, anything, and I’ll think that when I’m dying too. 
That’s how I am.*
(From “All In”.)
My last day at the Sanibel Writing Conference yielded more writing time to work on exercises offered by John Dufresne, Brock Clarke, Darin Strauss & Benjamin Percy
1. Reflect on a photograph:
The camera was given to me at Christmas. I took a picture of my brother in front of the garage. It wasn’t centered, not even close. He stared back, bored, his mittened hands awkwardly together, waiting for me. It was a nothing moment, taken badly, now something with little to say. I wonder where the other pictures are. Why only that one? There must have been another dozen or so. At least. Were they also of my brother and the garage? The garden? What about the dog? Where are my parents?
2. Write about a place and time – an indelible moment – with extraordinary and ordinary aspects.
Richard was shirtless, his sweaty chest barreling over his grey black shorts. His girlfriend was behind him in the corner, completely naked, just her high heels and a glass of wine in her hand. 
“She’s a nudist,” Jerome said. “Can you believe it?”
“It’s freezing outside.”
“I know.” His face was glowing, stretched like elastic. “It’s the kind of thing that only happens on MTV.”
3. Write a piece that starts with “The last time I saw _____ was _____.”
The last time I saw my cousin was on the park bench at Emerald Lake. He was red-faced, laughing, a bottle of Kokanee in his hand. “They’re everywhere! Holy shit!”
They raced back and forth, dotting the burrowed ground, chasing each other to get nuts from the people, darting back, vanishing like they were never there.
“It’s a Golden-mantle Ground Squirrel.” I had my glossy guide, The Field Guide for the Flora and Fauna of Western Canada, clutched in my hand.
“The Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel!” He spilled beer in a foamy glob at the one nearest. “There you go, tiger. You’ll like that.”
4. Choose the thing that you are most afraid of and write about that.
I can’t move my head. Not even my shoulders. I am pinned, dead still, between the boards, a bright side light on my face and neck. I am in a flat horrible space, my eyes wide, stuck inside this coffin in the ground. 
Stuck there, panicking. I can’t even raise my hands properly. I have no control. I am completely helpless, trapped by monsters, people I don’t know, who have left me here to die, to be tortured in my final hours and think nothing of it. I close my hands to make it go away, but it is still there. I can’t get out. I want to scream but I can’t even do that. I am stuck in the horrible silent box with not even myself.
The Writing Conference on Sanibel Island, Florida is underway.
I have begun the day with some writing exercises, led by John Dufresne:
1. Write what you are feeling right now:
Still the pain in my back, the lower blade, dull, deep. Don’t want to move my arm the wrong way. It’s an odd big room with glass doors bringing clanging light in.
2. Expectations for the conference:
Above all, get someone interested in “my bad side”, any thoughts, any moment that will lead to that. Meeting people seems to be the key, getting anyone to know who I am so that the next email isn’t trashed without a decent look. I am always very happy to be given the time, space and freedom to write in any way, for “Anori”, anything else, and revising “bad side”
3. Reflections on childhood, remembering/imagining a moment before going to school, even your first memory:
The water was far away, everything was, through the fence, looking below, imagining what it would be like to be on that floating log, or was that even remembered? The monorail turning high in the sky, metal and glass and movies on the curving wall, the sun coming in the outlet.
4. Who was your first friend?
Ronald was a bear with a big face, flatter than he should have been, little chubby arms and a long hanging belly, tiny legs. I stuffed my things in his back. Charlie was there too, a sad little monkey puppet with a hard bobbling head and cheap brown cloth for a puppet body. They were always together, Charlie inside Ronald, always there on my bed, beside my pillow and then in my closet. I don’t remember not having them, getting rid of them. I wish I did. I probably forced myself not to remember that, growing up and throwing them away.
Our room was in the back. It looked over the garden, the garage behind that. 
We had a record player on a wobbly table between our beds and listened to records in the dark, the hallway light coming under the door in a broken throbbing line, sloped to the end. 
I felt whole with my arms flat against the sheets, my face just touching the covers, listening to my sister’s breathing and her changing positions in her bed. I wanted to stay like that forever.
We listened to KC and the Sunshine Band and then the Bee Gees. And then the needle picked up and clicked down and it was quiet. My sister got out of bed and took off her pajamas. I did too.
She went out the door, running. I went after her, the warm brightness now cool, stretching my hand out against the wallpaper, an angular flower pattern that bubbled in curlicues. 
We were at the top of the stairs, looking over the banister, and heard Nani coming out of the kitchen, her shoes hard on the linoleum into the hall. We ran back and hid under the covers, laughing, when her shadow cut into the warm broken light and she pulled my covers back. “Get your pajamas back on this instant.”
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