Tag Archives: writing process

3-D Ojibwa?

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I had a glimmer of light on my screenplay, The Life and Home of Gerbi Norberg, in 1996, when I piqued an agent’s interest by making reference in my cover letter to the assumed “teetering piles” of submissions on her desk. She liked the image and called. “Before you come down to chat, I would like you to address the title. The Life and Home of Gerbi Norberg doesn’t work, does it? You need something that will catch the audience’s attention.” I was most pliant; I arrived the next day with my newly christened Manitou island. manitou“What does that mean?”

“The Manitou are the Ojibwa spirits.”

“Spirits? That’s a start.” She scanned through the first pages. “Okay, and this. I’m not sure about these names. What’s this one? Asawsny?”

“Asawasanay. He’s the spiritual leader.” I pointed out the name to follow. “And Pamequonaishcung is an elder. They’re Ojibwa.”“Pamakon? Oh.” She turned the pages. “I’m not sure that’s going to work.”

“That’s what the story is about. It’s their spiritual return to the land.”

“Oh.” The meeting deteriorated from there, and there was no follow-up. I understood her point about making the story accessible, and changes of course could be made, but her approach was facile, like she expected an explosion of light. bibleI was supposed to amaze and astound, to make the sale, so that she could sell another. I balked. Eleven books later, I’m still struggling with that. (And, yes, I changed the title back to The Life and Home of Gerbi Norberg.)

Bloom Jimmy & “Call the Dancers”

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Call the Dancers, a short novel, almost a novella, is set in Dublin and features a punk band, Bloom Jimmy, who only perform the words of James Joyce. jimmyjThe lights went out. Bloom Jimmy returned to the stage.”Like to be that rock she sat on,” Jack announced quietly and then sang, “‘O sweety all your little girlwhite up I saw dirty bracegirdle made me do love sticky we two naughty Grace darling she him half past the bed met him pike hoses frillies for Raoul to perfume your wife black hair heave under embon senorita young eyes Mulvey plump years dreams return tail end Agendath swoony lovey showed me her next year in drawers return next in her next her next.'” The drums and guitars began. He began screaming. “Darling, I saw your! I saw all! Darling, I saw your! I saw all! Friction of the position! Like to be that rock she sat on! Like to be that rock she sat on! Like to be that rock she sat on!”   Bloom Jimmy & "Call the Dancers"The music was churning; the crowd smoked and thrashed. Stephanie was glad for the shelter provided by Nicholas. Joyce or not. It wasn’t good. What would he think of this? She had read a little of Ulysses, but just the sections about sex, penises being hat racks and crowbars. What was her name? Milly. The wife was Milly. That wasn’t right. Molly. That was it. Her name was Molly. Ulysses intimidated her. All of the masterpieces did, To the Lighthouse, those, consciousness and no story.

The Trilogy of “Buzz”

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I wrote Buzz in three installments, one per year, 1996-99. Leaving documents the main character’s younger years, cycling across Europe to burn off a broken heart. Syria 198A yellow road turned inland from Valencia, went up into the hills and onto the plateau of La Mancha. The climb out of Chiva was hard, four vast switchbacks to the ridge, a burnt-out tractor-trailer wreck beneath a sign welcoming visitors to the heart of Spain. Sad dusty trees teetered beside rocks and weathered white-washed houses. Maybe here he wouldn’t see so many dead dogs. 

Through is a piece in stasis, offering only the illusion of getting anywhere. IMAG1220The monster blackness in the corner of the room, ripping the roof off, vertigo and on forever, beautiful and tiny like a bar of soap, just under foot, holding it, dinosaurs across the island and his mother’s best friend lying with him naked bent over backwards, the curtains and the phone ringing, on a boat, a really nice boat with a super big flag and clean bathrooms or in tatters and leaking a bit.

And Out is the final dissolution, what it is to have thrown everything away for no reason at all. Phone 290I was trying to understand, meaning to do it right, holding her eyes perfect, leave nothing, not myself, not jumping, not dead, not there, and then just stupid, loving her, stuck in myself, stuck stupid and sad.

Black Ice: Alone Together

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Black Ice is a novel about isolation. The eldest son is handicapped, lost in his own world; none of his family knows how to connect. reader460Joel didn’t throw rocks; he didn’t punch and grab. He just read, mostly in his room, hunched up, hour after hour, at the end of his bed or against the closet door, his tongue half out, fingers tightly at the corners. Michelle worried about his eyes and posture. She had John move the desk beside the window and put in a nice straight-back chair, but Joel wouldn’t use either. Michelle left the ceiling light on to find it off again, Joel in the dark. As frustrating as it was, she knew it was pointless to get upset; she could only sigh when his glasses got thicker. He liked history books the best, stories about real people. White Slaves of the Nootka was about an Englishman held captive by Nootka Indians hundreds of years back. White-SlavesCam laughed at him, “You mean the Knucklehead people.” Joel liked the Nootka people because they liked being alone. That was like Pesto. Joel said that Pesto was a Nootka. He wrote the name in his Rabbit Book. Pesto wasn’t a rabbit; rabbits were just what Joel drew. The drawings were only at the beginning; it was all writing after that, all about Pesto and where he went.

Dream within a Dream

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Writing about dreams is a hazard to be avoided. As grand and pure as the moments may seem, they are probably too much that and thus not decipherable for others. IMAG2424And yet…and yet…I really did have an interesting dream last night. I was attending a seminar on how to submit work to agents. I was on my computer, editing my cover letter for my bad side when I received an email titled we will take you. Yes, it was from an agent. I held myself still, not wanting to shatter the moment. IMAG2369Someone ran past and I leaned forward to hide the computer screen. And then I clicked. We are pleased to advise you of our interest in your work. I scrolled down quickly, too quickly, and found an email exchange between two of the agents regarding my work, one extolling the vitality of my prose, the other in complete agreement…and then a note near the bottom about editing out the dream imagery. I didn’t care. I had an agent!

All In: Writing about 9/11

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My last novel, All In (2005), centers on a character killed at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The book is told from three different voices (his brother, niece and wife) months and years after the events. The most powerful voice is, of course, that of his wife, Cheryl. Phone 005We argued. That’s how I left him. I walked away because I wasn’t listening. It was ridiculous. It wasn’t even an argument. And then I was on the elevator. There was a stout woman across from me; she had folds in her arms, bulging layers at her elbows and shoulders. It was ridiculous how I never said what I wanted. I was angry at him, and I didn’t know why. It was all so ridiculous. I waited in the sky lobby. There was an attendant there from the restaurant; the express wasn’t working. Her fingernails were red. I wasn’t going to call him. He would call me. And then I heard it; it was a vibration and then much louder than that. I stopped and was going to turn to see what it was. I knew it was somewhere else, this sound coming in. I held myself there, twisted against the ground. I couldn’t move. There was only the light on the floor and my hand out in front of me. IMAG1398I was on my side. I couldn’t hear anything and then it was sharp and bright, knocking me flat again so that I was holding against myself, thinking of what I must have broken and where my purse had gone. I was looking across, how the light was orange and grey, and there was the woman, the attendant with red nails, hunched and then standing. I wasn’t going to move. And then I was sitting and trying to think. I smelt gas. It was something they would have to fix. I could see out the window, and there was smoke or fog, something that made it so I couldn’t look out without my hand on my eyes. I couldn’t understand why no one was here. And then my phone was ringing. “Hello?”

Re-formating Torturous Prose

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I just finished re-formatting my work from 20 years ago, a project that wore on me both from the tedium and the malaise of reading torturous prose, all of it mine. The worst was in the painfully obvious themes in my first novel, The Sacred Whore, glaring derivative elements from 1984, Do the Right Thing, Dog Day Afternoon and Logan’s Run at every turn. logans-runOn the upside was one dream sequence, a decent rock amongst gravel, depicting a nightmare I remember well: She sat alone in the clammy interior, amusing herself by pressing and peeling her skin from the plastic seats. Her skin glowed red and she climbed out of the car and stood in what seemed to be an old riverbed. She turned to face the demon of her nightmares. Its black body, swollen and hard, oozed of molten marble. Its nostril slits slapped open and shut in grotesque harmony with its gasps of air. Its massive jaws ravenously clacked open and shut, exposing rows of green-caked teeth and its purple, veiny tongue slopping from side to side. leosealAmazingly, its cement-slab feet, each rising and falling alternately in excited agitation, did not sink into the thick mud. Its head leaned back toward the bleeding sky and, for a moment, seemed to have lost consciousness until it launched itself, jaws first, into her chest.

Confidential: in a word

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Confidential is an interesting word, a word with power and value, reflecting our understanding of what to keep to ourselves.Confidential wordInformation not to be shared, thoughts not to be disclosed, secret…and yet something for one more person, a friend to a brother, a husband to a wife, until it, as they say…loose-lips-sink-ships-posters2 It appears that the seal of confidentiality is broken too easily by us common folk…unless of course there’s a lawyer present, formalizing it as a threat and terror. Confidentiality is a paper to sign. The_Devil's_ContractTalk and face the consequences.

Virginia Adamantine: Prometheus Stripped

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My screenplay Sister Prometheus is a reworking of the Promethean myth, utilizing  elements of the Oresteia. Virginia Adamantine: Prometheus StrippedI realize that this is a dangerous and foolhardy pursuit, as any modern work is likely to pale in comparison with the work of Aeschylus, exemplified in the passage below, describing Iphigenia’s death at the hands of the priests of her father Agamemnon:

Rough hands tear at her girdle, cast/ Her saffron silks to earth. Her eyes/

Search for her slaughterers; and each/ Seeing her beauty, that surpassed/

A painter’s vision, yet denies/ The pity her dumb looks beseech/

Struggling for voice; for often in old days,/When brave men feasted in her father’s hall/

With simple skill and pious praise/Linked to the flutes pure tone/

Her virgin voice would melt the hearts of all/

Honoring the third libation near her father’s throne/

The rest I did not see/ Nor do I speak of it.Virginia Adamantine: Prometheus Stripped

This sacrifice is said to have appeased the gods and given the Greeks fair winds to Troy and eventual triumph in their bloody quest for Helen. My Prometheus is female. Her name is Virginia Adamantine, and she’s furious with the Agamemnons of the world, ready to fight anyone in her way. And she’s a stripper. Virginia Adamantine: Prometheus StrippedThat’s the part I doubt Aeschylus would have appreciated.

Toro Muerte: A Cordoba short story

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I wrote a short story many years ago (1989) in Spain and called it Toro Muerte. Cordoba-SpainBefore coming to Spain, I saw it only as flamenco dancers, bullfights and Hemingway, drunk. The only flamenco dancers I saw were little girls in small towns, both eager to grow, the bullfights I couldn’t distinguish from the game shows, and Hemingway was nowhere to be found. bugs_bull1“Are you a writer?”  I stutter, never thinking the muse – braces, roses and tennis shoes – could come from such an innocent throng. Spring didn’t come this year; there wasn’t any room between the dry air and tired sun, no time for blossoms and birds, nothing outside the thoroughfare. Cars plunging horizon to horizon, rubber and olive branches left on the shoulder with the sod clumps and rusted bones, waste piled at grates. The gap widens. vespa girlI don’t know how well the narrative holds – four little stories intertwining in Central Spain – but I remember the writing of it well, the heavy table, the bars on the window, the congestion in the winding street, watching a football match with my hosts at the pensione, not speaking a word of Spanish, walking late at night, the plaza full of vespas, and writing every day until it was done.