Writers are the biggest cowards of all.
Instead of facing the horror of reality, they tire themselves out with fairy tales to get a better sleep.
Cowardly Pens
Tag Archives: writing
Expunged Scene from “The Vanishing Pill”
“Have you seen Chris anywhere?” Blaire asked Davis, her heavy breasts pushing into arm. “Did he come?”
Davis looked around the half-crowded bar, the view of Granville Island and Burrard Inlet behind it obscured by the overpass stanchions. He didn’t recognize half of the people even though he had apparently been in college with all of them 25 years ago. “I thought he was dead.”
“Oh, hey, what?”
“Bad joke. I don’t know where he is.”
“Same old Davis.” She stepped back and crossed her arms over her beer. “Always saying crazy things.”
“That’s what my wife says too. She might be finally done with me.”
“Oh, hey, I’ve been there and it worked out okay for me.”
“I’m sure it will be fine. Yeah.”
“Hey, there!” Minnie, Blaire’s sister, arrived and kissed them both. “How are you, Davis? I haven’t seen you in years.”
“You know, living the dream.”
Minnie was prettier than Blaire but she had more a boyish figure and no breasts, not that Davis hadn’t tried back in the day. “You’re still writing?”
“I don’t know what I’m thinking. I personally hate it when people say that. ‘Living the dream’. It’s really stupid. Sorry about that.”
“Okay.” Minnie and Blaire laughed.
“I’m teaching. That’s what I’m doing, teaching. Although the way it’s going now, I don’t know.”
Minnie leaned in. “Nothing bad, I hope.”
“Bad? No. I think I’m going to get fired and my wife is kicking me out.” He threw his arms out. “But I feel good. I do. Could be the gummy bear, I don’t know.”
“Oh, hey, Davis, I’m sorry.”
“I’ve actually got a bone to pick with you?”
“Yeah?” She leaned in, smiling, and it seemed like no time had passed, like they were in a bar at college, and the weekend had just begun.
“You owe me money!”
“I don’t owe you money! That’s not true.”
“You’re right. You don’t. But what I wanted to say is that, as much I loved the good old days, there wasn’t enough sex.”
“You and Lynnie had lots of sex.”
“No, I mean me and you, me and Blaire, me and you and Blaire!”
They looked at each other, barely offering a smile.
“Not to be crass, but it would have been good.”
Minnie glowered. “Okay, Davis.”
“Hey, Davis, old buddy!” Jackson crashed into their tiny circle. “I haven’t seen you forever, man! Forever!”
“Jackson, hey.” David looked back, curious as to why he wanted to talk. They had never talked in college and, if anything, had been acrimonious. “What are you up to?”
“Who the fuck knows?” He looked back and forth between Minnie and Blaire hello. “Who the fuck knows?”
“Hey, uh…” Davis leaned into Minnie. “Sorry about that. I’m just…”
“It’s okay.” She looked over at Blaire. “It’s okay.”
“It’s okay, Davis,” Blaire agreed.
“Yeah, Davis, man, it’s okay!” Jackson slapped him on the back.
“I gotta go.” Davis was going to kiss Minnie goodbye but turned and fled down the steps and was in a cab. “Number Five Orange. You know it?”
Programmed to Forget
You think you know. And you do. You know what’s being said.
And you go over, ready to do say what it is, forgetting that it’s a program, just a program, and then you forget.
Mot Juste, Mot Paresseux (lazy) or Mot SAT
Gustave Flaubert famously coined the term mot juste. The idea of finding the right word and avoiding synonyms to vary the language was famously seized upon by Ernest Hemingway in his autobiographic tale of boozing and writing in Paris, A Moveable Feast.
I always appreciated the idea and tended in that direction but have come to wonder if it is more so mot paresseux (lazy), just sticking in the word out of habit, rather than some kind of idealization. I still prefer the idea to Mot SAT, but it’s something to consider.
Writing Process: That Didactic Voice in My Head
First, I dream up something in my head, a moment or a line like “I like that they like you.” That’s where I feel like a baby shaman. I make it into words, a little doll house as it were. I am proud of it. And then I think about it and kill it. It stinks.
I dream another thing like “gun laws around here”, and build again. I feel a better shaman now, almost through adolescence. I kill it again. It’s worse than the first, a foul mutant.
I think more about the dream of the thing, the essential little lines and light and capture what I can of that. I mean, I’ll kill it later. Just not now.
Self-Knowledge: Writing Process
I know who I am. I don’t know who I am.
I know exactly who I fucking am. I have no fucking clue who I am.
These phrases go back and forth in my head like Mrs. Mulwray’s cries as Jack Gittes slaps the shit out of her in Chinatown. “She’s my sister! She’s my daughter!”
Which one is it?
Any Other Verse But This: Writing Process
The recent obsession with a multiverse existence is not surprising, given the surge of the sad and lonely scrolling to the next seven-second moment.
I think about a moment when I was 25 where I had to make the call between working as a caption editor or assistant book store manager. I chose to edit captions and did that for several years before stumbling into education. Why? I don’t know. I could have made a publishing contact at the book shop and been a dozen or so books into my career. Or I could have been fired for yelling at customers for reading the Penthouse magazines. Or I could have murdered someone for losing the only draft of my first and great work. Who knows.
Where would we be if Trump had died of food poisoning as a boy? If Hitler had been aborted? If Paris had just kept his hands off Helen? Or if, as Gunter Grass posited in The Flounder, women had never told boys the secret of procreation and therefore held onto their super power. Yes, sadly, this verse is it, kids.
Writing Process: Day and Night
The difference between the morning and evening edit is day and night. I am methodical in the morning, sorting through scenes like cupboards and drawers, matching the colors, straightening everything out.
My brain is loose in the evening, searching for the magic and music more than anything else, adrift, catching at the flotsam.
It’s a balancing game, getting those two to work together, always interesting to see which gets the last word.
Writing Process: The Four Essentials
There really are only four things to writing well:
a. Picturing the scene
b. Focusing on the key details
c. Finding the right words
d. Honing those down
(Dink, dink, as easy as that!)
Big Ideas in Tiny Rooms
I like the bathroom for its clean lines and tight confines. I like closets and storerooms too. I think about staying in there for days and days, the rest of my life in this safe little place, the opposite of claustrophobia.
That’s where I leave the orphans from my book, alone in their room where they must stay:
They watched the ranger and two of the others amble toward the dead moose, the other one vanish from view, and then moments later, a pickup truck come careening through the grass.
“These boys are up to this tomfoolery? The ranger boy included.”
“I don’t like this, Tommy.”
“None of it is good, my love.” They moved quickly down the path, across the beach and were just getting to his camper truck when the pickup appeared behind them on the road.
“We’ll just keep walking, Deirdre. Same pace and that. We know nothing of them.”
“You’re the one who has to keep his cool, right?”
“As the Bay of Fundy.”
The truck pulled alongside them, the ranger in the passenger’s seat. “Glad to see he’s back on the leash.”
“Just like you said,” Tommy replied quickly.
“What the hell is that?” A high-pitched voice called from inside the truck. “A goddamn leopard?”
Dee walked just ahead of Tommy, her eyes on the ground; they were almost at the camper.
“Seriously.” The truck stopped and the man got out. He wore dark sunglasses and had close-cropped hair. “What is that?”
Dee looked at him briefly. “A serval.”
“A what? Never heard of that. What is he like? African? Looks a hell of a lot like a leopard. Or maybe a puma-like. Can I pet him?”
Dee pulled Apollo close to her legs as Tommy unlocked the back of the camper. “He doesn’t do well with strangers.”
“You come here from Newfoundland?” Another had got out and stood by the first. He was taller with a thick head of hair and beard. “Quite the place, I hear. Hell of a lot of moose up there, right?”
Tommy opened the door, and Apollo jumped inside.
“You two on a trip?” The first one moved closer, rifle in hand. “Driving up the coast?”
“What’s your hurry, huh?” The second man leaned toward Dee. “Have a beer with us before you head on.”
“We would like that,” she replied. “But we’re supposed to be somewhere.”
“My name’s Steve, all right?” He turned to the man beside him. “This is my buddy, Dale. And that’s Carter driving. You already met Alex. He’s the big ranger.”
“Nice to meet you fellas.” Tommy nodded back.
“You see our moose?” Dale waved to the back of the pickup where the hind legs and antlers were visible above the brim. “Nine hundred pounds easy.”
“Have a beer with us.” Steve turned back to Dee. “We’ll carve you up a steak.”
“We have to go.” Dee pursed her lips. “Like we said.”
“Who breaks camp at the end of the day?” He leaned on the camper. “We can chill and then you can split.”
Dee went down the side of the camper and climbed in the passenger seat.
“Hey, you can be polite, right?” Steve had followed her down; his face got hard, stupidly so. “Aren’t you Canadians supposed to be friendly?”
“I’m from Pittsburgh,” Dee replied.
“You all right?” Alex, the ranger, held onto the driver’s door of the camper as Tommy climbed in. “You seem upset about something.”
Tommy stopped, one leg in. “No.”
“We just have to get going,” Dee added.
“There’s nothing going on here,” Alex replied.
Tommy tried to close the door but Alex held on. “I’m not getting your meaning.”
Alex sighed. “Maybe I should impound the cat.”
“Why would you do that?” Dee demanded. “We’re leaving.”
Tommy started the engine.
“I’m sorry.” Alex leaned toward the keys in the ignition.
“Listen, b’y.” Tommy elbowed Alex’s hand off the door and put the truck into the gear, gunning it down the rutted road, his teeth clenched, getting the door closed as he glanced in the side mirrors. “Is he coming? You see anything?”
Dee turned back, waiting to see a cloud of dust. “I can’t see anything.”
“Fucking hell.” Tommy laughed angrily. “Fucking hell, those boys. Up to no good, that’s what they were. No good.”