August 2008

Moment 6: Blob Gets a Name

I still have no idea why I decided to write a children’s book. Actually, I have some vague recollection of thinking that I would “take it easy” for this story. Back in January what this meant to me was that I would write a children’s book. So simple. How hard could it be? You rhyme mouse with house, draw some pictures, and you’re done.

Plus, I work with kids, large parts of me are still beguilingly childish, I like talking animals, it seemed a perfect way to coast through a story and catch a break after the halfway mark of the project.

A number of people who are far smarter than I am have hypothesized, after reading “Mindy and Barkley,” that I probably have a new found respect for Dr. Seuss and his ilk now because these things, duh, aren’t easy.

To put it simply, yes. Yes I do. Ridiculous amounts of new found respect for Watterson and Seuss and everyone whose books and rhymes entertained me growing up. Rhyming is hard. And while I enjoy doodling, and while the pictures I made still make me laugh with their in your face crapulence, making a picture that carries the story and maybe even adds to it is also, as it turns out, really hard.

Really.

During these two weeks I didn’t exactly get a chance to “take it easy.” I did get a chance, though, to create one of my favorite stories and to cut loose from whatever rules happened to be with me at the time and completely go nuts. Imaginary friends, blobs, poop jokes, etc. You name it. It’s all there. Plus, come on, who didn’t bawl their eyes out when Barkley came back? Huh? Show of hands?

On top of all this there was the notion that for the first time ever I was writing something fully intended to be read aloud. I’ve never done that before. It made meter king in a way I haven’t ever experienced. It also allowed me to mess with anyone who dared to take that step and read this to a child. Because when you read aloud you get into a rhythm, you start to feel the words, you develop a running flow, and I went ahead and intentionally threw a gigantic hurdle in there of unjumpable proportions when it came time to give my blob a name. Because I was floundering like crazy during those two weeks, it seemed to me that anyone who followed me should flounder too.

So slot six goes to these two couplets from “Mindy and Barkley”. Just imagine trying to read this out loud. Mwahahahahahah!:

Now, way far away in a neighboring land,
Lived an angry green monster with ugly thick hands

His name was Slzzynqux, though to friends he was Blob,
And he wandered about with a frown on his gob.

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Moment 7: Nyx Stops Off For Chinese

I don’t even know where to start with this one. Throughout the course of this project people who were Matthew and Epp inclined would tell me how much they enjoyed one character or the other. Some people liked watching Matthew as he tried to bumble his way to an understanding of the new world he had entered; some liked Epp’s smooth manner, charcoal suit and hard-taught lessons. And I would nod as they said this. Then I’d open my mouth and out would come, “I like Nyx.”

And the person would slowly back away from me.

There’s nothing like writing the bad ones. The bent and the devious are always the most fun characters to play with. I had known this going in to these stories. I had written a few lunatics, a few warped individuals, a few people it would be fun to have a drink with assuming you were safely separated by a nice thick sheet of bullet proof Hannibal Lector cage glass.

But none of them prepared me for Nyx. I love Nyx. There isn’t any moment of Nyx in these stories that I wasn’t in love with; her introduction, her cold creaking glove, the bizarre and pert sexuality of her body movements, her teenage-style head bopping attitude, everything. To the point where, once she had appeared and I began to appreciate her, I made a conscious decision to under use her. To only let her bounce in at the sides of scenes, to never let her command the stage. I wanted to keep her as off center as possible. For a few reasons.

First, I think less is always more. I’m a firm believer that the best thing to ever happen to Steven Spielberg’s career was the mechanical shark not working when he began filming Jaws. Less is more. To show too much of Nyx would have lessened her impact. In fact, I never once showed what it was that she did with her victims. The farthest I ever let her get on the page was her first kill, and there we only see her teeth just touching the back of Robin’s head, then we get a single sound, then we leave and come back when she’s done. That’s as far as we see her go. Everything else she does we see only the aftermath of. Except, of course, the parts your imagination fills in.

The second reason I didn’t want to linger too long on her was because I wasn’t sure how much there was to linger on. A lot of these characters I knew I’d be providing back story for. As soon as Kyo showed up I knew there’d be more to him. Others I knew there would be exactly no back story for. We were never going to see Mary or Bartleby’s origins. They just weren’t part of the structure as it first came to me. It would be possible, mind you, to create their stories, like it would have been possible to create an origin for Nyx, but those tales would have felt tacked on. Like putting an addition on a house using a different architect than the original. It might work out okay, but it might not, or you might wind up with two very nice structures that don’t really relate all that well as a whole.

My third reason for keeping Nyx thin is similar to the first. Not only did I not want her to have too much page time, I also didn’t want to run the risk of describing her attitude for you. I didn’t want her to act creepy. I tried to never make her snarl, never glare, never look “with evil intent” at someone, never rant or rave, never, really, do anything other than be a somewhat empty-headed girl in her late teens/early twenties. I’m sure I slipped up here and there on this, but for the most part I just wanted Nyx to be a normal girl…who happens to cannibalize those around her for what, at times, appears to be sheer entertainment purposes. It felt to me that this would be much creepier than to have her gnashing around in every scene she’s in.

Nyx also created one of the weirder aspects of the Matthew and Epp stories from my end of things. Her and Mary.

I listen to an astounding amount of music while I write. Very loudly. AC/DC‘s “Dirty Deeds” got me through most of “Sunrise Over the Dakota.” And I listened to “These Things That I’ve Done” by The Killers over and over again while writing the scene with Epp in the cathedral. Within this love of popular music, there is contained a sub genre of rock and roll music performed by women. There’s a lot of Furtado and Stefani in my i-Tunes. I have a rather profound liking of girls who can sing. And rock. And turn a crowd into a frenzy. A girl who can properly scream, “Thank you, CLEVELAND,” and then drop the microphone and throw her hands up before walking off stage…well a girl like that is a keeper. And, granted, you don’t get that sort of Joan Jett rocking as much in today’s musical landscape, but in my mind it’s all good.

Now, I’ve already mentioned that when I was casting about for what Mary looked like during her introduction, I wound up using this photo of Shakira as sort of a template:

I don’t really think Mary looks anything like that. At all. But at her genesis this photo helped me get a bead on her. And from there on out I found myself putting on Shakira whenever Mary was around.

Then came Nyx. And while I didn’t use a photo to create Nyx (she was based on a girl I saw riding the subway) I started noticing this album cover popping up on my i-Tunes:

That’s an album cover from the Swedish band The Sounds. It’s very nipply. And it sort of freaked me out. Because I looked down at the little square on my i-Tunes window where the cover art for the current song is showing one day and Jesus Christ but Nyx was sitting there. Two of her. One innocent, the other hungry. And from then on songs from The Sounds became my jumping off point whenever I needed a shot of Nyx, creating this very odd split of musical personality with Shakira/Mary on one side, her songs melodious and vulnerable, and then The Sounds/Nyx on the other side with their gravelly pep.

It’s rare, very rare, for me to be provided wide open doors into the worlds I write. Usually I have to sniff my way around when I pick up writing for the day until I can get my bearings, and then I have to proceed slowly with my first scene or two. Or I’ll have to meditate and think a bit on one of the bigger marquee scenes that are firmly rooted in my head, then back away from there to the scene I’m working on, retaining as much feel as possible.

For Nyx and Mary, once this weird battle of the bands started in my head, I never had to do anything more than play Shakira or play The Sounds and I was able to walk right into their heads. They even started becoming counterpoints to each other for my writing. This isn’t overly abundant in the finished stories, but when I was trying to bounce back from one side of things to the other it often became easiest to take Nyx’s (or Mary’s) view of things and invert it in order to figure out how Mary (or Nyx) was currently handling the situation.

I never got to work Shakira into Mary’s personality, but I did mange to make The Sounds a part of Nyx’s life. One of their songs is her ring tone.

I love Nyx.

And she’s the only one of my antagonists to make the list. Gregor didn’t make it. His muddled attempt at recreating the world always seemed a bit more like a roundabout way of getting even with Epp. And Hector? Hector was nothing but a persnickety coward. After he made his first move Hector did nothing but hide. I get the feeling that even if the battle at Katie Packer’s birthday had gone his way, Hector still wouldn’t have felt comfortable coming out in the open. For Hector, things were never going to be perfect. You ever notice how often he readjusts things mere centimeters so they look right to him?

No, for me there was only Nyx. I’ll throw in here that, for the briefest of moments when I was trying to come up with Nyx’s look, I almost made her a ten year old girl. I’m not sure I could have handled that.

And then there was Nyx’s ending. Her ending was abrupt. Part of me felt she deserved more. But part of me was worried that this was my wanting more Nyx and not what the story wanted. So I made Nyx end the way she existed: mostly off of the page. And it was a little disturbing to not properly be able to say goodbye to her. But I think it’s what she would have wanted. She was never a major player. She was the side-kick. She was the muscle. Hell, for that matter when we first meet her she’s the side-kick’s side-kick. The muscle’s muscle.

And so she gets slot number seven. And there is nothing that captures Nyx for me like her lovingly sucking on some poor person’s finger bone through all of “The Monk, The Warrior and The Lord.” The thing rattles around in her mouth the entire story. Of course, it’s not until the following moment that you were meant to think it was anything but a delicious piece of hard candy. Which for Nyx I guess it was:

She took a long, slurping suck on the object in her mouth, enjoying its taste so much she didn’t notice Hector glaring at her until he cleared his throat and she froze, like a student caught chewing gum.

Hector held a cupped palm up in front of her mouth and she obligingly slid the object out between her lips and into his hand. Hector held it up to the light, turned it around a few times, then stared angrily at Nyx.

“What?” she asked. “I stopped off for some Chinese before I came here.”

Hector handed the finger bone back to her; she popped it into her mouth and resumed sucking.

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Moment 8: Will Quits Running

“New York City Marathon” is a favorite story of mine and will always be a favorite story of mine. This is the story one thinks about writing when one manages to find time to daydream and think about writing. The whole notion of “capturing a generation” or becoming “the voice of a” group of people is a pretty common daydream among writers.

I have no idea if I managed to do either of those things here, mind you, but for me this story is a nice take on my life during the past decade. The notion of living in New York being a bit of a long haul meshed nicely with one of my favorite events in the city, the marathon, to provide a backdrop that works well on a number of levels. Which is to say that the people in this story wearing jogging shorts aren’t the only characters who are running a marathon.

The most cutting moment for me came when Will and the unnamed runner crumble and decide to give up the race. I wrote it as simply as I could, aiming for less description and written thought whenever possible and tried to have them just give up. Just feel pain. Just start sobbing. Plain and simple. Because Will and the runner were only part of the equation. Really it’s watching Byron react that drives this moment home.

Byron, the ever caustic smart-ass, has his guard forced down as he witnesses the unnamed runner, and thus Will, at their most vulnerable moments and we get a brief, albeit swear induced moment of humanity from him. The rest of the story doesn’t work, I don’t think, if Byron doesn’t crack open here. This scene allowed his character to become rounded out to a degree I often fail to achieve.

I should mention that the story also doesn’t work if Byron stays cracked open, so him righting himself while his brother watched almost won. Likewise Byron and Calvin returning to their race, running down the street, sliding back into their usual roles with some friendly punches at the end of the story almost edged out this moment. But in the end Byron cracking open was what stayed in my mind, and him cracking doesn’t happen without the unnamed runner quitting, and that doesn’t carry as much weight without being interplayed with Will’s decision to move back home. Yes, that might really be three moments in one, but I won’t tell if you won’t.

So slot eight goes to Calvin and Byron and all the other people out there currently on the hard-side of the mile seventeen marker in their own personal marathons.

Remember to stop off for drinks periodically:

There was no need for him to be in this city anymore. He would move back to Ohio.

And that was it. It was decided. And Will, for the first time in months, maybe years, felt the absence of pressure on his body. He would tell everyone in a day or so. Right now, with that decision firmly in his head, he just wanted to go home, maybe get a good night’s sleep. He was tired.

“I’m heading out, guys,” Will said, getting a wave and a smile from Byron and a couple of words of goodbye from Calvin. Then he turned and started walking down the street.

Byron was staring intently at the race. There was something strange in his face and Calvin was about to ask what was going on when Byron spoke.

“Ah, shit,” Byron said, “I saw this start to happen while I was over there.” His voice was very different, lower, heartier, a gravel filled bed of humanity running underneath his usual bite. “I hate to see this.”

Calvin watched Byron swallow slowly and then turned to see what he was looking at. Coming towards them from the race was a group of three people. Two were obviously not runners, they were dressed in jeans that didn’t fit right and t-shirts that were too busy. They were flanking the third person, a woman, who was slowly making her way down the street. This third person was dressed in full racing gear, teal shorts and a stretch tank top. She was favoring one leg as she walked. Her shoulders were covered in a foil blanket. She was sobbing.

Byron was staring at her, one of his hands up at his face, his first two fingers lightly rubbing up and down his jaw line. “I actually saw the moment when she decided to quit,” he said slowly. “She saw her two friends on the sideline, she had forced herself to make it to them, then she just veered off and stepped out of the race.” He pulled at his lower lip. “I’m not sure when she started crying.” Byron and Calvin watched the woman let herself be guided to the other side of the street. She stopped near a car parked on the other side and they could hear her crying change pitch as some new pain flared in her body. Her two friends turned and started walking back to her.

“Come on,” Byron said, staring across at the scene playing out, the volume of his voice soft but the force behind it strong. “Come on,” he said again, rooting her on, his energy strong enough that Calvin felt himself getting caught up in it. “Let yourself do this much at least.”

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Moment 9: Neil Bakes Muffins

I like plots. A lot. And in general I enjoy writing plots. I like creating characters, winding them up, then watching them act out stories. I enjoy treating events like open ended puzzle pieces that I can then mix and match in order to create a larger picture. So whenever I write something in which basically nothing happens it’s always a scary time for me.

There is no way to know what people are going to make of it when your story takes place completely internally. When I, say, take one character and have him inject another character with deadly poison in front of your eyes, I know that this is going to come across in some way or another. At the very least you’ll see the physical motion, you might not be entirely with me as far as what’s going on inside of these characters, but you’ll get something.

If you take away the deadly poison, though, things become very tricky. Then it’s just two characters standing there. And as a writer you have no footing that you can be sure of. For all you know (and all the little voice inside your head tells you) everyone who reads what you’ve written is going to do nothing but ask why you thought watching a guy make muffins then watching that same guy try to sleep was a good idea for a story. Because in “You’re Allowed to Order Take-Out” that’s all that happens, really, as far as the stuff taking place right in front of you. They mess up muffins, they have trouble sleeping. The end.

But people were more than happy to linger with Neil in a way I never expected and it was touching for me how many of you found it touching yourselves to watch this overwhelmed father struggling with how his new daughter fit into his life while worrying about how he would fit into hers.

So the number nine spot goes to Neil as he drifted off into what I can only hope turned out to be a mouse-free sleep:

And he wondered what time it was, and wondered who else was awake, and wondered what kept the world going at this hour, and wondered if the bagel store down the street made good coffee, and wondered that his new daughter would someday be able to talk to him like Illiam and he wondered if she knew he was here worrying about her in the middle of the night. He lay down on the couch so his head was near the crib and rested a hand on one of the wooden slats, the physical nearness of her a comfort to him, and in a few minutes he fell asleep, his body relaxing deeper and deeper as the rain softly pelted the windows.

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Moment 10: Penelope Speaks Gibberish

“The Donkey of Vincento” is the single stupidest story I’ve ever written. In my mind it goes flying past “Light-Years Ahead of His Time” by…well by light-years. But this story makes the list for one very simple reason: The whole project almost tanked during these two weeks. I almost gave up. I remember this pretty clearly. I was tearing myself apart trying to write something good and nothing was coming except this stupid idea for a…I don’t even know what…a concept story written as a poor translation of a fairy tale from a made up place. Sort of like a bad joke crossed with a pointless story (for the nth time I also feel obligated to point out that all of the “foreign language” in this story is nothing short of complete gibberish. I actually translated gibberish into other languages using babelfish, then retyped it incorrectly. Part of me wants to believe that this resulted in perfect Cantonese…but that’s probably not what happened). And I was about ready to just say to hell with it and start ignoring my deadlines. But I didn’t. And the story turned out to be not completely horrible. A lot of readers actually enjoyed it. Somehow.

And so it makes number ten because of that. Because a lot of this blog is intended for fellow writers and a lot of the e-mails I get are from fellow writers and any lessons I learned from this past year I feel I should try to pass on. So here’s the lesson this stupid donkey story taught me: Sometimes you write crap. Not only that, but sometimes you’re supposed to be writing crap. If I had strained really hard to make this a touching literary-minded story with great crisp writing and all that, it would have turned out horrible. Because that’s not what this story is. This story is silly and light and a fairy tale.

I guess I have three points. First, it’s okay to not write well. If you’re stuck, just keep going, do your best, know that you can always start another story once you’ve finished the current one. Two, don’t force your stories to be what they’re not. And three, your readers can sometimes bring things to life in a way you never expected. Seriously. Some people liked this one.

So coming in at number ten we have Penolope’s final surge of delight at the end of “The Donkey of Vincento” when she declares in a language that I totally made up out of nothing:

“Maecenas odio ante consectetuer pullazo, uscevitale risus mauris sollicitudin; phasellus statione, libernecanto adipiscing gravid acciastona!”

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My 10 Favorite Moments from 26 Stories

I’m still in vacation mode and haven’t come up with anything all that interesting to do with this coming year. Sure, I could blog and write stories and post them (which is my current plan), but part of me wants to come up with something with a little more…oomph. I just have no idea what that is.

While pondering this and working behind the scenes (I can now update my WordPress software in five easy clicks) I was given a rather astounding present by my sister. She took the 26 Stories project and printed it up as a hardcover book complete with “blurbs” from my family. I find this stunning on two fronts. First…it was just so cool to hold this project in my hands as a book. And second, it’s that easy to make a book nowadays. Sometime soon I’ll be looking into this process myself with the intention of packaging the stories on this website into a printed bound book to be made available to the general public. Because there’s nothing like a book.

Think about that. And think about who just said it. I continue to look for fiction online and I have come across a number of authors with various amounts of their work available online, but as of right now and to the best of my knowledge I have more story length fiction available on the Internet than any other author in the world (I’m notoriously awful at research, so, again, this is to the best of my current knowledge). My commitment to the Internet is pretty huge. And I’m the one telling you that there’s nothing like a book. Nothing. To pick one thing I love about books at random, there’s no equivalent on the web to pinching a bunch of pages between your fingers and flipping through them, like rifling a deck of cards, and watching the words, the story, the lives contained therein go flipping past in a shuffle. Hitting back-back-back-back-back-back-back on your web browser just isn’t the same thing. The Internet offers plenty of pluses that books are lacking, naturally, so there is ample room for both mediums in my mind. But, man, books are wonderful.

As I was sitting on my couch and flipping through everything I wrote last year I was put in a nostalgic mood and I decided to take one large look back before turning around to face forward. Thus, I put together a Top Ten List of my favorite moments from the past year.

I had planned to knock this list out quickly and put it all up in one post, but I wound up writing three or four paragraphs about each moment so I decided to stretch it out into ten separate posts.

They’ll be coming your way over the next few weeks.

Drum rolls will have to be provided by you.

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