Month: October 2017

The Character and Me

I often develop relationships with my characters when I’m writing a novel. It’s not surprising for them to be with me at a movie. Sometimes, as I respond to something, I always think about how they would respond, as an exercise to better understand them.

This arrangement leads the characters to be vocal about what’s going on. When I struggle through a scene, it’s not surprising to discover that the character is doing something that they believe is contrary to what the would do. It’s an odd, true north alignment. I created, or discovered them; I believe I know them best. Yet, they will reject a path that they feel is wrong for them. Their rejection is displayed through a work slowdown.

That’s not what transpired this week. I was writing, and going along fine. Yet, several things that the character did or said bothered me. The writing didn’t suffer. It flowed with no problem or stoppages.

I considered this today while I was walking. Although I was surprised, and I shouldn’t be, the character explained why he wasn’t bothered by what was happening. His explanation opened an entire rue of thinking about the situation. I’d been thinking about that situation in terms of plot, story arc, and activity. The character has been reacting to how it affected him. 

I was pretty astonished and pleased. His explanation to me opened a new paragraph and facets of him and the situation that I’d overlooked. It’s exciting and stimulating.

Here we go. Time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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The Future Dream

I’ve endured a surfeit of dreams this past week. Many stayed with me. I can’t say they all did. I don’t know if that’s true.

One particularly striking dream dominated. The dream setting was simple. Basically, um, me. Not the whole me, either, but head, neck, a bit of torso, and shoulders, the traditional bust sculptor. I knew I was sitting, and dressed in a light blue Oxford shirt, like the sort I favor. I don’t know where I was. The background was a favoring blue sky rich with sunshine over a calm ocean. Green hills sloped down to the ocean. Some of this strikes me as Mediterranean in retrospect.

Others were there, never seen, but sometimes heard, males and females. They could have been one of each, or more. I never saw them. They were commentators, commenting on me, and my activities. On my part, I was looking into the future. In the first stages of this, it troubled me, because I wasn’t correctly seeing the future. The commentators, in their dry, pithy way, said, “Okay, that’s fine, you’re just starting. Take your time. Try again.” Sometimes they spoke of me in the third person, “He’s fine, let him try again.”

Arms crossed against that background, all I did was sat, look, and listen. A soft breeze tousled my hair as the future was fed to me. As that happened, I assimilated it and explained what I saw. Part of this, my dream-self knew, was to make it my own, but I was also explaining to gain feedback and improve my comprehension.

It went thus for a while, with the commentators speaking more often as my visions clarified and my confidence waxed. Like teachers, they would sometimes say, “That’s right.” A female more often told me that. The dream ended with me happy, with a male commentator saying, “Okay, he’s got it. He knows how to see the future.”

Naturally, awakening, the dream pleased me. But I was also dissatisfied, because I couldn’t remember any of the future I was purported to see. That fits better with my personal philosophy; I think the future is wholly malleable. There’s probably more than one future in my future. I may skate between them, but chances are, I’ll mostly travel through one.

Even if I’m wrong, it was such a pleasant, powerful, and affirming dream.

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

I’m back-upped with music, dreams, and writing today. I took my monthly swim in the dark waters for a few days. Now, breaking surface, a survivor one more time, my creative and artistic energies are lit up.

For the musical theme portion, so many songs streamed through me last night and today. I finally went with an odd choice. My love of music comes from Mom. I’m sure. I once asked Dad what music he liked to listen to; he shrugged. Mom, though, put albums on whenever she cleaned, and Mom was, and is, passionate about keeping her house clean. Music was always playing. One guy she really enjoyed was Frank Sinatra.

I can understand why. Sinatra had a big voice and style. This song, “That’s Life,” has been covered by some great talents. I especially enjoy Shirley Bassey’s cover, because I like Shirley Bassey. But I stayed with Frank’s cover, because that’s the one streaming through my head today. I thought about doing David Lee Roth’s version, just for the hell of it, but that was rejected.

Got to love these words, right?

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The End

He’d never seen the movie, “Unforgiven.” He explained to incredulous friends that his wife, rest in peace, didn’t like television, and disliked Clint Eastwood. He was Squint Eastwood to her, spoken with disparaging smugness. “He can’t act,” she said. “I don’t know why people like him.”

Nor had he seen “Reservoir Dogs.” “Too violent,” she said, scowling. Same with Al Pacino in “Scarface,” and Tom Hanks in “Saving Private Ryan,” and other movies.

After a year of mourning her death, his friends convinced him that he should rent and watch them. It took that long to feel like he wasn’t betraying his wife’s principles and tastes. He intellectually recognized that silliness, but that didn’t stop him from apologizing to her spirit on his first movie night. Filling a growler with an IPA from a local station – something he’d never done while she was alive – and buying and baking a Papa Murphy pizza, he settled in for the first one, “Unforgiven.” His friends had really enjoyed it. They thought he would, too.

But he was old. He’d had a long day, what, with walking, laundry, and house-cleaning. Pizza and beer added its weight. Despite his desire to see justice meted out against the cruel Little Bill (played superbly by Gene Hackman), he fell asleep as Little Bill tortured Logan (Morgan Freeman). Instead, he awoke, somehow in his bed and night clothes, an alternately alarming, bemusing, amusing turn. But going out to start the day, he discovered the laundry washed the day before was accumulated in the basket as though it hadn’t been done. The toilet and sink would benefit from cleaning, and he needed to run the vacuum. The grass needed to be cut.

Walking around and seeing the state of things, he worried about his sanity.  There wasn’t any leftover pizza, although he’d only eaten two slices. No beer in a growler. No sign of “Unforgiven” on DVD. Alarm rising, he rushed through activities, confirming he was reliving the day before, as Bill Murray had done in “Groundhog Day.”

Getting in the car and driving down to Redbox to pick up “Unforgiven,” he remembered that “Groundhog Day” had been one of his wife’s favorite movies (although she would tell people it was “Three Coins In A Fountain”).

He watched “Unforgiven” earlier and saw the ending, but couldn’t remember it the next day, when he again awoke in his bed without knowing how he got there. This, he believed, was a departure from “Groundhog Day.” Bill Murray had been able to learn to play the piano and help people, hadn’t he? He would need to watch it again.

Maybe. He suspected his version of “Groundhog Day” was different. He thought it would be a long time before he would remember and know the end of “Unforgiven,” even though he was forced to order and pick it up every day. Apparently, some things could not be altered.

On the other hand, he could eat and drink whatever he wanted, and not gain any weight, and never had to worry about money again.

He’d always been a glass half-full sort of person.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

When I heard this song in twenty-eleven, I wanted to know more about it. Each time I heard it played, I listened to hear the performer’s name and the song title. That’s not something easily learned in the modern listening era. Many stations like to end one song and start one or two more before giving a song’s details, if they do at all. But thanks to the computer age, I looked up lonely boy. Knowing there were many songs featuring those words, I settled in for a detailed search.

But, ta-da. I found it immediately and checked out the video. I enjoy this video. So here we go, Tuesday’s theme music, “Lonely Boy” by The Black Keys.

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Floof-name

Floof-name (catfinition): the private and secret names that cats give to their people, i.e., Warm Lap, Chin Scratcher, Giver of Treats, Can Opener, and Shower Man.

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How Writing Isn’t Like Yardwork

I was raking and hoeing yesterday, preparing the back yard to seed it for the winter. My wife had already put one garden to bed. As freezes are striking, she’ll probably put the other to bed this week. Meanwhile, we have before us the question, should she plant garlic and, or, onions for winter? Probably so, but we veered away from the subject into collateral discussions before a decision was found.

Back in the yard, thinking about trimming back trees and bushes, I wrote in my head, as I often do when doing something that doesn’t require focus and will let me think about other things. Often, I think, writing is a lot like yard work. You’re always pruning and weeding, considering what’s been done and what else must be done.

But in yesterday’s internal dialogue, I realized how flawed that was. Yard work is continuous; it changes with the season, but you’re always out there, forever doing things. Plants grow, not only in the yard, but in the yards around you. Volunteers arrive, and trees grow taller and fuller, changing the exposure to the sun. Weather changes, like the super-hot summer of twenty thirteen, and the super-frigid winter of the same year, damages and kills plants. These need addressed, as much for fire safety as aesthetics.

Which is why novel writing’s comparisons with yard work should end. Eventually, I finish a novel. It becomes published and goes out into others’ hands and minds. The yard is always being attended; it’s only completed for a brief cycle. Although a novel may feel like it’s taking forever – this one of mine is now in its fifteen month of writing – I know it’ll be done someday. Then I’ll begin another, and it’ll feel like yard work again.

But it’s not.

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His Legacy

He always kept a clean house and well-maintained yard. He cleaned his car inside and out in all the seasons, creating a shiny beacon to others. This would be his legacy, he realized, as death’s shadow shaded his light: a clean house, a clean car, and a well-maintained yard.

That’s how he’d be remembered.

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Monday’s Theme Music

Ah, they’re always pestering me, calling from phone numbers that I don’t recognize, and sending me emails with sensational deals, deals that will make me wealthy, or is such an amazing travel bargain, that I’d be a fool to take it up. Never mind that the travel bargains are going to places that I don’t want to visit. It’s such a good deal.

Although this song, “Who Can It Be Now?”, by Men At Work, came out while I was stationed on Okinawa, I always think of Mom and my family. In the days before caller identification, Mom established the number of rings as a primitive IFF – Identification, Friend or Foe – for when friends and relatives call. “Ring twice, hang up, and call again. I’ll know it’s you, and answer.” Or maybe she won’t. But when the phone rang more than twice, “Who can that be? Should I answer it?”

The same was true with someone knocking on the door or ringing the bell, or  stopping in the driveway or in front of the house. “Who is that? What do they want? Who can it be now?” Mom passed it on to the rest of us. “Who can it be now?”

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