One of America’s literary icons died yesterday, Tuesday, Jan 27, 2009.  He won a Pulitzer Prize for his work.  If you haven’t read him, you might take this opportunity to try his Rabbit series.  For a taste of his style, the NYTimes has posted some excerpts here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/28/books/28excerpts.html?ref=books

My blog was accepted by Authors’ Blogs. What a happy surprise this morning! http://www.authorsblogs.com/

Character, plot, story, setting, style, voice, point-of-view…. We can have all that, but I think there’s something else that makes a short story or a novel good.  It’s the ability of an author to make the common uncommon, to make “moment” out of the seemingly mundane.

Just thoughts this morning.

An author friend came to visit.  She sat drinking soda and not saying much of anything except to keep asking me how I was doing…which I kept answering with variations of “fine.”  After about twenty minutes of this, she finally got around to the fact that she wasn’t “fine.”  She felt isolated and alone.  Now this is a woman who is a major social networking force, not only locally, but also on the Internet.  She felt abandoned, she said, like there just wasn’t any “real connection.”

Ah…there isn’t, for the most part, was my lame reply, to which she just stared. When she finally said something again, which was a bit of a long, rather uncomfortable pause, she began to lament “people.”

But people are really all quite the same.  Everyone gets this feeling of isolation, of feeling adrift in a seething sea of faceless multitudes.  And when that feeling comes home to roost on our doorsteps, we feel “lost.”  That was the gist of my response, anyway.

“But you never seem to be affected,” she said.

“Oh?  You think I’m immune?”

She nodded.

“Well, I’m not.  It’s just that I’m used to it,” I replied.

“Used to–?!”

I laughed.

“Bev–” (Not her real name, of course).  ”You thrive in peopled surroundings; for me, throngs are overwhelming.  I can’t think or work in that kind of environment.”

“But it’s so healthy!”

“Not for me.  I wind up stressed.”

“Well,” she said, waving a hand, “that’s because everybody wants to talk to you when you do show up, since you so rarely ‘come out.’”

“Steamrolled,” I replied, laughing and getting her another soda.

“You seem to enjoy yourself.”

“I do.  I enjoy people.  I just wind up exhausted and sleeping for two days afterwards.”

“But that’s just it,” she said.  ”I’m around all these people, and they’re just as lost and isolated as me.  …No matter how many friends are around.  You, you’re never lost or isolated.  I want to know why.”

I shook my head.  ”I get to feeling lost and isolated just as much as any of you,” I said.  She, of course, gave me this disdainful, “roll-eye” look.  ”You don’t see it because I’m not out among you.”

“So how do you fight it?”

“I don’t.  I write it out,” I said.  ”It’s always good for a scene or a story.  And the feeling will pass.  It is, after all, just a feeling.  We’re never really lost or alone.  It’s just a state of consciousness that happens when we’re feeling like nothing we’re doing has any effect or meaning.”

She leaped forward in her chair. “That’s it!  Yes!  No effect and no meaning!”

“The minute you get a short story accepted or a good word from an agent or editor, that feeling goes away, doesn’t it?”

Nodding now, she agreed.  

“It’s just that spot when we don’t feel like we’re making any headway, when no one who we perceive as mattering to our progress as authors is making noise about us, that makes us feel alone and adrift.  We aren’t really.  We’re surrounded by friends, family, associates.  But, right then, their words don’t count because we’re not waiting for their praise.  We’re looking for it from somewhere else.  And that makes us feel alone in the midst of our crowd of cronies.”

“I am waiting for word back on a revision I sent in,” she said.

I nodded.

We went on to talk about other things — the weather, our writing, the new President, the economy and its effect on publishing.  She seemed more relaxed when she left as well as more at peace.

When nothing’s happening and when you or I, the author, are waiting for something to happen, at times it can leave us feeling utterly lost, even when surrounded by well-wishers.  It’s just part of the process.

The new issue containing my short story “A Gift for Eternity” is now available for your reading pleasure.  See it at The Rose and Thorn Literary Ezine on this page of the issue release January 15, 2009.

Today we had to go to “the big city” to get an LCD screen still under warranty on the road to being replaced.  One word to describe the experience–exhausting.  Traffic was frenetic and rude with people cutting in and out, no prior signal for warning.  Is there some death wish out there?  At 65 mph, it seems prudent to be a little more conservative with your own and others’ lives.  Cars aren’t weapons of mass destruction, or shouldn’t be.  Slow the [[expletive deleted]] down, be a bit more patient, and be considerate that the lives at stake are more than just your own!!

End Rant

I thought I’d share a bit of the kind of thing which inspires novel scenes.  Here, with full permission of the original email author, is an entry in what I’m going to call North Idaho Diary.  This post comes with a warning, warning. There IS a bit of “off-color” language, but, MORE IMPORTANTLY, hang onto your tummy because this is going to have you laughing yourself silly.

Please note that this all but raw and unedited.

North Idaho Diary, Entry 1-14-2009

Yesterday my five-year-old and I went to Johnson’s to cut firewood and remove the snow off the Quonset hut. Simple task, noooo!! The firewood part required digging a tunnel through the snow to the buried pile of logs. Then shoveling the snow off the pile, making enough room for me and a chainsaw (Chainsaw is small, luckily.), then dislodging a log to cut.

Sure!

Frozen logs come apart like grape juice comes off your white shirt. Pry pry pry kick kick kick curse curse curse, and, when all else fails, chainsaw in place, then repeat process–pry pry pry kick kick kick curse louder curse louder curse even louder…pop.  That is for just one piece!!!  Who needs wood heat when I get hot and sweaty getting one measly log.

So I decide it’s time for a break. I’ll work on the Quonset hut with the glacier embedded in the sagging top.

Smart man that I am, I hook up the propane heater inside and close the front flap. Theory; snow will melt and slide off the top, end of problem. If only…  

I go back and cut two more pieces of firewood repeating process as described earlier, with the exception of being more tired and using more abusive vernacular. (Maybe I can scare the ice off of the logs.)

I return to hut to see the progress.  …Yeah progress!  It’s a humid, dripping mess inside with the snow stuck on top, still. …Except now it’s getting heavier as the roof sags inward even more.

Okay.  I grab a 10 foot piece of 4×4 and begin smacking the snow from underneath.

Hooray! It’s coming off.  …Oh.  And I’m getting soaked by the waterfall leaking through the roof as it melts. Another problem is that, after about ten smacks with the 4×4, my muscles go “nooo, we’re tired. Please stop.” I respond, letting my muscles know that this must get done, and they have to help. I swear they whisper, “You’ll be ’sorey’.”  So now I’m smacking snow–smack smack smack–and getting drenched–drip drip kawoosh–and, of course, cursing–curse curse curse.

Hours pass, and I’ve gotten almost all the snow off the hut except one spot.  But I’m hungry, tired, and feel like I could swim in my clothes. So I shut the heater off and figure I’ll get it with next load of firewood.

Oh firewood!  Shit!!!

Back to cutting firewood. Repeat process only now it’s in slow motion. But I manage to fill the truck, and we leave for home. 5-year-old, luckily, played with the dog the whole time and hopefully won’t be repeating Daddy’s words of encouragement to others…like Mom!

Lunch, water (to drink), and a change of clothes, and it’s back to work: Unload firewood. But now I have the kids to help so it goes twice as fast, the bonus of the day.

Back in the truck and off for more wood and the dreaded hut of hell!! I start with the firewood, and I’ve cleared enough that it actually is going smooth. Fill the truck, and now it’s time for the last piece of the glacier on the quanset.

Smack smack smack.

Won’t budge.  In fact, it’s sagging towards me even more!! So I climb on top of an off balance barrel and put one foot on a stack of boxes.

Push push push,  drip drip drip curse curse curse.

A little piece rolls off.  Yeah!  …But the bulk is still there, and now I’m soaked, again.

I push-smack-curse all at ounce and, boom, it slides off…at the same time the barrel falls over and the boxes sway–oh shiiiiiiiiiiiiiitttttttttttttttttt!!!!!!!!

…I survived without injury, and no damage to anything.  (Amazing, I thought.)

That was yesterday.  Needless to say I’m tired and sore today, and now I am going to unload the firewood left from yesterday, but Ithought you’d get a kick out of my Tuesday adventure.

Have a great day,

Max

A novelist’s brain has a will completely independent of the body within which it resides.  It is also resentful of the person to whom it belongs.  Take sleep, for instance.  The novelist’s brain waits in gleeful anticipation of bedtime.  Why?  So that it can take over, of course, without anything or anyone demanding it spend time on more “useless” pursuits…like “the routines of daily life.”

Most people dream about things which either they desire or they fear, which relieves their subconscious of unwanted worry, frets, and stress. Some dream symbols, but never much in the way of “making any sense”…or that’s the general gist, anyway.  Novelist’s brains, though, are creatures of a different sort altogether.  Free of the onus of having to battle the conscious will of its host person and resident body’s demands, the novelist’s brain takes sleep’s opportunity to…WRITE, PLOT, PLAN, OUTLINE, LIVE, REINVENT, MANUFACTURE, and EXPLORE the stories it insists on spawning into tangible reality whenever it can coerce and induce the person it owns and the body which owns it to sit down and type.

I tell you, it’s an exhausting thing to go to bed tired only to wind up having to gallop around all night in fictional scene-scapes.  But that’s what we novelists do, all night, every night. And you wonder why we’ve got bags under our eyes? Why we seem perpetually grumpy? Sleep is our nightmare!

I was invited and went to an author’s party. This was a kind of a combination wine-tasting/book-reading/book-signing/talk-a-lot kind of thing put on for the author’s benefit. I drank too much wine; I dutifully purchased a book, had the author sign it, and pretty much spent the evening suppressing yawns. …So did everybody else, listening to the conversations in the washroom. We all put on a good face, though…for the author’s benefit.

My, my. We authors are a boring lot. Just check out any writer’s forum if you doubt me on this.  Anyway, my reaction to this author’s party wasn’t much different than my reaction to most of them. There are few of these socials that I find stimulating unless the author has a knack for engaging his or her audience.

Let’s face it. Nobody I know, especially me, is much interested in how much work it was for the author to write the book, get it into publishable form, la-da-da-da-da. Likewise, the quips and the cutes don’t go very far.

My favorite author events are those where the author might read a passage of the book, then stop, look up, and say something like: “You know, the morning I wrote this particular section was right after I spent a night shoveling water.”  [[Author looks around.]] “That’s right–water. My basement flooded…waterline broke…plumber wouldn’t be there for two hours.

“Did you know? Shoveling water has its tricks. You have to sort of sneak the shovel into it, slow and gentle… .”

Or maybe: “This scene in the book where Tess gets woken by a mouse falling into her tea cup really happened.  At my aunt’s house.  Except we weren’t asleep. I was sitting in her parlor while she read to me and my cousin from her favorite book–the Bible–when this mouse surprised us by sliding off a pile of her letters right into her tea cup. The rest is in the book, and, yes, said mouse got away!”

Those are the sorts of things that will make an enjoyable author’s event for me. Unfortunately, most of the time there’s just a lot of questions from other writers in the audience about “how it feels to be published, how difficult was it to get an agent,” and so on. Then there are the “personal interest” questions from some quarters. Questions like: “Is the main protagonist someone you know?” (No.) “How about the bad guy?”(No.)  ”Do you have kids of your own?” (No questions that could compromise the lives of loved ones, please.)  or “How can you write about something so appalling/sad/intimate?” (Because it’s part of the story.)

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t care a whit’s damn about most of the stuff that gets asked or answered at the majority of these get-togethers. Let me in on the inside scoops behind the scenes–the horrors and humors that sparked incidents in the book. Or tell me about the time you were supposed to meet an agent and overslept the alarm by two hours…about tripping all over yourself getting ready, breaking a shoelace and having to use one of your kid’s, only to barge into the agent’s office and have her look startled, then nod and say, “You didn’t get my message?”

“What message?”

“I had to postpone our meeting till next week.”

*chagrin*

Show me life in action, please.  Just like you do in your book.  Don’t bore me with your angst or your travails…unless they’re intriguing, action-filled, and lip or eyebrow twitchers.

You all know we moved to a new house not so very long ago.  Well, my “writer’s den” has an exterior wall, covered in books, that I sit beside or before, depending on whether I’m working at the keyboard or on hard copy.  This “exterior wall” has nothing but “outside” beyond it, “outside” being plants, a garden path, and then a fence.  Beyond the fence isn’t much of anything.  Got that picture?  Good.

So I sit in my writing den, oblivious to the world, listening to tunes, watching the fish in my display tank when I get stumped (or lazy-brained).  I’m all alone, without anyone else around, not even a cat…because those ladies and gentleman are more content lounging on plush carpets and chittering out windows at feathered flutters.  And, all alone, lost in “writer’s trance,” there comes a jolt!

It’s like a knock on the wall, but a quick peek out the window in the door that’s but three strides east shows no one is there…not that they could get through the side gate without the my watch-birds sounding Hell’s alarm.  Frowning, I return to my desk.  Again, I become lost in my work…only for two knocks to jolt me out of reverie just about the time I lose track of reality.

I look under the desk for some surreptitious presence of cat, mouse…something.  But nothing’s there.  There’s nothing outside, no one around, at all.  So I sit there dwelling in wonder.  And again it knocks, one sharp rap!

Bounding out of my chair, I launch myself out the door, intent on catching my mischievous other half up to no-good.  But, yet, there’s no one there.  

My frown is deeper now.  

The knocking stops…for the rest of the week.

Next week it isn’t knocking.  It’s squeaking…like an old desk chair, only it is IN the wall.  It keeps up even when I explore outside to find no cause.  It keeps up when I pull manuscript boxes out from their storage cubby under the desk.  It keeps up. For an hour. And there’s no one, nothing, there.

I call the telephone company.  They send someone out.  There’s nothing wrong with the wiring.

I call the gas and electric companies.  Same result.

I get the plumber.  I call a contractor.  They dig into the wall.  Nope. Nothing there.  No plumping in that wall.  No mice nested in there.  Nothing in the wall that could knock or squeak.

Am I going nuts? They certainly think so by the looks they give me (humoring).

And this week?  It’s a moan.  It’s making me grumble under my breath now.  I’ve actually video recorded it, loud, live audio, with the clock on, because I’m calling all of them back, scheduling them all–telephone man, gas man and electrician, plumber and contractor–to come at the same time of day it happened–around 2pm.  It has to be something to do with temperature changes or something.  There used to be a hot tub out and down the path a ways.  Gotta be pipes or something. …Right?

…And, yes, this is just the sort of thing that winds up tucked into one of my novels.  But not until I’ve chased down the cause.  Can’t write about something I don’t know the answer’s end to, now can I?