Quick Update

If my blog has fallen by the wayside of late, it is for positive reasons.

My research and story design continue, and I’ve finally settled on a tentative chapter outline; there are 15 or 16 sections currently. Both plot and characters have evolved immensely over the past two months, and I’m reinvigorated by each new development. It is sometimes hard to swipe away the notion that maybe things happen for a reason.

Pausing to study the art of story has paid dividends. Like a mechanic with a dismantled automobile, I’ve had to learn each cog intimately in order to eventually construct my machine. I shudder to think of the hundred different directions I nearly pursued–in haste–and the opportunity that would have been lost if I had.

While the day-to-day process and odd free-form schedule sometimes presents challenges, I think I’ve done a reasonable job of adapting and making use of my time in a way that allows me to work, learn, live, and have time left over.

In the interest of avoiding the fall/winter doldrums, I’m off to Yuma, AZ for a couple of weeks next month. I look forward to worshipping the sun and getting some good work done. I’ll be staying with family, which is nice, as I’ll enjoy free board and a jubilant tour guide. 

My book is set in a Latin American country, so the setting will certainly inspire. Granted, there are many differences between Mexico and the country in question, but I’ll take what I can get. I hope to travel to said country early next year.

Also been boning up on classic films. In the past week or so I’ve seen Casablanca, Chinatown, Sunset Boulevard, and Tender Mercies. I also watched Transformers 2, which is in the running for worst script of all time. How they managed to pack every film cliche known to man into 90 minutes of movie confounds me. They even used the dreaded, “I’m getting too old for this shit!”

Cue explosion 1,134.

Michael Bay is a topic for another day…

Ode to Balloon Boy

If I were a balloon boy I’d travel

Hard but easy toward sunshine

Stiff fingered, legs dangling, I’d unravel

My TV smile, the shoreline

*

Gliding like fowl float in greasy oil slicks

Banking left toward summertime

Daddy’s duck-taped marvel: trash bags, thin sticks

Ten miles high, the perfect crime

*

Depart for final dash toward heaven’s seam

Sheared from sky, sewn with sound

Satellite shadows, spotlight on a  dream

I’m all that can’t be let down

*

Optics fail, a phantom no lens can catch

Test-Monkey will shun airstrips

Overfly wastelands, send kindly dispatch

To lost boys with no airships

Live to Cut to Live

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.   

Henry David Thoreau

Greater and lesser writers (usually greater) have expressed the sentiment for eons. The tenet that less is more confounds then empowers. Its truth sweetens its irony.

In business it is wise; in life it simplifies; in art it magnifies.

Actors say, “I like your choices.” They know the scene as acted was one of ten, maybe twenty approaches contrived—they understand the talent evidenced in choosing the best.

As with actors, so with novelists, playwrights, and screenwriters. From a score of options for each of 60 or more scenes and hundreds of combinations, they select the brightest.

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.

Nietzsche

As we whittle story, act, sequence, scene, and individual beats of exposition, description, and dialogue, we near a work’s pulsing core. As debris flies from layer upon layer, vitality intensifies. We reach the heart where the work’s essence is revealed; its beat connects, compels, guides us.

Reaching these rewards demands time, honesty, and courage. Reaching these rewards may mean killing your babies.

The more you say, the less people remember. The fewer the words, the greater the profit.

Felelon

I’ve been living the concept of wise choice, of sacrifice for greater good, since leaving my job to write. I continually choose what to keep and what to discard to facilitate my dream chasing.

Life as much as prose requires editing.

Those times in life when I’ve been richest haven’t equated to greater happiness. I’ve found living simply, largely removing myself from consumer culture, enhances confidence and satisfaction. Among friends, I’m never less happy or more wanting—the opposite often seems true.

Could it be that in life as in art fewer trappings bring greater rewards?

We’re Concerned About Your Package

There was a construction mishap at a wedding this weekend.

Luckily it was a sentence construction issue—I’d rather be schmucked with a wayward verb than a wayward I-beam—but it was real nonetheless.

It also provided a moment of comic relief.

You see, we’d neglected to purchase a greeting card for the happy couple. We found ourselves with enough time between ceremony and reception to hunt one down, so we headed first to a local mini-mart.

Kwik-Trip’s wedding card selections (3) were overly floral and drowned in generic Biblical verse, but we were glad to find anything on a Saturday morning in a town the size of our bathroom.

We settled for a purple monstrosity and returned to our car to sign it, assuming the worst over. But then I read Jackie’s inscription:

Please enjoy the bottle of wine from our wedding.

Flares launched in my brain. THE bottle of wine? From our wedding?

I could misinterpret this sentence three ways:

We have wine left over from our wedding. We’re trying to get rid of it and don’t want to buy you a gift; here’s a bottle!

We had one and only one bottle of wine at our wedding. Inexplicably nobody drank it, and here it is.

We’re re-gifting this bottle of wine we received at our wedding.

What Jackie meant to say was that the wine, one of our favorite selections, was the same type we featured in our wedding. Laughing, I voiced my concern, reading the inscription aloud. Jackie thought for a few moments, cursed loudly, then tromped back into the gas station for a second card.

“Never marry a writer,” she told the clerk. “If you do, never show them anything you’ve written.”

This time, I wrote the inscription:

Enjoy the wine! We served this brand at our wedding.

A few extra words, but I can find no way to misinterpret their meaning.

It is worth noting that Jackie’s original sentence was grammatically and syntactically spot-on. The problem was semantic.

The wedding went well; no runaway brides or drunken grooms. I took a few notes-to-self based on conversations I heard, and smiled when I reviewed them this morning. Here are a couple of the verbatim entries—presented without context they’re a comical example of how meaning can be mistaken.

Well, maybe you have a little crack. [Jackie's diagnosis of a relative's medical complaint.]

Dick masseuse. [A reminder about a Christmas gift for my father-in-law Richard.]

Are You Sure This Is It?

A few nights ago I tossed and turned into the wee hours of the morning. My erratic writer’s schedule of late mornings and later nights had gotten the better of me.

Around 4 a.m. I glimpsed white on the rocks beneath our window. I peered through the blinds—sure enough, it was snowing, the first of the year.

I closed my eyes and mouthed, “You’re kidding me,” into the pillow, careful not to wake my wife. We don’t need snow this early—it isn’t even Halloween.

Haunting visions of parkas and moon boots overtook me. Still, the sun fought through the clouds shortly after dawn and the season’s first dusting melted into a memory.

Today the white stuff has hung around long enough to accumulate on sidewalks, lampposts, and cars, and it’s still coming down. Gives you that hot-chocolaty feeling.

Up early, I thought I’d check out the new Michael Jackson track they’ve been hyping. Sony is offering a streaming version of “This Is It” via MichaelJackson.com to stir up buzz for the upcoming concert film and soundtrack.

I’m a Michael Jackson fan. When MJ got it right, he got it righter than any pop musician in history. When he slipped, his missteps were clichéd, saccharine, sometimes embarrassing.

As an outtake—the track is built around a demo piano/vocal take—”This Is It” is compelling. While the vocal performance never fully takes off into Jackson’s signature soul stratosphere, it exceeds many vocalists’ best work. But the song itself lacks: it is mid-tempo, bland, and unremarkable.

I blame Sony. Its ham-handed handling of the “This Is It” soundtrack is opportunistic and artistically misguided; it’s another tame greatest hits album in chichi packaging. While the film itself offers fans something they’ve never seen, the bloated two-disc album comprises the same hits we already own, a few remixes, and alternate versions of the lame-duck single.

Countless corporate and independent record labels, movie studios, and book publishers have made the same mistakes. We’ve all sat cringing in a theater, wondering if the script had been bad from the start, if the studio dialed back an interesting story to sate the masses, or if the project had been rushed.

But the ads! With all of the hoopla it must be good.

Why does underwhelming work need overwhelming hype?

I’ve often scolded myself for trying to take shortcuts, to deliver good work that could be great after a few more passes (like this blog). Why can’t media companies take this approach? Instead of rushing to market, spend time digging up the best tracks, creating the best artwork, cultivating the most unique script. Find ways to pleasantly surprise audiences in terms of content, delivery, and price. Touch people and leave them talking.

Instead, they hit the ground fast and melt even faster.

Outside my window it’s still snowing.

Maybe it’s not about being first, but about being the one that sticks.

So Good It Hurts

The other day I interviewed a recording studio owner. He proved an excellent interviewee, gushing at length about his job with little prompting.

I listened for two hours. It was an inverse psychotherapy session in which I, the doctor, was couched. I harvested several valuable quotes, though one in particular resonated:

“He’s the kind of musician,” he said, “who makes you want to either run home and practice or quit playing.”

I didn’t bother to write it down; I remember it verbatim and will for a long time. While he isn’t a hero of mine or a scholar or even a major player in his field, the truth he spoke was universal. For insights into everyday life, look to everyday people.

I’ve been there: as a writer, a musician, a marketer, a thinker, a husband, a son. I know what it’s like watching somebody whose gifts transcend gifted, whose efforts seem effortless. I know what it’s like to swallow two ounces of inadequacy for each ounce of respect.

There are those whose works inspire us, motivate us to grow, and yet somehow (by way of naiveté or acuity) feel accessible. They exist on a plain above, but adjacent to, ours. These models are invaluable when we’re beginning.

Then there are those whose glory crushes. Their talent is so profoundly unreachable that the faster we run, the further behind we fall. For some, a symbol of inspiration becomes a symbol of defeat.

Unless you’re the World’s Greatest in your field, there is always somebody better, somebody more. Smarter, faster, prettier, funnier…

The question is, “So what?”

My interviewee issued his quote from the comfort of a recording studio he owned. I was there to catalog his growing success in the local music scene for tens of thousands of readers. He’s slowly realizing his dream because he hung in.

I almost quit this blog. Though I’ve only shared it with a handful of friends, because I devote most of my time to my “real writing” I feared the drivel I write here would backfire. 

As for real writing, I’m attacking it with all I’ve got. I second-guess myself daily, but isn’t that how we grow? The danger comes when everything you do effuses perfume.

I’ll keep working if you will.

I’ll keep studying the masters, absorbing. I’ll chase those accessible inspirations and tag along with geniuses, nipping at their golden heels hoping a bit of shine rubs off.

Flash Fiction #1

6:30 p.m. her thigh-length wool jacket bare legs. Leaves with him. Walk east toward lake, huddling. Not even cold.

Hair down, same as last time. Up yesterday and sweatpants with Anne. Gym, probably. Girl talk coffee. Muffin. Didn’t follow. Now hair blowing, hand checking. Chilly. Breezier today. Him scarf like serpent, leather, glasses fake. Him bumping with hip laughing. Careful facial hair.

Cat sees me. Her bedspread cat same color. Name silly. Will rename after. Her talking with hands, ignores phone call. Her much eye batting. Round corner.

Cross, but neighbor. Ancient. Wander ’til inside. Between buildings space ample, daytime dark. Night perfect. Nail second window left, snagged elbow. Others safe stand on electric meter. Her laughing somehow far off. Bedroom floor mess. Nice panties bad panties brushes. No way here. His place far. Maybe luck mine. Need replace wallpaper. Mirror crack. Gift?

Cat back.

Living room dead as shadow. TV, books, laptop. Photos and old furniture like she cares. Stereo mute as I. Rumpled afghan. Cat toys. Remotes in control. Crap trinkets, oriental balls, Cosmo. Takeout box. Ass-improvement videos.

Stove yesterday supper. Looks chicken/pork. Said dinner plans but no. Transparency. Windows good at this. Tell her be like windows. One filthy fork, filthy knife sharp, cuts ties. Cuts self I say. Gave options.

Cold pane transparent here like friend, dirt inside not warm as looks…him picture fridge no glasses. Alley dark climbs, sun dips. Climbs like water up around neck then face gone, swallowed.

Too hard one dinner?

Fake butter fake eggs u are what u eat.

Next chance last. Free will at a price. Decision her. I am consequence.

Confused heels on sidewalk. Hers like fingerprints. Last go tomorrow.

Her with emotional problems and fucking cat.

Real (Good) Sells Itself

Don’t sell me.

Don’t be pushy or arrogant or talk more than you listen.

If you talk more than you listen, you’re deficient. If you spew more than you ingest you’re left wanting. Be attentive, listen, read. Don’t read a playbook and try to squeeze me into your scenario.

The better prepared you are, the more you listen, the less likely you are to lose the sale or end up looking foolish.

This is not to deride all salespeople; sales is a noble, necessary profession. Like most careers, it’s part art, part science. When a sale is handled correctly, win-wins happen.

I worked in marketing, a branch of sales. If sales and marketing come together in the right way, good things happen. If not, things go south like an RV in January.

You’ve got people like Seth Godin who could sell gasoline to a blowtorch. The thing with Seth is he focuses on ideas; his products are ancillary. He didn’t sell me his books. I bought them because I’d invested time in his daily blogs and watched clips of his speeches on YouTube. I looked forward to his insights, saw truth in them, and bought a book along the way. It was almost an afterthought.

Bob Lefsetz is Godin’s analogue on the music side. Bob, while he may be paid to speak or consult here and there, sells nothing more than ideas. He’s kept at it like a madman for years and he’s earned the industry’s ear. If I ran a label looking to improve, I know whom I’d call.

As a society, we need to focus inward. We need to perfect our products and ideas and art. Honesty helps. We need to sacrifice instant gratification for the long haul and pursue sustainability. Real and true sell themselves.

On some level, we all want to “sell” our art.

Think about the lame “musicians” out there with charting singles whose names you can’t recall, whose faces you’ve never seen. The authors churning out trash novels like fast food and collecting the check. They play the game, make a quick cash grab, and fade into obscurity.

Think about the artists who’ve never had a radio hit, who’ve busted their ass building fiercely loyal fan bases that will support them until the day they croak.

Prince once said, “An artist gets the kind of fans they deserve.”

I agree.

On the Road

Giving the mobile blogging thing a shot. Forgive my brevity.

I’m trying to salvage time–I’m here in a car dealer’s waiting room, complete with Overweight Guy and Coffee I Won’t Touch. Better add Scraggly Close-talking Mustache Guy.

This dealership is so far out of town it could be in the Appalachians. And me without my banjo.

So far this mobile blogging thing bites it.

The good news is chapter one is coming along. Where things had grown stilted and self-conscious they’re beginning to flow. Characters are sauntering in unannounced and the resulting broth gets spicier by the day. Even this far in, I’m convinced I can do this thing.

I hope to leverage technology to bring the book to the universe in a novel (no pun intended) manner come hell or high agua. Remember, kids, the gatekeepers are sunk.

Is there anyone else out there going it alone, toiling away for the love of it? I know you exist–you’re probably sitting there in some greasy auto shop in the middle of elsewhere, typing your blog.

WM-

Through the Rabbit Hole

Did you catch the dancing Beyonce baby on YouTube?

The clip of Hugh Jackman scolding the audience member with the cell phone?

Is Ashton Kutcher still the biggest Tweeter in the land?

I was thinking about the modern phenomenon whereby filtering anything through a medium gives it instant credibility, makes it worth viewing or reading or discussing.

Everyday I stand in my kitchen talking with my wife and nobody cares. Not one reporter has called to interview me afterward. I’ve gotten zero requests to do the speaking circuit. Yet, people tune in by the tens of thousands to watch people do it on TV.

Why?

If I give my opinion on a recent movie to a friend in a coffee shop, nobody cares (least of all my friend). If I speak into my webcam and post it on YouTube, strangers will take time out of their day to watch.

You’re annoyed by the bearded guy standing too close at the airport, until you learn he’s that guy from the movies. Then you want him to scribble his name on a receipt for your nephew.

The mundane becomes compelling by being captured and disseminated. Isn’t it the same event, before and after? Are you the same person before and after I snap your picture?

So many people struggle to reach a plateau I’m fairly certain doesn’t exist.

My work is sometimes published. I’m writing a book. Aren’t I on the same quest as the woman trying out for WifeSwap?

In some ways, I probably am. Although I’m not seeking recognition for my shopping sprees or getting hit in the crotch with a whiffle ball bat. I’m willing to work.

I don’t want the spotlight.

I would feel more comfortable adopting a pen name and honing my craft in secret, blending in with the hoi polloi like Spiderman or the voices behind Milli Vanilli.

If you haven’t been published or broadcast or whatever, don’t fret. Sure, to have a sustainable career you’ll probably have to be eventually, but is art about creations or creating?