Month: October 2014

Whaturday

Pavowski4 Comments

The edit continues.  Hard to give a status update; it seems like I’m moving more quickly through the book but not actually getting all that much accomplished with it.  I try to deal with the notes I left to myself in the draft, but I feel like I end up only leaving more notes for further future mes to deal with.

That said, occasionally the notes I left to myself back then brighten my day here in the present.  I came across one yesterday that made absolutely not one stonking bit of sense.  “Nope, but good try.”  Stuck in amidst a not particularly compelling bit of dialogue, not referencing anything in particular, certainly not communicating any sort of useful message, it lurks there in the margin, taunting me, daring me to puzzle out what it means and what it’s doing there, like a cat turd on the kitchen countertop.

I’ve mentioned in previous posts about the edit how time especially is an issue that vexed me in the draft, and continues to vex me in the edit.  Time is so crucial to the plot of this thing and it is so often referenced that nailing down the times that things start and end, and the times during which things are happening in the background, has become one of my primary giants to slay.  My Past Me’s notes to my Present Self grew more and more frantic from about one-third of the way into the book right up until the end, but today something different happened.  Rather, I found something different which happened several months ago.  The note was actually in the text itself.

Characters are arguing.  Things are happening.  And there, jammed into the story like one discolored brick in a mosaic, is a note to myself lurking with the story itself.

“His agent met him out front with a haggard look on his face: it was, after all, nearly midnight on a Whaturday.”

Not italicized, not asterisk’d or otherwise cordoned off like any self-respecting note; just there, hands on its hips, tongue sticking out, thumbing its nose at me.  With its third hand.  (I don’t know, it’s a word, it doesn’t even have hands.)  At least I remembered to capitalize it.  I can picture my Past Self typing furiously away, realizing I was about to have to remember what day it was supposed to be in this tangle of time and deadlines, then saying, “Fargo it, it’s a Whaturday.”

It cracked me up when I stumbled upon it because I can recall the frustration I was feeling and the complete lack of fargos I gave about trying to sort out the problem at the time.  But I wonder if I didn’t accidentally name a thing that needs naming.  These last few days, with my wife and kids out of town, with the regular punctuation of the day scattered to the winds, one day feels very much like another.  Is it Tuesday?  Thursday?  Monday?  Does it matter?  What day is it?  Whaturday.

This goes doubly for the summer, when as a teacher, I don’t even have a regular work schedule to anchor my time.  The summer becomes one long unbroken string of Whaturdays.

Then I take that last step too far, start really breaking down the word itself, and realize that it’s got the word “turd” right there, unavoidable and undeniable, as turds always are.  And turds are always funny.  Well, the word is.  Turd.  Word.  Wordturd.

God, editing a book is hard.  Please let this Whaturday be over soon.

How do you Write in the Silence?

Pavowski4 Comments

I hate to harp on a topic, but I’m home alone this week while my wife and kids are still living it up on the beach in Florida.

Well… living it up may not be entirely accurate.  Storms have forced the local authorities to close the beaches, so they can’t do much more than dunk their toes in the water or hang at the pool, but still, they have the lovely view every day, and they have each other, which is a lot more than I have at the moment.  And don’t get me wrong — it’s nice having the house to myself.  It’s quiet.

But it’s also soooooo quiet.

I never thought much about it before, but I always write with a healthy supply of noise in the background.  At work there’s the intermittent shouts of students in hallways or the low drone of teachers in other classrooms, not to mention the constant hum of the air conditioners.  At home there’s the buzz of the kids’ monitors or the sound of the television in the other room, or the click-clack of the pets’ claws on the hardwood, or — even when I write in bed — the softly interminable whooshing of the white noise machine that we can’t sleep without.  There is noise everywhere.

But this week, there’s an astounding lack of noise.  The kids aren’t here, so there are no tantrums, no shouting, no pitter-pattering of feet, no whining.  The wife isn’t here, so there’s nobody to watch TV with or chat about my day.  And to top it off, the weather has been frustratingly gorgeous this week, so the A/C hasn’t had to run.  The silence is shocking, and as I sit in the silence trying to write, I find myself increasingly unable.  It’s almost as if, without those periodic punctuation marks for my concentration, I find myself unable to maintain focus.  Does that make me ADD?  Lonely?  Stir-crazy?

I’ve got the television on now in the other room just to break the monotony, but even that isn’t doing the trick.  This house, normally so full of irritations and distractions and light and life and love is driving me batty with the overpowering lack of movement and noise.  I feel the silence creeping in around me and settling into my soul.

Silence used to be a comfort to me.  It used to be a thing I sought, a thing I chased for all I was worth; perhaps because it was so unattainable.  Now it’s here — all around me — and I’m running from it.

When it's gone, will I even remember it was ever there?
When it’s gone, will I even remember it was ever there?

Anyway, it got me to thinking.  Am I uncomfortable with the silence or am I uncomfortable with what it means: the isolation, the inability to hide from my thoughts?  And it got me further wondering.  Am I the only person writing like this?  I know some out there must write in perfect silence, but then I think there have got to be others on the spectrum like me that simply can’t abide it.

How does the silence affect your writing?

Rookie Move (or, why writers should keep pens and paper handy all the time, even when it’s impractical to do so)

Pavowski1 Comment

One of the sort of take-it-for-granted bits of writing advice I once heard was, “make sure you’re always able to write something down.”  It makes sense.  If you believe in inspiration as I do (for the most part) then you know that it can strike you at any moment, without the slightest provocation, and that it can depart again with as little warning as it gave you when it arrived.  This is why, in my work bag, I keep a composition book and two pens at all times, no matter where I’m going or for how long.  It’s why I keep a stack of note cards binder-clipped in my back pocket and a pencil on my ear just about everywhere I go.  It’s why I keep a pocketknife ready to carve strips of flesh from my arm in the semblance of words I can later affix to a page, though I’m happy to announce I’ve not yet been reduced to that particular method of transcription yet.

Still, ideas sometimes slip through.  Occasionally I’ll have a brilliant idea strike my cerebellum only to bounce off like so many hailstones on the pavement.  Or, more often, something will seem earth-shatteringly clever to me as the thought strikes, but then when I try to articulate it, I realize it’s so foolish it doesn’t bear further thought.  Then there are the days when the fountain seems to dry up entirely and no amount of coaxing, cajoling, pondering or preening will make the ideas come forth.  It’s a crap shoot, in other words, whether the good ideas will get through or not, which is why it’s doubly important to always have the net ready to catch them before they crater in the vast depths of the ideas I will never write.

Let me back up.

The wife and kids and some extended family and I were all on vacation in a fairly swanky condo in Florida over the weekend.  I mentioned it last time, and then in a dutiful showing of a man on vacation, I didn’t write again until today.  Anyway, I had to come back for work, but my wife and kids stayed on and are staying on for a few more days of sun and surf (NOT THAT I’M JEALOUS OR ANYTHING), which means I’m at home by myself for a few days.  No kids.  No wife.  No distractions.  Perfect conditions to get some writing done.  And I did, and I plan to, and night one was brilliant and night two is shaping up just fine so far.

But at night the monsters come out.

Routine is a powerful thing, and when your routine is shattered, it tends to snowball out of control, like a tiny crack in your windshield spiderwebbing like a mutant octopus every time you hit a bump in the pavement.  With no kids, there is no bedtime.  With no wife, there is no meditative glass of wine before the bedtime I don’t have.  I found myself in bed at the appropriate time last night but unable to get to sleep for lack of the vague comforts that knowing your children are asleep in the next room can bring.  No warm backside to press my cold, bony toes into.  The actual night part of last night was, in short, all wrong.  In addition to staying awake for an hour and a half before sleep took me, I woke up of my own volition several times in the night: something I never do (if only because the kids will make noise and wake me up before I ever have the chance to wake myself).  But something else happened unexpectedly in the night: inspiration struck.

It struck with the illumination and voltage of a 1.21 gigawatt lightning strike direct to my cortex, and unfortunately departed just as quickly.  Because for all my various preparations and eventualities for capturing the most fleeting of writerly ideas during my waking hours, I’ve somehow never had the good sense to stash pen and paper next to the bed.  I just don’t get great ideas at night (or if I have, I’ve forgotten them).  But inspiration struck hard and fast enough to wake me and make me think, “gosh golly, I should really write that down,” which lasted me roughly until I remembered that I didn’t have pen and paper at bedside, and I’m sorry, but I’m not one of those writers who is going to huddle over and mash my latest screenplay snippet into my phone with my mutant monkey thumbs.  I’m just not.  No, the inspiration struck, and I realized I had no way to write it down, and I assured myself that this idea was so good, so inescapably awesome, that I would surely remember it in the morning.

So here I am, grasping at the straws that may once have stuffed its scarecrow, but which more likely were the bed for some flea-bitten ox with a penchant for pooping literal poop rather than the brilliant story ideas I might prefer it to poop.  I know it involved either Sherlock Holmes or some Holmesian character.  I’m pretty sure there was genetic modification involved.  There may have been a jetpack.  Also a rhinoceros on a train.  But it’s all one big useless jumble.  No more good to me than the vague idea that I really should have gotten up early and gone for a run today.

Lesson learned.  Paper is going on the bedside table tonight, where it will probably lie untouched until, months from now, I wonder what the hell I put paper on the bedside table for, and move it back downstairs where it belongs.

It’s Not All Bad

PavowskiLeave a comment

When I was drafting this novel, I’d occasionally post a favorite passage from the day’s writing, sort of as a pick-me-up to let me know that what I was writing was worthwhile, and not (as I secretly feared) an egregious waste of my time.  I fell off the wagon with it, especially toward the end of the draft, when I felt the writing was not nearly so good or clever or worthwhile.

During the edit lately, though, I’m stumbling across all sorts of gems; gems that a Past Me penned and then forgot about, so they seem as fresh as clean shirts from the dryer.  This one literally made me laugh out loud when I tripped over it, so here, then, is a favorite passage from today’s work:

Inconveniencing him mightily seemed more within her grasp.  It might take a few years, but she could chip away at his empire of friends and associates, and probably cost him a couple million into the deal.  Would he notice?  Maybe.  But she’d sure as sharknado know, and she wanted more than anything to stick it to the jerk with the stickiest stick she could find.

Here, I thought my entire draft was a spaghetti tangle of mismatched characterizations, nonsensical plot progressions, and ridiculous non-sequitur.  Who knew there was actually some good funny stuff in there?

Sharks.

Pavowski4 Comments

I’m on vacation in beautiful Panama City Beach this weekend, courtesy of a father-in-law who loves it here and takes the family every chance he gets, and a school system kind enough to give teachers a four-day weekend in mid-October.  What’s that?  The kids get the long weekend too?  Meh.

I’ve been here before, but there’s something different about being here as an adult and being here as a kid, or for that matter, a pre-adult.  The opportunities for relaxation are virtually endless.  The beach is powder-fine and not too crowded this time of year, the water is a glorious iridescent bluey-green swirl, the temperatures are warm but not oppressive, the sunrises and sunsets are transcendent.

And I have ruined it all by peopling the waters with sharks.

Metaphorical ones, mind you.  I did see a shark here last time we visited — tiny one, about the length of my arm, just cruising the shallows like a deadly, silent Roomba — but I don’t think those are terribly common to these parts.  No, my sharks are sharks of the mind, because I have done a thing that I swore as a teacher I would never do: I have brought work with me on vacation.

I don’t have any excuse.  It’s a terrible move, but it’s the end of the quarter, I’m behind on grading (juggling 180 students will do that to a man, no matter how well-meaning), and it simply has to get done.  I’ve got a stack of about fifty student essays to grade and a gradebook full of back assignments that have to be put into the electronic grading system before I head back on Tuesday.

So as we pulled in to the condo and took the first breathtaking look at the view from our balcony, I saw not only the vast unknowable expanse of the ocean but also the ominous stack of paper tucked away in my bag.  I saw not only the pearlescent sands where my pasty skin will suffer hideous burns, but also the labyrinth of clicks and categories and long webpage loading times that I must walk to get all these grades put in.

In short, I look at that water and I see mothertrucking sharks.

Because I know that as soon as I let my bare feet sink into that sand, as soon as I dunk one toe in the ocean, the moment I watch my son’s face light up when he hits that beach, those papers and grades and all my obligations are going to melt away from my mind like so much butter on a hot plate.  And then they are going to devour me when I get back to work on Tuesday.  In fact, I’ve already chummed the waters, because in between the last sentence and this one, I brought the laptop out onto the deck with me and the cool night breeze is drifting through what’s left of my hair and the starlight is twinkling on the waves and the headlights are floating slowly past on the strip and all I can think about is how glorious my run will be in the morning and how many hours I can possibly let my son play on the beach before people start to question whether I’m his father.  (You know, cuz his skin will be a delicious ochre color before we leave, I’ve no doubt.)

This might be a time to panic with all these sharks circling about.  Or maybe it’s time to remember that these are only metaphorical sharks, and as such pose as much threat to me as a whiff of vegetarian pasta.  (Unpleasant, but not ultimately harmful.)  Times like these call for bigger boats, or maybe just bigger glasses of wine.

Mm, wine. Time to chum the waters a little more.

This post is part of SoCS.