Category: Sabattical

posts related to my sabbatical

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We’ll see

Okay campers. I know I’ve been a little flirty these days. I mean, who actually writes a book, tells the world and then refuses to let people read the damn thing?
This past week has been a bit off-schedule, as I think most of the rest of this project is going to go. I’ve sent my manuscript to the only person I trust to not only call me on my bullshit, but also know when to use “that” instead of “which”. She’s thrilled at the idea of taking care of my baby while she’s also going to be busy delivering a baby of her own. (She’s due to give birth to an actual child, not a book—although she’s an excellent writer.) So those of you awaiting a cursory glance at the manuscript while in it’s infancy are going to have to wait for another infant to at least give his mother some time to take a serious look. Personally, I’m counting on all those raging hormones to give me a break. We’ll see.

I’ve also got a call into someone who is going to help me with the website. So the next time you read the blog, you’ll be able to subscribe, and that darn picture of me running across my Aunt Clara’s backyard just might stretch across the whole page the way I want it to. We’ll see.

And probably the biggest thing I have to let you know about is “the book” page will most likely change to “the books” as I have enough leftovers for another start on a fascinating tale of a young man perfecting his slacking abilities whilst pursuing fame and fortune in the big city. Granted, that means I’m going to have to keep writing about myself, and to be perfectly honest, I’m a little bored with that. I might pick up a fiction story I whipped up years ago and finish it. We’ll see.

That’s what’s on the agenda. I’ve committed to three posts per week—roughly 50% of what I’ve been doing these past six weeks. They may be short and sweet, but that’s the plan.

We’ll see.

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Now what?

Well, I did that. Now what?

I’m so grateful to everyone who stopped by and gave me such great support. One of the wisest things a prospective agent said to me when I started this project was “I like coming-of-age stories, but my experience has been that they’re almost impossible to sell. So you don’t want to get lumped into that category. You need to signal as early as possible in the book that something more is happening.”

Granted, this person hadn’t read the entire book. Hasn’t seen this blog. Has no idea what my something more is. I have to admit, up until I sat down and started receiving such encouraging feedback from all of you—Anacondans especially, I didn’t know what my something more was.

Now I do.

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Only time will tell

I suppose it’s time to get serious. I’m going to have to start figuring out a marketing plan for this book. These last few, golden weeks have been blissfully marketing-free. But now I have to start thinking about twitter feeds and facebook pages and developing a readership. There’s so much more to this than just the writing. I’m excited and scared at the same time.

I once had a conversation with a prospective employer. (I didn’t actually know at the time he was asking me to work for him, I just thought he wanted to chat.) At any rate, it was at the Depot in Missoula, and he’d met me in the bar before I started my shift washing dishes. He was the executive director at a theater company. Anyway, he was sitting across from me and without a lot of fanfare asked, “What do you want to do with your life?”

And I was all like, “Whaaa?”

And he was all like, “Seriously? What do you want to do with yourself? I’m assuming you don’t want to wash dishes for the rest of your life.”

Of course he was being a bit presumptuous at the time. Up until recently I had never really divulged my affinity for washing dishes. Back then, (you know, in the 80s), washing dishes was a nowhere job. And I was young, I suppose. And silly. So I took a sip of my Tab and said, “Well, I suppose one day I want to be an actor.”

And he laughed. Out loud. At me.

Bear in mind, this guy had already hired me and paid me a slave-labor wage to haul my ass all around Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas and western Canada to … well … act among other things. But I was young. And silly. So I said, “What’s so funny?” Kinda like he’d hurt my feelings.

And he said, “Well, I guess if that’s what you want to do you should do it, but if you ask me … ”

“You asked me,” I said.

“Right. Well … I just think,” he said, “it would be a terrible waste if you just became an actor.”

I had no response to that. At the time he was referring to my superlative secretarial skills. (I still think I’d make someone an excellent executive assistant if only they would give me a chance.)

If you fast forward about 15 years or so, another man in a similar power position said to me, “I think it would be better if you just stayed a teacher.” And I don’t really know if it was the limiting way these fellas had spoken to me, or my own gut that told me, on both occasions, to get the hell out of Dodge.

When I applied for the job I currently have, the woman who hired me said, “I didn’t know you were a writer.”

And I think I said “Well, I didn’t know I was a writer, either.” But she had faith in me. And here we are, almost eleven years later.

The fact of the matter is, it was really my ability to put two words together that got me anywhere. (Well, anywhere other than Montana, Wyoming, the Dakotas and western Canada.) And I’m extremely grateful for that. I cannot write in actual words, how lucky I feel to be able to do something that makes me feel good and shitty at the same time.   And if there’s one other thing I think I know I’m good and shitty at it’s … well … marketing.

I just don’t know if I’ll be any good at marketing myself.

Only time will tell.

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Was that a goal, or an objective?

Just passed 82k. My goal was 80k. Or at least I thought my goal was 80k. I came to the end of my writing period today and discovered I had missed the celebration. Kinda like when I missed turning over 100k miles in the Volkswagen. I was disappointed and elated at the same time.

The feeling didn’t last long. It was only a few second before I thought, “Now what?” These past few chapters had come so easily. It seems like only a few days ago I was at 70k.

Now what? I clearly wasn’t finished.

So, I went back and hacked out some chapters. I was ruthless. I don’t know if those stories will ever see the light of day, but I decided they just weren’t part of this collection. (Not for me to decide? Don’t worry, I saved them. Actually I resaved the whole kit and kaboodle with a new name I would recognize.) So I’m back at 70k. And that, I think, is good.

I have at least two or three chapters left in me. The rest will be cake? Right?

Still, it got me thinking about goals. And objectives. Up until I started teaching (lo those many years ago) I really didn’t believe in goals. I remember talking with my first principal. We were sitting on a dock on Lake Merwin and she wanted to know what my goals were for the coming year.

“I don’t believe in making goals,” I said. (God I was an asshole.)

“Well, I have to write something,” she said. She was maintaining a book of goals for all the teachers.

I looked out over the water. It was a beautiful day. I sighed.

“Well, if you have to write something down, let’s put, ‘Grant will learn to embrace a system of measurement that employs goals, objectives and tactics,'” She looked at me, stymied.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the way I see it, you can really only have one goal. One outstanding goal. In this case, it would be for me to become a good teacher. Then, if we break it down a little bit, we could set a few objectives, like maybe I’ll get through a text book, or maybe I’ll pick up a new elective or something like that. And I’ll use tactics to reach the objectives,” I said. “But frankly, I think the whole thing is bogus,” I said.

“You seem to understand the system,” she said.

“Well, yes and no. Up until now, and I mean this very minute, I think I might have been reluctant to make a goal. I mean, if I don’t make any goals, I can never really disappoint myself,” I said.

“But isn’t that aimless?”

“Sure, why not?” I said.

But teaching really made me see the value of setting a goal and achieving it. I found, especially with the population I was dealing with, the goal system was quite useful. So I embraced setting goals for my students. Much more so than myself.

It was that practice that convinced me that I probably had been setting goals all along. I just wasn’t very cognizant of my actions.

So today, I reached a goal. I celebrated for a second and a half, then I went in and cut ten thousand words.

I can’t wait for tomorrow.

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Confessions of a pearl diver

Maybe that should be the title of my book.

I’ve spent the past couple of days writing about things I always wanted to write about. For a guy my age, I’ve had very few jobs. But the one job that I have always considered my fall-back position is to wash dishes at a busy restaurant. I’m serious.

I’m probably too old to do it now. But in my day, I was a proud pearl diver. (That’s slang for dish washer … I’ve also been known as a professional dish monkey, but that seems a bit derogatory.) At any rate, during my tenure behind the Hobart I’ve often heard the phrase, “I could write a book.” Which I completely believe to be true. I think, of course, Anthony Bourdain has already capped that market, but his book is mostly about cooking. Mine would be about washing. There’s really nothing quite like it. (I know what you’re thinking, and your completely wrong. It’s not gross. There are some disgusting things you have to do, but I happen to believe there’s at least one disgusting task in every job.) The restaurant world is filled with interesting characters who are willing to tell tons of stories. They all react differently (and mostly humorously) to stress. I remember one New Year’s Eve in the Depot kitchen, I was absolutely bombarded with overflowing bus tubs at the end of the night. Everyone was celebrating and popping champagne and I was working my ass off, trying to trim the time I would have to spend cleaning up. You develop an incredible amount of efficient, time-saving tricks when you are in that situation. You find a rhythm. There are periods of amazing, mindless zen-like flow. It’s actually relaxing work.

And when you’re done, you’re done. There’s no bringing dirty dishes home with you at the end of the night. You usually have to clean the kitchen, mop the floors, take out the garbage and lock the doors. Done. No unanswered phone messages or email box. Just you, the dishes and the machine.

In many ways, these past few weeks have been like that for me. Once I get in the zone, I could stay here for hours. I listen to these people from my past. They are talking to me. Some of them are saying things for the second or third time, some of it (I freely admit) I’m putting in their mouths. It’s probably things they should have said. Or I should have heard. I actually don’t think that much about it. (I’m very thankful for that.)

And when I’m done … when I’ve reached the end of the story, or I think people who might want to read should take a break … I’m done. It’s one of the most utterly satisfying feelings I’ve ever had.

Maybe that’s why my mind is drifting back to my first real boss—Ruth Perrini—who used to command the kitchen at the Hideaway with a sharp tongue, an iron fist and a huge heart. She used to say, “It takes all kinds, Grant. It takes all kinds.” I remember the line cooks at the Depot (they were both named Dan when I worked there) who would come into the back kitchen and sigh, “It’s so clean back here. And it’s so quiet.” Poor suckers. They had to cook in front of the diners. That’s not unlike being asked to perform a cold-reading at an audition. And yes, I remember the intoxicating, yeasty smell of the bottom of the dough bucket at Godfather’s Pizza. Spraying that down with a faucet hose was a lot like swilling a beer. But when you were finished, the whole kitchen sparkled.

I’m thankful for them all. All the dishes. All the jobs. All the characters.

And some day, if I ever fall on hard times job, I just might take it up again.

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Why this? Why me? Why now?

I didn’t come up with those title words—they are actually lyrics from an obscure musical version of The Goodbye Girl, written by Neil Simon, David Zippel and Marvin Hamlisch. And now you have another bit of useless information for your next Trivial Pursuit jamboree.

I have to admit, I find myself asking myself those questions as I try to catalog some of these gap-filling stories. I don’t know if there’s a better way of filtering out the things that I’m remembering from the things I’m writing about. But I’m starting to wonder if there is any worthwhile merit to censoring myself.

Up until now (and by that, I mean up until being given this incredible gift of time) I had developed what I’ve come to recognize as a bad habit. I would make sure the entire story was worked out in my head  before I’d even start to write it. I think I was censoring myself into some twisted sense of completion. There’s probably something to be said for that. I mean, why start to write a story when you don’t know how it’s going to end up? Then again, up until now, it has stopped me from writing altogether.

Up until now.

Throwing open the endings of these pieces is a challenge. It flaunts my first rule of the road … DON’T BE BORING. I keep hearing my father in the back of my head. He used to imitate Archie Bunker whenever he was starting to become bored by people. He’d say, “Get to the pirnt, Edith! Get to the pirnt!” With a perfect Sunnyside, Queens, New York accent. Just like Carroll O’Connor. (A favorite son of the University of Montana, by the way … Go Griz! … even more trivia.)

My challenge, (and I truly see it as a challenge, not a problem), is that as I’m banging away, writing about the experiences I had student teaching, or driving my dad to his radiation treatments, or stealing a job from a friend (it’s true, my first job as a dishwasher I completely swiped out from under one of my friends) I keep wondering if these scenes are important enough to include. And I think why am I writing about this?

Why this? Why me? Why now?

I only think about that for a second, though.  Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s to stop judging the merits of the story and just tell the damn thing.

I’ll worry about the rest tomorrow. It’s the Scarlett O’Hara school of memoir.

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Housekeeping

I’m willing to admit, there’s a few things that make me impatient. I’m not going to go into all of them here, but as this is awards season, I’m going to let you in on one. I hate it when actors complain about how hard it is to act. In the words of one of my friends, who gets much more work that I do, “Oh please. You stand around all day and people bring you food. How hard can it be?”

So, by association, I become impatient when writers talk about how hard it is to write. I admit, having time to write is a luxury. And I’m eternally grateful to the company of folks I work with who have sacrificed to give me these seven weeks. But I’ve promised myself to not write blog posts about how hard it is to maintain a blog. In fact, I’ve promised myself to not reference the act of blogging in an actual post (like I’m doing now.)

So, in a way, I’ve broken a promise. To myself. But that’s okay because I can forgive myself. Now, when Bruce Willis starts in about how hard it was to make Die Hard, well … I change the channel. So those of you who are like-minded, may want to browse elsewhere.

The blog, and the site (and the webpage about the book) are a way to build what publishers call a “platform”. To that end, in an effort to get the word out, I’ve posted six days a week (as per Stephen King), and mentioned in my Facebook status every time I’ve written something new.

Many of you have commented here, but most of you have commented on my Facebook updates. (Or hit the ubiquitous “like” button.) I’m ever grateful for your support. Thanks! Keep it up!

Now, about the “subscribe” button many of you have asked about. After several rounds of technical support, it turns out the development platform I chose to create my website doesn’t support putting a subscribe button on this blog page. Which to me is okay. Here’s why: I write a post every day. If you subscribed, that means I’d be bugging you every day. And my number one goal in writing is to NOT BORE ANYONE. Honest. Don’t want to do it. So, at least for the sabbatical, I’m blogging using website developer. Once the posts become less frequent. (I’m imagining once a week when the sabbatical is over. Twice, tops.) I’ll archive these posts and switch to a development platform that allows you all to subscribe.

I promise.

Last bit of news: The plays still exist as plays, they just aren’t in the collection. (I think it’s better that way.) Also, I have a goal of 90,000 words for a rough draft. Today I passed the 60k mark.

I’m going to celebrate by making falafel.

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Small world, but I wouldn’t want to paint it

I wish I’d said that, but it’s actually a Stephen Wright quote. He also said, “I don’t want everything. Where would I put it?”

Today is a banner day in my gaining some insight into Anaconda, post 1980. I finally went up to the Washington State University extension campus (just up the street, for the love of God) and picked up a copy of Anaconda: Labor, Community and Culture in Montana’s Smelter City, by Laurie Mercier. This was the only area library that had a copy of the book, turns out with good reason. Here’s a brief snippet of dialog to explain:

Me: I’m looking for this book

Librarian: Anacon … I can’t read your writing.

Me: Anaconda. A N A C O N D A

Librarian: Oh! By Laurie!

Me. Yes. Laurie Mercier

Librarian: Well it was just checked in.

Me: Oh good.

Librarian: Are you taking one of her classes?

Me. What? Oh, no. I’m a community user. I’m not a student. This is the only library that has a copy of the … wait, what?

Librarian: Are you taking one of her classes?

Me: Does she teach here?

Librarian: Yes. She’s one of our Professors

Like Mr. Wright says … small world.

So, here’s today’s nugget. I open the book, which is largely based on a number of interviews Ms Mercier conducted with community members, and lo and behold, there’s a quote on the first page from Mary Dolan! Miss Dolan. As in Miss Dolan, THE PRINCIPAL of W.K. Dwyer Elementary School. The very same Miss Dolan who saved me from hating school and … BANG! It was like I’d been shot out of a cannon.

Miss Dolan had a profound effect on me. She was tough … there was no doubt about that … but when I was called into her office in November 1968, it wasn’t because I was causing trouble. But I was in trouble, and she knew it. I had been in school for only three months and managed to have the highest absence rate in history. If I remember correctly, (And we all know it really doesn’t matter if I do, right?) I had been in school a total of 15 complete days.

It wasn’t that I didn’t like school. I hated school. And I remember reasoning with my mother—actually trying to negotiate my way out of having to go to school at all. There was something deeper there, a greater truth I should have learned about myself much earlier than I did. I simply didn’t like being in a group of people. I didn’t like being classified, I didn’t like having to be called on … randomly … to answer questions. I hated the entire idea that I was going to have to spend the rest of my known life attending school. And here we are more than forty years later, and I still feel that way. I don’t think the way we educate people in this country actually works for the majority of the population. To me, the way most students are being taught, learning is accidental. If anyone manages to retain anything, it’s a total, complete accident. Learning (again, to me, I’m not blaming anyone here) should be intentional. It has everything to do with student motivation and very little to do with teaching expertise. Good teachers point the way. Good learners ask for directions.

Miss Dolan made me aware … no, that’s not the right word … Miss Dolan made me understand that I was entitled to my opinion. And that, even though I had major issues with “the system”, I was going to have to make the best of it. Suck it up. Make lemonade. Learn as much as I could about how I learned, so that I didn’t have to rely on the school system to teach me. It’s difficult to explain. In my little first-grader mind, she made me realize that it was completely my responsibility to figure out how I was going to learn, and then accommodate the information being given to me to the style I was going to understand it in. Miss Dolan made me realize I was auto-didactic long before anyone even knew what that meant. And there were teachers along the way … true teachers … who understood that the best way for me to learn from them was to continually question. I remember one of my college professors telling me, “Your problem is I just can’t tell you anything. I have to constantly prove everything.” And I remember saying right back, “That’s not a problem … it’s a method.” Snark, right? Total ass. I know, I know.

Miss Dolan showed up one day, in the back of my classroom when I was student teaching. It was the last time I saw her. I remember I was having a discussion in my class about why we all needed to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. There was a student who just didn’t see the point. The class was discussing the merits of having to read the novel when there was a movie available, (I believe they even wanted to just peruse classic comic). Anyway … what I remember is we were truly debating the issue when Miss Dolan came into the room, walked to the back and stood with her hands behind her back, her head bowed. Even from the front of the room, without my glasses, I could see she was smiling.

She was a remarkable woman—she could be meaner than Mussolini—but in a world where it’s easy to be mediocre, she remains one of the truly remarkable teachers I’ve ever had.

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I pinch myself

There really is something to this “in the zone” thing. I’m telling you. Once I get down to business I get completely lost inside the words and I know how trite this sounds, but … it’s like someone else is writing the story and I’m just reading along, correcting the spelling. I wonder if there’s other times in my life when that has happened. I know there’s been times when I’ve been performing and if you’d asked me afterwards how it felt, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you. It’s not out-of-body as much as totally in-body.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t get as far today as I would have liked, but when I finally did get into myself, I just sort of sat by and watched things appear. It was  … exhilarating. When I finally slowed down, I went into editing mode and just sort of plowed through a couple of chapters, changing things like “my mom” to “Mom” and fixing sentences to meet the format.

I know this sounds precious, but I have to tell you … everyone should be so lucky.

Today I filled in some missing meaning gaps in a chapter I started more than a year ago about diving into a wading pool. I really didn’t know why I’d done it, at the time, but through writing the scene, I honestly think I was  doing it just to get attention. God, what an ass!

I spent the morning reading a pamphlet that was published by the Soroptimist Club of Anaconda in salute to Anaconda’s first 100 years called Anaconda, Montana’s Copper City, by Matt J Kelly. A true native son, Mr. Kelly had collected a boatload of information on the beginnings of Anaconda, including many of the facts and figures about the smelter that other researchers would have overlooked.

I took a couple of important things away from the reading. First off, the town was much more sophisticated than I have ever given it credit for. (For this I feel ashamed, in fact.) Also, and this is an important thing to remember I think, there’s more than a couple tales of hard-working folks helping each other through tough times. Mr. Kelly’s description of the depression, for example, shows a town supporting each other, starting a community garden, making sure the hungry were fed. Or the time when the alderman, clearly understanding they weren’t going to stop bootlegging, decided to regulate the speakeasies and charge a nuisance fine … collecting some $650 to add to the city coffers before the mayor called them in and put an end to the regulation program.

I’m sure that other places in the west have similar stories, probably just as colorful, I’d wager. But the fact that I grew up with such history leaking through the bricks of the very buildings is … astonishing. Hopefully, by shining a light into the corners of my own weird little existence there, I’ll be able to find that history and sophistication seeping through the decisions I made, and the reasons I made them. Sometimes, I just have to pinch myself.

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What to keep

Today I tackled two things at the same time. I cleaned my garage, and I cleaned up my narrative line. In both cases, I clarified the setting and really honed in on what I want stuff to look like. I’m thinking that will probably be enough thinking, thank you very much.

I recycled a lot of stuff from the garage. The book, well … I don’t think there’s anything there to recycle. Maybe something to cut, a lot of somethings to polish.

On the advice of a friend, I’ve changed the starting point of the whole collection and now need to work on the why, the reason for telling the tale. Let’s face it, I know for a fact I didn’t get this far on my good looks, but you can only get so far on good writing. There’s going to have to be something more there.

This got me to thinking about the stuff I keep. Why it has value. What the simple, subjective evaluation of a piece of writing does to the balance of a book. I used to have a box in the garage of assorted electronic cables. No devices, mind you … just the cables. Speaker wire, coax cable, RCA jacks, you know the routine. It was a pretty big box. Of cables. Probably twenty year’s worth.

I know all about the arc of obsolescence (I enjoy a fine career writing about technology.) So it stands to reason that, as things evolve … follow me here … the things we use to connect them to other things evolve as well. One man’s VGA cable is not another man’s HDMI, if you get my drift.

I thought these stories could be told in a non-linear fashion; arranged according to the month in which they happened, rather than the year. So January, 1969 is followed by February, 1980, which is followed by March, 1968. You still with me? The connection of the narrative, in this case, was the time of the year. Not the year itself. So as I’m about to drop the box of cables in the e-waste bin at the recycling center, it strikes me that maybe the commonality of the seasons is not the best way to connect these stories.

I think I’m onto something. So now I’m going to look at the dramatic arc of the collected stories and try to figure out which story best follows which.

In other words, I’m not leaving it up to the connector to dictate the order of the stories. If you’re still with me, God bless you. If I lost you, never fear. It’s going to be alright. I just know it.