Category: Writing

posts relating to the writing process

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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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He said, she said

In 1991, when I was finally finishing up college, I read a book called The Five Clocks, by Martin Joos for a linguistics class. It’s out of print, or I’d link you to a copy. It’s actually a very long essay on language styles. Joos starts his essay by using the five clocks at a London train station as an example. They all have slightly different times, but they are all saying the same thing. His theory, and it’s a good one, is that there are five discernible styles of language. The most formal is the words you use when you are writing expository. Formal because it is written, and intended to be read and re-read. So we have to follow a set of accepted rules (called a grammar) that help the reader interpret the writing.

The hard one, the one that is exclusive in its usage (meaning it’s only understood by the speakers) Joos called Intimate style. And I have to tell you, the difference between Intimate and what Joos called Casual style is an absolute beast when I’m trying to capture dialog. So, in the course of revising these plays … these ten little minutes of dialog … I’ve spent a good deal of time just decoding the Intimate and the Casual. I think I’ve got a bead on where the narrative is likely to go, and I know that’s all I need … a vague idea of the plot … but the simple activity of turning the play dialog into the narrative dialog is taxing my use of what I understand Mr. Joos has to say.

Onward.

Into the land of “Um,” and “Huh?” and “Ah-ha!” When you hear it (like when you are hearing a play) it makes perfect sense. But when you are writing it … well … it just looks … awkward. Just one more thing I have to get over, right?

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Sore thumbs

Here’s something I know. When you are compiling a bunch of stories you’ve written over the course of ten years, there’s a seemingly endless round of revision. I’ve already decided to scrap the plays and rewrite them as narrative. That was easy. But there’s also passages of interior monologue that I just don’t know what to do with. Here’s a sample. Taken out of context of the collection, this is fine … but inside the book, it’s a sore thumb:

Strange room—nothing familiar. The smells were different than what I remember things smelling before. Back home. When I was back home. Was I back home? Strange person in bed next to me. OK, I think, you just have to get over this sick feeling you get where you don’t know where you are. So I say aloud, “Where am I?”

No answer.

OK. No answer. No light. No smell. Nothing familiar. OK. So I fumble around in the dark for a bit, feeling my way along a wall. Or what I think must be a wall. There must be a door somewhere.

Someone was in the bed next to me. Huh? How do you like that? I was used to sleeping alone. OK. Door handle. Aha! I think. A handle. As if the uniqueness of a door that opened with a handle rather than a knob was still as new as it was when I woke up. Handle. Door. Simple.

So I pull the door open and there it is. The living room I couldn’t remember just a second ago. This is it. I’m in a con—do—min—i—um. Cavalier By The Sea. A condo on the ocean with my family and my cousins. That was Hughie. Was that Hughie? I go back into the room and there he is. Deeply sleeping. OK. Condo. Ocean. Gotta pee.

It’s kind of nice, I think, getting up in the middle of the night all by yourself. Once you get your bearings. Once you know. Really know where you are. And how you got there. And what that strange person was doing in bed with you. Hughie. Cousin Hughie. OK.

So I pee. And there I am at, like four in the morning. Must be four in the morning. Maybe not. I don’t know. I can’t tell time in a place where I don’t know where the clock is. And I hate wearing a watch. Watches are for girls. Well, that’s not exactly true, I guess. Watches on my wrist look like watches a girl would wear. It’s my single physical flaw, as far as I can tell. My wrists. They are so girly. I mean really, really girly. I hate them. OK. Four in the morning. Just peed. Go back to bed with Hughie?

No. I don’t think so. Let’s do something interesting. I mean, here we are by the sea. Let’s do something downright interesting. Make breakfast? No. I don’t think so. OK. I slip back into the room and get dressed. I think about waking Hugh, but I don’t. Instead, I take a long look at the room, close the door and leave the condo. It’s dark, but not really dark. I noticed how it wasn’t really dark, when we pulled into the parking lot the night before. Just before we unpacked and got into fights and had dinner and went to bed. Just before the last thing I remember hearing was the rain. I mean real rain. Biblical rain. Pounding on the roof of the condo. We never get rain storms back home. I mean not legitimate rain storms. Maybe an occasional shower or something. Lightening, thunder, sure. But this was driving rain. Driving. It sure wasn’t raining now. And it wasn’t dark. Not really. It was kinda gray and dark and light at the same time. Must be four in the morning, I think.

Away I go. Trundling down the rickety steps of Cavalier By The Sea to the beach. It occurs to me, like out of nowhere, how what I’m doing isn’t exactly dangerous. I mean, you can’t really get lost on the beach. There’s one way down the beach. There’s the ocean, and there’s the land. Go in the ocean and drown. Go up on the land and it’s pretty easy to get lost, I imagine. But once you’re on the beach, really there’s only up the beach and down the beach.

I like that.

On the beach in the dark at four in the morning. Or what must be four in the morning. Maybe four fifteen.

Anyway. Eighth grade. God. Eighth. Fucking. Grade. This is so going to not go well. I can tell. I tried all summer to not think about it, but here we are, the whole fam damnly at the beach for the last hurrah before I have to go back into that cess pool. School is so stupid. And hard. Well, the school part of school isn’t hard, but the rest of it is so not easy. If I was like Hugh, I’m sure it would be fine. He’s great. He’s great looking. At least, you know, for a boy. And he’s smart and he’s funny and I just bet he has, like, a dozen friends. That is so …  not me. Well, the friends part. And the good looking part. If I wasn’t so fat, I’m sure I’d be OK looking. But I’m not … not fat. In fact, I’m willing to bet I’m the exact opposite of not fat. Let’s face it, OK? I’m fat. Fatty. I’m just fat. But that doesn’t really have anything to do with what I hate about school. I just hate the people. The people are awful. Well, the cool ones aren’t awful. They’re great. But they are pretty awful to me. In fact, if I was cool, I probably wouldn’t be awful to anyone. But I wonder: Do you have to be mean to be cool? Is that what it is? Because I could be mean, I guess. If I wanted to. I’ll have to check on that with Hughie. I’ll ask him, when I get back to the condo, what it’s like to be cool, and if you have to be mean to fat people to be cool. It’s probably different for him, though. In Boise, there’s probably plenty of fat people. In fact, I’ll bet they have their own group that they hang out with. Not me. In Anaconda, I’m like the only fat person. Well, that’s not true, but I’m the only fat person I’d hang out with.

I try not to think about it.

The beach was all full of stuff that had washed up the night before, and I headed past the soft squishy sand to the place where my feet didn’t slip, and my footprints disappear. The fog and the beach and the water and the sky. It was like it was all one color, but not. It was hard to see where the beach ended and the water began. Just like it was hard to see where the water ended and the sky picked up. In fact, I bet I could walk right out into the water and not even know I’m drowning. So, I pay attention to the stuff on the beach. As long as I can see the stuff on the beach I know I’m not in the water, and oddly enough, not in the sky.

The sun was starting to peek over the rim of sea grass that lined the high side of the sand dunes leading down to where I was walking. It was going to be a cloudy day, that’s for sure. Maybe even driving rain. Maybe not. Like I said before, I don’t really know anything about rain. Or the beach. Except it’s absolutely impossible to get lost on it. Even in the dark. At what must be four thirty in the morning.

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Who said what?

Good God. I’ve just about had it with anyone who said this a lonely pursuit. It’s not. It’s crowded in here. My parents are back from the dead. My teenage sister is as snarky as ever, and my thoughts are just as messed up as they were in high school.

I just slammed through a couple of scenes where I knew I was right, but I was so totally wrong! I had a conversation with a friend of mine a couple of years ago. Very similar to me, he had lost his parents one right after the other. Only he was in his early 30s, whereas I was in my early 20s. Nevertheless, I had enough distance from the spring of 1987 and summer of 1988 (forever known as the most fucked summer of 1988) that I could offer a little bit of perspective. The conversation doesn’t matter, but the question he asked me does. At the end of the conversation he asked, “So, when does the forgiving start?”

And I worry a little bit about that, you see. That question weighs a little heavier on my mind today. Just when do we forgive each other? I said horrible, hateful things to my parents, (and my poor, dear siblings). I was a total smart ass. There’s no doubt about it. The person I projected with my friends was completely innocent of the crimes I committed against my family. Today, as I dove into the scene I had with my father (when I was completely sure he was going to let me leave Anaconda and start singing in bars … I’m not making this up) I remembered saying some horrible, hateful things. And … it was like he didn’t hear them, or he had nerves of steel, because he was so totally cool about the whole thing.

And I was being a real shit, let me tell you. But in a way he was too. Kinda. Well probably not as big a shit as I remember … but still.

So when does the forgiving start?

I get this sense that I need to let myself off the hook, but I gotta tell you, that’s the hardest part of this whole journey.

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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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No plot please, just story, thank you

I think Stephen King should be teaching writing somewhere. Seriously. The day I left for this sabbatical, my colleagues presented me with a gift basket that included, (among other things) a copy of On Writing. I’ve just about finished it, and I have to say, aside from the copy of Warriner’s English Grammar and Composition I swiped from the high school when I was student teaching, this one book has had a most profound impact on the way I’ve been spending my afternoons.

Among other things, King lets you know right away that plot will kill you if you give it too much thought. To him, the story is what should be handled with reverence. And I tend to agree. Probably because not a lot is happening in this little book of mine. In these stories. The sections that are action-packed (my sister and I did manage to blow up the family Buick, after all) aren’t as revealing or nearly as interesting to me as the interior stories that are being revealed just through what I remember people saying to me. I’m not kidding. When that happens … well … it’s like the story is writing itself. I’m just along for the ride.

The other thing I find appealing about King’s memoir is his no-bullshit approach to craftsmanship. Like today, I found myself getting a little lost in the details. I spent more than a few minutes trying to find out a couple of facts. (Those of you who know, can you please, please tell me when the post office in Anaconda was built? AND most importantly, is the benchmark for a mile about sea level in the third step of the post office, or the hotel?) But as soon as I took his advice and allowed myself to get that wrong … or put in a placeholder … the story started tumbling like water.

It was really, really cool. I wish you all could have been here, but you are! You are all here with me. And we’re having a great time.

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Against the wind

There’s a lyric in the Bob Seger song Against the Wind that goes, “Wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.” Amazing.

During my research on the strike of 1967, I found this interesting article by Janet Finn on the relationship between Anaconda and Chuquitacama, Chile. I guess I always knew that the Anaconda Copper and Mining Company (that’s the ACM to you and me, kids) had operations in South America, but I never really understood the extent of the relationship. (I still don’t, but the article helped.)

Here’s the deal: There was a whole lotta shit going down that nobody in Anaconda even knew about, that’s for sure. So how much did I know? I knew nothing about Chile until the ’80s. But in 1967, I knew that my friends and neighbors were in trouble. I was only five or six years old, but the absolute, crushing effect it had on that town, well … I remember that very well. I’ll bet all of you Anacondans do, too. If you don’t, I’m willing to bet even more that it’s closer to the surface of your psyche than you might know.

Consider this for just a second. July, 1967: the summer of love, the balance of union power had just shifted from the Mine-Mill Workers Union to the Steelworkers Union, and the contracts were due to be renegotiated. The resulting strike would be the longest, most devastating stoppage of work in the history of copper production in the United States. That very year, as the local economies of Butte and Anaconda were collapsing around us, the ACM had a banner year in Chile. The company didn’t need to settle that strike. They were producing all the copper they needed (hell, they even controlled the demand for the copper … they owned the American Brass Company.) Plus there was a war in Vietnam, and the women’s movement was just starting to percolate.

An interesting vortex of unrest, don’t you think? That’s where my story begins. There are similar occurrences in the 70s and 80s too! That’s the line, I think. Finding that line is all I’m after.

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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.

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Why I love to cook

I know, I know. This is supposed to be all about writing a book. Or about the book. Or something like that. But I’ve spent most of the day working here and there, tidying up chapters, quotes, etc. I got a call from a librarian (the book I want is coming … coming … it’s due back in a week. Ugh.) And, on and off, I’ve been cooking.

Here’s why I love to cook meals for more than just Alana and me:

While I cook, I think a lot. It’s a pleasurable way to pass the time, thinking and cooking. I think about the food. Where it was grown. How it looked when it was in the ground, or on the range. I think about the recent past. Things to remember about this recipe, or that burner, or that one time I ate something close to what I’m making, and how it tasted. I think about the distant past, too. How my friend Brien loved to cook and listen to Robert Cray. He’s sing and move and make cooking into pure performance.

The mere act of cooking refines those memories. I think about my mom—how she really didn’t like to cook, but pretended to enjoy getting a meal together. She’d call from work and tell me what to get what started so she had something in the works when she got home. I think about my dad—how he loved to cook, and the enormous mess he would make. My mom would audibly sigh when she went into the kitchen after my dad had fallen asleep in his chair. HIS chair. (It was a big deal in our house. If you sat in his chair, he’d walk up and growl at you.)

I had a piece of fudge on New Year’s Eve … took me back to Dad and the marshmallow creme he used to stir and stir until it wasn’t marshmallow creme anymore. Then he’d mix in some butter, some chocolate, a little bit of salt and a drop or two of vanilla. His fudge was so smooth … so … unbelievably good.

I also think about the people who will be eating soon. What I will say to them, how much I love gathering a group of people around a table. How I love to eat. (Some people describe themselves as voracious readers. I describe myself as a voracious eater.)

Food does the trick. It triggers the memories. It flows through almost every single page I write. I like to think the flavors linger, somewhere, in the back of my mind. I like to think that some day, when I’ve lost the sense of taste, I’ll be able to think about all this food. All these people. All those meals. And I hope, I really hope, I can conjure the taste of that fudge. Because, hey, if you can’t taste anything anymore … everything should taste as good.