On the bus

Thursday morning on the bus, sans iPod, I found myself seated next to two men about my age, who were standing in the aisle and talking to one another in the privileged tones of the corporately secure. They began by assuring one another that the bus was not normally considered an appropriate mode of transport. Both used "fuck" as the most frequent condiment in their sentences, and one of them said "retarded" a couple of times. At first, they were discussing a sporting event.

"Did you see the game?"

"Yeah"

"Fucking intense."

"Yeah."

"The ending?"

"Yeah, the part at the end."

They reminded me of the people who populate the best of David Mamet's early stage work: often, he has two characters speaking passionately about something with which they may or may not be familiar. It was entirely possible from what I heard that neither man had actually seen the game. I was not able to discern so much as what sport it may have been.

The bus had reached maximum density and the driver had begun to skip stops rather than risk letting more folks on, but these men spoke loudly, as though they were certain that there was not another soul for miles. Children often have this quality, but in a confined public space, most adults do not. Or at least I don't.

We passed a tower of condos near the river.

"You know what those places cost?"

"No. I bet it's retarded."

"Sure, just think about what a fucking membership across the street costs."

"They include a membership?"

"No. I don't know. I'm just saying that's expensive."

"Right."

"The club's expensive, so the condos have to be."

They got off soon afterward, in the midst of discussing recent or potential sexual conquests.

That's the thing about a rush hour bus ride. You never know what you're going to overhear or see, or become involved in. Two days earlier, a young woman sitting next to me was idly reviewing the images on her cell phone, which included several topless shots of herself. And on Monday, a woman said "Steven, you're breaking my heart" twice into her cell phone, each time in a sort of dreamy singsong. She said nothing before or after, and more than a minute passed between repetitions.

It's nice, I guess, as a writer, to absorb these things. To watch the behavior and be curious, to remember and to record.

But all the same, most of the time I'd rather have my iPod.

*****

Speaking of sporting events, I attended one Friday night. I'll post about the experience soon. In the meantime, there are some pictures of the park and some fireworks which are freshly added to flickr.

A sort of writing meme

Minx is desperate for links (linx?). How else to explain her pouncing upon me within moments of my reopening the blog to tag me with a difficult writing meme. My blogbody was barely warm again. Oh, I link you, foul Minx, but I also have a surprise in store for you in the next couple of days. (chuckles to self) Get ready for some day-rueing, my friend.

*****

On with the meme...

What is the last thing you wrote?
Clever to put this one first, so my answer isn't "the answer to the previous question." I wrote an email. Does that count? It had no symbolism, though. Very little conflict. Even the characters were crudely drawn.

Was it any good?
By what standards? It conveyed the information I needed to convey.

What's the first thing you wrote and you still have?
Hmmm. Bad fantasy stories from 8th grade, I think.

Write poetry? Angst?
I write poetry sometimes. I'm not sure what you mean by angst, though. Are you offering me angst? No, thank you.

Favorite genre of writing?
I seem partial to word writing.

Most fun character you've ever created?
Aside from myself? I find secondary characters to be the most fun, because they can go a little farther out.

Most annoying character?
Protagonists. They just refuse to do what you tell them sometimes. Also: characters with shrill voices.

Best plot?
I'm not particularly plot-driven. For me, it's all concepts and characters.

Write fan fiction?
For a writer's meme, you sure have included more than your share of sentence fragments. And, no. That story in which Mulder and Buffy team up to defeat the Borg was not mine. (shudders) OK, that's maybe unfair. I don't actually read fan fiction, either, so I shouldn't be saying snarky things about those who do.

Type or write?
Proficient in both. Is this a job interview? Am I doing well?

Ever go back to an old idea?
Absolutely. The current novel is the one I tried to write when I was 19.

Favorite thing you've written?
I'll answer this when I see a parenting meme that asks which child is best.

Do you show people your work?
Sometimes. I'm a bit weird about it, and it makes me terribly anxious, but I understand that it makes me better, so I force myself to do so, among a selected group of trusted folks.

Did you ever write a novel?
Yup. Did you?

Favorite setting for your characters?
Low. So they simmer.

How many writing projects are you working on?
I assume we can have the definition of "working" be somewhat fungible? If so, somewhere between three and ten.

Do you want to write for a living?
Makes sense, since I seem to live for the writing.

Ever written anything in script or play form?
Moon Topples: (to self) Nothing presentable. (sighs)

Five favorite words...
You have completed this meme.

Which character most resembles you?
Of mine? Uh, many of them, in the right light. Of other folks' stuff, I get Eeyore a lot.

Where do you get your ideas for other characters?
Is "people" a suitable response?

Ever write things based on your dreams?
Sure, but more often I get ideas when I am just on the cusp of sleep. I create much better if I am nearly asleep. Works for songs, too.

Do you favor happy endings, sad or cliff hangers?
What a weird question. I'll ignore the implication that there are only three ways to end something. The story goes where it goes. I suppose "sad" is probably the one I lean toward, but you have to give the story the ending it wants, or there is no point.

Ever written anything based on an artwork?
No, but a friend of mine said he might do some artwork based on one of my descriptions of a painting. Which is the opposite of what you asked, I suppose.

Are you concerned with spelling and grammar as you write?
I took out all of the superfluous "u"s from the silly Brit spellings in this meme. So I guess I am.

Ever write entirely in chatspeak?
OMG! No. lol.

Entirely in L337?
I made a calculator say "boobies" in third grade. I assume that counts.

Does music help?
With what? I understand it's handy for beast-soothing.

Quote something you've written.
"...there was no fan in the bear's head, and there should have been."

*****

I tag Signs, because she told me to.

A long, hard look into a semi-reflective surface

The keyword for today is "doubt." So many things are in flux. The play, my writing, even my financial security is a bit up in the air at the moment.

I went with it for a while. Sometimes important things become clear in moments like these, when all the surfaces in my life seem to be made of sand.

And a tiny revelation did come, concerning my NaNo project. I was describing the book to a friend the other night, and then started to explain the Baranatalo book, from which some of you have read excerpts here on the site. Even I could feel how passionate I became when discussing this project instead of the one I'd set aside for NaNo. How that same passion was missing when I was describing the outline of the newer project.

"Why aren't you writing that book?" My friend asked.

I explained that the rules of NaNo do not allow for works already started, and since I have 25,000 words already on paper, blah blah blah. I don't think I sounded very convincing. Even to myself.

The NaNo project is theoretically a fun book. I think I would enjoy writing it and that people might enjoy reading it, but what I realized today is that I do not need to write it. The other book—the strange man who spends page after page alone in his apartment—this is the story I have been coming back to ever since I was nineteen.

This is the one that will not leave until I get it onto paper.

So I'm sort of bowing out of NaNoWriMo, although I'm still setting myself a 50,000 word-count goal for the month. That should be plenty to finish the first draft of the piece, and let me move on to the editing, reshaping and polishing that I know it will need. I think I'll keep updating the word count on the NaNo site, just to get the camaraderie and competition aspects that NaNo provides, but I will stop short of declaring myself a "winner" this time around, even should I meet the goal, since I don't want to cheat.

It feels like the right call. It feels good to have made a decision.

*****

After resolving the writing issue, I decided to ignore the other mysteries I currently face and do something productive instead. So I made a fake dust-jacket for a book of poetry, to be used as a prop in the play.

Something ironic about designing the cover for a book which does not exist when I should have been creating an actual book instead, but it was cathartic to throw myself in, and just build something.

Here's what it looks like, before we beat it up tomorrow to make it look old and forgotten:


Tomorrow, the Moon answers more of your questions! Don't miss it! And don't forget to submit queries of your own to the email at left.

Phoctober the finished

Well, it's all over, our happy time of Phoctobering. Should I still have a blog next October, I expect we can do this again. Looking back at the month, I see that I personally posted more than one hundred images, and provided almost 150 links to other sites' Phoctober entries.

It was a reasonably global event, as well. We had entries from five different continents (damn you, Antarctica and South America!) as well as some ardent posters from right here in America. We were treated to English gardens, Parisian streets, leaves and trees from virtually every place currently experiencing autumn, snow, rain, fog, sunshine, clouds, bottles, whales, paintings, music and scores of other things. It was really delightful how much everyone shared.

Even more inspiring to me personally were the reports from some of the other blogs which seemed to indicate that they had fallen in love with photography all over again as a result of Phoctober. I cannot express how cool I think that is.

Phoctober was conceived as a way to trick myself into blogging every day again, as I used to. I had some nice shots sitting around, and figured it would be a cake walk to fill thirty-one days with images. I was wrong about that. It was more difficult than I could have realized, but having completed the month I feel like I have accomplished something. Nothing big, maybe just a little thing that I find personally enriching. And I seem to enjoy blogging again.

So I want to thank all of you who did a post yourselves, or more than one, or even just came by to look at the pictures. Joiners, lurkers, those who left comments: all of you have made this something far nicer than it had any reason to be.

Next year, I expect we'll have an official Phoctober badge, and perhaps something a little more structured in terms of how links are set up. And I hope we'll have some of you who thought about posting but did not joining in.

We now resume regular blogging. Hope you guys are okay with mostly words for a while.

*****

NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo both begin today. A month of writing for yours truly. I leapt into my NaNo project last night as soon as the bells chimed midnight (okay, there were no actual bells). I speedily spat out five or six hundred words.

They were the wrong words. I am starting again. I may do so three or four times. I know it's all about the word count in NaNo, but I need the foundation to be strong if I'm going to be able to write a novel in a month.

I never got very far with outlining, but I have spent a fair amount of time thinking about what I want the novel to be, what it should say and do. I have answers to some of the questions and none at all to others. Once I have answered a few more, the real work begins. The other questions will answer themselves in the writing.

I am, weirdly, not nervous. Last year I did not get a chance to start until the sixth, and finished in about three weeks. I tend to write pretty quickly, so once the ideas have taken their shapes, I know I can get the words onto the page and begin building this thing, this work, this novel I have inside of me.

It's a genre piece, about people who would most commonly be called superheroes. Specifically, it is the memoir of a formerly costumed man with abnormal abilities, who is now retired from the whole racket. I don't want to say too much, as there are things I do not know about the plot, and also things I would rather not reveal to someone not perusing the actual manuscript. My hope, though, is that it will be fun and thinky and all sorts of good things.

My further hope is that it will be fleshed out and written in a clumsy first-draft by the end of the month.

For others plunging themselves into NaNo this year, I offer a quote from Ernest Hemingway that helped me a lot last time around: "The first draft of anything is shit." Not really a Hemingway fan, but he kind of hits the nail on the head with that one.

NaNo asks for 50,000 words in thirty days, which breaks down to 1667 words a day, or about 70 an hour. This is more than a word a minute throughout the month. Whether you've personally enlisted for this folly or not, I hope you'll come by to wish luck upon me and my Bloggeagues also undertaking this immense, uh, undertaking.

Phoctober the twenty-fifth

Only one for you today. Is one not enough? Greedy Blogreader!



Still mostly mired in the play: the learning of lines, running of scenes, the design of the printed materials. Sadly, the last is the most time-consuming. There are an awful lot of cooks peering into that particular pot, and the emails seem to be nearly constant.

Somewhere in there I am also trying to plan my NaNo piece. I think I know what I intend to write (although a weirdly intriguing young adult novel [of all things] popped into my head last night and may warrant consideration). The trouble I am having is with the outline. I've never outlined anything in my life. I'm not even sure I think outlining is a good idea for me personally, but I wanted to give it a stab so that I don't have to improvise the whole month as I did last year.

I'm registered and ready to go. I'm here, if any of you have signed up and would like to befriend (or, possibly more accurately, embuddy) me. Last year, I really got a motivational boost from seeing where everyone else was throughout the month. At one point, I realized that if one of my friends crossed the finish line, then I would as well. So the buddy thing is a nice aspect of the month-long struggle that is NaNoWriMo. Sort of allows you to share the pain, or at least to know that you are not alone in your folly.

I think I'm also going to sign up for NaBloPoMo (a blog post each day in November) because I figure I don't have enough on my plate with the play, writing a novel, looking for work, and attempting to have a social life. After the Phoctober experience, I am really looking forward to using words again. You may have sensed from the posts the last few days, where I've become more wordy in my Phoctobering.

Fact is, I love words. First love, head-over-heels, dizzying, distracting love. And next month is all about words, so I'm pretty excited about that.

*****

Other Phoctobering:

All Phoctober posts from this site.

Absolute Vanilla by any other name...

Kyklops really loves vending machines.

Roberta on the finery of autumn.

"Sognatrice" is possibly Italian for "puppies."

Taffiny gives us a portal, a path, and a generous helping of green. (Three different posts)

Jefferson Davis gives us a book, some abstracts from a power outage, the lights of a city, and brings back some misty goodness. (Four different posts)

It isn't too late to join the fun. Just do a photo post, mention Phoctober, and come and tell me about it in the comments.

Five writerly strengths

I was tagged on Saturday by Canterbury Soul with this meme, to list my five strengths as a writer. As if to ensure that "timeliness and punctuality" are off of that list, I was tagged twice more today, once by Sognatrice and once by Taffiny. I figured I should post now, before I get tagged again.

I guess I just tend to think of myself as a decent overall writer. I don't think I spend a lot of time analyzing my strengths and weaknesses. So this list is kind of hard to compile. This is more or less the five things I can most easily come up with at this instant in time, as they occur to me. Some of these may not even be strengths, or, being strengths, may not be ones I possess. But writing "I have no idea" seems like a cop-out, so...

1. I think I am good at providing an interesting perspective on what might otherwise be a common event. I seem to have a knack for either zooming in close on a detail that someone else might have overlooked or dismissed, or examining the whole thing from afar as an outsider. I can usually find a kernel of beauty in a random street encounter or an overheard conversation, and carry that kernel back home with me.

2. To whatever extent that my sense of humor carries over into my writing, I think that would qualify as a strength. I have found that it is usually fairly easy to make people laugh in person, where my inflection, body language, etc. can come to my aid, but that being funny on paper requires a different set of skills. So, yeah, that.

3. I tend to know when my writing is not working. I don't always know how to fix it, but I think I can read back something of mine and decide very quickly if it does what I wanted it to or not. Although being able to fix it would probably be a better strength. Still, recognizing when I am being clunky with words is something that I think I, uh... I should point out here that I sometimes just leave things clunky. Not everything that comes from my fingertips has to be good.

4. When someone has read something of mine for critique or input, I think I am pretty open to the ideas they present. Even though sometimes I do not take the suggestion, figuring out why exactly it feels wrong to me can be a tremendous aid in clarifying to myself what exactly I am hoping to accomplish with the piece. And then there are the nice moments when the suggestion is something that I might not have thought of that fits perfectly and opens a door in the writing. Those times are pretty great. But, wait. How is this a strength? Maybe it isn't, unless I count picking good people to read my stuff as a strength.

5. I have always been a voracious reader. There is nothing in the world that can better prepare you to pick up a pen. People go on and on about technique and craft, and some will tell you that doing this or that will make you a better writer. To my mind, the only things which can guarantee improvement in this area are reading a lot, and writing a lot. Any other method is, at best, subjective.

I tag no one, as usual, but if you have a whack, let me know in the comments and I'll gladly come have a look. Then I will steal your answers and update this post.

Also, as a side note: I have lots to tell you, gentle Blogreader. I am behind on my posting, but will probably be writing a lot this week to tell you of some developments and some future plans for this blog. So keep checking back...

Labor day, and a tomat-ode

Monday was Labor Day in America. As it is a day off of work to celebrate the working folks, this is often the year's most ironic holiday for me.

Other countries hold similar celebrations on May 1st. A little research revealed to me that some of these international celebrations of labor can be partially traced back to the Haymarket Riots in 1886, right here in Chicago (the American celebration can be traced back slightly further, to 1882). Grisly stuff, the Riots, but you can read more about it here if you are so inclined. Apparently, getting an 8-hour workday made into law was quite a difficult process.

Why does it always seem like the fair city of Chicago is only ever noticed when something horrible happens here? But enough of civic self-pity.

*****

I spent my Labor Day laboring, once I finally finally shook off the shackles of sleep late in the afternoon. I am proud to say I was putting words upon paper again, although not on actual paper. Actual words, though.

What finally roused me was a phone call from my friend Craig, who was returning from a weekend visiting his folks on the other side of the state, near the Mississippi River and the Iowa border. This is the area from which he hails.

Craig was calling me to get me to come outside and claim some of the tomatoes which his father grows, and about which I have been pestering Craig since the last time he gave me some, late in the summer of 2002. I ate them like apples, juice running down my chin. They were heaven itself.

It should be noted that I adore tomatoes, even the hard, mealy things which use the same name and are commonly available here in the city. These are something else entirely. Craig's childhood home was a working pig farm. His parents retired some time ago, but the 25 years of pig feces has left them with some incredibly rich soil. Tomatoes apparently leap forth from these patches of land like the cicadas which flooded the air earlier this summer.

He brought me five tomatoes, with instructions that I should be careful to eat them today and tomorrow lest they split their skins and attract insects.

Not a problem. Two have already fallen. After I hit "publish," the third shall meet its fate.

My blurby thing for the novel racers

Liz Fenwick asked me for a blurb about myself and my current novel as a part of the novel racers experience. I am criminally overdue in completing it. Not being good at blurbs, I decided to do it as an interview instead...

Moon Topples: Let's play "Questions."

Liz Fenwick: How do we play?

MT: Like tennis, but we can only converse with questions.

LF: (slowly) Okay...I'm not sure you've explained it all that well.

MT: But you think you understand enough to give it a whirl?

LF: I suppose.

MT: I win!

LF: Well, we hadn't started yet.

MT: Hadn't we?

LF: (sighs) Would you like to tell me about your book?

MT: The one for novel racers?

LF: Are you working on more than one?

MT: Is that bad?

LF: Is that why you're progressing so slowly?

MT: Is that a dig about my word count?

LF: Are you a little self-conscious about that?

MT: Should I be?

LF: Did you know that some of us have already completed our first drafts?

MT: So I've lost already?

LF: What are you writing about?

MT: Are you asking for a plot summary?

LF: Is that how you've interpreted my question?

MT: During a game of questions?

LF: Would it hurt to try?

MT: It might.

LF: Ha!

MT: Dammit.

LF: I've won. Now go update your links section and admit that you are a culpa.

MT: Me? A culpa?

LF: I accept your apology.

Update: I have updated the links to include all of the Racers. In the sidebar, under "Novel Racers"

Dodging you

Where have I been, Blogreader? These last couple of days, have I been avoiding you?

Maybe a little.

I'm wrestling with myself a lot about the novel—its characters and contents—and have fallen behind on my promise to pluck out 2,000 new words each day. I have not been eager to admit this. I am still working on it daily, and thinking about things almost constantly (which may or may not be part of the problem). I have some new directions to try to feel my way through, characters who are only slowly revealing themselves, plot lines that occasionally unravel completely while I am writing them. It's been slow going, and today I have decided to do some outlining to see where I am and what lies ahead.

Progress.

I still could reach the 30,000 words I'm supposed to have before I retire for the night. I'm not so far behind that it's an impossibility.

One of the problems I am having is that each tweak I make to the overall story seems to make the novel more ambitious. Ambition is good, of course, but at some point I fear I will be trying to tell a tale which is beyond my abilities as a writer.

So, yes, I suppose I have been avoiding my blog while I work through all this. I apologize for my silence.

Another boring writerly post

I was asked a question by fellow blogger and writer Reading the Signs in the comments of the last little chunk of first draft fun from the current novel.

She wrote: "I would be interested to know how you eventually decided what the subject and focus for your novel should be. Did you just plunge in and see where it led or did you have a sense of what you wanted to do before you started?"

I don't claim to be an expert on writing, but I thought discussing my process might be beneficial to myself and to some of my readers.

It's different all the time, of course. That's the first thing that comes to mind. And varies wildly depending on what I am writing. A blog post is usually a spur-of-the-moment affair, going from initial idea to published post in 20 minutes or so. Since I don't really edit anything that appears here at The Moon Topples, the time is spent mostly writing, with a quick read back (usually) just to make sure that I am making as much sense as I hoped.

For short fiction pieces, I tend to have an idea of what the story is about before I begin writing. I don't know much about my characters yet, and I do not have the entire plot when I sit down to write it. Instead, I have my initial idea: the conclusion or an arc or even a single moment that inspired the piece in the first place, and I feel my way into it somewhat slowly, allowing the characters to tell me how they will get to the thing that I had planned.

I used more or less the same process during NaNoWriMo. At the beginning of the month, I had only the notion that it might be interesting to explore a man struggling with a list of New Year's resolutions. What his resolutions were, how he would fare in his quest, even how long a span of time I might cover were all details that came later. I had a man and his resolutions (and I think the notion that he had broken several of them by a few hours after midnight).

This made the writing more difficult than it might have been otherwise. I hit a lot of blind alleys, wrote an awful lot of redundant or bad prose. Due to the nature of NaNo, I soon became focused primarily on the word count. I seem to recall that I spent time each day trying to work my mind up to what might happen next, which was always a total mystery to me. Once I had decided, I would write what I could about that subject. This was not a very pleasant experience for me, although I suspect that was due to the work I was creating rather than the process.

For the current novel, elements of the story have been in place since I was about nineteen. I had the protagonist and some of his problems in my head when I decided to write. I had eight or nine major plot points left over from the draft I attempted in college. While I knew I had to hit each of these notes eventually, I tried not to plot out too much how I would get from one to the next, or what might happen in between or as a result of the abuse I planned to heap upon my character. This has left me free to explore some aspects of the character that I might not have thought of while creating an outline. I have discovered many new elements of the character by doing it this way, as well as stumbling into some entirely different storylines and characters that I had not initially known would play a part.

I fully intend to outline the thing completely, but not until I have more or less improvised an initial draft. I think outlining is a great tool for writers, but I worry that I might use it as a checklist, and lose some of the creative flow in the process. So I want to use it prior to second draft in order to make sure I have hit upon all of the things I had intended to write about, to double check that the elements of the story are all present.

So the shorter answer to the question seems to be that I mostly improvise within the constraints of an idea or plot points.

I'd be curious—for you Blogreaders who also write—to hear about your processes as well. Knock out down in the comments or just let me know if you've done something similar on your blog...

2300 words since making my pledge. I'm a little behind, but still have a lot of the day left to catch up.

A vow

Hello, Blogreader. I'm glad you're here. Please...have a seat. I wanted to talk to you about something.

As you know, I left work a little over a month ago in order to concentrate full time on my writing for a little bit. I recall you being very supportive of this, and if I didn't thank you at the time for being so nice about everything, I do so now.

Truth is, though, that I've barely written more than I have cut in that time. I don't even bother to update the word count meter anymore. I wrote 4,000 new words one day a couple of weeks ago, and was sad to find I was still floating around the 20K mark.

It is less than a month until the first anniversary of my decision to write seriously. July 1st.

To make sure that I cross this line with a feeling like I have accomplished something, I am making an official vow to write 50,000 new words by that date. Essentially, this means I'm sort of doing NaNo all over again, but without any hope of a crappy, downloadable certificate.

The rules are: the 50,000 words must be written for one of the two novels on which I am working, or for a short story. Ideally, though, they should be for the main project, the one that taunts me from my own sidebar. They need not be brilliant words, just new ones which advance the plot as I have it planned, and get at least some version of the events which must take place on paper.

Completion of this task will require 2,000 words a day. This will also mean I'll probably end up writing more bitchy blogposts about writing. I apologize in advance for these. It also probably means I'll be blogging more often than normal, perhaps going back to a couple of times a day. I found that writing about something non-fictiony or funny or whatever was a great way for me to take a break during NaNo last year. So I hope when you stop by, you'll scroll down a bit and see if you've missed anything.

You guys have been wonderfully supportive of the snippets I've posted, and I'll probably end up throwing a few of those up throughout the month as well.

Whether this decision is merely leftover delirium from my fever, I cannot say. I do know that this is something I am capable of doing, even though it means I shall be something of a workaholic in the next few weeks.

So, uh, wish me luck! Here I go...

Nameless Lion

So, uh...

...I got a lion...

No, really. Look:



Just a lion, you say? Well, he's also representative of my joining the Shameless Lions Writing Circle. So far, we mostly write about lions. But, you know, circular ones. Great, round lions who've eaten far too much from what I gather.

So I am supposed to post my lion, and add him to my sidebar, and then compose a short piece about him. 48 words, max.

48 words?!?

That's not very many. Here goes:

This lion, bestowed on me by Shameless
Is long of locks, checker-clad, and Nameless
his outfit might set your eyes a-popping
his mangy mane suitable for mopping
I'm told that my pal will help my writing
to my relief: I thought I'd read "biting"

So, he's named Nameless Lion, and I guess that's all I have to say about my new furry friend. I've put him in the sidebar as well, but not so close to Bonto the monkey that he gets any ideas. He's under "Miscellany," which he tried to get me to change to "Miscel'lion'y." No deal, Nameless.

If you look at him in the sidebar, sometimes he gets excited and tries to escape his bounding box to say hello. Do not be frightened. He cannot get out.

Should you desire a lion of your very own, click here. They aren't all checkered, your know.

Current Novel Excerpt: Returning to work

Here's another little chunk of the first draft of the novel I'm writing. Baranatalo has been fired from his job, but returns the next day in an attempt to restore his routines. The following takes place shortly after he is noticed by Lemont, his former coworker in the mailroom. I thought it might be nice to include a piece from one of the few times in the novel where someone is talking to Baranatalo.

*****

“Go, man. Please. You don’t work here. Not anymore.” Lemont looks like he himself might cry now, as though he were shooing away a beloved puppy at a roadside.

A single envelope drips from Baranatalo’s hand as it begins to shake.

“Not anymore,” Baranatalo echoes.

“That’s right, man. Not anymore.”

“I don’t like English muffins. Not anymore.” This is the first time he has given voice to the thought that has been beating against the side of his skull for the entirety of his morning, if not longer. He replaces the envelopes on the table and bends down to retrieve the one he has dropped.

“I don’t like English muffins. Not anymore,” he says again as he stands and puts the errant mail on the table. This time he says it more urgently, as though this were the one thing Lemont needs to know about him. A small cackle breaks forth from his lips in a spasm.

“That’s cool man. No English muffins. No problem.” Lemont’s eyes have lost their pitying quality and gained something harder. He has spread his arms out and lowered his center of gravity. He is preparing himself should Baranatalo attack him, should the situation require physical intervention or restraint.

“My name is not Barry,” Baranatalo says in a loud voice which startles them both. Another cackle escapes him and even he is starting to feel like he has taken Lemont hostage somehow. He is not used to so much eye contact, but Lemont does not look away.

“Yeah, okay, man. Not Barry, no English muffins. We’re all good here. Check on both counts.” Lemont is attempting to sound soothing, and moving back and forth on the balls of his feet.

Baranatalo stares into Lemont’s eyes for a long moment before lunging toward the door. Lemont flinches but holds his ground, proud of himself for having sucessfully averted a crisis. He feels this way in spite of the fact that Baranatalo has not moved toward him at all, but rather fled the room in a rush.

Lemont peeks out from behind the door to check Baranatalo’s passage through the office, wondering if he should call someone, wondering if Baranatalo is planning to attack someone else. Baranatalo is already at the elevator, pressing the call button repeatedly. A man stands next to him, also waiting for the elevator. He does not see the look of horror on Baranatalo’s face, just watches the jabbing finger and chuckles.

“I’m not sure hitting it again makes it come any faster,” the man says.

“My name is not Barry,” Baranatalo replies, darting to his left to take the stairs instead.

Potpourri

Busy times, Blogreader.

While I've spent a lot of time lately working on my novel, and a lot of time fretting over what seems to be a shortage of entries to the current GBA(s)FC, I've also been living a life (of sorts).

Well, good news on all fronts. The first two entries to the contest are posted and I'm hopeful that more will show up soon. Click the graphic in the sidebar to check them out. Still plenty of time to get your own stories together, by the way.

A friend of mine joked yesterday (when no entries at all had yet come in) that he could write the word "growth" five hundred times and walk away with all of the prizes. I informed him that no entry can win more than one prize. I also informed him that he is mean.

"Maybe your topic just sucks," another friend counseled via chat. Special "thanks" go out to that friend as well.

*****

I went to see a softball game last night, a team of Workers battling against some athletic foes in a very chilly late evening match. They did not fare well, in spite of the celebratory nature of the image at right. Something called a "slaughter rule" was enforced, and the game ended early. Perhaps they were simply happy to be able to go someplace warm, or that none of the players had sustained an injury.

*****

Tonight was a trip with a cadre of good folks to see the incomparable Grant Lee Phillips. I have reached the conclusion that no one has more fun at a Grant Lee Phillips show than Mr. Phillips himself. His humor and obvious pleasure at playing music are incredibly infectious, and I think we came close. He's a tremendous singer and a great songwriter and if you've never heard him, there is almost certainly something in his catalog that will bring joy to your ears. Try Jubilee or Virginia Creeper or Mobilize.

*****

The biggest bit of personal news is that I've made a bit of a breakthrough on my novel. A lot of pieces suddenly made sense this week, and I've got a better idea of the larger story and how things are going to connect. I've solved a lot of the problems that have kept me from being able to write much, and this weekend I plan to spend some time outlining in preparation for a serious burst of writing next week. If I can carry this story into a full draft without crushing it in my big clumsy hands, I think I'll have a pretty good book. I haven't felt like that for a while.

And I'll close by reminding you all yet again that there is still plenty of time to cobble together an entry for the GBA(s)FC. Deadline remains May 7.

GBA something, something

I took some time off from the blog, Blogreaders. This was not because I no longer love you. I have not met a new blog; I am not leaving you. I simply had some stuff to work through on the novel, and it seemed silly to spend a lot of time blogging when I wasn't getting any proper work done. I suppose I was trying to punish myself, but the fact is that I did not have much to say.

I considered a post about a certain royal who wants so badly to go and fight in Iraq, in spite of the danger this would create for all of the soldiers around him. I thought I would entitle it "War is not an adventure camp, you petulant little snot." I thought about a writing a post to memorialize Bobby "Boris" Pickett, singer of "The Monster Mash," who died recently. I planned to call it "It was a graveyard smash... ." I thought of combining the two into a single post, entitled "It was a graveyard smash, you petulant little snot."

Aren't you glad I simply refrained from posting?

*****

The contest has finished over at Clarity of Night. I was not among the winners, which (if I'm being totally honest) stings a little, but mostly because there were eleven winners. I suppose I hoped I had written a top-20% story.

Still, I am very glad to have taken part, and I'm still fond of my entry. Having absorbed the reality of not being a winner, I am strangely energized. I may take a break from the novel for a day or two and polish up some short stories to get in front of the eyes of the people who generate rejection slips (and acceptance slips, although I'm guessing I'm not there yet).

And, of course, we have the GBA(s)FC #2 starting at the stroke of Tuesday. The rules and prompt will be posted at or around midnight. Once you see that post, the contest is live, adn entries are welcome. Last time, there were 44 entries, and I'm hopeful that we can repeat that success. Any help in spreading the word is greatly appreciated, and I'm still accepting applications for jurors to help in selecting the Jury Prize.

I am thinking of making up a "Participant" badge for all the entrants. I almost did it last time, but couldn't decide if anyone would want one. Let me know what you think of this idea in the comments.

Anyway, I'm excited that the contest is starting so soon. All a-twitter. I hope you are, too.

Tick...

Still down with migraine, still spending a lot of time in the dark. Today I spent an awful lot of time thinking about time. Time has become a major character in my novel, and the nature it displays is sometimes confusing to me. I've been sorting out why it is behaving as it does within my pages, what it means, how it affects my tale.

It is perhaps not a coincidence that time is behaving strangely in my own life. I have nothing to add to that sentence.

Below is another chunk of first-draft fun from my novel, which touches on some of the time issues I've been thinking and thinking about. I'll still be thinking about this tomorrow.

*****

There is a woman on the train listening to music through a device she has attached by thin wires directly to her ears so as to keep the sounds it produces private and neither annoy nor entertain the other passengers. Baranatalo does not see her.

The musical device is not a common sight on the train in 1986, as it is not a portable device for playing cassette tapes or tuning in radio waves from nearby broadcasters. It is not even designed for the playback of the relatively new compact disc, which stores music digitally, as a series of ones and zeros which through some alchemy are far more accurate at reproducing sounds than the magnetic blips of a cassette tape. Her device is small and sleek and can hold more information than all the computers in Baranatalo’s workplace put together, and yet its sole purpose is the playback of music. It has no other real function. The woman Baranatalo does not see is separated from him by an approximate distance of thirteen feet and twenty years.

There are, of course, millions and millions of people on the train whom Baranatalo cannot see. At every stop, getting on, getting off. They sit over and over again in the same seats, crowd for positioning at the poles which provide leverage and balance for standing passengers. Their hands overlap and pass through one another. There are too many to ever count, and they blur and swim in our vision. Likewise the train itself passes through from time to time, to those who can see these things.

Three young men in crew cuts and horn-rimmed glasses discuss their standing in the involuntary military draft at the back of the car. One expresses a concern that he will not fare well in the government lottery, as his assigned number is considered precariously low. There is a war going on somewhere that he would like to avoid, and he speculates aloud that by becoming a cleric or attending classes at a University, he might avoid the drafting process altogether.

If we focus hard on these men, the woman with the music device vanishes. Harder still, taking in the type on the newspapers in their hands and the styles of their clothing and Baranatalo vanishes, too. We are left with only the thousands of people with similar garb and manner who also blur into one another and through one another on their way to the places of their lives.

*****

The "Endless Hour" contest is closed to new entries, and I'm really looking forward to sifting through the entries tomorrow. There are 59 in total, which is a fair amount more than I got for the GBA(s)FC, but he's been doing this longer and clearly has a much more popular blog.

Click on over and check out the entries. Some of my Blogfriends are over there, in addition to my own entry. I'm not expecting to win anything, but am happy that I entered, and delighted at the positive feedback I've received from the readers over there. My story had generated 18 comments, last time I checked, which is a lot more than the things I write here seem to draw, so it's nice to feel like I'm being read outside of my normal group of Blogreaders.

It's all very encouraging. It makes me want to start getting stories out in the mail and into the hands of editors, the sooner to feel the flip-side and start gathering up my rejection slips. Apparently, three rejection slips is the number the government requires to officially call yourself a writer.

The moment before something

Last day to enter the contest over at Clarity of Night (links in, uh, the last few posts). Thirty-nine contestants, when last I checked. Looking forward to reading them all on Thursday morning.

"Sentence fragment" is also a sentence fragment.

Woke up kind of grumpy today. Stayed that way, more or less, until a migraine took over. Now I'm just lying here awake in the dark, trying not to look directly at the computer screen.

Novel ideas are gestating at the moment. At the very least, I can say I'm spending several hours a day thinking through things, deciding on the direction the next section will take. I know more or less the plot points, but I have a lot of ways to get from point A to point B, and am ruminating as to which option(s) will feel the most natural and require the least amount of blah blah blah.

Right now, I'm looking for order, structure. In the work and in my life. I've started rearranging all of the furniture in my home. I have already begun to sleep during the day, awake at night. While this is a little irritating for numerous reasons, it is also when I get the most done. I am far more productive at night.

I flit and flutter, but I can feel it: I will settle soon, and the real work will begin.

Is it tomorrow?

Everybody loves fiction contests

C'mon, who doesn't love a good fiction contest? I'm looking at you, GoodThomas.

Just a reminder that you still have a little time to enter the Clarity of Night "Endless Hours" contest. It's only 250 words, and entries are due at 11pm EST (GMT -5) on Wednesday. My entry is number 3, and quite a few of my Blogfriends have taken a stab themselves. I haven't read most of the entries yet (24, as of this writing) but the few I read before deciding I wanted to wait until they were all up were very good.

And we are a week away from the second GBA(s)FC, which kicks off May 1st here on this blog. It's going to be a little different this time around, starting with the replacement of the Reader's Choice award with a Jury Prize. As with last time, most of the prizes are Author's Choice. The elimination of the Reader's Choice means that entries will be open for comments as soon as they are posted, so you can tell the author what you thought without waiting for voting to close. The lack of comments felt like a mistake right off the bat last time, and I wanted to make sure people could comment on their favorite stories without having to wait for two weeks.

Full rules will accompany the announcement of the prompt at the stroke of May on this page. I'm working on making them shorter than last time. This is my gift to you, Blogreader.

If you'd like to serve on the Jury, email me and let me know. Please do not let me know via the comments as the Jury, like the authors, will remain a closely-guarded secret until voting closes. I'll be choosing a couple of special folks to represent the variety of people who read this blog. Being on the Jury does not prohibit you from entering the contest yourself, and the voting will be much the same as an author vote, just counted in the other category.

So tell your friends, writing groups, coworkers, loved ones, former loved ones, servants, enemies, and anyone who will listen. That boy or girl you've been dying to talk to, but can't think of what you'll say? Tell them about a fiction contest, and he/she will be putty in your hands. Not actual putty, of course. That's kind of gross. Last time around we had an incredible batch of stories from all levels of writing experience, which was truly wonderful.

I hope, with your help, the second go will be as successful as the first one was. Won't you help me spread the word?

Workers, white space, "Without Rose"

Those of you who have been reading for a while may recall this post, in which I detailed my first day of my recent bout of Dayworking. One of the many puzzling scenarios in which I found myself involved cake, and a strange cake immunity I noticed among some of the Workers.

Today I went in to pick up a check, and while I was there, the intercom once again sang its siren song of free cake to be found in the breakroom. This time, I was free to go in and get a slice.

So there's balance in some things, at least.

*****

I spent a lot of time today looking at a page upon which is written only the words "Chapter Fifteen." My hope is that later tonight or tomorrow morning I will fill it with something more.

*****

Below is my entry to the Clarity of Night "Endless Hours" contest. It's very short, but I hope it tells a story even in its brevity. People have been very nice to it so far over there, which is a bit of a relief, even though I wouldn't have expected attacks or anything. I'm still not sure how I feel about it myself.

Many of the comments I've received so far concern the "twist" at the end, which I found surprising. I guess I didn't think of it like that. It certainly isn't of the "I sold my pocket watch to buy you this comb" type.

Posting this technically violates one of my rules that I have set for my blog: I am not really permitted to edit anything that is posted here. My rule is basically that the writings here be extemporaneous, and when I post fiction it is always the first draft. I guess my story for the contest never technically went through a second draft, but since I submitted it somewhere as "final," it's still technically breaking the rules.

Rules are nice sometimes, but they certainly aren't everything.

*****

"Without Rose"
by maht wells

The front door let out a creak and Tim nearly bolted, letting the exhilaration of coming close be enough. This was his dare, though, and he intended to prove himself. He felt his brother’s eyes on his back as he crossed the threshold.

They’d lain in the bushes and watched the old man push through the crooked screen door and pick his way to the truck. Tim had never heard the old man speak, had only seen him moving from house to truck and back again, and once in a great while sitting out front in an ancient metal deck chair.

He shut the door behind him and stood still as his eyes adjusted to the darkness inside. As the green wash faded, he was able to make out a pile of magazines stacked next to an easy chair, and an enormous, overflowing ashtray on the coffee table.

It was when he reached the kitchen that he thought about Rose, once the old man’s wife. Even Tim could feel her absence as he stared at the piling sink, the fallen curtain, the decay. This was his first real image of death, the effects of it and what life could become to those left behind. He would carry this kitchen with him.

“Tim!” His brother’s voice, from outside, probably halfway home already. The old man had returned.

Tim stood still for another moment, weighing his options before he turned on the water, squeezing soap from the bottle onto the dishes.

Toothpaste, time management, and trying something new

Junior was talking with Loudmouth at the counter as I approached to purchase my cigarettes. Loudmouth was telling Junior that hip-hop was dead, and that he should rely on Bon Jovi and Warrant to serve as the music for a gathering Junior seemed to be planning. Loudmouth beamed at me as he said this, delighted at his joke.

"I'm more of a Kiss fan," Junior said.

"What'd they ever do?" Loudmouth asked, before fake-headbanging and singing the chorus to "School's Out."

"That's Alice Cooper," I said, jabbing my finger upwards in what has become how I order cigarettes from Loudmouth, who is never not talking. I then held up six fingers and he pulled down six packs of cigarettes. If I wait for a chance to speak, I can be stuck there for hours.

"Alice Cooper," Junior said, somewhat wistfully. He entended his fist to me. I know from previous encounters that I am to extend my fist to come into contact with his. Awkward as this gesture may be, it is infinitely preferrable to the "high-five."

Junior listed some Kiss songs as Loudmouth rang me up. I offered "Beth," but was told that didn't count because it was a ballad.

"Man, I loved Kiss," Junior said. "I used to put toothpaste in my mouth and..." A customer cut him off with a question, leaving Loudmouth and I to speculate as to what exactly he used to do with toothpaste in his mouth.

"...and rinse," said Loudmouth, grinning.

"I certainly hope that's what he was going to say. I wonder if he still puts toothpaste in his mouth," I said.

Junior dispatched the questioning customer and resumed his tale, pantomiming brushing his teeth this time.

"I used to put toothpaste in my mouth and then go out into the other room and go 'ahhhhh.'" With the last word, he pantomimed playing a guitar, rolling his head and working his tongue around outside his mouth. The "ahhhhh" does not do the sound justice. I can find no combination of letters that would do the job.

"I couldn't, you know, use real blood," he explained.

"Take care, um, music fans," I called out as I made my exit.

*****

Craig came by to jump-start my car this evening. My recent vandals had left the dome light on, and I had failed to notice, depleting my battery. When I tried to start it yesterday, it made no attempt to roar to life, and I nervously popped the hood to see if someone had come by and stolen my battery.

We stood outside the vehicle as it idled, giving the battery a chance to charge. I glanced in through the window and noticed that it's really dirty in there right now. It looked cleaner before the stereo gang pulled extra trash from under the seats in what I imagine was the search for the stereo's faceplate.

"I really have to clean out my car," I said.

"Yeah," he said dryly. "But how will you find the time."

So already my lack of Dayworking has opened me up to all new areas of ridicule. Fantastic.

*****

I did something new today, Blogreader. I took something I had written and submitted it. In this case, it was an entry for the "Endless Hour" flash fiction contest over at Clarity of Night. Based on the picture at left, contestants are to compose an entry of no more than 250 words. Since I sponsor such a contest myself (May 1st, if your calendar remains unmarked) I thought it might be a good idea to give it a whirl.

I wrote my entry in something like 20 minutes, but then spent quite a long time whittling it down to the proper length, and trying to make the story cohesive and complete within the insane word limit. I wrote it yesterday, and was quite pleased with the result, but on rereading it today, I was far less enamored with it. I did one final combing of the text and then submitted it anyway. I'm not figuring on winning a prize, and the other people I let take a peek all seemed to like it. I thought if I held off, I might talk myself out of the whole thing.

The point is, though, that I have never before submitted fiction anywhere. So the Clarity of Night contest is pretty much my virgin attempt to enchant strangers with things I have made up. Without luring them to my blog and having them read it here, that is.

I encourage any of you who think it might be interesting or fun to have a try yourselves.

It's weird, but now that it's out there, I feel even less sure of it than I did before submitting it. I wrote the story that the picture conjured in my mind, but I cannot help but feel that I should have written something funny instead. I am far more self-conscious about my writing when it contains no attempts at humor.

I'll probably post my entry here within a day or two. For now, though, you can pop on over to Clarity of Night if you have an interest in reading it. I'm entry number three (unlike the GBA(s)FC, there's no condition of anonymity, so I'm allowed to tell you that, or to post the story here if I so choose).

Let me know if you have a crack at it yourself. I'm very curious what other people will come up with. The two entries already posted are both quite different from mine and from each other, so I'm hopeful that there will be a lot of different viewpoints represented.