Thursday Night Writes

These blogs have a wonderful way of forcing focus and at the same time make that focus harder to achieve.  I’m sure that all writers come up with visions that seem so real and then watch them evaporate in the presence of a notebook or computer.  It can get worse; the fuzzy mirage of a story becomes even more blurry when the heat of waiting to the last minute to finish it is applied.  Let’s see what I can come up with in the next hour before my deadline.

You, the reader, have no way of knowing that this is not the next paragraph I wrote.  I actually wrote and discarded two paragraphs using a metaphor of a chef using experience and imagination to put together a fine dinner and made the comparison of writing ideas to food ingredients and editing to cleaning, chopping and parboiling.  It was lame.

But, I’m still thinking along the lines of places where a writer can get ideas.  At the supermarket actually might be a good idea.  Any place other where people congregate can be fertile ground for observing the human condition.  Take Wal-Mart for example, it is probably one of the best people watching places there is.  I remember once, a long time ago, seeing this hairy old guy standing in the check-out line with just a giant bag of cosmetic puffs in his basket.  Although it piqued my naturally suspicious mind that odd things usually have a definite explanation, I didn’t confirm until later that drug users use cotton balls for purifying heroin before shooting up.  What at first seemed to be just an odd and almost funny scenario could almost certainly be made part of a story that juxtaposes the tragedy of drug abuse with the banality of its everyday trappings.  Or maybe there was no more to it than he was getting them at the request of his makeup laden wife.

You don’t have to leave home gather the ingredients of stories.  Just listen to the news and voila, there is the whole spectrum of the human condition laid out for the taking.  Think about a fictional character conjured from tidbits of observations made of the president, Tom Brady and George Stephanopoulos.  Bet that puts a picture in your head.  Maybe you could see a spectator make a face at a golf match and read whatever you want into it to make the next great story of the golf fiction genre.  By the way don’t even stop to wonder if there is such a thing as a golf fiction genre; if you write a great story, there will be one.

Last weekend I had the opportunity to listen to Leslie Budewitz do a terrific reading of one of her stories—“The End of the Line” from the December 2006 issue of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

Her dramatic reading highlighted for me how well the narrative voice served the needs of the story. The narrative was confident, active, and melodic without drawing attention to itself. I was never pulled out of the story by an awkward turn of phrase or unduly repeated word. The narrative voice of the story was not the character’s voice, but it reflected the inner workings of the character’s mind.

Hearing the story reminded me that one of the pleasures of reading is the performative aspect. Even while reading alone, I still hear the story as I read, and that audible dimension is a large part of what I find so satisfying in a beautiful passage of writing—and frustrating when the language is flat or clumsy or when the writer has tried too hard to affect an unnatural style.

Every writer should read his or her work aloud—perhaps first alone, but also to someone else when the work is more polished. And every writer should listen to his/her own writing. When you listen to your own writing, what do you hear?

We talk often about how important it is for writers to read widely. I would say that listening is just as crucial a part of the writing process. Listen to other writers as you read, listen to the world—and listen to yourself.

There are forty-eight hour writing contests and forty-eight hour film-slams, and on Friday, May first, through Sunday, May third, I will be writing and slamming. And catering.

And which activity do you suppose wakes me at night to give me the heebie-jeebies? The food part. Someone could faint from lack of food because I didn’t prepare enough. Will I find the cast and crew to bring them meals on wheels? I’ll have no idea where they’ll be filming when I think they should be eating a nutritious lunch. And the lasagna. It could stay warming in the oven till two in the morning while they finish a scene. What will it taste like then?

I need to get over this. I catered for this team, my son’s, a few years ago. The only complaint then was that there were not enough snacks. The team has grown from ten to seventeen, and I’m tripling the provisions.

My first acting role was in last year’s film slam. I played a crabby Eastern European ticket taker who sprays down undesirable patrons with bug spray before they can enter the ‘pristine’ theater. I was told I did a good job, but having meals on hand when hungry will mean more to the cast than having a crabby Eastern European character actor waiting in the wings. Still, I wouldn’t say no if asked to fill in.

This year, for the first time, I’ll get to write a log line. It’s like an elevator pitch. Anyone in cast and crew who is so inclined will have a chance to write and pitch their very abbreviated scripts to the others, to try to sell their idea. I wish I knew how to prepare for that. It’s not like cooking ahead, because before a forty-eight hour film slam or project begins no one knows what they will be filming. Think sitting around nibbling on the caterer’s offerings, biting nails, guessing, while waiting for the phone call. This call will tell the team in what genre their film must be, and what line of dialog, character, and prop must appear in the film.

Because this particular film project is headquartered in Boston, my daughter (who has also acted, written and cooked), will be there to receive the instructions. She’ll call in all the info needed to get cast and crew started, and then she and another team-mate will make the long trek up north to join the crew.

The call will come at seven-thirty P.M. Talk about pressure. Talk about being at your best at the end of the day. I was heebie-jeebied about meals? We won’t get forty-eight hours to write this script; we’ll get maybe two. When I’ve written a story for a forty-eight hour writing contest I’ve roamed the house with pad and pencil for at least two hours waiting for the muse to strike. That option is out for a film slam. I’ll be feeling like the octopus from Heidi’s posting on 4/27.

Then, when a script or concept is decided upon, everyone will jump into furious activity even though it’s closing in on the end of the day. Props must be begged, borrowed or built. Sets constructed. Outdoor scenes decided upon. Costumes found and made to fit. There’ll be more writing, certainly a rudimentary screenplay is needed, one that will allow the actors a little creative wiggle room. It will be typed up, printed, and handed out. Lines need to be learned. A seven minute film needs to be completed and in Boston by 7:30 Sunday evening.

I’ll do the dishes and go home. They’ll stay up all night.

Tomorrow everyone will be twice as hungry, and breakfast is at six. Maybe I’d better get some more food. There’s no reason to think my story will be picked, or I’ll get to play another crabby role, but sure as shootin’, these folks will need to be fed.

Like first time parents, new writers worry about things they never realized existed before.  For me, this became a reality when we started our writing group and the others chimed in about how I should write stories based on my twenty-eight years as a State Trooper, ten of which were as a homicide detective.  For the five years since retirement, my persistent objection to my Thursday Night cohorts has been that it would be improper or unseemly for me to write about some of my experiences.  It is a high honor and huge responsibility to be entrusted to investigate a murder and I felt somehow that to write about what I had witnessed would take unfair advantage of my position.  I have discussed this with my old detective partner and he pointed out that if people did not write about these things, then how would anyone find out about them?  Maybe I’ll soften and reevaluate my stand as I progress as a writer.  No guarantees, but I’ll work on it.

Joseph Wambaugh wrote “…what a sorrowful thing it is to be murdered” in his novel The Glitter Dome.  I read that long before I became a cop, but it stayed in my subconscious and reemerged when I saw my first dead body.  It is sorrowful.  It’s not dramatic and certainly not glamorous.  It’s not at all like Hollywood’s CSI with mood music and fuzzy, psychic flash-back visions of the crime.  It is coldly sobering to stand or kneel over the most personal physical legacy of a human, their body, a human being who only hours earlier would never in their wildest dreams imagine that before the day was over, they would be cold, gray objects of observation to be described in notebooks, photographed and measured for diagrams.  I doubt that many people stop to consider when they lace up their shoes or button their shirts in the morning that they won’t be the ones to undo them at the end of the day.

Sometimes bodies lay in some degree of repose like on TV, but often they are in the grotesque sprawl of their last attempt to retain life or in the ineffective comfort of a fetal position.  Injury levels range from a few bruises or a little hole that is hard to find to extensive, mangled trauma with copious spilled blood.  There is a stillness to death greater than sleep or unconsciousness.  Oh, there actually is real, every-day music sometimes; if a body is discovered with a radio playing in the room, that’s documented as part of the scene and left on until everything is processed and turned off with the lights only when the search warrant return is left on the premises and the doors closed and locked.  You can only guess at the weird and lousy associations I have with some popular songs from years past.  The whole thing was and is sorrowful.

Any writing inspired by actual cases will have to be done with a high regard for ethics and respect for those involved.  No person’s death should be grist for the mill of popular culture where everything is presented merely for entertainment and titillation.  Before writing about such things, I’m going to grapple with the concept of “socially redeeming value”.  I’m no Pollyanna, in fact I’m quite cynical, but I do believe in karma.