July 31st, 2009 by Neal

The heat has broken, or at least gotten to the point where it’s tolerable to sit in the writing room, and shit has come pouring out of me in a way that it hasn’t since I had food poisoning on the 4th.

I didn’t do much TIME work, but all of the thinking and meandering and planning I’ve been doing in my head came out in a kind of a pre-write flush, and I have now outlined the entirety of No Weak Sister. Outlining is a new thing for me. I used to hate it. I still kind of do. But it helps when constructing a mystery, it’s almost necessary.

I realized that while Stephen King touts the idea of letting the story organically write itself (still an idea I wholly support), there is also an inherent danger when you’ve read too many books and have a bit of a general scorn for genre. In other words, when I go to the book store, I hardly ever head for the racks that are categorized… I just head to general fiction. At least until Powell’s, where I found that every section is like three women in bed.

At any rate, point being, when I just spin MY wheels, I don’t do what Stephen King does, and keep it a piece of pop fiction fun that rocks your ass. I make a piece of work that should go into the GENERAL FICTION area. This was originally the sole goal of my life, but I’ve been reading a lot of the modern version of that lately, and it hasn’t turned my gears. A good reason why is the book I just finished, Lush Life, by Richard Price.

It’s essentially the story of a robbery gone wrong that ends with (spoiler) the murderer coming to justice. It takes 450 pages to do it. It reads a lot like The Wire watches. You yell and you scream at it to get to the fucking point already, and it keeps shouting back, “But look! Look at this intriguing character moment!” so you don’t shut the damned thing off. And I read the whole book, true to my moronic form, when I have Sharpe’s right next to me, Working by Terkel, and a bunch of other fun books that I need to read to gear into No Weak Sister.

I can read that stuff, because I admire the craft. The average reader will read it and go, “FUCKING BORING!” Especially when there’s no broader existential point made, as was not made in Lush that I could see, really. In Clockers? Yes. There was a much broader point, that stereotypes inform who we will become and take us away from what we will become. Clockers is a tale of nature vs. nurture. Lush Life was a tale of a yuppie gone wrong and a dumb street thug. There didn’t seem to be any redemptive point. It was superbly crafted from the character and dialogue standpoint, but that’s not what I want to offer. I want to offer a good story, strong character, kickass dialogue, a point, and a motivation to read the next fucking page if you’re not a big reader without going BOH-RING!

In other words, I still like Richard Price, and I’ll read him, but I don’t want to be like him in my work.

The biggest problem I’ve had with Hal is the larger picture. The arc of his character, which still must (and will) form organically and grow and shift over time. I look to Atticus Kodiak as a model, and Matthew Scudder. I want to do it like Chandler did with Marlowe over the course of The Big Sleep, but I don’t have the patience for THAT much longform, and beyond that, Marlowe is patient and doesn’t seem to repeat mistakes, whereas Hal is a general fuckup, even if he’s lucky and can find a way out of situations. I’m learning a lot as I go here, and having fun.

Maybe I do have the patience for the longform, who knows? The outline for BCS was 1,500 words, NWS is 3,500. We’ll see if I actually have to cut stuff.

July 29th, 2009 by Neal

The heat is down to about 86 in the writing room. It’s not great, but I can breathe. I’ve slept downstairs for two days now, and gotten absolutely ZERO work done.

This has actually been either the laziest or most preoccupied month for me in most of a decade. I don’t know if it was the novel or what, but I haven’t written much lately. That’s like, to give you perspective, you not taking a shit for four straight weeks. It must be done, it has always been done, what the hell is going on?

But there’s no malice or desperation to it, just good old fashioned life getting in the way. And nonetheless, I’m not stressing about it, I’m not worrying about it. I’ve managed to find a place of hope and cling to it, and this has influenced me profoundly. I still have the nasty habit of overthinking every damned thing I do, but I’m coming to terms with the fact that rest can lead to better work, and so I’m allowing myself rest.

The reason I type all of this is because despite all of that, I feel like busting into a writing day right the fuck now, and it’s ten o’clock, and I’m trying to whip my schedule around to 9AM to 1 AM. The heat feels like it’s breaking. We’ll see.

July 29th, 2009 by Neal

No wonder there were no WMDs.

Get the president on the phone! Now!

July 28th, 2009 by Neal

Seriously, guys. Enough now.

105 in the damned writing room. Turn off the sun. Okay. Joke over. I get it. Ha ha. You got me.

Guys?

July 27th, 2009 by Neal

Fuckin’ thermometer on my window reads 100… and it’s 2:20.

Tomorrow is supposed to be hotter.

Fucking. A.

July 24th, 2009 by Neal

Thanks to the folks who asked after me. It reminds me how often I post and how attached by the ankle to this damned computer I’ve been, something I can’t seem to see a way to rectify of late, but I’m finding it easier and easier. I’m getting better. I’ve learned to work hard, rest hard, and at least of late I’ve found a kind of balance in my life. This is because of Portland. (See Above)

I haven’t written much poetry since I moved here, maybe twenty or so in the last seven months, and the reason, I realize, is because I’ve had much less stress, much less worry, and, as I thought about a few minutes ago, much less martyrdom, some real, some less real.

When I was younger I thought that the way to be able to write was to have enough free time to do so. I knew I wanted to write, I knew I had to, but I didn’t realize that I’d write in a tenement or a penthouse, and that’s it’s not necessarily the type, but the urge that kills.

So what did I do? I thought, hey, save up enough money, then you can write. I see this bargain philosophy erupt in many writers, and it either ultimately consumes them, or leaves them beaten to shit. I think it’s why they die young. “If I could only do ___________, my writing will be complete!”

With me it was, “If I can only save enough money and work hard enough so that I can get to the REAL work, then life will be great!”

I got the construction job, schemed with credit and homes and the basics, and stuck to that for five years with no practical insight into getting published, writing marketable work, or even what I would do with ALL THAT MONEY (that never materialized) once I got it. I crashed and burned last year, and then BAM, rapid-fire, two deaths. I didn’t think at the time it was too stressful, but as I’ve learned from other times of major stress in my life, you never do realize it until it’s either too late or consuming your existence.

So I said, whafuck. Move to Portland. I had to live in a shitty apartment for a bit, but now I’m in a rental house, saving money, writing articles that aren’t tainted by the malaise of my life, and I’m HAPPY. I’m fucking HAPPY. So it’s hard to write poetry, even if I still can. I’m not doing it to get over the gunshots I’m hearing out my window. My neighbor on the left is a very nice black lady, the folks on my right are middle aged white couple, there are bikes pedaling slowly past on the sidewalk all day, and though the sun’s been a little hot, I can’t think of a single goddamned thing I don’t enjoy here so far.

I pulled back for a bit and enjoyed it. I had my buddy Al here in town for two months, and I spent the last two exploring my new home. I did not find it wanting.

St. John’s Bridge. OMSI. The walk down Broadway to downtown. The bus station. Chinatown. The Zoo. Powell’s. I even went camping a few times. Though that wasn’t here, I did exactly what I said I’d do. I said I’d go camping this summer a bunch of times, and I fucking well did, with more to come. I’ve been saying I’d do that and not doing it for years. Maybe that’s something wrong with Portland. No readily accessible lakes. But then, there’s Battleground a half hour north, so whafuck again?

I finished Hal and took a long breath, because I have faith in the book and believe it might be published. Unlike all previous books, it’s turned me on my head. I created a fucking good guy. And while I still like down endings and cynical tropes, and while I’ll probably still write and read them all my life, I found a categorical reversal in order. We don’t explore the people in our lives that make them harder, and the dilemmas, and how we fail to defeat them. We create a guy who pounds the fuck out of those things. That was me over the last year for myself, and that’s about all of what Hal is. I believe in Hal. I’ve learned to fucking well hope, and life is much more copacetic for it.

I’m not doing anything I don’t want to do any more. I’m not overly concerned with how I’m going to get credits, I’m concerned with the WORK, and that’s reaped some nice dividends. I’m following my heart.

The work bends in and follows, and becomes better than what it was. There’s even a reassuring feeling that I’m not conforming, because really, it’s not that I’m changing who or what I am, I’ve just moved myself into a place where I can be happy enough to tell the kind of story that most normal people who don’t live near gunshots can relate to. It’s a strange, healthy feeling. I’m scared of it, but I still have what I’ve been through.

I heard a rumor that there’s a law that each house has to have a tree here. When I walk down the street (like, six blocks from fucking CITY city) all I smell is that fresh air that you have in the woods, the reason you drive way the hell out there. There are so many trees here, I can breathe. No one’s harassing me for music. Shit, across the street this lady plays Radiohead on the piano while some putz sings along poorly but with life.

I have only one conclusion to draw from this. I died on May first somehow, and was wrong about theism.