1. Justified.  A really kickass show starring  Timothy Olyphant.  He plays a US Marshal named Raylan Givens who gets reassigned to his homestate of Kentucky after shooting a gunrunner in Florida “justified”, he says, because the man drew first.  Givens is an old style lawman, throwing down what the Chauffeur and I call Prairie Justice.

2.  The end of Winter Quarter.

3.  #sexbyauthor.  A fun, rude thing to think up.

4.  A glass of Coke with ice.  I don’t drink pop very often, but I did today, and it was marvelous.  Quit some luxuries for a while, you’ll come to appreciate them more when you take them up again.

5.  My novel excerpt in Verdad Magazine/blurting out something of a short story in one evening.

6.  My assumptions about the world being proven true again.

7. Poets & Beer Night.

8.  Robert Johnson (and the blues as a whole. But mostly Robert Johnson).

My exile has done me a lot of good.  And a lot has happened.  Chief among these things is that I just finished my third book.  It came in at 102,128 words.  Shorter than I anticipated, but I expect a little expansion in revision.  That’s 102k in 7 months.  The quickest I’ve ever finished a book, and it rivals my first in size (pre-cuts).  This past Monday I wrote over 4,500 words in a night.  That’s some kind of record, I think.  For those not word-savvy, that’s about twenty pages.  My pace increased quite a lot once I put myself off the internet, and I don’t think I’d be as far as I am if I hadn’t.

But wait, there’s more good news.  The third book–have I mentioned? it’s called Above All Men– is going to be excerpted in Verdad Magazine.  On top of that, myself and Clowncar are in the next round in Amazon’s Breakthrough Novel Award Contest.  On top of that, I’ve got a poetry gig coming up that’s gonna pay out a little bit, and let me write about Joshua Tree.  On top of that, I’m going to be Editor-in-chief of CRATE Literary Magazine next year.  On top of that, I’ve been hanging out with a few poets, one of which is, I shit you not, going to be the next Lorca or Neruda or pick-your-favored-poet-that-changed-what-being-a-poet-means, hopefully minus untimely death; and the other is a Tom Waits and No Country for Old Men-loving punk rocker who enjoys her (my) whiskey and is currently reading my copy of All the Pretty Horses.  Her favorite Tom Waits album is Real Gone.  You can’t get more legitimate than that.  And both of these two are much, much better poets than I am.  Not that that’s particularly high praise.

So, life has been pretty good since I left you.  There’s a lot of work to do down the pike, and I won’t really be back until after that, if then.  But I’m thinking of you, and I hope you’re well.  I haven’t gotten any letters from you.  Don’t think I haven’t noticed.

It’s a long road to the summer.  It’s a long way back to Ohio and what joys I might find there.  The writing is easier than ever but I’m afraid I don’t have enough words to fill the distance.  I don’t, in fact.  This book will be done in a few months–two is the projection– and then editing, and it will all be faster than anything I’ve done before, and better, but it’s the Word of God alone and I need the bread, too.

This is all rather melodramatic, and I’ll be back inevitably, if I do leave.  But I am bothered by these things, and not just emotionally, but by what they mean, what they’re doing to me and taking away from me as a writer.  I’d miss the updates about Iran and Morocco more than anything.  The rest is just egotism.  So I’m going to try this, for a while.  Be an internet ascetic.  I’ll have email, of course, and I still love you all and want to know how you are.  So if you don’t have my email, drop me a line here and I’ll get to you.  You know what would be even better?  Real mail.  Let’s do that.

Janet Fitch was on campus yesterday as the keynote speaker for Writers Week.  I’m not big on her writing, but from what she said I know she’s got it  together and I have a lot of respect for her.  She said she doesn’t know how she feels about something until she writes about it.  And I figure that’s true for me, too.  My books thus far are mostly a 800+ page wrestle with what it means to be a moral being in an immoral world.  We’ll see what comes out of me next.  Probably more of the same.  I haven’t found an answer, yet.

From the Land of the Lotus Eaters, take care.  I’ll be emblazoning the Crane on my eyelids, and thinking of you.

“I see myself staunching wounds. All the pages of all my books going into a great hole in people and slowing the loss of blood.”

Talking with an old friend about art.  Her philosophy came up, and mine, and my place in the world through art.  That’s what I came up with.  I don’t really think about myself in that capacity, because I’m not important in that way.  My words are.

Class has been tough this quarter.  Life has been tough.  The writing, as always, has been good.  I’m coming up on the end of this book and whenever I do that, in my experience, I get a little nervous.  No reason in particular, really.  It’s the same with starting a book.  Anyway.  I’m about 30,ooo words away from the end, maybe a little more.  It’s a treat to hold cards to your chest and finally get to lay them down.  The writing comes fast and somewhat easy, lately.  I should be finished in a few months.

Was laid out for the last week or so, sick.  Had a good and ridiculous time bar-hopping the weekend before that.  The places life takes me, sometimes.  The Antagonist came for a visit, on her way to Australia.  She cooked for me, we drank, we watched movies, we wrote.  She changed the alarm on her phone to a recording of me singing the beginning of Tom Waits’ “Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis”. Went to LAX for the 8th(?) time.  I’m now going steady with the 105.  Bought her a promise ring and everything.

May have some good news for you next time.  Meanwhile, I enjoyed the vlog thing, so, requests?

With the first installment, I told you, young writer, to have something to say. I should add that this something ought to be something you feel strongly about. I hope that goes without saying, but to be sure. You don’t want to start a novel about animal cruelty if you aren’t a vegan or a member of PETA, or something. Remember that this is the soul of your book, it’s what should drive you when the pure joy of writing itself is temporarily exhausted. You want to get up in the morning, and think, “Right now, people all over the world are massacring innocent carrots. I must save them.”

Or something like that. Moving on.

Knowing Your Story

This is equal parts personal and universal. Sequentially, this should occur almost concurrently with the next post in the series (which will talk about inspiration).

I’ve never been one to plan my story. Except when writing a screenplay, I’ve never mapped events out, only kept a loose list of things I wanted to happen. Between these nodes of concrete events was the rest of the story, and that I made up as I went along. I follow this mode of operation in all aspects of my writing. The characters develop subconsciously, as does the theme and plot. This may not work for all of you. And it doesn’t always work for me. Sometimes I get stymied. So it’s important to know what you want conveyed, and whether in a concrete fashion or not, what you want to happen.

The method of your conveyance is character. All themes and I’d say half of the actions in most any novel need to be brought across by your characters. This means you can’t break in with a deus ex thema to explain your morals, nor act like some weak-kneed Evelina and let outside forces speed the plot. So, briefly.

Characters- I’ll be the first to admit that I can’t handle a great number of characters at once. I don’t deal with mobs well, and my writing style doesn’t allow for multiple voices to be heard at once. But it’s equally hard to say anything but “pretty scenery” without some exchange. Hence, two main characters in my first novel. Keep this in mind when coming up with your characters– you probably don’t want a Power Ranger cast worth of main characters, unless you plan on relegating them to the depth of ROYGBIV.

Once you know at least the quantity and type of main characters you want, a good exercise (that I’ve never tried) is to write, whether in brainstorm format or no, their backstory. From birth to present. Age 3, fell off trike and skinned knee–formative event, first sight of blood. Age 7, showed his to see hers. Age 8, father left. Age 9, met best friend.

That sort of thing. Maybe even write a short story or two with them. Or scenes from the book that you’ll never put in. (You’ll do this anyway, via editing. End up cutting scenes from the book that the reader will never know about but happen in your head, nevertheless, and end up impacting the course of character development.) Remember that, at the most basic level, the relationship the reader has to have with your characters is love. Love the protagonist. Whether it’s love or love to hate, that’s inconsequential. But you can’t have an unlikeable character. If you do, you have to be ready to give them their just desserts.

Once you have a solid conception of your characters, you let them roam free in your…

Plot- Which, if you’re noticing my theme, will happen organically. You’ll find your characters bouncing around in this world you created and acting nearly independently of you. That’s how it often happens, anyway.

The plot is the least subconscious thing you’ll be working with in your book. It’s something that requires harder thought and it’s the framework that you want to have most in place by the time you start writing. However, you’ll find, like everything in writing, that you’ll be surprised in the middle of the night by some twist that your characters bring you to, and you’ll have to break things apart and reorganize them. Oftentimes your prof or teacher will tell you it’s a good idea to put all of your plot-nodes onto notecards, or organize them in any other such way. Not a bad idea. Again, something I’ve never done.

When I started writing my first novel I had a good basis for my work in both temporal directions–that is, I knew what the past was, and I knew what the far future was. What was in between, I’d fill in. Don’t fight it if you get lightningstruck and your last scene comes to you before you write the first. You’ll be amazed at what you’ll make span the gap. But, for the breakdown, it’s really, truly important to have guideposts set up along the way. Know your beginning, middle, and end. And if not that, know what’s near the end. Have little scenes planned out, those little inspirations you get throughout the day, set up like signposts. It seems forceful, maybe counterproductive to the creative process, but you’ll be surprised, again, at what your own skill will produce. A scene here and there keeps your plot linear.

Aristotlean writers will tell you that plot comes first in a book. It is prime. I don’t agree, but. A strong plot is never a bad thing. A way to get a strong plot is to craft a Major Dramatic Question. This is what drives a reader to turn the page if love of character and prose fail or don’t register immediately. What’s going to happen next? In thrillers, mysteries, etc., the MDQ is easy to pin down. Will Dan Brown’s stock professor character stop the pope from crushing the Sphinx with his giant hat? Will Nicolas Cage’s hair terrify the bad guy into submission before he crashes the plane into Alcatraz, with the Constitution in hand?

In more literary fiction, the MDQ becomes harder to suss out. In The Sun Also Rises, what’s the MDQ? Seriously, I defy you to give me a good one. What you’ll end up with is something like, “What will happen to Jake, to Jake and Brett, etc.,?” But that’s not the whole of the book. The play between Jake and Brett, while crucial in providing tension in some places, is half the book, tops. So what of the other half? In All the Pretty Horses, the same problem arises. “Will John Grady woo Alejandra?” Maybe, yeah, not bad. But he meets her nearly a hundred pages into the novel. So don’t be afraid to be at a loss for an MDQ. If you can break your book up into several, so much the better.

Before I sign off I want to stress two things. One: I put plot secondary for a reason. In literary fiction, I think today’s readers want to get to know characters more than they want to discern plot. So put your focus on lifelike, endlessly deep protagonists and antagonists. If you do well enough here, the reader will follow them to the dentist and back.

Two: Take everything I say with a grain of salt. Writing is not something that can be taught without flaw. It takes a certain amount of talent that I don’t think can be given by anything after birth, along with a lunatic dedication. Remember too that I’m writing this guide for the semi-literary to literary fiction crowd. If you’re not in that corner, play fast and loose with these guidelines.

Here’s a good link to Aristotle’s Theory of Tragedy. Very valuable stuff, there. Smarter than me, surely.

Helluva night last Friday, but that’s not what I’m here for.  I wanted to make you aware that I am now part of the editorial staff for CRATE Magazine, and we’ve got a call for submissions:

Lesson the first: Have Something to Say

When I enrolled in my first creative writing class at Wittenberg, I had only the vaguest conceptions of what my philosophies were re: writing. Toward the end of the semester and into my next class, and probably after that, I fought with my professor over whether or not a story has to have some deeper meaning, a message to go with the story. This message goes by a bunch of different names and has many variations. Thesis, moral, theme– but it boils down to the question: “So what?” What is the writer trying to tell the reader?

As I said, I fought with my professor over this. I was of the opinion that art for art’s sake was enough. The beauty of a story is worth its telling. Now I’m of another mind. But! It’s important for a writer to not, underline, go wrapping a novel around a theme. For this reason my first piece of advice is simple: Have something to say. Don’t go into a novel with nothing at all guiding you. Shelley said that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, and since nobody reads poetry anymore(I’ve learned this is untrue.  I do!), writers need to take up this mantle. Make this idea, this moral, the seed or kernel of your work. Plant it and forget about it. But everything should spring forth from that point.

Some comical examples of morals:
The Sun Also Rises: War sucks. Getting your junk shot off sucks more.
A Farewell to Arms: War sucks.
For Whom the Bell Tolls: War sucks.
Long Way Home (My book): War sucks.
The Handmaid’s Tale: Men suck.
Blood Meridian: War is awesome. Not really.

In all seriousness. Whether you want to decry war, pick up the affairs of veterans, speak out against racial or sexual inequality, what have you– you need a moral. But don’t get caught up in it. The best books evoke these things organically*, and you may never even realize you’re getting these opinions disseminated to you. But this is where you start.  If you’ve got your characters and you’ve got a kickass first line– hold it.  What you do here is the difference between genre and literary fiction.  Well, partly.  If executed correctly, this kernel of justice, coupled with strong characters, will help whatever you write transcend genre.  And even if you write about space elves, you shouldn’t frown on a Nobel Prize because your space elves happened to eradicate moral relativism.  Or something.

*You’ll notice a particular word will be repeated throughout these posts, and that word is “organic”, or a form thereof.  Don’t get tired of it– I repeat it for a reason.

You wonder if you have something good to say, something better than usual because you’ve been quiet.  Time passes and the burden grows.  After a while it becomes hard to say anything at all.  Partly I’m silent because I think it’s the better course of action.  I don’t know if what I want to say would be said if things were different.  I want to share parts of my life with you because I know and adore most of you.  But whether or not it is applicable here–and you’ve convinced me, it is– will it cause harm?  I don’t know.  And so I take pause.

It’s been warm here, as always, and stepping off the plane weeks ago was almost laughable, it was so hot.  Noel drove me out of LA and I don’t know if I can convey the dread and resignation I felt at the sight of the yellowy sky and the dirty street signs.  We passed two signs for a tattoo expo and the ad pictured a busty woman with no tattoos and I laughed at that, at how false it was.  I’m no longer surprised that I don’t mind cities like I used to, living in this one and being in LA and in Portland.  Columbus was beautiful, snow-covered and deadly cold.  The people were wild and a kid tried to fight me and I stood right in front of him staring and telling him to remember who I was.  Minutes later he threw a chunk of pavement through the window of the house and I got cut a little on the glass and Christ, how alive that night was.  Ushering people out and hiding the contraband and the moment when she was caught up in the rush to leave and there was such a pull in her eyes and it may have been too perfect to happen but our hands met as she backed away.  Days later I found her on the street in the cold and she took me to a bar and we talked for hours.  And just a handful of hours before I had to leave she called and said she was coming, and she found me, and we sat before the fireplace and eventually we moved to the couch and laid down and for an hour I wanted to kiss her and could only brush our cheeks together.  We fell asleep and woke each other up a few times and finally I kissed her, and eventually we slept again.  I regret that I didn’t tell her to warm her car up before going.  I regret not having those few minutes and what they might have held.

And then here, in the dark, with storms approaching and lined up for the week.  Gray skies look so much worse out here.    New laptop because the old broke, money I don’t have spent on something I have to have.  I wrote a prose poem that went away from where I wanted but I think is good.  Too close to really write about it, now.  Though I want to, and I think she deserves it.  65k into the third novel.  40k or so to go. 2,213 miles from where I want to be.  Less if she drives out to meet me, again.  A little gesture, a little kindness.  I haven’t been exposed to something like that in a long time.

Well, there you go, dammit.  I managed to shut up about myself for a couple posts, at least.

Edit:  Wasn’t quite clear enough re: kindness.  A great many people are good to me, and there are a few I probably don’t appreciate enough.  I meant a particular brand and a particular reception of kindness.

Butcher’s Crossing is set in 1870, and centers on Will Andrews’ search for the ineffable and ultimately untameable wildness inherent in the American landscape and in, John Williams’ seems to posit, most Americans.  Andrews leaves Harvard to seek this spirit out, coming to Butcher’s Crossing, Kansas.  Having a decent amount of money, Andrews gets hooked up with a veteran buffalo hunter named Miller.  Miller had, years ago, found an undiscovered valley in Colorado that was almost completely inaccessible, and in which a veritable sea of buffalo live.  Now with the buffalo nearly extinct, Miller uses Andrews’ means to assemble a team and the two set out with a skinner and moderately insane ox-driver for the valley he found long ago.

Williams’ book has quite a lot in common with Melville’s Moby-Dick.  Andrews is an easy descendant of Ishmael, and Miller is quite clearly Ahab.  Miller’s dedication to the hunt, his arrogance and ignorance, ends up trapping the hunters in the valley for the winter.  Shy of 300 pages, Butcher’s Crossing is not a particularly big book.  Williams spends quite a lot of time with the set up and leaves himself about 200 pages for the execution.  The actual hunting and the whopping six months spent in the mountains take up a comparatively little space for being the point of the novel.  Where Andrews is supposed to develop, where we’re supposed to be in, dirt-level, with these men, Williams gives us an all too brief glimpse and moves us on.  This contrasts strongly against Melville, who, some would argue, throws the reader in too deep.

I argue that the greatest short work of fiction ever told will not match up to the greatest long work.  I’m not about to claim titles for those positions, but I’ll say that Butcher’s Crossing and Moby-Dick have similar premises, dissimilar lengths, and dissimilar places in the literary canon.  Williams has written a forgettable story because the reader is not submerged in it.  Butcher’s Crossing is easily a book of another hundred pages than what was written.  The author flies over six crucial months and skims the slaughter of thousands of buffalo.  It’s this sort of detail and depth, even repetition, to a degree, that imprint themselves upon a reader’s mind and make the story live on.  I had to look up Miller’s name, and I finished the book about two weeks ago.

To bring things full circle, Blood Meridian is not a very big book, but there isn’t a moment in it that’s really skimmed over unnecessarily.  McCarthy spends 4 pages introducing us to the Kid and his backstory, throwing us immediately into action and spending the rest of the book in dizzying detail until he again scoops us up through time in a few pages and sets us down at the end.  Williams manages the opposite.  By cutting through the middle, racing past the changes in these men (and letting Andrews state the changes rather than reveal them) Williams undercuts his ending, which I think would have been excellent had we spent proper time in the events before.  The disorientation and frustration the men experience on their return is on the brink of being powerful, but ultimately the reader has been distanced, and the ending falls short.

While Googling, I found out that Joe Penhall, screenwriter for The Road, is actually adapting Butcher’s Crossing into a screenplay. I happened to catch The Road a little over a week ago.  Pretty good.  I teared up a few times, which is strange for anyone who knows my reaction to the book.  Apparently I’ve grown enough to relate in the past few years.

In other news, I read Brian Hart’s debut novel, Then Came the Evening, a little while ago, and am currently powering through Don Carpenter’s Hard Rain Falling, which I am enjoying immensely.  I think I’ll try for a true review of the former.  Will let you know if that comes out anywhere.  Chauffeur won the race by 3000 words, as I got a little too tied up with some craziness over break that I might let you in on sometime.  My novel currently stands at over 60k, and I just finished a rewrite of the beginning of the first novel.  Great to see how much my characters have matured over time.  I think that’s it.