Category: revising

Hold on My Heart

It is rare, so rare, that something random can lead to an enormous breakthrough in something you are writing. And yet that very randomness is almost some kind of weird cosmic force. Imagine, for example, that you, a writer, have been working on a novel for nearly two years–off and on, really, around other books and other projects–but something has always been missing from that manuscript; something doesn’t work, you can’t quite get it to work, you write draft after draft after draft, you ask other friends to read it and give you input, you talk to other writers about it, and still…something’s just not quite right, not quite there. You know it’s missing something and you agonize over it, try to write it out in your journal.

And then one day, wasting time on a break scrolling through social media, someone posts a link to an essay which is basically a hatchet job on a writer you’ve come to appreciate, while still having some reservations about that writer’s art, and where it comes from, and the eye with which said writer sees the world might be colored in some ways by their own experience which might also not allow them to see things as empathetically as they might, as you yourself might wish they had. And during the course of this hatchet job, the essayist posts a link to a piece written by the problematic artist, and you arbitrarily click on the link–which only offers a strange title, the title the problematic artist gave to his/her piece.

And suddenly, you realize that this piece, originally published in 1992, was part and parcel of a much bigger story that you distinctly remember and completely forgot about. And as you read this piece, which you’ve actually not read before but had read other reportage of the story, you realize and remember that this is the thread of the novel you are writing and having so much trouble with.

This true crime story, in 1992, inspired you to create the town and characters and the story you are writing now…only you’d forgotten the inspiration, the original plot, everything but the town and the set-up and the characters.

And you realize that THIS is your answer. Using this as your basis for the story solved every single problem you have with your manuscript, your story, and its resolution.

And had you not been bored, had you not been scrolling through your Facebook feed, had some random friend not shared a random essay for some random reason, you never would have remembered, you never would have solved the problem.

And this is why writers drink.

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Warm It Up

Well, the weekend turned out to be a total bust as far as getting anything writing-wise accomplished; this means I didn’t actually sit down at the desk and revise or write. I did scribble ideas in my journal, though, which while not counting as actual work, does count as something. I did manage to get the apartment cleaned during the LSU-Georgia game on Saturday (GEAUX TIGERS!) but on Sunday, I relapsed a bit into whatever-it-was I had last week; fevers came and went along with headaches and some nausea, some post-nasal drip. So, I curled up in the easy chair, covered myself with a blanket, and finished watching The Haunting of Hill House.

I will say that I thought the finale was a bit of a disappointment, but I thoroughly enjoyed this show. I knew going into the final episode that it would most likely be disappointing; the ending is not something Shirley Jackson would have written or done, and up until that moment, the show had done an excellent job of channeling Jackson. It was thoroughly involving from the very first moment, the writing was superb, the production values excellent, and the acting perfectly en pointe. It was chilling, eerie, creepy and terrifying; everything I would want from a Jackson adaptation. The show also had a lot of shout-outs to the original and to Jackson–I loved where in one scene one of the kids was reading The Lottery–and actually gives me hope that the film adaptation of We Have Always Lived in the Castle might be good.

So much of Jackson’s brilliance was about the internal, not the external–which is what the people involved with the hideous 1999 remake of The Haunting got so completely wrong. And while in Jackson’s novel you never see and never know what is haunting Hill House, seeing some of it in this mini-series didn’t spoil it in the least; it was done minimally, and in such a way that added to the creepiness.

But this morning I feel better. My head feels clear, my sinuses aren’t full, there’s no drip going on in the back of my throat, and I don’t feel feverish. So I am hopeful that the whatever-that-was is over and done with, history, archived, collecting dust in the file rooms. And that I can focus this week on getting the things done that I need to get done.

Here’s hoping, anyway.

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One

GEAUX TIGERS!

Yes, second ranked Georgia rolls into Tiger Stadium today to take on the twelfth-ranked Tigers, reeling from the first loss last week at Florida. I’m trying not to get to invested in the stakes of the game; I just want the Tigers to play better than they did last week and be competitive. I want them to win, I will be rooting them on–but I will also likely be cleaning and keeping myself occupied to handle the nerves.

Sigh.

I slept in this morning–I did wake up around seven, but chose to stay in bed for another hour, before finally getting up and getting a load of laundry started. I feel extremely well-rested this morning; which is absolutely lovely. I have a lot of cleaning and organizing to do today in order to clear my plate so tomorrow can be all about writing and editing and reading. I am greatly enjoying Empire of Sin; it’s giving me all kinds of ideas about stories to write and maybe even a novel or two…I’ll probably read Herbert Asbury’s The French Quarter next.

Lisa Morton once suggested that I do a New Orleans version of her book Monsters of LA. I am thinking that might just be something I can do, now that I’m reading all this New Orleans history.

I also started streaming the Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House last night; I got through the first two episodes, which I greatly enjoyed. I was tempted to watch  yet a third but stopped myself as it was getting late. There’s been, since the trailers for the show dropped, a lot of anger and disgust from Shirley Jackson fans as well as horror fans, since obviously the show was going to be different from the novel, and why does this even need to be? Well, I am a huge fan of both Jackson AND this particular novel; one of my proudest moments was when Night Shadows was a Shirley Jackson Award finalist. (I love the rock I got for being a finalist.) The show is good. It didn’t have to be Hill House; it didn’t have to be The Haunting of Hill House, but that’s what it is, and it is inevitable, as such, that it’s going to be compared to the original. Jackson’s structure is there; Hill House, the Crain family, the Dudleys; even some of the things that happen in the book happen in the show. It’s being told in a parallel structure; when the Crains moved into Hill House, a young couple with five children, ostensibly to renovate the house and flip it. Something horrible happened while they lived there, and the parallel story being told in modern times is about the Crains today; all five of the kids grown up into severely damaged adults. The children are Steve, Shirley, Theo, Nell, and Luke–the names of the characters from the novels plus the novelist’s name–and the parallel story structure works. The performances are good, and I also like the concept–it’s very Stephen King’s It, because clearly they are all going to have to return to Hill House and face not only the house but their own demons. As I watched and began to understand the story structure, I also thought to myself, ah, this is a great direction modern horror is going in; not only dealing with the paranormal elements but the also dealing with the psychological aspects of having dealt with something so traumatic as a child. It reminded me somewhat of Paul Tremblay’s novel A Head Full of Ghosts in that way. I am really looking forward to continuing to watch and see how it plays out. I don’t see how this can become a regular series…but then again Netflix turned Thirteen Reasons Why into a multi-season show and the second season just wasn’t very good.

I’m also still watching season three of The Man in the High Castle, which is sooooo good. The first season was terrific, the second kind of mess, but they’ve really hit their stride in Season 3.

And now, I have laundry to fold, dishes to put away, spice to mine.

Have a lovely lovely Saturday, everyone.

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Too Funky

Well, last night’s Saints game was quite lovely, and more than made up for the disappointing LSU loss this weekend. Drew Brees broke the record for most yards passing in NFL history, which was very cool, and the Saints won, as well, defeating Washington handily. 40-23? And he’s still going. The weird love affair between New Orleans and the Saints, New Orleans and Drew Brees. As I watched the game last night, I realized that there are a lot of people living here now who didn’t live here when the Saints were, for wont of a better word, lackluster. For that matter, who didn’t live here when the Saints won the Super Bowl. That saddened me, because that was all such a lovely bonding experience for the city after Hurricane Katrina and the flood; how much the Saints meant to all of us as we rebuilt our lives and the Saints rebuilt themselves. And Drew Brees, rebuilding his career when there were plenty of doubters and naysayers, came to symbolize our city, down but not quite out.

It all seems so long ago now, but how nice that he is still playing, the Saints are doing great yet again, and now he is on his way to holding practically every individual record a quarterback can have; how nice to hear the rousing ovation from the fans in the Superdome when he broke the record.

Absolutely lovely.

The revision is swimming along nicely. I fell behind again, and need to get caught up sooner rather than later, but I am happy with how it’s going and how well things are turning out. I still think I can make the November 1 goal for submission, and then I can figure out what I am going to work on next. More short stories, perhaps? A new y/a? The WIP? We shall see.

And now, back to the spice mines.

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She’s Playing Hard to Get

GEAUX TIGERS!

LSU plays at Florida today at two-thirty central time. Paul is going to be out all day; he has to go work at the office and is attending an event tonight. I have to do some errands around noon–post office, bank, mail–and of course I want to get some writing done today. I didn’t write at all yesterday; I came home from work and started cleaning, then relaxed and watched some television until Paul came home. I’m trying to get as much of this book done as I possibly can today, around the LSU game.

I’m trying not to get worked up about football as much as I used to; it is, after all, just a game and the players are just young men, barely adults. This has worked for me since the Auburn game; during the first quarter I was very anxious, and found myself getting highly irritated in the second quarter. When LSU fell behind 14-10 just before half-time, I thought, let it go. Stop yelling at the television. They can’t hear you for one, and it doesn’t make you feel any better, and the players are just kids. This isn’t life or death. It makes ZERO difference in your life for the better or worse if LSU wins or loses. 

 It worked and I calmed down considerably, and was able to watch and enjoy the rest of the game. Of course, it didn’t hurt that LSU won the game, coming from behind to score nine points in the last five minutes or so of the game. I suppose the real test of this attempt to watch games calmly will be a game LSU loses.

It’s a lot of energy to expend on something over which I have no control. So now I try to watch the games with detachment rather than overhyped emotion. It also makes no difference also in that I am never going to stop rooting for LSU.

Maybe someday I’ll get more zen about the Saints’ games.

I woke up just before eight this morning, but stayed in bed for another forty-five minutes before finally getting up. I feel rested. My sleep has been better for the last week or so–the overnight rains have helped in that regard tremendously–plus getting up at seven three days a week now instead of just one has helped shift my sleep patterns to something more manageable. For years I woke up at seven every morning like clockwork; that changed when I started working late nights and my sleep has never been the same since that time. Now that I am back into a regular sleep pattern, I get up early every morning and get to do what I used to do in the mornings, before I faced the world; answer emails, write blog post, read my social media feeds, even do some writing, on the mornings when I don’t have to be at work by nine. On weekend mornings, like this one, I can relax with my coffee and get some things done around here. I like this new schedule I’ve been on for the last few weeks; I get to start cleaning the house and doing the laundry early Friday evenings, and then I can relax with television or a book (honestly, cracking open the wine usually results in me watching television instead of reading; and I still haven’t finished Circe; again this is a not a testament to the quality of the book. Thus far it is one of the best books I’ve read so far this year.)

And so now, it’s back to the spice mines. I’ve got laundry going already, and the kitchen is fortunately already clean. I need to work on the living room some today as well; I can do that during the LSU game without disturbing Paul since he’ll be at the office. I’m going to spend the rest of this morning working on Scotty and maybe starting to pull apart the WIP. Ironically, I’d begun to think that a y/a novel about rape culture wasn’t timely anymore; these last few weeks have proven to me that it’s just as timely as ever. I have to put aside all of my doubts about being a gay man writing a novel about rape culture and just write the damned thing. As I said earlier this week, it needs to be pulled apart and it’s own stand on its own book, which means starting from scratch (which I had already kind of done) and then start piecing it back together again. The shell I’ve already written can certainly be recycled into another book, if need be, and I even already know what that book is going to be. So, this is a win-win, really.

Have a  great day, Constant Reader, and hang in there.

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Breakin’ My Heart (Pretty Brown Eyes)

WE MADE IT! Constant Reader, we have survived another week and it’s finally Friday! Huzzah!

Looking forward to the weekend always reminds me of my mom warning me, when I was an impatient teenager and counting the days till summer vacation, don’t you know you’re just wishing your life away?

But now, whenever I hear her voice in my head reminding me of that, I think, yeah, well, we’re all going to die someday anyway. Not looking ahead to the weekend isn’t going to make me live longer.

Sometimes, when I have those down days and I wonder why I ever thought I should write fiction–or anything, really–I think things like look at all the books you’ve written and published! Look at all these award nominations–you’ve even won a few! And still you have a day job. Why do you try? Why do you keep writing books? If you haven’t broken out and become successful (even by your own modest standard) by now, why do you think it still might happen?

And then I remember John D. MacDonald wrote a lot of books, but didn’t break out and hit bestseller lists until he was about forty or so books into his career, when he hit upon Travis McGee. He was certainly successful prior to McGee; but McGee was the big break that enabled him to stop writing two or three books a year and settle into just one. His pre-McGee pulps were also quite good; I certainly have enjoyed the ones I’ve read. But I hold on to that with both hands: John D. MacDonald didn’t hit the Times best seller list until he was over forty novels into his career.*

So, there’s still hope for me…if I can figure out how to write as well as John D. MacDonald.

So, this is something to keep in mind as I move into the weekend and try to decide what I’m going to write once the Scotty is finished. I think the WIP, which needs to be deconstructed and revised almost entirely from scratch, might have to take a backseat for a while to something else. I’d like to do Bury Me in Satin, but I am also interested in writing a short and nasty noir, which would inevitably be Muscles. 

Sigh.

Seriously.

AH, well, back to the spice mines.

*this may be incorrect; but I believe it’s true.

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Please Don’t Go

It’s Thursday morning. I am pleased to announce that I have made it all the way to Chapter Seven in the revision. At this rate (one per day) I should have the entire thing revised in 18 more days, which would bring us to the 24th; which would give me another six days to revise and polish and all that jazz before turning it in.

Isn’t it lovely?

And the truth is, now that I am in the downward side of the mountain with this book, I don’t want to–and can’t–write anything else. Yesterday after I finished for the day, I tried working on a short story in progress (“Never Kiss a Stranger”, for those of you tracking Gregalicious arcana) and just couldn’t write a word. I was actually, in a very strange way that probably only makes sense to me, relieved this happened; it means I am so deep into writing the book that no matter how many thoughts and ideas I might have about other stories, I can actually only work on the Scotty from now until it’s finished. This is a strange quirk I’ve had for quite some time, but having not finished or published a novel since early 2017, you can imagine how worried I’ve been about the ability to finish this one. But old habits are, apparently, still so deeply ingrained in my system that they pop up automatically.

Which is a huge relief.

There is a sense I have, sometimes, that with the WIP that I’m, to quote Mean Girls, “trying to make ‘fetch’ happen.” I do think the story is an important one, and I think I went about writing it the wrong way: it’s set in Kansas, so I did what I always do when I write about Kansas–retreated to a world I’d already created. I noticed recently that the character names I used in the WIP are character names I’ve already used in Sara and some other books; I was trying to fit this story into a town and characters I’d already created back in the late 1970’s and refined a bit in the 1980’s rather than starting from scratch. I’d started writing a book set in this town in or around 2004 whose working titles included Sins of Omission, Against the Storm, Between Two Rivers, and The Past Doesn’t Sleep. I then tried to wrap a new story into the structure of what was once called “the Kansas book” rather than coming up with something new, and then being able to write almost a hundred thousand words in a month on the first draft made it seem like I had done, absolutely, the right thing in going this way with it. But it wasn’t, and while some of it can be salvaged and re-used, I’m going to have to go back to the drawing board and take it apart, piece by piece and decide what the story really is and who the characters really are. I’ve renamed the town, and now I am going to go back to rename the characters.

And hopefully, it will become the book I want it to be.

And now back to the spice mines.

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Stay

We did finish watching Castle Rock last week. I’m not really sure what to think of it, but I probably should watch the finale one more time just to be sure. I was playing with my phone–getting text messages–and I may have missed something key.

Either that, or the finale simply made no sense.

Which is, I suppose, a possibility.

I did write yesterday, not nearly as much as I wanted to or would have liked to, but despite all of my best efforts the words simply weren’t coming as quickly or as easily as I would like. I can remember, years ago, putting Madonna or Stevie Nicks or Fleetwood Mac CD’s in the stereo and hitting shuffle, sitting down at the computer and then several hours and thousands of words later realizing there was no music playing anymore and the afternoon was gone. Now, I feel like I am always scrabbling to get some work done between interruptions and distractions. It’s okay–the work is getting done, if at a slower pace than I would prefer–but I do miss those blissful afternoons writing away like a madman.

I’ve been mulling over my y/a about rape culture. As I said yesterday, I had thought (oh, innocence) that in the years that had passed since Steubenville that it wasn’t timely anymore. Yeah, that. It is amazing that at age fifty-seven I can still be so fucking naive about the world in which I live. I read a terrific essay the other day on Vox about how one of the greatest teen rom-coms of the 1980’s, Sixteen Candles, is actually deeply problematic (I’d already recognized its racism years ago), which also sent me into a deep think about other movies aimed at the youth market in the 1980’s and how problematic they are: Revenge of the Nerds, Risky Business, Weird Science, The Breakfast Club, Fast Times at Ridgemont High (less so than the others), Valley Girl, and The Last American Virgin, among many others–and we can’t forget (no matter how hard we try) Porky’s and it slew of even worse sequels. I also started reading Dead Girls by Alice Bolan; which is well written and very interesting. (Every so often I think I would like to write creative non-fiction; I would love to write a critique of the bury your gays trope which would also deal with how gay men are depicted in crime fiction, as well as piece on Gothic romantic suspense novels from the 1950’s through the 1980’s, posited on the premise that these books were noir for women; but then I read something like this book and think, not educated or well read or smart enough.)  I also think there’s a book in a critical reexamination of teen films/books/television programs and how they handled gender roles and sexual assault in the 1980’s.

I am also seriously considering learning how to speak Italian…although French would probably be better for research purposes.

And the Saints won!

And now back to the spice mines.

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The Best Things In Life Are Free

Hello, Thursday! I am front-loaded on hours this pay week (our week runs from Friday thru Thursday) so I don’t have to go into the office until way later today; just for testing hours, and so I can run some errands today so I won’t have to do them this weekend.

Huzzah!

My kitchen is also a mess this morning, and I have a load of dishes to put away and a load of laundry to fold and put away. I would also like to get some work done on Scotty this morning; I made it through to Chapter Four or so last night, and I think I can get some more significant progress done on it today. What’s interesting is now that I am diving into the Scotty revision, my creative ADD has seemed to have significantly slowed down and I am not thinking of other things I want to write anymore. Which on the one hand is kind of cool, on the other interesting. When I was working on the WIP, for example, I was constantly distracted, just as I was as I suffered through writing the first draft of the Scotty. But this revision is going so smoothly–I haven’t reached the snags yet, I suspect, but I’ve made it much further without reaching a snag than I would have thought–that I am actually kind of enjoying this revision.

Which is really weird. I’ve always hated revisions and rewrites, but this is going very smoothly, as I said before, and the only reason it isn’t going faster is because I am a lot lazier than I should be. Last night, for example, I could have kept going but decided I’d worked long enough for the day and called it quits earlier than I could have.  Which is always par for the course. But even if I only manage to get through a chapter a day, I’ll be done in less than a month. This is my longest Scotty since Jackson Square Jazz–twenty-five chapters, a prologue and the postscript–and it’s probably the most ambitious one I’ve ever written. But I am also enjoying writing it…I am enjoying the challenge, and I am enjoying doing it the way that I used to write books–slowly and carefully, and spread out over a long period of time. There’s nothing wrong with writing fast, either–but it’s so lovely not having a deadline.

So fucking lovely.

If I’m lucky, I can get this draft and the final polish done by November 1, which is my plan for the moment. I am going to wind up missing the deadline for the anthology I started writing “The Blues Before Dawn” for–it’s mid-October–but other than that I don’t mind putting all my short stories on hold for the time being. I am really getting excited about starting to do some research for a novel set in New Orleans’ past, and even more excited about the research itself. There are so many archives in New Orleans, and the city’s past is so rich and full. (Just looking over at the little two shelf bookcase next to my desk where I keep research books, I see the following books: Gumbo Ya-Ya, Bourbon Street, The French Quarter, Empire of Sin, Plantation Parade, The Civil War in Louisiana, Mr. New Orleans, Lost Plantations, Inventing New Orleans, The Capture of New Orleans 1862, Louisiana in the Confederacy, The Thibodaux Massacre, The Ghosts of New Orleans, Frenchmen Desire Goodchildren, Getting Off at Elysian Fields, Legendary Louisiana Outlaws, and Dixie Bohemia, which barely scratch the surface! On my desk is Robert Tallant’s Voodoo in New Orleans as well.)

I need to get a library card. I can’t believe I’ve never had one in New Orleans.

All right, back to the spice mines.

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Tennessee

Wednesday and halfway through another week. I am almost finished with the revision of Chapter Three, and am hoping to power through it and Chapter Four today, with a side helping of Chapter Five and Six tomorrow; at this rate–should it persist–I will finish the revision in about three weeks.

I suspect, however, that will not turn out to be the case.

Look!  A squirrel!

Not having to be at the office early today feels really strange; like I should be there already and I am somehow loafing around this morning. I only have a partial day tomorrow, so I am going to try to get the weekend errands done before heading into the office tomorrow so this weekend I can simply focusing on writing and editing and revising.

It sounds good in theory, at any rate. In a worst case scenario, I am hoping to finish reading Circe this weekend at the very least. And maybe even work a little bit on “Never Kiss a Stranger,” which is turning into a novella. Which is fine; it’s too much story for a short story and not enough story for a novel; so I guess I am going to just somehow manage to turn it into a novella and sell it myself on Amazon, which I of course did with “Quiet Desperation.” I got rejected from a major market yesterday, which I was expecting, and I have to say–some of the major markets have the most kind form rejection letters.  I like to think that the kinder rejection form letter means my story was actually seriously read and considered before they decided against it; that helps lessen the sting. Since it was done through Submittable, they easily could have simply let the rejected label let me know, but they had the decency to email me as well; which I greatly appreciated.

A rejection used to always send me into a tizzy or downward spiral; but I also am very well aware that I am not the greatest short story writer out there–and there are a lot of terrific short story writers out there–and I am not really sure what I need to learn/experience/know to take me to a higher level as a short story writer. I am pretty much flying blind with them, to be honest; and sometimes I do manage to get it right. I know my subject matter can be a bit disconcerting; the story that was rejected was about someone raised in a cult who escaped from it and has built a life for himself outside of it…only to have paranoia set in when he thinks he recognizes someone from the cult at the grocery store. I think it’s a good story and I did a good job with it; but trying to find a market for it with a gay main character…well, you never can be completely sure that didn’t play a part in it being rejected, to be honest.

You see, there’s the thing when you’re a writer from a marginalized group, the thing the straight cisgender white writers never quite get when we talk about own voices and diversity; we never are sure if our work just wasn’t good enough for the particular market (or publisher) and we need to work harder, or if the marginalized voice/character automatically disqualifies the work. And for the record, that doesn’t even mean bigotry on the part of anyone reading the work to decide whether to publish it or not. Inherent bias can be so systemic and subconscious that perfectly lovely people who don’t think they have a bias at all actually do but are completely unaware of it; which is why the conversation always makes them uncomfortable.

All marginalized voices are asking is that our work be judged on its merits and values. This business is hard and crazy enough without having to always have that awful voice whispering in the back of your mind it’s because you wrote about a gay man/Latina woman/black man/transwoman.

All due respect, straight white cisgender writers don’t have those concerns. (Although it can be very strongly argued that straight white cisgender women also are in that same boat.)

And now, back to the spice mines.

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