Write-a-thon, Day 11: Happy birthday to you? Happy birthday to you? You call that a lyric? Happy birthday to you?

Posted: July 3, 2013 in music, Record reviews, Writing
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Liverwurst 1

Despite the fact that I was entombed in an office in the middle of an industrial wasteland on a stunningly beautiful day, I had a great birthday. My one indulgence at work was french fries with lunch.

My sister called to remind me of several embarrassments that occurred at my third birthday. She wasn’t even there. Do I make fun of her for her various adolescent infatuations with substandard TV and singing stars of the 1970s? I do? Oh.

I spoke with my parents; for once they did not relive the night I was born. I reminded them that the hospital played the theme from Exodus in the delivery room, an old joke that always gets a laugh because I only use it on my birthday and they forget it from one year to the next. Dad was more interested in talking about his cat’s birthday. When my nephew Jared was born, I was replaced as The Prince, but when Dad got his cat last year, Jared became a non-person. At least I was replaced by a human.

Special D and I ate dinner at a neighborhood Greek place, then I opened my gifts in the back yard in the softly glowing twilight, and then we ate ice cream. This was what my strength coach called a “behavior day.” Tomorrow I get back to the business of training to become tall and thin and a successful novelist.

Somehow today I worked on my book and wrote what you’re reading: my 100th post since my first one in November 2010.

Today’s cartoon is one of the oldest writing cartoons I have. My girlfriend Judy gave it to me in 1979. Nobody knows where it came from. Tomorrow you’ll see another side of the Muse. Thanks as always for following along!

Random Pan of the Day
Hans Zimmer, Man of Steel (2013)
If you were as appalled as I was by Man of Steel (the only thing I liked in it was Kevin Costner), you’re probably wondering why I’m giving it any space at all. Zimmer’s score is dark, dreary, obvious, and unrelentingly thunderous. It’s Wagner’s Ring cycle compressed into a spin cycle. It sounds pretty much like the soundtracks of every other science fiction summer blockbuster of the past five years, and there are numerous places where the music could easily branch off into the darker moments of much better scores, including James Horner’s Glory (1989) and Randy Newman’s The Natural (1984).

However! The online version of the soundtrack includes a little number called “Man of Steel (Hans’ Original Sketchbook).” The running time is 28 minutes. This looks like a job for – Yes? No! I direct your attention to the 4-minute stretch that begins at about the 12-minute mark. This I like. To my ears, it’s the perfect musical theme to accompany Superman as he flies to the rescue. You can keep everything else.

The Jesus references in Man of Steel are hard to ignore. They were already present 35 years ago in Superman: The Movie. I see Superman as more of a Moses figure, but I may be biased here.

 

Write-a-thon, Day 10: Hit me with your best plot

Posted: July 2, 2013 in music, Record reviews, Writing
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Noveleeny 1

Sometimes I wonder if I’m ever going to finish my book. I write all the time and yet my forward progress compares unfavorably to that of most slugs. I passed by a tree this evening and saw a slug trail on the bark that was easily eight feet off the ground. That was one ambitious gastropod. As noted railroad guy Robert R. Young once wrote, “The way a person spends his evenings is a part of that thin area between success and failure.”

When I came home from work I put in another 90 minutes, crawled ahead a bit, filled in a gap or two. I can’t resist revisiting earlier chapters and making adjustments, I’d like to think just like a sculptor , though probably the best analogy is to a chiropractor. This is how I work when I write fiction. I take comfort from something I read once about John McPhee:

McPhee has published more than 25 books, even though he rarely writes more than 500 words a day. He once tried tying himself to a chair to force himself to write more, but it didn’t work. He said, “People say to me, ‘Oh, you’re so prolific.’ God, it doesn’t feel like it – nothing like it. But you know, you put an ounce in a bucket each day, you get a quart.”

Writing sometimes feels more like drop-by-drop torture than doling out an ounce. Sometimes an ounce feels like an unattainable body of water. And sometimes the words pour out and you speed ahead, a big rooster tail in your wake. I guess the only thing to do, as many people have said, is to show up for yourself, as I’m doing here for Clarion West. If you write every day, you’ll hit your share of gushers. Then maybe these damn metaphors will stop.

I’m too sexy for my shirt
Tomorrow is the best day of the entire year: my birthday! Your birthday is a pretty good day, but my birthday is the best and it’s about time you acknowledged my total domination of all things birthday. Fortunately for all concerned, I am a generous ruler and I urge you to celebrate along with me on July 3. (I was born an hour and a half before the Fourth – Mom had had enough!)

One more thing: This is my 99th post.

Random Pick of the Day
Jimi Hendrix, Band of Gypsys (1970)
Some records improve over time. This is one. Everything was there when I brought it home from the record store when I was in high school, but it’s only now that I can really appreciate it – or really hear it. “Changes” got the airplay at the time, and deservedly so. But “Message to Love” might be better. You really can’t beat Hendrix’s first three albums, but I keep playing this one.

Write-a-thon, Day 9: Been caught writing

Posted: July 1, 2013 in music, Record reviews, Writing
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More protagonists 1

This morning I went to work on a Monday for the first time in five months. And I spent the whole day at a desk. I could only do one activity and someone else thought it up for me. How do people do this??

This assignment will be over in a week, and then I get back to where I once belonged. Someday my prince will come, and when he does he’ll offer me full-time employment. In the meantime, I have the Clarion West Write-a-thon, where I’m still conjuring a book out of years of reading, supposing, and daydreaming, paragraph by paragraph.

I’m a great believer in the power of the paragraph. I think paragraphs should have a little plot, should lead you into something strange and different, tie the knot in the middle, and at the end do a little surprise, and then prepare you for the next paragraph. (Norman Maclean)

Another hour to the good today, and a little closer to the goal of typing THE END to a paperback novel, like the kind the drugstore sells. I’m not sure exactly how I’m going to get there. These paragraphs keep surprising me!

Random Pick of the Day: 30 Year Anniversary Edition
Red Rockers, Good As Gold (1983)
Red Rockers were efficient. They had two hits, and they put them both on the same album, tracks 1 and 2. Done! These songs are excellent pop treats; “China” was the upbeat one, “Good As Gold” was the serious one. Don’t spoil them by looking up the videos. I doubt many people ever made it all the way from track 3 to track 10. I did it – once!

Write-a-thon, Day 8: Don’t stop ’til you write enough

Posted: June 30, 2013 in music, Record reviews, Writing
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Also by the author 1

I was up until 1:30am in the wake of our party, and then I had to get up relatively early to reassemble the house and garden and take my Little Brother to see Monsters University (which I recommend) and then to lunch at Taco Bell (which I don’t). The temperature topped 90 here in Portland, and Deshawn, who just turned 17, suddenly saw the wisdom of getting a summer job in an ice-cold movie theater.

When I got home late this afternoon I wasn’t exactly at my best. In fact, one of the first things I did, after thanking Special D for all the party clean-up she did, was fall over on the first comfy horizontal surface. But I rallied after dinner and put in my hour.

I may only be getting one workable page each day, but in A Moveable Feast, Hemingway was usually quite happy with one good page. I’m not doing all the drinking he was doing, but the principle is the same. “Write it the way you see it and the hell with it,” the man wrote, and though he’s nowhere near my favorite writer, who am I to argue?

Box score
I believe I’ll only do the box score on Sundays.
– I’ve written for 8 days out of 8
– 9.5 total hours
– Current word total: 19,300 (I was hoping to hit 20,000 by tonight. Not far off!)*
– Here’s the Clarion West Write-a-thon
– Here’s my first post on the Write-a-thon
– Best movie Deshawn and I have seen: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
– Worst: Hop

* 19,300 since I started writing this book, not since I started the Write-a-thon.

My sponsors (all hail):
Karen G. Anderson
Mitch Katz
Laurel Sercombe

Random Pick of the Day
Camper Van Beethoven, Key Lime Pie (1989)
If you could plug in one of the bands that accompanied the Union army during the Civil War, you’d about have Camper Van Beethoven. Key Lime Pie includes the band’s gorgeous cover of ’60s psychedelic classic “Pictures of Matchstick Men” and the bizarro drama of “Jack Ruby.” Camper Van can be hilarious, as in their 1986 masterwork, “Take the Skinheads Bowling.” Co-founder Dave Lowery later formed Cracker, who were a lot less amusing.

Write-a-thon, Day 7: Who’s to blame when parties get out of hand?

Posted: June 30, 2013 in music, Record reviews, Writing
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Dinos 1

Trying to write on the day when you’re holding a twilight garden party is probably not the best idea, but I somehow managed an hour of working on my book. A character I had mentioned in passing appeared again, this time with a betting game he liked to play. I was surprised – I thought he was just a name in the middle of a sentence. I didn’t write much in that hour but I liked what I wrote.

The party turned out just fine. Even the mosquitoes noted the occasion and stayed away, although it could be that we’re in debt to the bat colony next door.

Rejections: Plague or pestilence?
Today’s cartoon looks at the number-one killer of writers: rejection. The elite writers always seem to skip this stage, but the rest of us have to learn acceptance and humility pretty quickly. I had 64 rejections on the day I sold my first short story. I remember that because it’s the number of squares on a chess board. I stopped counting in the mid-1990s, because by then my total had surpassed 500 and it was way too depressing.

I don’t know where I am now, but I do know that the two magazines that have rejected me the most are The New Yorker and Fantasy & Science Fiction. I’m guessing they’re tied at about 50 each. Many of their form rejections came with a “Sorry” scribbled by a human. I take some consolation from that.

How do you survive rejection? Everyone says not to take it personally, but of course you take it personally. What else can you do, alone at your desk, with the vision of your byline in your favorite magazine suddenly gone kerflooey?

Well, you don’t get angry at the puny editor who couldn’t detect your brilliance if they gave him the Hubble Space Telescope. The editor might be myopic, or has maybe seen 15 stories this year with the same plot, or maybe you’re still not good enough. All you can do is send your story off to another place and keep on writing. Yes, I want to be successful. But being successful is beyond my control. The only thing I control is the process of writing. So I keep on writing. It’s taken me years to learn that.

Weird places where I’ve been published
American Window Cleaner
Classic Toy Trains
Computer Games Strategy Plus
Postcard Collector
Rubberstampmadness

Random Pick of the Day
Lords of the New Church, Killer Lords (1985)
You would’ve expected Lords of the New Church to be a vicious punk band, as everyone in it came from a vicious punk band, particularly singer-songwriter Stiv Bators, who started life in The Dead Boys, who made The Ramones look like the cast of Glee.

But Lords of the New Church were nowhere near vicious. Their songs are about freedom, same as punk, and while they are played with urgency and sincerity they are not played with anger or to gross you out. “Dance With Me” is actually danceable, as are their loving covers of Creedence Clearwater’s “Hey Tonight” and The Grass Roots’ “Live for Today” (almost a hit for them), and even “Open Your Eyes,” though its lyrics are straight from the Gang of Four playbook:
Video games train the kids for war
Army chic in high-fashion stores
Law and order’s done their job
Prisons filled while the rich still rob.

This is my Saturday, June 29 post, BTW. Our party got out of hand, by the clock, and I couldn’t get this in until after midnight. I’ll be back this evening. Thanks for following along!

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