Category: Winchester penrose

You know that saying “the hurrieder I go the behinder I get?” Howzabout “the more I think about it, the confusider I get…”

As you’ll recall from the Saga of Me, I’d been waiting and waiting for first my lovely wife, and then her lovely sister, and then, well, ANYONE, to roll out some valid feedback I could use on the novel I’ve just rewritten.

Well, after much haranging and ballyhooing on my part, my lovely wife, who had already begun reading it without my haranging, finished it. Despite her quite justifiable frustration with the author, she felt the book made it all the way to page 70 without falling apart.

For one of my books, that’s epic.

Upon our return from the recent drive-the-kid-to-Oregon trip, what waits upon our doorstep but notes from the lovely sister-in-law.

She read it no less than 4 (spelled f-o-u-r is you skeptical), yes, four times. Four!

She really liked it! Pointed out some themes and metaphors that I have to nod and smile knowingly to rather than say what I actually thought, which is “I did?”

Her notes are concise and well organized, and just plain breathtaking.

She liked the book.

She liked the book enough to actually want to read the upcoming final rewrite.

Over the moon. Gobsmacked. Thunderstruck. That’s me.

With Lovely Sister’s tempering of the notes given by Lovely Wife, I believe I now see a way forward that will make everyone  happy, and that will produce a good and marketable novel we can all enjoy.

Four times!

Over the moon!

So, when I lived in Sacramento, I had to move from my apartment because the guy upstairs would be pounding on the floor at, like, 2:00 in the morning, totally interrupting my trombone practice… Ba-dump-bump

My wife, puppy, and I just returned to southern California from having helped our youngest daughter move in for her fourth year of university in central Oregon.

My lovely wife and I had a long and lovely chat about a number of things, including the structure of the book.

Say, when you were a kid, do you remember telling your parents what you wanted to be when you grew up? Ballerina, heart surgeon, astronaut, CPA…

When I got out of school, my dad asked me what I was going to do.

School didn’t end well for me. I was too much of a knucklehead to link the coursework I was taking in radio and television with getting a job. Internships? You mean actually work during the summer? No thank you, buddy. Not for me!

Idiot.

So, when I got out of college, I could have, and often was, correctly and completely considered to be Count Clueless.

My dad asked me what I wanted to do, and I said, “you know, I think I’d like to get into acting.”

My mom said “That’s my boy!” and offered a firm handshake and a round of applause.

My dad said “Acting. Huh. You should get a day job, and once you have a day job, don’t quit your day job.”

Anyway, in downtown Salem, Oregon, at the corner of Liberty and State on Saturday evening, my daughter, lovely wife, puppy, and I sat down on the sidewalk patio of a very pleasant little place.

We brought the puppy along on this extended road trip because we have three dogs. The other guys are so old and doddery that the puppy, being 75% chow hound, would gobble down all of the food we left out before they even knew we’d left.

Anyway, across the street from us on this busy downtown street corner on a warm and sultry Saturday night, cooled by the gentle breeze wafting in off the Willamette River, and where you have to speak loudly because yahoos in their jacked-up pickup trucks roar down State Street trying to impress girls, or guys, but ultimately only themselves, stood this maybe 14 year-old girl.

She quietly switched on her battery-powered amplified and plugged in a pale-blue electric guitar that was nearly as tall as she, set a microphone in her portable mike stand, and proceeded to belt out her version of a seemingly endless set of tunes.

The glorious chords from her guitar echoed up and down the canyon of building fronts and off the sides of the passing pickup trucks and deep down inside our eardrums with equal indifference. And then she began to sing…

“Buuuuuuusted flat in Baton…………… Rouge, as ragged……….as……….my jeans,” she worked her own stylized way through Janis Joplin’s Me and Bobby McGee (or, as Martin Mull called it, You and Bobby McGoo), in a brave contralto that was full of oomph and intensity but totally off key, and with a timing that would challenge even the most avant garde jazz musician.

She. Was. Awful. And she had a huuuuuuge repertoire of songs, some current, some classics, some her own, that were nearly indistinguishable from one another.

Seated about ten feet away, in one of those little beach kind of folding chairs that are super low to the ground but have a nice little canvas backrest, sat what we finally figured out had to be her mom, watching this 14-year-old girl’s performance intently and applauding after every dragged out, whiny tune.

The restaurant’s service was slow, and the wall o’ sound was agonizing, but there was something kinda cool about it.

This kid told her parents “I don’t want to be an astronaut or a CPA. I wanna be a blues singer.”

Instead of Dad patently saying “you’ll make better tips as a waitress,” or maybe he did, Mom said “let’s try it!”

Because you think something you created is pretty good is not reason enough to put it on the street corner to sell. This is my fear about my work. Well, maybe benignly selling it is okay, but trying it out on the rest of the world without their permission might be a stretch.

Still, though, her parents supported her in fulfilling her dream. Good luck with that.

Anyway, that’s not the point of this post, not by a long shot.

My wife, who has forgiven me and allowed me out of the dog house (much to the relief of the dogs), told me a number of amazingly helpful things about the book, and about my writing itself.

For example, she pointed out that this friendly, folksy style in which I write was, well, friendly and folksy, and had an appeal that I should be exploiting by writing articles in. It. I think I got lost in the sub-clauses, there. All those commas…

To the book, which is far and away the best thing I’ve written, she said it’s a great book until about page 70 (of 135), at which it loses its thread a little and becomes more like a movie script than a novel.

And, she said, you’re telling the wrong story.

See, the book is about a grimoire, a book of magical spells, which is created by a 10th century prince for the purpose of wooing a 10th century princess. Sadly, he dies before he can give it to her, but his spirit takes up residence inside the grimoire. It takes a thousand years, but the prince, still trapped inside the book, maneuvers and manipulates 5 men, (a sawdust manikin, a lovesick seventeen-year high-school junior, and three sorcerers desperately seeking to own the book), into creating a sawdust manikin of the princess, so that he can profess his love to her. It’s a tricky and adventurous path, but he eventually succeeds. Sadly, things go awry once the job is done.

That sounds fun, doesn’t it? Yeah! It’s just not the story I wrote.

My story is about the sawdust manikin and the high-schooler trying to outwit and escape the three sorcerers. When the five ultimately do meet, the prince, hidden in the book (surprise, surprise), connives them into creating a sawdust the manikin princess. Just in writing it down, it seems kind of disjointed.

You’re a writer. You can see the difference, yes? I couldn’t when I was writing it. I had teased around the idea of having the prince recreate the princess for a long time, and ultimately decided to bite the bull by the tail and put it in.

And that, my friend, that turned out to be the point of the story.

My wife said that this was the good story I should write.

So, here I sit, like that kid boldly and badly belting out blues tunes to an indifferent world, actively telling the wrong tale.

Maybe I shouldna fired my wife as my editor…

You’re a writer – you know how it is. Writing is the best thing in the world! New ideas, new chapters, maybe new characters! It’s like taking that Shelby Cobra onto the Pacific Coast Highway with the top down… unless it’s on blocks in the driveway.

So, the Saga of Me continues. The lovely wife and editor did in fact read the book. Got all the way through with some insightful notes and suggestions. More suggestions followed after page 51, which is the point at which I harangued about how long it was taking.

But the notes are good and very helpful. Another month under the hood and the thing’ll be ready to submit for real. For real.

Under the hood, which is fortunate, for I find myself rather living in the garage. You know, temporarily. It’ll blow over. It’s all good. Everything’s fine. And I seem to find myself with a lot of time to myself here at home.

Ups and downs. Rises and falls. That’s the way it works, right? I’ve been terribly blessed so far. Sometimes storms brew up, right? Even the noblest ship on the sea can expect a right blow once in awhile, eh?

I’m not really living in the garage. But never have I felt such coldness in a summer.

The thing is, the thing is this: you ARE a writer, and you know what joy there is in tapping out exactly the right words. You know that rush and sense of oneness as you make the literary pieces fit in place.

That’s the thing, isn’t it? But writing is such a solitary business.

And, the real pain of it is that those who don’t write really don’t understand, do they?

Well, I’ve got the book back and much to do to get it ready to submit, so I’ll be rejoining the hunt, the race, the chase… there’s a correct word, I’m sure.

From the garage.

I’ve done some stupid things in my time – once I was offered a job at Jet Propulsion Laboratories. JPL! But I turned it down. No brains…

So if you know the Saga of Me, you know that I’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting for my lovely wife to read my book and give me some feedback. Waiting and waiting.

I got it in my head last week – Thursday morning at 2:34, to be exact – that I can wait no more.

This book is my dream – it’s The One. I know it instinctively.

And I just can’t toil away in the day-t0-day endlessly waiting for my darling editor to get around to helping me make it come true.

So I fired her.

Read it if you want, I’m moving on .

She counters with “my goal was to finish it this weekend.”

Ah.

Oh.

Oops.

No brains.

The impossible has happened, and I don’t want to jinx it, but, hey, right?

The girl of my dreams. The very love of my life. She’s on Page 29 – yes, 29! of my 135-page manuscript.

What do you mean that sounds short? You’re short!

Anyway, the point is… SHE’S READING IT!!!

And she’s lika-likin’ it!

You’re a writer, you know this feeling. It’s like pins and needles and empty-headed confidence and bravado and you want to go hide in the closet until it’s over.

The thing is, well, it’s been in the “reading phase” for almost two weeks. So that hiding in the closet thing is right out.

But, hey! She’s reading it, and I am soooooooo happy! I can hardly wait to see what she thinks of the chapter that starts on page 29.

I once worked with a wonderful lady, from the lovely town of Oxnard, who used to say “OMGeezies,” when she thought something worthy. Kind of violates the acronym, kinda.

Here’s a piece of useless trivia: the first time OMG was used? 1917! An English admiral wrote it in a letter to Winston Churchill, First Sea Lord at the time. And, to make sure it was understood, the admiral wrote “(Oh My God)” after it.

Watch this space… more to come!

OMGeezies!!!

When I was a young man, I was swept away by the movie Mutiny on the Bounty. Not the Mel Gibson one – ew, no. Not the Clark Gable one – I mean, come on, I’m not THAT old.

No, no, it was Marlon Brando as Fletcher Christian and Trevor Howard as the salty Cap’n Bligh. Oh, a good pair those two made.

I tell you this in secret, because it’s kind of embarrassing: I spent the bulk of my days the summer that movie came out way up high in a neighborhood castor bean tree.

I climbed up as high as I could go, and the wind would blow, and the tree would rock, and the leaves would sigh like the open sea, and the sky was so blue, and I went a’sailin’ away towards romance and high adventure in the Great South Sea.

Stupid story. Sadly true.

Anyway, the book Fragile Paradise, written by Glynn Christian, a great, great grandson of Fletcher Christian, revealed that Fletcher Christian bellowed “I am in hell with you, sir!” at Captain Bligh.

“I am in HELL with you, sir!”

Mel Gibson kind of squeaks it out in his version of the story. Fortunately, Brando was spared the opportunity as the book was published after his version on Bounty debuted.

Why are we poring over all this old film rubbish and nonsense, you ask? Because we took my globetrotting daughter to LAX this morning, and drove not once, but twice through Malibu.

I know, Malibu, blah blah blah. But it IS beautiful, and the weather was epically gorgeous, and we spotted not one, but three container ships in the inside channel, laden deep and headed north. Three!

Not one was the converted collier Bethia, purchased by the Royal Navy, and renamed Bounty. But then again, neither seemed to be undergoing a mutiny. See? Never change a ship’s name!

So, our drive up the coast, from Santa Monica, beneath the rugged Pacific Palisades, through Malibu-Barbie Malibu, up into Ventura County, past the ginormous Mugu Rock, and around thorny Point Mugu felt an awful lot like driving alongside the Great South Sea.

Duh. Same ocean.

My book remains unread by that certain someone, the very love of my life, whilst her sister, the one who read it twice and said I had done an amazing job of creating a splendid fairytale, has yet to send me her notes.

Every day, when I get home from work, I rush to the mailbox because maybe today, today is the one. Nope. Just bills and junk mail.

I am in hell with you, sir! Or, well, madame…

I’m terrible at transitions, you know, moving characters from scene to scene. My wife the editor tells me so all the time. Maybe I’m bad at them because I just plain hate writing them.

You’re a writer, you know how it is. There’s always something your just not good at writing, and typing it out is always a painful chore.

For me, it’s the laborious task of getting characters from here to there so that they can meet up with each other. It takes so long and is so hard to not write a transition scene that is empty-headed and shallow because really it’s not a scene at all. It’s just movement.

I read a piece of e-fiction this week that has a great story. You could tell the author was having a blast.

But to get to the actual story, you had to wade through pages of uninteresting setup, with throw-away characters and dull, half-hearted descriptions. You could so easily tell that the author didn’t enjoy writing that part, but felt it had to be in the book. You can hear him whispering “don’t worry, the good parts are really good!”

You and I are writing in a time much like that of William Shakespeare. In his day, there were no mega-publishers. Just small-time patrons to help you sell your work.

Most of the publishing and the selling was done by you.

And won’t you now take a look at the online marketplace for books? Are you not writing posts on your blog to sell your book?

Is it not the same, Iago?

I mention that because of this e-fiction I read.

This author published his book, hoping you’d see past the heartless parts and enjoy what he really wanted you to read.

Like dancing with a wooden leg, I ask you to watch my arms and my torso and my good leg and enjoy the show. Wooden leg? Oh, just ignore that.

I suck so completely at writing transition scenes that my wife the editor told me to stop trying.

“You’re no good at them, and they ruin the flow of the story.”

So, I quit writing transition scenes, and my story is muuuuuuch better. The new novel, which is waiting to be read by a certain my-wife-the-editor, has none. Zero.

He braved the dark and frightening alleyway, his heart in his throat, finally breathing a sigh of deep relief as he entered the warm, cheerful pub. See? No long description. Just get him in there!

Better yet, ignore the transition altogether and start the scene with the character in the pub. He can explain the transition in dialog: “Oh, I came down the alleyway – a dark and frightening bit of roadwork was that!”

No transition. No hard, stupid scene. Bye bye.

If it’s painful for you to write, you can believe that it’s painful for your reader, too.

I enjoyed the e-fiction, and so entirely hope this author writes another.

And, although I haven’t said it before, I truly do thank you from the very bottom of my heart for following me!

Okay, so The Sequel is gelling right now – pieces are flowing into place while I sit and do other stuff.

You’re a writer – does that happen to you? You have a scene playing out in your head. Eventually, after you’ve played with it for a while, you get around to writing it down.

While that’s going on, the structure of the new story slowly drifts into place, and, son of a biscuit, color-me-surprised if it doesn’t somehow make use of those dopey little scenes you’ve been jotting down.

The mind is a fabulous thing, isn’t it?

In between scenes, I sometimes get a little nervous that I’m going dull. You know, same-o-same-o, so-so writing, using the same, lame words.

To challenge myself, I’ll play dumb word games, like Word Cookies. The words aren’t hard, but there are a lot of them, and it reminds me that, duh, I know a lot of words.

My personal challenge is to give this game three words it doesn’t know in each round. To this game’s credit, it has a huuuuge dictionary, so it recognizes most of my words, even though it doesn’t play them in the game.

And that’s how it goes in the hamster wheel of my mind whilst I wait and wait for my book to be read.