Short Assignments

Photo: Bird by Bird, front cover, from Google.com

Well, the ol' writing hasn't gone well lately, and a harsh bout of strep hasn't helped, so we're back to the basics.  I've gone over some good ideas from Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird--which I reviewed here--and I've taken some advice from a writer who's been nice enough to answer some questions for me.  (That would be Dr. Julie Holland, author of Weekends at Bellevue, which I reviewed here, on Goodreads, and here, on this blog.  I'll be posting the Q & A between us, broken down in a few posts, coming soon.  I thank her again for doing that for me.  Her tips about writing were helpful and often eye-opening.  I hope she comes out with another memoir soon.  Buy Weekends at Bellevue.  On another side note, she is unbelievably fast responding to emails and interviews.  I've taken longer to respond to a direct question, with the person standing right in front of me.)

But I digress.  Helpful hints.  Back to basics.  Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird.  By the way, if you haven't read Bird by Bird, you should; if you've ever considered writing anything at anytime, for any reason, you have to read this.  Often.  I've re-read it now many times; I always find something new in it.  It's funny; it's helpful; it's well-written.  I think I'm finding new things in it at different times because I need different types of help at different times.  (And I always need help.)

So the helpful hint today that I'm going with, via Bird by Bird and Anne Lamott, is: short assignments.  Too often I'm aghast at all the ideas I have, all the writing I want to do.  All the novels, the short stories, the articles, the memoir pieces, all the chapters and characters--they come at me fast and furious, and lately they've buried me.  I'm paralyzed.  Too much going on.  And having the living room wallpaper taken down, the walls painted, the carpet ripped up, the floors sanded and treated three times each, living in the small and cluttered den downstairs because I can't walk on the treated floors for 8 hours, paying all these guys, and an overwhelming time with mountains of work to do at and for the job--and throw in everyone's birthdays all in the last week, plus the swollen throat and ears because of the strep--oh my lord, who wouldn't be snowballed?  Oh yeah, there's been that, too.

I've been going a little nuts and stir crazy over here.

So, short assignments.  Narrow it down.  Break it down.  Do something small, but productive.  So, today I'll work on just one scene from...(the wheel spins)...The Gravediggers.  Okay, no problem.  I have to choose something, because there's revamping another novel in 3rd person to do yet, and...okay, whatever, block it out and work on just one scene from The Gravediggers.  Which scene?  I don't know...there are so many.  Okay, let's....let's start revamping the novel in 3rd person instead, and see where that goes.  I think it'll go in a great direction that I'm very excited about, so...okay, let's do that.  Revamping a work into the 3rd person.

Wish me luck!!!  Oh, wait.  Which scene from that?  Easy choice--the first one.  Okay.  Now wish me luck.

Happy Holidays 2011

This time of year finds me working hard on The Gravediggers and Cursing the Darkness, anticipating the arrival of "Hide the Weird" in the upcoming Winter 2012 issue of Space and Time Magazine, and waiting to sign a contract for a very short nonfiction piece I just sold a few days ago.  A few other stories are out pounding the internet pavement.  Reading, writing, taking care of the new house and hangin' with my better half.  What's better than that?

I hope this time of year finds you well.  Happy holidays, all, and happy New Year!!!

A History of Vampires in New England--Thomas D'Agostino

photo: Book cover from Goodreads.

I'm only the third person to rate this book on all of Goodreads...Just sayin'.  For more of my book reviews, my book list, and other nerdy book-related things, please visit my Goodreads site here.

The previous two reviewers gave this book an average of two stars.  I don't see how, as it never pertains to be something it isn't.  It's a book that reviews, summarizes and, frankly, rehashes information that's already out there, but puts it all in one place, and does so with a website's writing feel to it.  (If anything, the real complaint is the $17 tag Borders had put on it.)

Of particular interest to me were the stories of the vampires I'm incorporating into my novel--or trilogy, or whatever--tentatively titled THE GRAVEDIGGERS.  These, mostly, are the stories of Sarah Tillinghast, Nellie Vaughn and Mercy Brown, all woven into one.  (Nellie Vaughn being more or less a mistaken Mercy Brown, but with the now infamous epitaph on her gravestone; and I focus more on Stukeley Tillinghast, Sarah's father.)  And there's a lot to say about them, specifically because the author comes from my neck of the woods, and so is able to write about his visits to some of the places in his narratives.  I've been to some of these places myself, so it was interesting to see pictures of places I have already been to, and to compare our impressions and thoughts.  Essentially, this book was useful to me as a sort of place to gather all my notes--notes I didn't even have to write.  Not that I don't have a whole three-subject notebook of them anyway, as well as many journals and emails to myself.

A criticism would be that this book mostly cites just two others, one of which--Michael Bell's FOOD FOR THE DEAD--is vastly superior.  This one gives just the facts, ma'am, while Bell's gives that, and extensive first-person investigation, more thorough research, and even some slightly comical interviews.  Unless you're writing a novel--or trilogy, or whatever--about this sort of thing, and you only want one book, get Bell's.  But if you have the coin, spring for this one, too.  It's thinner and different and not as well-written or extensive as Bell's, but I think it useful, anyway.  Particularly good were the Introduction, the history of TB, and the description of "Life, Death and Superstition in Early New England," especially for my work.

Check out The Keep near Mercy Brown's grave, but do so at dusk, on a cold February day, like I did--and heed all due respect at this and other such places.  The crypt (or The Keep, as it's called) is really, really, creepy, even more so than the stories, or graves, or anything else.  D'Agostino's book has pics of inside of it, which are invaluable for my work because you can't get inside The Keep anymore--it's bolted shut.

It's Been Awhile

Whoa, it's been a little while!  The writing and research of The Gravediggers have been going so well that, with the job to pay The Man and the possibility of my moving into a bigger and better house also taking up my time, something had to give, and blogging was it.  I'm at the part in the ms. now where I had to know a little bit about one of my main characters, and as this is historical fiction--my first foray into this genre--I had to research a bit, and get it right.  I needed something about the real guy--but not too much!--that I could grab on to, and I got it.  Several pictures (with my new phone, thank you very much), several internet articles, and a couple of actual book chapters later, I've got my man.  I've got his two main residences, his movin' up in the world, his education background, and a bit of his mindset and reputation.  Not too bad, huh?  Things going well at the job and on the house search as well.

How about you, guys?

Quick Jots

I completed a rough sketch of the three acts of The Gravediggers, and have been working hard at just writing, and not thinking too much.  Thinking too much, researching too much--such things are purposeful distractions and resistances.  So I've just been writing--chapters, fragments, sketches, etc.  But you need to structure all that sometime, so that's what I've done today, after celebrating Mother's Day with my better half and her mother.

I started reading Geraldine Brooks's Year of Wonders, about Eyam and the Plague.  I wanted to see what she famously did there, so I didn't do badly what she's already done so well.  The writing is exceptional, though a little Hallmark Hall of Fame for me.  But she deserves her accolades, and her work with the Wall Street Journal certainly earned her the Pulitzer.

I've surprised myself by not downloading and using the Dragon voice software.  So far, haven't needed it.  But I know where in this work, and in other things, I will.

I've tidied up the office a bit, bringing some stuff to redeem at Newbury Comics (for $12, not bad) and brought the rest to Salvation Army.  I've decided to bring many of my books to my workplace and store them there, sort of start a decent-sized library.  That'll clear up a lot of space in the office, as will donating the bed.

Writers write.  So far I'm still plugging away.  This work hasn't been as easy as Cursing the Darkness was.  Then again, none of them have been since.  But I'm told they're much better.

"Hurly Gurdy Man" sounds creepy as hell to me.  I can't use it in the book, of course, but it always brings up dark images for me that will go into the book.  Hard to believe it's a flower power song.  I like the verse that George Harrison supposedly offered, which were never put into the official song:

When the truth gets buried deep
Beneath a thousand years sleep
Time demands a turnaround
And once again the truth is found...

Now that ain't flower power.  Another stanza that isn't, that is in the song:

Histories of ages past
Unenlightened shadows cast
Down through all eternity
The crying of humanity

'Tis then when the hurdy gurdy man
Comes singing songs of love
Then when the hurdy gurdy man
Comes singing songs of love...

My question is this: When we're at our weakest, our most defenseless, how do we know those "songs" are truly of love?  What if the hurdy gurdy man was as Hamlet's thought of his father's ghost, a demon in disguise, using our sadness against us to damn us?

That's a writer's mind at work.  Yup, that's how I roll.

One-Sentence Summaries

To further become focused on my writing, it made sense to me this morning (after reading an article in Writer's Digest's "Write Your Novel in Thirty Days issue) to type up one-sentence summaries of the novel I'm currently working on.  Then, while I was at it, I wrote one-sentence summaries for a few other novels currently gestating in the ole noggin as well.  This is more challenging than you might think, but ultimately it's necessary.  Think of it as a thesis statement for an essay or paper: If you don't know what you're writing toward--or even what you're writing about--how can you expect yourself to write it?  You have to know what you're doing; to an extent, you have to also know where you're going.

So, though they may not be perfectly formed yet, here are my one-sentence summaries for a few novels.  Brief notes or explanations may follow each one.  Please feel free to post a comment or send me an email about any thoughts you may have about any of these.  I look forward to your ideas!  And while you're at it, why not do the same for your own writing?  (This would work for any type of writing, and for any length.)

One sentence summary:

The Gravediggers

Fears and bias surrounding an outbreak of TB in 1890s Exeter, Rhode Island, hide the scourge of a true vampire in the town and surrounding area.  [May be combined with the Plague in 1665-6 Eyam, England and AIDS in early 1980s America, and a small RI town today.]  This could be a series, as each of those ideas could be separate novels.

One sentence summary:

Untitled Concentration Camp Novel

A young boy with no artistic talent must either learn one or successfully fake it in order to survive his internment in a Nazi concentration camp whose purpose is to show the world how “well” Germany treats its Jews.

One sentence summary:

Apocalypse

Small groups of people in Kansas City, MO, Warwick, RI, and other major cities throughout the world must survive wars and natural disasters as they attempt to completely revamp what they thought was their “society.”  This includes attitudes about patriotism, religion, and the Bible itself.  This could be a series as well, as each of the last three things could constitute its own novel.

One sentence summary:

The Observer

After a breakdown nobody knew he had, one man must suppress the beliefs of his existence that held him together in order to re-establish himself in the mundane process of everyday American living.

5 a.m.

That's the time that I have successfully gotten up this week, every weekday, and written more for The Gravediggers for an hour before I showered, ate, and went to work.  In that time, I've managed to finish three chapters--drafts, edits, etc.--and I've been on-time to work each day as an added benefit.

Actually, there have been many more benefits!  By writing every morning between 5 and 6:15 or so, I've had the quiet that I don't get during any other time of the day.  I also get my thoughts during my waking-up moments, which are often the best and most creative ones I get all day.  I feel a sense of peace and contentment I don't get when I write any other time of day; I'm by myself, doing my own thing.  Just me and the keys.  It's rekindled the utter joy I used to feel writing fiction.

The reason I decided at first to get up even earlier than usual--I have a get up very early kind of job--is that I was run-down by the sheer number of words, edits, papers and corrections I have to do at my job.  When I got home, I couldn't bear the thought of doing any of my own, so I had to wait for the weekends.  So I decided that I would try to wake up early and get my words done BEFORE I was completely turned-off to writing by everyone else's writing.

And what happened?  By writing in the morning and then going to work, I got enough writing done so that I was excited about doing even more when I got back.  I knew exactly what I wanted to work on, so I was already invested and focused, already driven to get more words done--even though I was still dealing with the same volume of material at my job.  It just didn't bother me as much when I got back.  I was already working in my head all day what I wanted to do when I got back.

When I couldn't garner the energy to work any more when I got home (yesterday), I got the business end done: I got my recent rejections in order; I jotted down where I'd sent things, where I should send things, which responses I'd gotten back, which conferences were coming up...

The bottom line: I refused to allow myself the excuse anymore that I just didn't have time.  I found the time.  And this is coming from an insomniac, from someone who went to sleep between midnight and 2 a.m. usually, got up around 6 a.m. and did the day.  Turns out, waking up at 5 a.m. also makes you more tired, so you go to sleep from 10 pm to midnight instead, and then do it all over again.

I followed Steven Pressfield's advice (in his tidy The War of Art) and I overcame that particular Resistance.  Check the book out.  Maybe it'll inspire you, too.  Believe me, if I can change something, like getting up even earlier, then you can, too.

Successful Chapters & More

Well, it's been a little while.  Truth is, I haven't been here because I've been writing!  (And watching baseball games.)  I'm two or three chapters into THE GRAVEDIGGERS, and things are going well.  It's exciting and a little bit freaky.  Its success has seeped into a few other things in my life, such as:

--An online friend asked me how I've been able to write, as the job that pays The Man gives me all the reading, words and editing I'd never want to ask for.  At first, I responded, "Well, vacation helps."  Then, as she is of the same profession, I mentioned that you just have to sit down when you have the time, no matter when that is.  She writes when she's waiting at a doctor's, or at soccer practice, etc.  (She'd write early in the morning, like 5 a.m., but that's when she does her running.  "Oh," I said.  I have a friend of the same profession who hits the gym by then.  I'd rather be writing.  We're all a little bit crazy.)  I have a new wish that I can get up at 5 a.m. and write more, but we'll see how THAT goes.  It makes sense to do this, as tons of other writers who were of the same profession have in the past, not to mention busy mothers and people of other professions.  The bottom line: If reading too many pages, editing too many things, and just looking at too many words during the job make me not want to write when I get home, then I have to write before I see those things.  Right?

--Steven Pressfield's The War of Art is a small, tidy helper against what he calls Resistance.  And it all makes a lot of sense, and sounds more like me than I do.  Highly recommended for writers who aren't writing as much as they want to be.

--Examples of resistance that I have offered in this blog recently that I didn't know were examples of resistance: clearing the desk; organizing the office; not being able to use a laptop a lot; reading too much; blogging and e-socializing too much...Turns out, writing is done by just writing.  I'm typing this on a severely cluttered desk with nowhere near the same anxiety I used to have.  I'll bet you have a ton of things you think are actual problems, but are in fact just examples of resistance.

--Which reminds me: I have to do more writing now before the game comes on, and then Easter dinner.  See?  Blogging is an example of resistance, too.

   Happy Holidays!

Tricks to Write Consistently

I used to write very consistently, every day.  Of course, that was before I had a rewarding, but draining, job; this was also before I had anything closely resembling a life, as well.  Now I have both, and the caveat to that, which in a million years I never would have foreseen, is that I don't do as much writing anymore.  Sitting down and getting into a writing zone now takes more time than the actual writing itself used to.  I just can't focus; I can't shut my mind down on my day, or things coming up, etc. and focus on what I need to write.

If you've read this blog for awhile, you saw entries on all of my ideas about viruses, vampires (of course; though in my defense, I started The Gravediggers in the mid-90s, before it actually became something that everyone and their brother wrote), concentration camps, WW2, and all of the other things I've mentioned as ideas.  I have a million of them, and I start things, and then I get excited about something else, or my career rears its head, or I simply lose focus on writing in general--and everything just peters out.  All of those great ideas, all of that energy and positive feeling...just...drift away.

Reading a lot used to help.  Now, all of that reading time is all I've got for creative time, so all reading, no writing.  Reading used to help writing--until about two years ago.  Then a few months ago, I started taking pictures that tied into my writing, and that helped a lot...for a few months.  Now that I've taken all the pictures I can take, that process is of little help now.  These days, it's all photos, no writing.

Then, a few days ago, I realized that I hadn't written any poems in a long time.  While I would never say I was a gifted poet--or even a good one--I can say that writing poems would focus me, ground me into whatever I was writing at the time.  The poems themselves didn't have to correlate with whatever project I was working on at the time--though they sometimes did--but the very process of writing them apparently would hone my focus to such a degree that I was able to work on my longer creations.  Somehow, as so often happens to hyper and unfocused people like me, I stopped doing that, got sidetracked, and never went back.

So now I will work on poems again, and although Frost and Dickinson don't need to worry about their posterity, maybe, just maybe, some present-day novelists should be looking over their shoulders and not ignoring the dustcloud that just kicked up a long, long way back, just ahead of the horizon behind them.  Wish me luck, everyone, and if you have any tricks to help me along, I'll gladly listen.

Exeter, 1888

Okay, so this is a (very) rough draft of Chapter One (maybe) of The Gravediggers, the title of which comes from a famous Nietzsche quote, about God being dead, which I'll cite for you when I feel like it.  Well, okay, here it is:

“…Do we hear nothing as yet of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God?  Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition?  Gods, too, decompose…”
      --Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science



You can look up the rest, if you're so inclined.  Just put in keywords NIETZSCHE, GRAVEDIGGERS, THE MADMAN  and GOD IS DEAD and you'll see the entire passage.  And he didn't mean literally that God was dead, but more or less meant that all man-made foundations were inherently nothingness, just a creation to protect us from the horror of the void.  Such umbrella terms include Society, Propriety, Family Values (he didn't mention that one, but he would today; love that one); such thought patterns include "Because I was raised that way," "Because that's what ---- do(es)," and, yes, organized religion.  Anything that ignores the fact that every single thought and action is the sole responsibility of the individual.  In other words, it is Bad Faith to say, "I believe so because that's what it says in the Bible," but it is good faith to say, "I believe so because I have chosen to believe that that's what it says in the Bible."  And I imagine that Good Faith and Bad Faith would be Nietzschean umbrella terms (traditional morality) as well.  But what're you gonna do?

I knew my philosophy degree would come in handy someday.  So, anyway, here's the fragment/draft/chapter.  I won't be including too many (if any more at all) of these, because why would an agent want to represent me if my stuff is free on the internet?  So here you are, and sorry for the above sidetrack---

Exeter, Rhode Island.  April 21st, 1888

Snuffy Stukeley would not have dug up his children had it not been for his neighbors.  Adam Wilcox, Mark Reynolds, John Whitford, the Mooneys, the Gardners, all of them wanted him to dig up his daughters.  They men of each family were with him now, in the burial plot behind his backyard, about twenty feet into the woods.  Their breath a mist in front of their mouths, they all dug at the softening earth of Anna’s, his youngest daughter’s, grave.  The rest of the men did not show that they heard his whimpers as they dug.  Shovel and spade sifted through the now-black soil.  The men grunted.

Edwin Mooney stood and stretched his back, his hands to both hips.  The oldest of them all, at forty-three, he looked at the darkening sky, the slow moving clouds, and wonders at the blasphemy of this.  Melissa Mooney, his eldest daughter—now nineteen herself, the same age as Snuffy’s daughter, Sarah, had been when she’d died—had wanted him to help dig, to help burn the bodies, if necessary.

“Sarah will come for me next!” she often wailed.  “Do you want me to die, too?”

Mary, his wife, had also asked him to help with the bodies.  “At least,” she said to him in bed one night, under flickering candlelight, “it will quiet Missy down.”  Mary had always been logical, he knew.  Very strong.  When he was uncertain, which was often, she was not.

He dug.

“I want it to be recorded somewhere that I want no part of this,” Dr. Harold Metcalf intoned, standing on the backyard doorstep of Snuffy’s home.  “This is a violence against God and good decency.”

“As you’ve been sayin’, Doctor Metcalf,” gasped Mark Reynolds between swings of the spade into the earth.  “As you’ve been sayin’.”

“Jus’ wait, Doctor Metcalf,” Adam Wilcox grunted, heaving shovelfuls of dirt to his left, into the woods behind Snuffy’s plot.  “Wait.  We’ll show you.  One of them’s to blame.  We’ll find ’er for ya, sure enough.”

“It’s just the Consumption, I tell you.”  Metcalf was angry and horrified.  The small town of Exeter, Rhode Island, was turned on its ear, and being led by the likes of Wilcox and Whitford.  Though not as base as Stukeley, they were worse because they were ignorant.  Stukeley, barely more than an idiot—though a great farmer, Metcalf had to admit—wasn’t expected to know any better.  But these men could.  And Reynolds and Gardner, too.  Otherwise good men led by their wives and daughters.  And superstition.

“Tell that to my Hannah,” whimpered Snuffy.  “Tell that to ’er after she’s done tellin’ you how Sarah’s been sittin’ on ’er, and drainin’ ’er.  Tell that to my wife, who says the same.”

Metcalf went to him and placed a hand on one of Snuffy’s shoulders.  Snuffy had stopped digging and stood there, sobbing.

“It’s the fever, Snuffy.  The starvation.  They’re just repeating what they’ve heard.  They’re seeing what’s been told to them.”

Snuffy turned then, and looked at him.  Bloodshot eyes leaked tears that ran his stubbled, cratered cheeks.  “Anna said the same!  Anna said the same and I didn’t listen to ’er!”

Doctor Metcalf removed his hand and stood back.  The others stopped their work.

“I didn’t listen to ’er and look what happened!  Six of ’em gone!  Six!  And now my son’s struck, and my wife!  And Hannah!”  Snuffy slid a soiled and shriven coatsleeve over his flowing eyes, then the back of a gloved hand over his running nose.

“I got six more, countin’ Hannah and my son.  I’m gonna lose my only son,” he wailed.  “He’s due to be married in a month.  I lose him, I lose my name.  Haven’t I lost enough?”

Metcalf calmed himself and offered a hand as he stepped forward.  “Snuffy, I’m sorry.  We’re all sorry that you—”

Stukeley batted away his hand.  “Haven’t I lost enough, now?”

The men stood around them, silent.  After a moment, Mary, his family’s young servant from Wakefield, appeared in the back doorway, clutching a shawl around her neck, sobbing.

Edwin Mooney, still rubbing his lower back, said: “What is it, child?”

She sniffled and hiccupped but finally got it out.  “It’s Hannah.  She’s—she’s gone!”

Snuffy gave Metcalf a last hard, yet weary, stare, then turned, walked slowly past the small headstones in the plot behind his yard, and entered his home.

“Jus’ leave yer good doctor’s hands in yer pockets,” drawled Wilcox.  “Let us work at it.  We’ll find the Devil yet.”

Metcalf, who thought of Wilcox as a common criminal, ignored him.

An hour later, Reynolds’ spade struck the coffin, damaging it.  He swore.  Carefully they slid strong ropes beneath the wood; then, four to a side, with Snuffy at the head and Dr. Metcalf—against his own judgment—at the foot, they hoisted it out and placed it carefully on the rocky ground.  The men offered the crowbar to Snuffy, but he couldn’t do it, so finally Adam Wilcox pried the top of the thin, wooden coffin.  Soon the nails gave, and they lifted it up.  Reynolds, Mooney and Gardner shown their lights.

Anna Stukeley lay in a state of advanced decomposition.  Strands of light brown hair lay scattered upon the red and pink pillow, upon her skull and on both shoulders.  Flecks of browning skin were attached still to the right jawbone and cheekbone, both otherwise the skeleton was bare.  The white and pink dress and black shoes they had buried her in had faded somewhat, and her skeletal hands lay, crossed, upon her chest.  She’d been dead for two years, and she’d obviously never risen.

Reynolds swore again.  The other men murmured as Snuffy covered his face and sobbed.  The doctor walked him into his house while the others replaced the coffin and began to fill in the hole.

When finished, they agreed, they would return home and meet again at eleven to work on the next grave.