Read Me

An Exercise in Dialogue

2005-12-19T19:46:00.000-07:00

...with which I am tremendously awkward.

Emery could recall wanting to club Mort with a wrench ever since he met the future mayor, on his first day as a shophand in Lon Armbruster’s overbooked garage. Mort had apparently dropped by exclusively to inspect and torment Lon’s new hired hand, hoisting his wrinkled slacks and scanning the dim interior until he spotted Emery’s unfamiliar boots protruding from beneath the sheriff’s rusty Taurus. He leaned in under the leprous hood, one eye leering at Emery through a gap between grimy components, and whistled through fleshy lips as if marveling at a new specimen in the zoo. He took in what he could of Emery’s blue overalls and the thick black braid resting on his chest. “That’s some greasemonkey you got there, Armbruster.” Half an hour later, Lon’s half-mast, milky eyes followed Mort out of the shop, still bragging over his shoulder about the mill being in the black.

After Mort drove away, Lon gimped over on his twisted leg, squatted with emphysemic effort and quietly addressed Emery, still blushed with rage, through the Taurus’ flaking, gaping wheel well. Emery thought he was speaking to the floor.

“He don’t mean nothing son, he’s just makin’ himself known. Mort likes to meet new people. He’s runnin’ for mayor next month, probably wants your vote.”

“Some campaign.” Emery yanked the wrench.

It was more than three weeks later when he heard heavy, even steps in the office while Lon was at lunch, but he knew in an instant to whom they belonged. He had his back to the door, rummaging in the red metal tool chest, heard Mort shift his polyester waistline upward and head across the shop floor. He coughed directly behind Emery, choking on solvent fumes.

“Greaser, I’ve got just the job for you.” He pushed a cotton rag aside and put a suede-patched elbow down in its place on the worktable, dangling sausages for fingers.

“I’m sorry, you’ll have to talk to Lon. We’re booked solid this week. We can’t possibly fit another client in.”

“No, this ain’t a car job, kid. How would you like to make a few extra bucks?” Mort wiped his perspiring woodgrain face with the corner of a linen square.

“I’m not interested.” Emery tried to turn away and found Mort’s sweaty paw on his shoulder.

“I can’t imagine somebody like you turnin’ down a chance to do me a favor and get easy drug money. Is it me, kid? You got a problem with Mayor Mort? Oh, I know I’m not the mayor yet, but I’m gonna be here soon, and then it’ll be easy for me to make a truckload of trouble for you. Now, that’s not what you want, a new kid in town, just tryin’ to get along and fit in. Wouldn’t you rather help me out? It’s such a little thing I’m askin’ and it won’t be no hardship for somebody like you.”

Emery turned to gape at Mort, who took the pause for resignation. “I just need you to gather up Mr. Bartlett’s campaign signs around town tonight, after everybody’s turned in, you know the ones. That idiot banker looks like a walrus with his bushy mustache. It’s not fair to the community to post those signs in public. Get ‘em up off the poor peoples’ lawns, out of the parks where the kiddies play. Put them in the bed of that old Dodge pickup of yours and bring them out to the mill, and I’ll have Harvey load them up in the chipper tomorrow morning before anybody notices they’re missin’. Don’t you think you’d enjoy that?” He leaned closer, reeking an unpleasant mix of sauerkraut and his wife’s excessive use of cheap floral fabric softener. “That man’s got no business runnin’ for mayor. Everybody knows he’s a fool, he’ll run our fair town into the ground. I’ll compensate you for your trouble.” Emery rolled his eyes at a grown man trying to make a crime sound like a prank. He picked up a wrench from the worktable, held it loosely at his waist with both hands.

“I think what you’re asking me to do is illegal, Mort. I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can accommodate you.” Emery turned back to the bench, but not before he saw the older man’s grin ease into an unfriendly sneer. He gripped the wrench, but relaxed his hands when he heard Alma Armbruster’s sedate taupe flats bustling through the garage door. She poked her white head into the office, wielding a damp paper sack and scolding, “Lonnie, you forgot your lunch.”

Emery grinned so Mort wouldn’t see how relieved he was. “He’s not here, Mrs. Armbruster, he went across to the diner for lunch.”

“How convenient that he left his salad on the counter,” Alma fussed. “That man can’t live life without three fried meals a day.” Emery refrained from pointing out that Lon could probably make it a lot longer without something fried than he could without four pots of black coffee a day, another of Lon’s habits she was trying to stanch. Luckily, she hadn’t noticed the used filters in the wastebasket. Emery found himself edging away from Mort, who seemed irritated at the interruption, but was obviously concocting a glib and charming speech for Mrs. Armbruster.

“Alma, you look as much like a spring bloom as you ever did.”

She scowled. “Oh can it, Mort. Shouldn’t you be out kissing babies?” and she wheeled around on her brown slip-ons, hibiscus-print skirt flailing. “You have a good afternoon now, Emery.”

Mort glared at Emery and walked swiftly out of the garage.

Begin in the Middle

2005-10-20T23:19:00.000-06:00

1. The barn on the Argyle Ranch burned down the same year the schoolhouse did, and I started one fire and finished the other with nothing but my bare hands.

2. After thirty years' worth of unwanted pets, the fat goose won Avery’s heart by opening the screen door with her beak and waddling into the kitchen, where she promptly ate a spider off the pristine tile floor.

3. The only place around town to cool off is the fountain in the mall, but if the guard on duty is the fat bald man, you’d better be ready to run.

4. Bella chose the circus over Harvard because she hated the way libraries felt like tombs.

5. Mrs. Walton decided she would rather be a rich widow than a bankrupt divorcee, and the next morning she proceeded accordingly.

I could write opening lines forever and never complete anything, because I love the infinite possibility in them. I find it amusing that in so many of the lines I come up with, someone appears to be doing, has done, or is about to do something criminal. And they are invariably the ideas that call out to me to be continued. The point of this exercise was to attempt to draw the reader right into the middle of things with the very first sentence.

Evolution of a Writer: A Very Roundabout Way to Get From There to Here

2005-10-18T19:22:00.000-06:00

A year and some months ago, I spontaneously participated in a well-conceived writing workshop at coffeehouseforwriters.com (useful interactive exercises in an anonymous group format, well worth the minimal fee if you need criticism and encouragement as a hobbyist, but not for professional writers, in my opinion). That six-week session constitutes my entire formal creative writing instruction. Though classic and modern literature were studied and analyzed, and grammar and punctuation duly attended to, at no point in my American public school education do I feel I was ever afforded a course really designed to strengthen my creative writing skills, which is regrettable. I might have been a lot farther along than I am.

Because I had a knack for writing, a vast vocabulary, and excellent reading comprehension (probably all due to an obscene amount of childhood reading), I was an object of suspicion in English classes throughout my school career, and was frequently called on to prove that I was solely responsible for my work (thanks for backing me up, Mom. Your indignation on my behalf was worth the world to me). I edited the Mar Vista High School newspaper, the Sea Breeze, for a year and a half (which completely soured me on journalism, sadly), and gained recognition for my consistently above average performance on the annual district wide writing sample.

By senior year AP English, my writing had become the standard by which most of my classmates’ work was judged. I had an inherent formula for critical essays that made the Misses Suber, Porter, and Schillinger weak in the knees, and during my sophomore year Miss Porter even tried to arrange an internship with the writers of The X Files, one of whom was an acquaintance of hers, which fell through more from my lack of enthusiasm than her faulty connections (and don’t think I don’t kick myself for that now, but when you’re oblivious, there’s not much anybody can do for you until you grow out of it, which in my case didn’t happen until I turned 23).

After high school, I obtained an Associate Degree* in Visual Communications, which encompasses such things as graphic art, marketing, and retail and interior design. However, in my few college courses that involved writing (like Art History and Public Speaking), several of my instructors wrote little notes about my literary style: “this report was such fun to read I forgot I was supposed to be grading it,” and, “it appears to me that you may have picked the wrong major. You should be writing professionally.” among others. I still have those papers. It didn’t occur to me at the time, but those words had far more to do with my destiny than all the mannequin wire and Photoshop tutorials and Faith Popcorn books in the world. I have somehow always been a little slow to develop in the cognizance department, though; probably because a person with her nose permanently buried in a book isn’t thinking useful, progressive thoughts of her own, and self-awareness gets delayed.

After college I was unjustly booted out of the good ol’ Aerospace Museum like a fledgling from the nest, falling into odd jobs and adventures and relationships and scrapes. For some reason during this period of time I just completely stopped writing. I’ve never been much of a diary keeper (so many thoughts become liabilities when committed to paper) and there were countless other things to do, so I didn’t even notice how much I missed writing. I forgot all about the challenge and release and absorption and overall sense of peace and order it brings, not to mention the gratification of how much my friends and family enjoyed what I wrote, and how much it helped me progress as a person. Then came the rearranging of my life by Oscar, not a tyrant but a manipulator, who sweetly demanded that I devote all my time to his many imprudent schemes and inadvertently but effectively put a complete stop to whatever creative processes still smoldered. My intellect virtually stagnated during that time, with insufficient music, very little art, and scarce reading, until finally I couldn’t take anymore. Weary and miserable (though somehow completely ignorant of it), over three years after my parents sold the cab company that was physically and mentally draining them and came home, I accepted a heartfelt invitation to sort out my life from my sister and followed suit. (After a brief, misguided foray to Northern California, of course. When I fled to this old familiar place instead of returning to vibrant San Diego, I told everyone back there that I wanted to spend time with my grandmother and parents while they were still around. I was aware Grandma couldn’t last forever at 91, but how could I have known that both she and Dad would be gone within four years? I still feel incredibly lucky that I came home when I did, even though it may have meant many missed opportunities.)

Finally, finding myself home and safe, and whole and happy again (and spoiled and coddled in the most appalling manner, as is customary), I got some necessary time to stop and think, and for the first time in my life, thoroughly, seriously take stock. Who am I? What do I want to do with my life? What have I done wrong, and how can I avoid making the same mistakes again? I was so relieved to be alive that I should have been content, but once I got back on my feet I found that something was missing. I began to experiment with all the things that once made my life complete. I painted and sketched and played for hours the Kimball piano that had been patiently waiting for me. I read everything I could get my hands on and plundered Evanston’s inadequate library. I looked up the few people who have always somehow made me strive to be greater, some near, some far away, and found them better allies than ever, and grown and changed in remarkable ways. I tentatively moved in a few circles in town, and in the end found none of them worthwhile, so I abandoned them for the far preferable company of family and a few cheerful, understanding friends. I tagged along with my sister, Morgan, on outings with her in-laws, which was natural since she married the son of old family friends. I took in cars and politics with Dad and spent weekend afternoons in Grandma’s sunny room at the Center, teasing and entertaining her. And one mellow fall day, sitting at the card table by the window that overlooks the little mining town I spent nine formative years in, I told her, “I think I want to be a writer.” And she looked me square in the eye, the mild dementia momentarily dominated, and said, “So what are you waiting for?” She always did wield the power to stun me right and proper. I filed and painted her fingernails a pretty melon pink as we chatted about family and analyzed the headlines in the Rock Springs Rocket-Miner. I kissed her goodbye and left her to her large-print Louis L’Amour, and thought about what she said the entire forty-five-minute drive home. I had no answer to her simple question.

Despite the fact that she was the center of my childhood universe, I have not always taken Grandma’s good advice. This time I knew I should. When I got home I cast about online, thinking that something casual and anonymous would be a good place to start, and Google returned coffeehouseforwriters.com. I signed right on and found the stress-free course useful, with many constructive elements, but somehow my writing felt stilted and generic and completely uncreative. There were no blithe and brilliant dialogs, no compelling descriptions; there simply was no flow. I struggled on for a little while afterwards, thumbing through the recommended reading for the course: What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers, by Pamela Painter and Anne Bernays. There were a few quotes in the book that seemed inspiring, but the exercises didn’t stir me and it felt more like homework than the natural, beloved pastime that engrossed me early on in life. I was floundering, doubting, frustrated and discouraged.

And then, like a bolt from the blue, came the answer. I was halfheartedly working one afternoon at City Hall, complaining bitterly about my encumbrances to Lenny, who has a ten-year record of casually lobbing me constructive suggestions that turn out to be absolutely monumental. He sent this instant message: “well you should get a blog.” I sent back, “a what?” He sent me a link to www.blogspot.com, and the rest, as they say, is history. The first month or two I had difficulty thinking of subjects. I had a hard time getting over my embarrassment regarding the vanity of writing about me and my opinions and my observations and my family, as if they were the only important things on earth. But then something happened. I have no idea from whence the inspiration came, but I composed a post titled Trekking, about the Historical Society treks my family and I used to go on when I was very small, when everyone I loved was still alive and my every day was a state of unrecognized bliss and opportunity. Sinking into the memory of those priceless times, I found that the words to convey my impressions came effortlessly. My friends and family went nuts over that post, and for good reason: it moved them. And even though it was such a small thing, and probably only affected the people who lived those precious days with me, somehow my world got right again and the words began to pour out in glorious combinations and with surprising ease. Writing became the same solid, lovely friend it ever was, and I have never looked back.

Now I’m just like you, if you consider yourself a writer. Some days it’s all I can think about. I am constantly scribbling names and notes and eavesdropping on strangers. I daydream (which I have always done compulsively) and become stricken at odd moments during the day with an idea, which often spirals into a full-fledged concept with a definite structure, a beginning and an end and important points along the way, and I see each perception in terms of the literary pattern I used in those celebrated high school essays. And then there are times that blogging is just therapy, an outlet, a rambling way to empty my head of the random impressions and events of the day and see how people react to my experiences, and later I sift through and find valuable literary treasures amid the rubble. Of course I go for days at a time without inspiration or drive, but I sit them out knowing that eventually I’ll open Word on my Vaio and slip into the zone, joyful, eager and content.

Recent reorganization of my overflowing bookcase unearthed the aforementioned exercise book and, flipping through it, I discovered that every single page contained a world of potential I couldn’t wait to explore, and I decided to blog the process. This raises an important issue, however. I don’t think my entries will mean much without the reader knowing the premise of the exercise that inspired them, but I’m reluctant to post the exercises themselves, as they belong to Anne and Pamela. I think I can manage to convey the basis without giving away too much of the educational text of the book, and I’ll post a permanent link to it (and its possible successors) in the sidebar in the event anyone finds him/herself inspired to play along. I may also frequently post the wonderful quotations of famous authors that can be found at the end of each chapter. I can’t describe what an outrageous and novel thing it was when I discovered that, sometime between the day I first cracked this book and now, I became a writer. I know this because suddenly, the words of those authors absolutely ring true for me, and I can’t imagine why they didn’t shake my soul a year ago.

“Generally I’ve found this to be true: I have forced myself to begin writing when I’ve been utterly exhausted, when I’ve felt my soul as thin as a playing card, when nothing has seemed worth enduring for another five minutes… and somehow the activity of writing changes everything.” –Joyce Carol Oates

No words could better describe the state of my literary life right now, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Bear in mind that this blog is an experiment and done in the spirit of enjoyment and personal growth. I invite criticism, comments, and camaraderie.

*Incidentally, that wacky blanket degree has opened quite a few strange doors for me, and I don’t regret the time and money spent to earn it, even though I’m not using it just now and may never again. I had a lot of fun in L.A., sleeping on Larry’s dorm room floor at Pomona so I wouldn’t have to drive back and forth from San Diego twice a week (even though I love the drive, it was a long way to go on not much sleep, and I worked the other five days at the museum), exploring all the downtown marts and museums, visiting Steve at UCLA, harassing Mary Jo’s mom in Fallbrook, and soaking up that great metropolitan vibe that Los Angeles exudes like a perfume.