What a Character

I drove home from the book club thinking about how we arrive at decisions.  Why do we do the things we do?  I'm not talking about big, life-changing decisions.  I'm talking about the little decisions, like why do some people wear socks that don't match and how does that fit into the overall scope of their persona.  Mostly, I was trying to figure out this man I saw while I was writing. 

What would possibly inspire a man to wear a coon-skinned cap to a coffee shop?  Otherwise, this man was somewhat normal.  He wore faded jeans with an elastic band, white tennis shoes, and a stable coat.  Not what I would call fashionable, but certainly not weird.  Underneath the carcass on his head, he wore a Bluetooth headset.  Although slightly out of place, the Bluetooth completed the look. 

I started thinking about character development.  How could such a small, albeit furry, gesture speak to the type of man beneath the hat?  I ruled out potential reasons for choosing the hat.  This was not a random act, as in "oh I just grabbed the first thing I saw".  He did not stand before his hat rack choosing between a baseball cap, stocking cap, and a coon-skinned cap.  He did not look like a collector of rare hats.  The decision to wear a coon-skinned cap must be purposeful. 

I searched further for an answer.  Perhaps he went small game hunting and caught his first coon.  The taxidermist was too costly, so he made a hat out of the hide.  Maybe his great-great grandfather bequeathed the dead varmint to him, and in honor of his relative he dons the hat on the last Saturday of the month. 

I guess I will never know the real reason he wore the cap.  I regret the decision not to ask him, but the fashion statement left me speechless.  I later asked a friend of mine who hunts about this situation.  His answer left me unsatisfied, yet maybe it was just that simple.  My friend said, "It's warm."
 

Just Do It

"The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed."

From the moment I read those words, they were seared into my brain as the greatest opening line of any novel I had ever read. For me, the brilliance in the line is not just in it's simplicity, but in the particularly American image it evokes; after all, did you not picture Our Hero chasing the Bad Guy across a dusty land, possibly with a setting sun in the background?

Here's the thing. When this story was first published, if someone said "The Man in Black,", odds are, your first thought was, Johnny Cash. Troubled, sure, but not exactly a villain. And a gunslinger isn't the local lawman; he's a bounty hunter, a gun for hire; and Dirty Harry is now part of our cultural lexicon. You can't tell a hero by his white hat, and suddenly things are a lot more complicated. Our classic Western trope has been turned on its ear in a simple and subtle way. The gunslinger may be chasing the Man in Black, but the reader may not want him to be successful. This is a world colored in shades of gray.

Stephen King wrote "The Gunslinger" in 1982, and I'm sure I first picked up a copy sometime in the late 80s or early 90s, after I had recovered from the psychological trauma of reading "The Shining", and was ready to dip my toe back into King-infested waters. I haven't read it in years, and have always intended to reread it and finish the rest of the books in the series, but just never got around to it. I loved it, though, and I think this one line made me fall in love with the written word in a way that nothing else did. I had read genre books before, but this book was like all genres in one: Western, thriller, romance, fantasy, time travel, science fiction - you name it, it was in there. And to top it all off, King based the whole series upon a poem by Robert Browning.

When I talk to people about doing NaNoWriMo, or about writing in general, the two things I hear most often are that people wish they had the time to write, and that they never know how to start their book. As far as the time thing goes, I think people can always find time to do the things they want to do, if they really want to do them. As to the other, that's never been a problem for me. I don't think that my opening line needs to be the Greatest Sentence in the History of Mankind. Stephen King beat me to it, and now the pressure is off. I'm the writer; this is my story, and only I know how to tell it. I picture my scene, put my fingers on the keyboard, begin at the beginning, and go from there.

Get Up Off of That Thing

All week I had been practicing Newton's Law of Inertia.  Yeup, a body at rest will remain at rest unless acted upon by an outside force.  I did things.  I don't want you to think that I spent my week sitting on the couch watching reruns of the Anna Nicole Smith show and eating Cheetos.  I just didn't write.  I focused on the mundane tasks of everyday life. 

So, when we met on Saturday, I needed to shake the cobwebs of inertia off my brain.  The Third Life Book Club was the "outside force" that got me off my ass and back into the habit of writing.  It was akin to aerobics after not exercising for a week.  The warm up felt good, stretching the neurons in my brain.  As I got into the writing exercise, I felt the rush of the aerobic high.  And after we were done writing, I felt the tenderness of using body parts that hadn't been used in a little while. 

So maybe this week, I'll practice a different law of physics.  Perhaps gravity needs to be challenged?

The Finish Line...sort of

I remember my dad telling me that I never finish anything that I start.  He didn't mean the comment to be offensive, nor was it taken that way.  It was just an observation.  It was made after I went to bar tending school and had just quit a bar tending gig.  I had visions of making fruity Mai Tais for roughnecks at biker bars, and ended up pouring wine at a business class hotel in Novi.  So I quit.  Ever since my dad's comment, I've been keenly aware of the completion of tasks.  My track record has improved.  I finished college while having two kids...but every weight loss plan I've started I've quit.  I purchased a house after years of planning, but I haven't finished putting my pictures on the walls.  My record is better, but there's definitely room for improvement.

Given my record for finishing things, finishing "leg one" of a project felt amazing.  I finished a rough draft of a short children's story.  I had written my daughter a series of bedtime stories when she was away at a fine arts camp a few years ago.  She received a story for each night she was away.  The stories were cute.  They still make me giggle.  I decided to develop those stories and see what happens.  Saturday, I completed the rough draft of one of the stories. 

There is still more to do, but I feel like a large part is done.       

     

A Good Day

So, I've abandoned my prior novel due to structural issues beyond my control, but that's another post for another day. It's okay, though, because I had another idea that I've been kicking around for a few weeks, and I've been plotting it out on my lunch breaks at work. We met today and I got most of my first chapter written. I have most of Chapter Two written in my head, so I think (fingers crossed) it's a good start.

To celebrate, I took my car for an oil change, and myself to the liquor store (they are fortuitously located in the same strip mall). On the way home, I drove by a pizza parlor that opened a couple of weeks ago, trumpeting their coal-fired pizza oven. I read a lot of cooking magazines, and I'd never heard of a restaurant that used a coal oven, so I was intrigued, and slightly suspicious. The parking lot only had a few cars in it, so I stopped inside to grab a menu. And then I did Something New.

The place smelled fantastic, and I decided I needed a pizza right then and there. So I went to the bar, and ordered a pie to go, thinking I would run to a nearby store and come back in 20 minutes for my food. Then the bartender asked if I wanted to have a drink while I waited.

Obviously, people do this all the time, but I do not. I don't have any objection to it; I've just never done it. I've gone to movies solo, and eaten in restaurants by myself, but never just had a drink at a bar alone. Even if I was meeting someone at a bar, I always got a table. But, they had Frankenmuth Dunkel on tap, on special (clearly a sign), and I had had a productive morning, so I cozied up the bar and had a pint. Here's where it gets weird: Then I talked to people.

I'm not an outgoing person, generally. I don't get into conversations with strangers or make friends with the cashiers at the grocery store. I'm friendly and polite, but it doesn't go beyond that. I don't think a stranger is a friend I just haven't met yet; mostly, I assume everyone is a potential serial killer until they prove otherwise. Today, instead of pulling out my nook, or my phone, or a notebook to continue writing, I talked to the people at the bar. Like, actually started conversations. The guy on my right had randomly stopped in, just like me, and I helped him make a pizza selection. The guy on my left had all kinds of food allergies. The owner came over to talk him through the menu, and we had a discussion about flour milling and filtered versus non-filtered water for bread dough, and how to make a decent meatball without using eggs. The bartender and I talked about a recent shipment of cava she had gotten, and how cutely it was packaged, and then we made fun of the table of burly men drinking pitchers of Miller Lite. It was nice.

So, nothing profound, but my random decision to pick up a carry-out menu was unexpectedly productive. Not only did I get some good work done on my novel, I found a great new pizza place with a well-edited beer list, and the folks I talked to gave me some great ideas for some secondary characters I've been struggling with developing. Sometimes, it's the little things that reap the biggest harvests. So, all in all, a good day.

Cheerleading My Way To Krogers

It’s amazing to me the difference a community makes.  Doing something alone has value, to be sure.  However, doing that same thing within a community takes on another dimension of significance.  When I am alone and write, my words and thoughts stop on the page before me.  My friends and family don’t always understand the challenges and triumphs of the process.  It took finding another person who is as engaged and impassioned to realize how meaningful having a support system of other writers is.  They know just what to say to get me over the writing block.  They understand the discipline needed to finish a project.  They appreciate the triumphs of solving a problem.  Whether the writing is poetry, prose, lyrics, or a thesis; the impact of a supportive environment of peers makes is significant.

Joanne approached me with the idea of a “reverse book club” where we would write a book (or other writing project) instead of reading a book.  We would focus on our individual projects, but gain the support of each other.  The idea appealed to me because I’ve been “putzing” around with writing, but didn’t dedicate a specified amount of time toward it.  Much like my exercise routine, if I didn’t do it, nobody would know or care.  Somebody or something needed to keep me honest.  Yeah, I was sold on the idea. 

And so it begins.  The worse-case scenario is that Joanne and I support each other through the rough draft of our respective grocery lists.  Grocery lists that will make you laugh, make you cry, and inspire you to alphabetize your spice rack.  However, I believe that the aforementioned things are just the beginning. 

So...

I've been thinking a lot about our little project today, now that we've fully committed to it. The concept is pretty simple; in order to stave off insanity and malaise, Jen and I have decided to tackle a writing project. Every week, we will meet for a couple of hours to write; whatever we want, however we want. Maybe I will finish one of my NaNo books, or start a new novel, or devise an elaborate new way to script a grocery list. The point is to have a creative outlet, to keep ourselves intellectually stimulated, and to have fun. A reverse book club, if you will, where we will each write a book, rather than read one. Maintaining a blog will hopefully help keep us committed to the project, and we're each going to try to post at least once a week. If others want to join us, that's awesome, but we'll slog on regardless of the headcount.

Joking about our "1/3 life crisis" inspired the name, but I'm finding a deeper meaning in it now. Doing something for yourself that has no external result can seem almost selfish; we won't gain a new skill or lose weight or get a diploma for it. What's left in the space between your work life and your home life? Like a third eye, the writing project is the third life, a place of imagination and creativity. Also, there is coffee.

We hashed the project out today, and I'm excited. Better than that, I'm feeling kind of inspired. I loved my NaNo book concept this year, and completely abandoned it midway through the month, so tomorrow I'm going to dig it out of my hard drive, revisit my plot and rediagram that sucker so that it makes sense.

And if that doesn't work, I can always fall back on the grocery list.

Our Mission

We will meet once per week for two hours to write.  We will write for ourselves, but can write anything (novel, poem, blog, grocery list).  Any one is welcome to join us, no matter where you live.  We're committed to doing this project for one year, and to post regularly on our progress.