Cooking the Hook

I have very quietly put the lid on the hot basket of snakes that is my first rough draft. I'm going to sing them to sleep for a few days and lose myself in a book I've wanted to read for some time. "A Prayer for Owen Meany" by John Irving.

When you get to that place where you realize that a pivotal scene is as bad as any network TV crap you've seen a thousand times and has to be hacked out and burned and you knew it when you roughed it out.

While I'm supposed to be thinking about the final chapters of the current book, the bones and nerves of another have been rattling around in my empty head. Not the story so much as the characters. Anxious, they are, that I not leave them in limbo. Again. taking notes.

          They took the stairs down three flights, then a long hallway to the elevators. So far there were no sounds of alarm, no sirens. Anna went directly to the restroom and, finding it empty, pulled Jack inside behind her. His bow tie was undone, the top stud missing from his shirt.  He pulled a paper towel, wet it and wiped Ray’s blood from her forehead.          “You are going to have to get rabies shots, babe.” he said, as she took a stud from the bottom of  the dress shirt and moved it to the top position. “Here, turn around, I can’t tie this looking at you.” He turned and looked into the mirror as she reached over his shoulders and tied the bow tie by feel, her head down. She pressed close against his back and he could feel her pulse, slow and steady, the chill of her body. “Are you okay?” he said watching her fingers blindly but deftly pull the sculpted ribbon of black cloth back to perfection under his chin. No answer. “Anna?” She looked up over his shoulder at his

Do we really remember or do we conjure up the magical past?    Well after dark Bea leaned back in the wet clover and considered the stars which were largely obscured by the yellow wash of the street light. She also considered shooting out that street light. One well placed shooting aggie should do the trick, but she wasn't that good a shot and a miss would probably take out the Republics plate glass window. Mr. Mckinley had enough to worry about. Brucie would come talk to her if he felt like it, stars or no. She was patient.   Since Brucie died, his mother, Audra, had taken to passing out drunk in any number of public places; the grocery store, the lobby of the post office and, just last week, Nell found her laying flat on the sidewalk halfway up Maple avenue, her butt on the high curb and her legs sticking out in the street like a dead goat. Lord only knows how many passersby clucked their tongues and made note that she had gone out with no drawers on.  Nell dragged her back

it was blue day at the book store.

There has to be a word for it. The buzz that you get from popping out a really great scene and the two or three days that you coast on that buzz doing nothing else.

Sometime in the night the sandman sent me someone else's dream, which I will savor and ponder. That- and the clean, fresh air  woke me. I don't even want to try and write it down because that never works. I might fixate on details like the young man's bright blue eyes, red-rimmed with the struggle to not cry, his blondish hair, six months overgrown beyond what must have been something stylish. His loss so clear on his face that I didn't even ask what had become of  his children's mother. An Ikea cafeteria of all places. It's easy to paint with words. Much more difficult to capture the tone and tenor a dream; the dreams that leave you wondering why. They had to have been intended for another so why bother.

Places with "the best kept secret" in front of their names never lasted long and they avoided them. This place was only known as 'the Mill' and didn't even have a listing in the Yellow Pages. Out front, steak and seafood at it's basic best. The bar was a warmly lit island with half of the twelve seats occupied by regulars on any night of the week. On the far side of the bar, the glassed-in dance floor extended out on pilings into the bay and was presided over by a pre-war Wurlitzer with no new music in it since 1965. The place had more than class. It was a time machine and since the past was Anna's realm, Jack let her take him there. The bartender saw them coming in and spread a stack of quarters in a glittering arc on the end of the bar knowing that his tips would more than triple this evening. The man in the black slacks and dress shirt, sleeves rolled casually up his muscled forearms, would seat the striking woman at a table off to the side where t

From a printed synopsis I've been able to shuffle scenes around so things start making sense, see the gaping holes where I've kidded myself with "I'll flesh that out later" and killed a few gems of self-indulgence babbling It's really too raw to call it a rough draft, but I don't know a better word for it. Now the idle traffic light diversion is finding a title. Can you imagine? All this time having no name for a project that's taken up so much mental energy? I used to look at a textile piece in progress and the title would pop out of my mouth without a bead of sweat forming on my brow!

All I need now is one of those giant baseball glove floats. The water has finally warmed up to the point where I can stand in it for a few hours with papers and such spread out on the decking, radio, drinks..all the amenities and I'm not sitting on my ass.  No computer of course, but that's not a terrible thing. I finally printed out a synopsis and spent my time shuffling scenes around and noting which ones needed more work. Lot's of work. I've been foot dragging over this for a while now and it felt good to get it done. There is a glimmer of this going on:  " Saying Goodbye "' PS HOLY SHIT! 230 single spaced pages, 138K words plus forty pages of notes to be added in. It's looking like a rough draft!

The view from my office is not exactly inspirational, but it will do as a place to get things done - mostly in the form of transcribing notes that I've jotted down at every stoplight I come to. What part of the brain is it that comes alive when I am driving on autopilot and listening to the same well-worn playlist on my ancient I-pod? It makes me long for the days of 1.55 per gallon gas. Then I was preoccupied with bitchin' about that too. I haven't been walking as much as I want to. It's getting very hot earlier in the day here and the pool is final warm enough to get into. It's time for a change of routine. I'm dragging my feet over writing key scenes - the ones of heavy conflict, murder and mayhem. A change of scenery would be welcome, but not likely to happen anytime soon.

I've waited a couple of days to write anything about the finale of Mad Men just so that I wouldn't be assassinated by some stalker for spilling any spoilers. Not here, btw. For now, I just want to say how much I loved the opening sequence - Don piloting this muscle car across the salt flats like nothing mattered (it was just dawning on him that it didn't), then him stepping out of the car and peeling off the snoopy flying helmet and the realization that he had bamboozled some fools into thinking he was a race car driver. Of course, he is. From the beginning, it's always been about the car. I watched the show in a celebratory manner, trying to go drink for drink with whoever was on screen drinking. I even watched the encore, another round, I think. Sleep was deep, but never dreamless. For some time now I've been wrestling with the realization that my female main character is weak. It's been tough writing her into things. So much wallpaper. Jack is rich

There are no cobwebs here. Perhaps the only place in the house that's web free. Now that I've learned some trixie things that I can do with Scrivener and DragonSpeak, I've stopped dragging my heels about making sense and order out of some 130 thousand words that have materialized since this time  last year . Notice my new muse, St. Brad...I don't know if he's interested in the endeavor or he's looking down my shirt. I'm not sure I want to see "Fury." I tend to get emotionally involved with rage. I was feeling the need for some 70s color in the book and I found some useful source material on Ebay. This is where I got my cultural news. No TV, no internet. Remembering life before so much technology and connectivity is like spending time on a deserted island. So slow and delicious.

The sign read “the MONKEY BITES”.  Ace sat with his back to the room tearing out single pages from a small bible and eating them, chewing slowly while looking up at the ceiling of his cage as if he was memorizing the passages. Billy, the owner and bartender, said he only ate one or two pages a day – it was not as if he was hungry. Billy always fed Ace every time he fed himself. In fact, he fed the monkey first since he was worried about being poisoned, a fair concern because he treated the cook like dirt.

I came across this yesterday.  It's a theme that has always run through my writing and personal philosophy. I suppose I'll have to learn the process of asking for permission to use quotes from other authors hoping it could be as simple as an email.

I can't just drop in on the thing and visit. I wind up wasting time tinkering. Fixing nail holes with spackle, meanwhile the third story stairs are missing. I have to go there, be there, hang with the people and spend some time before I can really get anything substantive on the page.

Yeah..just look at her face for a second. The shit we used to hear! And yes dear, we listened in. Just for a second to make sure the connection was good. Way back in the day, I was a telephone operator for Ma Bell. It was just like that, right down to the equipment. I could write a book! The premise could go in two directions . Like her, it could easily happen that you accidentally overheard something that you wished to God you hadn't. Shit ensues. It happened to me more than once. And then there was my daily idle fantasy of establishing my own phone company called the ES&D network. That stood for "eat shit and die". A network for the burgeoning legion of creeps who liked being abused over the phone. I believe they have grown up to be fans of E.L. James. The customer would pay fifty bucks a month for the service (a lot back then for a phone) and could only call The Operator who would abuse  him (or the rare her) in a creative and deeply offensive manner

waiting until after midnight, waiting for the furnace to kick on so the sound would cover my movements, the muttering mechanicals breathing warmed air throughout the house, everyone deep into their dreams but me. Thick socks over thin, jeans and sweater pulled on over pajamas, I sat in a chair in the kitchen and pushed my feet into my skates and laced them tight, tight, my high heels, in just enough time to ease the back door open, slip out and close it before the furnace sighed and stilled. the ground was covered with brittle brown grass, frozen hard and unforgiving of the misstep. I picked my way carefully down across the yard to the edge of the lake where the ice had trapped little pockects of air that you wanted to avoid stepping on and cutting with the sound like ripping silk. keeping the blades flat and taking the first steps out onto the black ice..right foot left foot ..tock. tock, tock  then leaning and letting the glide take me further away from the house into deeper silenc

Yes, your eyes do not deceive you, there are two "how to" books in that pile. " The Fire in Fiction " by Donald Maas and the other that I won't even  mention because, one chapter in, I'm already disappointed. Oh well, out of a heap like this I'm glad the first stinker is non-fiction. " My writing has been stalled by a variety of life circumstances " is complete bullshit and a handy statement of fact. When the fever is on me, I write, no matter where or when. Any writer will tell the same thing. In this little slack sail period I've been reading. Didion and Maas are great inspirations from two very different points on the compass, but when I started reading "Slouching Towards Bethlehem" I did what I always do, check the first date of publication. In this case, 1961. It helps me to fix the author in her time to get a better feel for the writing. I got to wondering if Joan Didion could even find work these days. I don't thi

I kept my promise to Day One and hit the trek on the Greenway. It was sunny and cold, cold, but I was prepared. I should have noticed that I was only perceiving cold cold. It was not the weather, but me. Illness underway. Layered, gloved, earbuds, my shuffle making love to my ears, I set out in hopes of reclaiming a little lost stamina. Just before I locked the car I thought  'pen and paper'. Ok, you never know. I've been dithering about a big scene, the bad guy take down, and gave it two seconds of thought before I had to negotiate with the dogs. Guy on two leads being dragged by two blind looking, big, strong, Man Ray dogs that mystical shade of gray. They wanted to know what I was thinking. This part of the trail attracts a lot of dog walkers and, lately, the dogs are all giving me the stink-eye. Friendly people with what are probably friendly dogs have to haul them up short on their leashes because they all want to investigate me. Why not? I live with three cats.