If I could write like this, I would.
Please Let Me Wonder, by Larry Ellis.
“Excuse me.”
She stopped, order pad in one hand, pen in the other, and looked at me. As did the rest of my family. It was the good-bye breakfast before they left for home hundreds of miles away. Some were sleepy, some were chirpy. They were only slightly interested in what I had to say to our server.
“Do I detect an accent?” I said.
Now I had everyone’s attention, though that’s not what I was going for.
*
I’m somewhat of an expert on languages. In addition to my native English, I speak Mandarin. A little. Enough to order a glass of wine in Nanjing and answer any question with Wǒ bù míngbái nǐ zài shuō shénme, which, roughly translated means, I don’t understand what you’re saying. Also, Nǎlǐ shì měiguó dàshǐ guǎn? Meaning, Where is the American embassy? Essential phrases in a foreign land.
Forty years ago I took two years of Latin. Veni. Vidi. Vici. Ten years before that I was living in Texas and Spanish was part of the daily curriculum. I could count to twenty and say good day to Senora Folks, my teacher in the third grade. A few years ago I picked up a Spanish language CD for a dollar at a street fair and I’ve managed to get through the first three lessons. Si, senor.
*
“Me?” the server asked.
“Maybe eastern European,” I said.
*
The company I work for used to have a catered Christmas dinner at one of the hotels in Charleston, and most of the catering staff had, what seemed to me, a Russian accent. So I asked one of the servers. Yes, she answered, Russian. So being the sophisticated multi-lingual guy that I am, I asked her to teach me how to say thank you. After several tries, I learned Spasibo. The following year, I had learned a few more Russian phrases, including dobry y vecher, or Good evening. She was appreciative of my efforts, but I think the rest of the staff found me annoying. Bez raznitsy. Whatever.
I must confess that I used Google Translate for that last phrase. Have you checked out Google Translate? Go do it. Right now. I’ll wait.
(Whistling in the background.)
Pretty cool, huh.
By now you recognize that I’m quite a cosmopolitan guy, even though I live in a very small town in a backwoods, hillbilly state. I really should start drinking martinis. Shaken, of course.
*
“Where are you from?” I asked.
I waited for the answer that would leave my family impressed by my ability to identify ethnic origins by accents. Ukraine. Maybe Kazakhstan. Could be Belarus.
“I’m from Red House,” she said.
Oops.
Red House is basically two hollers over from the restaurant, to put it in the West Virginia vernacular.
Oh, she had an accent. A Mountaineer accent. How I mistook that for eastern European I’ll never know. Not much you can say after a faux pas like that. At least the family had a good laugh and went home with a story to tell.
Faux pas. That’s French. French should be easy to learn.
Oui.
Ironic footnote to yesterday’s post about the Galaxy 2000. The building, the old Kroger, was demolished years ago. The site is now home to medical office buildings, including my dermatologist. So where I used to dance under the flashing lights, two weeks ago I sat under a blue light to eradicate pre-cancerous skin cells on head. I should have boogied on down.
“Few things linger longer or become more indwelling than that feeling of both completion and emptiness when a great book ends. That the book accompanies the reader forever from that day forward is part of literature’s profligate generosity.”
Pat Conroy, from My Reading Life
“Hey, do you guys think I’m an unsalted pretzel?”
“I could eat.”
“No. Am I like bland and a safe snacking choice? I was just wondering if that’s what people think of me.”
“Uh, I don’t think people think of you.”
“Well, I want people to think I’m spicy and fun and dangerous.”
“Like a bullet made of chorizo?”
“Kind of.”
“Where are you going?”
“Oh, I have to renew a library book. It’s not due today, but I don’t want to cut it too close.”
“Spicy.”
This is a scene from the animated television series, Bob’s Burgers. I’d never heard of the show, but yesterday when driving back from Logan, the show’s creator, Loren Bouchard, was interviewed by Chris Kimball on America’s Test Kitchen radio show.
It’s gold, Jerry. Gold.
See the clip from Bob’s Burgers here.
It’s snowing.
Again.
Are you kidding?
Soft little snowflakes that make me think of something nice.
That’s a lie.
It’s snowing and I’m cold.
The end.
AT FIFTEEN MINUTES PAST TEN the next morning, the news site flashed a red banner across the top of the screen announcing a plane crash in Texas. He clicked the link and saw that it was a commuter flight from Houston to Dallas. He would not have been shocked if it had been their flight. That’s how life worked, it seemed.
Witnesses reported a giant fireball. He looked at his disfigured left hand and touched the side of his face and felt the scars. He knew the agony they would have to endure if there were survivors, but that was unlikely.
If you want to know a man, know his pain.
It was one of dozens of quotes he had heard in his freshman literature class at the University of Tennessee, but the only one that stuck with him. For obvious reasons.
At the time, the physical pain he had endured was still fresh and still issuing reminders that his body had been greatly traumatized. During the months of recovery he had put on the brave face and carried a resolute disposition. And then the real pain began. The isolation. The guilt that never quite seemed to leave him.
If you want to know a man, know his pain.
He closed the internet browser.
He was supposed to be compiling demographic data to be used in establishing the housing ratios for the Renaissance project, but his thoughts were elsewhere. Loss. Grief. Dani. His own desolation.
He opened a new document and closed his eyes as he let his emotions speak to him.
He felt the rhythm first. A slow, three-four time. His body swayed slightly, his eyes still closed. Then music. The chords. On the down beat.
He opened his eyes, his fingers on the computer keyboard.
At first, random words: Pain. Loneliness. Her smile. Her eyes.
Then they began to find order.
Bring me back
from the dark of night,
Let me feel
love in your light.
He wished he had his guitar. He wrote a chord progression, not sure if it was really what he wanted. A melody started to form in his head and he wrote to it.
More random thoughts filled the page. He wrote quickly, trying to capture the mood without losing the music. A chorus. More words altered the mood and he heard the change in the tune that would comprise the bridge. There were typos all over the page but he didn’t dare interrupt the flow. More words. The last verse. And the chorus again.
He read from beginning to end. He closed his eyes and let it sink in.
Then again from the beginning, this time singing softly.
Then he scrolled back to the top of the page and wrote: Bring Me Back, by Trevor Larson.
It had taken him twenty-two minutes.
When was the last time you did this?
On my way home this evening, I drove by one of those little roadside parks and saw this kid, a girl maybe 15 or 16, giving it all she had on a swing, oblivious to everything around her. She was in her own world, and you could tell.
It made me want to go home and do the same.
There’s something about a swing. You can take it nice and easy, like me in the video, or you can go scary high. Either way, it just seems to make all the troubles of the day fade away. Maybe it’s the weightless feeling you get at the apex. Maybe it’s the centrifugal force that gives you a rush. Maybe it’s just fun.
I’m an old dude, but I’m here to testifty that swinging is good for any body, any time, any age.
As Al Davis might have said, “Just swing, baby.”
I said recently, “I just found out how the story of Trevor Larson ends.”
I was referring to the novel I’ve been working on for the past year. Faithful reader Lee Anne asked, “Do you not begin with an ending in mind? I thought writers had a whole outline of the story complete before starting the words. How do you know when you’re finished?”
Many of you won’t be interested in this discussion, but some of my internet friends are writers or are contemplating writing a novel, so I offer this as a case study.
I’ve heard it said that novel writers are either “pansters” or “plotters”. The panster being one who writes by the seat of the pants with little or no thought to plot or where the story is going. The plotter, of course, plots out the story from beginning to end. I have a hard time understanding how you could be a panster and create a coherent novel that meets the expectations of the mainstream reader. Many writers succesfuly take this approach, but it would be hard for me to do without wandering down every side street available. So I guess I’m a plotter.
In fact, here’s what I did with the Trevor Larson story. I had an idea. A “what if” scenario. That’s the seed. So I think about the scenario and and whether or not there’s enough meat in the concept around which to build a novel.
If the answer is yes, then I think about character arc. In the case of Trevor, he encounters challenges early in the story. And the challenges keep coming. The arc is completed when he learns how to handle the challenges. When the novel ends, he has to be a changed person, for better or worse. Again, this is early in the concept stage.
Then I think in terms of three acts and the arc becomes more defined. My target word count is 80,000 words and for me, I average around 4,000 words a chapter. That would be 20 chapters, more or less. But if I’m thinking three acts, that would be roughly 7 chapters per act. Then I think in even more detail about the story and and will try to write a few sentences about what will happen in each chapter.
For me, that’s pretty serious plotting.
Except…
Things happen along the way. Characters that I thought would be minor rise up into a major role. Dani, for example. Characters that I thought would be significant fall away or even die. In Trevor’s story, it’s Jackson Little. And the characters go off and do something that wasn’t foreseen. I didn’t know Trevor was going to be such a gifted songwriter when the story began, but that ends up being a key plot device.
That’s the fun mess of writing. The characters come alive and tell me what’s going on.
Yes, Lee Anne, I had an idea of how the story was going to end, but the last couple of chapters were agonizing. My novels are low-key so there’s no final heoric scene or anything like that. I have to see how relationships develop and how and where to stop the story that gives the reader a sense of satisfaction. It’s pretty much where I thought it would be, just not exactly. But all along, it was entirely possible that Trevor could have gone off script. He has a habit of doing that. That’s what makes him interesting.
Joseph E Bird 