Search

Joseph E Bird

Let's talk about reading, writing and the arts.

Open Search
Tag

novel

Check Engine

Joe H. used to say he didn’t have a creative bone in his body.  That was far from the truth. Consider this paragraph from an early draft of his unfinished novel, Test Drives.

“If Laura Lanham were equipped with a “check engine” light, perhaps someone she meets today would see something besides her silky dark hair, her high cheek bones, her cover-girl skin, and the way her jeans and her Alderson-Broaddus College sweatshirt seem to celebrate every swell and toss of Laura’s lithe body as it ripples beneath them. But that won’t happen today or any other day soon. For want of a simple warning light, Laura is allowed to roam the streets of Alban City in a large, gasoline-powered battering ram as if everything is fine, when it’s not.  In the year 2003 humans have not yet done for themselves what they have done for their cars, so the check engine light in Laura’s well-designed automobile will afford her car a level of protection Laura does not enjoy.” — copyright 2003, Joseph Higginbotham

Check Engine Light.  What a metaphor.

I look back on his writings and remember what I saw back then. A lot of understated but biting satire.  Characters that would be right at home in Twin Peaks.  I also see the autobiography in his characters.  Some in this one, some in that one.  Put it all together and you see everything that Joe wrestled with in his life.

No more.  He fought his good fight. He will be missed.

 

0

Joseph Higginbotham

From the Charleston Gazette-Mail is this:

Joseph Higginbotham, 62, of St. Albans, died Friday, June 2, 2017. If you are a family member or know the whereabouts of any family member of Mr. Higginbotham, please contact Bartlett-Chapman Funeral Home, St. Albans (304) 727-4325.

Joe was a friend for many years.

We had so much in common; we had very little in common.

At one time we shared a common faith.
And he taught me.
He taught me about theology.
About church history.
About caring for other people.
He was a great mentor, teacher, friend.

Things changed.
I don’t remember how or why.
We were all young and when you’re young,
life is constantly changing.
He moved away.

After many years, he became
whatever happened to?
I found him living in Lexington.
He had married.
He had divorced.
He had changed.

Our views of faith had diverged.
He no longer believed
as I believed.

Nonetheless, our friendship persevered.
I was writing a novel.
So was he.
And he taught me.
He taught me about story structure.
About voice.
About having something to say.

He moved back to St. Albans.
I was involved in community development.
He had been involved in Lexington.
And he taught me.
He taught me about the dynamics of community growth.
About seeing things from a different perspective.
About looking beneath the surface.

He was always doing that.
He had a great analytical mind.
He could provide so much insight.
He could be funny.
He could be maddening.
But he would always be your friend.

In his last years, we had diverged too far.
Conversations became more stilted.
So we just quit trying.
Maybe we shouldn’t have.
He deserves more than an obituary
that says nothing.

While we wait,
I’ll tell you about
Joseph Higginbotham.

 

 

 

 

8

This is no good at all.

Ever say that about your work? Consider this:

Self-doubt can be an ally. This is because it serves as an indicator of aspiration. It reflects love, love of something we dream of doing, and desire, desire to do it. If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), “Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?” chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.

Steven Pressfield

1

Appalachian Spring

Larry Ellis posted this over at Home Economics. It’s a great description of where we live, in the heart of Appalachia.

At the end a character is introduced and then left standing there. The story of Jack Sampson is told in Larry’s award-winning novel, In the Forest of the Night.
_________________________________________________________

His ancestors settled in the central Appalachians without a thought for aesthetics. They came not for the beauty or value of this place, but only to escape from servitude and second-class citizenship in those cities to the north where their own forebears had landed as indentured servants. This new land to the south was steep, overgrown and not particularly amenable to the plow, but it was away from those engines of commerce and social institutions that had benefitted those to whom they were beholden and had just as certainly kept them a class away from full participation in the new nation’s economy.

The weather here was no more inviting than the soil. The winters were long and damp and made of days and weeks of snow so deep that travel was nearly impossible and in the summers the heat and humidity and insects were relentless. No one who had the luxury of considering the comforts a location might afford would have chosen to live here. There were no beautiful waterfronts and no rolling, thousand-acre spreads of black soil. All of life was closed in to narrow valleys and closed off to the flow of goods and information common to the new cities on the coast.

Those who came to escape the cities paid no heed to the hardships the land and the weather imposed, but lived their short lives together on subsistence farms, learning how to hunt and what to gather in the vast forests that surrounded their villages.

The generations brought change, of course. When those in the north learned that this land was rich in coal, oil and gas, industry came to Appalachia and the tiny villages became small towns and small cities and some made enough money to move themselves back into the mainstreams of commerce and society in the cities of the eastern plain..

It was, and is, an unromantic place. There are no ancient gardens or master artworks on display. There are no homes of famous artists or statesmen and no classic myth to fill the air with mystery.

But in the spring, something happens that no one who settled here saw coming and no one who has not lived here knows of or could even imagine. There are days in April when the scent of the blossoms all over the forests – the tulip poplar flowers, the lilac buds, the honeysuckle, the white blooms of the apple and plum trees, the new buds of the sycamore and the birch – all are lifted from the mountainsides in the softest breezes and the new warmth of the spring sun dries the stones on the edges of the creeks and branches and sends into the air cleansing mineral aromas and the trees on every hillside unfold in new green and soft rains fall and the forest floor thaws and releases the essence of the earth into the air. There are a thousand varieties of tiny plants that sprout under the canopy of the forest in these days. Only the Shawnee knew them. Only the Shawnee had given them names. They are tender and live only for days and in those days they release their own perfume, each a different, subtle taste. The clouds part and the grey of winter disappears and the sky is clear and high above the hawks soar and wheel on the gentle, warm thermals. The sun glistens on the rivers and those rivers run for those few days green and blue like the purest emeralds and sapphires. It is a season all its own, hidden from those who give names to such things, and in those few days the romance of this rugged place is enough to fill the longings of men’s souls and to ignite in their hearts even deeper longings.

It was in this time, in the middle of these days, that Jack Sampson fell in love.

Copyright 2017, Larry Ellis

2

The garage.

I recently attended the Design and Equipment Expo in Charleston and met a local photographer, Emily Shafer, who specializes in industrial photography. She has a creative sensibility and transforms ordinary images from the blue collar world in to works of art. Like a set of greasy Craftsman tools.

The next day I walked across the street to the mall and saw signs outside the Sears store announcing its closing. I went in and browsed a little, but there wasn’t much left. Empty shelves where the Craftsman tools used to be. With all of that, I couldn’t help but think of a scene I had written in my novel, Heather Girl.

Heather is traveling to Texas to see her father, who has just been paroled. She stops for gas in Montgomery, Alabama and has car trouble. A man and his son are watching (and eventually offer to help). As she’s trying to figure out what the problem is, she remembers learning about cars in her father’s garage.

She turned the key and the engine turned slowly a couple of times but didn’t start. She turned the key again. Same thing. And again.

She popped the latch on the hood and got out of the car. The boy looked up, then looked away. She opened the hood and looked at the battery.

Always start with the battery.

Her father’s voice. What was it now, thirty years ago?

Easiest thing to check, easiest thing to fix.

The smells of the garage came back to her. Warm, oily smells. There was a gas heater on the back wall and in the winter, there was always a hint of unburned fumes, but most of the time it was tools and parts and greasy rags that made the garage feel heavy and comfortable. The same garage that now is more of a storage locker. Her father’s tools went with him when her parents moved across town, then were sold when they moved south to escape the cold winters of the mountains. She and Robert bought the family home.  Robert took over the garage as his own workshop, complete with a table saw and other carpentry tools. His tools are still there, but are never used. Boxes of boys’ forgotten toys and yard sale finds make it nearly impossible to even see them. She keeps the lawnmower by the door, along with a few garden tools, and every spring makes the same promise that she’ll never keep to throw out the junk and put some order to the mess.

Despite everything, she found it hard not to think back to when the garage was truly a place for parking the family car, and for the weekend project of rebuilding the brakes or cleaning the carburetor or putting in a new radiator. Her dad had a natural genius for such things, part of the reason he was a good engineer. She loved being around him when he was working. It was when he seemed most content. Anything could be fixed.

She learned by watching, and when it became apparent that her brother Wayne had more interest in music than cars, she became her father’s tomboy grease monkey. She never learned enough to really diagnose a car’s problem, but she could change the oil, put in new spark plugs, and even tinker with the timing. She also learned why he enjoyed that kind of work so much, aside from the peace of the garage. Parts that didn’t work properly were thrown out, never to be seen again. Repair manuals didn’t lie. And the tools were always faithful.

If she had one of those old crescent wrenches, maybe the big one that had been used so much that the brand imprinted on the handle had worn away, she could tighten the nuts on the battery terminal. Though she knew that wasn’t the cause of the problem. She looked at the engine and tugged at the battery cables. They seemed tight. Not much corrosion. More than likely the battery was dead.

copyright 2017, joseph e bird

6

Writer’s Log – You think you know your characters?

I’ve been writing about Heather for a couple of months now.  You remember Heather, the woman with the two boys, living alone now that they’re out of the house. She studied Avery’s photographs in the coffee shop until she learned that her father was being let out of prison.  I thought I knew her, too.

But when she leaves for Texas to get her father settled in with her brother, she takes a detour to stop and see her ex-husband three states away.  I didn’t know she was going to do that until she started driving. And on the way there, she reveals a little something about herself that I didn’t know. Something a little disturbing.

How can I not know these things?  She’s an invention of my imagination.

There are fiction writing gurus who will tell you to plan your characters meticulously, to know their history, their families, their personalities, their moral standings, even which toothpaste they prefer. I can see the advantage to writing that way. There is less likelihood that your character will do something, well, out of character. These same gurus will also advise you to allow for the possibility that your character might surprise you along the way.

In my previous work, I’ve tried to outline my characters as much as possible. With Heather, as well as the other characters in my story, I’m completely winging it. It’s kind of like I’m along for the ride. What better way to get to know Heather than to spend three days in the car with her?  So, yeah, I was surprised at what I learned.

Then there’s her ex-husband.  I had some thoughts about what he might be like.  Some thoughts about why they weren’t together anymore.  But Heather hasn’t really told me anything about all of that yet, not even in the four hours it took to get to Charlotte.

It wasn’t until they were face to face that I started to see some things.

The front door opened when she was halfway up the sidewalk.

“I’ll be damned.”

He was wearing jeans and a white t-shirt and looked like he hadn’t shaved for a few days. His once-blonde hair was mostly dark brown now with just a little gray around the temples. It was long and unruly and made her smile. He was aging very well.

“Hi, Robert.”

“And out of sky she fell, like an autumn leaf floating on a cool October breeze, my beautiful Heather Girl.”

He was off the porch and had wrapped his arms around her before she made it to the steps.

“It’s so good to see you.”

His voice was almost a whisper, but not quite. A true whisper would have been out of place, maybe a little threatening, a normal voice would have lost the sincerity. It was the perfect intonation, the kind of thing that came natural to Robert Scott. She had no choice but to believe his words.

And so on.

Robert is as much of a surprise as Heather.  I’m glad I didn’t plan these guys out. I really think it would have stifled the creativity.  All of this may be a complete train wreck before it’s through, but I sure am having fun writing it.  Which for me, is the whole point.

5

American Pastoral

“I have to go write my review,” I said.

“Why do you have to write a review?” she asked.

“I don’t have to write a review.”

And then I realized that, yes, I have to. Not that anybody really cares what I, an overfed, long-haired leaping gnome, thinks about a book that’s almost 20 years old. Still, I need to get this out of my system. Let’s call it writer’s therapy.

As I said before, I can’t think of anybody in my circle of friends and family to whom I would recommend this book.  It’s just too much…of everything. And yet, I’m glad I read it. It was good exercise.

“The Swede.”

As if to answer who the book is about, the first sentence leaves no doubt.

It’s about Seymour Levov, aka The Swede, and his seemingly ideal American family set in the time of the Vietnam War. The pivotal event: his daughter blows up a post office as a protest to the war and a man is killed. The daughter goes on the run.

This plot line is slowly dripped (more slowly than my father’s decrepit coffee maker) as the author tells us everything about everybody that dares make an appearance in the novel.

Warning: Never volunteer to be a character in a Philip Roth story. He knows all and tells all.

And this is why I’m glad I read the book. It was one heckuva an exercise in character development. Layer after layer after layer.  After layer, after layer, after layer.  After layer, after layer, after layer, with enough hints at a story to keep you interested. Like the daughter has been missing for five years. And then, three-quarters into the book, he finds her.  Ok, we know the characters pretty well, so now the story is going to pick up.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Everytime something is about to happen, we get more dense paragraphs of exposition. Layer, after layer, after layer.

Then there’s the character Marcia Umanoff, a militant non-conformist whose duty in life is to make people uncomfortable. She’s a thinker and disdains simpletons. She’ll do anything to get under your skin. An elitist. Her actions in the novel are irritating, yet the perfect foil to the perfect world of the perfect Seymour Levov. I’m not giving away much to tell you that his world is not as perfect as it seems. Marcia Umanoff represents reality.

So here comes Joe Bird, a simple man (with a simple name) taking on a highly-acclaimed Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Because he concludes that the book will not be in his top ten of all time, an elitist might conclude that the allegory and symbolism and sheer depth of the narrative might be too much for such a simple man. The elitist may be right.

Page 413: “These deep thinkers were the only people he could not stand to be around for long, these people who’d never manufactured anything or seen anything manufactured, who did not know what things were made of or how a company worked, who, aside from a house or a car, had never sold anything and didn’t know how to sell anything, who’d never hired a worker, fired a worker, trained a worker, been fleeced by a worker – people who knew nothing of the intricacies or the risks of building a business or running a factory but who nonetheless imagined that they knew everything worth knowing.”

Yeah. It’s like that.

 

 

2

The Long Shadow of Hope

Founding member of the Shelton College Review, Andrew Spradling, has just published a new novel, The Long Shadow of Hope.  Here’s my review:

Football, I think it’s fair to say, is primal. Speed and strength and aggressive ferocity matter. Coaches like to talk about game plans and strategy, but nine times out of ten, the faster, stronger players win. And make no mistake, winning is everything. There may be talk of building character and lessons learned in losing, but such subtleties are just that – talk. It’s a man’s game, in every sense of the archaic phrase.

So it is with Andrew Spradling’s novel, The Long Shadow of Hope.

His prologue paints the scene. If you’ve ever watched a college football pre-game show, you’ve seen it. The fans, the cheerleaders, the tailgating – and the players who still display a naive enthusiasm for a multi-billion dollar business that masquerades as a game.

Spradling’s book is a behind-the-scenes look into that world. There’s no Rudy who sticks with the game against all odds. There’s no underdog team battling for a championship. It’s a story of how selfishness and greed can ruin lives and it’s told with the same direct, unflinching fierceness that is on full display on Saturday afternoons every fall.

In Long Shadow, story is everything. It’s pretty clear who the good guys and bad guys are. In fact, Chap Roberts is one of the more despicable characters I’ve met in a long time and he has little time for inner reflection. And the men in Long Shadow, being the primal sorts that they are, are susceptible to the lure of illicit relationships and their encounters are described with direct clarity. Things are happening, surprises are brewing, and there are more twists in the story than the road up Lookout Mountain.

Like a good football game, you don’t know who is going to win until the end. It will leave you shaking your head, and hoping that college football isn’t really that bad.

The Long Shadow of Hope.  Find it now on Amazon.

1

Knowing when to end the story.

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.

 

 

2

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑