Ordinary Horrors: A Blog

I Answer Some Questions About Writing XI

1/22/2021

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Outlines...?
Make a list of 30 things you want to have happen in the novel. Bullet points are fine.
Each bullet point is a day's writing. Then double it--number it 1a, 1b...15a, 15b, or whatever.
Does your bullet point take up less than 800 words to tell? Well, no it doesn't—there is always something more to say about anything.
Don't let your internal editor worry you about continuity and/or "quality"—just keep moving forward.
Eating is a profound rhetorical connection between writer and reader. So—do it. Use eating.
Remember that eating is about memory as much as it is about nutrition. (Watch some shows on Food Network and see how chefs and cooks present their food—very often they start with a memory).
Making coffee becomes an anchor for a memory.
Meals eaten with two or more people are about how the people relate to one another.
Go back to Food Network again and see how Guy Fieri describes food. He's kind of annoying but he's good at what he does. Watch almost any episode of The Sopranos. Read writers to see how they do it. Research is fun!
I always look for new things to try—these Participation Questions are a pandemic adaptation....
I would rather not be confused.
People have lives—they are very busy!
Most writers pay—or at least buy dinner for—their beta readers.
This might sound glib, but—pretend to be confident?
The people reading your work do not and will not know you. So if you pretend to be confident, they will think you're confident.
Writing is about acting as much as it is about putting words on a screen or a page....
Also, I sense a writer's confidence by how the scenes unfold early in a story. The beginning works, then the next scene takes the story another step, then another. The writer shows that they know what they are doing structurally.....
So....maybe pretend to be confident while you learn structure...??
For a long time I subscribed to several word-of-the-day email lists, and any work I found interesting would go into my writing. I particularly liked the one with archaic words. ("carking" made it into my novel). But imagery can be constructed with basic words, too....
I read Lord of the Rings when I was in the 6th grade and I wanted to do what Tolkien was doing. A year later I read Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and it changed everything in my life....
I've had a few poems published, though not many. I tend toward narrative poems—stories that have been stripped down to 14 or so lines....
Here's a poem....

The writer should always interrogate themselves about how they are using the character who is unlike them. Is the writer appropriating a story? Is the writer stereotyping or exploiting?
The first step is always empathy. And empathy doesn't come naturally, you have to work for it and learn it.
This is something I do not know! I've had students who are game writers--I assume there are books written about game-writing....
When I started I was in a class like you all, and I just wrote the story as it came out. I did a LOT of reading outside of the classes—I went to the Best American Story shelf in the library and worked through about 40 years or so, and I subscribed to multiple literary magazines. And I wrote a lot, which is also a way of learning. And as I learned more I became more methodical--planning the story with—yes—outlines, and focusing on revision rather than generation.....
I started calling myself a writer fairly late--probably about the time I got the Dobie Paisano Fellowship. Even though I'd been writing for a long time, that was a big external validation....
Keep them simple--only describe what the focal character is seeing/experiencing....
Also keep in mind that fighting is really hard. And exhausting. And most fights are settled swiftly....
I've had students totally turned off by Christine Granados or Oscar Casares because their characters code-switch. But I look at those writers and see that the dialogue is totally in context and understandable. So—make sure the context works....
I love Tolkien and I would BURN those stupid fucking LOTR movies if I could! ha!
But—the Godfather, Parts 1 & 2, is/are the best adaptation ever. The Godfather novel, by Mario Puzo, is very mediocre. But Francis Ford Coppola, in his adaptation, found the inner story and elevated it to greatness. You can buy a book, The Godfather Notebook, by Coppola, which contains his annotated copy of the novel and the shooting script. It's a revelatory insight into the creative process....
Oh, yes! Absolutely! You can learn a whole lot about the structure of narrative by watching film. Film structure is different from literary structure in its details, but the scene-to-scene structure can be really helpful....
Start by knowing that your revision will take multiple passes.
Each pass you will focus exclusively on a different aspect:
character (a pass for each character)
setting
scene transitions
beginning
ending
plot holes
widows & orphans
weasel words
Then read it aloud!
Then read it aloud—backwards!
This is the fun part of writing....
Pre-pandemic I would take a week to 10 days to grade, now with the pandemic friction, it's 10 days to two weeks....
All assignments are good—some are terrific!
I wouldn't worry about plot holes until until you begin revising. As you consider (and reconsider, and re-reconsider) your work, the holes will become more and more apparent....
Maybe...something political and topical? The protagonist's significant other (or father or mother) becomes enveloped in conspiracy theories or fascism or white supremacy. What then to do...?
This is a problem that many, many people are facing right now.
Don't look at your story as a whole. As an entire story. As a plot.
Look instead at the writing.
At each sentence, ask—Is this the best sentence I can write?
Seriously interrogate your work and your writerly self.
You'll find things to fix!
Every semester someone does something truly terrific!
Too many students focus on plot. A story is much more than a plot.
Any plot can make for a good story if it's written well.
If you focus on character and setting and language you'll be successful....
I come up with a character, then find an idea to put them in, then a setting. Then I figure out what will happen (the plot)....
Sometimes that's simple—my current work is a sequel to my last book, so the character and setting are done.
A lot of my stories are set in Austin, so there's a setting I know well. I'm able to visualize my characters doing stuff in the setting....
That's part of the outline. I make an outline and then update it every couple of days—motifs, themes, maps, are all part of it....
Thanksgiving’s my favorite holiday! Because I get turkey and beer! Especially now that I'm an adult (an adult for many years) and can organize things however I want and get all the turkey!
I think I'm going to zoom happy hour with a friend. And then sleep.
What are you going to do?
Well, stories are about characters. They can have objects, or they can interact with objects.
Oh my gosh yes!
Several students have won awards for work they've done in my classes, and several others have been published.
In fact, two stories from this semester are very close to publishable....
Still—personally, I would not feel safe teaching a face-to-face class. And I'm very happy I'll be teaching online next semester.
My guess...is that nationally the pandemic will get worse before it gets better. Cases are going up all over the country right now.
Please keep wearing your masks and doing your social distancing
Yes! In fact, you're going to read one of them a couple of weeks from now.
It's a story that was published and, yes, I was dissatisfied with it, so I revised it while teaching a class of Advanced Fiction Writing, to show students methods of revision....
You'll read the original and the revised version, and you are not under any obligation to like either one!
By looking at the photos, perhaps we become more absorbed into the memory/story...?
I call it a memoir. Or a work of creative non-fiction....
Collapse.
I can get TOTALLY lost in old photos! Sure—I could go on and on.
Women tend to be judged harshly—harsher than men—for marital infidelities.
There are a lot of different thoughts about how to arrange a story collection. I tend to go strongest story first, next-strongest last, weakest in the middle.
A writer writing about a murder in Texas would frame things differently....
This was scanned in—the scanner made errors. Sorry about that! Typos are distracting--
Sure—we can look at the photo, read the text, look back at the photo, contemplate the person as someone who once lived....
Guilty.
Yes—I sure do. They really help to bring it to life....
People often feel trapped. Very often. Trapped by economics, church, gender, family....
So, sure—to a trapped person it might seem easier and quicker to murder your husband than to get a divorce.
Mental health needs to be addressed everywhere!
It’s a tawdry illusion with a rotten core...
No.
To make money.
I'm thinking she was guilty....
Memory is a construct—it's always changing. Incidents get compressed and expanded and rearranged....
There's legal trouble? You need a lawyer. Also in this case, a comfort factor....
I don't think Didion likes this place—she finds it cheap and gaudy and shallow.
That's an interesting question!
My answer is...maybe?
Family cohesion can help people stay strong in a crisis. On the other hand, some families might be lax in social distancing and have a get-together that turns into a superspreader event!
Maybe, sort of...? The Hunter Thompson novel is about the sixties, but it's about drug-induced madness, and not so much about tawdriness and shallowness....
This might make for a good essay question...!!!
Collapse.
The Granados book is set in the right now. But I hadn't considered the time-perspective in the other books....
No, they were just sinners. They believed and fell short....
It's popular across all of literature. Stories need conflict—marital discord is conflict!
Almost all prisoners in state prisons get parole at some point—that's the (theoretical) goal of incarceration—get people ready to reenter society. (Maybe).
Murdering someone for the insurance money is not a good thing.

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Pandemic Status XIV

1/22/2021

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So Trump is gone and that is a very good thing. Trumpism survives, however, and will be a threat to our freedoms for years. And the virus hasn't gone anywhere. So: all indices UP. Rage might start to decline in the next few weeks, but I expect Terror and Heartbreak to continue to climb--for a long time.

Post-Trump America

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Pandemic Status XIII

1/15/2021

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All indices UP. Rage won’t subside until well after the Trump regime is over, and Terror and Heartbreak will continue to climb until someone gets a handle on the fucking pandemic.

Below the status graph is a screen grab of places authorized to distribute vaccine in my town. But—none of these places have vaccine, or only a little. The grocery store up the street from me, for example, has only one dose of Moderna vaccine.

This is all Trump’s doing—Trump the traitor and seditionist. What he’s established is a course of passive eugenics. Shameful.

As you see in the bottom photo (a page from my journal) even the coronavirus itself hates Trump.

No vaccines in town....

Even the Virus hates Trump

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I Answer Some Questions about Writing X

1/8/2021

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Reading out loud works for me. You can feel the rhythm of the words....
Make your poems literal. Nothing wrong with that! Close observation of the world makes for excellent poetry!
You can impose a type of exterior order on your poems by making each line the same length. (Counting syllables is a good way to do this--make each line 11 or 14 or whatever syllables long)....
Nope. Little narrative poems generally work best for an assignment like this—but any theme you want....
Well, what do you care about?
If you don't care about what you're writing, your lack of care will come through.
That said, "feelings" are usually kind of abstract and hard to write about. Personal experiences are good beginnings for a story, but they need to be better—that is, more story-like—than "real life."
Social topics can work if you don't preach at people—put your character in a situation that illustrates something (like roommate tension during pandemic quarantine, for a very good example).
Like my fave TV series. The Wire is the best show in tv history. (It streams on Amazon and HBO). It's cops chasing drug dealers, but it's really about people and the problems they have—funny, exciting, suspenseful, heartbreaking—and the society they live in. Covers social topics and doesn’t preach.
Most of my poems are short stories that didn't work as short stories—I just keep whittling them down to about 14 lines or so....
And—observations of the world. Something that catches my eye. It doesn't need to be much....
I try very very hard not to get all philosophical.....
Don’t overthink it. Poetry's not (necessarily) about making grand pronouncements on the Meaning of Life. It's about observing the world.
Go look out your window. What do you see? That's your living poem.
That's enough. That's plenty.
As I said upthread, most of my poems are stories that didn't work as stories. They're narrative poems.
Some of my poet friends write their poems in paragraphs—descriptions or stories. They get the sentences right, the punctuation right, and then they break it into a poem with line breaks.
Try writing four or five sentences about something concrete you know about. (How to drive a car. How to tie your shoe. How to pour milk on cereal).
Break it into lines—make each line more or less the same length by syllables.
Elevate the language.
Boom—a poem.
Don't overthink it. Don' try and be profound.
Just look to the world for inspiration and you'll be fine.
Poems are usually written in sentences—so, just put the commas and periods and em-dashes where they would usually go in any sentence….
(Maybe avoid semi-colons, which I’ve always seen as elitist punctuation).
(That’s just a personal maybe, though).
And, that said—punctuation is really important in poems. Poems are so short that the punctuation really draws attention to itself.
(Unless, on occasion, you don’t use any punctuation at all).
I write about the world I observe or remember....I stay as concrete and real as possible. (I hope you do, too!)
Just describe it as it is. Later, when you revise, you can search for the right metaphor (and maybe you don't need one!)
Obviousness can be the right thing!
I might add on a technical issue that your secondary characters could become very important as they interact with the protagonist....
Sure! Read a lot. That's part of the research. You want to see what's been done before, so that you can do it better!
One of the odd things I noticed when I first started teaching creative writing was that student stories often went on just a bit too long. That the endings were over-explained. And that the easiest way to fix a story like this is to lop off the last sentence or paragraph or whatever. It's like a miracle!
That said, happy endings have to be earned....
And that said—it could and might well be that the problem in the ending lies earlier in the story.
One of my fave writing quotes is by movie writer/director Billy Wilder: "If you have a problem in the third act, that means you have a problem in the first act."
Keeping in mind that you're always writing a story about people, not about magic or science. People who engage in magic or science. (If your protagonist is a robot, it's an essential person).
Why is a lot of dialogue a problem? Who says it's too much dialogue?
Hemingway was the writer who changed my life, and he was big on dialogue. So, guess what? I've always been big on dialogue! Who's gonna stop me?
That said—if you're a dialogue-heavy writer, your dialogue should be sharp and well-punctuated....
Now I'm scared. Did I not warn everyone not to be literal about "hero sets off"? Like--it's a protagonist, a focal character. They don't have to be Achilles....unless you want them to be Achilles or whoever....
But, anyway...Me? I don't worry about category when I'm pondering a story. Character first, then setting, then action. The category will emerge organically from the action as it develops.
(Obviously, I'm not writing for a class where I have a cranky professor who's trying to nudge me into trying New Things).
I've been reading a lot of detective/crime/noir fiction the past few years. And—Elizabeth Hand has a new Cass Neary novel out! And Tana French has a new novel out too! They're great--highly recommended....
That's the function of the outline.
I truly see the outline as the First Draft. I spend a lot of time on it before I start writing and update it often as I write.
And—outlines for short stories don't have to be detailed--just a handful of bullet points will work. But it's good to have the from-here-to-there thought out, even if you change it as you write....
Most published stories are about 12-20 pages--3000 to 5000 words. The trend is shorter and shorter. There's just not enough space for longer stories.
We go six to eight pages in class because grading. But—don't stress! Make the story as long as you need it to be....
(That said--if everyone in both classes went three pages over, I'd have an extra 108 pages to read. It adds up).
I'm fond of all my characters. Even the villains.
Tom Holt has been in three books--Professed, Normal School, and my current work in progress. So I apparently have lots to say about him.
I'm very fond of Linda Smallwood in That Demon Life....
I think this might happen more with freelance journalism than with fiction....
But I think it would depend on how you approach it, what kind of limits you set between internal deadlines and external deadlines, and the pressures and stresses of whatever else is going on in your life....
I think about my character a bit--who they are, how they got to be the way they are. Then play around with an outline. Then I get serious about the outline, etc.....
Great idea!
Novel or story? You probably don't need too many characters in a short story, so introducing new round characters late might be a problem. (A flat character might be easier, since they don't have to be People We Care About).
Adding new characters late in a novel is usually not a problem unless they totally take over the narrative.
(I'm looking at you, Alexander Solzhenitsyn).
If you're with a major press and if the company is making lots of money off of you, they will take care of your publicity. If not—especially if you're an unknown writer—PR is up to you. Be on social media, send out review copies, hustle for interviews and bookstore appearances, etc.
Okay, triggering incidents. Where do story ideas come from? Example—my story collection, The Messes We Make of Our Lives.
Maybe three of these stories came from dreams—not the whole story, just an image or idea.
(Do you keep a dream diary? You might want to).
Most of the others have a triggering incident that more or less happened in "real life," something that I then applied imagination to and made better than real life.
(Imagination is simple--it's merely looking at something an asking "What if?)
The story "Quiet Sport," for example. I was once fishing the Shoshone River in Wyoming, sort of near a campground just outside Yellowstone. And I was doing my thing, and this kid, maybe 13 or 14, starts throwing rocks right by me! I was PISSED! And I thought—I'd like to throw that kid in the river. And so I wrote a story where the protagonist throws the kid in the river! Ha! Victory! The End.
The story "It May Be a Day..." is also sort of based on something I saw. Back when I was your age, I was witness to a murder. But—when I wrote the story, I wrote it not from my puny witness POV, but from the POV of the murderer. Some months after the murder, a cop told me that the murderer got turned in by his sister. That was my "what if?" moment—I wondered what happened between them. (My first published story...).
And so forth. Moral of this post: make your stories better than real life.
Also a moral—your life is your most precious resource.

Life gets in the way sometimes but don't stop!

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Pandemic Status XII

1/8/2021

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The Coup Klux Klan. The Beer-Belly Putsch. (I didn't come up with those, just saw them on the internets--I wish I was that clever). Whatever. A dark fucking week for America. And while we were watching the redneck rampage in the Capital, the covid death count reached 4000 a day. All indices up this week--Heartbreak up, Terror up, but RAGE up the most.

Impeach and convict Trump now--and wear a mask while you're doing it.

Got my mandatory pre-semester covid test....

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Pandemic Status XI (A New Year)

1/1/2021

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A New Year, and the same pandemic.

If you’re a person who did something worthwhile this year—be happy about what you did. I’m seeing “people” on Twitter saying that we should be quiet about our various achievements out of respect to those who have suffered losses. Uh, no. Doing good work in the face of adversity is a positive fucking thing. So go brag.

(I'll start. My bragging: I zoom taught good classes, I wrote a big part of a new book, I did well in seclusion, I didn’t get sick).

My prediction for the coming year: things, whatever things are, all things, any things, will get worse before they get better.

But! As my boys The Clash once said, “The future is unwritten.”

All indices up, of course.

"The future is unwritten"

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I Answer Some Questions about Writing IX

12/25/2020

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Once again...The Answers. BYOQ!

The hardest part might be figuring out what I really want to say. That takes effort and thought but it’s part of the process!
Then—I have to figure out the BEST way to say what I want to say, the most expressive language to say what I want to say.
How do I turn up the power of my language....?
The most useful writing class I had as an undergraduate was an art history class—we had to write about art! I learned so much!
Try it right now—go find a painting and just describe it. (Trad narrative art is easier at first).
Then write an ekphrasis….
(I’ll wait…).
Other history classes are good, too. (I was a history major, ha).
Knowledge is good.
We're in the 21st century, so you will also need to know some basic Photoshop and InDesign. These are very valuable skills!
I always wanted to tell stories. When I started college I wanted to be a journalist (I wanted to write the A-heds for the Wall Street Journal!).
But I'm too shy to talk on the phone, so that didn't work out at all....
Once I set foot in grad school I wanted to be a professor....
But, basically, I'm a linear word-type guy....
No, not too much. I just move onto something else....
Titles...
When I’m grading or editing, I look at the formatting—it’s something that just jumps off the page. Sloppy formatting is a bad sign.
If your reader can’t read what you’ve written, you have a problem.
Be generous—both with other people and with yourself. (Writing is an act of generosity).
Perhaps practice writing longer sentences, and embedding your ideas in those sentences....?
Walt Whitman.
I'm not in college anymore, so I don’t have to read things I don't like. Or finish everything I start.
It's nice!
In grad school I was reading a lot of memoirs as I researched my dissertation, and I read The Dead Girl, by Melanie Thernstrom. Dreadful. It was the last book I hated that I finished....
In my downtime I work on my own books. Also: I drink beer and watch tv.....
What a great question! And—there is no definitive answer.
Generally, punctuation is more important in a poem than a story, since there are fewer words in a poem, and every word has to be in the correct context and carry a lot of weight.
But! Sometimes you can remove punctuation from a poem and speed it up!!!!!
Read your poem closely, and experiment. How do you want it to sound?
I go through phases, though I always like reading histories about American stuff in the 19th century....
The ending should be a big part of your outline. Maybe even the starting point!
What I've found a couple of times is that the novel stops the scene or two before the projected ending in the outline. Just—there is nothing more to say about this story or this character.
So: The End.
But the overall tone of the ending itself is dependent on what has transpired in the novel. Triumphant, elegiac, whatever.
And—whatever happens—maybe turn up the volume in writing the ending? It's the second-most important part of your book. It's what will stay in your reader's memory.
Also—who gets the last line? This is really important.
I guess some writers do the name symbolism thing. But I'm feeling that character names should just be names.
That said—the name should be appropriate for the characters. Who are they? What year were they born? Where were they born?
All these factor into the naming conventions....
Yes...but--
It will vary from poem to poem!
George Martin is kind of an outlier, but at the same time his big novels are still under focal control. (Maybe). (Sort of).
Also—it’s a long long series!
(Martin needs to get busy and finish those last two books!)
(Robert Caro needs to finish his LBJ biography, too!)
I would still advise you to limit the number of important characters in your short stories. Do you really have enough space really make them into individuals?
Or will they just be names on a page? What is your available narrative space?
Okay—titles. In ye olde face-to-face class days, I would often send students out to walk about the halls for 10 minutes and come back with 10 titles. (Everyday objects can make great titles!)
Or—maybe a song lyric that represents something in your story. Or a line from a poem. Or something odd your overhear while walking around....
We are surrounded by titles.
And—I usually start stories with a title. The title is sort of where I get the inspiration from.
(I have a notebook which is nothing but titles. I'll never get them all written!)
Character names? I really really good resource is the Social Security Administration's baby name listing. The most popular baby names, decade by decade.
So—figure out more or less when your character was born, and go from there....
Or—use phone books. (Do phone books still exist?)
For Burnt House, I had an old WV phonebook and chose many names from there, mixed up by first and last names....
Outlining! (Outlines are my answer to every writing problem!)
So I outline, of course. But, yep, I start writing the book or story at the beginning. It's the most important part of your story/novel/memoir/whatever.
I worry most about beginnings and endings....The middle, generally, can take care of itself.
I think it's a pretty good idea to have multiple projects going. You can switch from one to another as your get stuck.
But my experience has been that at some point, one of the projects will catch fire and take over all your time. If that happens, just go with it—you can get back to project B later...
I'm writing a sequel to Normal School. It takes place in 2020 and features the pandemic and Trumpism and ghosts.
I haven't generated any new material on it in about six weeks. I'm just too tired. But I have @45000 words, so I work on revisions every day.
And—last weekend I pulled out an old project and worked on it for a couple of days.
There's always something to do. As busy as I get, there's always 15 or 20 minutes a day for writing....
And 15 or 20 minutes a day is enough.
A page a day is a book a year.
You can republish a story in a book, no problem. In fact, I'd say that's encouraged! Some journals will take previously published work—always check their listings in Novel & Short Story Writers Market.....
I read a lot of student stories, and I see the army of characters as a real problem.
When there are too many people in a six-to-eight-page story, there’s not enough space for the secondary characters to be even flat characters. They're just names on the page.
And the fact that they stake up valuable narrative space means that the protagonist is given less to do....
Well, both. Sort of. But you need good work for your buddy to promote.
Good writers come out of the slush pile all the time. But you have to put yourself in a position to benefit from any publication.
Hence my encouragement of Literary Citizenship.
Be active on social media, and support other writers. Let people get to know you.
Try pushing ahead. The work that is forced is just as good as the work that flows. Can't tell the difference.
But—you can always skip the tough spots (make sure to update your outline) or bypass a stuck place for something easier.
(Me—I usually force my way through the tough spots).
I'm a total oddball and outlier—I look at genres as mostly marketing. (Which has its place, of course). On my level of pen-to-paper, I just write words....
No—you're fine!
And—a lot of people do this. I'm thinking right now of the Hemingway novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. The book opens with the protag laying on pine needles in a forest watching people, and the last scene...there he is again.
(His life has changed a lot in the previous three days!)
So—a form of circularity.
You can easily do this in a short story or novel. When you're dreamstorming your outline, just work the circularity into it....
I have a list of seven books I need to write before I die. So—I'm racing the clock.
I'm 62—will I get them all done? Will my physical and mental health hold out?
We'll see!

Revision advice from the great Megan Abbot, from her Twitter feed....

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Pandemic Status X

12/25/2020

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This week--today, Xmas Day--Rage retakes the lead. Covid! Nashville bomb! Fucked-up pardons! Peace on Earth and Goodwill to all!

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Best Holiday Movies and a Story

12/18/2020

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I was seeing someone on Twitter arguing again that Die Hard is a Christmas movie and I was struck by the boring flatness of the argument, after all these years. I mean—okay, it takes place at Christmastime, so, okay, sure. Why not? And if you enjoy it watching it at xmas, even better! Go watch your movie and be happy! But I was and am fed up with people trying to build up their edgy irony rep by making this argument. Enjoy your xmas movie in solitude and if you can’t keep from gabbing about it on Twitter, block me.

So, since no one asked—what are my go-to holiday movies?

I have one top fave xmas, one second place, and an honorable mention. And three New Year’s movies. And a story.

Top Xmas Fave: TAXI DRIVER
I first saw this movie in 1976 when it was showing in theaters. I got back from my father’s funeral on a Sunday evening and was sitting around the house, and some friends came by, and no one had much to say—talking about death at age 18 and whatnot is difficult—and someone suggested a movie, and we went to Taxi Driver. Because it was 1976 and we were all 18 or 19-year old guys, we didn’t want to sit next to each other in the theatre lest people think we were gay, and so we all sat on aisle seats on different rows. The movie itself was a fucking revelation. It immediately became one of my two or three favorite movies of all time. Years and years later, c. 1990 or so, Chris Itchkowski came by one December evening, and I was watching Taxi Driver, and he said “Ha! A classic Christmas movie!” and I thought—Yeah, exactly. And so Taxi Driver has become a Christmas tradition in this household.

Hmm. The trailer is age-restricted, forsooth. Someday a strong rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets...!!

Second Xmas Fave: THE MAN WHO CAME TO DINNER
This actually is a legit Christmas movie—Bette Davis in a comedy! Monte Wooley is terrific as the asshole guy who takes over the house. I want to be like him some day. (One of my students said I looked like him—I’ll take it). There are sad penguins. And Jimmy Durante is creepy as a sexual harasser (this might be triggering for some people) who was probably seen as comedic in 1942. I really love this movie.

Honorable Mention Xmas Fave: IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE
Because of course I like the darkness overcome with sentiment. And why not be like everyone else who likes this movie? Though in truth I’d rather live in Pottersville….

A new year is conductive to movies, too….

New Year’s Movie Number One: MAD MAX FURY ROAD
I used to watch Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome on New Year’s Eve—I was/am always touched the sadness and determination of those people trying to make new homes in the desolation, and also I have a crush on Tina Turner. But I lost my dvd of it in some move or other, so I watch Fury Road instead now, and it’s actually a better movie. Get the year-end adrenalin up!

Another video link age restriction! (Who killed the Earth?) This may give you some insight into how I see the holidays....

New Year’s Movie Number Two: A NIGHT AT THE OPERA
Because I need to laugh at the end of a dreadful year. (All years are dreadful, each one closer to the inevitable). The fourth-best comedy of all time.

I always sympathize with the exasperated manicurist. Apparently no one knows the name of the actress who played her! A comedy mystery. She looks happier in this still from the movie....

New Year’s Movie Number Three: THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES
I usually watch this New Year’s Day. Again, darkness and sentiment. Just like Pottersville, Boone City looks rocking....

A Holiday Story

A few weeks ago, a student asked if I’d ever written a Christmas story. And—I have! It’s in BURNT HOUSE and is pretty dark. Though maybe also…funny…?

Here’s a pdf: Love Puzzle

Enjoy!

love_puzzle.pdf
File Size:	121 kb
File Type:	pdf

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You know my entire oeuvre makes a great present, right?

So get over to my Amazon page and order some books. Your life will be better for it!

The kindle editions are at a special pandemic/holiday price!

No sure which book to get? That's understandable--it's easy to be confused by an abundance of excellence. So here's a seasonal reminder: THAT DEMON LIFE is the official community read of Pottersville!