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I Answer Some Questions About Writing VII

11/27/2020

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Giving thanks for the defeat of the traitorous slaver armies in 1863....

All the exciting answers, none of the boring questions...Thanksgiving Edition!

Turkey legs & turkey leg pie!
I've written a Holiday/Christmas story—it's in my book Burnt House. It's pretty grim!
I didn't want to drive a cab any more....
People have appetites; how do they sate those appetites?
When people dine together, they talk. Food gives them something to do. (A lot of dialogue I read seems to take place in a vacuum).
Also, food is itself intrinsically interesting for most people. (Always be looking for ways to connect with an audience).
Be humble.
Big picture hope: I'd like to see America healed. It's going to take some time!
Personal hope: I hope I live long enough to get all my books written. (Which might take a long long time and that’s fine!)
But there will always be a demand and desire for stories.
I miss hanging around the Teacher's Bar and bragging about my students!
Basically, what I said upthread—cultivate Humility and Patience.
Writing doesn't happen overnight. Many young writers find this discouraging.
Humility will win the day.
And I would encourage all of you to follow Lev Nikolayevich's example—be excited about your next project!
I've learned to adapt and survive (so far).
Horror.
Everything is equally easy or difficult, depending on the writer's state of mind....
But here's some advice: don't wait to tell your stories!
So I sat on it, and waited until I was "good enough."
And I never wrote it.
I should have written it immediately! It would have sucked, but who would have cared? (Other than my ego).
Moral of the story: don't wait! Write—now.
Everyone needs to read more.
Those of you who already read a lot need to read more.
Those of you who don't read a whole lot need to read more.
Every book you read helps build your Writer's Toolbox. You'll be able to see all the options you have as a writer.
I think just about everything is important enough to write about—if the writer takes their writing seriously.
Understanding what a story is, and making it happen....
Go with what's in your heart. That's vague—but true.
What poems do you feel strongest about?
Activities: keep a journal. It doesn't have to be complicated and sound like the all-knowing voice of whatever. Just write down your observations about what you see and experience. It can be a list. Or photos!
(Actually, if you use social media, you are in fact keeping a journal).
The world is always changing and slipping away. Notice the changes! (It takes practice).
Develop HUMILITY and PATIENCE.
It takes a long time to get really good at writing fiction. A writer's ego and perfectionism can in the way.
And also be PERSISTENT.
Pretend to care.
Make it a game. In the end, everything you write is just words.
Watch how one scene flows into another. Look at how the dialogue is edited and cuts from one character to another. Look for how setting is used. Look for how it is lit and filmed. Read the movie like a writer....
I don’t buy it.
I’m seeing the Stranger as an idealized romanticized personification of America itself. The Cowboy! Honest, straightforward, kind, respectful. How America sees itself reflected through media/Hollywood....
That may not be factual, but it's True enough to be a starting point for a novel or a film....
Though I wouldn't want to hang around with him....
The drugs are definitely making him irrational.
There are easy-going, good-hearted stoners everywhere.
I see him as the innocent victim of capitalism….
Nihilism is the denial of the value of reality, so here the nihilists are the cats-paw of capitalism, which believes in nothing outside of profit/greed/gain....
I liked it. Dark and funny.
We've had some grim readings and viewings this semester—I thought it might be nice to close with a comedy....
The War on Drugs has been a catastrophe for our country.
Food.
This job is easy when you have a lot of great students!

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Pandemic Status XVI

11/27/2020

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Everything still trending negative, which is to say--all indices UP.

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Cops Shot Up a Car in 1980 and I was a Witness!

11/20/2020

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So, spring of 1980. I was living on Parker Lane, which I’ve written about earlier.

It was late April, and it was late at night (or early in the morning, depending on how you tell time), and I was doing some schoolwork. Don’t remember what, exactly. That spring I was taking the basic journalism class, a class in Italian Baroque Art, a class in French Film, and a class about the Spanish Civil War. I don’t remember finals in any of the classes—I mostly had to write essays. So I was up late, reading—probably something for the Spanish Civil War class, which had a pretty heavy reading load. And I heard—sirens.

The sirens sounded close.

I got up and looked out the window.

A sedan stopped right below my window. A cop car right behind it. Another cop car went around and stopped in front of the sedan, and a cop got out. Two cops got out of the car behind the sedan.

As the first cop approached the sedan—the sedan tried to pull away!

Bang! Bang! The cop was shooting his pistol into the car!

BOOM! Bang! The cops behind were shooting with shotgun and pistol!

Damn.

The sedan lurched up onto the curb.

I’m standing there in the window like an idiot. My first thought—they’re gonna shoot me! Like, just see me move up here in the window and reflexively shoot me.

I sort of stepped back and peered around the corner of the window.

The three cops went up to the sedan and pulled out the occupants and they beat those guys. Just stomped them.

I went downstairs and out the door to get a closer look. People from the other units were out, too. There was quite a crowd.

More cop cars arrived. An ambulance. Cops tore the car apart—pulled out the seats and tossed everything on the street. Looking for drugs? A weapon? The ambulance took one of the car occupants away. Cop cars took the others away. A tow truck showed up and towed the shot-up car away.

My roommate, TWS, had been across the street at Mother Earth. When the bar closed, he came home and I tried to excitedly tell him what had happened. TWS was unimpressed.

“Lowell, we were witnesses to a murder back in January. Cops shooting a guy is nothing.”

Maybe. Sort of maybe.

When I read the article top left, I called Jim Berry at the American-Statesman to offer my eye-witness account. He didn’t return my call.

Subsequent newspaper stories, below, say the cops got in trouble for shooting up the car. Good.

I wasn’t able to find any resolution on the incident. Nothing more on the guy who got shot, nothing more on the cops.

Probably nothing more happened, and, like most things, the incident was mostly forgotten....

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Pandemic Status XV

11/20/2020

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Slow-motion coup, people dying of covid. All indices are up up UP--because what other direction would they go? All America is trending negative.

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I Answer Some Questions about Writing VI

11/13/2020

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All of the answers, none of the questions....

Sure, it's very satisfying to finish something. Take a couple of days and be happy, or happyish.
But—then you have to get to work to get your project published.
And then you start on a new project.
Writing is a way for me to understand the complicated world I have been born into….
Sometimes! But it's changed over the years.
I usually listen to the Clash before starting work....
Well, it's capitalism.
Percival Everett once told me that "the writer's true self will always elbow its way onto the page."
For most of us, our fears are very deep and usually unspoken.
We are all complicated!
You can just skip a space, and then the narrator can begin the next section, "Months later...."
The best thing about teaching CW is working with energetic young people....
Stories can come from everywhere, and do.
Once a piece gets published, it's pretty much done. But until it's published, feel free to go back and back again, if you want, until you are truly satisfied....
Many writers have a tendency to overwrite the ending. Just cutting off the last couple of paragraphs or so, or even the last words, can be an easy fix to make the story better.
There are no definitive endings in nature. Abrupt is often better...?
In a short story, you don't want to have very many characters. There’s not enough room for them!
I know my first drafts are flawed. I know that every text is flawed. So—of course, I've written a flawed text.
Then I revise—and I fix the flaws.
My advice—accept the flaws and move on and finish. Then fix the flaws.
Of course, I grew up in the 1970s, and these things were little understood....
The more you write, the better you get. It really is a learning process....
Paragraphs!
You probably want to leave with the impression that the life of the protagonist is....going on....but it's going on differently because of what happened in the story....
Yes. Keep moving forward. Finish the story.
Then—abandon it, or revise it. But finish it.
Please don't ever delete your work!!!!!!!! You might want those words later. THEY ARE PRECIOUS.
Well...it took me 45 years to finish writing my first book. But—from first word to final draft? About three years.
The idea what to write—well, I have hundreds of ideas. I'll never write them all. But I chose the one that spoke to my heart.
Make significant changes. Look deep into your story and your poems. Elevate them.
Just making grammar/spelling/punctuation changes are not enough....
For me, the crisis we're living through is a spur to get going and keep going. "I will not be defeated," etc.
Try taking your response—anger, sadness, whatever it is you're feeling—and put it in your writing. Engage with your environment.
"Anger can be power."
Pandemic is putting the kibosh to FTF networking.
Keep writing. Keep learning. Support other writers. Be a Literary Citizen.
Make everything better.....
There are many ways of telling stories....
NO!!!!!!!!!
Again, I grew up in the 70s. So, yes. And there are stories about that.
America has always been a tense and violent place.
You have heroic rescuers! Anguished loved ones! And the tick-tock final breaths of the unfortunate trapped human....
Yes, a contemporary rebooted version of Ace in the Hole would probably add more moral complexities....
It would be a heartwarming human struggle which would take our media minds off the grim pandemic/political news.
People would go crazy for this!
(Let's pool our money and acquire the rights....?)
A novel? One....
Stories? Maybe eight or ten....
I think he was going for bleakness—the (apparent) emptiness and desolation of the desert….
But my favorite is--The Big Lebowski!
Best movie about journalism? His Girl Friday, with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell. (Streaming on Amazon).
Every little town had a least one newspaper.
All kinds of madnesses are out there....
We get to talk about it next week!

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Pandemic Status XIV

11/13/2020

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(If the fucking pandemic doesn't wrap up soon, I'm going to have to learn more Roman numerals).

There was a tiny almost-plateau when Biden's victory was announced, but since then, all indices UP. Terror leading....

America is messed up! People need to stay safe and in seclusion.

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Election Day(s), 2000

11/6/2020

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Biden has taken the lead in our current election—a good thing!—and is likely to win. But here’s a memory of an election that went—the wrong way.

The stolen 2000 election. I’m still traumatized by that fucking thing.

I was driving a cab in those days. I went and voted (my man Gore!) and then hit the streets, hoping to make good money. And I did! It was very busy. Lots of activity.

At one point in the evening I was dropping off a journalist (from New York Magazine, I think) at the Governor’s Mansion. I was dropping him off on the Guadalupe side, and he was paying, when around the corner came a battalion of drunk frat boys chanting “Bush! Bush! Bush!” One of them had uprooted an unfortunate bit of shrubbery and was waving it around. And there were many other trips, and the night went on, and it got cold and rainy, and my cab was acting hinky—stalling and lurching.

Around 10pm I was going by the Governor’s Mansion again, and a DPS trooper flagged me down. I pulled over. One of the drunk frat boys—well, a drunk frat boy—was with him. “This guy’s had too much to drink,” the trooper said. “Can you take him home?”

That’s always an unpleasant thing to hear. But, yeah, I took the kid. At Guadalupe and MLK he bailed on me. A fare jumper! I pulled out my maglight and took off after him—I was going to smash the little fucker—but he dodged into a convenience store and cowered by the cashier and I didn’t want to smash him in front of witnesses and so he got away and he probably voted for Trump this year, the piece of shit.

I drove on. Made more trips. I listened to returns coming in on the radio, and it was grim. Gore conceded. I was bummed.

Then my cab broke down, on MLK by the university. I had passengers in the car—I called for another cab to take them, and then I called for a tow truck for my cab, and then I called for a cab for myself and I left my cab blocking a lane in the rain.

By the time I got back to my apartment more returns were coming in. I got in my personal car, went to the grocery store, and by the time I came back, Gore had unconceded and was ahead.

Judy Woodruff was on CNN being speechless. (This is about the time I stopped watching CNN—their coverage was lame. Over on MSNBC, Mike Brzezinski was scribbling numbers on a whiteboard and Lester Holt was calm and collected).

Anyway—the election went on for weeks. I was driving days part of the time, nights part of the time. I was watching tv at home, listening to the radio in the cab.

I drove some Japanese journalists around for a couple of nights. They said they were going to mention me in their story, and they sent me a link—but it was in Japanese, so I couldn’t read it.

One afternoon I was explaining the electoral college to a woman who was confused about the process, and she said—“You sure know a lot, for a cab driver.”

Yeah, fuck you, too.

I was in line out at the airport when Gore made his second concession speech. I was just—fucking sad. And angry.

So much was lost.

Bite me, "History."

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Pandemic Status XIII

11/6/2020

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Terror passed Rage this week! Covid Terror, Election Terror--everything Terror.

And while, as I post this, Biden has taken the lead and looks poised to win--Terror ain't letting up. Covid is still out there, and Trump is very capable of wrecking shit between now and January 20.

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How the Characters in My Novels Voted in 2020

11/2/2020

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I created these people but I can’t control their votes!

THAT DEMON LIFE

Linda—Biden (though she voted for Trump in 2016)
Paige—Biden
Raul—Trump
Gilbert—Biden (he didn't vote in 2016)

PROFESSED

Tom—Biden
Camille—Biden
Clayton—Trump
Nelda—Trump
Travis—Libertarian nonentity

BURNT HOUSE

Jackie—Biden
Everybody else—Trump (true to life, sadly)

NORMAL SCHOOL

Tom—Biden
Lynnie—Biden
Sally—Biden
Courtney—Biden
Nancy—Trump
Ted—Trump
Devon—Biden
Tee—Trump

Stop the doomscrolling for a little bit and go out and buy my books!

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Election Day, 1980

11/1/2020

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So—while we wait the outcome of this year’s election with TERROR—why not a memory?

Election Day, 1980. Tuesday, November 4.

I made the worst vote of my life that year—I voted for the dumbass Libertarian candidate, Ed Clark. And who was the Libertarian VP candidate? David Koch, of the infamous and un-American Koch brothers.

What the hell. I was fucking stupid. I was 22. Everyone is entitled to one bad vote. (Except this year).

I voted in the Morning. Maybe I went to class that afternoon. I don’t remember. Probably. But I went to the Deep Eddy around seven o’clock or so. Bartender KW was taping black balloons along the bar, in anticipation of a Ronald Reagan victory.

Then I went down to Club Foot to see Gang of Four! They were a great political second-wave punk band from Britain. It was a terrific show!

There was a little black & white TV on the corner of the bar, and when I left the music side of the club to get a beer I would check in on the returns. It wasn’t looking good for Jimmy Carter.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. I cast my first vote, in 1976, for Jimmy Carter. I liked Jimmy Carter, but I didn't vote for him in 1980. Fucking stupid.

After the show I stopped back at the Deep Eddy. The mood was glum. Two old twin brother rednecks, Hans & Will, were pulling KW’s black balloons off the ceiling and biting them and saying vulgarities.

I went home and drank some cheap vodka and watched the election returns. I was—feeling sorry—for Jimmy Carter. And already feeling guilty about my stupid vote. Would my vote have made a difference? Really? Yes? No? I called a friend in Minneapolis and had a drunken late night chat, then went to bed.

I woke the next morning with a hangover, in Reagan’s America. Morning indeed.

Here’s Ed Ward’s review of the concert....

Austin-American Statesman--November 6, 1980

And here's Gang of Four!

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Ordinary Horrors

I Answer Some Questions About Writing VII

Pandemic Status XVI

Cops Shot Up a Car in 1980 and I was a Witness!

Pandemic Status XV

I Answer Some Questions about Writing VI

Pandemic Status XIV

Election Day(s), 2000

Pandemic Status XIII

How the Characters in My Novels Voted in 2020

Election Day, 1980

Lowell Mick White

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