For better or worse, I get a head start on the rest of America regarding a traumatic event that happened ten years ago.
I don't know when it started, just like we don't know when the seed was planted for the horrible events of September 11. I know that in late July to early August, I started feeling poorly. After a beach vacation in which I slept on a pull-out couch, I thought my subsequent back pain was easily explained. On August 11, when I planned to drive to Nashville to see a Titans preseason game, I was in bed with a fever, barely able to move. There was pain in my back. There was pain in my left leg. I started having trouble breathing. I was 27 years old, for all intents and purposes feeling as immortal as most 27-year-olds, and 72 hours later my entire body shut down.
All I remember of August 14 is pushing myself to drive to work. An hour into my day, I called my contracting agency, told them to put me on short-term disability, and that's it. I do not remember anything else until September.
I drove home that day, in my teal Ford Escort GT that would be my last manual transmission car, and to that point, my last teal one. I got home to the condo that I shared with my roommate Carol. I went to bed, and in bed I remained until my girlfriend stopped by that evening. She took me to the Emory Hospital emergency room and had the unenviable task of calling my parents and telling them that their son was in critical condition and they didn't know what was wrong with him.
I am 37 years old today. I no longer remember what it's like to feel anything in the back of my left leg, a lingering effect of the back surgery I had to remove the abscess full of Staphylococcus. The numb part of my body is like the numb part of my memory. There are second-hand accounts, but the girlfriend and the roommate are out of my life. That's one of the toughest issues with my trauma. Everyone's September 11 trauma is based on what was witnessed and experienced. I don't have any memories to attach to this.
Saturday, August 20, 2011
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Bucket List continued
See my latest Ask Your Fantasy Football Expert blog post at my other blog home, Zach on Sports.
I feel a Bucket List Tune coming on..."Where did you go oh Bucket List, we had such high hopes for you and you just left, weft weft weft..."
What happened to the June Bucket List? Well, one of the smartest decisions we made regarding the Bucket List was to make it a summer Bucket List, not just for one month. It's not dead yet.
Over the past weekend we did two BL-worthy events. The first lasted an entire weekend and the other was over in about an hour. We visited Lake Sinclair in East Georgia and saw Flannery O'Connor's house.
The lake trip was our substitute for an annual beach trip we usually take with a couple I'll call the Crunks. The trip was canceled since we're still in the new home phase of our finances and Mr. Crunk is a teacher who thought he was going to lose his job. He did not. Mrs. Crunk's family owns a lake house so we got it for a weekend. It was my first four-day weekend of the year that didn't involve me laying on the couch, sick.
The drive to the house was the adventure. It was 130 miles, give or take, that took us nearly 2.5 hours. The country roads at the end were what slowed us down, including one shortcut the wife suggested that took us down an unpaved dirt road. I white-knuckled it for a few miles while she said things like "cute ponies". We were paranoid that we'd miss our last opportunity to order fried chicken out of a gas station, so we stopped about 30 miles short of our destination to load up.
When you finally make it to the lake, proof that you're in a small town is that instead of there being street signs, there's a list of the names of the families that live on that street.
It was the middle of the afternoon before I finally made it down the steep hill to the dock. The spot is pristine. If you want to leave the city, come here. You hear nothing but nature and float. The dock was at the corner of a cove so there was little traffic.
What on earth did we do for those three days? We sat under my friend's Chicago Bears tent. We did not secure the tent on the first evening and it ended up in the lake. We got it out but the supports were bent so we duct-taped it and hoped that it wouldn't fall apart. It survived, although another storm on the final evening put the contraption in the drink for good. I rediscovered that swimming is very hard. We went to dinner with Mrs. Funk's father and arrived in a boat. There's something about docking a boat and going to eat in a restaurant. For the most part, I sat in a chair and read books or listened to podcasts. In the evenings we grilled out and continued reading books.
On the way home, Mrs. Blogger aka the wifey wanted to stop at nearby Milledgeville to see Flannery O'Connor's farm. I have not read a word of O'Connor's work, although I put two of her works on hold at the library. Hey, she's dead. She doesn't need the money. O'Connor had Lupus so she had to live on the first floor while she wrote. It's a historical site but really it's a run-down old farm. There are dozens like it in the area, I'm sure. Her bedroom was roped off, but the guide quickly told us that her actual typewriter had been donated to a local college and what we saw was a replica at best.
The selling point of the trip were the peacocks. I know, peacocks? We visited the Ernest Hemingway house in Key West years ago and what I remember were the six-toed cats that were everywhere. We went out back and saw the peacocks. Birds are the opposite of humans, in that the males are generally dressed up and preening while the females are somewhat plain. The male was a work of art, all blue breast with the furled tail twice as long as the rest of the body. He strutted for us a bit but did not unfurl the tail. The peahens for the most part sat. They were brown with some green. Technically they're all peafowls, but peacock is the more impressive term.
We stopped at a local BBQ joint and I had one of my favorite treats, a Dr Pepper in a bottle. I almost always drink Diet now but the stuff in a bottle is the best. The sauce was quite full of vinegar and had the right amount of bite.
We made it home and the weekend was over. The highlight was when we took the paddleboat out on the second night, wheeled out to the edge of the cove, and watched the end of the sunset. I'm recharged, or better be since I'm going to work shortly in either case.
I feel a Bucket List Tune coming on..."Where did you go oh Bucket List, we had such high hopes for you and you just left, weft weft weft..."
What happened to the June Bucket List? Well, one of the smartest decisions we made regarding the Bucket List was to make it a summer Bucket List, not just for one month. It's not dead yet.
Over the past weekend we did two BL-worthy events. The first lasted an entire weekend and the other was over in about an hour. We visited Lake Sinclair in East Georgia and saw Flannery O'Connor's house.
The lake trip was our substitute for an annual beach trip we usually take with a couple I'll call the Crunks. The trip was canceled since we're still in the new home phase of our finances and Mr. Crunk is a teacher who thought he was going to lose his job. He did not. Mrs. Crunk's family owns a lake house so we got it for a weekend. It was my first four-day weekend of the year that didn't involve me laying on the couch, sick.
The drive to the house was the adventure. It was 130 miles, give or take, that took us nearly 2.5 hours. The country roads at the end were what slowed us down, including one shortcut the wife suggested that took us down an unpaved dirt road. I white-knuckled it for a few miles while she said things like "cute ponies". We were paranoid that we'd miss our last opportunity to order fried chicken out of a gas station, so we stopped about 30 miles short of our destination to load up.
When you finally make it to the lake, proof that you're in a small town is that instead of there being street signs, there's a list of the names of the families that live on that street.
It was the middle of the afternoon before I finally made it down the steep hill to the dock. The spot is pristine. If you want to leave the city, come here. You hear nothing but nature and float. The dock was at the corner of a cove so there was little traffic.
What on earth did we do for those three days? We sat under my friend's Chicago Bears tent. We did not secure the tent on the first evening and it ended up in the lake. We got it out but the supports were bent so we duct-taped it and hoped that it wouldn't fall apart. It survived, although another storm on the final evening put the contraption in the drink for good. I rediscovered that swimming is very hard. We went to dinner with Mrs. Funk's father and arrived in a boat. There's something about docking a boat and going to eat in a restaurant. For the most part, I sat in a chair and read books or listened to podcasts. In the evenings we grilled out and continued reading books.
On the way home, Mrs. Blogger aka the wifey wanted to stop at nearby Milledgeville to see Flannery O'Connor's farm. I have not read a word of O'Connor's work, although I put two of her works on hold at the library. Hey, she's dead. She doesn't need the money. O'Connor had Lupus so she had to live on the first floor while she wrote. It's a historical site but really it's a run-down old farm. There are dozens like it in the area, I'm sure. Her bedroom was roped off, but the guide quickly told us that her actual typewriter had been donated to a local college and what we saw was a replica at best.
The selling point of the trip were the peacocks. I know, peacocks? We visited the Ernest Hemingway house in Key West years ago and what I remember were the six-toed cats that were everywhere. We went out back and saw the peacocks. Birds are the opposite of humans, in that the males are generally dressed up and preening while the females are somewhat plain. The male was a work of art, all blue breast with the furled tail twice as long as the rest of the body. He strutted for us a bit but did not unfurl the tail. The peahens for the most part sat. They were brown with some green. Technically they're all peafowls, but peacock is the more impressive term.
We stopped at a local BBQ joint and I had one of my favorite treats, a Dr Pepper in a bottle. I almost always drink Diet now but the stuff in a bottle is the best. The sauce was quite full of vinegar and had the right amount of bite.
We made it home and the weekend was over. The highlight was when we took the paddleboat out on the second night, wheeled out to the edge of the cove, and watched the end of the sunset. I'm recharged, or better be since I'm going to work shortly in either case.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
David Tyree Drops This One and The Good News
Here's my disclaimer. All comments are my opinions, and therefore subject to as much second-guessing and ridicule as the man I will focus on in today's blog post. If you want good news only, click here.
Let me get this straight. David Tyree, Super Bowl hero of the New York Giants two years ago who made the famous "Helmet Catch" that helped defeat the New England Patriots, said that he would trade his Super Bowl ring for one thing. That one thing was that the law in the New York legislature giving gay couples the right to marry would not pass.
Any time one minority goes after another minority, it makes me think of an abused child. Less than two generations ago, the same crowd protesting with Tyree against gay marriage would have been protesting against marriage between different races. Tyree believes that God decreed that marriage is between a man and a woman. Let's examine that religion, shall we? That's the same religion that gave the rubber stamp to slavery. Whose descendants were slaves? And guess which church they were allowed to attend as their one so-called freedom? Yep, it's the Christian church, the same church that's a backbone of African-American society.
Tyree called passing of gay marriage to be a "softening of the backbone of society". Marriage really strengthened the backbones of his former teammates Michael Strahan and Tiki Barber, didn't it? In case you didn't know, both Strahan and Barber got divorced after having relations with women outside of their marriage. Strahan came out in favor of the law giving gays equal marriage rights, by the way.
Any time you hear hate language, and that's what this is, go ahead and transfer that language to African-Americans, or Jews, or what the heck, Christians. If there were attempts to pass laws saying that these groups deserved the same rights as everyone else, and there were protests, that sounds pretty crazy, doesn't it?
Denying any group equal rights is wrong. Let's not be idiots and say that gay marriage is going to lead to people wanting to marry their pets or attempt to legalize sexual relations between adults and children. This is a relationship between two people in love, and it is a legal right to make medical decisions and take care of one's family. To be against that is to be against love and life.
It's pretty awesome that when I read an article on a site called Christianpost.com about the gay marriage bill, I saw an ad pop up featuring Neil Patrick Harris. Psst, you guys already lost. No, really, David Tyree getting 60,000 signatures against gay marriage is like me getting 60,000 signatures declaring that the Titans won Super Bowl 34.
The implication of the article is that since more people are protesting the law than supporting it, that it should not pass. A long time ago, a majority of Americans supported slavery. In the 60s, a majority of Americans were against the Civil Rights legislation. Our laws are not based on what the majority of people think or believe. Our laws are based, at least we hope they are, on what's right and just for all Americans.
An Atheist Goes to Church (the good news section)
In Bend, Oregon, two churches were recently vandalized by punk kids who "tagged" the churches with messages that included "Praise the FSM". No, this isn't the good news part. The FSM refers to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. FSM was created, ironically enough, in response to a Kansas school board attempt to teach Intelligent Design in the classroom. Here's the letter that started the FSM phenomenon.
Let's get back to the main point of the story. In short, it's not cool to vandalize a church for any reason. Hemant Mehta, otherwise known as The Friendly Atheist, immediately went to work, getting the word out and raising more than $2,000 to help pay for the damages. The church turned down the money, saying that they had everything they needed, but the point had been made. The money went to Foundation Beyond Belief, a nondenominational charitable organization that's based out of Atlanta. A man representing a belief in no God had attempted to help a house of God.
Let me get this straight. David Tyree, Super Bowl hero of the New York Giants two years ago who made the famous "Helmet Catch" that helped defeat the New England Patriots, said that he would trade his Super Bowl ring for one thing. That one thing was that the law in the New York legislature giving gay couples the right to marry would not pass.
Any time one minority goes after another minority, it makes me think of an abused child. Less than two generations ago, the same crowd protesting with Tyree against gay marriage would have been protesting against marriage between different races. Tyree believes that God decreed that marriage is between a man and a woman. Let's examine that religion, shall we? That's the same religion that gave the rubber stamp to slavery. Whose descendants were slaves? And guess which church they were allowed to attend as their one so-called freedom? Yep, it's the Christian church, the same church that's a backbone of African-American society.
Tyree called passing of gay marriage to be a "softening of the backbone of society". Marriage really strengthened the backbones of his former teammates Michael Strahan and Tiki Barber, didn't it? In case you didn't know, both Strahan and Barber got divorced after having relations with women outside of their marriage. Strahan came out in favor of the law giving gays equal marriage rights, by the way.
Any time you hear hate language, and that's what this is, go ahead and transfer that language to African-Americans, or Jews, or what the heck, Christians. If there were attempts to pass laws saying that these groups deserved the same rights as everyone else, and there were protests, that sounds pretty crazy, doesn't it?
Denying any group equal rights is wrong. Let's not be idiots and say that gay marriage is going to lead to people wanting to marry their pets or attempt to legalize sexual relations between adults and children. This is a relationship between two people in love, and it is a legal right to make medical decisions and take care of one's family. To be against that is to be against love and life.
It's pretty awesome that when I read an article on a site called Christianpost.com about the gay marriage bill, I saw an ad pop up featuring Neil Patrick Harris. Psst, you guys already lost. No, really, David Tyree getting 60,000 signatures against gay marriage is like me getting 60,000 signatures declaring that the Titans won Super Bowl 34.
The implication of the article is that since more people are protesting the law than supporting it, that it should not pass. A long time ago, a majority of Americans supported slavery. In the 60s, a majority of Americans were against the Civil Rights legislation. Our laws are not based on what the majority of people think or believe. Our laws are based, at least we hope they are, on what's right and just for all Americans.
An Atheist Goes to Church (the good news section)
In Bend, Oregon, two churches were recently vandalized by punk kids who "tagged" the churches with messages that included "Praise the FSM". No, this isn't the good news part. The FSM refers to the Flying Spaghetti Monster. FSM was created, ironically enough, in response to a Kansas school board attempt to teach Intelligent Design in the classroom. Here's the letter that started the FSM phenomenon.
Let's get back to the main point of the story. In short, it's not cool to vandalize a church for any reason. Hemant Mehta, otherwise known as The Friendly Atheist, immediately went to work, getting the word out and raising more than $2,000 to help pay for the damages. The church turned down the money, saying that they had everything they needed, but the point had been made. The money went to Foundation Beyond Belief, a nondenominational charitable organization that's based out of Atlanta. A man representing a belief in no God had attempted to help a house of God.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Two Movie Experiences
What do you want from your movie experience? You're probably not the kind of person who sees a movie and afterward says "that was OK" and consider that you got your money's worth.
I saw a couple of movies recently that fit the bill of experience flicks. They are two of the most divergent movies in history. One is The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and the other is Hobo with a Shotgun.
One is a metaphorical title and the other tell you the entire plot and purpose of the movie. Diving Bell is the true story of a 40something editor of French Elle who has a massive stroke. After the stroke he is paralyzed except for one eye. His brain is unaffected. The only way this movie works is if it lets you gain insight into the experience of being completely immobile with a functional brain. It feels like nonstop torture. Through an ingenious system the man is able to communicate with the world, and he dictates a book. I can't say the movie has a happy ending but it is an uplifting story. It makes you feel like a weasel for wanting to take a nap, though.
Hobo with a Shotgun. I saw the title in Atlanta's own Creative Loafing while waiting for a pizza. I knew immediately that this movie was in my wheelhouse. It is based on a trailer that won a contest that earned it a spot before the Grindhouse double feature a few years ago. The makers of the trailer decided to go all the way to make a feature film.
You need a few elements to make a modern exploitation movie. It needs that cheap 70s look and feel. You get that in the opening scene as you see Rutger Hauer riding the rails and landing in Hope Town, otherwise known as Scum Town, with some cut-rate orchestral music in the background. Hauer gives the role enough gravitas while spitting out requisite one-liners like "I'm going to hell, and you're riding shotgun."
This movie makes you feel, although you might feel like vomiting. It's one of the most over-the-top violent movies I've ever seen. If you didn't like the wedding dress scene in Bridesmaids because it was too graphic, imagine approximately 86 minutes of too graphic. The most shocking part is it's made by Canadians. You have to admire the movie's willingness to go all the way to make a point, including ruining the song Disco Inferno for life. Let's face it, the song deserved it.
I rate Hobo above last year's based-on-a-trailer schlockfest Machete. It's still below my favorite exploitation homage, Black Dynamite. Ya dig?
Give me a new cinematic experience over something tired and played out every day.
I saw a couple of movies recently that fit the bill of experience flicks. They are two of the most divergent movies in history. One is The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and the other is Hobo with a Shotgun.
One is a metaphorical title and the other tell you the entire plot and purpose of the movie. Diving Bell is the true story of a 40something editor of French Elle who has a massive stroke. After the stroke he is paralyzed except for one eye. His brain is unaffected. The only way this movie works is if it lets you gain insight into the experience of being completely immobile with a functional brain. It feels like nonstop torture. Through an ingenious system the man is able to communicate with the world, and he dictates a book. I can't say the movie has a happy ending but it is an uplifting story. It makes you feel like a weasel for wanting to take a nap, though.
Hobo with a Shotgun. I saw the title in Atlanta's own Creative Loafing while waiting for a pizza. I knew immediately that this movie was in my wheelhouse. It is based on a trailer that won a contest that earned it a spot before the Grindhouse double feature a few years ago. The makers of the trailer decided to go all the way to make a feature film.
You need a few elements to make a modern exploitation movie. It needs that cheap 70s look and feel. You get that in the opening scene as you see Rutger Hauer riding the rails and landing in Hope Town, otherwise known as Scum Town, with some cut-rate orchestral music in the background. Hauer gives the role enough gravitas while spitting out requisite one-liners like "I'm going to hell, and you're riding shotgun."
This movie makes you feel, although you might feel like vomiting. It's one of the most over-the-top violent movies I've ever seen. If you didn't like the wedding dress scene in Bridesmaids because it was too graphic, imagine approximately 86 minutes of too graphic. The most shocking part is it's made by Canadians. You have to admire the movie's willingness to go all the way to make a point, including ruining the song Disco Inferno for life. Let's face it, the song deserved it.
I rate Hobo above last year's based-on-a-trailer schlockfest Machete. It's still below my favorite exploitation homage, Black Dynamite. Ya dig?
Give me a new cinematic experience over something tired and played out every day.
Saturday, June 4, 2011
The tale of a boy and his zaps
One of the most difficult and seemingly narcissistic things I can do is explain how I feel or react to events in the world. Nearly all the time, the way I feel isn't very different than countless millions of folks, which means it is a good thing for me and my seven readers to not share.
There are times when my experience is outside of the norm. The reason for this is my malfunctioning body.
I'm approaching the ten-year anniversary of a major event in my life. By coincidence, so is everyone else in the world. This is my story, so let me get to it.
Ten years ago, I nearly died. The major event was surgery on my spine to empty and remove an abscess that contained staph. Either the abscess or the surgery did significant damage to my nervous system. I didn't notice it immediately, but one morning I asked a doctor why my left foot felt asleep and didn't wake up. It was nerve damage. The long-term prognosis was that I wasn't likely to get feeling back in the part of my body that runs from the waist down on my left side from my backside to the bottom of my foot. It's not 100% without feeling. It's a strange feeling but anything strange becomes its own kind of normal if you have to live with it.
One side effect of the numbness was that the nerves weren't completely dead. I would get what I call zaps or shocks. It would feel like an electrical shock, pretty high on the pain scale. While it might repeat, the zaps usually were short lived.
Fast forward to last Wednesday night. On the way home I felt the zaps. They were regular and unceasing in my back left thigh. About once a minute I would get one and I'd grit my teeth and my entire body got tense. When I got home I thought a little self-medication in the form of beer and some Ibuprofen would do the trick. They went away for a couple of hours. Right before bed, they returned and I knew I wouldn't sleep if this kept up. I went for the big guns. I have some pain meds from my three Mays in a row of having surgery. I went for half a Vicadin. I'm not sure what it did with the pain, but it put me straight to sleep.
In my dreams I felt the zapping, and pretty soon after that I woke up. It was 2:30 in the morning. For the next two and a half hours I turned over to one side and the other and my back and my stomach and nothing changed. I would wait for the shock of pain to hit me. Finally I got up and went online. Man, a lot of my Twitter followers are up at 5 in the morning. Sitting up did no good. Eventually I tried three Ibuprofen which put the beast to sleep temporarily.
It was Friday morning and I had two hours of sleep. I was clearly up for some work. Neither my regular doctor nor a neurologist I've met before had time in the schedule for me. The zaps have quieted but not completely gone away. I worry because this isn't going to be a good thing to live with long term. My wife worries because there's a huge bulging vein near the site of the zaps.
It's quiet now. I'll enjoy the numbness while I can.
There are times when my experience is outside of the norm. The reason for this is my malfunctioning body.
I'm approaching the ten-year anniversary of a major event in my life. By coincidence, so is everyone else in the world. This is my story, so let me get to it.
Ten years ago, I nearly died. The major event was surgery on my spine to empty and remove an abscess that contained staph. Either the abscess or the surgery did significant damage to my nervous system. I didn't notice it immediately, but one morning I asked a doctor why my left foot felt asleep and didn't wake up. It was nerve damage. The long-term prognosis was that I wasn't likely to get feeling back in the part of my body that runs from the waist down on my left side from my backside to the bottom of my foot. It's not 100% without feeling. It's a strange feeling but anything strange becomes its own kind of normal if you have to live with it.
One side effect of the numbness was that the nerves weren't completely dead. I would get what I call zaps or shocks. It would feel like an electrical shock, pretty high on the pain scale. While it might repeat, the zaps usually were short lived.
Fast forward to last Wednesday night. On the way home I felt the zaps. They were regular and unceasing in my back left thigh. About once a minute I would get one and I'd grit my teeth and my entire body got tense. When I got home I thought a little self-medication in the form of beer and some Ibuprofen would do the trick. They went away for a couple of hours. Right before bed, they returned and I knew I wouldn't sleep if this kept up. I went for the big guns. I have some pain meds from my three Mays in a row of having surgery. I went for half a Vicadin. I'm not sure what it did with the pain, but it put me straight to sleep.
In my dreams I felt the zapping, and pretty soon after that I woke up. It was 2:30 in the morning. For the next two and a half hours I turned over to one side and the other and my back and my stomach and nothing changed. I would wait for the shock of pain to hit me. Finally I got up and went online. Man, a lot of my Twitter followers are up at 5 in the morning. Sitting up did no good. Eventually I tried three Ibuprofen which put the beast to sleep temporarily.
It was Friday morning and I had two hours of sleep. I was clearly up for some work. Neither my regular doctor nor a neurologist I've met before had time in the schedule for me. The zaps have quieted but not completely gone away. I worry because this isn't going to be a good thing to live with long term. My wife worries because there's a huge bulging vein near the site of the zaps.
It's quiet now. I'll enjoy the numbness while I can.
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Writin' and editin' makes one want for drinkin'
I took a break from writing this evening by going for a run at sunset. I spent most of the run thinking about writing. When one topic's on your mind all the time, even when you try to push it out, it's still there.
The problem with writing isn't the writing itself. It's knowing when to stop. I have been working on a manuscript for almost nine months. I wrote it in four months and in the past five months I've had a couple of editing passes. While no one knows my stuff like me, when I submitted it to an online critique group through the Atlanta Writer's Club, they found things that I didn't notice. There were minor things like "than" for "as". There were major things like me neglecting to introduce my main character's name in the beginning of chapter one.
I always know when a blog's done because that's when my hands stop moving on the keyboard. In the tricky world of narrative fiction, the task seems to be never ending. Change is almost always necessary but it affects more than one spot in your story. It's layered in many scenes, conversations, and the motivations of characters. It makes a big difference that I have a character who's actually on a Last Will and Testament instead of having to go through court procedures to get that power. It's a huge change to make one character think that a relationship has no future, and decide that instead he has a vision of longevity that he's almost desperate enough to acknowledge. Changes like that can require major rewrites. My patience for such efforts is wearing out.
In the past week I've worked on one major chapter in the book. It's a crucial scene in the manuscript because it's the only extended chapter that has all 12 characters in a room together for an extended period of time. I worry about balance because some characters speak more than others and some have bigger revelations. The key to the scene is that despite their differences, they choose to honor their friend together. It's completely plausible that without this reason for unity, they would continue to drift apart due to the kind of petty issues that occur in any long-term relationship, let alone 12 distinct personalities that exist in a fantasy football league.
After a week, I'm still not sure if it's ready for prime time, or print. What is revealed individually could make a few novels or novellas of their own. To the reader the scenarios might be implausible but so are most of the football finishes in season one of Friday Night Lights and I can overlook that because the show is great, the characters are great, and I'd watch it if the major sporting event was fencing.
What is a writer to do? Continue plugging away. Whether it's a blog or a critical conversation in chapter ten of your 110,000-word manuscript, you have to keep plugging away until it feels right. Next week it might feel wrong but that's next week.
The problem with writing isn't the writing itself. It's knowing when to stop. I have been working on a manuscript for almost nine months. I wrote it in four months and in the past five months I've had a couple of editing passes. While no one knows my stuff like me, when I submitted it to an online critique group through the Atlanta Writer's Club, they found things that I didn't notice. There were minor things like "than" for "as". There were major things like me neglecting to introduce my main character's name in the beginning of chapter one.
I always know when a blog's done because that's when my hands stop moving on the keyboard. In the tricky world of narrative fiction, the task seems to be never ending. Change is almost always necessary but it affects more than one spot in your story. It's layered in many scenes, conversations, and the motivations of characters. It makes a big difference that I have a character who's actually on a Last Will and Testament instead of having to go through court procedures to get that power. It's a huge change to make one character think that a relationship has no future, and decide that instead he has a vision of longevity that he's almost desperate enough to acknowledge. Changes like that can require major rewrites. My patience for such efforts is wearing out.
In the past week I've worked on one major chapter in the book. It's a crucial scene in the manuscript because it's the only extended chapter that has all 12 characters in a room together for an extended period of time. I worry about balance because some characters speak more than others and some have bigger revelations. The key to the scene is that despite their differences, they choose to honor their friend together. It's completely plausible that without this reason for unity, they would continue to drift apart due to the kind of petty issues that occur in any long-term relationship, let alone 12 distinct personalities that exist in a fantasy football league.
After a week, I'm still not sure if it's ready for prime time, or print. What is revealed individually could make a few novels or novellas of their own. To the reader the scenarios might be implausible but so are most of the football finishes in season one of Friday Night Lights and I can overlook that because the show is great, the characters are great, and I'd watch it if the major sporting event was fencing.
What is a writer to do? Continue plugging away. Whether it's a blog or a critical conversation in chapter ten of your 110,000-word manuscript, you have to keep plugging away until it feels right. Next week it might feel wrong but that's next week.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Atlanta Writer's Conference
I spent about 14 hours at the Atlanta Writers Conference over the past two days. In that time I received plenty of advice, helpful and otherwise, from agents and published authors. I also watched a line of writers waiting like a college football player trying out for the NFL.
I don't often feel like I fit in. I lack what some would call a community. This weekend I felt that I fit in. I sat last night with a man of my age trying for the second year in a row to sell his book about two friends and a kidney donation. Today I had lunch with two older writers working on a nonfiction book about parenting. They weren't married but looked a lot like my aunt and uncle who live in Las Vegas. I met a woman on the waiting list to pitch who got to pitch and looked dazed after the experience. I met a Vietnam Veteran, also a published author, who told me what a Marine is all about when I asked.
It was too late for me to sign up for a slot to pitch. In a pitch session you meet an agent or an editor and have ten minutes to sell your story. During my hour-long drive I went over my pitch as many times as I could. Even though I was 20th in the waiting list I stood around all day in the hopes that a slot would open up. One of my friends from an online critique group had volunteered to time the sessions and got an opportunity to pitch. I sat and thought maybe I could slide in after him. Another prospective writer, looking for an agent for his science fiction premise, tried to engage an agent on the way down the escalator. That was it. After hearing of successful pitches on an elevator or in line for the bathroom, every moment was an opportunity.
I witnessed something rare this weekend. I got to see dreams openly expressed. Just about everyone in attendance was looking for a publication deal, or had self-published in hopes of making it to the bit time with validation from an agent. The best they could expect was an invitation to send more pages and the hope for a formal relationship and eventual publication.
It was like a job interview, but it was more than that. Most jobs are not dreams. This was a dream, that in some cases has been decades in the making. It's my dream too. It wasn't my day. Being aware of the possibility might render me unable to sleep until I achieve it. Yeah, I better drink a little wine tonight to help the process.
I don't often feel like I fit in. I lack what some would call a community. This weekend I felt that I fit in. I sat last night with a man of my age trying for the second year in a row to sell his book about two friends and a kidney donation. Today I had lunch with two older writers working on a nonfiction book about parenting. They weren't married but looked a lot like my aunt and uncle who live in Las Vegas. I met a woman on the waiting list to pitch who got to pitch and looked dazed after the experience. I met a Vietnam Veteran, also a published author, who told me what a Marine is all about when I asked.
It was too late for me to sign up for a slot to pitch. In a pitch session you meet an agent or an editor and have ten minutes to sell your story. During my hour-long drive I went over my pitch as many times as I could. Even though I was 20th in the waiting list I stood around all day in the hopes that a slot would open up. One of my friends from an online critique group had volunteered to time the sessions and got an opportunity to pitch. I sat and thought maybe I could slide in after him. Another prospective writer, looking for an agent for his science fiction premise, tried to engage an agent on the way down the escalator. That was it. After hearing of successful pitches on an elevator or in line for the bathroom, every moment was an opportunity.
I witnessed something rare this weekend. I got to see dreams openly expressed. Just about everyone in attendance was looking for a publication deal, or had self-published in hopes of making it to the bit time with validation from an agent. The best they could expect was an invitation to send more pages and the hope for a formal relationship and eventual publication.
It was like a job interview, but it was more than that. Most jobs are not dreams. This was a dream, that in some cases has been decades in the making. It's my dream too. It wasn't my day. Being aware of the possibility might render me unable to sleep until I achieve it. Yeah, I better drink a little wine tonight to help the process.
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