Archive for October, 2008
Wednesday, October 29th, 2008
“If you add ‘ito,’ it makes it small.”
Said to me during a conversation about Spanish. As in ‘poquito’. My contribution was that, obviously, under those rules, a burrito was really just a little, tiny burro.
“Better than a whore.”
Said to me on duty last night by a truck driver who’d hit a deer. While I was doing the accident report, I asked if he had any passengers. He said just his dog. I opined that would be a good companion on the road. That was his response.
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Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
96 days since….
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Friday, October 17th, 2008
So I write a post that’s about 414,983 words long bemoaning the ups and downs of Bouchercon. A writer friend of mine sends me a note saying, “Jesus. Bouchercon. It’s like golf: emotional torture for hours on end, then you meet David Simon. It takes a sick person to keep at it.”
That’s…like…414,957 fewer words than I used and it gets to the point much faster.
Damn you, SD, you and your talent! Damn you damn you damn you!
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Thursday, October 16th, 2008
“Now I have lost a great deal of time. I have been remiss and lazy, my concentration have permitted to go under the line of effort. The point is that I am over half through with this book.”
John Steinbeck, “Working Days,” Entry #59, August 29, 1938
I’m with ya, Johnny.
I have been bad lately. Yes, work has been busy. Yes, I went to Bouchercon and conventions always mean I lose a few days. Yes, I’ve been behind in my homework for my current class.
But I’ve not put a single new word down on the novel in probably a week and a half. The book has been stuck at the illegal rave (happening in the forgotten bowels of the jail) for something like three weeks now. It took a while to get the right feel down for the scene, but since I got that done…putt-putt-putt.
Like Mr. Magoo putting down the street, completely unsure of where he’s going. Actually, I’d love to be Magoo. At least he was moving.
It’s not like I don’t know – in at least a general way – where the book is going. I know who’s up next on the death parade, I know what the next investigatory step is, I know what the next characterization step is. I just can’t find the time to get going again. And, of course, now that I’ve been stopped for so long, it’ll take me two days just to get back up to speed.
When I was in a writers’ group with Ed Bryant, I used to silently – and sometimes with full throat – tell the other writers they were idiots. I know, hard to believe. But every month the group would hear excuses from a vast majority of the group that they just “didn’t have time to write.”
I considered that bullshit. If you want to write, then you fucking find time for it. If you don’t want to write, then sit your ass down and watch reruns of The Bob Newhart Show.
I still consider that bullshit, even upon myself. I want to write, I want to get this book done and look at some other projects, and I’ve been blowing it off. I have become, God save me, one of those I yelled at. I have let apathy and laziness step in and become my current best friend.
There are a million reasons why. I could fill up every megabite of the Internet with reasons why this is so but they’re all bullshit. It comes down to do you want to write or not? If so, then do it. If not, piss off.
Andy DuFrense has a great line in Shawshank Redemption. It comes down to a choice, he says, get busy living or get busy dying.
Okay, writing a novel that might well never get published isn’t quite so dire as all that, but you get what I’m saying.
The act of writing has always been a joy to me. I’ve never had a problem with sitting in the chair for an hour or two and banging out new words. Put on some bombastic classical music or some angular bebop jazz and get the hell to it. Or slam on some Metallica or jangly blues and edit the crap outta something (no lyrics when I’m writing new…it just distracts me).
But lately, I just can’t bring myself to sit down. Actually, that’s not true. Lately, when I’m sitting down, I just can’t stay focused. There are a lot of dead fish swimming around in my head and I can’t see through their corpses to get Jace moving on to her next thing.
Steinbeck talks, in his quote above, about being lazy and remiss. I’m not sure I’m lazy, I’m getting lots of homework done, and I wrote a brand new short story when I got back from Bouchercon. But everything I’ve been doing is in short bursts. I believe that right now, my long-term concentration is as dead as McCain’s campaign, just as Steinbeck says in the second half of the quote.
But knowing and understanding the problems – even if I don’t expose them here – hasn’t done anything for my ability to deal with the problems, solve them, and move the fuck on.
I need to be more like ol’ Andy, I guess. “Get busy living or get busy dying.”
Actually, Red has the better part of that line. “That’s goddamned right.”
Tee it up, Red, let’s get this fucking book done.
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Thursday, October 16th, 2008
84 days since….
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Sunday, October 12th, 2008
I love Baltimore.
I love its dirt and grime, its tourists with big old baggy shorts and cameras hanging from around their necks. I love the horrible drivers who get hired as cab drivers. I love the smell of rotten fish down at the Inner Harbor. I love the Edgar Allan Poe grave site.
I especially love that Baltimore was the setting for two of my three or four favorite TV shows of all time, “Homicide: Life on the Street,” and “The Wire,” both created and written and produced and whatnot by David Simon.
Spent the weekend at Bouchercon, the annual mystery convention, wherein we gather all kinds of writers and editors and agents and publishers and fans and sycophants and various whoevers, and have a ball.
I always find myself, when surrounded by writers I admire, getting inspired. They make me think about things more deeply and work the craft more seriously and read more assiduously. In short, seeing these people and catching up with their projects makes me better.
There’s a great line in Metallica’s “Some Kind Of Monster,” documentary where the band has just offered Robert Trujillo the bass spot. Hetfield looks at Trujillo and says, “You make me play better.”
The writers of Bouchercon make me play better.
But they also make me crazy. See, I’m predisposed to jealously. Hate to admit it, but there it is. When someone gets a great deal or gets included in a Year’s Best anthology or wins a prize or whatever, I get jealous. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for them. No, really. I want to see my friends and acquaintances do well. I want to see them get rich and get awarded and get good.
I just don’t want to be left behind.
The same jealousy happened to me when I wrote and published lots of horror, too. Went to those conventions and had all the same petty and ugly bullshit. I had hoped it would all lessen as I got older but I was wrong, it’s still there. And understanding they’re there has done nothing for my control of them.
First of all, even before we got there, things were rocking. On the plane, LuAnn and I had to sit separately. She ends up sitting next to Dennis Lehane and I didn’t realize it until half way through the flight. Lehane wrote “Mystic River,” and “Gone, Baby, Gone,” both of which became great movies. He is an incredible writer and one of those I consider waaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy up the food chain from my perch. We ended up talking with him while waiting on bags at Balto airport and it was sweet.
So Thursday night, I hung out with friends and caught up and it was wonderful. Lori Armstrong’s new book just came out and it looks to be great. Sean Doolittle’s next book is scheduled for February and it’ll be fabulous, I’m sure. Karen Olson and Alison Gaylin have new books just out or on the way out and they’re rocking and rolling. Libby Fischer Hellman’s new one – ‘Easy Innocence’ – is just out and doing well. Michael Black and David Case, both Chicago PD members and writers, are doing well.
Everyone was doing great and sitting around just chillin’ out and it was fabulous.
Friday, same story. Some panels, wandering around Inner Harbor and taking a tour of the U.S.S. Constellation and the U.S.S. Tursk submarine and those were extremely cool. Then Friday night we went to Lee Child’s annual bash (he picks up the tab on an open bar for two solid hours and any attendees of the convention can drink…his way of saying thanks to some of the people who’ve put millions of dollars in his pocket…it’s a cool gesture).
And it was at the bash that the first great moment happened. I went to see F. Paul Wilson (author of ‘The Keep’ that became the movie…as well as tons of other great books), who I hadn’t seen in a few years. We’re talking, catching up, and some drunk guy bumped into me.
Turns out it was freaking Thomas Monteleone. “Trey,” he slurs. “Great to meet you!”
I almost shit a brick. This guy is one of the foremost writers in horror, one of the top editors, too. Back in the day, I had tried and tried and tried to sell something to him and just never cracked him. The fact that he was there at all, and that he remembered my work, blew me away. We had a fabulous conversation about all things writing.
Saturday was good, though things slowed down. And then I went to a shitty dinner at a shitty bar that played shitty music and had shitty-shitty food. Other than that, it was great. Ended up at the hotel bar on a panicked mission to find and schmooze an editor who has a book of mine. I’d been looking for her for the weekend and just hadn’t found her yet. Now the hours were ticking away and I was getting panicked.
No doubt the panic played into the bipolarness.
Remember, too, the building jealousy over the contracts and great reviews and all the rest. It wasn’t on display, but it was there…it always is.
So then I get introduced to two – FUCKING TWO – writers I’ve never heard of. Nor have I ever seen a byline with their name. Why? ‘Cause they’ve never written anything. Except the novels they just sold.
To the publisher I desperately want to be with.
Huh? Been working my ass off for 14 years and have no deal and these guys woke up one morning, wrote novels, and got contracts in the space of…like…37 minutes? Fuck that shit.
Oooohhhh, did I become Grampy McCrankypants. Jealous bipolar in full drama queen mode. I mean, I didn’t throw anything or yell at anyone or anything demonstrative like that. But I did have my glary face going and my monosyllabic grunt answers and flaring nostrils. And yeah, that’s all pretty hard to miss. I’m pretty obvious when I’m annoyed at something.
So, knowing I was channeling John McCain’s Grampy McCrankypants, I blew that popstand and went to bed. I figure if you’re looking for an editor to suck up to, best not have an attitude about her house offering hacks contracts but not you. See…ain’t so stupid.
Then Sunday, I was pretty much back to normal. In fact, Dennis Lehane saw me and asked after me by name…and then introduced me to? That’s right…David Simon. Couldn’t believe it. This man who wrote the book ‘Homicide,’ and then worked on the TV show, this man who showed the world it’s not just about car chases and shootouts.
And we end up having a long conversation because he’s been to Midland to cover stories. My hometown. We ate at some of the same places, we covered some of the same stories – me as a college journalist, him as a real one for the Baltimore ‘Sun.’ It was amazing. The man’s also been to Wink, Texas, home of Roy Orbison.
Then it was over and I said goodbye to some dear friends: John Purcell and Sandy Loper Herzog and Jared Case and the Jordans. And some new ones: Jim Born and Keiran Shea and it couldn’t have been a nicer weekend.
So out of the entire weekend, my bipolar/jealous/petty/ugly time, happened over about four hours. That’s a pretty good ratio of bad hours to good hours. And as horrible as all this sounds, I’m actually getting better about it. In a few more years, say around the end of President Obama’s second term, I’ll be all better.
Now that it’s all over and my bipolar has passed, I get to go work on a new short story, wherein I’ll play two different people; a situation that’s less bipolar than multiple personality disorder.
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Sunday, October 12th, 2008
A special two-fer tonight, folks, straight from Bouchercon, that largest and most impressive of mystery conventions.
“Do I look like I need peyote?”
Asked of me by a writer friend but actually – I think – an answer to someone else at the table at the time.
“Do we have a serial killer following us?”
Asked of me by two little old ladies when I ended up behind them walking down the hallway. You can supply your own joke about whether or not I actually look like one.
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Monday, October 6th, 2008
“Never been so happy to get my period.”
She said it with a sort of breathless relief. I laughed and then said that would be funny on the blog because of the obvious inference people would draw. She pretty much dared me to put it up.
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Monday, October 6th, 2008
“I can take these out,” he said, clicking a fingernail on his new teeth.
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