“Are you a backwoods Christian, sir?”
A homeless man biking across country to Montana, after serenading me with a few verses and a chorus or two of ‘Down In The Valley.’ Without waiting for an answer, he then launched into a pile of moderately funny but ultimately obscene jokes.
120 days since….
But I’m retiring the clock. It was a passive-aggressive way to get someone who probably never reads the damned blog to pay attention to some vague promises they made and then ignored. And yeah, they used the weakest, most bullshit ridden reasons I’ve ever heard to ignore those promises.
Passive-aggressive is good…unless ain’t nobody paying attention, and in this case…ain’t nobody….
Also, I believe that, Bush’s economy and the massive recession we’ll face in 2009 and the first part of 2010 (and longer if the private jet flying auto CEOs can’t pull their collective heads out) will absolutely slam the door on what this clock was counting.
There are always writers who whine about not getting book deals. There are always writers who whine about other writers (usually referred to as hacks) getting great deals for putrid books. There are always writers who believe they are being left behind even in vibrant markets.
Truth in writing here - I am absolutely one of those writers. I’m always guilty of those sins.
But the point is that over the next couple years, I fervently believe there will be no vibrant market. There will be, in fact, damned few books deals going ’round. Sales at nearly all of the major chains and many of the independent book stores would have to rise dramatically just to be considered in the toilet. When people are concerned about losing their jobs and getting medicine for the baby, they buy fewer books and no one can tell me any differently. LuAnn and I have the same income we had a year ago and two years ago and we - bookstore owners - are buying fewer books!
It’s been ugly for a while, it’s getting uglier, and there will be lots and lots of great writers whose voices you won’t hear for a few years when it comes to novels published by a major house. But maybe that means the small press, which I’ve always loved and supported as well as I could, will take the place of the behemoth publishing houses, just as small specialty car companies will replace the dinosaur Big Three.
Anyway, this was all to say that I’m bagging the Countdown Clock.
Or maybe I’ll find something else fun to count. Hairs left on my head…length of my toenails…how many Sudoku games I’ve played….
We’ll call him Ronnie and he first came to my attention a couple weeks ago.
A Spring Valley copper called me and said he’d found this kid walking across the bridge over the Illinois River. Seems the kid was walking home from Illinois Valley Community College, which is in a town called Oglesby. Ronnie had walked from IVCC to the bridge and the southern edge of Spring Valley.
That’s nine miles.
We’re not done yet.
Ronnie was headed out toward Seatonville, fully prepared to walk that entire distance…another seven miles. So the Spring Valley officer gave him a ride.
We’re not done yet.
The copper called me and said Ronnie was headed west on Route 6, did I have time to give him a ride further down the line? Yeah, that was no problem. It was dark, it was starting to get cold, and I’m not wild about people walking on the road in those conditions.
Ronnie told me he lived in the High Rise. In Princeton. That’s thirty one miles from IVCC.
Thirty one fucking miles.
And he was walking.
The next morning, one of the deputies got a call about a man on the road at 2:30. Five days a week, Ronnie leaves home at 2:00 a.m., walks to school, then walks home. He’s done it since the semester started. He needs to go to school, he has no license and no one to give him a ride. So he walks ’cause he wants to get to school.
Truth in advertising: Ronnie isn’t quite all there. He’s not stupid and he’s not mentally ill, he just has a touch retardation to him. The kind of degree that leaves people wildly uncomfortable. If someone is more retarded, then they can be talked down to and forgotten beneath a sheen of guilt and pronouncements about supporting social programs and donating to Special Olympics.
This kid is mostly there, just off a few degrees.
But this son of a bitch wants his education. Regardless of whatever wires in his head are misconnected, he knows education is the silver bullet, that education can solve every single problem - EVERY SINGLE PROBLEM - America has, and he wants it so badly he’s willing to walk 31 miles to school every damned day to get it.
*****
We’ll call her Jessie and she first came to my attention a couple of weeks ago.
My wife has a second job and works with Jessie at that job.
Jessie is pregnant.
Not as an accident. Not as, “Hey, the car ran out of gas and it’s getting cold so we’ll have to hold each other in the back seat…oh, don’t worry about that.”
But as in, “I chose to have a baby. I chose to complicate my life in ways that I can’t even begin to imagine.”
Jessie is excited about her baby. She should be. While I’m not into kids, I do believe that if you’re having one, you should probably be excited about it. Jessie is aglow with excitement and is reveling in the attention.
Jessie is 17. Jessie’s no longer in school. And Jessie is excited about filing papers to participate in WIC: Women, Infants, and Children.
It’s a social program, a form of welfare from the USDA.
Understand, I have no problem with the concept of welfare. I do believe there are times when people need help. Decades ago, it was churches that often tried to help but anymore, churches are - mostly - houses of judgment rather than compassion. So now we have government programs and I generally support them.
But to make that your life plan. To, with flushed cheeks and a hitch in your voice, inquire about WIC because you have no other plan, is a nightmare. Jessie’s short-sightedness has left me breathless and speechless.
Maybe Jessie will make it. Maybe, at some point, she will realize she’s got to have an education. Maybe, regardless of one or two or more kids, she’ll try and get her silver bullet.
I have my doubts.
I have my doubts that Jessie will ever come close to being Ronnie. Ronnie, who is self-aware enough to realize he’s not that smart, is doing everything he can to make a life for himself. Jessie, who seems bright enough, is doing everything she can to make sure her life is over.
And no, I’m not saying motherhood is the end of your life. I’m saying motherhood at 17 with no diploma, no supportive family (which, if we looked closely enough, is probably the psychological underpinning of the entire baby motivation), and a plan that involves government handouts, is probably the end of her life.
The dichotomy makes me crazy and there’s nothing I can do about it. One kid walking 62 miles a day to get educated and one kid walking to the local federal office to fill out paperwork. One has nothing and is working to get something. Another has - not everything, but quite a bit more than nothing - and is working to toss it all on the garbage heap.
I have no idea here, I have no thoughts to fix this for either party. This is just something that’s been on my mind lately.
And the last bit of information? The nugget I’ve been holding back? Ronnie was kicked out of school a few days ago. He’s having trouble paying for school and getting to school regularly and staying awake when he’s there. Seems he’s not getting enough sleep.
I thought so. I was pretty sure. I figured, “Eh, yeah, we’ll have a black president…when I’m 60…65…maybe older.”
And first we’ll have a woman.
And a continuing pile of old, white men before that.
(If I snark on old, white men, I do it gently, after all, that’s where I have to park my car.)
I like to think I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. I didn’t really grow up there, but I spent a lot of time with my Mama, who was a bookkeeper and did books for clubs ‘over there.’
(I also believe that’s where I got my love of blues and funk ’cause those clubs weren’t playing no Merle Haggard.)
Anyway, she did the books for lots of those clubs and had lots of friends and even though it was Midland, Texas - home of reformed drunk and future President George W. Bush - race never seemed to be a thing to me. People were people, as cornball as that sounds.
There is a story Mama used to love to tell, and I don’t remember it very well, but apparently I came home one day from a local park and told her all about some new friend I’d made. I went on and on, as both kids generally - and I specifically - are wont to do, and eventually she asked me about his race. According to her retelling of the story, I had a blank look on my face and was unable to tell her.
Black or white, I had no idea.
I don’t remember it but it made a pretty good impression on her. I went to Robert E. Lee High school, the Rebels (whose logo was, literally, the Confederate battle flag). There were a pretty good mix of races there but I don’t remember any problems. I’m sure there were, but being a white kid, they didn’t touch me much.
The point is I don’t remember race as anything other than genetic happenstance until I got to Lubbock, Texas to go to school. That’s where I remember discovering racists and and people who randomly and casually threw around ‘nigger this’ and ‘darkie that’ and all the rest of the crap.
Some of the talking head reporters are wondering if color played a role in the election and seem astonished that Barack Obama got 43% of the white vote. (Clinton did that well once and Carter did better, and that’s about it). I think color did play a role, but I think that color was green.
“It’s the economy, stupid.”
People were more frightened for their financial prospects than they were of a black man. ‘Don’t care what color you are, long as you can help me keep my job.’
But I do have to wonder: if Obama had been more visually black - that is, a wider nose and darker skin and long enough hair that it was more obviously kinky - how would he have done? Is it possible that white Americans who were not completely comfortable with him, were able to trump their discomfort because he didn’t look like the stereotypical criminal the media feeds us every hour of every day?
A random thought and it might well be a wasted thought because I do believe everything for the average American boiled down to the economy.
But…economy or not, I am still amazed at this country and proud of this country and still so in love with this country, though I am puzzled at how we could elect a black man while, at the same time, telling the gay and lesbian community around the country to fuck off. Check out some of the state ballot measures and how harshly anti-gay they are.
Baby-steps, I guess.
And we took a huge baby-step last night. So I’ll celebrate that for a while, then start working on the others.
“The time goes on and the manuscript crawls on. And after a long time it will be done. I am not sad. In fact, I am pretty glad now.”
John Steinbeck, “Working Days,” Entry #62, September 2, 1938
I am glad, too. In fact, I’m as close to rocking as I have been for quite a long while.
No, the novel’s not done. Not even close. But I’m working it again; stretching and pulling and beating and tearing and then trying to sew it back up.
I had gotten in a funk about it and some personal goofs and my schoolwork and whatever, and I left poor Jace with a knife to her throat in a darkened, abandoned holding cell for way too long. But now we’re moving again, she and I.
The book has a ton of problems, no doubt, but my novels always have a ton of problems in the middle passages. By that time, I’ve always thought of a hundred thousand new colors that will absolutely improve the painting and so I just start splattering cobalt blue and flake white and viridian green and a touch of cadmium red all over the place.
In other words, on page 358, suddenly there will appear a new character or a new situation with references linking backward. I have to keep lots of notes as to what new thing happened when so I can remember to go back and set it all up.
As confused as it sounds, it actually feels like I’ve come home again ‘cuz it’s always this fouled up. Hah, this is normal for me so that’s sadly reassuring.
On the other hand, this is where the painfully solitary act of writing starts to get giddily fun.
What I did, when I realized I had lately lost my writing discipline, was to ease back with a new short story (and by selling an older one to a market I’ve been trying to break in to…Thuglit.com). The new story was an idea I had before Bouchercon, but hadn’t touched because I wasn’t sure what was up. But at Bouchercon, because of the booze or barbeque or inspiring writers or rage inspiring hack writers, the thing took shape.
See…it’s all dialogue.
That’s right, baby. Nothing but dialogue. No description. No narrative. Nothing literary or literate like that. Nothing but quotes. Nothing but two guys talking and…eventually…shooting. It’s odd and experimental and structurally goofy and I love it.
Getting the thing done over the course of two days - I’d planned two weeks for it - quite wonderfully charged the writing batteries. Now I’m all atwitter, much like a two-bit tweaker, to crank up the stereo (jazz or instrumental world beat when I’m composing new words, brutally loud rock or blues or metal when I’m editing), toss a twelve pack of cheap beer in the fridge, snatch up a few big bags of Skittles and some Oreos, and get the fuck back to work.
Plus, I finished my second Master’s class (out of twelve…oy, vey….) so there is nothing in front of me except wide open roadway.
I know who’s dying next, I know who’s discovering the nugget next, I know where the beer is and how best to suck the filling outta the Oreos.
Hah…this is what it’s supposed to be like and I’m glad I found it again.
So don’t call me, don’t email me, don’t send me a text message that’ll cost me ten cents, don’t send up smoke signals. Leave me alone and when it’s done, assuming I’m not dead, I’ll come up for air.
“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.
96 days since….
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!
“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.
84 days since….