As picky as a nit

The air was warm and rancid, like raccoon breath infused with the aroma of just-eaten sardines.

Okay, so that's just ridiculous. What do I know what raccoon breath smells like? And do raccoons even eat sardines? Wouldn't it have been better to leave that sentence at "warm and rancid" or to have written something like "The air was warm and rancid-smelling from the mounds of seaweed washed ashore, the gnats and sandflies feasting on the microscopic creatures tapped inside"?

Certainly a writer uses too many similes if they get in the way of the story. Not too far into Feast Day of Fools by James Lee Burke I found myself groaning over another simile, rolling my eyes, wondering how in the hell he comes up with these things. This is Burke's twentieth or so book - are they all like this, nearly every paragraph containing a "like" or an "as though"? Has he ever re-used a simile? Does he spend hours with a notebook and pen, looking at a cloud and thinking "how many ways can I describe that?"

The dialogue in this book made me cringe. Everyone from major lowlifes to "beaners" to the sheriff are all great philosophers, especially as they stand provoking the guy with the rifle pointed between their eyes. The bad guys were so similar I couldn't keep them straight. The story was too convoluted. And, seriously, as we near the end of the book with the big shoot-out/rescue scene, lose the backstory. I don't care about your thoughts about Nam as you prepare to face the baddest of the bad guys. I skimmed those paragraphs. BTW, Burke used "palpable" twice but at least they were three hundred pages apart.

In spite of all this I may buy the previous book in the series where we get introduced to Sheriff Hack and his wide-assed deputy Pam. I liked them. To me their characters were as intriguing as a box of Sees candies.

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So on this particular day the air stunk. It was a couple days after the surf had been kicked up a little bit by that non-hurricane Pablo and the beach was covered with mounds of seaweed, as though hastily crocheted afghans had been tossed from above. On the day after the mini-storm the beach had pretty much been wiped clean but, in my experience, it's two days later that's good for shelling so I headed down to "jingle shell" beach.

Lately I've had a difficult time leaving the house. After four months of staying indoors, avoiding the heat and humidity, I'm out of the habit of walking. I'm out of the habit of doing anything outdoors. Whenever I open the sliding glass doors I expect to be met with a slap of hot wet air. But, no, the air is fresh and light and so I'm reestablishing old walking habits.

Jingle shell beach did not disappoint. After a few years of shell gathering I have the luxury of only picking up the perfect shells. These are jingle shells from just three beach excursions, along with a sand dollar and those wonderful fan-like shells that are so rare here.

Hopefully with this walking I'll lose my summer coat. I'll refurbish my winter tan. People who live in deserts do things backwards - out in the winter, holed up in the summer. My joy at winter days spent scouring the beach is nearly palpable.

How To Write

A month gap in blogging mostly due to settling into my 8-month house-sitting gig. But also transcription work picked up. And I've been writing a novel. I don't know how people can write more than one piece at a time. For instance, Cheryl Strayed wrote her book Wild while also penning various essays and doing the Dear Sugar advice column over at The Rumpus. Luis Alberto Urrea dusts off old pieces while working on new. I guess a lot of writers do that but that's hard for me. I started another book about life in a trailer park only this trailer park is in Mexico and not southern Arizona but there's this novel that's been nagging me to get on it so I dropped the trailer park book for that. And I kind of dropped blogging too.

There are a lot of books out there on how to write. I own a few: Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, Robert Olen Butler's From Where You Dream, Stephen King's On Writing, Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing, some books on screenwriting like Your Screenplay Sucks by William Akers, and books specifically on memoir writing (Judith Barrington's Writing the Memoir). Each book offers at least one piece of advice I've latched onto. For instance Anne's shitty first draft and Ray's writing should be fun. Most writers advise writing every day. Stephen King goes even further and recommends 1,000 words a day. Maria Doria Russell (Doc) wrote on facebook that she'd only written something like 459 words that day but 6 of them were great (I'm paraphrasing because I can't find the exact post). If I remember correctly when I saw Luis in Tucson he said he went long periods without putting pen to paper but the words were percolating in his head so that when he did sit down to write, he wrote muy rapido, almost like transcribing the story as he saw it in his mind's eye.

One of the biggest impediments to writing is our internal critic. In the NY Times series Writers on Writing, Kent Haruf (Plainsong) says he writes in the coal room in the basement of their house.

It's the old notion of blinding yourself so you can see. So you can see differently, I mean. I remove my glasses, pull a stocking cap down over my eyes, and type the first draft single-spaced on the yellow paper in the actual and metaphorical darkness behind my closed eyes, trying to avoid being distracted by syntax or diction or punctuation or grammar or spelling or word choice or anything else that would block the immediate delivery of the story.

This is akin to Anne Lamott's shitty first draft - just write the damn thing and edit later. And Stephen King recommends that a) don't let anyone read your book while you're writing that first draft and b) after the first draft is finished, put it aside for a few months. When you begin the editing process you'll be seeing it with fresh eyes.

There's been a strange shift in the way I write from memoir to novel. With the memoir I wrote fast and furious, wanting to remember as much as possible - just get it down! - then hack away later (and I've probably hacked too much but that's another story). Every morning I got up and wrote. I was excited to be doing it. After all, I was writing about me! (two exclamation points in one paragraph is one too many, btw)

Now the novel...in a way it feels more like a chore. Kind of the way I feel about doing those saggy upper arm exercises when, really, they're not a lot of work and once I'm doing them, the time flies and I feel very virtuous afterward. However, there are ways in which the novel and the memoir are similar: I know the main character, I know how the story begins and how it ends. Unlike the memoir, it's all the stuff in the middle I'm not too sure about. But here's the weird part. When I sit down to write I may not know where the book is going next - does she have an affair with the nice man who's given her shelter? - but the book seems to know where it's going. I sit down and type out the next scene with no forethought. It just happens. A scene in this case is only a few pages long and I'm not really sure how many words that is. I don't care. I write a scene and usually stop there. But that book is always open on my laptop. Sometimes I'll go back and begin the next scene. Maybe just a sentence. Maybe a whole paragraph. It doesn't seem to matter because the flow is always there.

Another difference is the ease with which I'm writing dialogue. With the memoir, I sucked at dialogue so I pretty much left it out. Maybe because I was trying to write as close to the truth as possible and that's pretty darn near impossible when you're trying to remember conversations, most of which happened while you were drinking.

And one last thing: Even when I'm not physically writing the novel, I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about my main character. She is the last thing I think about before I fall asleep. She is always with me. I guess she's telling me how we get to the end.

After a Sudden Death all Hell Broke Loose

I keep thinking about the woman whose husband died suddenly.

What have these past two nights been like for her? She's away from family and close friends. I think about the heaviness that must fill the motor home. The heaviness of that abrupt absence, the heaviness of the silence around her, the heaviness of the reality of her future alone.

My understanding is that her husband had not been well and they were hoping to get in one more trip to the beach. I wonder if his refusal to go to the doctor was his way of acknowledging that his time was now.

The day he died was a bad day in the park. As I was offering my condolences to the wife, Flo walked up and I could see she'd been crying. One of her beloved dogchilds - the uglier but nicer of the two - had died at the vet's in Hermosillo. He was there to get his intestines unkinked. I don't know if he died before, during or after the surgery. He had congestive heart failure and his heart couldn't withstand the stress. I felt worse for Flo than I did for the woman whose husband had died.

And then some other wild things happened that I can't really write about but I'll just say all hell broke loose.

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Elmore Leonard wrote some of the most worthwhile tips for writers I've ever come across. In one of his tips (see below) he says to never use "all hell broke loose." I was in the midst of writing my book and when I read that I thought oh-oh and sure enough I used that phrase to describe a scene where two men were having a confrontation in my small trailer. I was afraid they were going to break into a fight. I was afraid all hell would break loose. You bet I got rid of that! (oh and don't use too many exclamation points for goodness sakes!). So as you read, be on the look out for "all hell broke loose"; you will see it everywhere. Keith Olbermann said it last night in his show.

Here are Elmore's tips from the NY Times. They're priceless.

JUL 16, 2001 Easy on the Hooptedoodle By ELMORE LEONARD These are rules I've picked up along the way to help me remain invisible when I'm writing a book, to help me show rather than tell what's taking place in the story. If you have a facility for language and imagery and the sound of your voice pleases you, invisibility is not what you are after, and you can skip the rules. Still, you might look them over. 1. Never open a book with weather. If it's only to create atmosphere, and not a character's reaction to the weather, you don't want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead looking for people. There are exceptions. If you happen to be Barry Lopez, who has more ways to describe ice and snow than an Eskimo, you can do all the weather reporting you want. 2. Avoid prologues. They can be annoying, especially a prologue following an introduction that comes after a foreword. But these are ordinarily found in nonfiction. A prologue in a novel is backstory, and you can drop it in anywhere you want. There is a prologue in John Steinbeck's "Sweet Thursday," but it's O.K. because a character in the book makes the point of what my rules are all about. He says: "I like a lot of talk in a book and I don't like to have nobody tell me what the guy that's talking looks like. I want to figure out what he looks like from the way he talks. . . . figure out what the guy's thinking from what he says. I like some description but not too much of that. . . . Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. . . . Spin up some pretty words maybe or sing a little song with language. That's nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don't have to read it. I don't want hooptedoodle to get mixed up with the story." 3. Never use a verb other than "said" to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied. I once noticed Mary McCarthy ending a line of dialogue with "she asseverated," and had to stop reading to get the dictionary. 4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said" . . . . . . he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange. I have a character in one of my books tell how she used to write historical romances "full of rape and adverbs." 5. Keep your exclamation points under control. You are allowed no more than two or three per 100,000 words of prose. If you have the knack of playing with exclaimers the way Tom Wolfe does, you can throw them in by the handful. 6. Never use the words "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose." This rule doesn't require an explanation. I have noticed that writers who use "suddenly" tend to exercise less control in the application of exclamation points. 7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. Once you start spelling words in dialogue phonetically and loading the page with apostrophes, you won't be able to stop. Notice the way Annie Proulx captures the flavor of Wyoming voices in her book of short stories "Close Range." 8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters. Which Steinbeck covered. In Ernest Hemingway's "Hills Like White Elephants" what do the "American and the girl with him" look like? "She had taken off her hat and put it on the table." That's the only reference to a physical description in the story, and yet we see the couple and know them by their tones of voice, with not one adverb in sight. 9. Don't go into great detail describing places and things. Unless you're Margaret Atwood and can paint scenes with language or write landscapes in the style of Jim Harrison. But even if you're good at it, you don't want descriptions that bring the action, the flow of the story, to a standstill. And finally: 10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip. A rule that came to mind in 1983. Think of what you skip reading a novel: thick paragraphs of prose you can see have too many words in them. What the writer is doing, he's writing, perpetrating hooptedoodle, perhaps taking another shot at the weather, or has gone into the character's head, and the reader either knows what the guy's thinking or doesn't care. I'll bet you don't skip dialogue. My most important rule is one that sums up the 10. If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or, if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in English composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative. It's my attempt to remain invisible, not distract the reader from the story with obvious writing. (Joseph Conrad said something about words getting in the way of what you want to say.) If I write in scenes and always from the point of view of a particular character — the one whose view best brings the scene to life — I'm able to concentrate on the voices of the characters telling you who they are and how they feel about what they see and what's going on, and I'm nowhere in sight. What Steinbeck did in "Sweet Thursday" was title his chapters as an indication, though obscure, of what they cover. "Whom the Gods Love They Drive Nuts" is one, "Lousy Wednesday" another. The third chapter is titled "Hooptedoodle 1" and the 38th chapter "Hooptedoodle 2" as warnings to the reader, as if Steinbeck is saying: "Here's where you'll see me taking flights of fancy with my writing, and it won't get in the way of the story. Skip them if you want." "Sweet Thursday" came out in 1954, when I was just beginning to be published, and I've never forgotten that prologue. Did I read the hooptedoodle chapters? Every word. Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company | Privacy Information

Author Crush - Pete Dexter

I could weep.

It's love. Unrequited love. He doesn't even know I exist (unless the postmistress forwarded my fan letter). And he's married. And his wife seems really nice. But still, just a few minutes alone with this man...would that be a blessing or a curse? Would my craving be satisfied or would I want more?

It's this that's got my heart a'flutterin' and my spirits weighted and soaring at the same time: A review in the NY Times of Jim Harrison's new book, The Great Leader, by Pete Dexter.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I've never been able to get through a Jim Harrison novel. Being from the Pacific Northwest that's kind of sacrilegious, I know. But when I saw that the review of his new book was written by Pete Dexter I headed to the NY Times website to give it a look.

Jesus, I love Pete Dexter's voice, his writing style, his humor, his point of view. I'd read anything by him - even a review of a book I don't think I'm interested in. And then there's this synchronistic bit. I'm reading William Goldman's book Adventures in the Screen Trade and I'm smack-dab in the middle of the chapter on auteurs and the whole concept of the director as creator/author of the movie and then - whack! - I read this in Pete Dexter's review of The Great Leader:

I know enough about literature now to foresee that Jim Harrison’s new novel, “The Great Leader,” will be easier than the Bible was to option to the movies. For one thing, there will be fewer producers claiming they developed the material, and for another the protagonist has a more accessible arc. Possibly you are thinking that I haven’t learned my lesson, but trust me: I don’t have to be at that meeting to know what everybody is going to say.

This is exactly the kind of stuff Goldman's writing about. And that damn character arc - the thing I've been thinking about a lot lately. Do characters have to grow? Can't they be just as fucked up in the end as they were in the beginning?

It's obvious that Pete Dexter is one of my soulmates (along with Ken Bruen and Luis Urrea). For instance, he writes in this review that he generally skips dream sequences in novels - as do I! (that's meant to be read like the Priceline ad currently running with William Shatner). (Shit, Mr. Dexter doesn't like references to popular culture.)

When I started reading the review I was too infatuated with Pete Dexter's writing to care much about the subject. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Jim Harrison, can't get through him, blah blah blah, but the reviewer (I'm trying to get away from using "Pete Dexter" three times in one small paragraph) managed to make me interested in the book. I may just give Mr. Harrison another try. It'll give me something to do while I wait for Pete Dexter's next book.

Bisbee and Me

Ahhh, Bisbee. You and I have such a complicated relationship.

In my [as of yet unpublished] memoir, I write about Bisbee. About how I thought I might move there so I took a drive over from Amado and how it was obvious, from just a few minutes in town, that Bisbee did not want me. I won't go into all the whys and wherefores of that here. What I recently remembered was I had the same feeling about Bisbee a few years before that when I'd taken a road trip from Portland to see if the desert southwest was where I wanted to be (it was). As I came through the tunnel and saw the pretty little of town of Bisbee, I was unnerved. Rattled. Almost scared. And that was before I even reached the open pit mine. I don't know why it affected me in that way. As I drove through town I couldn't bring myself to stop. That night I stayed at the Gadsden Hotel in Douglas.

So it's a little strange that I ended up living in Bisbee for a year after leaving Amado and after a year in Kino.

In a lot of ways it was not a good year. My newfound self-confidence and joie de vivre vanished. I lived in Warren, in a warren. No wide open spaces, no grand vistas. It was a bug-infested lot without porch, patio, enticing outdoor space. I spent too much time inside my tin can writing and working. Both good things but unhealthy when it came to fitness and weight. I drank too much. Even did cocaine on a regular basis. After a year I knew I couldn't/shouldn't/wouldn't stay there and, not knowing where to go, I headed back to Kino.

All that being said, Bisbee was good to me. I needed to be there - or in the States at least - to get work. I met some truly wonderful people mostly through my friend and landlord Jack. But the best thing to come out of Bisbee was the Cochise Writers group.

I was pretty fucking scared the first time I went to the meeting at the library. I didn't know what to expect, having never been in a writing group, and when it came to sharing my own writing I was terrified. I'd had a friend or two read early drafts of my book but would I have the courage to have writers read what I'd written?

All in all, the feedback I received from members of the group was positive, helpful, encouraging. It was the spark I needed to close myself up in that tin can and write, write, write.

It's been three years since that year in Bisbee and each year (usually late summer or fall) I've returned for an extended stay. As with that up-and-down relationship, good and bad things happen to me in Bisbee. Friends die, bugs attack, my health fails. I reconnect with friends (who haven't died), listen to Terry Wolf at the Copper Queen Hotel, and once again sit in with members of the Cochise Writers group (who just started a secret blog which ain't no secret no more).

It's Saturday in Bisbee. I've spent the morning doing what I do in Bisbee - writing, working. And this afternoon I'll do what I like to do most in Bisbee - head over to hear Terry Wolf at the Copper Queen Hotel. My bug bites are about gone and I'm adjusting to the altitude. A friend has died but he wasn't from here; he was a friend from over Santa Cruz way.

Relationships are not perfect. That's a hard lesson for me as I've left so many people and places because they weren't "just right." So, Bisbee, a toast: Thanks for the good times and even the bad. As much as I say I'm never coming back, I'll probably see you again next year.