Bleeding for the company

Tradesmen know what I'm talking about. I got off easy, just a skinned knuckle repairing the horse barn gate. Make a note, do not build gates. Two tanks of fuel to whack the truck path back there, about 12 x 150 ft of tall grass and weeds, tossing aside windfall. Plenty more to pick up when I feel like doing a burn pile. Somewhat stunned. Another couple acres to whack. I need another gallon of gas. Plenty of string, which I pilfered from Carol. All my hand tools are at her house, haven't seen her for months. She'll show up and ask me to crawl on her roof, stretch 100 ft of shade cloth over her greenhouse windows, move big tubs of stupid plants outside with a hand truck.

 

The good news is page 238, another 30 or 40 to go maybe. I'm in the third act. I told the last good joke, foreshadowed hell, and it all goes downhill from now on, except a twist at the end. Those of you who know my methods will not be surprised that it took a while to find the right music for the next chapter. Music first, then write — "Twilight Zone" by Golden Earring, a slow dark strut. I'm tempted to write the next chapter in quatrain, hammer hammer hammer nail.

 

I worked in Holland a long time, two stints of two years, plenty of great Dutch rock, including Golden Earring, of course, but guitarist Ferdie Lancie, lunatic keyboardist Thys van Leer, and wonderful Herman Brood, last of the true rock and roll / heart and soul junkies. I got spoiled working with Dutch rockers. Made Bowie and Queen sound like Top 40 trollops.

 

My day started with hauling firewood, unloading and stacking it, then trimming the dog. If you trim a shihtzu's paws and flanks with a scissors, it's an exercise in interspecies diplomacy and you end up with enough hair on the floor to make another dog. No writing today. I'm out of pot and dead tired. The good news is that I'll live to see Escape! completed and launched, one of my worst and best novels, tons of sex and humor and heartache. I told Tom that my theme was individualism, which is superficially true, a politically correct gloss.

 

The hard nut is courage, love, and loyalty in a difficult world.

 

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5 a.m.

I started writing late last night around 1 a.m., had an idea, and being tired and stupid, I was fairly certain that I was writing rubbish. When I looked at the computer clock, it said 5 a.m. and I was trembling from too much pot, too much sugar, and far too many cigarettes. I got into bed fully dressed, cold and shaky, coughing feebly.

 

I woke up at 11 or so, still gasping for air, had to spit and cough. Old, badly behaved men are fragile. Then I read it. Oh my fucking god. And I knew how to end it, so I did that. Read it for typos, mystified, couldn't hardly believe it, broke into tears of triumph, had to use tissues. A wonderful turning point for my favorite character, a big leap of courage, transformation, and fulfillment. Neatly unanticipated and highly convincing. It could have happened that way.

 

There should be five main characters in a novel or a movie (I have trouble telling them apart because I write cinematically, see the scenes play, try to capture it in literature that's good enough to read and realize what I saw.) Anyway, five main characters. There can be another dozen supporting roles, named characters who we know quite a bit about and care about, plus a couple of villains because men are not angels, and some are less angelic than most. The very worst are demagogues on a mission to convince everyone to march in lockstep or to kneel in supplication.

 

Five main characters. If one of them changes, it tilts the pinball of destiny.

 

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Stuck

 

Trimmed the dog, weed whacked (always more to do), walked to the store, no writing for several days. A pivotal scene on deck. No pot. No willingness to write. Hunting a fast housefly. Smoking too many cigarettes. Listening to a baseball game. Put too much creamer in my coffee cup. Had to pour it back in the carafe to dilute it. Now I have a whole pot of tan coffee, drinkable after fixing my error. Reminds me of Aristotle making a little mistake that screwed up all of Western philosophy, explaining the difference in loaves of bread (white, wheat, rye, fresh, stale) as "accidents" that didn't change the "essence" of bread in all examples of bread. In epistemology, it's called The Problem of Universals. Thomas Aquinas used Aristotle's theory to explain how bread could be transmuted into the body of Jesus when a priest said magic words. God allegedly changed the "essence" without altering the "accidental" appearance and taste of bread. Terrible theology, disastrous epistemology. Aristotle made a tiny little mistake.

 

Back to the story I'm working on, middle of the second act.

 

Here's the situation. Hansje had a crack-up, blamed herself for a little design error that very nearly killed the man she loves and severely injured the boss who risked his life to save the hero. Whether the boss will recover is a toss-up. He lost a hand and forearm, a candidate for terminal cancer. Cosmic rays go through lead, and a lot of people who live in space die from cancer. Whether the boss dies or not is unimportant. He might make it. Hansje's design error wasn't detected, everything tested good, and it was easily fixed. The boss foreshadowed it, impossible to build a new space vehicle from the ground up without some trial and error. Splendid teamwork and heroism to rescue her main squeeze, who forgave her instantly. The injured boss forgave her, no problem. The second flight of her machine was perfect, a splendid achievement, made it possible to repair a meteor strike that punctured the colony.

 

The question is whether Hansje was changed? A little lamb by nature, given to grumpy complaints and technically brilliant, romantically and sexually vulnerable, a perfect mate for the hero and crucial to the climax (for reasons that don't matter right now) how does Hansje handle hostile, somewhat natural bureaucratic opposition in another department, all by herself? She can't fold under pressure. Too small to bully anybody.

 

Good place to be stuck. She needs to exemplify thematic elements of courage, trust, and loyalty. Not something that I want to approach without being stoned. I can author See Spot Run scenes sober and straight, but not transformational ones. This is Hansje's moment to cross an emotional rubicon. If she can't do it or ducks it, the ending won't make any sense. So I know it has to happen.

 

Writing it is something else. Need dope to see souls.

A bigger hammer

Writing Escape! is kicking my ass big time. A few pages more is debilitating, each and every one of them. If I get three a day, it's a big deal, breaking down in tears when I nail it. Endless revisions for grammar, elegance, surprise, humor (probably too much of that) and sex scenes that make sense and teach people how it's supposed to be, when you're so unimaginative and simple that it becomes beautiful. That's the human condition in a nutshell among the folks who do highly skilled professional work —except Red, of course, a public menace, tall, strong, and buxom. I should be ashamed of Red.

 

I don't think shame matters any more. In any case, the story is so gigantic that I will be happy to see it finished someday in the distant future. I'll need a bigger hammer to do that. Pull out all the stops, glad to go forward, willing to swing hard, bounce it to pdf, see a clinker and thread the needle more closely. Rand was decidedly unhelpful. "A theme is the summation of the novel's abstract meaning. The theme of a novel defines its purpose." (The Romantic Manifesto)

 

I'm all alone, 300 years in the future, in a space colony far from Earth, orbiting the Sun in a big frisbee with characters I like and respect. A little conspiracy to wonder about, a murder or two, intersecting a love affair that went too far too fast, which happens if the chemistry is ideal. Temptation everywhere. The physical reality of space, deadly meteor showers, and collision course with an asteroid big enough to crush the colony and kill everyone.

 

Unfortunately, adventures aren't shit in terms of fine literature. Adolescent action adventure was appropriate for Chris and Peachy, because my theme for them was "the emotional life of a warrior." Close enough for government work, and I wouldn't change a diphthong. But the theme of Escape! is kicking my ass. I used Prager as a devil's advocate, an evil to defeat. "The heart is deceitful, not to be trusted," he says with a satanic grin, happy to destroy love.

 

Be that as it may, the grim truth is that pages do not write themselves. Sometimes it's war to focus a single line, an adjective, fighting for a moment in a character's inner life with the ring of truth. If I use the same word twice in a paragraph it's a disaster. Chandler said that style determined if a story was believable. Thanks a bunch, Ray.

 

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The American Creed

 I'm an American.

 

I believe in freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of association, choosing what to say, how to behave, and who I befriend, without unreasonable restraint by government. The sole purpose of government is to defend the innocent, punish violence, and deter aggression by foreign countries.

 

Elections and referendums that determine public policy are constitutional rights explicitly given to We The People and state legislatures to provide in keeping with common sense, advance registration and nonpartisan ballot counting in each local district, verifying the identity and eligibility of each voter.

 

I believe in the civil right of marriage, one man and one woman, who have a natural right and primary responsibility to care for and educate their children. No one can be compelled by government to harm themselves or their children by tolerating indoctrination that "cancels" free speech.

 

I believe in private property. Good fences make good neighbors. I believe in the common law right of self defense and the constitutional right to keep and bear arms to defend myself and my loved ones in the event of criminal assault, legally answerable for use of lethal force.

 

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In case of social emergency

 

Emotions are not tools of cognition. (Ayn Rand)

Bizarre things I've done

Umpired a baseball game in prison, two teams of violent felons.

Gate crashed Stanley Kubrick's mansion at night in a black taxi.

Bought country & western radio spots to elect a liberal Democrat.

Told Boris that his new machine gun was nice, but leave it in the car.

Introduced to a Sicilian, who offered: "I'll call you Count Al, okay?"

A restaurant plate of brains that a bald audiologist insisted I try.