Taking My Time

 

I wrote in July about the influence of David Milch on my writing and the concept of “resting transparently.” An exercise he promotes is to sit down and start typing a scene. Two characters: Voice 1 and Voice 2. Nothing but dialog. Type whatever comes to mind for no less than 25 minutes and no more than 50. Stop when you begin to think about what you’re doing. When finished, seal it in an envelope and forget about it. As Milch puts it, “Give it to God.”

 

Milch believes writers too often think about what the writing can do for us, or how it will be received, or, ultimately, if it will sell. Or how well. The point of the exercise is to pull the creative process away from that. His point is that your best writing gives you the best chance of success, and your best writing often comes from a place the conscious mind may be reluctant, or afraid, to go. Resting transparently is letting go and trusting your subconscious.

 

I don’t have much time for exercises. The day job still consumes almost half my waking hours. What I can do is to put the concept to work for me.

 

I’m writing this after supper. The work-in-progress awaits. When I finish here I’ll do something else for a while to clear my head. When I’m ready to get to work I’ll take a few seconds, no more than 30, and refresh my memory of where I am in the book. Then I’ll walk into my reading room, sit in my chair, and close my eyes. Whatever comes to mind comes to mind. I make no conscious effort to direct it.

 

Sometimes it’s a little while before the book takes over. Sometimes—and more often recently—I sit no more than a few minute before I know exactly what comes next. I about launch myself out of the chair to get to the keyboard.

 

The session goal is 500 words. If I hit a roll, I keep going until I start thinking too much, or I start feeling good about what I’ve done. Either of those involves the ego, and the ego is the enemy of creativity. When that happens it’s time to stop. With rare exceptions, this takes 25 – 50 minutes.

 

Where this method works best is on days I don’t work the day job and I can repeat the process three or four times. It seems to work so long as I leave an hour or so between sessions. Do that three times a day and I’ll have at least 1500 words and quite possibly more than 2500, because, once begun, every session gets easier as more comes to mind virtually unbidden.

 

It also helps that this is the first draft. There are misspelled words and mangled grammar. There are sentences I’ll look at in three months and wonder, “What the hell does this mean?” Doesn’t matter. There are no mistakes. There are only things that need to be better. That’s what edits are for.

 

First drafts were always drudgery for me. Now I look forward to the next session. This may be the best first draft I’ve ever written. I don’t know if it will be the best book—a draft often bears only passing resemblance to a finished novel—but I’m delighted with what I’ll have to work with.

 

I’ve discovered chapters I’ll need to add. Leave them for the end, then find good places for them. Sanding off the unintentional edges are what edits are for. (Scrivener’s note cards are great for this. Just create a new card, type in a slug, and I’ll get to it when I get to it.) What’s best is the lack of anxiety. Every first draft I’ve written has had several, “Oh shit” moments. Not once in this one—so far—and I’m at least two-thirds of the way through.

 

I’ve known for years I’m more left-brained than it’s good for a creative person to be. Resting transparently allows my right brain to breathe. Taking my time allows what comes next to form itself in my subconscious so when I’m ready to rest transparently, what I need is right there.

 

I never think about writing when I’m not writing anymore, which is another Milchian trademark. That doesn’t mean ideas don’t come to me unbidden. I came home from shopping recently with well over half of the plot for a new Nick Forte novel so well formed I typed out 1500 words of notes. Didn’t have to think about them. Just wrote down what was on the tips of my fingers.

 

We’re all looking for a way to open the tap in our brains that lets out the words we want in the order in which we want them. Resting transparently and taking my time will not make me more talented. They might help me to stay out of my own way.

I Went to a Panel and They Put Me to Work

After three days of working on a cogent and well-crafted post for today I found the piece to be 1600 words of swamp. So maybe another time for that one. Or maybe not. If my thoughts have not coalesced enough for me to salvage something out of 1600 already edited and re-written words, they’re thought probably best kept to myself. I always try to have a back-up post ready, and here it is.

Conference season is seven months away (for me, at least) but today I’m looking back to a fun memory from last year’s Creature, Crimes, and Creativity conference. (The organizers’ omission of the Oxford comma in the title on the web site’s home page would ordinarily be sufficient reason for me to boycott, but the conference itself makes up for it.) Each year C3 has several featured authors. (This year Reed Farrel Coleman and Alexandra Sokoloff will be the two keynote speakers, with Donna Andrews and Cerece Rennie Murphy rounding out the special guests.) Each featured author has a panel slot—a “master class”—where they talk about various aspects of writing or how they built their careers. One of last year’s keynotes was Heather Graham, who’s written more bestsellers than most people have read. (F. Paul Wilson was the other.)

Heather had a unique approach to her master class: she made it a workshop, with a writing exercise for the audience. There were several conditions:

The first line had to be: The blood dripped slowly down the wall.

We then had to work in four characters: a policemen, a stripper, a firefighter, and a model. Four adjectives also had to make an appearance: bald, peg-legged, tall, and hideous. We had about twenty minutes to come up with something after which Heather had the more stout-hearted of us read what we’d written.

The results were surprisingly good. Amazing in a couple of instances. This is not my preferred method of working, but I gave it a shot. Here’s my effort (Which I readily admit was not the best):

The blood dripped slowly down the wall. Pictures, some covered in spatter, showed she’d been a model. “I’ll be damned,” the policeman said, scratched his head. “A peg-legged stripper.”

“No,” the stripper said. “That’s my outfit. I say I’m a model, but she really was one. Hands and face, mostly. Things that didn’t show her leg.” The face that had been so photogenic now a hideous mass of blood and brain.

A firefighter stuck his head into the room and the cop noticed for the first time how tall the stripper was. “No fire here.”

“False alarm?” the cop said.

“Not for lack of effort.” The firefighter pointed over his shoulder. “Fire didn’t catch. I’m not sure what set the alarm off.”

“I did.” Both men turned to the stripper.

*  *  *

Maybe someday I’ll make something of that. There’s Noir at the Bar potential there if I find the right angle.

Jacking the Beanstalk

(Or, "What if Mickey Spillane wrote fairy tales?")

Times were hard for the old man and me since Ma died. There was more work to do, or at least there was more work not getting done. My weekly visits to Trixie Hicks were the only fun to be had on the farm.

The old man didn’t help. He was no pleasure when Ma was around and started hitting the sauce even harder with her gone. It didn’t help his personality.

I didn’t want to come when he called that day to talk about the cow. He’d been on an all-night bender and was working on the hair of the dog cure for his hangover. By noon he had a snoot full.

“I got a job for you, boy,” he said. His breath reeked of stale beer and fresh bourbon. “Take the cow into town and see what you can get for her.”

“But Bessie’s all we got for milk, Pa,” I said, or started to say. I ducked in time for the empty bourbon bottle to sail over my shoulder. He wasn’t so drunk to throw the full one. He got up from the table when I wasn’t looking and gave me the back of his hand across my face. Not so hard that it hurt, but hard enough to snap my head back.

“It ain’t milk we need, boy! That beat up old football with legs don’t give enough milk to feed us! Now mind me and get yourself into town and see what you can get for her! I don’t got all day to wait on you. Do I look like a man that got all day for you?! Do I?!”

He looked like a man who had all day to crawl inside a bottle. I didn’t tell him that. I’d seen these moods and knew to stay away from him. He’d drink himself into a peaceful stupor soon enough, but he’d be one mean cuss on the way.

I went outside and got the rope on old Bessie. Town was a long walk on a hot day and I wasn’t half way before I started wondering what Trixie was up to, and if she’d be game for a little skinny-dipping. I was thinking a lot more about that than about selling the cow, or I would have noticed the guy before he stepped out from behind the tree and startled me.

“Hey, kid, how’s tricks?” he asked from the side of his mouth. He had a toothpick going in the other corner. How he managed to talk and keep that toothpick happy was quite a trick. “What’s your name?”

“Who wants to know?” I can hold my own in the witty repartee department.

“Hey, just a friend. I see you got a cow with you. Not a lot of folks taking their cows into town on a hot day like this. I was wondering what was up is all.”

“You got an eye for the obvious, pal,” I said, looking up and down the deserted road. “Maybe I’m taking her into town to see a movie. We’re farm people. We do things like that.”

“Nah, no movie for her. Not today, anyways,” the sharpie said. “You look like a boy with a mission. You got plans for that cow, don’t you, kid?”

He was getting on my nerves. “Yeah, you pegged it, Ace. I’m planning on winning the Derby with her. Now blow.”

He took the toothpick out of his mouth and moved in front of me on the path. “Look here, kid,” he said, pointing the pick at me for emphasis, “show a little respect. I’m about to do you a big favor and you don’t even appreciate it.”

“I don’t see no one here doing me no favors,” I said. “All I see is some slick in a cheap suit.”

“That’s because you got no vision, kid,” he said. “I know things about people. I know things about you.”

“Like for instance,” I said.

“Like for instance you’re taking that cow into town to sell her. What are you hoping to get for that broken-down old milker? A few shekels, maybe?”

I was ready to go. The line formed at Trixie’s pretty early on days like this. “You said something about a favor you were going to do me.” I tried to get past him.

“Take it easy, kid,” he said. He wasn’t rattled, but he was getting impatient. “You’re not going to get much for old Bossie—“

“Bessie.”

“Whatever, Bossie, Bessie, she’s two steps from being a porterhouse and we both know it. All you’re going to get is enough dough to buy three day’s hooch for your old man. I got a better deal than you’re going to get in town.”

“Better deal how? More dough?”

“Forget about dough, kid. Dough is for losers. You want to cash in quick, then go ahead. Be a loser your whole life. I got something better than dough here.”

Better than dough was something I had no familiarity with. “OK, I’ll jump. What’s better than dough?”

He looked up and down the road like he was afraid someone would see us. He got up real close to me and pulled something wrapped in a handkerchief from an inside pocket of his suit coat. He laid the handkerchief in the palm of his hand and opened it for me to see. “Here you go, kid. I got beans.”

“You got beans?” I didn’t raise my voice. It wouldn’t have been worth it. It was too hot, and he was nuts. I wanted to get to town, then see if Trixie was ready to go to town. “You keep them. I know what you can do with them, too.” I started walking again.

“Sure, you say that now,” he said, walking along with me, “but you don’t know about these beans. These ain’t ordinary beans, kid. These is magic beans.”

That stopped me. A chance for magic beans doesn’t come along every day. “Magic how?”

“Magic like in you put them in the ground and stuff happens.”

“I trade this cow for those beans and stuff’ll happen when I get home.”

“No, no, no, I mean good stuff,” he said, smiling. “I’m telling you straight. These beans is the real deal. You got to trust me.”

“Why?” I asked. “Why should you do me this big favor?”

He got a cagey look, like it was something he didn’t want to tell me. He finally decided he had to.

“I ain’t lived the best life, kid. I done some things that don’t put me on the Big Guy’s short list of companions, if you get my drift. One day I get a visit from this fairy godmother. She tells me that I only got a few chances left to do good, and she’s willing to help me. She gave me these beans and told me that they could make me rich beyond my wildest dreams, but to prove that I had really changed, that I would have to let someone else cash in on them.”

I couldn’t argue with a fairy godmother. If he really got the beans from her, then they were the real deal, and he must have got them from her, because who would make up a story like that? I did the math in my head and rolled over for him. I handed him Bessie’s rope and he gave me the beans.

“You won’t regret this, kid,” he said as he walked away with the cow.

I walked a few steps before it occurred to me. “Hey, wait a minute. If the fairy godmother wanted you to make sure someone else got these beans, why didn’t you just give them to me?”

He shook his head at me. “She said ‘do good,’ not ‘be a schmuck.’ Now go on home and plant your beans.”

Going home and telling the old man what I’d done was going to be a hard sell and I knew it. I had a better idea. I could do a little seed planting at Trixie’s first. The beans could wait.

The old man wore me out when I got home and told him what I’d done. He threw the beans out the window and hit me a few licks with his belt. He was reaching for the frying pan when he got tangled up in his suspenders and fell. I lammed and he got down to some serious drinking.

I slept late the next morning. The sun didn’t come in my window like it usually does. I looked outside and saw the biggest beanstalk I had ever seen growing up from where the old man had tossed the sharpie’s magic beans. I snuck through the kitchen. The old man was passed out dead to this world and the next and the floor was littered with his dead soldiers. I got around him and went outside.

The beanstalk had to be twenty feet around if it was a foot. I tried to see how high it had grown, but it went up into a cloud. It looked sturdy enough, so I started climbing.

I climbed all the way to the cloud. I could see a house in the distance. I’d never seen a house in a cloud before and it looked pretty solid up there, so I jumped off the beanstalk and started walking toward the house.

It was farther than I thought. The more I walked the bigger the joint got. Not mansion big, with lots of rooms, but giant big, with ceilings high enough to give a painter a nosebleed. I had a little trouble climbing the front stairs, but I managed. There was no way I could reach the doorknob, but there was a pet door right in front of me and I went through it. I hoped I wouldn’t come across Fido while I was there.

I like my women tall, but she was too much of a good thing. Ten feet tall and not an inch in the wrong place. She turned when I came in and I caught a look that told me she hadn’t seen the likes of me in a while. I get that look a lot. I bet she did, too.

Ten feet made her about four feet taller than me, and it gave me a view I didn’t usually get from a woman. Her legs were bigger than my arms, but they were perfectly proportioned to hold your attention for a while before you got too curious about what they were holding up. What they were holding up was worth waiting for. A nicely tapered waist led up to a major league rack, which hit me just about eye level. Long blond hair framed an oval shaped face and made the luster of her green eyes even more pronounced. I’d heard people talk of big, busty, blondes before, but this one got the blue ribbon.

“Hello, little man,” she said in a voice like forty weight oil on a cold day. “How did you get way up here?”

“Beanstalk,” I said as matter of factly as I could.

“Oh,” she said, like that explained everything. “Could you use any breakfast?”

“Sure. A few eggs would go good right about now. Scrambled, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t. I like to scramble men’s eggs,” she said and shot me a look.

I walked over closer to the stove where she was already whipping up my breakfast. “You’re OK, Toots. I have a weakness for tall blondes who know their way around a kitchen. You live around here?”

She paused from stirring the eggs for a second. “You don’t waste any time, do you, Little Man? As a matter of fact, I live right here. I mean in this house, but I might as well say here in this kitchen. Why doesn’t some big hunk of a man take me away from all this?”

I was standing right beside her. “Normally, I would volunteer, but I think your definition of ‘big hunk of a man’ is different than mine,” I said. She turned and a breast brushed my cheek. “Do you like to slow dance?” I asked.

She laughed a full throaty laugh that made her toss back her head and move her hair around. “Yes, I do. I was wondering if you like to limbo?” she said with an evil grin, running her tongue across her lower lip a couple of times.

Before I could answer a small explosion shook the house. I felt the floorboards shaking as a voice that could have come from a loudspeaker bellowed:

“Fee, fie, fo, fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman. Be he alive or be he dead, I’ll grind his bones to make me bread.”

I thought about telling him that I was German-Irish, but the rattling going on from everything that wasn’t nailed down made me suspect that he wasn’t the debating type. The woman looked down at me with alarm and reached for the oven door.

“Quick! Get in here! That’s my husband, the giant. If he finds you here no one else will ever find you again!”

“In there? Get a grip, sister. I know the baked in a pie story, too, and I ain’t no blackbird.” I ran for the stove, but slid under it. I made it just as he came through the other door.

Calling him a giant was no exaggeration. Fourteen feet tall and built like a defensive lineman, the dust rose from the floor rose every time he set down a foot. “Woman,” he said in a voice that still rattled the china, “I needs me breakfast. Here,” he said, slinging a freshly killed heifer onto the cutting board, “I’ll be wantin’ some steak with me eggs this morning.”

She set right about it and whipped him up a side of beef and about two dozen eggs in no time flat. I looked around for a way to get out while he ate. Blondie hadn’t ratted me out yet, but depending on her didn’t seem like the smartest thing.

I mentally measured the distance from my hiding place to the door and had started mustering up some courage when I saw the chicken. It looked like an ordinary chicken, pretty large by my standards, but not by the morning’s standards. It walked in through the pet door and started scratching around the kitchen. Normally, I’d think that was strange for a chicken, but not today.

“There’s my pretty bird,” the giant said in what must have been as close to a tender voice as he ever got. He reached a grizzled paw and the chicken jumped into it. He gently raised his hand and put the bird on the table.

“Now, then, my birdie, do what I keeps you for,” he said and rubbed one finger under the hen’s breast.

The chicken ruffled her feathers a little bit, made a few clucking sounds and strained a little. Then she laid an egg. It was about the size of a regular jumbo egg, but it must have weighed four pounds. It was solid gold.

Now they had my attention. If I played my cards right, I wouldn’t have traded the cow for a handful of beans; I would have traded it for a hen that laid golden eggs. That was a good deal no matter how you looked at it.

I laid low until the giant finished his breakfast and went into the next room for a nap. I waited to be sure he was sleeping, and for the hen to get to a position somewhere between me and the front door before I made a grab for it.

When the time came I was out from under the stove and had the chicken under my arm faster than my namesake could jump over a candlestick. I expected the blonde to say something, but she never opened her mouth. It was the chicken that did me in.

I never thought of chickens as having owner loyalty, but I had never owned a chicken that laid golden eggs before. I didn’t go two steps when it started screaming its fool head off. I heard the giant stop snoring and stir, but I never looked back. I made the pet door before he did.

I felt his hand brush the back of my shirt when he dove for me. I ran down the sides of the steps just as I had come up, but the chicken slowed me down, flapping its wings and clucking to beat the band.

I was off the porch and onto the cloud before the giant cleared the door. I had to make it to the beanstalk before he did or I was a goner. I was about halfway there when I realized I’d never make it at the pace he was making up the ground. I started zigzagging, hoping that he was so mad he’d forget that my only escape was the beanstalk and just chase me, where my agility might be able to make up for his straight ahead speed.

He went for it. The more he chased me the madder he got. I got to the beanstalk ahead of him, and started down the opposite side as he reached for me and missed again. Now the size of the stalk was to my advantage. I carved out a few footholds on my way up and I made good speed on the way down. It was harder for him. It took him a while to get the hang of it. The beanstalk swayed like an antenna in a hurricane while he figured it out.

I made it the bottom just as he cleared the cloud. He was picking up speed as I ran to the tool shed and grabbed the chain saw, hoping it had some gas in it. He saw me and started to hurry. I got the saw started on the second pull and cut through the beanstalk in no time. The whole thing came down and the giant landed on his head with a sickening thud.

He didn’t move, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I ran into the house where the old man was still passed out and grabbed the .45 from the drawer. I ran back into the yard and pumped two rounds into the giant’s head, right between the horns, and saw brains and blood mingle with the watery sap from the beanstalk.

I sat down, exhausted. I must have passed out, because the next thing I remember the old man was shaking me awake. “Come on, boy, wake up, you look terrible. Come on in the house and have some soup. You’ll feel better.”

Seeing the beanstalk and the giant in the yard didn’t faze him a bit. God only knew what he saw when the DTs grabbed him. I dragged myself up and followed him into the kitchen.

The soup tasted great. The old man could cook when he was of a mind to, and he was usually hungry after a drunk. I was swiping a hunk of bread through the bottom of the bowl when it occurred to me that we didn’t have any chickens and I had just eaten chicken noodle soup.

“Where did you get the chicken?” I asked.

“I found it in the yard,” he said as pleasantly as he could. “I figured you must have brought it.”

No jury would have convicted me if I had killed him. I didn’t. I turned him in for ratting out Snow White to the Evil Queen, and Trixie Hicks and I lived happily ever after on the reward money.