Eavesdropping on Bus Rt. 65 Northbound, 3/13/07

Future Character #1: white male, average height/weight, glasses, ~22 years old. He shared his side of a cell conversation with Bus Rt. 65 Northbound on 3/13/07, around 4:15 PM.

"Oh, you'll enjoy this. I went on a date with this girl on Saturday and we're talking, getting to know each other and stuff, and suddenly she asks me, 'Are you a Mama's Boy?' And I said, 'A what?' She goes, 'You know, a Mama's Boy? You just seem like you really love your mother. Do you?' And I said, 'well, yeah, i love my mother.' Yeah, I knew you'd love that."

"I'm totally pissed at Randy. He's changed his MySpace page and he put this girl before me on his top 8.... I mean, bros before hoes! And she's old.... She is, I mean she's more wrinkly than you!...Yeah, you just want her for a daughter-in-law so you'll look good.... No, I mean she's really old; she's like 36 or something."

Yeah, I know. That's SO old. I guess I used to think that was old too. I'm much more shocked by how this guy just rattles off to his MOM "Bros before Hoes." CLASSY.

The best littl' character - part two!

Yesterday's post discussed the 5 different methods to present a character. My exercise of using the latter 4 methods on the character of Gil "Grandpa" Myers from my novel continues with:

4. Speech. “I do not use profanity, nor am I prone to slang. Such terms degrade the English language. I’m not against the occasional conjunction, abbreviation, or compound words. Clearly, I am not a purist, but I have standards.
"Do you know what a ‘leading question’ is, young man? You best become acquainted with that expression, as I ask leading questions frequently. Asking a leading question often puts me in a position of power over the question’s target: if the recipient does not know the answer, a concise definition on my part creates a dichotomy of teacher versus pupil. If the recipient does know the answer, I have forced them to bring up my topic, thus they must submit to the discussion as I would have it run. I also find sarcasm useful now and then. I do enjoy jokes, but most tend towards vulgar or insult my personal code of ethics, and I have never been skilled in crafting my own.
"I do not take the Lord’s name in vain. While I seek to be judicious to those who uphold a different faith or code of conduct than I do, it is my duty as a Saint to try to illuminate the true faith to those disillusioned souls and to correct those in the Church who have strayed, whether inadvertently or by choice. For it shall come to pass that our Holy Father will meet us on Judgment Day to separate the true believers from the ambivalent, the misled, and the perfidious, admitting our souls to the Celestial, the Terrestial, or Telestial Kingdoms, or condemning us to suffer the outer darkness for eternity. On that day, I will rise up into the Celestial Kingdom to live forevermore. This I know is true, and I intend to share that information with every man, woman, or child within hearing so that they may choose to join me in paradise."

5. Thought. Deliberate. I must be deliberate. I cannot afford to make missteps, to reveal the inner blackness which chews at the lining of my stomach, my intestines, my lungs, and my liver. Secrets are made for keeping and I am a man of my word. The black thoughts only come to me when I become idle. I must focus on activities and following through with every intention to keep the receptors and signalers in my mind well-greased and moving. Stillness allows too much space for those thoughts to slip through and sink roots. I will not be consumed by the evils I have witnessed, committed, feared, or thought. I must stay focused. The Lord is my Shepard, I shall not wont. He makes me lay down in green pastures. He binds me in His strong rope, my body and soul bared face-up to the spring sky. The wind hurries the pale gray clouds across the cornflower sky to clear space for the charcoal thunderheads that roll in from the west. He leaves me there and the thunder croaks and claps, the lightening flicks and flacks. He leaves me there and the hailstones pelt my body, freckling my skin with red splotches. He leaves me there and the rains begin, pouring down and blowing hard, beating against my skin until it is scrubbed clean of the rotten sin. He leads me not into temptation, but delivers me from evil, each and every time he leaves me there.

An Elder duck.


This exercise was so liberating for me! I really enjoyed stepping into another character's voice. Especially this character, who my point-of-view (POV) character Sam only knows in a very specific, limited capacity. Sam knows his grandfather as someone who disapproves of his mother, as a patronizing, headstrong father to Sam's father, as a Mormon blow-hard, as an old man, and as an occasionally doting grandfather. But it's what Sam doesn't know about Gil that creates an intriguing character. So I'm glad I've delved deeper. Especially because I finished a 30+ page chapter today that revolved heavily around the two of them!

I did page and word counts today, so I could pat myself on the back. I have written 302 pages on my novel (Times New Roman, size 12, double space)! I can't believe I'm over 300 pages. Per word count, I'm around 89,000 words. The average first novel falls in between 80,000 and 100,000 words. SO by that measuring stick, I should be about done. Except I'm not. There's so much more to write! But after I finish the full first draft, there will be so much to cut and trim and condense. Even though I've plenty of work ahead of me, it is still so exciting to look
at this work's growth from when I began writing it three years ago and now.

The best littl' character in the whole wide world!

After two weeks away from my novel (bad, Jess, bad!), today I journeyed to my not-so-secret-but- adequately-not-stimulating writing hideaway in the Natural Science Stacks of the UW's South Allen library. Opening up my current chapter-in-progress, I realized how disconnected I can become from my work in a short period of time. Note to self: if it feels like a steep incline after two weeks away, don't you even think about taking two months away like in years past! Ugh.
Luckily, I brought my notes from the writer's conference last week. I flipped my notebook open to see what I'd scribbled to myself, inspired by different talks and workshops over the three days. After getting through the fairly vague agent/editor notes from the first morning, I came to my notes on Gail Tsukiyama's fireside chat, entitled "Body & Soul: Developing Character."
I've always found that character development is somewhat intuitive for me, right up there with dialogue and voice. Plot--trickier. Setting--oh boy, bores me to tears. But I have been struggling with a particular character in my novel of late, Grandpa Myers. I took a look at my notes from Gail's talk. For example: to help the author further understand a character (particularly a bland character, a small character, or one who is really bad or really good), Gail suggests the author create/discover a defining moment in that character's life, often from childhood. A miscarriage. Witnessing a deadly house fire at a neighbor's. A drunk man peeing in the yard. Winning first place in the spelling bee. Basically, the most important moment in determining who that character will come to be, be it a wonderful moment or ghastly or just incomprehensible. I'm still weighing Grandpa Myers' big moment in my mind. I'll keep you posted.
The other thing that caught my eye is more along the "intro to creative writing" line. She briefly outlined the five methods for presenting character:
1. Author’ interpretation (or POV character’s, i.e. my protagonist, Sam)
2. Appearance
3. Action
4. Speech
5. Thought
As an exercise to get closer to Grandpa Myers, I decided to write a paragraph for four of the five methods. I excluded #1 because my novel employs this method throughout due to Sam's first-person POV. Anyway, I thought I'd post a few of these here today, the rest tomorrow. First, here are a few basic facts to root you with Gil "Grandpa" Myers: 70-year-old white male from the imaginary Salt Lake City suburb of Micah Hills. Widower, wife Ellen has been deceased approximately 10 years. Two children, Kevin, 42, and Sarah, 34. Four grandchildren, Sam (14) & Amber(deceased, 10-1/2) Myers, and 2-1/2-year-old twins Julian and George Harmon. LDS. That's the basic lowdown. So:

2. Appearance. Gil “Grandpa” Myers looks younger than his 70 years. Relatively fair in complexion, he burns then tans in the summer, though his long, parsnip-like nose and the skin on his high cheek bones stay pink throughout the year. His skull, like his nose, is long and narrows from his crown down to his chin. A scar the shape of an bow tie marks his skin between the right-side jut of his chin and his lower lip: he got it on a Boy Scout cookout when Hubert Ellis turned around too quickly with his hot-dog roasting stick in hand, the tip aglow from just poking the campfire’s cinders. Gil has blue eyes the color of sky on a clear winter morning, but icier—there are only minute flecks in its blue canvas giving no texture to his irises, like they’d been polished with a sealant that rendered them unable to let dust particles in, or allow teardrops out. His eyebrows don’t have much of an arch, nor do they dip down, but run in modestly bushy horizontal lines over his eyes, separated by a centimeter or so.
He is bald on top, but still has abundant hair around his ears and the back of his head. He keeps it long enough on his left side that he can comb the hair over his massive bald spot. His hair used to be blond, but now it is white as snow. Gil never has grown facial hair, aside from a few days worth of stubble.
He has broad shoulders and strong arms, but overall, he’s kept himself fairly lean, aside from a healthy-sized belly, about the size of bread loaf. Gil’s tall, like his son, maybe 6’2”. Despite his height, broad shoulders, and strong forearms, his hands are small, with short fingers but wide palms. When he curls his fingers in to make a fist, his hand takes on the look of a croissant—the skin withered rather than flaking, the surface accentuated by a network of indigo veins rather than folds of dough. His size-12 feet correlate with his height appropriately.

3. Action. Gil never walks idly. He takes large steps with his feet, placing his heel down first then dropping his toes with a concise snapping motion. His shoulders jut ahead of the rest of his torso, following the pace of his footsteps. His movements tend to be quick more than slow, but not so fast that he becomes clumsy or cedes a smidgen of control. He is not prone to flamboyant gestures; he doesn’t wave his hands in the air to emote nor kick things in fits of rage. When he uses his hands while speaking, the gestures are quick and contained within the range of his torso. He rarely makes sudden movements, nor is he prone to abrupt stops. Gil Myers is deliberate with his every action, be it physical or behavioral.

Tomorrow, I get really down and dirty as we compare how Grandpa Myers speaks and how he thinks. WILD. I swear.

Rejuvenation and Resolution

I'm declaring March 1 my new "New Year's Day."

You don't have to follow my example. I mean, really, who am I to tell you that New Year's Day should actually fall two months after January 1st? And about two weeks after Chinese/Korean New Year's? Or a week and a half after Mardi Gras and Fat Tuesday? You are not obliged to follow my example. In fact, you shouldn't. Everyone should have their own personalized New Year's Day--the day of the year that gets you pumped up, enthusiastic, and ready to start something anew (or new). For me, that day has, for the last two years, fallen around March 1st and the Whidbey Island Writers Conference.

Anyone who has visited Whidbey Island--or any of the San Juans in the Puget Sound/Strait of Juan de Fuca waters--knows that this is a stunning region to pass a few days. Rain or sun or snow, I don't care. It is divine. Wednesday evening, I arrived on Whidbey during a surprisingly thorough snowfall. I took a Community Transit bus from the U-District. I have to commend my bus drivers who, due to the sudden onset of the snow storm, did not have chains on and had to drive up and down some steep, snowy hills amid a plethora of Bad Seattle Snow Drivers (BSSDs--I swear, this city takes the cake, abandoning cars on floating bridges and express ways to walk home instead). My drivers were wise to show so much caution as we passed two jack-knifed Community Transit buses en route to the Mukilteo/Clinton ferry boat. On board, I listened as people complained about their treacherous commutes. My writer friend, John, met me near the ferry terminal on the Island and we drove back to our temporary homestead, a 2-bedroom house that perched atop a hillside overlooking Admiralty Bay and Bush Point. The roads were dark except for the headlights on John's Honda, which illuminated the snow-glazed pines along the road. The world felt so still. Outside the cabin, I studied rabbit footprints in the snow. The clouds parted to let the moon sneak out, along with a handful of scattered stars. Inspiration curled its way from the snow beneath my feet, through my toes and ankles, thighs and hips, belly and breastbone, up into my lips, eyes, ears, crown, my mind. I let it seep through me and in the morning, when I awoke, I was hungry for more.

I spent Thursday walking in sunlight, watching the snow melt gradually--dropping off the boughs of trees and power lines overhead and mushing under my hiking boot heels. I ventured to the South Whidbey Island State Park to wander. A far-off deer and I engaged in a staring contest. The deer won. In the blue morning sky, a bald eagle circled. In the afternoon, when the clouds came in again, I walked down to Bush Point to the beach and collected beach glass. A blue heron hunched over on a piling 25 yards from the shore. I went to bed refreshed and ready to learn.

For me, the conference began officially on Friday. After a ho-hum keynote address by an editor at Hyperion (she was really all over the map) and a panel of lit. agents and editors (interesting, but I'm not there yet), we broke into our groups for the afternoon Fireside Chats. Fireside Chats are the WIWC's signature event, where island residents graciously welcome writers into their homes for an afternoon of discussion. There are fireside chats for most interests and genres of writing: publishing, nature writing, humor, screenplay, poetry, short stories, literary fiction, mystery, romance/erotica, childrens, YA (young adult). Both years, I signed up for the literary fiction chat. While I enjoyed myself thoroughly last year with oral storyteller Jack Dalton and novelist Chris Bohjalian, this year blew last year out of the water. If you know anything about contemporary literary fiction, you should recognize some of these ladies and you'll know that they are pretty much literary ROCK STARS: Dorothy Allison. Karen Joy Fowler. Gail Tsukiyama. Jane Hamilton. AND our island resident host? Elizabeth George, author of the Inspector Lynley books and subsequent BBC/PBS Mystery! series. I about blew a brain gasket. No joke.

So I could have been speechless and googly eyed all day. But these women are so down-to-earth, funny, smart, and thoughtful, I forgot to be awestruck. After listening to them talk about creating vivid characters (Karen), powerful openings (Gail), the quandaries of plot in literary fiction (Jane), and writing violence (Allison--by far the most incredible talk I heard all weekend), I felt so safe and warm, why not ask them my questions? I asked them what they did to make ends meet before they published successful novels and what they do now. And I asked them how they retained balance in their lives between their work and their personal relationships with family and friends. And they each gave me the most thoughtful responses: Making ends meet before? Odd jobs and husbands and sheer desperation. Making ends meet now? Teaching at conferences, serving as writers as residence, judging literary contests, husbands, short story sales, an advance now and then. Balancing art and relationships? Apparently this struggle doesn't ever stop--Karen said her marriage almost collapsed in the first few years of her writing success, Dorothy tries to take an away residency every other year that avails her alone time to write, and Gail is the single girl, though not necessarily by choice. The most beautiful thing about these gals is their tremendous friendship. They're best friends! I am so excited about the prospect of making such awesome writer friends, and I covet those I already have--there is nothing like spending a few days with a group of like-minded artists who know how to laugh too.

The weekend offered more opportunities to learn from seasoned writers and meet others who are in the throes of that first novel too. I could go on and on and on. But I've already over-indulged my urge to gush. So, a new year begins today. I WILL finish a complete draft of my novel this year. I will also post here about writing much more, as apparently the agents like to see that. Some posts will be about my writing adventures (like this one), some will be more craft focused, and some will be excerpts of my writing. I promise not to post bad poetry--at least not often. And only for laughter's sake.