In Which I Lose Decisively

So the Christian mentioned in the anecdote below -- up-and-coming writer Christian Walter -- recently sent me an email in which he suggested a resemblance between me and a character from a popular movie by the Coen brothers.

Can't see it, myself. But supposedly we talk alike.

So after the plot-blocking session at Taos Toolbox, my roommate Christian comes up to me as I’m skulking off. He’s hunched over with a dose of the giggles. “Walter Jon Williams plotted your novel. Are you going to your room to hide your enormous erection?

One thing I do know. There is no dignified avoidance of that sort of persiflage. There is only death or glory. “Sir, I do not respond erotically to such circumstances. It was not simply Mr. Williams, but a cast of the elite who plotted my novel. And should I find myself sporting an enormous erection, I won’t be taking it to my room. Instead, I will proudly display it to the ladies.”

I know, I know, but all men are vile and I was dealing with Christian. For God’s sake, the man drew boners on our placemat at the pizza joint. I couldn’t let him intimidate me. I’d never hear the end of it. Anyway, I go to my room, riffle my plot cards and rub my hands together like Scrooge McDuck, and then go back to that beautiful, horrible grind of critique.

A few generation starships later, I stagger to my feet and decide to shuffle about so as to stimulate flow in the lymphatic system. I head downstairs with the intention of offering a witticism to those hard at work in the meeting room.

I walk in the door. It’s Barbara, George, and Christian. Before I open my mouth, Barbara, without looking up from her laptop, says, “I don’t want to see it.”

It took me a good thirty seconds to figure out what the fuck she was talking about. Christian seemed entirely satisfied by this outcome. Barbara says she doesn’t have a sense of humor but I am unconvinced.

Ghost Rock

This last spring, my pal Deborah and I started sketching outdoors. Here's a blog post she did on the subject. (Yeah, that's me in the bottom photo, and yeah, my back gave me merry hell for a good three weeks after I sat on the ground like that.)

At first I felt as though I'd lost all my drawing abilities and they were never to return, but I've had that feeling plenty of times in the past and it's nothing that hard work can't cure.

Finally, this last time I got in a couple of halfway-decent bits. Nothing impressive, but it's nice to know the old muscles are there. My copy of Painter is screwed up so I had to do this one in Photoshop -- it was fun.

Sorry to have vanished like that. I've been doing some very hard cognitive work. See, when I came back from Taos Toolbox, I was on fire, writing thousands and thousands of words a day, totally re-working the novel from the ground up. I was trashing everything that slowed the reader down, inserting interconnections between sub-plots, really seeing the whole thing at one time.

There was a faint concern -- a paranoia, merely -- that by taking out all the richly observed autobiographical material, I was cutting the guts out of my novel and reducing it to a potboiler mostly notable for the degenerate nature of its lurid subject matter.

But this was but the faintest whisper of doubt. I knew I was on the right track for the first time.

Until I got in my first critique on the new material. One person said it was the best I'd done so far, hands down.

The other person hated it. I mean, it was as if the lead character in the book was a friend of hers, and I'd killed him. She was actually upset with me.

This was very interesting. First off, it totally played up to my worries. And secondly, she said that the character came off as being someone who was batshit crazy rather than someone who was coping with mental illness.

Interestingly, all the material I cut consisted of fairly unpleasant episodes of mental illness. And yet removing them threw the balance of the story off in ways I hadn't expected.

The woman who was bothered by my revisions is the least experienced writer I work with, and she was reacting emotionally rather than intellectually, which was unusual for her. She wasn't able to say exactly what I had done that wrecked things for her -- only the effect that it had on her.

This may have had to do with the fact that she's also the least experienced reader I work with. She and I met in class, hit it off, and wound up becoming friends. She was a non-reader, former non-writer who was trying out writing for personal reasons. While she's since started reading for pleasure, it's still a new thing in her life -- which made her strong reaction that much more interesting to me. I'll be honest. It messed with my head -- I was convinced I sucked.

The next set of reviews was very positive, and that came as a great relief. But one person thought the pace was too rushed.

So I thought. And thought. Lay in bed in the dark and thought, thought while I washed potatoes. And then something Nancy Kress had mentioned at Taos Toolbox came to mind. I won't go into it in detail -- I suggest you attend next year -- but the basic idea is that there are aspects of fiction that you have to pay the reader to plow through. And you earn the cash to do that by giving the reader dialog.

The draft of the novel in questions started off with six pages before there's any dialog.

I also remembered something my sister had said. She was in conversation with the missus.

The missus said, "It's really a compelling read (yes, she said that for real), but it's so disturbing."

"Well, it puts you right inside Sean's head." My sister turned to me. "You know, your head is a really shitty place."

Those first six pages took place inside the protagonist's head. Right, right, right. He doesn't like himself, the reader gets sick of him fast. What makes the reader like Matt? Seeing him interact with his friends.

So I went back and inserted an extensive dialog section between the protagonist and his best friend, resubmitted it, and it passed. There is some grumbling that the pace might still be too fast at first, but frankly? I think 'you could slow down a little at the start' is the kind of advice an editor would love to give an author.

I can't tell you how it felt to be able to do that. To get a complaint, analyze the work, and arrive at a successful solution to the creative problem. I felt like a regular pro there. Thank you, Taos Toolbox!

So the first chapter is nearing completion. I mailed it off to the hon. Mr. Richard Talleywhacker for one last set of grammar and punctuation edits, and then I am through with it until it's been through a brace of agents, damn their eyes.

Thing is, is that I had to go back and do a major rewrite on that chapter even after it passed muster. I realized that my lead character had an out-0f-body experience in the first chapter and nowhere else in the book. So I had to fix that.

I'm at the point where there are fine details of worldbuilding that are now becoming very important. I just spent three days where, while I did plenty of other stuff, the bulk of my energy was spent imagining the topography of my imaginary world. I thought I'd already nailed it, but the current plotting is tight enough to demand new levels of detail in order to maintain continuity. I have been busting my nuts linking everything, making everything make sense and be consistent. I'm operating at a new level, and it is a pain in the bee-hind.

I mean, dang. This stuff is hard. But it's paying off. On Monday, the dude I work with who just got signed by Donald Maass said that this was the first time in all the years he's been working with me that the voice of the novel shows up on the very first page. I knew what he meant, and I was damned glad to hear it.

So among other things, I've been poddling about with the start of a project that hasn't been worth being anything but secret up until now. I'll tell you about it soon.

State of the Oaf

So, whatcha think of the new look? Please glance to your right and notice the link to my spanking new Redbubble gallery, where the Bonelands series of prints is currently posted and ready for purchase. Also note a few changes in my blog roll -- I've added a couple of pals, deleted a few people who -- while certainly worthy -- were not particularly close to my circle.

See, it turns out that I passed 20,000 hits when I wasn't looking so I figured it was time to class the joint up. The banner? I didn't use 3D software; instead, I used Illustrator to draft a three-point perspective grid, then I drew the shapes in Photoshop, rendered them in Painter, and then brought the thing back to Photoshop for the lettering. Fun times.

So here's what's going on with me.

There's no need to go into the hell of last winter. If you're a reader, you've got an idea, if you're not, you don't need to read my pissing and moaning.

Things are different now.

I have a number of very specific plans to try and make some money. I'm going to be putting all my old art up on Redbubble and possibly DeviantArt galleries, and there will be prints available. My friend Deborah has recently approached me about doing a series of place mats with a dinosaur theme. I'll do those, and then use them as samples of my art when I try and sell a children's book on dinosaurs. And I'm entering the UC Extension editorial program this fall, and while I'm doing that I will be investigating the possibility of writing and editing manuals and tutorials for graphics software.

And I won't be going further into debt while pursuing these options. My sister has finally agreed to sell our family house in Merced, so I'll have enough money to get through the editorial program.

I will also be able to make a few changes in my studio that will make it a more effective creative space. Blinds on the west window so I can work in the late afternoon and early evening, a pillow to support a drawing board so I can sketch while at my workstation, a new stand for my light table so I can use it as a surface for blocking out plots with Post-It notes and file cards, and whatever I need to do podcasts. (That's right, by the end of the summer you'll be getting some spoken-word Oaf.)

The novel is cooking right along. I did some important writing yesterday, and will be doing a thorough re-reading in conjunction with the new plot outline generated at Taos Toolbox. I have every confidence that by the end of the summer, I'll be starting to circulate both the novel and the film script.

And Taos Toolbox was perfect. It set me back on my feet, made me feel that plot is learnable and the novel is under control, and the sheer pleasure of doing something well with people you respect is a difficult thing to beat.

I'm a little further along the process of coming to terms with myself. I am, like it or not, a classic crazy genius. If you were to go back and read this blog from the beginning, you'd find a fascinating if not always pleasant history of what seems to be a series of bipolar episodes. I run the gamut from sleepy croaks to extreme lucidity to hysterical ravings, and if you plot these out you do seem to get a sine wave.

So I am going to be experimenting with therapy, as well. But right now I'm riding the sweet edge of a manic state, and it's a hell of a lot of fun.

I'm grateful to all the people in my life who are patient enough to put up with me. I'm a rewarding person, I hope, but I'm not what you'd call easy on the nerves. Oh, well. Dealing with me is not always like dealing with a person. I'm a bit of a force of nature, a larger-than-life character, and that's just the way it is.

In the past I've felt kind of crappy about the fact that the personality I present to the outside world is one I deliberately tried to construct -- it's only bad craftsmanship on my part that keeps me from being arrestingly charismatic -- but I've come to realize that I had to assemble that personality from the parts I had laying around, and some of those parts are actually fairly admirable.

Yeah, I'm a weirdo. Even in the company of New Agers, stoners, junkies, writers, artists, and SF people I still stand out as an eccentric. What the fuck. You know what I am?

I am brilliant. Smart, talented, imaginative, and skilled. I have an excellent prose style, a fine control over composition, a rock-solid rhythm. I'm a brute, but I'm a good-natured brute. Having me around is like having a pet bear. And at the same time, I like to take care of people. I'm the kind of person people ask for advice, the kind of person children and animals automatically trust. People tend to open up to me if I'm around them for more than twenty minutes or so. That's because I really listen, and I really care. My raging insanity is balanced by a mind of exceptionally fine discipline, and the intense pressures involved in that balance are the source of my art.

I'm a man you don't meet every day.

My powerful drives toward self-negation and self-destruction are hard on the people who care for me. I'm sorry, I'm sorry -- but that is something that's going to come up. It just is. I can take responsibility for it, but sometimes I'm going to need help.

The thing is? I get that help. People think I'm worth the extra effort. I am so grateful for the kindness of those around me that it's hard to deal with sometimes, but it's enough to keep me going, to keep me motivated, to keep me interested in life. Every kind word and gesture extended to me carries a vital importance that I cannot ignore.

So think of it this way. If you're going to care about me, expect a fucking rollercoaster -- but you can count on a scenic ride. Yes, I make extra demands on the people around me. I wish I didn't. But I'm a rewarding person to be around in ways you won't get from anyone else. It's my job to be as good a person as I can be, but I simply am not going to be an easy person, and I'm through thinking I should be. I am big and hard and complicated and frequently difficult, because that's who I am.

I just have to try and be worth the trouble.

Taos Report 1

This is a very, very rare occurance on this blog -- a post with no art. Right now I"m far away from my home, my work computer, and a scanner... I could talk about my temporary retreat from the web, I could talk about my current plans for the near future -- which are interesting -- but there's something going on.

I"m in the mountains of New Mexico, at the Taos Toolbox workshop.

Sunday was a true day of adventure. I had a direct flight from the Bay Area to Albequerque (being able to spell the word 'Albesquerque' without using spellcheck has been the first unexpected side-effect of this trip), writing pal and fellow VP vet E.F. Kelley was going to pick me up at the airport, I'd be at the workshop by early noon.

Up at four-thirty in the morning out of the house by five-thirty, dropped off in San Francisco. As she drops me off, the missus flips into full Control Freak mode and starts telling me how to roll my suitcase and where to sit on the plane. (I know it means she loves me.) I go to check in my baggage, and am informed that my flight does not leave from San Francisco.

Karen dropped me off at the wrong airport.

Thankfully, the gentleman behind the desk was able to fix things for me. I should have noted his name. Roy, Duane, whoever the hell you are, thanks, dude. SF to Phoenix, Phoenix to Albequerque.

As we left San Francisco, rising through the clouds, I saw something I'd never seen before. It was a perfectly circular rainbow. And inside that circle? The shadow of the plane. It was an absolutely perfect logo.

Landing in Phoenix, the waiting area for my flight was crowded, so I had to do something I hate to do. I sat down next to a human being. All things being equal, I decided to sit next to a human being who was cute and female. Sometimes petty motives are the only variables in a situation, and fuck you. Another young woman sat down across from us. A few pages of Francis Bacon interviews later (fascinating stuff, an understandable mind whose aesthetics are highly intellectualized and very different from my own), the woman next to me pulls out her cell phone and made a call. The woman across from us answered her phone. They put down their phones, amused at the coincidence, and started talking.

They were talking about Taos Toolbox. And that's how I met Amy and Hallie.

Eric met me in Albequerque, and we rode out in his blue Mustang, Roxxie. I've got to confess, I"m a non-driver, but there is something about a muscle car... As always I found myself fascinated by the differences in the sky, in the landscape. I'm always fascinated by the quality of light in different locations, and the light here is crisper, sharper, more highly-focused than the light back home. The plants are duller, the ground more brightly colored, the shape of the land is different. The clouds are incredible and the sky is a stronger, darker blue than I"m used to. Just lovely.

So we climb up into the mountains, we get to the lodge, we get checked in. We'd been warned about the altitude, and sure enough, I found myself periodically becoming short of breath. And at dinner, I found myself with a badly impaired appetite. In fact, the food disgusted me. About halfway through my hamburger, I found that I simply could not swallow. So I got up from the table, silently went to my room, and began puking.

Altitude sickness? It is a real thing.

Sunday night was the most physically miserable I have ever been in my life, and I have had a few unpleasant experiences. Nausea is worse than pain for me -- I suspect I'm not alone in this -- and after a while I realized that this was not just stress puking, this was something wrong with me. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Puke, lay down, get up and puke again. There was a point where I said to my gut, "You are so empty, dude. Now you're just making shit up," and my digestive tract responded by just reaching a little deeper. By the end, I swear I was vomiting crap.

When I wasn't puking, I was sweating. I am a great big sweaty fellow. It's kinda gross. But this? I was sweating so much it felt as if I was under a low shower, a constant liquid flow across my whole body. My bedclothes were saturated. We are talking pints and quarts of fluid. My bedclothes were so sodden that it was like sleeping in wet towels, and they clung to my body so the sheets kept coming loose and when is this over?

So between the puking and the sweating my electrolytes went funky and I began to curse myself for not having access to Emergen-C or Gatorade or some goddamned sea salt. My muscles started to go into spasm, so now in addition to everything else I had pain. But thankfully, some time in the early morning, my symptoms started to fade and I was able to get a couple of hours of sleep in. I was afraid I might have to leave, but things have settled down. But let's put it this way. We've been told not to drink until we're acclimated -- the alcohol interacts with the altitude -- so I ain't drinking. That's right, I'm surrounded by writers and I"m fucking sober. What the fuck, people?

Anyway. It's nearly seven, I've got work to do, and while yesterday was good solid worktime, it wasn't generating a blog post. But I did get a very nice compliment from Nancy Kress on my critiques. I'm putting it up on the wall next to the other compliments that I turn to from time to time during states of emergency. Both she and Walter seem easy to work with so far, the group is hard-working and disciplined...

Lemme put it this way. Viable Paradise had a sort of summer camp/sleepover vibe that was a hell of a lot of fun and really helped bring us together as a group. This? This ain't vacation. This is school.

Which is what I want.

Now all I have to do is survive until I get my crit. I know I shouldn't worry, but I am intimidated. Christ. Is the novel salvageable, or is it a dizzy piece of shit and it's time for me to move on? I will confess, I am on tenterhooks.

And on that note, I sign off. First to look up 'tenterhooks,' and then to think about breakfast. There's some green chili cheese bagels about, and while I'm not a fan of freak bagels, I think I"d eat a tire if it had green chili and cheese on it.

Later.