Treacherous Footing

At left, a photograph of an especially treacherous road from wikicommons taken by Jake Williams for the Geograph project.


I believe everyone in the Eastern half of the US is intimate with these illustrated conditions today. If so, watch your step.

I'm in a re-write (again) and it too is treacherous. One wrong word or awkward bit of dialogue and BAM, down it goes.

The practical advice in these conditions is to "walk like a penguin."

Seriously.

I worked for a company once whose grounds crew was shit. Their solution: a slogan. Don't fix the ice problem. No - encourage the employees to be careful.

Brilliant. No wonder they turned a $60B firm into a $12B firm in five years.

Nevertheless, I'd try the very same thing - walking like a penguin - but it won't help the story.

There's an idea. A children's book about murder on the ice floe by penguins. Plenty of eye-witnesses but then, what good are they?

Maybe I ought to stick to an audience accustomed to mature themes.

I wouldn't want to slip and fall on my narrative ass.

Mind you step. Watch out for Random Penguins., They're sneaky.

Iced Up

At left, picture from NOAA in 1949 off Alaska.

It isn't quite that bad here; but, it's close.

My river has iced up. Like the sea in the picture at left, it is still there and still moving but to look at it, you'd never know.

It'll warm by the weekend.

I ate some leftover fruitcake tonight with my coffee as I moved into my library. I like fruitcake and I like leftover fruitcake most of all. I'm really the only one eating it around here so getting my paws on leftover fruitcake isn't a major coup.

I'm thinking of the small towns I've lived in. I'm thinking how the families all inter-marry - the ones whose offspring don't bolt in disgust.

I've found the kids who stay home to be surprisingly mercenary. "If I stay, then the business will go to me."

I've never heard my peers say something like "I'll stay because I like the summers" or "I think the picket fences are just great" or "The band in the gazebo on Wednesday nights just makes me feel like home."

The motivation has always been something else: dad's business; mom's acreage; sometimes the wife's family's business. There's some of that, too.

Anyway, I was thinking about zoning and what it takes to be a zoning commissioner and how corrupt the little town was when I came to school.

I realized I had all I need for a good string of murders in the little small towns I've known. I have good material for a fellow who comes "home" - probably back to his collage town - and knows the world's business better than the corrupt locals.

Five pages of quick notes later, I have something to explore.

My own little town in Kansas is having a little corruption problem because of business practices which have been prevalent but none of which actually stand the light of day. There's always that moment in local government when someone finally keeps asking "why" until the story has to make sense. Sometimes the stones turned over getting to the answer are more unpleasant than anyone really thought.

Mix a couple family relationships in there and we've got a good stew pot for fiction.

So, no shortage of ideas. I have a short story about a character who might work in my new aim. I never liked the story much and I need to age the character by forty years; but, I've got an idea.

Is there ever anything as dangerous as an idea?

An idea with a gun.

Stay off the ice. The water's moving quickly underneath and it isn't nearly as solid as you might think.

Oh, and where's your hat and scarf?

Superhuman

At left, the superhuman Vasily Alekseyev: the great Soviet man. He won the Order of Lenin as an Olympic Weightlifter. In the early 70's, he was very much the face of Soviet mastery in sport.

You won't comprehend how much weight he would lift over his head in competition. Trust me: it's superhuman.

I've been thinking on superhuman lately. I've been thinking what it means to be superhuman.

Steve Almond says writing is an effort of "superhuman compassion in the face of persistent misbehavior."

For a long time I thought he was wrong. Now I know he's correct.

Great literature - the stuff I want to read more than once - is about those freakish secrets deep in the author's soul he displays using fictive disguise. If you're doing any good at all, you're exploiting the the most sensitive of relationships you've had for items which appear in your pages.

You can lie about it but you know what I mean. You've never used parts of your mother in a character?  What did she want you to be when you grew up, anyway? A writer? I'd be not. 

You can call  bullshit. You can say Lee Child never does that and maybe you'd be correct.

I'd bet money that a bottle of scotch would get him to admit otherwise. He's hated someone enough in his life to imagine how a slug from a Desert Eagle would tear them up. He's known someone whom he imagines feeding a husband's testicle to a wife. He's known someone that mean. He's known them better than he wants you to know.

Oh - horrible I say this, isn't it? Best seller stuff cuties. That's in the FIRST Jack Reacher novel The Killing Floor. 

You don't want to face that dark ink you mix with blood and betrayal - fine. I'm telling you it happens in the good stuff. It happens in the commercial stuff. If the emotion smells true I bet you it is happening 9 of 10 times whatever that emotion might be.

You're misbehaving and betraying trusts - even those you hold with yourself - every time you get the pen out and write something raw. The contrived stuff? Who gives a shit. We've all bought crap to read on a plane. Col. Mustard in the library with the candlestick. It's fun.

I'm not talking about that.

Try of a little of For Whom the Bell Tolls again and see what you think of what is on the page. What do you think Hemingway's family thought about the suicide theme in the book? How'd you feel about that if your son wrote it after coming back from Iraq?

You are recording things that you hope no one recognizes. You are betraying unspoken confidences about old friends, family, lovers, yourself. You are misbehaving and hoping that in doing so you can communicate your deepest thoughts about your views on the human condition. Or, you're wanking.

Write something before you go blind.

Homewrecker!

At left, Katharine Hepburn. (removed - couldn't find fair use determination on undated photo. Sorry readers. ) Just the sort to induce a bout of cheating. Looking just like that.

I nearly started cheating today. I have my WIP and I was unduly attracted to a side project for a couple of reasons: short works can be damn sexy little bundles and I am a little afraid of another novel.

Oh, there's good reason to stick with the short form. However, cheating because something else is NOT the long form fiction is a damn poor reason to stray.

I'll put the sexy notes about a murder in a folder and put it in my drawer of stories I think have potential to finish and polish. However, I'm not going to turn to those items until the draft long form is done.

I was tempted today. Almost caved.

I need to get back on the novel horse. However, Katherine here makes me forget all about the range.

I hope you're not cheating. If you are, I hope you'll put it in writing. I've read Butler's Lives of the Saints and one of those is enough.