A Funny Thing . . .

Sue was my friend and coworker before she became my boss, and I'm grateful that she's found a way to stay my friend since moving up the ladder. She was one of the lucky masses who received a heads up about the launch of It Was a Cold and Stormy Night, and I could see from those magic Follower icons that she was one of the first to check it out.

For the next week there was silence.

When I finally got around to asking what she thought of the blog, she confessed she found it hard to read. Sue reads the articles I write as a freelancer for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and she has always enjoyed my work. As she tried to put her finger on why the blog didn't grab her, one comment struck me:

"I'm not used to you being funny," she said.

Believe me, I get this all the time, and for this I blame Katz. It's what happens when you marry the funniest person you've ever known. I know it sounds like hyperbole, but Katz is a savant when it comes to funny; it oozes from his body as naturally as sweat! Verbally, he's a gunslinger--quick and deadly accurate. Add in his non-verbals and he is the complete package.

I've written plays for many years, a couple dozen darn funny plays for the most part, and it is not uncommon for people who know us to reference some laugh-inducing dialogue and say, "Katz wrote that part, didn't he?"

So, let me set the record straight: Katz's humour is innate and interactive. If you are in hearing distance, he will make you laugh, usually at your expense. However, he couldn't write a joke if you paid him. (Love you, sweetie!)

I think there were other reasons Sue didn't take to my blog, and I do understand. While I'm hoping for a loyal following, this isn't for everyone. But, for those of you who choose to read my postings and find something to laugh about as you read along, I have one thing to say: You're welcome!

Point of View

Perspective fascinates me. I love conversations with my brothers and sisters whenever we get together, the rehashing of our childhood, the recollections of who we were and what we did or how our parents related to us are often very different--sometimes a lot different! Who's right? Who's wrong? Who knows!

I decided within the last couple of weeks to change the narrative voice in my book, so I'm busy recrafting three chapters of work from third person into first.

How's it going? Slowly. It's much more challenging to do the switchover than I anticipated, and a lot of the difficulty is that change in perspective. Thoughts of a simple change of pronouns--one, two, three, viola!--have been replaced by the agony of rewriting whole portions to reflect a more limited point of view. Still, I've gone from observing my protagonist to being inside his head, and I got to say I'm liking the view. Unfortunately, getting there is like pulling teeth!

I love this quote from Mark Twain's Notebooks and Journals, vol 3:
"Dying man couldn't make up his mind which place to go to -- both have their advantages, "heaven for climate; hell for company!"

So there you go. It's all about perspective.

Follow, Follow, Follow . . . How To!

When you start a blog, you let all your friends and family know about it, right? Well, right or wrong, that's what I did. After telling people who I love and respect that following me would be a simple commitment, I discover there is a slight trick to posting your comments. Oops!

If you're still interested in checking out my blog from time to time and helping me out with your feedback, here's how to do it:

• Above the Followers icons on the right side at the top of the blog page is a white button that says "Follow". Click on that button and a screen will open with a display of accounts you might already have. Any of these accounts will allow you to interact with my blog. (If you already Twitter, you are in like flint and way ahead of me!)
• If you don't have one of these accounts, you can set up an e-mail account with Google (no need to use it for anything else!).
• On the bottom of the page are the words "Create a new Google Account"! Click on it, follow the easy instructions, and ta-da, you're connected.

I hope some of you will see the need to keep me in line, and believe me, I really appreciate it. So take the plunge and let me know how I'm doing.

Evolution

Here's the scene: Police Chief Tom Wesley (name subject to change) finds his office unlocked one night and his father waiting inside. Tom has just left a violent crime scene and his father is the last person he wants to deal with tonight. There's all that history between them, that power struggle that never gives Tom any peace, that anger. And then there's the question of how he got into his locked office.

That was a week ago. Since then, the person waiting for Tom has morphed from father to embittered former police chief to controlling mayor of the small, rural town where the story is set. Heck, for a micro-second, he was Tom's father and the former police chief!

I'm pretty sure the evolution of this scene is complete and if/when you read this book the mayor will be waiting for Tom to arrive, but you never know.

I started this book with a crime in mind, a good idea of my protagonist, and a setting I felt strongly about.

That was it.

While interesting ideas come to me at unexpected times (taking a shower, lying in bed, on the treadmill at the Y), much of what I write comes as I (figuratively) put pen to paper. For me, the physical act of writing starts the flow. I could spend time coming up with a whole cast of characters, motives, emotions, unresolved tensions, plot twists, and put it all down in some sort of outline , but that outline would become obsolete as soon as I started writing. That's because every word I put down takes me down a path. Put down a different word and my protagonist could be headed in a whole new direction.

And that's fine with me. It's always an adventure to see what's waiting just around the bend.

Permission denied!

It doesn't take much of a reason for me not to write, but that kind of thinking isn't going to get a book written, now, is it? Here are the days when letting myself off the hook is easiest:

Work Days. Well, this one is a no-brainer. Who wants to spend a couple of hours looking at a computer screen when you've already put in a considerable part of the day doing just that?

Cleaning Days. These don't occur with enough frequency around my house to be quick and painless , so if I have scheduled a date with the vacuum cleaner, dust rag, and mop, my computer most likely sits idle.

Gardening Days are both all-absorbing and exhausting. Enough said.

Days When the Party Is At Our House are too chock full of shopping, cooking, and cleaning (see Cleaning Days, above) to make room for creative thinking and word processing.

Ditto for The Day Before the Party.

And what would a Holiday be if you had to work? Well, it wouldn't be a holiday, would it? Unfortunately, this reasoning usually comes into play on Weekends, too.

I'd like to tell you that from now on it will be "Permission denied" when I ask if I can have the day off, but I don't have that kind of faith in myself. So how do I find the discipline to recapture many of these lost days? You tell me . . .

A birthday in the family . . .

I'm surprised that when March 24th comes around, I still feel a need to do something to mark my brother, Mike's, birthday. Mike was the oldest of our clan of nine, and he passed away at the too young age of 58. I think he might have gotten a kick out of this blog, if for no other reason than as an entrepreneur he had a keen feel for product marketing.

Mike was a young 58 when he died, and as is often the case with pancreatic cancer, it all happened so quickly. I wonder if he'd be surprised at the lasting impact his early death had on his brothers and sisters. Older brothers Pat and Tim both chose to retire at 62 because of it, and the family has turned everyone's 60th birthday into a celebration of significance.

When my Dad died, I felt awkward on birthdays and anniversaries, not knowing whether such milestones were good or bad for my Mom. I'm sorry I never asked her how she felt about that.

Losing a brother before old age had a chance to touch him gives me a different perspective on how to approach days like today. If my family thinks about me on my birthday when I'm gone, well, I think I'd like that. And if on my wedding anniversary, Katz finds a little joy in remembering a good partnership or my sons have the wherewithall to wish him a happy anniversary, I think it might make the day just a little better for him. I know it would for me.

So happy birthday, Mike. We miss you.

Futzing

True crime writer Anthony Flacco, whose 2009 book The Road Out of Hell has received wide praise (http://www.anthonyflacco.com/), gave a nice presentation at the recent Eighth Annual Spring Writer's Festival at the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee, where he encouraged us to "Write, rinse, repeat." A riff on the longstanding advice that every-day writing is a must for the successful writer, he encouraged us to write at least two pages every day, then review and revise those two pages the next day ("rinse") before turning out two more pages (repeat). The advice was sound and clever enough that three weeks later it comes to mind with ease.

I find it all very hard to do. The initial writing, of course, can be difficult to the point of pain. That part is bad enough, but every day when I get to Flacco's "rinse" step, I lose myself. I fondle the words I have strung together, juggle them, admire them, kill some quickly and some with long drawn out regret, resurrect a few then place them in Limbo at the bottom of the manuscript with hopes of using them again, somewhere, somehow. I am like a dog with a smelly bone, rolling around on this debris-pile of words I want to hold, to keep, marking them as mine, burying them for that time when they will be needed and be brilliant.

My Mom would have told me I was futzing, and she would have been right. The truth of the matter is, I enjoy reading what I wrote, and I enjoy reworking it. Is this true of all writers, or am I some freak? And why is it so much easier to "rinse" then it is to "write?" I need a cure for futzing. Can anyone out there help me move on?

This Is Another Fine Mess You've Gotten Me Into, Ollie . . .

Blogging, day two, and I'm already in a pickle.

Promising to be funnier, more insightful, and pithy in my original posting seemed doable at the time, but now, not so much . . . I spent 15 minutes writing my profile so readers would know who I am, and I think whatever funny and insight I could muster may have landed there today. As for pithy . . . What the heck! Who aspires to be pithy? Pithy requires wrapping things up succinctly with some on-the-nose observation when what I was really hoping to talk about was the "rabid badger" and "bullet creased butt," 5 of the 10,000 words I have written for my book.

24 hours into this exercise I've realized two things: 1) It should have been It Was a Dark and Stormy Night not It Was a Cold and Stormy Night. This goes to show you that starting this blog was a sudden and perhaps capricious endeavor. And 2) My commitment to finishing my novel in a year's time occurred on the first day of spring, 2010. This means that next winter may be a longer, harsher, and colder winter for me than any Wisconsinite deserves, but come March 20, 2011, a bright and beautiful and commitment-less spring will be in my future.

How's that for pith?

I'm Blogging!

Who would have thunk . . .?

An hour ago, I was a blogging virgin, but here I am. My friend, Gretchen, my grammar guru and sensei, has led me astray and I am starting this new venture with her help!

10,000 words into my new book, I've decided a blog might just be the key to keep me on my toes and motivated. I am now accountable to the Internet for meeting my daily writing goal, which will lead me to a completed manuscript in a year's time.

Tomorrow I promise to be funnier, more insightful, and pithy. Tune in!