Doldrums

I once wrote a short story entitled "Horse Latitudes," a little piece about a marriage that is, to use another nautical term, in the doldrums. This time of year in northern California, the weather seems perpetually dominated by high pressure that builds up above the region and bakes us. I feel like a lobster in a covered pot that the cook forgot to fill with water. It'd be death with or without water, but being boiled is more dramatic than being... what--baked?

This same ridge of high pressure dominates what little bit of creative mind still exists in my pea-sized brain. My most not-so-recent short story, "The Map Reader," languishes in the needs-to-edited file, while the latest novel-in-the-works is little more than scribbles in a Rhodia notebook and a couple of plot points in search of a unified theme. In an effort to reclaim a bit of creative fire, I've resorted to reading novels rather than nonfiction--perhaps using my imagination a bit more will stoke that fire. Of course, the act of reading keeps a person away from writing, but what the hell.

Part of the secret is to pay attention--little gifts of creativity abound if we keep our eyes open. In his latest post over at These Rivers, Shawn does a nice job of illustrating what can happen when we keep our eyes and feet moving. Even sailors eventually made their way out of the Doldrums, and though they might have cursed the weather (or lack of it), I doubt they actually blamed it for anything. They put the sails up and caught whatever wind there was and moved on.

Bad Stretch of Time

A week ago I spent a day with Lazlo Kominski and got to listen to a couple of stories, one of which included Kominski's current Bad Stretch of Time, or BST. Without divulging details, this particular story includes several dramatic plot points, not to mention a couple of plot twists, and a good amount of back story. We live long enough and each of us will experience a BST, though certainly one person's BST might not seem so bad to someone who has endured a worse one. I gave Kominski some details about my own BST, which occurred many years ago but still plays into nearly every decision I make. Then we went into San Francisco where we looked at some books and had a beer, and the story-telling and conversation continued along July 4th sidewalk traffic that seemed eerily light.

How we in fact endure strings of very bad things varies, certainly; some of us choose medication, some of us choos denial, and some of us choose nothing. My father once experienced a brief BST, and I remember him telling someone that "things like this always seem to happen close together." My father would one day have a starring role in my own BST, and he ended up being quite right about the "close together" part.

I think of all this BST stuff because a couple of days ago I was driving home from work and watched a car fishtail and skid across 3 lanes of traffic, remarkably without hitting another vehicle. I lost sight of the car for a moment, and when I saw it again it was resting on its roof on the side of the freeway. My informal calculations determined that there was no room for the car to have flipped only once at about 60 miles before a sudden cessation of movement. I have rolled a car off this same freeway, though I was going only 30 MPH. I bounced on my roof and ended up on my wheels in a carpool parking lot, the engine still running, the wheels splayed out. I put the car into reverse and backed into a parking space, and I thought, "That was not fun." Somone stopped to help me and let me use his phone to call my wife so she could pick me up and take me to where I had to teach that night. This was about a year after I confronted someone who was trying to steal my neighbor's car, and that someone got perturbed enough at my attempted intervention to show me the pistol stuck into the front of his pants while I was keeping my eye on the screwdriver he had raised above his head. That wasn't fun, either.

But, neither of those events were part of my BST; in fact, they aren't more than a reflective digression from that car that tumbled and twisted in front of me. I've kept an eye on the news stories since the accident, but I've not seen anything that would tell me what happened, if anyone was hurt. I keep wondering if that moment was the start of a BST for whoever was in the car, or maybe someone's family.

Power Trip

One of the fun things about writing fiction is choosing which characters live and which ones do not. Maybe, deep down, writers are narcissistic sociopaths who allow their submersible dark side surface through their fingers, but that might be something I'd have to ask a therapist. Of course, I also believe that, given free rein, characters make their own decisions, decisions that sometimes cause their demise.

I'm thinking of this now because, with a nice pen and a Rhodia notebook on the table in front of me, I'm at the start of a new novel and trying to figure out who the characters are and what they'll do for the next 90-thousand or so words. I completed the first chapter a couple of months ago but then got stuck figuring out how--and even why--one of the characters would die. The death itself is instrumental to the plot and the protagonist's life, but this how and why had me stumped. Then, while out riding my bike one day, I solved the problem: someone else, not my first choice, would die. Simple.

My approach to most of my writing goes against what many people have told me either in person or in their own writing: do the planning before you do the writing. Unfortunately I am not much of a planner when it comes to writing, though it wasn't until I figured out my second novel's ending was I able to complete most of the story. I do enjoy letting the characters develop on their own, and I often feel that planning too much of their lives makes them less real. That my success as a writer is nonexistent, however, probably means that I should have learned listen to people who know about these things.

A good day with Kominski yesterday further helped me with some possibilities for this latest work. I am now, for example, considering at least one new character, someone who can add some fodder to the story. Both Kominski and my friend Shawn are very good planners when they write, and it does me good to hear their advice and to learn about their work habits. Talking to people like these also helps me think things through, lets me try out ideas.

I'm spending too much time not writing, but I kind of like this part of the writing process: figuring out who the characters are be so I can get to know them before I send them on their way. And, of course, it's always fun to see who has the real power: the characters or the writer.