First of all, I'm mad at Amanda.

Amanda is majorly cool. For two reasons. First of all, she's my niece and she's older than me. Yeah, I was born an uncle. Ridiculously cool, and I owe it all to her. Part B of Reason 1 is that she made me a great-uncle at the tender age of 22. Needless to say, this fact is more than just a great ice-breaker at parties -- it really reels in the ladies.

Secondly, Amanda is amazing with words, which, if you know me, is all you need to score coolness points on my court. I worshipped Amanda when I was a kid. She was the sister I never had. I was thrilled when I got to spend a day on the Santa Monica Beach with her, didn't mind at all getting stranded on the smoggy Golden State Freeway, doubled over in laughter at Chavez Ravine as we sat in "Baker's Field." I envied her crazy-quick wit; a high percentage of my sense of humor was shaped by her sharp delivery. (Yes, you have her to blame.) Amanda and I haven't lived in the same state now for almost 30 years, but the Internet brought us back together in the last few years, and I gained a new appreciation for her wordsmithery these past few years as I discovered her beautiful gift for the written word. She is a truly brilliant writer.

But none of this matters now because I'm mad at her. You see, a couple of weeks ago, Amanda hinted to me that she was too busy to do NaNoWriMo. I was on the fence on whether to do it this year myself, but when she bailed on the idea, I thought, "Well, if my genius niece isn't going to do it, I can let this baby go!"

Except that I forgot about the flip side of that whole "big sister" thing: she can be mean. Suddenly, come November 1, she changed her mind and embraced NaNoWriMo, hanging me out to dry! So here I sit, composing these silly blog posts and reconsidering whether I want to go for a finished draft of the novel by 11/30.

Amanda, there's only one way to get back in my good graces: when your novel gets published, dedicate it to your dear, old uncle.

How Fitting.

No sooner had I decided to use NaNoWriMo month not for noveling but rather for focusing on The Art of Fiction, I've managed to lose the book. Sure, this is disturbing in that I wonder if my subconscious is actively working against me. (Can a subconscious be active?) But I'm also perturbed because this book had sentimental value: I carried it all over NYC during my time living there in the 1980s. PLUS the bookmark I was using was one of my last remaining of the set of bookmarks I had gotten at the long-gone-but-oft-lovingly-remembered best bookstore in NYC (for me anyway), Coliseum Books on 57th.

So while I was hoping to post a writing exercise today, that will have to be curtailed for the moment. If I have to, I will pick up the Gardner book at the library today until I can replace -- or hopefully find -- my old copy.

I've been thinking a lot today about the recent news that a "lost" Nabokov novel is to be published. One would think at first that this would be tremendously exciting, but it is a bit bothersome that Nabokov left explicit instructions that the novel was to be destroyed upon his death, and now, lo these years later, his son has decided to publish it anyway. Isn't this the stuff that curses are made of?

The book -- or whatever is going to pass as a book -- will probably be terrible. Sure, it may give us some insights into Nabokov's process, but does anyone really think that this is what he was hoping to impart when he started it? He wanted to tell a tale, not show us how he scratched out sections and rewrote sentences. I worry the same for any of the posthumous releases from David Foster Wallace, who infamously sweat bullets over every word, getting it just the way he wanted before he released it to the world. (That's hard to believe when you check in for a hernia operation after lifting Infinite Jest, but this is what "they" all say about his process.)

I, however, have no pretension to perfection. I'll show off my crappy prose, warts and all, at the drop of a hat. Perhaps this is why I'll never achieve that genius of Nabokov and Wallace. Or do I mean the mystery of those writers? The coolness? The X factor?

Tenacity and Bookmarks

Piper showed her entrepreneurial spirit today in a way I haven't seen recently. She noticed that a couple of (slightly older) girls a few doors down had set up their own business selling bookmarks on their front lawn. They would cut rectangles of 8-1/2 x 11 paper, colored them, and advertised them on the card table at 25, 50, or 75 cents, depending on how complex/pretty the bookmark was. (Zuzu and I each bought one.)

PJ asked Laura what she might be able to sell, and Laura drew her attention to her drawing skills. "You could do portraits," she suggested. PJ found this to be a fine idea, and immediately drafted me to be her muscle, carting the small table and chairs used on the occasion of eating meals in front of the television out to the driveway. She made up a page that described her product ("Dad, how do you spell 'portraits?'"), and then decided to expand the offerings: she would draw anything the customer requested. "Like, I could draw the street," she suggested. What to charge? A mere 10 cents. For a moment, I thought that she was cleverly undercutting her bookmarking competition -- and I think they were concerned about that: at one point, one of the bookmark girls wandered down to Piper's station and asked, "So how much are you charging?" and looked a little concerned when Piper told her.

Both Laura and I thought she was undervaluing her art, but this was all for fun anyway, so we didn't lobby for higher prices. It was going to be an uphill battle for her as it was: Bookmark, Inc. had spent quite a bit of time on advertising, posting flyers on trees up and down the block, and even going so far as to talk Zuzu into posting a sign on the front of her scooter she had been driving up and down the sidewalk.

I watched her business from a distance as I raked leaves on this perfect autumn day, and my hopes rose when I spied an elderly couple ambling down the street, smiling in anticipation at Piper. They looked kind; it appeared her first transaction might be positive. "Are you the girl selling bookmarks?" the woman asked Piper. No, Piper indicated, that that was those girls, and she waved in their direction. "So what are you doing?" the woman asked, and Piper explained her business ... in her typically machine-gun onslaught of words. The woman didn't understand and looked for me for help. I re-explained the picture biz, and she nodded kindly and then turned down the sidewalk to join her husband, who was already perusing the bookmarks down the street.

My heart fell. But I underestimated the business plan -- and her tenacity. As I worked around the yard and in the kitchen for the rest of the afternoon, Zuzu ran up to me on several occasions with excited updates on her sister's progress: "Dad -- people are coming!" And by dinnertime, Piper had made $2.50. Which was not to say that she'd made 25 pictures ... some people -- including a close out-of-town friend staying with us -- had clearly seen more valuable in their commissioned art and paid accordingly. Most impressive to me was how long she had stayed at it: she was probably out there working her table for well over two hours.

***

I've been thinking a lot about tenacity recently as National Novel Writing Month (not to mention National Blog Posting Month) approached again. I couldn't see how I was going to commit to either endeavor, and I even felt fiercely envious of friends who were launching into another novel today. When I did it in 2007, I had that same sticktoitiveness that I saw in my daughter today -- and for even less profit. (But who knows -- I'm still working on the novel.) I see her struggle all the time to finish projects, big and small, and I see myself in the worst way.

I started re-reading John Gardner's The Art of Fiction a couple of weeks ago, probably due to my subconscious awareness of NaNoWriMo's approach. Well, "re-reading" is a bit of a stretch. I attempted to read it more than 20 years ago, when I first attempted to write a novel (precociously titled The Long, Sudden-Ended Always) that failed in every way imaginable. The book was intimidating, largely because Gardner's voice could be so aggressive, opinionated, imposing. Unlike a lot of "You can do it!"-style how-tos, this book wants you to know that writing -- good writing -- is a bitch, and you better be prepared to wrestle, sweat, and take some serious blows if you're gonna get into it. I wasn't ready to hear it then.

But I know this now, and it makes the reading easier the second time through. Or, after getting past the first 35 pages, the first time through, as I am now in virgin territory. He has some fun writing exercises along the way, and I'm thinking about attempting them and posting them here, just for the fun of trying it out, exercising my muscles. I originally thought I would spend this November trying to finish the first draft of Son of A Saint, but I'm not so sure that's what I should be doing right now. I'm still in love with the book, still feel determined to finish it ... someday ... but facing it feels tense right now, and I'm feeling weak, easily psyched out. So maybe I can sneak up on it through these other writing exercises and slowly find my way into it.

And maybe next time Piper sets up a shop in our driveway, she'll give me some tablespace to sell opening chapters of my Great American Novel. Or maybe I should just take up making bookmarks. At least I could then say I'm part of the publishing industry.

The Buddy Chat

There is a family gathering in Winter Park, FL, for my uncle, Jess Gregg (known as "Buddy" to the family), this afternoon. Today would have been his 90th birthday. I wrote this piece to be read at that gathering.

In December 1985, Uncle Buddy called me while I was home for the holidays from college. “Why don’t you and I have a little chat?” he said in a voice that was amiable but filled with purpose.

The “Buddy chat” was a consistent element of my return visits to Winter Park. They carried a certain element of the unexpected — I never could guess what might be on his mind. I felt an air of mystery surrounding my uncle, the artist whose life was so different from that of anyone else I knew. He was an unlikely father figure to me, one of three patriarchs in my life. While my father gave me a love steeped in the kindness and selflessness more closely akin to a proud grandfather, and while Uncle Don strove to equip me with important life tools, Buddy’s role in my life seemed to be tending to my respect for family and its history.

For instance, the earliest Buddy chat that I can remember occurred at the original Ark, Dean B.’s house. Buddy called me to an upstairs room and pointed out some weaponry displayed on a wall — I believe it was a pistol — and told me what he knew of its history, how it had belonged to an ancestor in the Civil War who fought for the Union, and how he was shot through the wrist of an arm while holding the sword that directed his regiment into battle. A memorable story for a 9-year-old boy.

“Someday,” Buddy promised in conclusion, “when you’re old enough to take care of these things, this will be yours.” I think I understood even then that my uncle wasn’t giving me a gun or some family possession; he was entrusting me with an important piece of Gregg oral history.

There was a ritual to my visits with Buddy: the tea and cookies, of course, prepared and served lovingly by Leo. During this time I would catch them up on my life. And then Buddy would inevitably say: “Let’s take a little walk,” and out the door we would go, walking the quiet brick streets of the neighborhood, or heading down to the edge of the tiny lake in his back yard, his quiet, sonorous tones sharing a concern that had been on his mind, perhaps about me, perhaps about him, perhaps about Mom or Dad.

Like many artists, Buddy was concerned with what legacy he would leave behind, but more than that he was thinking about the Gregg, Ogilvie and Bailey legacies. He was aware that, on paper at least, this branch of the Gregg surname would die with him, and it was important that some of us in a younger generation understand what we could of its history.

+ + +

As it turned out, the visit in ‘85 had a different purpose. After the usual tea and cookies, Jess directed me me to sit on the edge of the bed in his and Leo’s bedroom. He presented me with a small manila envelope with the words “The Underground Kite” written in black Sharpie. It contained what appeared to be three poems. Buddy explained that a dramatic reading of a new play of his was to be produced in Orlando, and that the production needed three songs. He wanted me to write the music to his lyrics. He read them out loud to me, not singing but imbuing his voice with a musical rhythm. He talked about Leadbelly, the folk blues musician, whose style these songs should most closely resemble.

I accepted the task with some trepidation, mostly pride. I walked on air for the next few days, feeling like all of a sudden, rather than simply being a mentor he was inviting me to collaborate with him. Some of that fog of “mystery” surrounding him seemed to dissipate. This was an acknowledgement from my clearest pardigm of an artist that I too was an artist, that I deserved that respect.

I never got to see the production, but I did get a copy of the program with my songwriting credit. I’m pretty sure my music was not exactly what he was looking for: as much as I, a white, middle-class boy at a private midwestern college, tried, I was not going to capture the passion and craft of an early 20th-century black musician who spent years on chain gangs in the Deep South. But the experience served to mature my relationship with Jess, and it helped me carry my artistic self with more conviction.

And that conviction is perhaps the most important gift that Jess and Leo have both given me. My parents, of course, spent a great part of their lives in the arts, but for me they were “stuck” always being parents first. With the little bit of distance Jess and Leo had, they became for me the purest examples in this family of a life guided by art. Jess’s commitment to his writing has been a constant source of inspiration in my own artistic pursuits, most recently my writing. He’s shown me that it can be done. He has given me license to think of myself as a writer, an artist. I can’t think of a better legacy.

A couple of days ago, I was listening to an interview with the writer Dennis Palumbo. He spoke of the value of committing to a life of writing, and in his words I recognized Jess, hunched over his typewriter — or later, his laptop — summoning the muse.

Dennis said:

Writing is a lifelong pursuit. It’s very hard for writers to do this, but they have to take the long view — they have to take the view that they’re going to be doing this, year after year, for most of their life. And that fads and genres come and go, and overnight successes come and go, but the real beauty and sublime joy in writing is the day-to-day engagement with your creative self. To do that every day, you accumulate over the long haul a real sense of connection with yourself, and with what makes you human and makes everyone else a human.

I hope that Jess and I will continue our chats on a regular basis.

NaBloPoMo 10: A Tag, Not of the Skin Variety

Thanks, Parenthetical, for the tag — my first time being tagged on this blog.

Here's the goods on how this works:

1. Link to the person who tagged me. (That's what that link up above is, so I'm cruising right along in my directions.)
2. Post the rules on your blog. (Even as I type!)
3. Write six random things about yourself. (Comin' up.)
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them.
5. Let each person know they've been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up. (That seems redundant to step 5, but who am I to quibble with the powers that be.)

Okay. So. Six random things about me:

1. In high school, I had an addiction to tonic water ... so much so that at my 18th birthday (which doubled as a going-away party before I left for college), my friends gave me 25 1-liter bottles of the stuff. Canada Dry, I believe.
2. Valerie Harper (of Rhoda fame) introduced me on a nationally televised telethon to raise money for the victims of one of those Mississippi River floods in 1993. I performed my songs "Saving The Levee" and "Invisible Locket."
3. I am unbelievably excited that Piper is getting to be old enough to start watching some of my favorite movies when I was a kid (i.e., Star Wars, E.T., Xanadu ... Ohmygod, did I just say that last one out loud?). I can't imagine that every parent doesn't feel this way.*
4. The first movie I saw in a theater was Sleeping Beauty. I hid on the floor when the wicked queen turned into the dragon.
5. If I could do it all again, I would want to be a professional athlete, for the sole reason that I could give much better interviews than those dolts can ever give.
6. My wedding ring has a chip of Laura's birthstone in it, and Laura's has a chip of my birthstone. I know: it's disgusting, isn't it?

Okay, so I have to stick six other friends with the task of sharing their random thoughts of themselves. So ... Catharine Chronicles, Jason, Scandal of Particularity, Squidlicious, and ...

Uh oh. I don't read six other blogs. I'm sorry, but four is the best I can do. Don't hate me because I'm anti-social!


* An anecdotal addendum to #3 above: When I was about 12, a national network showed Gone With the Wind as one of those sweeps month "television events." GWTW is my mother's favorite movie, and she reallly wanted me to watch it. No, you're not hearing me: she really wanted me to watch it. I, however, did not want to waste a good night's television viewing (I'm sure there was a kickass episode of Happy Days on that night or something dramatically important like that) and rejected her pleas, opting instead to watch my shows on the tiny B&W TV and leave her with the color set. This upset Mom greatly. I held my ground, stubborn adolescent that I was. Finally, in desperation, she came to me and said, rather pathetically, "If you'll come watch the movie with me ... I will pay you $5.00." I just got this sick feeling in my stomach. "Oh, Mom!" I whined. "Fine, fine. I'll come and watch it." I didn't accept the money. I couldn't believe she had done that, but even moreso, I couldn't believe I had let it come to that.

NaBloPoMo 9: Next Stop: A Gameboy on My Christmas List

Tonight, as we're walking through beautiful downtown St. Charles (MO) and meeting Christmas characters, Laura introduces a term that I'm certain has been around for awhile but I've managed to miss it 'til now. It's the word used to describe today's young'uns:

"Screenagers."

The term, as she explained, refers to the fact that while watching TV, a screenager will also be on his/her laptop and have their cell phone close by. Screens galore.

And as she's telling me this, and we're watching our steps as we walk on the cobblestone sidewalks, I think to myself: Holy Christ -- I'm 43 years old, and she's describing me.

NaBloPoMo 8: A quote from John Irving

One of the pleasures of reading a novel is anticipation. Would a playwright not bother to anticipate what the audience is anticipating? The reader of a novel also enjoys the feeling that he can anticipate where the story is going; however, if the reader actually does anticipate the story, he is bored. The reader must be able to anticipate, but the reader must also guess wrong. How can an author make a reader anticipate—not to mention make a reader guess wrong—if the author himself doesn't know where the story is going? A good beginning will suggest knowledge of the whole story; it will give a strong hint regarding where the whole story is headed; yet a good beginning must be misleading, too.

Therefore, where to begin? Begin where the reader will be invited to do the most anticipating of the story, but where the reader will be the most compelled to guess wrong. If anticipation is a pleasure, so is surprise.

-- from his essay "Getting Started" in the compilation Writers On Writing (Middlebury College Press, 1991)

The bad news is, I'm now feeling like I need to reconsider the opening of my novel.

The good news is, I think I know what it needs. Such revisions are never scary when I have at least an inkling of an idea of where I might go. "Scary" is when I have no idea what needs to be fixed.

NaBloPoMo 7: A Writing Excerpt

I took a marvelous writing class at Northwestern this summer. We only wrote and revised one story in the six weeks, but there was a lot of additional writing on top of this via exercises that were largely derived from two books: Janet Burroway's Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft and the better known The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers by John Gardner; both of these are pretty much required reading for anyone serious about writing fiction).

Those 18 exercises were challenging, but on the nights that I was really into it they were unbelievably fun. I thought I'd share one of my exercises here. You're going to be dropped smack-dab into the middle of a story. The rest of it is not written; honestly, beyond the scene below, the story hasn't even been conceived. But this is one of two or three exercises from that summer class that I could definitely see expanding into something longer and fuller.

•••

THE EXERCISE: Write a scene that shows a character who feels the pressing importance of getting or accomplishing something. That something need not seem significant to others; in fact, most people might find it trivial (e.g., he is terribly embarrassed even though no one seems to notice anything wrong; she must have a certain book from the library; etc.). Purpose: to make a character interesting by showing the intensity of her/his needs or desires.


I was having a hard time concentrating on what the officer was asking. I think I was finally going into something like shock. I was staring at a spot over the policeman’s right shoulder, remembering details of the accident, the point of impact, where the girl had ended up, where her mother landed, the color of the car, any scrap of info on the license plate … I was drowning in unorganized thoughts, when all of a sudden I realized I had been staring at something underneath a parked car.

It was a toy, a Rubik’s Cube. The puzzle was unsolved, a jumble of colored squares. I think the officer was repeating some question about what time it was, but all I could do was fall into those solid squares, count them off, unlock the patterns.

I was in high-school when I got my Cube. Actually, I borrowed it. Okay, stole it. I disappeared to my bedroom for a few afternoons, never quite figuring out the trick to solving it, and finally walking in the rain one day to the mall bookstore to copy down with a ballpoint the solution from a pamphlet on the back of several record store receipts. I mastered the Cube. I got to where I was able to solve it from any position in less than two minutes. Eventually the satisfaction of that ordered universe dulled, and I returned it to the locker from which it had been stolen.

And now the Cube was back. The little girl had been holding it, I remembered that. I didn’t remember seeing it fly when the car struck them. What was playing over and over was the two-part thud — da-THUNK. The sound was so dominant that I didn’t remember hearing tires squeal, though there were straight-as-arrow skid marks. Neither victim uttered a sound, not even of surprise. And the bodies: the mother, in a thin skirt, looking almost birdlike as she traveled; the child, in blue jeans, never really getting to experience grace in her life and certainly not showing it in her final moment.

And now, there it was, at least 50 feet from where the girl ended up. Green squares. Yellow. Red. Blue. Mostly blue. What were the other colors that I couldn’t see? White? Black? Purple?

“Mr. Poidevin,” the officer said, “if you can just bear with me for a few more minutes …”

“I’m sorry, yes, can you excuse me for just a moment?” I asked.

“Just a few more questions,” he said.

“I know, I just need to get … I need to look at something.” I lifted the yellow tape and bent under it.

“Sir!” the officer barked, and then modulated his voice. “Mr. Poidevin, this is a crime scene, and you may not go past the tape.”

“I’m not touching anything,” I muttered. “I just need to … I need to look at something in that car.”

“Which car?” the officer said. He had a hand on my arm now. It was a polite tug-of-war. I remembered when my father would grab me like this. I had learned to shuck out of my nylon windbreaker and get away. That would not be a good idea now.

“The black one, right there. Look, I’ll be right back. Then you can ask me anything.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but we’ve sealed the crime scene. Now, please come back to the other side of the tape.”

We stood still, him and me. I wanted to call him by his name, but now I couldn’t remember it, and I couldn’t take my eyes off my target to look at his badge. The Cube was right there, by the rear wheel of the car, its colors almost pulsing. The girl seemed young to be doing that puzzle. Surely she couldn’t solve it. I could do it, for her. I could put it right.

“I can’t remember …” I started to say. My eyes filled, and the Cube was lost in the blur. I bowed my head, pinched my eyes with thumb and index finger. Deep breath. “Alright, alright,” I said, ducking back under the tape.

The policeman returned to his interview. I thought about making up answers just to end this so that I could get to work on the puzzle, but that would only complicate things. Instead, I tried to focus on the policeman’s face, kept my answers brief, and tried not to give away the Rubik’s Cube’s location.

“That will be it,” he said. As I stepped away, toward the tape again, he added: “I just need your contact information, in case we need to follow up.” He clearly noticed my distress. “Mr. Poidevin, do you need to sit down?”

No, what I need is for you to let me fix the damn puzzle! I thought.

“I’m fine.” As I gave him my address and phone number, I saw another officer walking deliberately in the middle of the street, as if making certain he didn’t step on a land mine. He was studying the asphalt as if he’d lost something. He wore purple latex gloves. He slowly made his way toward the black car and the Cube.

“Thank you, Mr. Poidevin,” my officer said. The investigating officer crouched down. He had seen the toy. He called someone with a camera over.

“That’s mine!” I yelled. My face flushed. Both officers turned to look at me, expecting clarification. “I dropped that, that’s mine!”

Still crouching, the policeman by the car pointed at the Cube. “This?” he asked.

“Yeah. Yeah.”

“Is this your car?” he asked.

I was about to say yes, but my policeman said, “No, that’s his VW over there.” I forgot I had told him that. The photographer moved in for close-ups of the Cube, and then he stepped away, nodding to Officer Gloves.

As the other officer walked over to us, he smiled and said, “We have witnesses who says the child was holding this.”

“Well, they’re wrong,” I said simply.

“So, this is your toy?” my officer said. He was amused. It was a strange place to feel amusement.

I nodded, doing my best to temper my impatience. I allowed a glance at it, and I could almost hear the gratifying sound the Cube being twisted and turned, the calming rhythms, the feeling that my hands and wrists knew how to work together and make everything right.

Having considered my appeal, the gloved officer produced a plastic bag from his pocket, snapped it open, and dropped the Cube in. “Carlos,” he addressed my officer, “give me this guy’s contact info and I’ll attach it.” And then to me: “You can pick it up in a few weeks.”

As he walked away, he shook the bag at his side, and the Cube bounced against his thigh.

NaBloPoMo 6: The Definition of "Counterintuitive"

This is a gripe that I've had sitting around in my blogger "draft" file for the last two years, and I'm finally going to take the time during NaBloPoMo to finish it.

One of the biggest problems I encounter on a regular basis — and I say this realizing that it will speak volumes about how difficult the life I lead truly is — is the fact that, when inserting a common consumer DVD movie into my DVD player, it takes ... oh ... about 15 minutes to get through all the crap at the beginning before I finally reach the DVD menu where I can finally start the movie.

I wonder how many of us still remember that one of the biggest things we gave up when we left the videocassette behind was the ability to fast-forward through the FBI warning and maybe a movie trailer before getting to the feature film we sat on the couch to enjoy. Those crafty film industry people made certain that — on a vast majority of DVDs, at least — there is absolutely no way to skip the all-important FBI WARNING that you had better not have a room full of admission-paying neighbors with popcorn tubs waiting to enjoy your personal copy of Xanadu. The warning, I'd like to note, that nobody reads because they're too busy pushing every button on your DVD remote to try to skip through the (not one but) two screens of 8-point-sized text about all the dastardly things they can do to you if you go rogue on them.

As if that's not enough, many DVDs also put that same "can't fast-forward" feature on the now numerous trailers stuck after the FBI warning but before you get to the menu. Now, like many, I love movie trailers at the theater. On the rare occasion that Laura and I actually get to take in a grown-up film without our children, we always make sure that we're there in plenty of time to soak up the nonstop highlights of the next Bond film and all the best jokes from the upcoming Adam Sandler flick. The problem with watching trailers on a DVD is that after you've seen the trailers once, you rarely need to ever see them again. After a few months or years, the trailers only serve to annoy you as much as the FBI thing. Yet each time you put the DVD back in the machine, you are once again promised the anticipatory tease of a movie that long ago saw its premiere in theaters ... and on HBO ... and on DVD ... and on basic cable ... and its network broadcast ... and finally in the big "bin o' movies" near the cash registers at your local Walgreen's. And still you can't fast-forward through it.

Now, I know that, on some DVDs, once you're past the FBI warning you can press your "menu" button and skip all that stuff. But I swear I'm finding more and more that DVDs remove that

Enter Disney, the land of imagineers to come up with a solution: Disney FastPlay!

(I have to say: I was stunned to discover that Disney actually has an entire web site — with a lengthy FAQ — discussing this feature. I'm proud to bring you that link now! Please don't skim any of the materials. Read all of it.)

According to the web site, FastPlay is an "exclusive Patent Pending technology" (Yep! those Ps are capitalized, so don't mess with 'em!) featured on all Disney DVDs (mostly animated films — of which, I'm sure you're not surprised to learn, we have many in our house — but also some of the more grown-up movies to come from Disney) that on first glance appears to address my issue. "Consumers who don't want to use their remote," I am told, "can just put in the DVD and it will start to play the movie and a selection of bonus features." Awesome! Problem solved! the first time I saw this. It appeared that Disney had arranged for us to bypass all that crap and get to our movie fast.

Well ... no. When the FastPlay screen comes up, there are two icons on it: the "Disney FastPlay" icon, and a "Main Menu" icon. The first time I saw it, I quickly clicked the FastPlay icon ... and was rewarded with the first of the five or six movie trailers on the DVD. How is this fast? I wondered. I'm not watching my movie yet!

The FastPlay site promises that there will be no need for a remote control: "Disney's FastPlay plays the feature plus a selection of bonus features without pressing a button!" While this is technically true, what it actually does is play all the commercial trailers on the DVD — these must be the bonus features that they were just speaking of — before finally starting your movie. In other words, once you've pressed the FastPlay icon, your DVD does the exact same crappy behavior that it used to do before FastPlay was "invented." You are still sitting through all of the trailers. Nothing has changed ... except that Disney has now created Patent Pending technology to trick you into watching the trailers you used to scramble to skip.

In order to really get to your movie fast, you must avoid the FastPlay button; you must instead choose the "Main Menu" button, which bypasses all the top filler and gets you relatively quickly to your movie. But you had better be quick about it, becaue if you don't get to your remote and navigate off of FastPlay (Disney has helpfully made FastPlay the default button), it'll just choose it for you, and off you go to TrailerLand.

It just seems so typical of a large corporation like Disney to create a feature named in a way to make you believe it does something for you, when in fact it's simply doing something for them.

And yes, this is the kind of crap I am clearly reverting to think about now that the election is over.

NaBloPoMo 5: Writing in My Sleep

Sleep has a ridiculous effect on my creativity. I love to stay up late, and I can do a lot of things when I'm up past my bedtime, but writing well isn't one of them.

That being said, I'm not sure exactly how I pulled off NaNoWriMo last year as well as I did. I mean, it's certainly not hard for me to generate 50,000 words in a month — and not only did I do that but I also knocked out 30 blog posts that month — but I was actually happy with what I wrote. (Well, not the blog posts — they were crap. But the novel I still like very much.) I know I had the help with a lot of caffeine, and of course there was all that leftover Halloween candy. For some reason, Laura bought a ludicrous amount of mini Tootsie Pops, and I pretty much lived on them during November 2007. I'm not exactly sure how Chris Baty chose November as the best month for NaNoWriMo, but having the marathon kick off with an infusion of refined sugar certainly helped me.

If I'm really gonna churn out words — words that I can be proud of, whether they are for work or for "pleasure" — I need a good amount of sleep. Naps can be very helpful — even a five-minute power-nap can make a huge difference. (In fact, I often come out of those catnaps with the solution to a problem I was having with the work, or with a whole new scene or sequence of scenes almost fully worked out in my head, waiting for transcription.) But if I'm serious about kicking some fiction ass, I need a good eight to ten hours under my belt.

This is part of what has made this year more difficult: I've been working a second freelance job that involves a lot of reading, writing and thinking. So after the girls have gone to bed and I've taken care of the most important cultural duty (watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report), I have to dig into the work on this other job. By the time that is done, I have no energy left for more creative pursuits.

My mom's favorite line recently has been: "Take care of yourself first; the writing will be there waiting for you when the right time comes." That's very sweet. Sane, even. But it's hard for me not to feel like every day not spent writing is one less day I'll have in my life to complete the stuff I'm doing. I want to keep writing!

It's a sad irony that I want to draw on my life as inspiration for good writing, but life keeps getting in the way of my writing.

NaBloPoMo 4: This Has Nothing to Do with NaBloPoMo or NaNoWriMo

I'm just ... really happy tonight. I was thinking where I was on a night like this 16 years ago, at the apartment of some close friends as we thrilled at the election of Bill Clinton. Boy, does that look like a minor party compared to how I felt watching President-Elect Barack Obama's victory speech in Grant Park tonight. I haven't been that emotionally moved during this whole campaign as I was when he fell into his preacher-like "Yes we can" portion of that speech ... and the moment was intercut with a woman watching at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.

Things are turning around. And man, does it feel good.

NaBloPoMo 3: Writing Classes

I may not have done as much work on Son of a Saint as I would have liked over the past year, but I did take a couple of writing classes, and from the work in those classes I have created four short stories that I'm very excited about.

The first class was taken through a local community college, and the other students were, by their own admission, not as serious about writing or getting published as I was. This difference was probably most obvious during the critiques of the stories (as it was a "workshop," meaning that we spent as much time as we could discussing and critiquing each other's work). The other students' critiques were usually filled with positive comments about their favorite parts of each story, and in a couple of cases the critique was largely simply a retelling of the story in the critic's own words. Still, a class like that was useful to me because it made me very productive word-wise, and it also got me out of my own head and thinking, through the critiquing process, of what I liked and what I didn't like in a story ... what worked and what didn't work.

The second class, which I took this past summer, was a much more "serious" class. Again, it was a workshop, but this time it was taken through Northwestern University. It was clear from the first few moments of the class that the teacher was much more learned in teaching writing than the previous teacher. (Which is not in any way to suggest that my first teacher wasn't a good writer; he simply struggled to communicate the basics of good fiction writing.) There was much more reading, and much more discussion of each of those classic short stories we read. And there were more students in the class who were clearly serious about writing. The drawback was that these students were much younger — other than me, they were all between the ages of 16 and 26 — and while some of them were talented writers, they lacked the life experience that this fortysomething father has had. This issue showed itself most clearly in the critiques, where points that had little to do with the core issues in a story would be discussed ad nauseum. Thankfully, the professor's gentle-yet-firm hand kept things in line and kept the classroom discussions moving in a productive direction.

I spent a bit of time early on worrying about what class to take, and whether it would really be worth my time and money. The fact is, at the point I'm at now, any class was going to be valuable. My own level of expectation from my writing was going to keep the quality of the writing high. And it was going to be useful to simply get some kind of — any kind of — reaction to my writing. Not unlike when I was pursuing a singer-songwriter thing and I would unveil a song I was still working on in front of a live audience, just to sense what might have been working for them. I did get valuable feedback on my stories, and in at least one case the feedback radically changed the story's ending.

But in the future, I'm probably going to start to be a little more selective in my class choices. In fact, I'm toying with the idea of an MFA in creative writing, done through Northwestern's "night school" option. Then I'll really start making money with my writing!

Okay. That was a lame joke.

Anyway, I'm hoping that I can start moving in this direction next fall. The only bad news with this, I think, is that if that happens I probably will have to skip NaNoWriMo again. Because one thing I learned from this summer Northwestern class is that it is a LOT of work. Work that I did with a strong sense of gratitude, but work that would definitely keep me from being able to write a 50,000-word novel at the same time.

NaBloPoMo 2: Inspiration and Cocktail Parties

I was in the car yesterday, headed to Whole Foods to buy the ingredients for an appetizer I needed to prepare for a cocktail party last night ... I know, I know. Me and a cocktail party. That's just weird. But I have to face up to the fact that I do live on Chicagoland's North Shore, and the cocktail party is one of the major ways that grown-ups socialize. In this case, the group was the parents of Zuzu's pre-kindergarten class.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyway, I was in the car and, per usual, listening to one of the many podcasts on my iPod. In this case, it was an episode of NPR's Fresh Air, and Terry Gross was talking to Rev. Forrest Church, a Unitarian minister with a new book out called Love and Death. It's an account of how he has come to terms with his diagnosis of terminal esophogeal cancer. One would think that such a book (and interview) would be pretty sad, but this guy was incredibly uplifting as he talked about how he has worked through these heavy issues. I especially liked the fact that he admitted that, while he's not scared now, he figures that when he's lying on his probable death bed and the end is close, he will most likely be pretty freaked out about the whole thing.

But that's not what I'm really here to tell you about. What I wanted to say was that I had to pull my ass over and fish out my ever-present tiny spiral notebook where all my random/spontaneous thoughts go. Because I had just had an important breakthrough with the main character in Son of a Saint. I realized that his coming to terms with his return to the family concern will be very much like coming to terms with death: he'll be embracing something he has feared for most of his adult life, and he will be effectively "killing" the life he had built for himself for the last number of years.

And this, of course, allows me to start to explore a whole new vein of research: coping with an impending death. (This goes along with another area I've already explored from a particularly tragic part of the story: coping with a sudden, unexpected death of a close, loved one.)

This has been what a lot of the last year has been like for me. The first draft of this novel has been largely the structural bones, with a little meat here and there, in sections where I knew (or discovered as I wrote) some deeper details about characters, what makes them tick, their circumstances and emotional environments and what happens to them. But since the end of NaNoWriMo 2007, I've found that I'm discovering the nitty-gritty of the overarching themes. And I've been making tons of notes about what Walt does or thinks about situation X, or how Sherry reacts after Situation Y, or how devastating Situation Z is on Audrey's psyche and how this will change the way she views certain characters or the world.

If I was able to devote my life full-time to writing, all of this would happen much faster, I'm sure. But these moments are s p r e a d way out, sometimes by weeks. It bugs me sometimes that progress is so slow on the story, but everyone around me assures me that it will all get done in time, that I just need to be patient. I have a hard time knowing if they're saying this to be nice to me or if they truly believe this.

One of the big sources of inspiration for my novel is, of course, the everyday moments of my life, particularly around my family (since one of my characters is a five-year-old, and I'm living with an almost-4- and an almost-7-year-old; oh, and one of my characters is a mother, and I guess I'm living with one of those too *grin*). But the other sources of inspiration that brings a lot of new life into this are the people I encounter in these podcasts, and their stories. In addition to Fresh Air, the podcasts for This American Life have been very helpful, though I have to be careful there, because the stories are so good and often unbelievable that they are practically their own novels. I have to dig down to the level of the basic themes (love, loss, etc.) to get to the heart of what might be going on with my own characters.

My other helpful podcast source is The Kathy and Judy Show on WGN-AM Radio. It's just your typical morning talk show, with the hosts bringing up everyday topics and callers from around Chicagoland (and beyond) calling in to share their own experiences or give their two cents. A lot of it is claptrap, but every once in awhile something hits that just blows me away, and I hear one of my novel's characters talking right there through my iPod earbuds.

All these sources keep the flame alive, even when I don't have a lot of time to pour out tons of words. And they bring in new lives and fresh perspectives far out the (currently very limited) span of my family-and-work-life. It keeps the brain churning a little harder, and it lifts me momentarily out of the soggy worries of the daily existence of a suburban father with a 9-to-5 who fancies himself a novelist.

Oh, and by the way: cocktail parties help with inspiration too. The father last night who went on a ridiculous long soliloquy about the pros and cons of (seemingly) dozens of different tequilas ... It came across as such a non-sequitir conversation in my life that it just cried out to be used somewhere. It'll find its place. I've got the notes to make sure of it.

(It felt weird to be at a cocktail party on November 1st and not be doing that thing that the rest of you were probably doing at your cocktail parties last night: dropping not-so-subtle hints about the masterpiece you're returning to once you are talked out, alcoholically lubricated, and ready to turn back to your keyboards later that evening. But I know more about agave than I ever thought I would, so I guess it evens out in the end.)

Gentlemen and Gentlewomen, Start Your Fingers. (NaBloPoMo 1?)

I suppose I could say "Start your pens" as well, because I have heard of brave participants in NaNoWriMo who have written their novels in longhand with nothing but a good pen and a legal pad. I might have imagined approaching it that way at one time — just for the sheer challenge of it — but that day probably passed twenty years ago.

I'm just a cheerleader for NaNoWriMo this year, due to a number of circumstances. I know that I've only truly paricipated in NaNoWriMo once, last year, and I'm not sure how doing something once somehow signifies some sort of tradition. But it honestly feels weird to not be doing this again this year. And hard too, considering that I actually have two or three really good ideas for new novels.

One of the biggest reasons that I'm not doing the thirty-day run this year is because I have not yet finished Son of a Saint. My buddy Jason recommended that I shouldn't go attacking a new project of this size until the old one is done — and he should know, having worked for two NaNoWriMos on his novel before completing it. Yes, I could have spent this November finishing up last year's, but with a second freelance job going, these late-evening hours are spent doing other work that is more necessary than knocking out a book.

But that's not to say that I can't do something during this month in NaNo's memory:

• I can dedicate at least a little time each day this month to doing something on Son of a Saint. Over the last year, I have made copious notes on unfinished sections of the novel, and I have a long list of holes that need to be filled in the story. I will devote some thought to this.
  
  
• I can also post here and do my own version of the writing-every-day alternative, NaBloPoMo. Somehow I managed to do that last year in addition to NaNoWriMo. So why not give it a try? Plus, it'll give my buddy Jason something to do after he knocks off work on his new novel in the Pacific time zone.
  
  
• I can continue working on a number of short stories I've written over the past year, preparing them for publication.

In fact, just this evening I finished a fourth (and final, I think) draft of a short story I'll be submitting to Glimmer Train in their "Family" competition. I'm sure my chances are slim for a win, place, or show. But it's about getting it out there and seeing what happens right now.

So I won't write a novel this year. But I'll be cheering some of you on, and I look forward to reading excerpts over at the NaNoWriMo site. Good luck to all of you! I'm here to tell you that it's a worthy challenge.

Barack Obama Owes Me Money.

Well, he does, at least, if one can copyright photographic poses.

On the left is a self-portrait taken August 2007. On the right is Peter Yang's photo for the cover of the current issue of Rolling Stone.



No need to send me any money, Barack. You can show your appreciation by stemming the flow of junk mail with your name in the upper righthand corner of the envelopes.