Dating the Calendar: A Fictional Essay | Sal Glynn | Article/Story/Poem/Essay | Red Room

Dating the Calendar: A Fictional Essay | Sal Glynn | Article/Story/Poem/Essay | Red Room

HOW TO WRITE REAL GOOD: Scratching and Napping

(NOTE: There once was a union maid, she never was afraid 
/ Of goons and ginks and company finks / And the deputy sheriffs who made the raid.
 / She went to the union hall when a meeting it was called 
/ And when the Legion boys come ‘round /
 She always stood her ground. / Oh, you can’t scare me, I’m sticking to the union. 
/ I’m sticking to the union, I’m sticking to the union. 
/ Oh, you can’t scare me, I’m sticking to the union
. / I’m sticking to the union ‘til the day I die.)

Writing is hard and writers have to do it every day so they can call themselves writers and not just people who sit at laptops and typewriters and notepads when they could be serving in a soup kitchen or doing other unselfish public work. The act of writing is less important than what it produces: the story. Without our stories, we might as well be shoehorns or Dalmatians.

Every story has a beginning, middle, and end, and, as Jean-Luc Godard said about the cinema, not necessarily in that order. The story defines itself as the writer bangs on keys and scribbles on paper, and if the writer gets in the way of the process, the story is lost. It becomes a jangle of words without meaning or depth or soul. Stories are alive: they sing in strange choirs, have disparate images that meet one another without a formal introduction, and dance in peculiar arabesques called the human experience. They must be told with integrity.

Any story (or writer) is beholden only to the reader, for without readers the story is just an exercise in spelling and punctuation. Every writer has an ideal reader: Mom, Dad, partner, the next-door neighbor with the untamed bougainvillea, gas station attendant, seventh grade schoolteacher, or night clerk. A writer takes the effort to compose and make tidy a story for them, but others are invited to join the fun. No one is turned away from reading or writing. Stories are pure democracy, unlike publishing. Every writer, especially first timers, stumbles over getting his or her work out to the reading public. More rejection than acceptance can make them desperate enough to consider writing commercial fiction.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

Writers pressed by lack of attention and remuneration will try other avenues to make a living. In his essay, “Bread versus Mozart’s Watch,” Lew Welch says, “I’ve got a job. I’m a Poet. Why should I do somebody else’s job, too? You want me to be carpenter? I’m a lousy carpenter. Does anybody ask a carpenter to write my poems?” The fiction writer is encouraged by agents and editors to embrace commercial fiction instead of carpentry, and commercial fiction can be defined as fiction that makes money for anyone except the writer. Workshops across the country and creative writing courses tout the possible financial rewards. Maybe not, maybe so: the suspicion is there is more money to be made teaching how to write commercial fiction than doing it.

Most commercial fiction workshops go through what will sell to agents and editors at publishing houses, ending with the hope a reader will be found that agrees with their combined sensibilities. The workshop teacher will start with a series of rules: Never start a novel with the description of a landscape or behind the wheel of a car, never use dreams, and never have a redheaded protagonist. These are based on what is selling at this moment and the person behind such nonsense is an idiot. Writing for today’s marketplace does not take into account that it changes, mostly just out of capriciousness.

What cannot be taught is the drive to tell a story. This is a genetic disposition, like freckles or appreciating chamber music. The drive is inside the writer, and all any good teacher can offer is the critical apparatus necessary to read and think clearly. Craft comes from reading, writing through mistakes, and regarding language as full of infinite possibilities to tell one particular story, the writer’s story.

WHO STILL LAUGHS

A writer writes everyday, heedless of holidays and vacations, also known as the curse of vocation. Elmore Leonard gets by on four good pages a day, but he’s been at this for a while. Emails and grocery lists don’t count as writing; long, strange letters to friends on the other side of the country only count if the writer keeps a copy for future use. Journals are important until they take over from the real work of characterization, plot, and setting. Every bit of writing is a prelude to sitting down at the keyboard to give a future reader your glimpse of paradise.

To quit writing is simple: get up from your desk and walk away. The story remains voluntary, whether reading or writing. Sending out the finished short story or novel to agents and editors is a process no one likes. Agents reply with emails saying, “I didn’t fall in love with (your novel here).” Editors of journals send out form rejections when they get around to it. Writing commercial fiction might be easier than writing with integrity, but the result is the same.

For those who can’t stop writing, who fuss about sentence structure, participle phrases, Oxford commas, and compound words, don’t stop. Keep going through the rejections and send your work out even though it will be rejected and hope you will find a responsive ear. Agents and editors will eventually capitulate. If not, the writer might turn to carpentry and the story worth reading will go the way of the Twinkie.

AFTER SO DAMN LONG, WHY NOT

THE DOG has been silent of late and, according to Mr. Detroit, the bark and whimper has been missed. So have the stains on the hallway carpet. To have THE DOG all year round and also make sure the author gets a royalty check of any amount next year, jump up and run to your local independent bookstore. Politely enter through the front door, stand behind the patrons waiting for gift wrapping, and ask for several copies of THE DOG WALKED DOWN THE STREET: AN OUTSPOKEN GUIDE FOR WRITERS WHO WANT TO PUBLISH (Cypress House, $13.95). Compliment the cashier’s reindeer sweater before handing over that credit card and wish staff and clientele the very best of jolly holidays. Patrons and workers at independent bookstores are as handsome or beautiful as their genders permit, and THE DOG is the best gift ever made from natural products, fit for family and friends and the nice woman who delivers the mail. Log on to www.indiebound.com for the nearest independent bookstore that eagerly awaits your business and polite manners.

NEXT: No Bones Before Bedtime

SIMILES FOR RENT: De-worming Makes New Friends

(NOTE: I got the key to the highway / Billed out and bound to go / I'm gonna leave here running, people / Because walking is most too slow / I'm going back to the border / Before they put up the fence / Where I'm better known / Because you haven't done nothing, baby / Except drove a good man away from home / When the moon peeks over the mountains / Baby, I'm gonna be on my way / I'm gonna roam this mean old highway / Until the break of day)


Mr. Detroit is on the telephone, loud as an over-aged Arrowsmith roadie who spent his formative years too close to the amplifiers. This limits the exchange expected in a conversation. Quotation marks for Mr. Detroit are used anyway.

“What’s with not including similes in your post about metaphors and analogies? That’s like building a house out of sugar cubes and expecting to move in after the rain lets up. You got to have it all, otherwise language just sits on the page without any animating force. Analogies use ‘as,’ metaphors just are, and similes use ‘like.’ Push this rule so the confusion is cut down.”

I thought I did.

“Nope. I have a close personal friend who looks like she would make a bishop kick in a stained glass window, and she agrees. A writer knows the names of the tools in his or her box and their proper usage. The reader wants only the experience of the story, not to stumble over the hammers and wrenches of grammar left lying around after the job is finished. Tidy your mess.”

You’re hard to please.

“The division of similes and metaphors is a matter of degree. A simile states that this is like that, while the metaphor is less explicit and encourages the reader to find a connection. A lot of hairs get split on this, and pulled out in frustration.”

So if a character sticks out like spats at an Iowa picnic, this is a simile?

“Excellent illustration. Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) started writing short stories for the pulp magazines when he was forty-five, two years younger than Lawrence Sterne when he turned to the novel. What set Chandler apart from other detective genre writers was his approach to American English as a foreign language. He played with the figures of speech and turns of phrase that came from the American tongue in novels like THE BIG SLEEP, THE LITTLE SISTER, and THE LONG GOODBYE. When he was good, Chandler’s descriptive sentences shined like the gold in old paintings. When he was bad, he was still Chandler, walking down the mean streets a man must go who is himself not mean.”

GEORGE WHITMAN (1913–2011)

In exchange for reading one book a day and writing a biographical sketch in any of the blue exercise books scattered around, George Whitman gave shelter to the broke and busted traveler in Paris. He started out selling books on the street after World War II until he had enough to open Le Mistral on rue de la Bûcherie in the Quartier Latin, later changing the name to Shakespeare & Co in honor of Willie the Shake’s 400th birthday and the book shop begun by Sylvia Beach in the 1920s. In his quieter moments (and there were few), George confessed to being the great grandnephew of Walt Whitman. On the outside of his shop he installed a plaque commemorating his relative that read in French, “Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?” Thousands spoke to George over the years. Shakespeare & Co remains, run by his daughter, Sylvia.

HAVE A HOLLY JOLLY WHATEVER

For the generous of heart and wallet, no holiday stirs the soul like Christmas. Why? Advertising. From television and print to the giant junkyard of the internet, ads shuck off their regular somber colors and get bouncy in red and gold and green. Ever heard of Santa dressed in dour tweed? I thought not. To commemorate the holiday season and wrench the last dollars from your pocket, purchase several copies of THE DOG WALKED DOWN THE STREET: AN OUTSPOKEN GUIDE FOR WRITERS WHO WANT TO PUBLISH (Cypress House, $13.95). These make great gifts, even stocking stuffers if the socks are big enough, and will provide chuckles and insight throughout the years to come. Run to www.indiebound.com for the nearest independent bookstore that sells this award-winning, gosh-almighty book.


NEXT: Scratching and Napping

TAKING CHARGE OF COLOR: The Beauty of the Leash


(NOTE: Well Delilah was a woman fine and fair / She had good looks and coal black hair / Delilah, she came to Samson’s mind / The first he saw this woman that looked so fine / Delilah, she set down on Samson’s knee / Said tell me where your strength lies if you please / She spoke so kind, she talked so fair / ‘Till Samson said “Delilah, you can cut off my hair / You can shave my head, clean as my hand / And my strength ‘come as natural as any a man” / If I had my way / If I had my way in this wicked world / If I had my way / I would tear this old building down)


A story is more than a collection of sentences arranged on the page. It must include the reader, make them experience what goes on between the characters, or when using first person, be the character. How this is done is by choosing the right word or phrase; piling on adjectives is as useless as buying dance shoes for a mollusk. A snail remains a snail regardless of how much encouragement it is given.

What is the punch and bounce that makes writing lively? This is called color. Editors and writing teachers ask for more color with comments in margins of manuscripts, and mean more description. A wall can be a white wall, a brown wall, a broken plaster wall, or glass brick wall. Other comments will follow if the specifics of the wall miss reflecting the scene, characters, and action.

METAPHORICALLY SPEAKING

The Crayola box is far from empty. Sitting in front with a sharp point is your friend the metaphor. These can be dismal, like John Bunyan’s “the slough of despond,” and also slip into the cheery, “happy as a clam.” (This has nothing to do with the mollusk mentioned above; clams are bivalves and very tasty when steamed with garlic and white wine. Besides, the phrase, “as useless as,” makes this an analogy instead of a metaphor. ) Metaphors can make the abstract more concrete, as in “Bernice tumbled off the mountain of Ira’s indifference.” To only say he was indifferent makes the interrelation of the characters abstract. Using a metaphor makes the emotional state concrete, gives a sense of striving to overcome this obstacle, and shows the wreckage caused by pursuing this haughty twit.

One metaphor in one paragraph is enough. When the following paragraph has a sentence like, “The cold war between Bernice and Ira soon escalated into mutually assured destruction,” this obscures the relationship between the two and the story dissolves into a collection of nifty lines with other stuff in between that is forgotten. Using strong metaphors calls for a surgeon’s touch, placing them right where they need to be, and when.

Think of the metaphor as an active analogy where you take out the boring “as” and make the thing real. Since metaphors are figures of speech there are divisions to make it easier on academics and those without a stable relationship. Allegory is an extended metaphor that illuminates an important part of the subject. Catachresis is a mixed metaphor used on purpose. The parable is an extended metaphor that comes off as an anecdote and teaches a moral lesson for those who need the lesson or a slathering of unfamiliar morality.

WILLIAMS TO THE RESCUE

No mention of metaphors is complete without a tip of the hat and nod and wink to poet and raconteur Jonathan Williams. He created the four words per line form in the mid-1980s and below is an excerpt from his “Poem Beginning with Five Words by Gerard Manley Hopkins.” We miss you, Jonathan. Think of what you could do with Michelle Bachmann.

beauty’s what bites you
on the butt and
don't leave a hickey
on monday morning we
must be kind to
jesse helms you must
brake for senior republican
senators from north carolina


STOCK UP IN ADVANCE FOR THE NEXT NATURAL DISASTER

During uncertain economic times, the best and most inexpensive companion is a book. No restaurant reservations, no taxi fares, and no regrets. Better than a book is a book about books, especially publishing them. Jump and run to the nearest independent bookstore for one copy, or several, of THE DOG WALKED DOWN THE STREET: AN OUTSPOKEN GUIDE FOR WRITERS WHO WANT TO PUBLISH (Cypress House, $13.95). Inside are thrills and chills without the unsightly parade of zombies, vampires, and Republicans. Online readers can click over to www.indiebound.com for books when and how they want.


NEXT: De-worming Makes New Friends

GET EDITED AND AVOID THE RUSH: Fashionable Outerwear for Pit Bulls

(NOTE: Oh Mr. Noah /
Oh Mr. Noah / May I take a ride
/ In the Ark of the Lord / ‘Cause it’s gettin’ mighty dark /
Gonna rain mighty hard /
Doodly do
/ Doodly do
/ Doodly doodly doodly
/ Doodly doodly do. / Oh no, you can’t sir
 / Oh no, you can’t sir /
You may not ride
 / In the Ark of the Lord
/ ‘Tho it’s gettin’ mighty dark
/ Gonna rain mighty hard /
Doodly do
/ Doodly do
/ Doodly doodly doodly
/ Doodly doodly do / Well, go to the devil sir
/ Well, go to the devil sir
 / You can go to the devil /
In your durned old scow /
’Cause you know darn well /
It won’t rain anyhow
/
Doodly do…)

Every trade and craft takes a hit when a recession goes on and on, regardless of any positive prognostication. Publishing is no different. The chain stores that touted their acres of aisles as the future of bookselling are now closing doors and moving to Detroit, but not before rewarding their execs with big bonuses for failure. Small publishers fold and independent publishers are eaten by the big ones or gobbled up by private equity firms. What about the book itself? Readers still care about books, even as their value declines according to formulas dreamed up by the MBAs that fudged their final exams and now run e-commerce.

A skip and hop through the comments about new books on Amazon.com shows that editors are still needed, and right now. Complaints about spelling, mangled syntax, passive sentence construction, and general confusion are spread between nonfiction and fiction books. Nice covers mean nothing when the writing begs for a little tightening or an argument flops from missing that last set of eyes on the manuscript before it went to press.

What the hands-on editor brings to a book cannot be quantified as contributing to its success or failure, only that the cost of editing dips into profits that should go directly to inflated executive salaries. Little is left over for the fussy, demanding, green eyeshade-wearing, and actual working editor. He or she can often be found slumped over in exhaustion from explaining what they do. An editor brings shape and form to a manuscript, keeps the writer honest, and is the first reader in what is hoped to be a long line of readers. An editor is as important part in making a book as a printer.

Like other aspects that used to be the publisher’s responsibility (marketing and publicity anyone?), the decision to have a manuscript edited is left to the writer. A publisher agrees to pay for the printing and not much else. Warehousing maybe, but check your contract. Editors within publishing houses are kept busy negotiating contracts, filling out spreadsheets, and sitting in meeting after meeting after meeting, and rarely have time left over for basic hygiene. Agents try to take on some of the workload, but a look at their web sites shows that agents want complete, ready-to-sell manuscripts. Anything less means a short trip to the recycling bin.

Here comes the freelance editor to rescue the writer. These men and women of the blue pencil are terrific folk who never quit, on account of it’s the only word they can’t spell properly without referring to a dictionary. Quiet or quiz? One of those. No matter how many books a writer reads about being your own editor, hiring a freelancer is best. They dig into a story’s pacing, point of view, character development, and whether the argument holds water better than a vestal virgin’s sieve. The freelance editor also keeps a writer’s vague classical illusions to a minimum.

The freelance editor believes in the importance of the book. In THE IMMORTAL PROFESSION: THE JOYS OF TEACHING AND LEARNING, Gilbert Highet says, “Those are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but MINDS alive on the shelves. From each of them goes out its own voice, as inaudible as the streams of sound conveyed by electrical waves beyond the range of our hearing; and just as the touch of a button on our stereo will fill the room with music, so by opening one of these volumes, one can call into range a voice far distant in time and space, and hear it speaking, mind to mind, heart to heart.”

After a long day of consulting dictionaries and THE CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE, and going back through to see if they missed something, the freelance editor gets a good night’s rest by reciting past participles in alphabetical order: arisen, borne, beaten, begun, bent, bet, bitten, bled, blown, broken, brought, built, burst, bought, caught, chosen, come, cost, crept, and on into the night. Only the lame will settle for counting sheep.


THE BLANKET THAT HAS SLEEVES

Instead of spending your hard-earned green on a dumb Snuggie, every faithful reader and writer should buy THE DOG WALKED DOWN THE STREET: AN OUTSPOKEN GUIDE FOR WRITERS WHO WANT TO PUBLISH (Cypress House, $13.95). Oh heck, you say, why should I walk down to my favorite independent bookstore and demand a copy of this swell book? On account of you care, dear sweet reader. You can also care by logging on to www.indiebound.com. Every copy is printed on paper, using ink and bound into a real classy cover. Do it.


NEXT: The Beauty of the Leash

THE NEED FOR FICTION: Water Dog on Dry Land

(NOTE: Inspiration is everywhere for the astute writer. Newspapers and news feeds, snatched bits of random conversations, Top Ramen instructions, weather forecasts, out of print tales of derring-do, buttons from San Francisco’s Beat Museum, road maps, bobble heads, blurred photographs of dead relatives, bookmarks, and newt mating rituals provide the enterprising writer with the starting blocks and information to crank out a really nifty novel, or at least a swell short story. A writer works all day, every day, in search of his or her next great idea.)


“What’s the fuss about fiction? That stuff is only make-believe,” said a guest during the holiday season. Instead of a dead tree, sprigs of holly, and hanging mistletoe, the apartment was crowded with books on shelves and stacked in the hallways waiting for more shelves. (The guest was not Mr. Detroit, who turns fifty this month, and will miss the gala celebrations being held in his honor due to previous commitments in Rio de Janeiro with a swimsuit model who cannot be named due to contractual agreements with L’Oreal and Mr. Bubble.)

Like the blue moon or an eclipse of the sun, stupidity makes a brief visit. “Stupid” by itself is an adjective and means a lack of basic intelligence. Slap on a suffix and “stupid” becomes “stupidity,” a noun. Both poke their heads out of the French language around the middle of the sixteenth century, from the Latin “stupere,” to be amazed or stunned. Though “stupid” and “stupidity” have a fine beginning, neither is worth the trouble to look up the etymology. Stupid is as stupid does. Got me?

Fiction has a purpose beyond what is written in the flap copy. With the novel, the reader can experience different times and people and cultures that nonfiction, even creative nonfiction, can only report. That fiction is make-believe is preposterous when writers labor over injecting the real into his or her stories. Fiction comes from real people with real conflicts, the dull parts deleted so that these elements are shown in relief.

Reading any book is a complex operation. Words enter the eye by the pupil, and the cornea and lens focus the rays on the retina at the back of the eye. The rods and cones of the retina translate the words to electric signals, sending them to the left occipital lobe. Individual neurons seek patterns and we react in light of what we have read before. What happens next when reading fiction is dangerous: empathy.

Anyone who cares about Africa beyond sending money to Bono should read Chinua Achebe’s THINGS FALL APART. THE GOLDEN NOTEBOOK by Doris Lessing slaps the remaining sexism out of the most pointed of heads. The novels of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Gardner, Djuna Barnes, Umberto Eco, Jorge Amado, Jonathan Lethem, Jane Smiley, Joyce Carol Oates, John Fowles, and Iris Murdoch show us at our best and worst. These writers encourage readers to join the big messy world. They are (in some cases, were, on account of they are dead) committed to inclusion, not isolation. Reading fiction makes us more human and vote for Republicans less often, and there is nothing make-believe about that.

GOING BACK TO SAN JOSE, THIS TIME FOR REAL

The Barnes & Noble bookstore at the Eastridge Mall in San Jose sponsors a writing group and this coming Tuesday, January 18, I’ll be appearing as part of their Writers on Writing series. The shindig starts at 7:00 PM and promises to be the event of the season. Expect tirades, excellent hygiene, gossip, thrills, and lots of talk about telling stories. Signed copies of THE DOG will be available for purchase, each one a bargain. Paul Weller’s musical question, “I’ve got a pen in my pocket/Does that make me a writer?” will be answered.

WRITERS ON WRITING
7:00 PM, Tuesday, January 18
Barnes & Noble
Eastridge Mall
2200 Eastridge Loop, Space 1420
San Jose, CA 95122
(408) 270-9470


NEXT: Fashionable Outerwear for Pit Bulls

MEA MAXIMA CULPA OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT: Bones for the Boneless

(NOTE: A writer apologizes many times through the course of his or her career for mistakes being caught by watchful readers and personal gaffes made in public. Humility is important when making the apology, except when blame can be assigned. This situation allows the application of slander and libel to avoid responsibility. When in the silly position of having to make an apology, remember that somewhere else someone is getting away with what you got caught doing. Take comfort in knowing that the next time your vile behavior may go unnoticed, or even be accepted.)


After private screeds and foul-tempered blog entries that called down the Furies to attack the digital greed-heads, THE DOG WALKED DOWN THE STREET is now available in a Kindle edition. What happened, why this change in attitude? Simple. I didn’t read the contract.

When Cynthia Frank, the publisher of Cypress House (hereafter known as the “Publisher”), and I went through contract details during a dinner at Pane e Vino, most of my concerns were about having the book set in Bembo. This is a fine classic typeface, revived by Monotype in the early twentieth century, and never looks weak, weary, or dull. THE DOG must have a bookish look, I said, since it is about the making of books. Other parts of the contract were glossed over on account of I could not see making a fuss over film rights (still open to anyone willing to make the investment) or audio or translation or any other minutia that crowd into standard boilerplate contracts. The publisher trusted me to deliver the manuscript on time and I trusted her to produce a well-designed book, but we were not dumb enough to enter into a partnership without a contract. Even the most solid of friendships has limits.

Imagine my horror at finding out THE DOG was in the process of being converted to a Kindle edition. What is a book, especially my book, without type and paper and cover? Nothing more than a bunch of text floundering in search of a form. Respite from the digital world is necessary for any attempt at writing, whether another cookbook or free-ranging novel of insights and goofy dreams, and THE DOG was meant to have its spine broken and be stuck on a writer’s desk right next to Merriam Webster’s Medical Desk Dictionary, last used to look up the correct spelling for “anaphylactic.” With a fire-hose blast of abuse at the ready, I was drawn back to the contract. In twelve-point type under “Secondary Rights” glared my defeat:

The rights granted to Publisher, and Publisher’s licenses, under this Agreement include (in addition to all other rights described herein) the right to prepare, publish, use, adapt reproduce sell and otherwise distribute electronic versions of the Work.

Darn. She had me. The section went on to list “any and all physical media now known of or hereafter devised including, without limitation, magnetic tape, floppy disks, CD-ROM, DVD, game cartridges, laser disk, optical disk, IC card or chip, eBook, sound recordings, programs for machine teachings, ephemeral screen flashings or reproductions thereof, Internet downloadable books, PDF, Adobe Reader, Microsoft Reader, SoftBook, and any other human or machine-readable medium….” Slap me twice and call me silly. A little bit of attention in the right direction would have saved me from this embarrassment.

Now I have to give the proper support to my publisher and book by touting this new edition. For those who enjoyed the physical book comes the latest leap in digital thrills: THE DOG WALKED DOWN THE STREET: AN OUTSPOKEN GUIDE FOR WRITERS WHO WANT PUBLISH (Cypress House, $13.95) is available in a Kindle version for the low sum of $9.99. No more lost Post-It notes or water stains and every page is a clean page for your perusal and delight. A backlit DOG is yours for the asking at www.amazon.com. Buy early and buy often. Batteries not included.

(On a budgetary note, Amazon does not give free copies to publishers or writers of any Kindle edition. This is kind of cheap and shows a lack of interest in developing goodwill. Not like I’d read THE DOG in any form but paper.)


NEXT: Water dog on dry land