|
The Maplewoods Mirror #16 (July
2007)
Welcome to my monthly newsletter on life and
writing. If you want to see my website for back issues and other
news, please visit www.chrismeeks.com.
In This Issue:
July is over. It's been a fast month. I finished my
latest draft of my novel, Falling Down Mt. Washington, and sent it
onto my agent in New York. I've been traveling a lot this month with
my family, specifically to Catalina Island and Lake Tahoe. The former
inspired me to write fiction, very short, which I'm starting with
below. Next month, we're traveling to Utah, Montana, and
Minnesota. For this issue, I give you some fiction, news, and writing
advice--or at least a writing challenge that I have and others certainly
do.
Catalina
My cousin Elisabeth, who lives in Denver and teaches fifth grade,
had recently turned forty. She’s an amazing life force, a person who
keeps her students eager for each new day in class. She loves to
travel, so my wife Ann and I thought we’d take her someplace unique, a
place to remember, and we did. We went to Catalina.
I could write reams about why the place is special, but rather
than do that, I will give you below two ultra short stories, “flash
fiction.” It’s an unusual form in that there’s not a lot of space for
exposition or even explanation. You only get a taste of character and
story, yet, if it’s done well, there is much subtext.
My goal was to create two characters with two deeply different
and extreme mindsets, and push them to Catalina. What might happen to
them? How does the setting reflect them? What might each of
their journeys be? Even perhaps, what might the space between their
stories be?
Alligators and icebergs are mostly under the water, but what’s
above reveals a lot. Same with these stories. My hope is they
grab your attention. Try these:
One
Years ago, a friend had told Daunus that Catalina Island, twenty-six miles across
the ocean from the port of Long Beach, was like a persimmon, unexpected
fruit on a naked tree. Another friend had said, “Catalina could be
Italy.” A third commented, “It’s a place where you can breathe.” It
was the last idea that put him now on a boat. While he didn’t know
why breathing someplace else at the same elevation might matter, he hoped
he’d find out. He needed to breathe.
The Catalina Express boat, once out of the port, pushed its engines to full
and stabbed into the mist that hung over the dark water. In the hour
ride, Daunus sat at the back, looking rearward into the gray wake.
His chest felt constricted. Breathing was hard. He’d given this
country, this city, god damn it, everything after he’d immigrated—including
a shop that was open from seven in the morning until eleven at night.
He’d supported Mr. George W. Bush—even Iraq. What did such devotion
do for him? The churned water faded into the horizonless
backdrop. Fuck America.
Entering Avalon, the only city on Catalina, the boat moved like a dark eel
into the cave-like bay, past the casings of million-dollar yachts and a
tarped black speedboat, all at anchor.
Daunus stood and turned his attention to the shoreline, a narrow dead beach
that fronted a line of restaurants and shops with awnings. Because it
was midweek in November, the high season had passed, and so there were no
eager shoppers or young couples strolling the boulevard as summer days had
probably promised. The happy time was over.
Daunus shuffled off the boat with the crowd, doing his best not to
hyperventilate, feeling like an old car shaking apart. Nothing here
was helping him breathe any easier. One step then another, he told
himself. Follow the group. He moved with everyone toward
the town center, passing a shaded grassy area. He came upon bricks
arranged in a square. Names and dates were on the bricks and when he
caught the word “veterans,” he became dizzy and his breathing became
shorter, shallower. He pictured his son in uniform, proud and
innocent, muscles like a thoroughbred. Daunus grabbed a nearby
rail. Was he going to pass out here? Maybe passing out would
help.
He thought he heard a bird above him, a caw. He paused,
raised his head. High above the town, the scrubby hills stood naked,
even burned in some places. The yearly autumn Santa Ana winds, he’d
read, had sucked all the moisture from every tendril on the rocky soil, and
a careless spark from a construction worker had set off a firestorm.
Hundreds of fire fighters and dozens of fire trucks hovercrafted from the
mainland had saved the town, but the hillsides remained scarred.
Even so, he saw in them a beauty. The sight of these
hills made him stand taller. Air now filled Daunus’s lungs
easily. Daunus stepped forward more surely. He knew where he
wanted to walk, high into the heavenly white ash.
Two
Helen had no reason to go except John would be all day at the
conference, and the travel guide said Catalina was a fun day trip. She’d
been very nervous, wary even, about the boat part and had sat in her seat
waiting for something, the “it,” the “this is fun” part. When she
heard a female voice gasp, “Wow. This is it,” she looked out her
window. The guidebook had not mentioned how Catalina climbed straight
out of the ocean like two female shoulders rising from a bath. It was
as if the entire land mass had to touch the God light breaking from the
clouds above it.
Helen ran from her seat to the rear exit and out to open
deck just so she could see the long cliff walls more fully. Outside,
two white wakes formed behind the boat, creating a V, and the boat skimmed
over the two-foot swells, slapping water. Storks—or were they
seagulls?—glided behind their boat as if they, too, had to get there and at
last someone was showing them the way.
Helen stepped near a young woman who also stared at the sight of the
island. The wind whipped the girl’s short blond mane so that handfuls
of hair often covered part of her face but not the beatific smile.
“Hey,” the girl said. “Cool, eh?”
Helen nodded. Were they the only two who could see? “I
want to come here every year,” said Helen.
Would John get this? He probably would if he had his golf
clubs. He only really stared at something if he was going to whack a
ball into it. That’s alright. He knew what made her happy.
As their boat slowed, they came upon what had to be Avalon. In
the womb of the bay, white sailboats and cruisers, with masts and antennas
erect, bobbed in neat rows at the bay’s buoys to greet them. One
cruiser held a gaggle of girls in bikinis, and in the warm sunlight, the
girls stepped toward the boat’s seaside ladder ready to embrace the maternal
tide.
Helen peered down into the clear turquoise water. Several
large orange fish swam aimlessly as in a tropical fish tank when a group of
small green fish, tails whipping, raced by as if in competition. The
shoreline beckoned: sand, a bricked pedestrian street with palm trees,
store windows fecund with fashions. Small, ballooning white clouds
dotted the now-blue sky, and the rugged hills above the town stood like
centurions, happy to protect the innocent.
Helen hurried back to her seat to get her overnight bag. An
older woman in the row in front of Helen shuffled something in her
hand. Helen froze, disoriented. The woman, bent, gray-haired,
seemed to be praying. Helen leaned forward to look. The woman held
small colored stones—probably sea glass. Helen’s mother used to
collect them—had a whole bowlful.
A tear dropped from Helen’s eye. She wiped her face,
unashamed, and knew her mother would have been happy for her. Helen
grabbed her book and elephant bag and moved toward the open air.
Coincidence—or
Something Else?
While casting “Who Lives?”, actor and director Stephen Furst offered
donated kidney
When I told my friend and fellow author, David Scott
Milton, the following story, he said that writers have an amazing
connection to metaphysics. I'll let you figure out what the following
is—coincidence, metaphysics, or something else. This week marks the
10th anniversary of the first production of my play, Who Lives?
It also marks the 30th anniversary of the film Animal House.
You'd think there'd be no relation, but there is.
In February, I spoke on a radio show called "Kidney
Talk" about the publication of Who Lives?, interviewed by two
interesting and funny hosts, Lori Hartwell and Stephen Furst. The
interview was more like a morning drive-time show, with much energy,
questions, and humor. I hadn't expected humor. Furst,
however, had played Flounder in "Animal House" as well as
Dr. Alexrod in "St. Elsewhere." He also had a major role in
"Babylon 5" and had become a film director and producer.
His own kidneys had gone out due to diabetes complications, and he was now
on dialysis himself, volunteering on this radio show.
Furst was so taken with the play, he mentioned to a group of
doctors in San Francisco that he'd like to direct it. That mention
led to his receiving a call from a large theatre in Cincinatti, the Aronoff
Center for the Arts, which was interested in producing the play with him
directing for a September production, using a name actor such as John
Lithgow. Of course I was elated. Furst flew to Cincinatti in
June to do some initial casting. While there, he mentioned to someone
that he'd been on dialysis two years already. The person want to
know more. Furst explained dialysis made life complex, and he
really needed a kidney transplant.
A few days after this offhand mention, Furst received a call.
An anonymous donor heard about his plight and wanted to donate a kidney to
him if they matched immunilogically. Now Furst was beyond
elation. Tests were done. They matched. In fact,
Furst should be receiving the kidney as I type this.
In short, because I wrote a play, someone's life was
changed. Of course, we writers hope that we can change lives
emotionally, but here's a case of a physical change. What do we call
this? Luck?
Because Furst needs time to recover, the play's production has
now been pushed back. The play will open at the Aronoff Center for
the Arts in Cincinatti in January. Those of you in the area, please
come. If you want a good read, the book is available at Amazon.com,
BN.com, and on the shelf at Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena (626-449-5320),
among other places.
Lake Tahoe
Last summer, Ann, Ellen and I had gone to Ireland because we’d
never been there, and we heard it was a unique experience. It
was. This summer with less money, we’ve stayed closer to home, going
to Catalina (above) and to Ann’s cousin’s wedding recently in Lake
Tahoe. We didn’t consciously intend to go to two such picturesque
places, but we did, and the beauty is still washing over me.
So is the effect of the wedding. Ann’s cousin, Mike
Doyle, the lone pediatrician of South Lake Tahoe, has four children.
His new wife, Madonna, originally from Australia and a nurse at the local
hospital, has two children. It’s the Brady Bunch come to life, but
what the television show didn’t capture is the modern challenge of two
adults building two careers, nurturing the children, and planning and
enjoying truly isolated “together” time for each other. Perhaps being
in Lake Tahoe helps. In the winter, Mike and Madonna have set aside
Thursday afternoon for each other, and they ski. The kids, ages eight
to fifteen, come home from school on Thursdays, start their homework, and
eat the lasagna that’s in the oven on a timer. They all ski together
as a family on Friday and Sunday afternoons, too. In the summer, they hike,
boat, or swim. It’s an active family.
Some people might think, “They only have Thursday afternoon
for each other?” Plenty of marriages don’t even have that, even when
there is time available.
I have no fiction that takes place in Lake Tahoe, but I do
have a few photos, below.
How to
Start a New Novel
I happen to be considering the next novel to write, and the process
of choosing what to write next is a mystical one. A few people I know
keep notebooks or files to store ideas on possible future novels. I
only keep a file on possible titles. One is “The Rules of Gum.”
My wife created inviolate rules for chewing gum for our daughter, given
when Ellen was four. They are:
1. Do not take chewed gum out of your mouth unless you are
done
2. Do not swallow gum
3. Do not put gum on furniture or the floor
4. Do not give gum to Lucy (the dog)
5. When you are done with gum, tell Mommy and she will put it in paper and
throw it away.
Ellen, now eight, told one of her cousins last week a rule she
made up for gum: “You can throw gum outside on the ground because wasps
will eat it.” I love that. There might be a novel with these
rules. Or maybe it’s a short story. We’ll see. I’m still
mulling around characters and a central problem.
With three novels under my belt (all in various stages of
approaching publication over the next three years), I’m too new at this to
say how to come up with ideas for novels. I heard somewhere that
one’s first novel is mostly autobiographical. My first, The
Brightest Moon of the Century, follows the travails of a young man in
search of the right woman, and it takes him from age 14 to 40 from an all
boys school in Minneapolis to college in Denver to a trailer park in
Alabama to marriage in Los Angeles. Those are the places I’ve lived,
not including Denmark—which was the subject of my next novel, The
Laughter and Sadness of Sex. That one’s less autobiographical,
though, because it centers on a physicist at the University of Wisconsin
who has just received tenure. Now, he figures, he can have a wife,
and he’s trying to find one using the Scientific Method. It doesn’t
work.
Having run out of autobiography, my latest novel, Falling
Down Mt. Washington, sprang from an odd idea I had at Starbucks, which
was in a bank lobby. I figured I was there so much correcting
papers that if there were a bank robbery, I’d be in it. That thought
had me move to a different Starbucks—and to the start of my novel, which
begins with a robbery, and my protagonist, a Ph.D. candidate in theatre, is
taken hostage.
With that book done, I now need another idea, something
worthy. What? I e-mailed my friend, former professor and
novelist, David Scott Milton, asking how he does it. He wrote back,
“Here is how I seem to work. Something happens in my life--an incident, a
character, an encounter--and I take note of it. If it really settles in, I
begin to seriously examine it. It's always something to do with how we
live, with our human condition. Where are we going? Why? I start to take
notes. It begins to take some primitive shape. That is, it begins to come
to life. It begins to inhabit my life.
"I usually have a half dozen of these zombies walking
around in my life, nagging at me, nibbling at me, trying to get my
attention. At some point, I have a stack of stuff on the particular story
or problem or idea and when I'm sufficiently excited I set aside some time
and start to write. I use a very loose outline--not even an outline, just
notes set in some sort of order. I might say something like, if I make this
book thirty chapters and I write a chapter a day, I could finish the thing
in a month! Of course it never works like that, but in these ways I trick
myself into getting started.”
David’s new website, www.dsmwriter.com,
features explanations on the genesis on two of his novels, Kaballah
and Paradise Road. I’m a huge fan of his books, and Kaballah
I remember as being an intense crime novel. To read that one, go
here: http://www.dsmwriter.com/kabpreface.html
My challenge: nothing has been inhabiting my life, or eating
at me, or settling in. That’s a problem. When I went to Google
and searched for “How to Start a Novel,” the sites that came up were about
what to do after you have your idea. But how do you get your
idea?
In a way, this problem isn’t unlike the Scientific Method
itself, which begins with a person observing and even experimenting, then
coming up with a hypothesis, which is then tested. Where does the
hypothesis come from? You can observe clouds all day, for instance,
and be stumped for a hypothesis. Clouds form, change shape,
darken, and you have no theory why. No hypothesis. If you’re in
the right frame of mind, however, you can come up with hundreds of
possibilities. For instance, they come from the Bush
administration, byproducts of cooking up reasons for why we got into
Iraq.
For short stories, I brainstorm—also called mind mapping—where
you put random ideas in bubbles on a page and draw lines for
connections. I tried that this time, but it didn’t come up with
something I truly want to write. Part of my problem, I can see, is
I’ve been putting too much importance on "the idea." I’m
hoping for a notion that’s so interesting, so fun, and so grand, I
can’t wait to write it. Then again, what’s wrong with that?
I can see I haven’t been alone in this. Charles Baxter,
in his brilliant novel The Feast of Love, begins with himself as a
character in the book. He’s a writer, stumped about what to write
about. He knows it’ll be about love, but what specifically? He
can’t sleep because of it, so he takes a walk into a moonlit fog. He
comes across Bradley, an acquaintance of twelve years who is also out
walking.
Charles tells Bradley his problem. Bradley says, “You
should call it The Feast of Love. I'm the expert on that. I should
write that book. Actually, I should be in that book. You should put
me into your novel. I'm an expert on love. I've just broken up with my
second wife, after all. I'm in an emotional tangle. Maybe I'd shoot myself
before the final chapter. Your readers would wonder about the
outcome.” And the book becomes exactly as Baxter suggested, jumping
between different people in love. It’s a magical experience, frankly.
I want something magical.
(To be continued in the next issue.)
See you next time,
--Chris
For reviews or more information on
either of my two books below, click on the cover.
|
