Cutting Board

A story has caught hold. The plot is still unformed and the idea is in pieces, more a collection of impressions that I’ve laid out on paper like a cook assembling ingredients on the cutting board.

Here are a few of them:

• The short story “Stab” by Chris Adrian, told from the perspective of a boy stricken mute by the death of his conjoined twin brother. The boy is befriended by a strange orphan named Molly, who is killing her way up the food chain: rabbit, cat, dog, horse . . . human. Juxtaposed against the savagery is a lovely scene in which Molly catches dozens of fireflies in a glass jar and releases them behind her as she runs down a dark hillside. The beauty and evil in Molly are fascinating.
• Cape Fear. The movie is fantastic all the way through, but it’s the chilling eroticism between De Niro and Juliette Lewis that I find most compelling. She knows he’s dangerous, but he slides through her apprehension with the blade of his male charisma, dangling the mystery of sexual emancipation before her nose like a hypnotist with a gleaming gold watch. When he walks away, we see her awaken and the fear reassert itself. Lewis stole that scene, by the way–from De Niro. Not an easy feat.
• The Town, starring Ben Affleck (I know, but he’s terrific in this movie). I like the gang of thieves, and the relationship that develops between the architect of the ring and the girl they took as hostage during a bank robbery. Many things about the plot don’t work for me–I’m not sold on the shoot-’em-up thriller–but I love a bad boy. Maybe instead of the thief’s redemption through the healing power of love, this guy could be responsible for a good girl’s fall from grace. Which is usually the way it happens, in my experience.
• A ghost town (originally built around a copper mine) called Jerome, between Prescott and Sedona, Arizona. The town is thriving, in its way, home to a ragged population of artists and shopkeepers, and heavily photographed. But the town itself is slowly sliding down the mountainside. Many of the buildings are propped up on stilts, swaybacked and broken, and every now and then they lose one over the edge. I love the metaphor of a town hanging by its fingernails, and imagine it fictionalized with an odd assortment of characters, everyone trying to hold on.
• Daniel Tammet, one of the few prodigious savants known to science who can describe the synesthetic experience of making complex calculations in his head. He holds the record for reciting over 22,000 digits of π, flawlessly, in five hours, and learned to speak Icelandic in one week for a live television appearance. Wouldn’t a person like this be valuable, in a Rainman sort of way? Worth abducting, especially in the days before computers. Worth a gender swap, for the sake of a story.

I think I’ve got enough here to work with. It’s time to start cooking.

What’s on your cutting board?

There are photos on the cutting board, too.

Jonesing

It’s 5:17 pm. I’m back home, blogging in bed as usual. The children survived our absence in good shape; we came home to a spotless house and three innocent faces, along with most of the money we’d left with my 19-year-old for emergencies. These kids are the bomb-diggity, I’m telling you. Either that or they’re presenting a united front against the parental units. Which is not the worst thing in the world, actually.

Photograph by Hedi Slimane

As for me, I feel a bit adrift at the moment. I sent the final draft of my manuscript off to my agent before we left for Portland, and presumably he’s shopping it around, trying to find it a home. So all that is good, but after months of daily writing, I’m jonesing for something to work on. All week I’ve been trolling through old pulp fiction, obscure French films, top-10, -25, -50 lists of psychological thrillers and film noir–anything that will light me up and get this party started. This morning I watched Cape Fear; last night I went to bed with Elmore Leonard. Later it will be a Hitchcock double feature: Rear Window and Vertigo, and if that doesn’t work I’ve got another De Niro film cracking its knuckles on my hard drive.

Surely in all these stories there’s something for me. Two or three movies I can twist together with a modern cast of characters, a gender swap to freshen up a tired old trope, maybe a way to get inside a classic by choosing a different point of view and following the characters into the bedroom. There must be something. But for now I’m lost, and starting to get that full-body tremor of the junkie without her fix.

I’m in the dark country.

How nervous do you get between projects?

Home

We did it! We found a house and passed the background check (thank god they’re looking at credit worthiness and not moral rectitude), and we’re signing on the dotted line tomorrow morning. The house sits on a cul-de-sac across from a neighborhood park and a small lake with a walking path all the way around. It’s cobalt blue and has a nice backyard on a triangular lot, with a big wooden deck and plenty of space for my herb garden. We couldn’t afford that writing room I dreamed of–the one with a door–but I can put an armchair next to the kitchen fireplace and relocate the TV to the other side of the downstairs living space. I think we’ll all be cozy and comfortable and safe. What more could we possibly want?

Having put the house hunt behind us, Drew and I drove to the coast and spent the day beach-hopping. It was a gorgeous afternoon, so while he was digging up agates, I set off with my camera into the forest. There are so many things to see and photograph, unfurling fronds and raggedy pines, and flowers like a little girl’s earrings, hanging at hip level along the path. I wandered over a footbridge, up a long trail with my sneakers silent on the loamy soil and the air clean and still, and I stopped for a minute to look around. A squirrel hopped by, gave me an amiable tail-flick, and scampered up a tree to get a better look at me. The birds began a call-and-answer overhead.

I didn’t cry for happiness or hug myself or do that little joyful float-down like Snuffles the dog after a biscuit; I just stood there alone on a path in the woods, filled with sea-scented breath, and thought:

I am home.

Pockets

It’s Monday morning. I’m sitting by the window of our hotel room, looking over the rain-slick parking lot at a train passing by across the street. I’ve got my hotel coffee. A map. Our notes from yesterday about all the homes we saw.

Dinner at Suzy’s house was lovely. She made this amazing Indian stew (oh please, Suzy, the recipe; Drew can’t stop talking about it) and showed us around. Her home is backed up to a park, studded with pine trees and laced with tiny white flowers over a carpet of soft grass. What a place. We sat outside and ate and talked about books and writers and Portland, and the evening flew by. I hope she’ll come for dinner at our place the next time we get together.

And the hunt for ‘our place’ is on. We spent yesterday in the car, working our way from Cornelius inward to Hillsboro, Beaverton, Bethany, Tigard, and several points between. My favorite house was, of course, the untenable one. Four bedrooms, brand new, perched at the top of a winding road, surrounded by orchards and a postcard view. It’s no place for a ten-year-old, but I made Drew promise we’d live out there in Bumfuck once the nest empties out.

Of the towns, I loved Tigard best so far (which is like saying I like the caramels best of a box of chocolates). We saw some wonderful houses in hilly old neighborhoods with thick trees and pockets of forest, the lawns so neat, every flowerbed an orgy of color. No one was answering the phone yesterday, but hopefully we can get inside some houses today and see if we can find one that feels like home.

What’s the best part of your town?

Fly

Portland, here we come!

Gimmick

During this last rewrite, it occurred to me that I’ve been seeing the name of my protagonist–Lexi–all over the place. This same thing happened to me with each of my kids, but of course with an actual person you are committed to your original choice, what with the birth certificate and embossed baby book and all. However, a fictional character is different. Prior to publication, the character’s name can be changed (and the book title too, as I am discovering) and no one’s the wiser.

Also, in choosing the name Lexi I had neglected to work the name angle. There should be an element of manipulation involved in naming a character, in that as a writer you are constantly trying to bend the reader’s experience to your will–and any gimmick is fair game. I’m not above subliminal trickery (and Joe has a terrific post up to illustrate some cases of authorial conniving), though I have to say, I prefer a fairly straightforward name. It should indicate an ethnicity, a place and generation, and perhaps a twist of personality that might not be clear until you get further into the story and understand who you’re dealing with.

I’m not going to tell you who Lexi Martin has become. Let’s just say her new name is darker, a little more witchy, and a lot more her. 

Have you made a last minute name change to any of your characters? What made you do it?

Photograph by Hedi Slimane

Mercy

Another day, another deadline. Another check mark on my list. I don’t wanna talk about that last revision except to say that it’s done.

This Saturday Drew and I are heading up to Portland for a week. If all goes well, we’ll be putting down a deposit on some new digs. AND, we’ve been invited to dinner with Suzy! My second real-life writer friend! I’m so excited to meet her. She’s lived in Portland for years and has raised three kids there, so I know she’ll point us in the right direction and help find our little guy a good school.

We have a wish list of features for the new house. I know we won’t be able to afford all of them, but what feels crucial to me at this point is a writing space of my own. A spare bedroom, a chicken coop, a closet under the stairs . . . anything would be better than what I’m dealing with over here. This is the third book I’ve written in bed and my back is screaming for mercy. I’m desperate for a desk, in a room that does not also house the TV. (Also, if the TV falls off the back of the moving van, your friend Averil will be whistling and making shifty eyes.)

It might be a good idea to think this through. And since I’ve never had a dedicated writing space, I’d love some ideas about what’s workable and what I should avoid.

What’s your dream writing space and how does your current one measure up?

Flat

I spent the afternoon staring at my manuscript. Also surfing YouTube, visiting blogs, reading, napping. I’m ashamed of myself, but since I got home it feels as though my creative tank has been sitting on empty. I’m trying to fill it up and return to my work, but I’ve got nothing. And I’m so close. All the new material is written, it only needs to be edited, that’s a simple thing to do . . . And I cannot make myself do it.

What the hell. I want to finish, need to finish. My deadline is the 15th and I fucking will finish but why does it have to be so awful at the end? Every goddamn time. It’s like driving on a flat tire to the gas station, listening to the sound of the rim screeching on the blacktop, thinking, One more mile. The car may be destroyed when I pull in, but if I can just make it another mile I’ll have help. I can’t stop now, not alone out here in the desert, I have to keep driving, no matter that the rubber’s flapping and my fender’s coming apart, I’ll worry about that later but I have to get off the highway, and is that the exit sign in the distance, oh please say it is . . .

How do you keep driving on an empty tire?

(Guys, if you tell me to pull over and fix the flat I swear I’ll take a tire iron to you. Do not fuck with my analogy. Consider yourselves warned.)

Steam

I’m home tonight. It’s cool outside and breezy, and the jasmine by our front door is blooming, fragrant, creeping past the confines of the flowerbed and edging in tangled strands over the sidewalk. My daughter smells like pears when I hug her, my oldest like aftershave, my little guy like wet chicken feathers. I shoo him into the tub and catch him later, streaking across the hall with water streaming down the channel of his back, naked and only a little embarrassed to be caught in that state by his mother. He puts a hand down to cover himself when I hoot and pinch his bottom. He grins at me with teeth too big for his face.

I cut up a couple of peppers and onion and tofu, steam some rice, doctor a jar of Thai curry sauce and find a few wilted but usable leaves of basil. I sip a glass of wine and kiss my husband, smile when he whispers in my ear about what he’s going to do to me later when the kids are in bed. He strokes my ass, nibbles at the nape of my neck, grumbles something about how he doesn’t want to wait, how we could slip away while the curry’s simmering. . . .

That’s my boy.

It’s my turn for a bath and the tub is full, overflowing with honey-scented bubbles. I have to go now. I have promises to keep.

What does home smell like?

View

It’s the final night of my writing retreat. The room has become familiar, and the view of the dense pine hillside across the valley, where an A-line cabin gleams every evening at sunset with blinding intensity, a fierce cross of golden light with striated edges tapering on the ends like the tip of a knife. The acoustics are strange; I pass the time making guesses about which direction an approaching car will be taking when it moves through my field of view on the street below.

The girls down at the cafe see my notebook and ask what I’m working on. One of them lights up when I tell her I’m a writer. So am I, she says, and after that she circles my table quietly and keeps my coffee cup filled.

This is not like some of the other retreats I’ve taken. Drew planned it, for one thing, and when I spoke with him the other night he apologized for describing the many ways in which my previous coworkers have thrown me under the bus since I left: I shouldn’t have told you, you don’t need all that negative shit right now. Get back to work. My mom left a message, but didn’t ask me to return her call: You’re working, don’t worry about it.

Strange how things have changed. My successful agent hunt has brought me more than a partner on the business end of writing, more than an ally in helping me produce my best work. The revisions, the focus and intensity make me feel professional about my writing, as though I’m here on a business trip. I sense a new-found respect from my husband, who has been reading the articles on publishing I send him, who is interested in the conversations I’ve had with my agent regarding further plot development and possible avenues to publication. The odds I’ve just beaten are becoming clear to all of us, and as we near the point where my book will sell or will not (oh please, Mr. Kleinman), the people around me seem to be hovering, waiting to see what will become of all this work.

But I’ve gone away again, back into the story. The words and ideas, the plot, the characters . . . all are as they have been. They’re still mine, they’ve been waiting for me. I wrote a long new scene today and thought, yes indeed, there is more to be discovered here.

Tomorrow I’ll be home again.

What do you know about your work?

Girl in the Hat Says . . .

. . . Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by the Horns of Her Own Chastity is a portrait of a good girl and a projection of what some would like to do to her.  In 1958, Dalí wrote, “Paradoxically, this painting, which has an erotic appearance, is the most chaste of all.”  For the moment she is untouched, but her chastity is a wild bull charging headfirst, prime for the gore.  As observers, we are encouraged to enjoy the spectacle because she did it to herself—Dali’s title tells us so, insists that her adversary is merely her own manifest desire.  So, in rooting for the bull, we applaud her fulfillment.  (“She asked for it.”)  Her imminent rape will be self-induced, autonomous, and immaculate (never mind the artist who paints it or the bystanders who look). 

If the painting had included the image of a man standing behind her with his beret cocked to one side, nicotine-stained fingers, a curling moustache, and buggy eyes, then it wouldn’t be okay anymore, that would be just be wrong.  But she’s alone, all alone.  And look—she’s still a virgin. What happens next is all in your own (dirty) mind.  And it’s not real, anyway; it’s fantastic.  Dreamers are allowed to do all sorts of things they wouldn’t do in real life.

I suppose for many onlookers, the excitement and tension of this spectacle hinges on the girl’s naiveté.  If she knows what’s coming, it won’t be quite so fun. Her lack of knowledge and control is so exciting it’s like watching a child pick up a jack-in-the-box and turn the crank for the first time.  What will she do when the clown explodes from the box?  Will she squeal with excitement or will she burst into tears?  It doesn’t matter; either way will be gratifying for some.  So in order to fully appreciate this painting, one must possess a modicum of experience, one must be slightly jaded, because it was painted for those who have turned that crank before, who know what’s going to happen and have tired of the game.  For them, her innocence revitalizes the thrill and vicarious surprise. . . .

Read the rest of Anna’s post here.

Kinks

Day three of my writing retreat. I just finished a long and intense new scene and don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Part of me is reveling in the successful uncovering of an additional psychological kink of which I was previously unaware–and the point of this revision is to expand the story, so a brand-new chapter is a victory of sorts. But the isolation of this hotel room is forcing me to spend every waking moment in the company of two truly fucked-up characters who, by the final third of the book where I’ve chosen to focus my work, are in almost constant pain.

It’s exhausting to deal with them so intensely. I can only manage a few pages at a time, then I have to walk away, creep back, throw down a paragraph, retreat, and so forth. The process is painful and discouraging at times. After all, isn’t this my darkness too? What does it say about me, that I’m capable of thinking this way. How can I write this kind of cruelty and inflict it on other people?

* * *

I listened to a podcast last night. In it, an agent expresses the belief that writers are necessarily vain and self-absorbed, but also riddled with insecurities. I think he’s right.

A writer needs a wide assortment of flaws to get the job done.

* * *

During my breaks from these two desperate characters, I’ve been looking at photographs. Just random bits of inspiration, small windows into the darkness. I’m obsessed with Aneta Bartos.

Cheerful, yes?

Comments are off for this one. You know how I love to chat. . .