Falling Toward Oz

Just a quick note:

This week I became glad I hadn't decided I was more or less done preparing A Squire's History of Oz, because it occurred to me that I could add one more thing to it: "Falling Toward Oz."

Which, by the way, I haven't written yet, but that's hardly a problem!  "Falling Toward Oz" will be my version of Oz, which for a book celebrating Baum's Oz and the many versions that have followed, seemed about right for someone who thinks of himself first as a writer of fiction.

So that's hopefully something I'm going to write, or start writing, this week, and hopefully tackle some other stuff as well.

Rest Stop, A Squire's History of Oz, Best Cuban In Town...

I actually did end up writing "Rest Stop" last Monday, but as it turns out the contest closed submissions...several hours previous.  But it's okay.  The story ended up far shorter than I would think the contest would've liked.  It saves me the agony of waiting, and rejection.  Pat was confused about a few things.  (I reference Pat casually these days.  Hi, Pat!)  But it was basically exactly what I wanted it to be.  Maybe if I'd had more times, it could've been longer, better.  But I didn't even have a few of the ideas that went into it until that day, until after the apparent submission deadline had passed.  In the end, there could've been no different results for this one.

This week I continued working on A Squire's History of Oz.  Because they're in the public domain, I figured out I could actually include excerpts from Baum's books, and that was a breakthrough I typed into the manuscript with some satisfaction.  Last Saturday (not yesterday) I typed up a timeline (drove myself mad trying to remember a somewhat recent Eric Shanower comic, never did find it, thanks in part to a maddening remodel of ComicBookDB that I discovered was happening, in some ways worse than BoxOfficeMojo selling its soul to IMDb, but hopefully when it's back to functioning capacity it will be better), and just left out the bulk of Oz comics (because there have been many) and concerned myself with the many, many film, stage, TV, and book iterations (some of which will be very confusing, because a lot of them have the same title: Wizard of Oz).

And because I'm always brainstorming for that elusive idea that traditional publishers will actually want to publish, I flashed on Best Cuban In Town, which will join my lamentable large assortment of projects that need to be tackled.  This one has the virtue of drawing on Tampa, where I live, with a lot of elements I can practicably draw on, including stuff I'm really sure no other writer is approaching. 

Sort of drew inspiration, too, from the reminder that Hamlet is about thirty-three thousand words.  Granted, it's a play (and paradoxically Shakespeare's longest; I have no idea how many words the typical play encompasses; my mom was a rollerskating judge alongside a guy who ended up writing plays, but that's as close as I get, other than acting in school and writing the odd attempt).  But great things don't need bulk.  Maybe that'll help...

The Plot Thickens

In the last several days, the plots of two stories I'm tackling suddenly came together.

I was watching Ad Astra (a really good movie, by the way) when I realized what "Just a Regular Joe" actually looked like.  It came tumbling into view just as Brad Pitt was plunging down to earth, an image that itself made the movie for me.  Suddenly I knew what the main character in the story was struggling with, the relationships that defined him, everything. 

Similarly, after watching The Gentlemen in theaters, I knew how to write "Rest Stop."  (By the way, actually writing the thing will have to take a miracle, because now I have to do that on the day it's due, a classic scholastic scenario if there ever was one.) 

These were matters of knowing the stories but not knowing them.  There's a huge difference.  One is the basic plot, the basic elements.  The other is knowing what to do with them.

I think a lot of writers misunderstand this fundamental aspect of their craft.  They get hung up on the mere act of writing that they hope later revisions will iron out the differences.  But once you set out on a journey, you're already halfway there.  You have to have a solid plan.  If you haven't at least allowed yourself to figure it out along the way (another valid option), you're going to end up with something that's infinitely less than it could have been, because even if you and most of your readers won't be able to tell the difference, it will still be there.  And the story will die a slow death, or if you're really lucky, someone will care enough in the future to fix it for you.

Because the story is in the details.  The story is in how you tell it.  Movies have made it so much easier to distinguish the craft from the concept.  As far back as Citizen Kane, which hinges entirely on finally learning what "Rosebud" is (and in hindsight, everything makes so much more sense), and up to Memento, which is entirely defined by its flashback structure (seeing it in sequence would in theory make as much sense, once you'd seen it as originally intended, but then you'd lose the shape of it), filmmakers have understood that the language of the story is at least as important as the story itself.  Even the cold detachment of Melville explaining whaling is essential to the tragedy of Ahab's madness, however baffling and unnecessary it might seem to the unsuspecting reader.

So now I know how to tell a few of the stories I've been trying to tackle.  I'd had ideas already, but in hindsight they now look hollow and impoverished.  As to whether or not I can pull either of them off, that's another matter entirely.  But I can try.

Updates February 2020

Been working on A Squire's History of Oz recently, a nonfiction project I've been meaning to realize for a little while now.  I also have some more submissions I'll be tackling, one of them that's due in about a week and the story for which I figured out this morning.  Tentatively calling it "Rest Stop."  The other is centered around Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, otherwise known as the Captain Nemo story.  I actually read it a few years back for the first time, and was amazed at how compelling the first part of it, before Nemo is even introduced, actually was.  There's a Jules Verne park here in Tampa, so I almost feel compelled to work on this one.

Apart from these, I have Three Stooges Syndrome, in that there are of course larger projects I want to begin tackling, that I've mentioned here before, one of which (Collider) I worked on the outline for after previously tackling it anew last October, just before the blood-in-the-eye thing happened, which sort of derailed me for a while, and they keep butting up against each other.  And then I follow links in emails for shorter pieces I can submit, and...Oh, and I also worked on formatting another of the poetry collections, so that's another thing, and finally ordered copies of the last one I put out.

Plus, wrote about what I'm working on here, at the blog, which I don't do often enough.  Or perhaps the commentary I was doing a year ago for another project still leaves me feeling guilty...

Crunchy Peanut Butter...

Here's another Fun Fact About Tony:

For years, I've been convinced I don't like crunchy peanut butter.  I shunned away from it.  I didn't want anything to do with it.  Creamy peanut butter for me, please!

And while I was editing Fall in Their Place, I discovered...Well, I found out the truth.  It seems a decade back, I decided crunchy peanut butter was bad on bagels.  And apparently that was enough to drive me away for...a decade.  A whole decade.  And during the course of that decade, I became convinced I didn't like it at all. 

So that's how these things can sometimes happen, I guess.  Sometimes you can plum forget the original reason you turned away from something, and eventually draw completely different conclusions. 

Yeah.

Oh, and by the way, I bought a jar of crunchy peanut butter recently.  Have been making sandwiches with it for the past week.  And it's been perfectly fine.  Of course.

Sunshine Blogger Award

Hey, just saw that I got this from my longtime blogging pal Armchair Squid, so let's get to answering some questions.  (You can see more of what the Sunshine Blogger Award is supposed to entail, if the recipient chooses, on Squid's blog.)

1. If you could live one year of your life over again, which year would you choose and why?   The year I spent raising my niece, the Burrito, more or less singlehandedly, because that was the best, most magical year of my life.  And I would try to be less grumpy in the grumpy moments (which had nothing to do with the Burrito herself).
2. If you could learn to be an expert at something without putting in the work, what would it be? The stuff I need to research in order to write some of the stuff I want to write.  That would make writing that stuff so much easier!
3. If you could learn a new language instantly, which would you choose and why? It's not really a "new" language for me, but mastering French would be nice.  Because despite taking classes in high school and college, I really only ever considered it a nuisance.  But it disconnects me from my past, and that sucks.
4. If you could give $1 million to any charity, which would you choose? I don't have any particular charities in mind.  Generally for needy folk, I guess.  But isn't that kind of the point?  I would start with the people I know, and then the communities I know, and then maybe something I don't know at all, because charity isn't really about what you know, but what you don't.
5. When was your Robert Frost moment a la "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood..."?  The poem (read it here) says you can't go back and that is true.  "Way leads on to way" and so forth.  But if you could, would you?  What is the difference you think it would have made?  I've often wondered what it would've done to my life if I'd decided to stay in the general vicinity of the college I graduated from, if that would've spurred me to different creative realms, because that was what a classmate planned to do, and she generally seemed to have a much better idea of the writer's life than I did (or do).  But changing the past means sacrificing a lot of stuff I really would not want to change, not the least of which being that I probably would never have had the magical year with the Burrito (and that has made all the difference).
6. Time travel: where would you go and when?  Why? A few years into the past.  Just to be able to experience the Star Wars phenomenon from the beginning, I suppose.  Sneak into a theater.  Nobody would notice.
7. Who would you want on your fictional character bowling team?  You get to pick four. I said elsewhere the Pin Pals (from The Simpsons) or the Wesley Crushers (from The Big Bang Theory).  I can't come up with anything better.
8. What would you want for your last meal? Pizza.  Whatever else, but definitely pizza.  I'm a pizza guy.
9. What's your favorite song? I can only say "at the moment," as in "from the recent past," and that would be "Not Tonight" from Hootie & the Blowfish's new album, Imperfect Circle.  I've had it stuck in my head.  Love it.  Love that I love the new stuff enough to have, organically, at least one song stuck in my head.  They're my all-time favorite band.  Glad they finally got back together.
10. Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Definitely introvert.  If I can avoid people, I'm fine.  I can do the people thing okay, but when others are wondering how they could possibly survive any kind of isolation experience, I'm really only wondering, Will there be books?
11. If you came over to my home and I offered you a drink, what would you want me to serve you? I'm not fussy.  A cool glass of water.  Cheerwine or Moxie, if you happen to have it (extremely unlikely as that would be).  But a cool glass of water is easily doable, and I really do love it.

Some thoughts as 2020 begins...

This is a joke I have to make, given my abysmal vision (going all the way back to first grade! I'm the proverbial "coke bottle glasses" guy, but I've been wearing contacts for twenty years, so don't feel too bad for me, and quit reading this parenthetical digression, already), but 2020!  At last I have perfect eyesight!

Wasn't this supposed to be the magical far future?  How did we get here?  (Same as it ever was, same as it ever was.)

(Reference to a message board I don't visit anymore and/or has relocated and is bizarrely much harder to access, a switch that happened last year.)

(Anyway.)

A week ago I was severely depressed.  I should explain.  A week ago, counting from when I'm writing this, 5 PM EST, I was in New Jersey.  My sister's wedding had taken place late that morning and I had just spent a glorious afternoon with my niece, the Burrito.  I hadn't seen her (not counting video chats) for six months, and we picked up right where we had left off.  I cried at the wedding, not because of the wedding, but because it was now official, that my niece was part of someone else's family, and I wasn't a part of it.  She was upset while pictures were being taken just after the ceremony, insisting I was part of the family, and all I could do was cherish that she still believed. 

Getting to the wedding was adventurous.  I have rarely traveled on my own.  On the few occasions I have, I've been able to successfully make the connections (whether on a train, a plane, or a bus, or John Candy & Steve Martin's automobiles) (a movie I've never seen).  But it's one of those nightmare scenarios that usually only manifest in my actual nightmares (I have a recurring one where I can't find the buildings for any of my classes in college, which for the record was never actually a problem).  This time I had to get to the airport, catch a connecting flight, and then find my way to the hotel.  The return trip would be easier, just one flight, but I think I was actually more nervous that morning, because I needed to stick the landing, as it were.  Of course I did all that.  Mostly flawless victory.  (TSA really doesn't like sweat, for whatever reason.  Weirdos.) 

I had to book the flights to accommodate what I thought at the time was a fairly small window of opportunity, a Friday-to-Sunday deal.  Long story short, but originally I thought I wouldn't get vacation approval, because the wedding was in the Bermuda triangle of holidays.  Later, I got more time off than I could've dreamed, so I had plenty of time off.  But if I'd been able to leave sooner, I would've had more time with my niece.

I always tend to begin preparations with the best possible results in mind (I packed copies of some of my books in case anyone at the wedding, or even a great seatmate on the plane! was interested, for instance; every copy came back with me, alas).  I thought I might still get more time with the Burrito, either later Saturday night or even Sunday morning, but that didn't happen.  I spent Sunday waiting and waiting and waiting.  And that was the whole day, until the flight, and getting home, and the day still had plenty of hours left, and that was kind of weird, like the whole day was a vacuum that never really switched on.

The vacation time, I would've spent a lot more of it writing, at pretty much any other point in my life.  I have written a few things, here and there, recently, but haven't tackled anything major.  A year ago I was in one of those big projects.  I've done editing recently.  I almost quit one of the editing projects in the fear that the thing wasn't actually salvagable, but then I realized, at the time, that was exactly what I meant to write.  Even with some needed editing, this wasn't really a case of a young writer not knowing any better.  Even if I were to write it differently today, that's what I wanted to say back then.  That's the kind of writer I am.  There was a reason for that approach.  So I gave myself permission to breathe.

And I've written and submitted a few things.  One was a short story for a comic book company, and the other for one of those contests.  Of course it'd be nice to get one or both accepted.  One of my goals for the new year is to write more, regardless, and to keep submitting.  I've gotten really horrible about that in recent years.  I just stopped trying.  

I've talked here about some of the big projects I want to tackle, and I do want to tackle one or all of them within the next year.  My schedule at work is changing at the end of the month, and suddenly it feels like the break I only thought I got with a different change-up last year, which never really worked out the way I thought it would.  I tend to react better with a more limited window than a wider one, and that's what I'm going to have, and hopefully I react accordingly.  As always, we'll see.

I don't know where the year will take me.  I'd love to move, to find myself once again in the vicinity of my niece, but again, I don't want to be selfish.  Her new family is her new family, and I don't want to get in the way.  That's just how things stand.  I could pursue other changes.  Things could change.  Things could stay the same.  The future, as always, is wide open.

At the moment, I'm okay with that.  I got new glasses at the end of the year, the first time in a very long time, and these things tend to go, at first it was hugely disorienting, and whatever technology they're using these days, I noticed things I'd never noticed before, not because my vision was suddenly so much better, with glasses, than it had been, but because the technology was making colors pop out, like 3D glasses, and that made things quite interesting.  Now it's weird noticing how my vision is different from glasses to contacts, in a totally different way.

Something like 2020.  Something like that.