23 posts tagged “writing”

I'm posting, frankly, just to be writing something.  I've got inertia of the fingers, if not of the brain, and the only way to shake it off is to start slapping words onto the screen.  So here we are, me and this blog, staring each other down like cowboys in a Leone film (I get to be Lee Van Cleef; fuck you, blog).  It's been a while since I've been here.  I'd totally forgotten I'd picked a theme of skulls with cranberry eyes.  I'll leave it for now. 

Querying continues apace.  I've had two requests for the full manuscript now (one agent, one publisher), and got two very nice, very positive, very energizing "no, thank yous" for my trouble.  The publisher used words like "intensely readable" and "laugh out loud funny without trying too hard," and the agent said it was like a Miranda July movie produced by the Coen Brothers and directed by Tarantino.  So as rejections go, I'm feeling pretty good.  I took some time off over the holidays because I figured everybody was busy being a slackass drunkard like me.  But I've gotten a membership in the Mystery Writers of America and plan to keep sending the book out, hopefully using their resources to work smarter.

The missus and I weathered a big time crisis and have come out better for it.  It shook us up but also seems to have gotten our priorities back in whack.  A conscious kindness to each other has morphed into re-kindled attraction and a fair amount of hot, groping sex.  Which is good.  We like each other better and love each other stronger (and bang each other goofy).  A-plus on that.

I'm still ambivalent about comedy.  Still doing two or three shows a week and making good dough, but the Eye of the Tiger has dimmed, and frankly, I don't miss it so much.  I'm definitely thinking of my career in the past tense, even if the financial reality hasn't caught up to that yet.  It's still fun, I'm still funny, and I can still hold my own, but I don't have that hunger anymore, and frankly, I'm beginning to see that hunger for the pathetic desperation it really is.  I was never good at the "hey, look at me!  look at me!" aspect of being in showbiz, but now I'm finding myself with active contempt for people who're good at it.  I'll still sell you a CD if you want, though. 

I now like basketball, and want a Rajon Rondo jersey stat.

The knuckleheads are maniacal, destructive little bundles of unconditional love, one of whom won't wear pants and the other of whom is getting ninja-like in his sneaking of snacks, and I thank the God-Universe for them every single day, even when I'm scrubbing jelly off the TV.

And the new American Gladiators?  Oh, HELL YES.

Since I last posted about my book, I haven't gotten any more rejections.  I have, however, had an agent request a partial and then a full, so how about that?  I'm continuing to query, just to make sure I don't give into temptation and put all my eggs into this one basket that may or may not pan out.

I had my writing group, such as it is, hammer on my synopsis last night.  Usually, it's not much of a group.  It's two other guys, one of whom is writing a pretty good sci fi book, only he writes about 5 pages a month, and the other of whom has incredible insight and good comments but never actually writes a goddamn thing.  But last night, they found exactly what was wrong with my synopsis, and, by extension, my query letter.  I knew something wasn't right, but I couldn't quite zero in on it.  They twigged it immediately, and I got up early this morning to fix it.  Man, it's night and day.

Of course, now I wish I could somehow get the queries I've sent out back and replace them with the New and Improved version, but c'est la vie.  Halfassed Writing Group comes through in spades!

P.S.  Go Sox!  Go Rox!

So I've been mailing out query letters for my novel, and the rejections have started to roll in. Totally expected, of course.  I've read the stories of Stephen King and his nail full of them and everything.  "You're a real writer now," my friends say.  And truly, I've only sent out like 6 queries and gotten 2 rejections, both from agents way out of my league.

Still - kinda sucks, I gotta say.  Yes, yes, yes, I realize that I've got dozens (hundreds?) of more queries and rejections to go.  Can't a guy indulge the occasional fantasy of being the asshole that gets lucky before he deserves it?

Good news is that it just makes me want to write more, so I've got that going for me.  More letters, more stories, more coffee!

Things continue apace.  My half-assed shows this weekend turned out to be incredibly fun.  I sold plenty of CD's and killed all three sets.  The opener was a good friend and great comic, and the feature was someone I didn't know and completely underwhelming, but all in all, a fine weekend of comedy jokes.

I continue to query agents (plural, thanks to Jodi's bad influence) who are far too important to deal with the likes of me.  That's not false modesty - I'm just querying rock-star-level people at the moment.  Nothing ventured and all that.  I'm building a mail merge file of mere mortals and will start sending those letters out once I reload on stamps and envelopes.

Me and the Missus are doing well, I guess.  We've had a sort of passive/aggressive detente going the last couple weeks, and I'm not sure exactly where it's coming from.  I either feel like a victim or an asshole, depending on the hour of the day.  But then everything will be hunky dory and giggling at the Simpsons, so I don't know what's up.  Maybe it's just living in a house with two crazy kids. 

I miss Colorado like anything.  Mountains make me good inside.

I just sent out the first query letter to the dream agent (well, the only dream agent that accepts unsolicited queries), and I can now start trying to get this book published in earnest.

Of course, thanks to my local post office, I'm querying a hardboiled crime novel with fucking flower stamps, but c'est la vie.

I have fully and completely embraced coffee as my one last unabashed vice (which is to say, I have others, but I feel bad about them; not so sweet java).  The day gig has free unlimited cups of the stuff, and I avail myself as often as possible.  It's one of them cup-at-a-time machines, where you put in the little plastic pod, and press a button, and out comes your fix, er, a delicious cup of joe.  I can't even imagine how environmentally unfriendly this system must be, but I tell myself that using an unwashed ceramic mug somehow brings me back into balance.  Anyway, I'm guzzling some hot, delicious Sumatra Blend even as I write this.

You'd think, with all this caffeine, I'd get something fucking DONE, wouldn't you?

Alas, not so.

For my book - a guy gives a white trash coke dealer type some helpful information.  How much coke would be a realistic "tip" for the info?  Generous, but not ridiculous...

Answers gratefully accepted without question.

In his book On Writing, Stephen King insists that if you want to be a good writer, you have to be a prolific reader, and that reading helps get your brain ready to write.

Well I'm here to testify that I believe ol' Stevie was right about that.  I think I've written here before how certain unsavory elements in my life were attempting to bring me over to the crack-like world of comics.  One of said pushers dumped two crates of graphic novels on me, and, being only human, I finally gave in to temptation and went hog wild.  Nothing but comics for weeks on end.  Total comic orgy.

And my writing dried right the fuck up.

Here, my "real" site, my short stories, my novel.  All if it.  Kaput. 

I mean, I read some really great comics.  Incredible stories, beautiful art, and let's be real:  Brian Michael Bendis's dialogue puts every other writer's to shame, no matter what the medium.  Yes, Mr. Mamet, that includes you.  But ain't none of 'em prose; ain't none of them the kind of thing I'm theoretically supposed to be writing, and they sucked the words right out of my head.

A couple weeks ago, I realized what was happening and I gave all them crazy comics back.  Then I started reading some real books again.   Lo and behold, my writing's coming back, or at least my ability to sit down and get to work is.  Self-fulfilling prophecy?  Psychosomatic?  Quite possibly.  But also true.  I am going great guns on the second draft of my book, and I'm not so much as touching a comic until it's done, done, done.

Unrelated side note:  at a truly wretched and downright scary comedy show this weekend, in a club filled with drunken thugs and associated floozies, on a stage next to a pasta buffet and surrounded by TVs still playing the Sox game, and after watching my opening acts go down in big, bright flames, I got the first standing ovation of my career.  Weirdness abounds.

Having finished my draft, I find myself kind of in a weird headspace.  I've been so ludicrously obsessed with the thing that I feel like the rug's been yanked out from underneath me.  I feel like Kramer* after Kenny Rogers Chicken shut down.

Kenny.

Kenny.

Per the advice of every real writer I know, I did start a new project today, just to be working on something.  It could be kind of good, but mostly it feels like I'm hitting on an ugly chick because my real girlfriend and I are on a break.

Spent Easter at the in-laws', and it was very nice.  The food was aces, and the Knuckleheads did a great job of keeping each other entertained, so I could actually relax a bit.  Gramma did, of course, practically pour chocolate and sugar down their throats, so by bedtime, they were wound extra-tight.  Knucklehead One was pretty much just vibrating in bed.  The duclet tones of Joe Castiglione calling the Sox game** on the radio finally knocked him out, though.

The Missus insisted I buy her and her sister*** Morrissey tickets at the very instant they went on sale last week, and since I did it online, I got two free iTunes downloads from Ticketbastard, which I kept as my fee for being their ticket mule.  Since I almost never buy individual tracks, being more of an album-oriented geezer, I decided to snag a couple of songs that I love but have lost possession of somewhere in the cassette tape to CD to iPod transition, namely Crazy Mary by Victoria Williams and Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns by Mother Love Bone, both of which were played a million times back in the day, when I had just graduated from college with a degree so useless that the only job I could get was delivering bundles of newspapers to 7-11's at 3:00 in the morning.  

I'm fumbling through the chords for Crazy Mary on the guitar now.  I cannot stop listening to this song.

*Pre-Nazi Kramer, natch.

**Jonathan Papelbon, motherfuckers!  JONATHAN PAPELBON!!!

***I demand kudos for the phrase "Missus insisted I buy her and her sister..."

Jesus god.  I finished the first draft of my novel yesterday.

I know there are more experienced writers than me reading this, and I hate to sound like a dewey-eyed amateur, and I know the hard part starts now, but holy shit, does it feel good.