Category: Writing

Essay: From the middle.

I’ve been taking a writing class through the Attic Institute.  It is a five-week class that ends this Sunday and culminates (at least to my mind) in a reading.  That’s right, I’m doing a reading at a bar.  With my other classmates, of course.  There was no time for an essay this week, as I’ve been polishing my piece.  But perhaps you want to read what I will read? This is from the middle of the book I’m working on, and some of you might recognize part of it from a prompt I wrote earlier this summer.  The book has three main characters:  Irene, Eddie and Alex.  This part mostly concerns Irene and her friends as well as Eddie.  Alex is mentioned once, but otherwise is not present.

            There were five of them, piled in the car.  Five of them barely fit in the tiny white Mustang II, but they made do.  Irene was driving, of course, and Katherine, due to a complex matrix of length of friendship combined with an early opt-in option she created herself, had permanent shotgun.  As Karen, Eddie and Marie dove into the back seat, Irene realized she and Eddie had been together long enough for a routine to develop.  Karen and Marie always put Eddie in the middle, because he could stretch his long legs out between the two bucket seats while he wrapped his arms around her friends.  Still, it hadn’t quite become routine.  Eddie caught her eyes in the rearview mirror, checking to see if he was okay.  She smiled and patted him on the shin, enjoying the change she’d seen over the past few months.  The first time Karen and Marie had sandwiched him, he made himself small, pulling in his arms and tucking his hands between his legs.  Irene was glad things were more comfortable now.
            “You look like you are enjoying your harem” Irene remarked as he settled into place.
            “He wouldn’t know what to do with a harem consisting of the four of us.” Marie bumped Eddie with her shoulder adding a physical jab to her mocking.
            “I don’t know,” Karen remarked.  “He spends enough time with Alex.  He must have picked up some tips.”
            Eddie laughed at their teasing, something else Irene had noticed he had become more comfortable doing.  “I have some ideas of my own for a harem, but for right now, I’ll stick with Irene. I’ll keep you in mind for the day I do take on a few extra women.”
            “That will be the day after I take on a few extra boys.” Irene commented, arching an eyebrow as she cranked her window down.  Katherine had already done so, letting the last heat of the day escape from the blue interior. 
            Irene started the car while Katherine leaned over to flip the radio station to something halfway decent and they drove off into the night.   The car only had an AM radio, but there were a few good stations, all of them playing oldies of some sort.  When they couldn’t find anything good on the radio, one of them would break into song and the rest would join in.  They knew a lot of songs. 
            After winding through the flat of town to the foothills, Irene stopped at the tiny neighborhood grocery store.  It was past dark, but before curfew, and the clerk smiled, knowing what they were up to.  She’d seen it before, kids spilling out of cars, swarming the store and happily lining up to hand over their dollar and change.
            Purchase made, they piled back in and drove up the road, then turned and parked in the glare of the church parking lot near the hill.  They rolled out of the car and pulled their towels and bags out of the trunk.  Katherine, Karen and Marie headed off toward the hill immediately, but Eddie pulled Irene back for a kiss. Marie turned back to say something to Irene, and when she caught the couple with their tongues in each other’s mouths again, she let out a catcall that whipped Karen and Katherine’s heads around.
            “I think we should start a PDA jar for you two” Karen called back to them. “One dollar for regular kissing, three dollars if we can see tongue.”
            “Marie is even disgusted.” said Katherine, referring to Marie’s infamous lip locks with her rotating cast of boyfriends.
            “Can’t you just save it for after you drop us off tonight?” Marie added.
            Irene squirmed away from Eddie, smiling, grabbed her bag and caught up to her friends. “Maybe I should take the money from this jar and use it to pay for the gas while I drive you guys around.  How much longer until you get your licenses?”  Irene had been the chauffer for two years now, as she was in the last group of Idaho teenagers to receive a license at 14.  Her friends had to wait a very long two years to get theirs.
            “I’m good in four weeks.” Eddie loped along beside her.
            “Four months.” said Katherine.
            “Six” reported Marie
            “I’ve got more than a year.” sighed Karen.  She was younger than Irene and the age difference cropped up in frustrating ways.
            “Well then, I guess soon it will be Eddie doing the driving.” Irene commented.  “Then he really will feel like he has a harem.”
            Eddie’s eyes gleamed. “Yes.  I’m eager to see what the four of you will do when I’m hauling you around in my van.”
            “I have a feeling it will involve taking over the radio.” Marie suggested.
            “And a lot of loud singing.” Irene agreed.  “Is this car going to have an FM radio?”
            Eddie winced.  “Not if I can help it.”  The girls’ singing was enthusiastic and lusty, but not necessarily pitch-perfect.  There was a reason all of them chose band over choir, and the wavering tunefulness sometimes got on Eddie’s nerves.  It was one of the prices he paid for hanging out with Irene’s friends.
            Their sentences grew shorter as they ascended the hill. It was a smooth hike, though steep.  The lawn had been graded and trimmed and Irene always wondered if the groundskeeper had to buy special mowers to maneuver such a slope.  Halfway up, Karen stopped, gasping, and they paused, sweating and panting while they stared at the city lights below them and caught their breath.  There were others around them—they could hear the laughter through the darkness—but the hill had room enough for everyone. 
            “Do you think he minds?” Karen stared up at the house above them, brightly lit against the summer night.
            “All of us here on his front yard?” Katherine asked.  “Probably not.”
            “Then why do we always do this late at night?” Karen asked.  “I’ve never seen anyone Ice Blocking during the day.”
            “It’s more fun at night.” Eddie said as they resumed their journey. “It seems like we’re getting away with something.”
            When they reached a good starting point the five of them broke open their bags, and their blocks of ice slid onto the grass.  They expertly caught them with their feet, holding them in check as they shoved the empty bags into their pockets, careful not to litter, though Karen had lost a very nice ring last summer.
            Quickly, each person folded their towel into a small square that just covered the rectangle of ice and set it down on top.  They automatically lined up in a row and sat down on top of the towels, their feet holding them on the hill, though the ice wanted to slide away beneath them.  They would start at the same time.  Ice Blocking always called for a race.
“Ready?” Eddie asked looking up and down the line to check no one had an advantage.  Nods came back all around. 
“Set?” They leaned back.  When Eddie shouted “Go,” they lifted their feet and were off, sliding down the grassy hill of a billionaire potato magnate in the hot night of a desert summer.
            Irene knew that if she kept her feet up, she could make it all the way to the bottom, but she never could.  The glee of slipping down a hill as smoothly as if it were covered in snow while sweating in shorts and a t-shirt always translated into uncontrollable laughter and she always lost control, tumbling away from her ice as it continued to slide serenely toward the bottom.  If she was fast, she could bounce back up and catch the block before it had gotten too far from her.  It usually took her two or three tries to complete a single run, and she knew from experience she would never win the race.  Katherine always did, her taut athlete’s body controlling her descent, abs tight and laughter waiting until she reached the bottom, when she stood and turned to watch the rest of her friends slide in.  As Irene continued down the hill, half sliding, half rolling, she watched Karen barely beat Eddie, and Marie take fourth, before she herself rolled to the finish, convulsed with laughter as her ice slid away from her one last time.
            Eddie pulled her to her feet and the group wrapped their ice in their towels for the ascent, saving their hands from the cold blocks.  They made five or six runs before they headed to the car, sweaty from the climbs and with sore stomachs from the descents.

            Later, as she repeatedly combed through the moments of “Eddie & Irene,”; while she assembled the timeline of events, Irene was surprised to realize that Eddie had already made his decision by that night. She was soon to return to “she” and lose “us.” She had no idea.

Essay: So, are you?

“Are you a writer?”
It’s good to have an answer to that question if you attend a literary festival because people will ask you that question a lot.  I don’t really have an answer.  Am I a writer?
In the “yes” category, we have the evidence that I spend a lot of damn time writing.  I write letters, and postcards, I have written 67 essays, I write for my own blog which right now numbers around 1700 posts, or will be once I catch up to the posts I have yet to write.  I also wrote the first draft of a novel last year for NaNoWriMo and am working on another novel this year.  So yes.  Totally a writer.
On the no side?  No one actually pays me to write.  The sum total of my writer earnings consist of the $60.00 I won in college for a paper I submitted in my college’s academic writing contest.  I won first place for my research and summation about the German Peasant Revolt of 15-something.  Woo.
One of the things that I think makes Americans are boring is how focused we are on our careers.  When you are meeting someone for the first time and ask them what they do, they tell you what they are paid to do for the company that employs them.  Which, if they love their job and are excited to talk about it, is pretty cool.  But most people aren’t really interested in talking about their jobs.  I’m certainly not.  So I’ve taken to answering the question “What do you do?” with a question of my own:  “Would you like to hear what I do for pay, or what I enjoy doing?”  It’s much more fun.
But even when I talk about what I do for fun, I hesitate to bring up writing.  For one thing, I greatly enjoy writing for my blog, but I feel silly about the existence of the blog itself.  I think they’ve migrated over to the kind of uncool category.  And as for writing fiction, who hasn’t written a novel?  Thinking to the monthly breakfast I attend, at least four people there have written novels.  None of those novels have been published and really, does anyone read anymore?  I feel at times like writing is equivalent to manufacturing 35 millimeter film for film cameras.  There are people out there who still take pictures using film, but they are an ever dwindling bunch.
One of my roommates once told me the story of when she came to interview at the house we lived in together.  She asked the three roommates already in the house what they did and they answered, “Printmaker.” “Musician” “DJ”  It was only after she moved in that she learned that what they were paid for was “Temporary work,” “Housecleaning,” “Drug Dealing.”  I think of this story every time I think about claiming to be a writer. 

Maybe it’s the “new” factor that makes writing hard to claim. I’ve only been writing essays for two years and the fiction thing still feels very new.  Perhaps eventually I will be able to claim a small spot on the grand staircase of writers.  For now though I’ll keep it on the down-low.  An avocation, not a vocation.

Essay: On Not Going to Work.

I did not want to go to work today.  I’m sure you are familiar with the sensation.  I mean, that guy wrote a poem about it and everything.  I’m convinced that there are maybe five people on the planet who want to go to work every day and the rest of us sometimes just wake up in the morning and think, “Nope.  Don’t want to do it.”
Which isn’t to say that we have that thought and then immediately follow through.  There’s a trajectory, and it can go in a number of different directions.  In my own case, there are several levels to travel through several stages before reaching a conclusion.
Stage one:  General health.
Am I unwell?  Aside from the persistent skin thing that doesn’t keep me from working, I’m generally rarely unwell.  I (knock on wood) haven’t had the flu in ages, I don’t run fevers, my colds rarely progress to the point where I need to take a day off of work.  Usually after this general health check, I must continue on to other avenues.
Stage two: What do I have to do today?
Is there a reason I absolutely MUST be at work today?  Sometimes there is a staff meeting, sometimes someone is coming in and I have to meet with them.  Sometimes there too much work to do that day.  But if not, I spiral over to the next phase.
Stage three:  Will my not being there adversely affect anyone today?
I work in a small nonprofit, and we know when someone is absent, especially the three of us who can’t call substitutes.  If I don’t go to work, one of my coworkers will have to take my 45 minutes of recess duty and the other coworker will have to triage all the various “school office” things that happen during the day.  Mostly I don’t get past this stage, but if I do…
Stage four:  Will my staying home leave me feeling guilty and thus ruin the exquisite pleasure of not working on a work day?
Sometimes I can work through my stages, call in sick and not mind much that I’ve thrown a wrench in my colleagues’ day and am neglecting my work.  But mostly when I do it, I can picture how their days are going and how mine will go when I return the next day and it spoils the freedom of the day at hand.
I went to work today.  I knew why I didn’t want to go and it had more to do with the book I consumed the night before and the lack of sleep resulting from this consumption.  It was an okay day, plus it was a short day anyway.  I’ve noticed I take many fewer sick days since I reduced my hours from 40 to 32.  There is something about working 7:30-1:30 that is much easier to bite off than 8-4:30.

 

I suspect I won’t want to go to work tomorrow, either.  I know this has more to do with the un-done things at home than it does with work.  So I will do my best to crawl into bed at a normal time, work through my day in a diligent fashion, and come home and plunge into chores to regain my footing.

Prompt: The smell of green grass.

This spring, I took a writing class offered through Write Around Portland.  It was called “Prompt” because each week we would meet and write for a limited amount of time–usually somewhere between 2-8 minutes–to a number of different prompts.  As the school year grinds to a start and I have less time to write, I will be featuring excerpts from my writing class in lieu of the weekly essay.

We stopped at the tiny neighborhood grocery store on our way there.  It was past dark and the clerk smiled, knowing what we were up to. She had seen it before, kids piling out of cars, swarming the store and happily lining up to hand over their dollar and change.

We piled back in the car and drove up the road a ways, pulling off and parking in the lot of the Mormon church across the street.  Without much commentary, we picked up our towels, grabbed our bags and headed up the hill.  It was a smooth hike, though steep.  The grass had been graded and trimmed and I always wondered if they had to buy special mowers to operate on such a steep slope.

Halfway up we paused, sweating and panting, and stared out at the city while we caught our breath.  There were others around us, but the hill had room enough for us all.

We broke open our bags and our blocks of ice slid onto the grass.  We caught them with our feet, keeping them from rolling down the hill, as we shoved the empty bags into our pockets and folded up our towels into a small square.  Without hesitation, we set our towels on top of the ice and sat down.  Smiling, we leaned back, our abdominal muscles lifting our feet and we were off, sliding down the grassy hill of a potato magnate in the hot night of a desert summer.  If you kept your feet up, you could make it all the way to the bottom, but mostly laughter took over and you tumbled away from your block of ice, scrambling to catch it before it slid away without you.

 At the bottom, we wrapped our blocks in our towels and walked back up the hill, the sound of green grass beneath our feet, the cold ice block melting through the towels, freezing our hands.

Prompt writing: as the days grow longer.

This spring, I took a writing class offered through Write Around Portland.  It was called “Prompt” because each week we would meet and write for a limited amount of time–usually somewhere between 2-8 minutes–to a number of different prompts.  As the school year grinds to a start and I have less time to write, I will be featuring excerpts from my writing class in lieu of the weekly essay.

As the days grow longer, I’m vaulted into the summers of my past.  Long, languid days filled with swimming and reading and watching a bit too much TV.  Swimming lessons when young, swim team when older, pining to be old enough for a part-time job, working that part-time job and cursing the loss of the long, languid days, while simultaneously gleefully spending my paycheck on whatever I wanted.  Summer was freedom.  From school, from schedules, from most expectations, from the daily grind of the average middle class American girl.  Summer was car washes for band fundraisers, boyfriends ending relationships and so many movies watched and books read.  Every summer I would look forward to the day my feet would be tough enough to spend the entire day barefoot.

Prompt writing: at the water’s edge.

This spring, I took a writing class offered through Write Around Portland.  It was called “Prompt” because each week we would meet and write for a limited amount of time–usually somewhere between 2-8 minutes–to a number of different prompts.  As the school year grinds to a start and I have less time to write, I will be featuring excerpts from my writing class in lieu of the weekly essay.

She sits on the lip of the pool, her legs dangling in the tepid water.  Her hair is pulled back and summarily shoved under a swim cap and the vinyl pulls her forehead back, nearly lifting her eyebrows.  She stretches her arms above her head, arching her back, then drops them and rolls her neck a few times.  She trails her hands in the water, waiting to shift a bit.

Swimming is always hardest at the water’s edge.  Once she has submerged her body, it’s a matter of moving her limbs, breathing rhythmically–things she’s done a thousand times before.  But while on land, swimming seems incredibly hard.  Years ago, she solved this problem by diving in, but times have changed and the pool rules don’t allow it.  Too much liability.  So now she sits on the precipice, still a land mammal and not yet an aquatic one.

Prompt Writing. When everyone was asleep.

This spring, I took a writing class offered through Write Around Portland.  It was called “Prompt” because each week we would meet and write for a limited amount of time–usually somewhere between 2-8 minutes–to a number of different prompts.  As the school year grinds to a start and I have less time to write, I will be featuring excerpts from my writing class in lieu of the weekly essay.

One of the rules of Prompt writing is that you are to “assume fiction.”  And so this is partly me, but I was also thinking of Molly Ringwald when I wrote this.  I heard an interview where she talked about how she wrote for years before publishing because when she did publish, she wanted it to be good.

I do my best writing in the morning.  I like the quiet, the breaking darkness and the chill in the air.  I look out my back door as I write, watching the shapes emerge in the backyard.  First, my face is reflected in the glass, then the trees and the fence become visible as light seeps into the sky.  But I’ve always like times best when everyone was asleep.

As a teenager, I stayed up later than my parents and brother, listening to music, puttering about in my room.  The silence of the night freed me from the task of having to be me and I felt myself relax as the hours went on, dropping deeper into my work.  Now, I wake early, on the tail end of the night, and slip into a sweater and then my chair.  I have things to do.  The day is before me, but for a few minutes this time is for me and the characters I’ve created.

I like to read about authors and how they write.  The haphazard process for this one, the structure of another’s routine.  Sometimes, when I am writing, I think of the Catholic women, going to mass every morning before slipping off to their jobs, or home to feed their families. I understand the attraction of the ritual.  The daily need to be in a specific place at a specific time saying specific things.

If I miss a few mornings writing, I get jittery, filled with the words that need to escape me, to make it onto the paper.  No one pays me to write; there is no reason to continue doing it.  But here I sit, morning after morning, weaving characters and plots together into something different from myself.  After writing, I set down my pen, spent, and gaze into the sunlight of another day.

Prompt writing: Motel

This spring, I took a writing class offered through Write Around Portland.  It was called “Prompt” because each week we would meet and write for a limited amount of time–usually somewhere between 2-8 minutes–to a number of different prompts.  As the school year grinds to a start and I have less time to write, I will be featuring excerpts from my writing class in lieu of the weekly essay.

The first three paragraphs I wrote in response to the prompt “while everyone was asleep.”  A few weeks later, we were looking at ways of revision and one of the suggestions was to write from a different point of view.  I went back to my guy in the motel and wrote a piece from the guy on the other side of the counter’s perspective.  This was my favorite piece to read aloud.

I’m the overnight guy at a local motel.  I arrive at work every night promptly at 11:00 PM, my bow tie fastened.  I won’t leave work until seven in the morning.  By eleven, most of the rooms have been rented, though I sometimes get a few stragglers: the people who have been driving too long and just need to crash for a few hours, or the night owls who prefer the emptiness of the highway.  Every once in a while I rent a room to a couple for a late-night hookup, sometimes even to people I know. Those are the worst transactions; keeping the breezy professional air while thinking, “Brian, are you sure, man?  How much, exactly, have you had to drink?”
I have to balance the books for the day and complete some housekeeping tasks, but a lot of my time is my own.  I listen to music, or, if it is really late and no one is around, I play my guitar.  But mostly I sit in silence.  There is a comfort to the quiet, like all the people I care for are tucked away asleep and it’s my job to keep them safe.
Morning will come, as it does, and people will hustle out the door, smelling of soap and showers, or last night’s overindulgence.  I settle their bills and send them on their way, then wander home to my own bed and sleep.
***
“Do you have any rooms?”  Holy Shit!  Is that Gary from school?  Oh, god, please no.
“One bed would be fine, thanks.” It is him!  Goddammit!  Of all the motels in this city.  What’s he doing here?
“Just one night, thanks.” Jesus.  Does he know I’m still with Jessica?
“Nope.  Normal check out time will be fine.” Christ. He does know and he knows this isn’t Jessica.
“Credit card.”  No Gary, I’m walking in here with, wait. What was her name?
“That’s weird, I sent them a payment last week. Try this one instead.” It was something with an E.  Evie?  Evelyne? Evangine?  Oh fuck it.  I don’t really need to know her name.
“One key will do.”  She looks good though Gary, doesn’t she?  I bet you are panting at the thought of what we’re about to do.
“Wait, which hallway?” Dammit.  I saw that look.  I didn’t like that look.  Who are you to judge, buddy?
“Second floor?” It’s not like you see how Jessica looks at me.  Like I can’t do anything right.  Like I missed the promotion and I’ll never make things right.
“Wait.  Is this a non-smoking room? We need a smoking room, right, uh, honey?” The way I’m about to drill it to uh, Emily? Emma? Whatever.  There’s no way I’m not smoking after.
“No, no trouble at all.” And she’s totally into me, I can tell.  I bet she’ll do things Jessica hasn’t done in months.
“Third floor?  Great man, thanks.” Look at that ass, Gary.  Look at it.
“No wakeup call necessary.” Wait.  Look at that ass.  Did it look like that back in the bar?  We were sitting down.  But really, you think I would have noticed.  I only had, uh.  How much did I have to drink again?

Prompt Writing: Burnside homage.

This spring, I took a writing class offered through Write Around Portland.  It was called “Prompt” because each week we would meet and write for a limited amount of time–usually somewhere between 2-8 minutes–to a number of different prompts.  As the school year grinds to a start and I have less time to write, I will be featuring excerpts from my writing class in lieu of the weekly essay.

Some of you “out-clickers” have already read this, as it was the piece I picked for the broadsheet.  The prompt was “along Burnside.”

The sidewalks are skinny. Too small to hold the accumulated panhandlers, tourists and residents who travel along Burnside.  There are even posted signs, directing us to keep walking, not to stop and sit, or contemplate the heavy traffic.  Sometimes, I think back a few decades, imagining the hybrids sprouting tailfins and doubling in length, then morphing again into Model Ts and early horseless carriages, and soon I hear the quiet clop of a horse pulling a carriage. As my mind travels back, buildings transform, replaced by their shorter predecessors.  I go further back and traffic thins until the road itself disappears, replaced by a footpath leading through the trees to the banks of the Willamette River.

Prompt writing: Letters.

This spring, I took a writing class offered through Write Around Portland.  It was called “Prompt” because each week we would meet and write for a limited amount of time–usually somewhere between 2-8 minutes–to a number of different prompts.  As the school year grinds to a start and I have less time to write, I will be featuring excerpts from my writing class in lieu of the weekly essay. 

The prompt here was more complex and came near the end of the series.  Everyone thought of a number between 8 and 80 and then wrote it down.  Then we passed that number to the person on our right.  The number passed to me was 15.  Then, we had to write a letter to ourselves at that age.  After we were done with that prompt, our next prompt was to write back.  

Dear Patty,

In six years, you will shed that nickname, reverting to the three syllable name of your birth.  It will be a relief, the metamorphosis, but you will always love those who knew you when your name was two syllables.  Those boys?  All of them?  They are all consuming, I know.  And they will be for awhile and let’s face it, your teachers aren’t going to be fabulous the next few years. A few standouts, sure, but academically, you are going to be a bit bored.  So get some homework done somewhere, but there’s nothing you can do about the boys.

You are going to stop writing creatively.  Not because you aren’t good, but something will happen and it will go away. But keep writing in those journals.  The writing will come back eventually and the feeling will be tremendous.

You will have your heart broken and it won’t be easy, knowing what to do when you feel like that.  You will make a lot of wrong choices.  I wish I could say differently, but I can’t.  It sounds grim, no?  But you get out.  You leave the town, your friends and your family–everything–behind and it’s all you ever wanted it to be.

Your twenties will suck too, but in a different way. I don’t even want to go into that now, it’s too soon.  But you are fine.  You will muddle through and you will look back on this time with a crimp in your heart and you will laugh at your joys and sorrows.  And you will never want to be fifteen ever again.

Sincerely,
38

Dear 38,

Wow.  Could you make it sound any worse?  I mean, Jesus Christ, according to you, school is going to suck, boys are going to suck, writing will suck and it will just keep on sucking for a long time. You’re really making me want to fucking age, chica.  But the getting out sounds good.  And I’ve grown to hate being called Patty.  It’s too much sorority tea party and not enough bad-assed rebel.

Am I really fine?  Will any of those boys every like me back?  I mean really, you skimped on some pretty important details.  What about Craig?  He seems promising.  Does anything happen with him?  Oh!  Or Shawn?  Maybe things move in a good direction there?  Come on, I need more details!  Just about the boys!

Yours,
15