Inter-Galactic Memo
To: All Personnel
Fr: W. Leavitt
Re: The Writing Process
11-8-2010
There is a writer, I know of—I’m a fan—who writes backwards. He’s a famous one, with awards, and millions of books sold, and even an academy award for a screenplay. But how does he write backwards? He explained it in one of his novels, through a character who is also a writer. He has to have the last sentence, has to hear it and feel it, before he can start. And then he writes backwards, so the first sentence is the last one he writes. And it takes him a long time. Years. He’s only written twelve books in his career. I’ve written more than twice that in the last ten years. And he has this strange habit of writing sentences, or fragments of sentences, and tacking them up on a board where he can see them and think about them. I guess when he has enough sentences he can write a paragraph, and then a chapter—backwards. Once he knows the whole story, and is familiar with the characters, he can start writing, filling in. That’s what he says at least.
It was nice to find out that this technique was an accident; just the way he started doing it and it became a habit, and then a process. At first he thought it was an immature phase, but it turned out to be the way he writes.
I’m pretty insecure about my writing, and it is a little comforting to discover that famous writers sometimes feel that way too, and wonder if their ‘method’ might be off kilter or out of bounds. It doesn’t bother me that this writer is much better than I am. He writes, I write, we both do our best and hopefully get what we are looking for out of the experience.
On the other hand, my ‘method’ is so different from his, and from any other method I’ve read about, that my insecurities come raging forward again, and I worry that I’m missing something, that my writing is hampered or limited by my method, or lack thereof.
The truth is, I don’t have a method that I am aware of, based on any known and accepted process used by professional writers.
I start writing when it feels like the right time to start. Sometimes I’ve had the idea for months or years, and sometimes I’ve had the idea for five minutes. And a few times—two that I remember for sure—I’ve started with no idea in mind at all.
I’ve started several with only a title because I liked the way it sounded and knew something would come if I began writing. Car Dancing and Evil Alien Artifact were both written that way. For Car Dancing, I had the title and a one sentence description of the main character. For Artifact, all I had was the title, which was a throw-away line from That 70’s Show, and a vague idea that I wanted to do a send-up of sci-fi stories. Another book was worse. I started The Seaweed Bar and Grill with no title, no plot, no characters and not a single idea as to what it might be about. That was on purpose; I had just finished reading a book by Thomas Pynchon and took it as a challenge to try and write something blind, because it felt like that’s what he did—even though I knew this wasn’t true. He’s just a genius and can do things like that. So I just put my fingers on the keyboard and started, and things came, and a few pages later the title magically appeared (although I didn’t know it at the time). It’s one of my favorites. I have no idea if it’s any good or not. I was trying to see if it was possible to write with no pre-conceived ideas, and make the story entirely character driven, rather than by plot. I guess it is.
I never plot anyway. I don’t know how. That is the secret of my ‘method.’ I’ve never taken a writing class. I’ve never attended a writers conference, or gone to a writers workshop, or joined a writers group, either real or virtual. As a writer, I have three things going for me. One, I love doing it, and always have. It comes easy. Two, I’ve read thousands of books across a wide range of types, styles, authors, genres and subjects. And three, I have a pretty good imagination. But I don’t know process. I don’t know how to plot a story—I’m not sure I even know what that means. I don’t know how to build a character. And I don’t know how to write backwards. For me, knowing the end of a story, and what will happen in each chapter and in what order, before I start, would ensure that I never start. Why write it if I know how it’s going to end? At some point in the writing, I usually figure it out, but sometimes that doesn’t happen until I’m on the last page. I knew how Car Dancing would end by the time I was half way through, and I spent the last half trying to prevent it, change it, but I couldn’t. Stories and characters are powerful. Inevitable.
In other words, I’m an ignorant writer. Or an innocent one. But good or bad, talented or a hack, I love it. Nothing makes me any happier than sitting there, typing away, caught in a continuing moment of discovery. I start at the beginning and characters show up as I need them, and things happen that surprise me, shock me, make me happy and sad and angry. I’m telling myself a story I haven’t heard before, and that’s my method. I have an audience of one.
Now I’ve written at least thirty books, and can’t stop. I don’t want to stop. I read things writers have said about writing and I don’t get it. For them it is a struggle, a horrible, lonely, excruciating experience. For me it’s just the opposite. I love everything about it, can’t wait to go somewhere everyday and write. I love how every time I sit down, not know what’s going to happen, something comes. And I never get writers block—I just work on something else, or don’t write that day. The only thing I worry about now is this: since my heart attack, I worry about having enough time to get them all out and onto paper. I’m working on it though; unlike my backwards-writing hero, I write pretty fast. Probably because I don’t know what I’m doing.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Friday, November 5, 2010
IGM Construction
Inter-Galactic Memo
To: All Personnel
Fr: W. Leavitt
Re: Construction
11-4-2010
Nita and I did something different today. We got up really early (see, already different) dressed in layers because it was chilly and drizzling, and drove into Rochester. A good-sized city which has not escaped the “downturn.” We avoid Rochester.
We made our way to one of the worst neighborhoods in the city, where every third house is abandoned and boarded up, even the pets are armed, and met several people we didn’t know—and a few we did—to build a house. Yep . . . Habitat for Humanity.
Our Stake (an ecclesiastical entity which consists of several congregations) has formed a partnership with the Third Presbyterian Church of Rochester to raise both money for, and donate time to, the construction of several houses.
Small, unassuming homes in which owners invest their own sweat-equity, move in and begin paying the mortgage. Indentured servitude (volunteers) keeps the price down. The plan is 100 new homes that will resurrect the neighborhood—take it to a tipping point where interest will turn to investment and a rebirth will occur.
Why would we do that, you might ask? Well, we’re retired. Most people go to work all day every day. It’s hard to say no. And it is a legitimately good cause. So far, we are a veritable PSA for Habitat and charity work, right? Now for the splash of reality.
Remember when I said it was raining? Not hard, but long enough to soak the ground. And it was cold. Upstate New York is like, fifteen feet from the arctic circle.
One house is up and they are hanging sheetrock. That wasn’t our house, that was just where we met. Then we drove a few blocks to the other house. And when I say house, I mean a large, rectangular hole in the ground, bordered by piles of mud, with a concrete footing and a huge pile of gravel at the bottom.
I looked at the supervisor, one-half of a identical twin team, and said:
“We’re unskilled volunteer labor. What are we going to do with a hole in ground? Fill it?” Well, sort of, it turns out.
The wooden forms were still in place. They are held in place by big nails the size of small spears which have been pounded into the ground with industrial pile-drivers and then nailed to the 2x12 forms—below the ground line. I don’t know how they did that. Our first job was pulling the forms, which meant pulling the two-foot spikes, which meant finding and pulling the nails . . . you get the picture. We were covered in mud after fifteen minutes. But we got the forms pulled. Then it was time to lay a black plastic pipe covered in fabric around the outside edge of the footing. It’s for drainage I’m told. But the key word here is drain. Which means the tubing (About 6 inches in diameter) has to start low then steadily ascend to the other end, or vice-versa. Whatever. Which means digging. Then shoveling gravel over it to hold it in place, then spreading the huge pile of gravel (Left over from those stables Hercules cleaned) into an even layer of gravel instead of a pile of gravel. That was when I went into a fugue state. I would move two or three shovels-full of gravel, and then wake up a few minutes later having gone bye-bye. I was exhausted to the point of . . . well, a few times I idly entertained the possibility that I was closing in on another heart attack. My body was resting whether I wanted to or not. But we finished the gravel while I joked about working harder than everyone else.
Did I mention the wall forms? Next to the giant hole were stacks of steel and something-else modular forms, two by eight feet and very heavy. They needed to be in the hole. Apparently this was a good job for unskilled volunteers. So four of us began to relocate the forms. We made six stacks about five feet high. Then one of the supervisors had the clearly inappropriate idea of taking us from unskilled to semi-skilled volunteers. He showed Nita and another guy how to assemble the forms. They made four corner sections. We had to carry them to the corners and stand them up. Then he showed us how to attach the two-foot sections together. They wanted us to make walls! The forms were for the concrete basement walls. So five of us began assembling wall-forms.
Oh, I forgot. Somewhere in there the Roach Coach showed up (How do they always find us?). I bought a Pepsi, Nita fed me two tuna sandwiches (with potato chips inside—yum!) along with half a banana and several Ibuprofen. I was a new man. It is scary how much better caffeine can make you feel. I wasn’t exactly a human dynamo—mostly I stopped feeling like an imminent heat attack, but I managed to find a groove and work steadily-if-not-heroically until quitting time. I am happy to say we got the entire outside half of the form built—all the way around the footing. Wow!
Truthfully—we had a blast. I’d attach a photo of the wall in the giant hole, but I don’t know how to get it off my phone. (Newell, you may now invoke the “Dork” word.) Neither of us have been that dirty in decades. We all had not just a sense of accomplishment, but a sense that it meant something as well. Some family, the working poor, with whom most of us can identify and/or sympathize, will get a new home in a few months. We interacted with several people from the very scary neighborhood, and they all were glad we were there and told us so. I feel this reduces the chance of being shot on the job. Which is good, because we’re going back. Tomorrow. I recommend it.
This evening, neither of us can move, and everything hurts. But it’s a “good” hurt, in the same sense that Vegas heat is a “dry” heat.
To: All Personnel
Fr: W. Leavitt
Re: Construction
11-4-2010
Nita and I did something different today. We got up really early (see, already different) dressed in layers because it was chilly and drizzling, and drove into Rochester. A good-sized city which has not escaped the “downturn.” We avoid Rochester.
We made our way to one of the worst neighborhoods in the city, where every third house is abandoned and boarded up, even the pets are armed, and met several people we didn’t know—and a few we did—to build a house. Yep . . . Habitat for Humanity.
Our Stake (an ecclesiastical entity which consists of several congregations) has formed a partnership with the Third Presbyterian Church of Rochester to raise both money for, and donate time to, the construction of several houses.
Small, unassuming homes in which owners invest their own sweat-equity, move in and begin paying the mortgage. Indentured servitude (volunteers) keeps the price down. The plan is 100 new homes that will resurrect the neighborhood—take it to a tipping point where interest will turn to investment and a rebirth will occur.
Why would we do that, you might ask? Well, we’re retired. Most people go to work all day every day. It’s hard to say no. And it is a legitimately good cause. So far, we are a veritable PSA for Habitat and charity work, right? Now for the splash of reality.
Remember when I said it was raining? Not hard, but long enough to soak the ground. And it was cold. Upstate New York is like, fifteen feet from the arctic circle.
One house is up and they are hanging sheetrock. That wasn’t our house, that was just where we met. Then we drove a few blocks to the other house. And when I say house, I mean a large, rectangular hole in the ground, bordered by piles of mud, with a concrete footing and a huge pile of gravel at the bottom.
I looked at the supervisor, one-half of a identical twin team, and said:
“We’re unskilled volunteer labor. What are we going to do with a hole in ground? Fill it?” Well, sort of, it turns out.
The wooden forms were still in place. They are held in place by big nails the size of small spears which have been pounded into the ground with industrial pile-drivers and then nailed to the 2x12 forms—below the ground line. I don’t know how they did that. Our first job was pulling the forms, which meant pulling the two-foot spikes, which meant finding and pulling the nails . . . you get the picture. We were covered in mud after fifteen minutes. But we got the forms pulled. Then it was time to lay a black plastic pipe covered in fabric around the outside edge of the footing. It’s for drainage I’m told. But the key word here is drain. Which means the tubing (About 6 inches in diameter) has to start low then steadily ascend to the other end, or vice-versa. Whatever. Which means digging. Then shoveling gravel over it to hold it in place, then spreading the huge pile of gravel (Left over from those stables Hercules cleaned) into an even layer of gravel instead of a pile of gravel. That was when I went into a fugue state. I would move two or three shovels-full of gravel, and then wake up a few minutes later having gone bye-bye. I was exhausted to the point of . . . well, a few times I idly entertained the possibility that I was closing in on another heart attack. My body was resting whether I wanted to or not. But we finished the gravel while I joked about working harder than everyone else.
Did I mention the wall forms? Next to the giant hole were stacks of steel and something-else modular forms, two by eight feet and very heavy. They needed to be in the hole. Apparently this was a good job for unskilled volunteers. So four of us began to relocate the forms. We made six stacks about five feet high. Then one of the supervisors had the clearly inappropriate idea of taking us from unskilled to semi-skilled volunteers. He showed Nita and another guy how to assemble the forms. They made four corner sections. We had to carry them to the corners and stand them up. Then he showed us how to attach the two-foot sections together. They wanted us to make walls! The forms were for the concrete basement walls. So five of us began assembling wall-forms.
Oh, I forgot. Somewhere in there the Roach Coach showed up (How do they always find us?). I bought a Pepsi, Nita fed me two tuna sandwiches (with potato chips inside—yum!) along with half a banana and several Ibuprofen. I was a new man. It is scary how much better caffeine can make you feel. I wasn’t exactly a human dynamo—mostly I stopped feeling like an imminent heat attack, but I managed to find a groove and work steadily-if-not-heroically until quitting time. I am happy to say we got the entire outside half of the form built—all the way around the footing. Wow!
Truthfully—we had a blast. I’d attach a photo of the wall in the giant hole, but I don’t know how to get it off my phone. (Newell, you may now invoke the “Dork” word.) Neither of us have been that dirty in decades. We all had not just a sense of accomplishment, but a sense that it meant something as well. Some family, the working poor, with whom most of us can identify and/or sympathize, will get a new home in a few months. We interacted with several people from the very scary neighborhood, and they all were glad we were there and told us so. I feel this reduces the chance of being shot on the job. Which is good, because we’re going back. Tomorrow. I recommend it.
This evening, neither of us can move, and everything hurts. But it’s a “good” hurt, in the same sense that Vegas heat is a “dry” heat.
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