Writing

Performance Vs. The Wizard of Oz

Author: June 28, 2012 2 Comments

THIS IS NOT THE PROBLEM.

THIS IS NOT THE PROBLEM.

A few years ago, The Duchess decreed that we would take a trip to Paris, as wives are wont to do. I was, of course, powerless against her wishes, despite the fact that my own desire to visit the City of Lights hovered around zero – nothing against the city, of course; I’m just unconvinced that it matters whether I visit or not, and I can be overcharged for things by rude people right here in the New York City metro area. Still , Jeff merely pawn in game of life, so I started making my preparations for the trip, which included learning some French. I have a personal rule that states I must at least have some grasp of the language of the country I am traveling to. I will not be one of those American tourists who runs around saying “English, motherfucker: Do you speak it!??!”

I worked on French for months. I do not have a brain designed for foreign languages, so this was a struggle, but I did manage to learn at least basic French, enough to get by on. Proudly, I went to Paris with my wife … and promptly choked. Every time I tried to use my French, I screwed it up. Mispronounced things. Forgot words and phrases. Every attempt ended with a sardonic Parisian asking me if I was American, then speaking in English. Slowly, as if to a retarded boy.

I am not a Performer.

Some people thrive on the Performance, the pressure of having to do something in front of other people on demand. Some writers are like this. They can elevator-pitch a story to an editor in the middle of a conversation, they can sell an idea. I’ve never been good at that. I much prefer to keep my ideas to myself and then reveal them when I feel more confident, when I have something more or less complete and more or less coherent.

The downside to this, of course, is that sometimes you only find out that people think your idea is crap after you’ve spent 300 hours and tons of energy on developing it. This can be a bit of a kick in the balls. Believe me, it’s happened to me. I once wrote an entire novel based on a vague conversation with an editor only to have that editor send it back with a dead rat in a box. True story. Figuratively.

You have to work with what you’ve got. I know I’ll never be the guy who can make you want to read a book of mine based solely on my passionate pitch:

YOU: So, what’s the new book gonna be about? Vampires? Sluts? SLUTTY VAMPIRES?

ME: Well, um, I had this, er, idea, after eating too much Chinese Food and drinking too much whiskey – which, you know, never ever eat Chinese Food with whiskey it DOES NOT go together well AT ALL – and so I had this idea, where this guy, like nothing he does feels right to him, you know, like people tell him something’s fun and he tries it and it isn’t fun at all it’s awful and he eats things people tell him to eat and he hates it and stuff like that and slowly he starts to realize this is because everyone is lying to him all the time and oh! I forgot about the aliens.

YOU: Aliens?

ME: Yeah! They sing. And that’s pretty much it.

YOU: …

ME: I’ll let myself out.

YOU: Yeah, I can’t even look at you right now.

Oh well. When I do finish a book and deliver it to folks, I usually get at least 85% the reaction I want. Which isn’t bad! The point is, sometimes I’m pretty sure the idea, diffuse and vague in my head, is actually pretty good, it’s just my inability to speak it coherently that’s the problem. My inability to speak coherently has been a problem since I was 13, actually. Which, coincidentally is the year I discovered liquor. Funny, that.

Deep Thoughts & Pronouncements, Writing

The Sex Scene in “Lifers”

Author: May 13, 2012 1 Comment

Lifers by Jeff SomersOn the insane assumption that any one cares, I thought I’d tell the story of the sex scene in Lifers, my first published novel.

It wasn’t in the draft submitted to the publisher (a cold submission, with no agent, pure slush to a tiny publishing company), which is amazing, because the final, published word count for Lifers was 39,616. Thirty-nine thousand words. This barely qualifies as a novella, much less a novel. So the fact is, the book was even shorter when I originally submitted it. The fact also is, I am a lazy, lazy man. If I ever become supersuper famous and powerful as an author, expect my novels to start being about 5,000 words long and written in bullet-point fashion, in huge 24pt type. Or possibly expect to be contacted by my people to write some novels for me, which might be better, if slightly more expensive.

But I digress.

When the publisher contacted me about buying the book, they were looking at it from a “Gen-X” point of view. For those of us too young to be Gen-X, this was back when being a twenty-something in the 1990s meant you were automatically a desirable market. As opposed to being middle-aged in the 2010s and realizing no one wants to sell you anything. YOU BASTARDS! MARKET YOUR AWFUL ENERGY DRINKS TO MEEEEEEEEE!!!

When I spoke to the editor on the phone about the book, he told me he thought the only thing the story needed was, in a word, sex. This was his sole editorial note. Looking back, this should have been some sort of warning sign for me.

Anyways, I was delighted with the offer to publish, of course. They were offering me $1000 as an advance, which in 1999 dollars was actually like $1003 today, and as a percentage of my gross annual income was about 75%. So, yeah, I was excited. Do you know how many packages of Ramen Noodles you can buy for $1000? LOTS.

I thus took his sexy suggestion seriously, though I wrestled with it for a bit. After all, I’d never been seriously edited before, and was generally convinced of my innate genius. The book was perfect! This clashed with my desire for the immense riches my debut novel was sure to generate for me (HA!), so I decided I would read the book over, see if there was a place for such a scene, and if so, write it. Then I could decide if I’d just ruined a perfect story, or improved it, or maybe just left it neutral.

In the end, I wrote a scene wherein the narrator has a one-night stand. It’s ridiculous and humiliating in that he’s almost not a voluntary player in it, and I ended up liking the scene a lot, as it speaks to the character a bit and it’s also one of the few scenes in the book where the narrator is apart from the other main characters. It ended up being a good addition to the story, though I don’t give that much credit to the editor at my publisher, who, I don’t think, even read the new manuscript when I turned it in. For him, he just wanted some sex in the story because young people like sex. End of story.

Of course, I was not put on this world in order to write erotica. Believe me – please! – this is not my purpose in life. We should all, in fact, take a moment to bow our heads and offer a moment of thanks that I have not been asked to repeat this experiment.

The lesson there, if there is one, is that any feedback or revision to a story has the possibility of improving the story. It doesn’t matter what the genesis of the note is. All that matters is what you do with it. That and that you can, apparently, sell a 40,000-word “novel” without an agent, a clue, or any clear idea of what a contract means. Incompetence, ho! And also, too, writing a sex scene involving stuffed animals, shame, and painful regret is not, apparently, sexy. At all. Or so I’ve been told.

Lifers is now available for $0.99 on Kindle and Nook, by the way. Just sayin’.

Filthy Lucre, Writing

The Futility of Writing

Author: May 3, 2012 5 Comments

The following originally appear in The Inner Swine, Volume 11, Issue 4.

until drops of blood form on your forehead

The Futility of Writing

Brain Surgeon. No, really.

Brain Surgeon. No, really.

PIGS, when I was but a wee little one in Jersey City, before the standing-on-a-corner-drinking-blackberry-brandy period, I wanted to be a brain surgeon. The reasons for this desire are now obscure; possibly it had something to do with The Six Million Dollar Man. Possibly it was simply an easy answer to the endless questioning by tiresome adults about my career plans—adults were always asking us kids what the fuck we wanted to be when we grew up, and Brain Surgeon was a good response as it got a lot of grins and impressed gestures from the questioner. I coasted along with the whole Brain Surgeon thing for a few years, probably giving my poor parents—who probably hoped I’d magically evolve into some sort of athletic prodigy and earn scholarships to pay for school—a lot of sleepless nights as they contemplated the roughly 55 years of medical school such a profession requires.

Of course, I didn’t really want to be a brain surgeon. The only ‘profession’ I’ve ever desired is Writer, and as every writer in the world knows, the ‘profession’ of Writer is similar to the ‘profession’ of Sorcerer: Very cool sounding but usually only existing in movies and fantasy stories. Because no one makes any money at writing, ever, so it isn’t really a profession. But when I was six I didn’t realize writing was something I might someday palm off as a profession while standing on line for my food stamps, so Brain Surgeon it was.

And then, some time around grade three, I began to slowly realize that in order to become a Brain Surgeon, I was going to have to master math. Shortly after that came the aforementioned  standing-on-a-corner-drinking-blackberry-brandy period, and that was the last I thought about a career until I was twenty-two, waking from a lengthy alcoholic haze and realizing I needed a job, and right quick. And also too a change of clothes and a bath.

Somewhere in between, I sold my first novel, White Rabbit.

(more…)

Bullshit, The Inner Swine, Writing

My Favorite Poem

Author: March 29, 2012 0 Comments

Call Me

The eager note on my door said “Call me,”
call when you get in!” so I quickly threw
a few tangerines into my overnight bag,
straightened my eyelids and shoulders, and

headed straight for the door. It was autumn
by the time I got around the corner, oh all
unwilling to be either pertinent or bemused, but
the leaves were brighter than grass on the sidewalk!

Funny, I thought, that the lights are on this late
and the hall door open; still up at this hour, a
champion jai-alai player like himself? Oh fie!
for shame! What a host, so zealous! And he was

there in the hall, flat on a sheet of blood that
ran down the stairs. I did appreciate it. There are few
hosts who so thoroughly prepare to greet a guest
only casually invited, and that several months ago.

— Frank O’Hara

Jesus. If I could write one thing like that, I’d die pretty happy.

Deep Thoughts & Pronouncements, Someone Else's Writing, Writing

The! Inner! Swine!

Author: January 24, 2012 0 Comments

The Inner Swine Vol 17, Issue 3/4The new issue of my zine The Inner Swine is ready. I have a pile of paper here that is slowly being transformed into issues, which will then slowly be folded and stuffed into envelopes and mailed out. The key word being slowly.

In the mean time, the Kindle and Nook editions are available right now! Technology is amazing. The issue is 100pp long and the Kindle/Nook versions are each 99 cents and differ from the print only in that they lack most of the images. Go buy them and tell me I am a genius:

KINDLE

NOOK

Thank you for your support.

BAM!, The Inner Swine, Writing

Showing

Author: January 21, 2012 4 Comments

Breakin' BADThere are, believe it or not, still people in this world who do not own a television and like to communicate this fact with pride, as if it underscores their intellectual bona fides. Now, I don’t much care if you own or watch TV, or what you watch, but I have always believed that condemning an entire media as substandard is just intellectual vanity. It’s proving a negative: You don’t own a TV because you are too smart to fall for that dreck.

Whatever. I’ve been watching Breaking Bad from AMC recently. As with most things, I am several years behind the curve. I am not, as the kids said in 1985, hip. Whenever I start to hear about a good TV show I play coy, refusing to check it out until 5 years later. Part of this is because I myself have intellectual vanity and I like to think that if I haven’t discovered it independently it can’t be good. So if I wait long enough after you tell me about it, I can pretend I found it all by myself, because I am a genius.

Blogging ain’t pretty.

Anyways, after years of reading that Breaking Bad is a great show, I started watching it a few weeks ago. It is, in fact, a great show. I’m in the middle of Season 3 right now, so I haven’t finished the run, so much of what I’m about to discuss may be incorrect if you’ve watched it all the way through, who knows. Still, 66% of the way through, I’m damn impressed, because Walter White may be one of the greatest depictions of a character in history. Not necessarily the best character, but the best depiction of a character. Because this show takes that old writing class saw “show don’t tell” and makes it into a work of genius.

Spoilers, for those who care, follow.

(more…)

Deep Thoughts & Pronouncements, Someone Else's Writing, Writing

Sho’ Stories

Author: January 6, 2012 6 Comments

Short Stories in HereSo, I write a lot of short stories. I enjoy writing them, and have a rule that I write a complete story every month. This doesn’t mean every story is genius, or even good: I’ve got plenty of stinkers. Some ideas were never that good to begin with (when pressuring yourself to write a story a month you sometimes have to go with whatever moldy inspiration you have), some good ideas aren’t handled well, and sometimes I have a good idea and a good beginning and just run out of time. On the 31st of the month (or the 30th, or 28th, or 29th) sometimes you just have to sculpt that Plane Crash Ending, or that Sub-O’Henry WTF ending, and go with it.

This is useful for me for three reasons: One, it keeps me on my toes, forcing me to work quickly and get ideas organized into a story fast. Sure, sometimes the story has a terrible ending, or a weak development, but it’s useful to be able to sketch out a recognizable concept in 3-4 weeks. Two, it serves as a meta-notebook of ideas. Instead of opening some small moleskin and finding something scrawled in there like MAGIC BABY MARBLES and trying to figure out what the fuck I thought would make a great story idea, I actually have the stories. At any time I can go back and revise, enlarge, or steal from them. Finally, sometimes by some miracle I actually write a story in 3-4 weeks that I think is good enough to polish and submit.

This year I managed 13 stories, actually, writing two in August. One or two have potential and might end up plaguing editors around the globe this year. The rest are kind of meh, but then you never know: Sometimes I go through the meh pile and find something that I can’t believe I didn’t think was great at first.

I submit my stories pretty freely; I write the damn things, I like to see them published, and I like to get paid for them when I do. Why not? This whiskey ain’t buying itself. As I’ve mentioned before I used to be a damn machine when it came to submitting stories: In 2002 I submitted 107 stories. One-hundred and seven. Jebus. How is that even possible? Of course, I sold 4 stories that year, so there might be a lesson there.

In 2011 I submitted 35 stories. Not 35 different stories, just 35 submissions. A slight improvement over last year’s 31. but I didn’t sell any of them. I got some interesting rejections, but no bites. This is the first year without a story sale since 1998, and officially made 2011 one of the worst Years of Jeff in recorded history. Sigh.

Oh well. For 2012 I aim to add 1-3 new stories to the submission pile, and try to hit 50 subs this year. And of course, 12 more new ones in the ole’ notebook, even if they all end with David Lynch Mindscrews.*

*I enjoy taking mild writing techniques and giving them names that could also be sexual acts a’la a Dirty Sanchez. Don’t judge me.

Deep Thoughts & Pronouncements, Filthy Lucre, Writing

Happy Endings Resistance

Author: December 29, 2011 3 Comments

The Final EvolutionSo the other day I got a note from a reader titled “The Final Evolution”:

“I love the ending. I don’t think it could have ended any other way and it was excellent. Not every story has a happy ending, and I am glad you didn’t shy away from that like many authors would.”

I actually got a bit of resistance to the ending of the Avery Cates series because it’s kind of dark and lonely and soul-crushing. Despite the fact that the main character is pretty much an evil bastard who kills folks for a living, for convenience, and for petty revenge — not to mention a guy who view violence as the only way to deal with even trivial annoyances like chatty people — a lot of readers wanted a happy ending for him. I even introduced a vague romantic possibility for him in the final book mainly to enjoy the sound of hearts breaking when he didn’t end up with her. Ah, I am cruel. Like Caligula, only sans the power to deify myself.

People want the happy ending. This is, I think, to justify a) your time investment in the story and b) (in this case as in others, but not always) your identifying with a sociopath and rooting for him. Avery is a terrible person. Wishing that he ends his days with a girlfriend and modicum of peace is so wrong, so unjust, I simply couldn’t do it. You’re lucky I didn’t end the book with him being torn apart by wolves while he quoted the Nic Cage Bees scene from The Wicker Man:

This restraint can be laid at the feet of my own affection for the character. I love Avery, despite his mass-murderin’ and being semi-responsible for the end of the world and all.

So, it was great to get this email. Someone gets it! Thank goodness, because I thought I was going insane. What’s that, voices? I am insane. Shut up.

Deep Thoughts & Pronouncements, Writing

A Xmas Miracle!

Author: December 26, 2011 3 Comments

So, the other day I was kvetching about writing on the road and how little actually gets done, I did, in fact, get some work done on the planes yesterday. I’ve remarked before how airplane travel, with its associated miseries, actually inspires good work from me. All my life, the more bored and unhappy I am, the better the writing I do is.

Then, of course, after knocking down a few thousand words on the plane and feeling like a genius, I had a mishap with the computer and the thumb drive and, yep, didn’t save any of it.

After the Sky Marshals released me from restraints and sent me back to my seat with a stern warning, I sat weeping for a while. I wept all the way home, which may have something to do with the speeding ticket and accident. And then, a miracle! I sat down later that not and re-wrote the section, and goddamn if it wasn’t better.

This doesn’t happen often, to me. Usually lost work is always enshrined in my memory as superior. I’ve written and lost some award-winning scenes, bubbas. Usually when I sit down to re-create them, they are pale imitations. Not this time! This time I actually came out on top. IT’S A XMAS MIRACLE!

Look for the HallMark Original Movie next year: The Alcoholic Writer Has A Good Day. Hopefully this will inspire a series of Alcoholic Writer feel-good movies. I could play myself!

More Shit I Gotta Do, Writing