Doing a Solve Is Key to Writing

Might've said, "You writers are always upset about someething."

One of the epiphanies I discovered was the reveal in building my crime story to its climax.  "No," screams the grammaraian in me.  "It's the revelation in the last paragraph!"

I do try to concentrate on my characters' dialogue.  Sometimes, the PI will want to do a "solve" on the crime, instead of finding a solution.  It's like those Hollywood scripters, asking to do a lunch and a meet.

The reveal, lunch and meet — all nouns demanding a verb — are a writing/speaking function that grates on the nerves when used in real life.  They’re called nominalizations and, God help us, they’re becoming mainstream dialogue.  Nominalization is a word that’s been switched from verb into noun.  But it reads well.  It’s a “solve” to the need to sound hip.  Now, we’re stuck with these conversion formations when sequestration becomes the “sequester” on the evening news.

A friend and fellow writer says she hates "This is key."  It's one in her repertoire of writing pet peeves.  "They make me want to scream ‘one more edit!’”

Can we agree to drop the "reveals" in our flash fiction, or do a sequestration?

Were You There?

You remember matchbooks.  Those ubiquitous lighters on which detectives found scribbled clues.  The keepsake of the place where your boss gave you a promotion.  The joint where this babe kissed you for the first time, and then became your wife.

Matchbooks have disappeared.  At the Hoya resort hotel in Taitung, Taiwan, last month I asked for one and the confused clerk handed me a souvenir notebook as a consolation.  At Moriarty’s pub in Philadelphia last week, the waitress said, “I’ll give you a light, but we don’t have matches.  Or swizzle sticks.” 

Matchbooks have gone the way of celluloid mirrors (1900s), plastic telephone dialers women used to keep from breaking a fingernail (1950s), and metal lunchboxes your kids used in fights on the school bus (1960s).  We all have Bic lighters now, or have quit smoking.

Matchbooks and matchboxes are the ephemera of memories.  The Equinox in Manchester, Vt., is where Ethan Allen held staff meetings a few centuries ago.  The Kitcho on West 46^th in New York was a weekly hangout for sushi when I was directing communications at Dun & Bradstreet.  The St. Regis on Fifth and 55^th St. was a marvelous place to sip a martini, but don’t ask for some simple cheese and crackers for dessert.  The Hôtel Royal in Evian, France, is the place I told the roadie for my meetings to sit down and simply watch the passersby.  The Waldorf’s Bull and Bear is where my wife and I repaired for drinks before a show or after I was stuck working late.  London’s Inter-Continental brings back memories of strolling through Hyde Park.  And on and on they go.

And so the years pass.  Time is the rip tide in the Hellgate, pushing on my seventy-odd birthdays.  Surging forward and backward, dragging me onto the rocks and then washing me back with the new currents.  Why hold on to these things?  Memories. 

Realists will tell you memories are like trying to describe your first kiss with the red-headed eighth grade girl in the movie theater.  It’s not the real thing.  It’s a memory, and you can’t trust that any more than you could trust your first girlfriend.  But the truth is that the memories may be better than reality.

We're Swimming in a Digital Sea

My apologies for being away so long.  It’s unconscionable, I know, but in the meantime I’ve published four stories, a novelette of 12,000 words and several reviews.  Two more acceptances came this week and the new writing continues.

In fact, writing “in a vacuum” is on my mind.  There’s a feeling in writing camps and among other frustrated scriveners that the Web interrupts their creative juices.  Could I write in a digital vacuum?  No, never!  I can’t any longer imagine a world without Facebook, the Internet, my iPhone and Wi-Fi.  I’m not a cut-and-paste writer, but there are sources that need to be looked up, facts to be checked, names and places to be verified.

I just completed a 3,000-word story in two days this week.  It started when I stumbled across a person named Cameo.  Great metaphorical name.  What’s a cameo?  Had to look it up for the tension between black and white, smooth and rough. 

Then Sheryl Sandberg (Leaning Forward) intruded with the insight that likability and success are correlated for men, but inversely affect women.  Okay.  Good tension for a woman entering my fictional affair with a professional acquaintance.

The other main character is named Batman, like my 9^th grade classmate in Pasadena.  Is there really such a name?  Yes, it’s Anglo-Saxon from Derbyshire and comes from bat, or boat.  Thank you houseofnames.com. 

I was troubled over my blah ending when my star-crossed lovers agree to see each other at the next year’s conference.  Image of a library book being returned to the lover?  Nah.  Then it came to me: the phrase signifying epiphany: “I once was lost and now am found.”  Yes!  Biblical?  No, it’s a lyric from “Amazing Grace.”  Thank you, Google.  All this research while banging out copy.

So, pooh on Yaddo and other writers’ retreats that have no Wi-Fi, little or no Internet access, that all but ban telephones.  I’m wired!  Junot Diaz wonders how many novels he will not have written because of his digital linkage.  How about you?

Gobbling Up the Whole World

Someone facetiously said that when an inveterate collector installs smoke alarms, the first one goes in the place he stores his collection.  I understand because I’m a collector without — I hope — being anally compulsive.

A few glasses from my collection of 300-plus.

I started with matchbooks in the ‘50s, especially those with Petty girl pinups.  And coins, stamps, arrowheads, junior pilot wings from airlines, and sugar packets with restaurant names as our family criss-crossed the U.S.  Now, more than ever, I relish those ephemera that have disappeared.  There were clever plastic styluses a woman used to dial a telephone without breaking a nail.  Pocket mirrors with advertising on their celluloid backs.  Toogles — the metal hooks with a faux jewel on the end women used to hang their pocketbooks on a table edge.  Other things are gone or going fast, like metal lunch boxes and fast food collectible glasses.

Collecting and the search was the basis for a short story I wrote about flea marketing (and love, with a happy ending) published in R.kv.r.y. magazine (at http://www.rkvryquarterly.com/?p=81).  My character of Archie Mezinis was “a boardwalk stroller, a country road rambler, a city street seeker.  His compulsion lay in taking an hour to walk up and down the lanes between the [flea market] tables.  His practiced eye could spot a three-inch Meissen figurine and know it was really Japanese, or a Murano cigarette time worth twice the asking price now that smoking was socially hazardous.  He didn’t sell the finds.  Instead, they went into a footlocker.  A single item in his pocket could validate his whole existence for the next week, reinforcing an existential question as to whether he was truly alive.”  Now, that’s collecting!

The value of collecting — and nature of love — were notably present in Cadillac Jack, Larry McMurtry’s haunting story.  Jack is a rodeo cowboy turned antiques scout who floats across the landscape of flea markets and auctions.  Unlike me and most collectors I know, McMurtry’s Jack was a womanizer and skirt chaser.   

Name a friend who doesn’t collect something.  At worst, it’s wanting to own one of everything in the world.  At best, it’s a desire to hold on to history.  Somewhere in between, it’s simply nostalgia.  I just don’t know where having over 300 glasses in my attic stands on the spectrum of collecting.  But you’re either part of this world — or not.  Ain’t no in-between.

 

Tempis Fugit, Write Concisely

Time slips through our fingers like (cliché warning!) sand.  Never enough of it to do all we want, especially never enough time to read. 

 

Just a reminder that Banned Books Week is Sept. 30-Oct. 6.



This is why flash fiction — generally accepted as stories of fewer than 1,000 words — is gaining in popularity.  It’s also accepted that flash is tougher to write successfully than a traditional short story.  Characters must be presented succinctly and in as few words as possible.  There is no space for meandering off into descriptions that don’t push the story line ahead.  Time is usually constricted to the immediate here and now and space is circumscribed. 

I gravitated to flash because the length and style can be applied to any genre — mystery, romance, thriller, “literary,” humor/satire, Western.  Unknowingly, I tripped innocently into writing and selling my first flash in 2007 with the sale of “Not My Wife” to the now-defunct mystery magazine Mouth Full of Bullets.  It started with my Hong Kong cop Jimmy Huang talking about a murder suspect….

Right now, I’m looking at this hwa-chiao, a Chinese-American tourist at the station house who’s bitching at Inspector Chan.  He claims he’s an important visitor.  He’s shaking his finger and saying, “I report my wife has disappeared, then I came back to find an imposter in my hotel room, not even a good duplicate.”  Of course, from his mouth it comes out like “fucking imposter” and “goddamn duplicate.”  Most perps use bad language to show their sincerity.  This guy is the slickest I’ve seen and I’ve seen a lot of them, from Guangzhou to Macao.  His missing wife was Shanghainese and one of the richest broads around.  Now he claims this woman at the hotel really isn’t his wife.

The inspiration for the story was discovering a fascinating condition known as Capgras syndrome, after the French shrink who discovered it.  It’s when you think a close relative or spouse has been replaced by an imposter, an exact double.  (Send me an e-mail if you’d like to know how Detective Huang solved the murder in 744 words.)

Since that time five years ago, I’ve written and published, in print and online, some 36 flash fiction pieces.  Half a dozen of them have appeared in one of the great online publications, Every Day Fiction.  You can read “Death in the Afternoon,” one of my early sales, at http://www.everydayfiction.com/death-in-the-afternoon-by-walter-giersbach/. 

Best part of writing for immediate gratification is that I trip over loads of prompts.  “Number Eleven” concentrated on the terrible coincidence of the number of letters in a phrase or name; “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover” by Paul Simon made me think of a 51^st event that might have won the Darwin award for stupidity; “Queen at the End of the Bar” (http://www.gumshoereview.com/php/Review-id.php?id=2915) was inspired by pollution causing biological changes in wildlife (and humans?); and “Where’s Old Bill Hughes” was prompted by a mythical passenger who has survived shipwrecks for 200 years. 

Now, someone help me with a story surrounding prosopagnosia, the neurological condition in which person doesn’t recognize faces.  I have a touch of that bad wiring in my brain, and can’t come up with a plot.



Ooopsie, I’m Stealing an Idea I Gave to my G-Daughter.

Liberal arts majors are a diminishing species of college student.  In fact, I’m proud of the pre-med track my granddaughter is taking at Temple University.  Specially proud that she’s a good writer.

But in five minutes today, a slew of ideas crossed my mind.  I whipped them up as a series of prompts for Megan to develop for her erstwhile blog.  I know she’ll put her own spin on them, but meantime I’ll try them out on you….

Some Sharp Scribbled Sticks for Pointers

Anne Murphy Paul, a science writer, said, “Character is created by encountering and overcoming failure.”  In reviewing How Children Succeed, by Paul Tough in the New York Times 8/26, she explains that American children miss essential life experiences.  They’re insulated by doting parents who “baby proof” them and shield them from adversity.  Poor children, however, get little support to help them turn obstacles into character-enhancing triumphs.

Q.  Are young adults today floating on a cloud that carries them over obstacles, preventing them from learning from life’s difficulties?  How do you view adversity?  As something to be avoided at all costs or as a learning experience? 

* * *

Many schools have given up teaching cursive writing.  Indeed, with all the texting and typing we do, cursive may be a relic of the past.  Some research at Indiana University has shown, however, that learning and using cursive leads to more adult-like brain development in children who write by hand.  There’s more information on a blog at http://campaignforcursive.blogspot.com.

Q.  Would you prefer that your kids learn cursive (even if they hate it).  And, do you think there’s still a place for people to use cursive?

* * *

Every generation looks back on youth and wonder, “Where is civilization heading?”  (Socrates, I’ve heard, also voiced this question.)  Young people seem predisposed to shake up their world — challenging authority, their teachers, government, culture.  Sure, there was the “quiet generation” in the 1950s, and people seem more restrained during hard economic times.  But the 1960s and ‘70s were a time of great demonstrations against the status quo.

Q.  Are young people predisposed to turn everything upside down, or should they just shut up and go along with the mainstream?

* * *

Most people seem to believe national prosperity leads to happiness, but one poll suggests a minority (47%) don’t believe money equates to “happiness.”  In fact, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently noted, “the ultimate objective of our policy decisions” is to promote well-being — a broader consideration than simply having more money.  The Himalayan country of Bhutan has even given up its “gross domestic product” measurement for a “gross national happiness” measurement.

Q.  Should the U.S. concentrate on physical, mental and spiritual health; time balance; social and community vitality; cultural strength; educational levels; living standards; good governance; and ecological vitality and drop all this effort to make more money?  How would we measure “happiness”?

Searching for the Real McCoy

       Forest Grove in the 1950s

My passion for authenticity began in Forest Grove, Oregon.  Mom ordered me to run down to Cooper’s Grocery to buy the maple syrup she’d forgotten.  I had to put down my new Amazing Tales comic and turn off Bobby Benson’s Saturday morning program from the B-Bar-B Ranch. 

“And hurry!” she said.  “I’m ready to put the pancake batter in the griddle.” 

 

I trudged the long block down to 21^st Street, another block past the Congregational Church, and a half block down Main Street to Cooper’s.  All blocks are long when your eight-year-old legs aren’t very big. 

Mr. Cooper was a daunting figure behind his brushy mustache and white apron.  Silently, he’d leave the counter and fetch the item you wanted.  I returned home with a bottle of Aunt Jemima syrup, thinking it was pretty clever to make a bottle in the shape of a woman wearing floor-length dress.  This was beauty combined with utilitarian value. 

Mom stared at me.  “Why, this isn’t Log Cabin!”   

“It’s the same thing,” I said defensively.  “Anyway, I like the bottle.” 

“It’s not one hundred percent maple syrup!” she explained, as though I had introduced heresy to our church service.  “It’s not the real McCoy.  Go back and tell Mr. Cooper you want the real thing.”

I plodded back.  Red-faced with embarrassment, I said, “Mom wants Log Cabin maple syrup.  The real McCoy.”  He nodded wordlessly and went down one of the dark aisles to fetch the syrup in the metal can shaped like a log cabin.  They were good cans, worth saving to build a town of homogeneous houses, a tabletop version of a pioneer town, but I already had several.  

The real thing was important.  Dad told cautionary tales of people in Germany so desperate they put chicory — whatever that was — and other foreign matter in their coffee.  He said, “During the war, the Germans were so poor they would eat grass.” 

Authenticity was paramount.  Usually.  Butter was always butter, for example, until Mom brought home a strange invention.  “It’s margarine,” she explained. 

“But it’s white,” I whined.

“It’s Parkay, and it’s white so people don’t think it’s real butter.  It’s the law that you can’t fool people into thinking something is the real McCoy.”

The plastic bag resembled cheese curd from the creamery in our town, but with the addition of a little orange dot of dye.  Invariably, I was ordered to massage the bag for half an hour until it all turned yellow.  We knew it wasn’t real, but it was novel and cheaper, and so a trade-off was made.

Choosing between the real and the novel was a dilemma as the 1950s appeared.  A Safeway supermarket opened two doors away from Cooper’s, and an entirely new item appeared: TV dinner:  A TV dinner meant, by definition, eating in front of a television. 

“We don’t have a TV,” Mom explained.  “They’re much too expensive, and there’s only one station.”

“C’mon, Ma, buy some TV dinners,” I urged, although the only TV we knew about flickered in the window at Montgomery Ward’s.  Several times she relented.  Somehow, the thin slices of turkey didn’t taste like Mom’s cooking, and the mashed potatoes had so few lumps we wondered what they were made of. 

The whole reality question came crashing back when my kids were growing up.  My wife cooks scratch, and we’ve always had the smallest bag of tins and bottles to recycle.  Meat, stir-fried vegetables, rice, salad — preparation takes a while, but the cooking goes together in a few minutes.  Then I’d watch my kids' friends at the table.

“What’s that?” one would ask my son, and nudge him in the ribs.

“Beans.”  Or spinach or broccoli or cabbage, usually with pieces of chicken, beef, or bacon.

“It doesn’t look like it.”  Then, they’d settle for white bread and margarine.  Reality had to come in brightly colored packages.

About that time, I was shocked to see Log Cabin had reduced the maple syrup content to 8 percent.  Coffee with chicory from New Orleans is now a delicacy.  Instant food became the norm for people who have a parking meter in their brain measuring time.

It’s tough finding the real McCoy in a world that’s accelerating.