Write, Wrote, Written


Phenomenon
July 27, 2007, 11:32 am
Filed under: Writing | Tags: , , , , , , ,

Sunday Scrinbblings # 70 

Those in the field knew it as “electronic voice phenomenon,” sounds captured on electronic recording devices unexplainable by conventional means–words spoken in an empty room or sentences uttered by an unseen participant in a conversation.  As a ghost hunter, he used the phenomenon to track the spirits of the departed.  He had once even recorded organ music in a room devoid of an organ.

In the February of 2006, he found himself in New Orleans.   The city had always teemed with the paranormal.  Practically every street corner had at least one dark, old house that creaked and swayed in the wind and could only be held together through supernatural intervention, and almost everyone had a story of encountering the unexplained, but after Hurricane Katrina the number of incidents skyrocketed.  Such outbreaks, he knew, could be triggered by concentrated human suffering.

In the preceding weeks, there had been strange happenings among the giant stone mausoleums and gardens of St. Louis Cemetery.  A night watchman saw a man and a woman, both fancily dressed, walking together along a path.  When he called to them, they stopped and looked at him, and vanished.  A group of noisy teenagers who snuck in one night got the scare of their lives when a hand reached through the wall of a vault and grabbed for one of them.  A homeless man was admitted to the hospital babbling about being attacked in the cemetery by a man with a sword, only to have the blade swipe through him without leaving a mark.

Many of his ghost-hunting colleagues used state-of-the-art equipment–ultra-sensitive microphones and computers that could parse out individual sources of sound.  He preferred using an old-fashioned tape recorder with a blank cassette tape.  He felt that it was a superior means of capturing the nuances of the human voice, and the lack of manipulation made the proof harder to refute.

The first night, he climbed over the wall of the cemetery, and he placed the tape recorder on the ground among a grouping of stone sepulchers, near where most of the sightings had been.  He pressed “record,” and he left it.

When he came to retrieve it the next day, though, he found that the cassette tape had not recorded anything.  It was as if someone had pressed “stop” immediately after he left the recorder.  He tested it several times to make sure that it was functioning.  When he had convinced himself that it was, he decided to try again that night.  The same thing happened, and the next night as well.  On the fourth night, he decided to stay in the cemetery and watch the recorder.

After he pressed “record,” he crouched down behind an ornate monument a small distance away.   He waited.  How long, he couldn’t tell.

The stillness was almost overwhelming as he sat there in the city of the dead, within a city itself half-abandoned.  Above the stone mausoleums that surrounded him, marked with names such as Thibodeaux, LaFarge, and Bellefontaine, loomed statutes of angels and saints, blackened with age and weather until they looked less like protectors and more like ill omens.  Above them, the sprawling branches of ancient oak trees blotted out the circular progression of the stars across the black sky. 

He was getting cold, and just when he was about to give up, he felt the tap on his shoulder.  He turned around to see a man dressed in a Confederate army uniform, with a rather nasty red gash running from just above his right eye to somewhere underneath his hat.

“Excuse me sir,” the ghost said clearly, ”What is that odd little box you keep leavin’ by my tomb every night?”

5 Comments


Mustache-Twirling
July 26, 2007, 1:31 pm
Filed under: Reading | Tags: , , , , , ,

Booking Through Thursday

Who’s the worst fictional villain you can think of? As in, the one you hate the most, find the most evil, are happiest to see defeated? Not the cardboard, two-dimensional variety, but the most deliciously-written, most entertaining, best villain? Not necessarily the most “evil,” so much as the best-conceived on the part of the author…oh, you know what I mean!

The one who came to mind for me was Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  She was cold, manipulative, sadistic, and power-hungry–everything a good villain should be (and she was downright shiver-inducing in Louise Fletcher’s portrayal of her in the movie).  The weird thing is that, even though she didn’t care anything about her patients, she probably didn’t see herself as evil.  No one really does when you think about it.  We all make justifications.  Hers were probably that she was maintaining order and keeping undesirables out of mainstream society.

The other villain I though of was Superboy-Prime from DC Comics Infinite Crisis story line.  It was one story I actually managed to follow, despite my comic book reading disability.  He was a teen-aged version of Superman from a parallel universe.  Shortly after he discovered his powers, his universe was destroyed.  Bummer for him.  He was compensated by being allowed to live in a “paradise” dimension, but it was a place where he could never grow into an adult or live up to his potential.  On top of that, shortly afterward, DC Comics introduced Moral Ambiguity ™ into its stories.  Superboy-Prime, having the limited reasoning ability of most teen-aged boys, couldn’t handle said Moral Ambiguity.  He broke into the “real” world to show that he was a better hero than the other superheroes.  However, again being an immature, hormone-riddled teen-aged boy, he let himself be manipulated by others in the furtherance of their not-so-benevolent agendas.  Then he got angry and accidentally killed someone.  Then he got really angry.  Before he was finally defeated, he caused a lot of death and destruction, but somehow, you find yourself feeling sorry for him, just a little.  Again, he didn’t think he was evil.  In fact he was doing what he thought was right. 

That’s what I think makes a good villain–and it’s a hard thing for a writer to do–someone who has justifications for his or her actions beyond just “being evil,” to the point where the reader may even identify with him or her.

2 Comments


Wicked Witches
July 19, 2007, 10:55 pm
Filed under: Writing | Tags: , , , , ,

Sunday Scribblings # 69 

As Gwyn sat on the very end of the hospital bed, she took his hand in hers.  She knew with her head that he didn’t know she was there.  The morphine made sure of that.  But her heart told her to stay and hold his hand anyway, just in case.  She felt the tears well up again.  Her mother, who had come with her, took her other hand.

“You know dear,” her mother said, ”if you hadn’t married him, you wouldn’t be responsible for his medical bills.”

Gwyn choked down a sob.  “And I wouldn’t have had the five wonderful years I’ve had with him either,” she replied.  She could have said a lot more.  Years of dealing with her mother had taught her that it wasn’t worth the energy.

Evan had a tumor in his brain.  Inoperable.  He was only thirty.  She had loved him from the moment she saw him that day in college crossing the quad.  He had curly dark brown hair that somehow always seemed like it needed to be cut, and he had blue eyes that could light a darkened room whenever he was excited.  He made her laugh, and they still sometimes stayed up past two in the morning just talking, but he was usually quiet, even shy, and a little on the bookish side, traits of which her mother did not approve.  She had wanted Gwyn to marry a schmoozer, someone who knew how to press the flesh.

“That’s how you get ahead in life,” her mother had told her, to which she responded by saying that her mother would be happier if she married a fraternity brother from Sigma Epsilon Chi.  “Well, at least then he’d be fun,” her mother had said.

After leaving the hospital, Gwyn went home.  Their house seemed cavernous now.  Without him there it was so empty.  She climbed the stairs to their bedroom.  After she shut the door, she slipped out of her clothes.  She then lit eight candles and placed them around the room.

In the flickering light, it was apparent that about half of the wallspace was covered in writing, but nothing recognizable to anyone else.  It was the old alphabet of the Celts, used before the Norsemen brought their runes, before the Christian missionaries brought their Latin letters.  Her Welsh father had taught it to her, along with the language that went with it.  She had received her gift from him, and he had taught her how to use it.  He taught her that words–spoken and written–have power, but only by knowing the complex symbolism, the meaning behind the meaning of the words, could one access that power.  She knew the sacred alphabet of the trees, as well as that of the flowers and of the birds.  She knew all the old strories of the heroes and the gods and the hidden codes that they contained as well.  What she was writing was both a poem and a magic spell, with layer upon layer of interconnected imagery.  It was the most complicated magic she had ever performed, all in a desperate attempt to save her husband.

It didn’t work.  By December, Evan’s conditioned had worsened.  The doctors said they couldn’t do anything else, and they sent him home to wait for the inevitable.  Evan’s parents had come from out of town and were staying in the guest room.  They were in the way a lot.  It was a strain on Gwyn for them to be there, but she understood that they needed to.  Her mother did not.

“I can’t believe I’m expected to entertain these people now,” she said to Gwyn on the phone one day, ”It’s December 21, and haven’t even finished all of my Christmas shopping yet.  I don’t have time to be a babysitter.”

Gwyn was busying herself with the dishes.  “No one asked you to, Mother, and you haven’t been babysitting them.”

“I took them shopping last week.”

“That doesn’t count.  You got to go shopping, too.”

“Well, I can’t believe they’re intruding on Christmas dinner.  My Christmas is just ruined.”

Gwyn let the glass she was holding slip out of her hands.  It shattered on the floor.  “Your Christmas?  Do you think Evan developed terminal cancer just to spite you?  We’re all upset here.  I don’t think this Christmas is going on anyone’s top ten favorite list.”

Gwyn didn’t even wait for her mother to chastise her for yelling.  She hung up the phone and ran upstairs.  She didn’t bother lighting the candles.  She just picked up her pencil and began to write.  Maybe it was her anger at her mother, or the fact that it was the Winter Solstice, but the words just came to her, faster and faster.  She wrote all night.  By the time the sun was rising, all of the walls were covered, and she finally collapsed.

After the first of the year, Evan began to get better.  An MRI revealed that the tumor was shrinking, and by April, there was no sign that it had ever been there.  Everyone said that it was a miracle.  By June, he was working again.  One Saturday afternoon, Gwyn’s mother stopped by their house.  Evan left.  He didn’t even make any pretense of liking her anymore. 

“Life is too short to put up with people like her,” he would tell Gwyn.

“I just wanted you to know that your cousin Emily is expecting another baby,” Gwyn’s mother told her.

“Really?  How many does that make?  Six or seven?”  Gwyn asked.

Her mother frowned.  “Four,” she answered, “Why do you have to be so negative?  I just think that it’s wonderful that she’s able to stay home with them and that her husband’s able to support them.  I guess you’ll always have to work.  You never know when Evan is going to get sick again.”

“Mother, Emily, her husband, and their brood live in a rented two-bedroom apartment in an area of town I won’t go to during the day.  We own a nice house in a nice neighborhood because I work.  Besides, I like my job.”

“Well, you’ll just never be completely secure.”

“No one is ever completely secure, Mother.  I could get hit by a bus tomorrow.  You could have a house fall out of the sky and land on you.”

“What is that suppose to mean?”

“Nothing, Mother.”

Her mother kept talking, but Gwyn wasn’t paying attention anymore.  She was busy thinking up a poem in her head.

8 Comments


Just Wild About Harry?
July 19, 2007, 11:35 am
Filed under: Life, Reading | Tags: , , , ,

Booking Through Thursday

  1. Okay, love him or loathe him, you’d have to live under a rock not to know that J.K. Rowling’s final Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, comes out on Saturday… Are you going to read it?
  2. If so, right away? Or just, you know, eventually, when you get around to it? Are you attending any of the midnight parties?
  3. If you’re not going to read it, why not?
  4. And, for the record… what do you think? Will Harry survive the series? What are you most looking forward to?

I never really got into the Harry Potter books, but I have enjoyed the movies. My wife is really into them. She’s pre-ordered the new book and is not leaving the house once it arrives this weekend.

I made the mistake of proposing to her the week after Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire came out.  With the ring in my pocket, she dragged me to five bookstores looking for a copy.  In order to actually propose, I made her take a “romantic” sunset walk with me on the beach.  It’s a good thing we had finally found a copy, I guess.  She was at least in a good mood when I asked.

2 Comments


Hairy
July 15, 2007, 10:55 pm
Filed under: Writing | Tags: , , , , ,

Sunday Scribblings # 68

He had been in some hairy situations before.  He had been outnumbered, outgunned, even outmaneuvered, but he had always managed to survive somehow.

He knew the basics, of course–garlic, sunlight, crosses, wooden stakes–but every encounter taught him something new.  One time he saved himself by running into a soup kitchen operated by a group of Russian Orthodox nuns.  That was the day he learned that all consecrated ground is safe, even if it isn’t a church.

Then there was the day in the library.  He had chosen a dusty table on the third floor in order to conduct some research into his situation.  Instead, he fell asleep.  When he woke up, it was dark, and he knew that he wasn’t alone.  Something was lurking among the deathly still stacks of books.  Somewhere in that room, down a shadow-laden row, something was waiting to kill him.  Slowly, deliberately, he gathered up his things and started toward the elevator.  His heart was pounding outside of his chest, but he forced himself not to run.  One foot in front of the other, not too fast and not too slow.  He glanced down each row he passed, praying he wouldn’t see the glowing red eyes he had become so familiar with.  Finally, he turned the last corner before the elevator, and that was when he impaled it on the pencil he was holding out in front of him.  That was the day he learned that a sharpened pencil counts as a wooden stake.

He still didn’t know why they were atracted to certain people, though.  He doubted that even they knew.  Like a moth to a flame, he liked to tell himself, but he knew better.  He was still alive because he had learned to defend himself, and also because he was very, very lucky.

But as hairy as of those situations were, they weren’t as hairy as the one in which he currently found himself:

He liked a girl, and she liked him back.

7 Comments


Celluloid
July 12, 2007, 12:15 pm
Filed under: Life, Reading | Tags: , , , , , ,

Booking Through Thursday

  1. In your opinion, what is the best translation of a book to a movie?
  2. The worst?
  3. Had you read the book before seeing the movie, and did that make a difference? (Personally, all other things being equal, I usually prefer whichever I was introduced to first.)

Ha! I must have had a premonition when I wrote yesterday’s post. Consider this the companion piece.  So, my answer to best all-time adaptation would have to be all three movies in the Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Yes, they made changes.  No, I didn’t agree with all of them.  But oh my God, what amazing movies.  What they absolutely nailed was the epic nature of the books, but balanced with the intimateness of the thoughts and feelings of the individual characters and their relationships with one another.

As for worst?  Any adaptation of a novel by Agatha Christie.  While I’ve seen a few, and I can’t complain about the acting, they usually have to simplify the plot to get the story to movie length, which sort of defeats the purpose.  They also usually delete characters or add characters or consolidate them together, and sometimes they even change the ending, which is never as clever as the original one.

I almost always prefer the book over the movie, because they’re just different media.  What works in one doesn’t necessarily work in the other, which is why I generally prefer the movie if its a movie-to-book adaptation.

3 Comments


Adaptation
July 11, 2007, 9:37 pm
Filed under: Life, Publishing, Random, Writing | Tags: , , ,

The imminent arrival of the new Harry Potter movie has me thinking about writing a screenplay versus writing a novel.  I have to admit, I’ve never really gotten into the books, but I have liked the movies. 

I tried my hand at screenwriting a few years ago.  Between my wife and me, we have all requisite “how-to” books.  Actually, I wasn’t half bad at it.  I’m a visual thinker, so in a lot of ways, I’m really suited for the medium.  When I write, I always start by envisioning the scene.  A lot of times, I think of how a scene would look if it were being filmed, and I describe what I see and hear.  However, after a time, I realized that screenwriting just wasn’t for me.

It’s partly a selfish motive.  Making a movie is a collaborative effort that involves the creative input of a lot of people.  Screenwriters get only a tiny sliver of the credit when a movie is a hit.  Compared to the actors and directors, they get hardly any recognition at all.  When a movie is a bomb, on the other hand, guess who gets blamed first?  I know that a lot of different people also put a lot of effort into making a novel successful, but the writer is generally the star of the show.

In addition, having lived in Southern California for a while now, I’ve met people in the movie industry, and the only real way to describe the culture is “pathological.”  It is about as far from glamorous as you can possibly be.  The best analogy I can muster is Hollywood Boulevard itself.  Everyone thinks of Hollywood as a wonderful, magical place.  Everyone wants to see the Walk of Fame and the Chinese Theatre.  In reality, the Chinese Theatre is a giant tourist trap.  Hollywood Boulevard, for most of its length, is nothing but tattoo parlors, “adult” stores, cheap souvenir shops, and abandoned buildings covered in graffiti.  All it takes to get a star on the Walk of Fame is a $50,000 check to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.  Not so glamorous.

Again, I know that the book publishing world has its share of issues, but compared to the quagmire that is the movie industry, the obstacles to becoming a successful, published novelist seem pretty navigable to me.  And there’s always movie rights.

1 Comment


Slippery
July 8, 2007, 10:32 pm
Filed under: Writing | Tags: , , , , ,

 Sunday Scribblings # 67

He was careful not to let things slip.  Sometimes, it was hard, and it was always exhausting.

For one, it meant lying to the ones he loved, like having to explain to his very Midwestern, Presbyterian parents why he carried a rosary, why a curcifix hung in every room of his apartment, why they couldn’t drink the bottled water in the refrigerator, and why he had suddenly developed an interest in collecting swords and crossbows.

It also meant following the rules: (1) never invite a stranger into your home; (2) never let your guard down when out after dark; and (3) always order the garlic dish.

Only twice did he have a close call.  Once his landlord let a repairman into his apartment.  Nevermind that the “repairman” could only come after sunset and didn’t bring any tools.  The only thing that had saved him was the fact that he had fallen into the habit of taking a step back after opening a door.  His intruder came rushing through the door and smashed into the wall.  It gave him just enough time to get inside and get his hands around the hilt of the nearest sword.  The next day, after a heated conversation with his landlord, he bought his first crucifix to hang in his apartment. 

The other time, he got carried away with a date.  She was beautiful and intimidating as hell.  She had asked him out.  A late dinner after a show led to one of the most intense make-out sessions he had ever had–right on the steps of the Supreme Court.  He almost didn’t notice the dark figure upon them until it was too late.  She thought the attacker was a mugger.  He knew better.  Her mace didn’t work, but the vial of holy water he hurled at the man’s face did the trick.

Then one summer evening, he saw a girl sitting in the coffee shop down the street from his apartment.  It was a frequent haunt for him.  He had never seen her there before.  She was cute, he thought, but what made him notice her was the way she subconciously ripped her napkin into tiny pieces, the same way he did when he was nervous.  He also took note of the crucifix around her neck, the rosary beads hanging out of the pocket of her jeans, and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer comic she was reading. 

He would have though it all oddly ironic except for what she did with her compact mirror.  She pulled it out of her purse, and she held it up as if she were checking her hair and her make-up, but he could tell from where he was sitting that she was looking at the reflections of other people in the coffee shop,  as if to make sure that they all had reflections.

He stood up and walked over to her table, and, smiling, he introduced himself.  For the first time in a long time, he thought that maybe he wasn’t alone.  And if there was someone else, then maybe he could finally stop worrying so much about letting something slip.

4 Comments


The Great American Novel
July 5, 2007, 2:52 pm
Filed under: History, Life, Reading | Tags: , , , , ,

Booking Through Thursday

What, in your opinion, is the (mythical) Great American Novel? At least to date. A “classic,” or a current one–either would be fine. Mark Twain? J.D. Salinger? F. Scott Fitzgerald? Stephen King? Laura Ingalls Wilder?

It doesn’t have to be your favorite book, mind you. “Citizen Kane” may be the “best” film, and I concede its merits, but it’s not my favorite. You don’t have to love something to know that it’s good.

Now, I know that not all of you are American–but you can play, too! What I want from you is to know what you consider to the best novel of YOUR country. It might be someone the rest of us haven’t heard of and, frankly, I think we’d all like to get some new authors to read.

In fact, while we’re at it–I’m curious about the geographical make-up of this meme. So, while you’re leaving your link to your post, tell us where in the world you are! (For the record, I’m in New Jersey, USA.)

 I’m in Southern California, but my heart’s not here.

I grew up in the South.  My parents grew up in the South.  Their parents grew up in the South.  For me, the answer to this question would be To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.  Thankfully, the South has changed since the 1930’s, but my grandparents and my parents remember things the way they’re depicted in the book.  And the issues that it adresses are still there, all this time later.  In my own lifetime, I’ve seen the damage poverty and racism can do.

But I know its doesn’t have to be that way, and for me, To Kill a Mockingbird has always been about hope that people can reach across those race and class boundaries. 

4 Comments


What’s Your Sign?
July 1, 2007, 10:37 pm
Filed under: Random, Writing | Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Sunday Scribblings # 66

Aquarius:  loyal, inquisitive, generous, ambitious, eccentric, moody, erratic, aloof.  So, she thought, that makes him either a selfless humanitarian or a sociopath.

“What’s your sign?”  It was such a silly thing to have done.  She had never been the kind to hit on a guy in a bar.  But, then again, since moving to the city, she had done a lot of things she had never thought she’d do.  She saw him across the crowded room and a voice in her head told her to go for it.  She just wished she had come up with a better opening.  She was surprized when he smiled and answered her.  She liked his smile, she decided.  He had good teeth. 

From there, the conversation continued in fits and starts.  She was nervous, but eventually, he put her at ease. 

“Hey, listen,” he said after about an hour, “I know a sushi place around the corner.  They’re open late, and they make a mean dragon roll.  Why don’t we continue talking there?  Have you ever had sushi before?”

“No,” she repled.

“Well, this will be an experience, won’t it?”

She let him do most of the talking at dinner.  He was funny and charming, and he had a nice laugh.  He talked about how much he hated his job, but loved living in D.C.  He asked about her, but she deflected most of his questions.  When he asked her where she worked, she just told him that she had just lost her job because the hours didn’t work for her anymore.  He paid, and she thanked him for the delicious meal, though she hadn’t eaten that much.  After dinner, he suggested a walk on the National Mall.  It was only a few blocks away.  She agreed.

“It’s completely different at night, isn’t it?” he said, “but it’s still beautiful.”

It was beautiful.  The Reflecting Pool splashed the light of the full moon onto the trees lining the Mall, giving them a soft, almost supernatural glow.  He told her ten interesting facts about the Washington Monument and told another joke or two.  He made her laugh, but then he startled her when he grabbed her wrist, and leaned in close, so that he could whisper in her ear.

 ”You know, my apartment’s not far from here,” he said, “Why don’t you come by for one more drink?”

She hesitated.  She couldn’t believe that she was thinking about doing what she was in fact thinking about doing.  She couldn’t possibly.  She had only met him, but she had  never had such an amazing evening before.  The possibility of more evenings like it excited her.

He unlocked the door his apartment and pushed it open.

“Go right in,” he said, “It’s not much, but I’ve done what I can.”

The scene inside would have taken her breath away, if she had any breath.  One entire wall was covered in swords.  There was a Japanese katana blade, what appeared to be a medieval broadsword, and a curved Turkish scimitar.  No fewer than three crossbows adorned another wall.  The shock was just setting in when she heard a strange noise behind her.  She turned around to see him holding a neon orange pressurized water gun.  It must have been lying on the table just inside the door.

“You shouldn’t have let me touch your wrist,” he said.  “No pulse.  And, I know the gun looks stupid.  I’m sorry it’s not more dignified, but it is filled with Holy Water, and it will finish you off just the same.”

He was an aquarius:  ambitious, eccentric, moody, erratic, aloof.  Unfortunately for her, that made him a selfless humanitarian.

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