Why Write for the Stage?

For a change, money is not the answer.

Oh, one can make a buck or two writing plays, and there’s a refreshing point in one’s career where the contracts rise to the four- or five-digit level. And, if you write a hot play that does well at the Humana Festival and becomes a favorite among the regional theatres and you get a write-up in American Theatre magazine and make a dozen other perfect bank shots…you could see a pretty good year or two. Until the next flavor comes along. Winning a Pulitzer helps. Maybe.

But even the folks ostensibly making it usually have to supplant their incomes, often through teaching or, lately, writing for television…which is one reason why the writing quality for non-broadcast programs has increased so…well, dramatically.

What do you have left if you take money out of the picture? Control. And love.

Control because, unlike film or television, where you’re pretty much writing for hire, a playwright can say no. No to a wrongheaded rewrite. No to changing a line because it might conceivably upset the second cousin of someone who knows a backer. No because an actor can’t wrap their head around the words (even though they can play the rest of the part well). Never underestimate the peace of mind that comes from carrying the trump card (though it also means you have to accept the consequences). That is, until real money gets involved. Then you may have a contract, but you’re still playing three-dimensional chess.

Honestly? It always feels better to say yes: someone’s helping make your play better and handing you a gift. And you get to walk away with it, red-handed.

Which leads, oddly enough, to love. Even though you need a team to make theatre—a directors to realize your words and actors to voice them, along with a host of designers and other wizards, theatre presents a remarkably direct connection between the writer and the audience. One would think books create the strongest bonds, given the immediacy between words and thought, but books lack the feedback loop theatre provides.

See, it’s one thing for a reader to talk with you or correspond with you after the artistic transaction has occurred (i.e., they’ve read your stuff), and it’s another to hear an audience laugh, react, or, if you’ve done your job well, applaud. Your art has to happen in real time. When it works, you get this incredible rush. There’s some kind of direct line between an audience reaction and one’s euphoria receptors. (I can only imagine what it’s like for a rock musician to hit a chord and feel the air move through those speakers and the audience flow.) It’s also a serious bummer when you throw it out there and get nothing. (Which is why stand-up comedians are incredibly courageous. And maybe a little crazy.)

That’s your drama: whether or not the play will live or die, right in front of you, with everybody watching. The real kick arises from the tension, from that sense that you’re doing something genuinely dangerous, which might forever change you, for good or ill. The play might win itself a gold star in the memory achieves, or you might bury it at the bottom of the box. (A pointless gesture: the real embarrassments stick with you as much as the triumphs.)

And, once in awhile, the connection transcends getting a laugh or a gasp. Something really mysterious happens. It’s almost like the bit in a movie where the director uses slow motion to convey intensity or rapidly occurring action. The air drains from the room. There’s a kind of silence, despite the words—your words—being spoken and put in motion. You know and your cast and crew knows and your audience knows that you’re all in the zone: you’re experiencing something special, that will never, ever happen again the same way. Something akin to satori. Something…profound.

Those don’t come around all that often, but, when they do…. Man. That gets addictive. Any playwright who tells you they don’t feel a little buzzed witnessing that transaction is either being slightly less than honest (with you or with themselves) or has been doing it for so long, in so many places, that they’ve built up a certain tolerance. It happens.

Make no mistake, we’re talking dopamine, serotonin, and all those other juicy brain chemicals that make or break your day. Maybe the equation should be: control, love, and addiction. You need just one more good show. One more. Then you can call it. Say you’ve done it. Just that one special gig that’ll really fly high and wild and fully realize all of your….

Congratulations. You’re a theatre junkie.

Tales from the Ice(pack)...continued

Where we last left Luke Murphy, he’d been seriously injured playing hockey, did not know if he’d ever return to the sport, and began to ponder his alternatives. One of those involved taking up the pen...

From Professional Hockey Player to Published Novelist, Part Two

I really enjoyed the process: coming up with a plot, developing characters and organizing a setting, problem and conclusion. It only lasted a couple of weeks, and once we were done, I kind of missed inventing, creating my own little world and characters.

 I remember walking to my bedroom one morning and seeing my roommate’s laptop sitting on the desk, and I thought…why not?

I sat down at the desk, took the characters my girlfriend and I had created, and wrote an extension to the story we had written together.

I didn’t write with the intention of being published. I wrote for the love of writing, as a hobby, a way to pass the time. Even after my eye healed up, and I returned to hockey, I continued to hobby write through the years, honing my craft, making time between work and family obligations.

Then I made a decision to take my interest one step further. I’ve never been one to take things lightly or jump in half way. I took a full year off from writing to study the craft.

I constantly read, from novels in my favorite genres to books written by experts in the writing field. My first two purchases were “Stein on Writing”, a book written by successful editor Sol Stein, and “Self-Editing for Fiction Writers” by Renni Browne and Dave King.

I read through these novels and highlighted important answers to my questions. My major breakthrough from Stein’s book was to “Show don’t Tell”. I had to trust my readers. I even wrote that phrase on a sticky note and put it on my computer monitor.

The Self-Editing book helped me learn how to cut the FAT off my manuscript, eliminating unnecessary details, making it more lean and crisp, with a better flow. I learned to cut repetition and remain consistent throughout the novel.

I continually researched the internet, reading up on the industry and process “What is selling?” and “Who is buying?” were my two major questions.

I attended the “Bloody Words” writing conference in Ottawa, Canada, rubbing elbows with other writers, editors, agents and publishers. I made friends (published and unpublished authors), bombarding them with questions, learning what it took to become successful.

Feeling that I was finally prepared, in the winter of 2007, with an idea in mind and an outline on paper, I started to write DEAD MAN`S HAND. It took me two years (working around full time jobs) to complete the first draft of my novel.

The first person to read my completed manuscript was my former high school English teacher. With her experience and wisdom, she gave me some very helpful advice. I then hired McCarthy Creative Services to help edit DEAD MAN’S HAND, to make it the best possible novel.

I joined a critique group, teaming up with published authors Nadine Doolittle and Kathy Leveille, and exchanging manuscripts and information. Working with an editor and other authors was very rewarding and not only made my novel better, but made me a better writer.

When I was ready, I researched agents who fit my criteria (successful, worked with my genres, etc.) and sent out query letters. After six months of rejections, I pulled my manuscript back and worked on it again. Then in my next round of proposals, I was offered representation by the Jennifer Lyons Literary Agency.

After months of editing with Jennifer, and more rejections from publishers, my dream was finally realized in April, 2012, when I signed a publishing contract with Imajin Books (Edmonton, Alberta).

Even today, a year after publishing my first book, I’m stall amazed at the direction my life has taken. Never in my wildest dreams would I have believed I would someday get paid to write books. Sometimes life can be impossible to predict.

_________________________
For more information on Luke and his work, go to: www.authorlukemurphy.com, or check him out on Facebook www.facebook.com/#!/AuthorLukeMurphy or Twitter www.twitter.com/#!/AuthorLMurphy

Tales from the Ice(pack)

This post brings a little something different to splattworks: a guest post by novelist Luke Murphy (right). He tells a good story: that of a writer discovering the craft a little later than many of us (who began producing chapbooks in crayon); and he set his goal, stuck to it, followed the recommended steps…and it paid off. Imajin Books published his novel Dead Man's Hand in 2012.

I felt Luke’s story fit well with one of splattwork’s missions—to serve authors and to discuss the trade—as it to serves as kind of a tonic for the many writers, slogging along, who wonder if the work will ever pay off. And it’s also kind of hair-raiser, dealing with one of those low points in life where the clouds look pretty dark. But Luke tells it better than I do; so I need to hand him the wheel.. I’m publishing Luke’s piece in two parts, to give him room to lay it out. Thanks, Luke, for the kind offer to step in and for putting up with me as an editor. 

The good Mr. Murphy lives in Shawville, Quebec, with his wife, three daughters, and a pug. He played six years of professional hockey before retiring in 2006. Since then, he’s worked a range of communications jobs, from sports columnist to radio journalist, before earning his Bachelor of Education degree (Magna Cum Laude).

For more information on Luke and his work, go to: www.authorlukemurphy.com, or check him out on Facebook www.facebook.com/#!/AuthorLukeMurphy or Twitter www.twitter.com/#!/AuthorLMurphy

From Professional Hockey Player to Published Novelist, Part I

It can almost be said with certainty that I didn’t follow the path of the average writer. As a child, I never dreamed of writing a best-seller, never aspired to write the next classic novel, I wanted to be an NHL superstar…period. In fact, the only time I ever thought about writing was when my teachers at school made me.

In 2000, my second year of pro hockey, after a decent training camp with the Louisville Panthers of the American Hockey League, I was sent to play in Oklahoma City. I know, hockey in Oklahoma, who would have thought, right?

I was having a very good preseason when in the third exhibition game, disaster struck.

I was forechecking on a Tulsa Oiler defensemen, a seemingly innocent play. As he shot the puck out of his end, the blade of his stick came up from the follow-through and struck me in the left eye. I went down immediately from the contact. I don’t know how long I was out for, but when I came to, I was on all fours, staring down at a massive puddle of blood. There was no pain, but the shock of seeing the blood with my right eye, and unable to see out of my left, drew me close to panic. I was terrified.

I later found out that the results of the injuries were: a broken nose, slit eyelid, scratched cornea and deeply bruise cheekbone. I went through surgery and was sent home with a patch on my eye.

I was unable to practice or workout with my team, uncertain of my future, but all I could think about was, “will I ever be able to see out of my left eye again?” The doctors had no way of knowing until the swelling went down and the outside of my eye healed up. I was devastated, my dreams shattered, and I was at one of the lowest point in my life.

The team sent me to live with a longtime season-ticket holder and friend. So as I was sitting at home, feeling sorry for myself, I decided that I would need an alternate plan. What if my eye never healed properly? I would certainly never play pro hockey again, that’s for sure. I needed to think of what to do next with my life, in case the worst scenario transpired.

It sucked!! I hated the uncertainty. I hated not knowing if I’d ever see again, or ever play hockey again.

So what to do? Because I was working with only one eye, it gave me headaches to watch TV or read books for extended periods of time.

I had just started seeing a girl from back home that summer. She was attending French College in Montreal while I was in Oklahoma, so we communicated by phone and email. My girlfriend knew that I was an avid reader and loved books, so she asked me if I was interested in helping her write a short story for her English class. Since I had nothing else to do and a lot of time on my hands, I agreed.

I really enjoyed the process: coming up with a plot, developing characters and organizing a setting, problem and conclusion. It only lasted a couple of weeks, and once we were done, I kind of missed inventing, creating my own little world and characters.

I remember walking to my bedroom one morning and seeing my roommate’s laptop sitting on the desk, and I thought…why not?

To be continued….

Season of the Bitch

You got to crank up every pitch
You got to crank up every pitch
This is the Season of the Bitch

Ah, writing. At last count, I've been doing it seriously for...(pause for math)...36 years. (Not counting the short story I spontaneously wrote, unbiddened, at age six, and then demanded my mother type up. Which she did. That's a mom.) In general, the first four or five years of writing turned out crap. Then, for the next ten years, it turned out more ambitious, somewhat better-crafted crap.

After about 15 years, I started writing for the stage, found my form, and put my apprenticeship behind me. I'd achieved what I'd more or less decided to do when I was, uh...six. I became a writer. Which essentially meant I'd found my way out of one maze and entered another.

In the process, I've experienced some incredible highs, weathered some dark stretches (when I seriously wondered if it was worth it) and some bleak streaks (when I had no ideas or just didn't feel like picking up a pen), and received more rejections--I prefer the word "bounces"--than I can count. Seriously.

I used to decorate the walls of my office--whatever space I'd set aside for writing--with rejection slips. It seemed like a defiant gestures--something a Writer would do. After awhile, the decor lost its charm, took on the stench of self-pity, and felt slightly masochistic. Now, production posters and cast photos cover the office walls. And, you know, there are a bunch of them. They're a lot easier on the eyes and psyche because they say: you've done it before, you'll do it again. That comes in handy when one enters the Season of the Bitch.

Which is to say, over the last month or so, I've submitted a shitload (to use the writer's technical term) of work after a long stretch of basically non-stop writing (you have to grab the work when it's hot and coming in, else it'll spurn you, and you'll lose it), and the little letters and e-mails have started trickling in. One picks up an envelope armed with a letter opener (I prefer a antique Mexican switchblade, compadres) and a bag full of rationalizations: these are tough times; everybody's having a hard time getting produced; there are a ton of good playwrights out there and a limited number of slots; getting bounced means you're in the game; and, as the posters attest, getting produced is not impossible.

These help to push away the darker thoughts, which still have a way of sneaking in when you're tired, bummed, or overwhelmed. The game's rigged. Your work's too weird (non-commercial, non-linear, dark, unconventionally structured, and about 100 other choices you've deliberately made). You don't live in New York City. You're not paying off a more or less useless MFA in theatre. And the killer: You suck and you're kidding yourself.

If that last one kicks in, it can paralyze you as quick as a curare dart to the neck. Then you have to: distract yourself (in my case, do something creative just for pleasure, but there are plenty of other options available...some of which won't kill you); get back to work with a big, neon FUCK YOU sign flashing over your head; or crank up some fast, furious rock'n'roll and crawl back into the submission machine. If you can do all three without getting lost, the process can actually feel somewhat manageable.

Lightning eventually strikes, but, the longer between flashes, the more tempted one is to wise up and get the hell out of the rain. You can, or course. Sometimes you must to dry out. But, if you want to see the process through, inevitably you're going to have to bundle up and head back into the storm.

As for the don'ts....

Don't take it out on whoever responds to you. They're doing a job, may have limited clout, and are prey to circumstances you can only guess at. If they're taking time to read scripts, they love theatre and new work just as much as you do, and they may well be another writer dreading the mail/e-mail when they get home. And, brass tacks, they may not like the kind of plays you write...which means you don't want to be produced there anyway.

Don't take it out on other playwrights, sucessful or otherwise. They have worn the very same impossible shoes hurting your feet, and, though they might be having a hot year, they might be lacing up the torture shoes 12 months later.

Don't take it out on family or friends. They really can't understand how you feel, and, whatever they say, they probably think they're being helpful. That's called love, and should be accepted as such. Also don't avoid them because you think you'll bum them out. Honestly, they're just as eager to tell you all the stuff that's pissing them off; it's a symbiotic relationship.

Don't take it out on the job you have to work to pay the bills. They haven't a clue, could care less, and you're lucky to have a gig these days.

Society. Yeah, you can take it out on them. But it won't do a damned bit of good, they don't care what you say or do, and it can lead you back into "lost cause" wilderness.

And...don't blame yourself. At the moment, you have enough problems. Just try to write as well as you can, and keep going.

So. For writers beginning and otherwise (and, I suppose, any artist--and anyone looking for a job). Do you ever get used to those oh-so-polite kicks to the nuts? Nope. Are they avoidable? Not if you want to play. Should you take it personally? No. Will you? A little, even if you won't own up to it.

This is the Season of the Bitch.

Commencing Bombardment

Back in the early Nineties, we had ourselves a perfect little pocket war, known as Operation Desert Shield, the only U.S. war, so far, to sound like a feminine hygiene product. It was a swift, unforgettable thing, with CNN broadcasting live footage of Scud missiles falling on Tel Aviv, our wealthy friends, the Kuwaitis, getting looted by another one of our wealthy friends, one Saddam Hussein. Back during the Cold War, we weren’t always too choosy about who we took up with, and, as often happens, some of our relationships ended badly.

Seriously, it was a terrible war, with real bombs, blood, and bodies, and there was nothing amusing about it. I keenly remember feeling an awful sense of despair, as it became readily apparent the violence was inevitable, with no true certainty how it would turn out. Just as with its sequel, Operation Desert Storm (like most sequels, even more of a bummer), there were legitimate fears the war would set the entirely Middle East ablaze and completely destabilize the world economy. We’d have to wait another decade for that to happen.

History felt like an irresistible wave, a tsunami that rolled over everyone, no matter where they lived and how much money they did or didn’t have. The sense of fear and helplessness haunted me long after we’d tucked everyone back in their boxes, and I dealt with it the way writers do: I picked up the pen. In this case, I wrote a two-act drama called Bombardment.

At that time, I’d become friends with some wickedly clever artists running a new Portland Theatre Company, Stark Raving Theatre, and I asked them if they’d take a look at it. You know, just to see what they thought. They said, sure. And the next thing I knew, we were building a set. That’s the way theatre ought to be done--by the seat of your pants, with absolutely no idea what you’re getting yourself into.

The four-actor play--two men, two women--was directed by the very talented Kyle Evans, and ran for six weeks. It took a typical trajectory for a new play by a then-unknown playwright: a great opening (when everybody’s friends and family showed up), struggling weeknights, but stronger weekends. Reviewers were puzzled, dismissive, or both, but word got around that the play was a wild little beast, and really different from anything else running in town. Weekend audiences began to grow, and we closed strongly.

A year later, I tried to hide myself in a plush theatre seat at the Oregon Book Awards ceremony (Oregon’s top literary prize), absolutely terrified that Bombardment, one of three Finalists, might actually win, and I’d have to say something in front of a bunch of writers much more distinguished than myself.

It didn’t win (it’d be almost 20 years before I’d finally bring the OBA home for Lost Wavelengths), but the Bombardment experience really set the hook: I wanted to keep writing plays. For good or ill (depending on who you ask), I’ve been doing it ever since.

So I’ve always had kind of a soft spot for Bombardment, even though it totally screwed up my life. The play was just so . . . out there. I was so new to playwriting, I didn’t even know how many rules I’d blithely shattered. Bombardment was like letting the horse loose, holding on, and just marveling at its power while trying not to worry about getting killed.

Over the years, as I’ve honed my craft (supposedly), I’d dig the play out of the files, work on it a bit, maybe shop it around to a few theatres, maybe put it back in the folder. I came to accept it just wasn’t the kind of play for bigger theatres--the kind afraid of possibly alienating their subscription base. It was just too jagged, non-linear, brutal, and, frankly, weird. It’s a play for theatrical buccaneers.

And that’s why we’re here.

[To be continued]

A Taste of "Immaterial Matters"

From the new play....

REILLY thrusts the paper at CRANE.

REILLY
Read!

CRANE warily takes the paper.

CRANE
"Three fires of incendiary origin--"

REILLY
The other column.

CRANE
"Clifford Beekly has been diagnosed with acute insanity--"

REILLY
Further down.

CRANE
"An unknown man found hanging in Mr. Wilson Crowley's barn--"

REILLY
Below the fold, Crane.

CRANE
There's nothing below the fold but obituaries.

REILLY
Wrong. There's nothing below the fold but customers.

The New Thing

I’ve been away from the blog for awhile for (I think) a reasonable reason: I’ve been writing. Seriously.

I took the morning off from writing and spent some time reading my friend Jack Boulware’s very sharp and funny book Gimme Something Better: The Profound, Progressive, and Occasionally Pointless History of Bay Area Punk from Dead Kennedys to Green Day. You should check it out: it’ll make you want to immediately dye your hair green and stick a safety pin through your cheek.

I felt like I had the carte blanche to blow off the muse for the morning because yesterday I finished typing up Immaterial Matters, a new, full-length drama with which I am very, very pleased. I’m never a very good judge of my own work. First off, you’re always in love with a play when you’re writing it, even if it’s putting you through fits. Second, others often really like the stuff I end up a little indifferent to, and the work I become besotted with tends to be the stuff that generates an “eh” from others. I have no explanation for this, other than I have perverse taste. Sometimes, it ends up being vindicated; sometimes it just stays perverse.

But this one feels a little different. Writing’s generally hard, hard work, even when it goes well, but this thing was just a breeze from beginning to end. In fact, it was coming so easily that it began to freak me out—like I’d inevitably sit down with the notebook one day and be suddenly dry, dry, dry. Never happened. It was always there for me when I called upon it, which is a joy. It continually surprised me—another good sign—and, when I was typing it up (I write all my drafts in longhand, then type them, revising as I go), I’d slightly change a line, then pause and change it back to the original. This almost never happens.

So I don’t know. But I’m guardedly optimistic. As to the play itself: it’s set in 1880s, and it’s about a photographer, death, and a ghost.

And that’s about all I’m saying for now.

Taking Stock

So...it was 19 years ago, in September 1990, when my first play--Controlled Burn--opened. And, with year 20 coming up, I thought I'd sort of look at what's gone down with the playwriting. Frankly, the stats kind of knocked me over: I've written around 53 plays, 25 of which have been full-lengths and 33 of which have been produced (several have been produced multiple times, so my total production rate is slightly higher than that). That means around a 62% of the plays I've written have been produced--not too bad for a goofy kid from Selma, Oregon. In other words, I write about 2.7 plays per year, even though I work full-time, and I'm a semi-professional photographer, serious gardener, and, of late, guitar player.

Now, I'm not saying all those plays were good. But still....

Makes tired just thinking about it, much the less doing it. Maybe I'm getting the hang of this writing thing.

The Writing Life

Long stretches of your work involve doing nothing. This is hard to explain to others, who think you're goofing off. Sometimes you are, but goofing off is part of the job. It may look like you're just sipping coffee, listening to music, and staring into the middle distance, but, in actuality, scenes play in your head. Characters speak, laugh, argue, die. Whole worlds appear and disappear. A pen moves across paper. The paper gets crumpled and thrown into a wastebasket. All this in your head. Your family worries about you. You've just been sitting there for hours....

A routine helps. You carve out this little chunk of life dedicated to sitting quietly and appearing to do nothing. Often, that's what gets done. Failure makes up a large component of what you do, but you have to keep trying and keep failing to make anything happen. When things are dead and nothing comes, it's blindingly frustrating, painfully boring. Your words are colorless, inert. Repulsive. You want to get up, walk away, do anything else. When it's completely hopeless, that's about all you can do, but you keep at it anyway. You hate what you're doing. You curse that you ever got into this thing. You're never going to have another idea, never going to write a decent word.

Then something happens, a glimmer...and suddenly it's four hours later, your hand's cramping, and you feel like you've been tripping your brains out as you flip through a dozen pages and wonder where they've come from.

The mail carrier is not your friend. Most of the time, he or she brings you envelopes you've typed and stamped yourself, and, though their contents may vary in form, language, and tone, they usually more or less say: no. You teach yourself not to care, but you do, and any writer who says they don't care about rejections is lying to you or themselves. You do learn to keep going; there's no choice, really. But once in a while, you'll let your guard down and let yourself hope--really hope. This movie begins to play about how this'll happen, and then that, and then another thing. How the doors are about to burst open and welcome you in.

Then the rejection comes, and it hurts the hell out of you. You have go sit by yourself, unable to be with people. Sometimes, frankly, you just fucking cry. A tiny part of you wants to die and be done with it all. Sometimes it takes a couple days to get over, sometimes a couple of weeks (occasionally, never...though the intensity lessens with time); and, all the while, you have to deal with the voices that tell you: you're wasting your time, you suck, it's pointless, nothing's ever going to be produced or published again. This is not a condition solely of beginners; your favorite author faces the same thing because there's always another level to rise to and, usuallly, fall short of.

Other times, the bounce comes, you shrug, move on. There's no telling how you'll feel. Sometimes, the big ones have no effect. Sometimes, the little ones snap your bones.

Perversely, you have to hope. When you drop an envelope in the mail or click "send" on an e-mail, there's one part of you urging "yes, yes, yes...this time" and another going "forget it, no way, never happen." The "yes" keeps you going; the "no" keeps you armored. The only thing that stops the strobing between poles is more writing, more submissions. Like planting a perennial, submitting a manuscript is an affirmation that there will be a tomorrow. And, like a perennial, those manuscripts have a way of coming back year after year. Submission means you're in the game; being in the game means, most of the time, you lose.

When it gets really bad, you'll go the files and take out old reviews, thumb through production photos, wonder if you're ever going to sit in the audience and see your work again or walk into a bookstore or library and see your name on a book's spine. When it gets really, really bad, it's time to take a break, pull weeds, play the guitar, do some art you don't have to be good at, see a movie, get together with friends and listen to problems refreshingly different from yours...if they are, because artists have a way of flocking together in solidarity. And, yeah, sometimes we pour a glass or flick a lighter or swallow a pill because, for a little while, it turns you into someone else--someone with a window between themselves and their self-inflicted suffering.

You learn humility, and not for show, at the same time you have to carry an ego sufficiently outsized to believe what you're doing matters and will somehow pay off. That people will actually come to see your play or buy your book, and that, incredibly, they'll like it...or at least remember it.

When success comes, it's surreal. You disconnect, not quite believing it's happening. And, in a strange way, you don't because you still have to protect yourself, and, when it's over, you realize you've missed part of the experience due to your wariness.

Truth? It's gets incredibly dark sometimes. Grim. Your own personal cloud follows you, and rains continually while the rest of the world basks in sun. On the other hand, you're one of the luckiest people in the world, and you can't imagine what it's like for everyone else.

In other words, you're a complete lunatic: a writer.

The Sky is What Color?

So, it's like this with writing. You can't find your way through to a new piece unless you work at it. But you can't make it work until it's ready. Which means that you spend a lot of time wandering around glassy-eyed, stumbling into posts, getting honked at by cars, or unnerving people on the bus who think you're staring at them, while all the time, the editor in your head runs images, snippets of dialogue, soundtracks, in an unending, meaningless collage. And you generally are kind of a dick to be around because you only care about this chaotic state you're in, and you assume everyone else is as crazy as you are.

Then suddenly, usually without warning, you lay your limp, weary pen once more against your rumpled, exhausted notebook, and--BAM!--you're off. And you're like, uh...what the hell is going on? What's going on is you're writing, and suddenly life seems simpler. And more sunny.

Which is to say that I've been living with the pre-writing bends for almost a year on a particular project, and this weekend it jumped up and danced for me and got all weird. And now I'm hanging on and going...wherever we go. Which is a lot better than drifting through life with "No Surprises" playing on an endless, interior loop and generally feeling just a little more miserable than Thom Yorke.

The really perverse part? Every single, goddamn time, you have to get to a point where you forget this is how it works; so that when you actually pass into the writing state, you kick yourself for forgetting, knowing full well that, when it's over, you'll just go and forget again.

Want to be a writer? Nothing says glamour like a 1,000-yard stare.

No surprises. Heh.

Options

As I've noted on my blog, I recently bought a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar, and I'm learning--slowly--to play. Over the years, I've tried a number of kinds of art: writing (obviously), photography, painting, drawing, playing piano and organ, garden design, making prints, stage directing, and even a half-assed attempt at sculpting. Though I've enjoyed all of these, writing and photography were the only two that I thought I showed any aptitude for. And, though I love photography and think I've grown in the field, selling a print now and then, and even having a couple of shows, I am and always have been a writer. (One day, when I was six, I sat down and wrote a short story. Something about living under the sea. Wish I still had it, but it's vanished over the years. To me, the funny part was that I took it to my mom and demanded she type it up. I think she was a little taken aback, but she did type it for me. Unlike many artists, I had parents who always supported my efforts. I hit a fallow period between six and eight, and then I distinctly remember thinking, writing that was kind of fun: let's try it again. So I wrote another short story, and another, and, pretty much, never stopped.)

When I bought the guitar--which I call "Red" because it is a shockingly pure candyapple red--the store provided a free lesson. The instructor was showing me how each fret represented a half-step, which clicked for me as it corresponded to a piano's keys (and I can read music). I noted the similarity to the instructor, and he said, "Yeah. It's like having six pianos." (Which is really not true, because it takes two hands to make a chord on the guitar and one for a keyboard. You also can't individually bend or vibrate a piano's strings, but I digress.)

What has struck me are the seemingly infinite options for making sound the electric guitar offers, which I'm just starting to grasp as I've learned how chords are formed, how scales apply to solos, the many ways strings can be thumped, rubbed, stretched, and mauled, and the many voicings that emerge from which pickup you've selected (three on the Strat with two settings combining pickups), the pickup tone controls, the amp settings, and, in my outfit, with a nifty little foot-operated box called a Digitech RP50, the mind-blowing array of available voicings--from clear, ringing notes with a touch of reverb to create the feeling of playing in a large hall to absolutely demented, psychedelic overdrive, flangers, phase-shifters, noise gates, delays, and various amplifier modulators. You can make it sing, cry, scream, and simulate jet aircraft. It's absolutely marvelous. I'll be deaf in no time.

One evening, after playing some teeth-rattling distortion, I just kind of reeled, overwhelmed by athe choices the guitar offered, and I suddenly thought of a favorite quote from Miles Davis, which has actually informed my writing as much as my understanding of music: it's not just the notes you play, Miles said, it's also the notes you don't play.

Which seems obvious, but it lies at the heart of making art, for we're offered so many techniques, colors, effects, traditions, schools of thought, theories, pacings, and structures, that, once you get past the puppy love period where you want to do everything right now, you understand how holding back is just as important as holding forth. It's not just a matter of making the right choices: it's a matter of knowing when to stop, when to step back. Of knowing when, essentially, it's right.

And, if you're dedicated enough to be honest with yourself, doing an art--any art--really well is so terribly, terribly difficult that you'd lock up if you thought about it directly. Someone once asked Walter Cronkite if he ever thought about the millions watching his newscasts, and he said no, he thought of it as speaking one-to-one with a single person because, if he really thought about all the people out there, he'd be too terrified to do his job.

I don't know how much aptitude I have with the guitar. I feel like I'm learning, and once in awhile, I make sounds that please me, and that's all I'm really in it for. That and developing sufficient skills to play a song or two with friends. It's refreshing to do an art that's not a profession. But playing the guitar is devilishly hard to get right, and the more I seem to grasp, the more complicated it becomes. The relationship between difficulty and reward reminds me of an evening at a fiction writing workshop nearly 30 years ago when I'd presented a short story, which, frankly, was terrible--an utter cliche from beginning to end (and not even an interesting cliche). Out came the knives, and, when it was over, my self-esteem had been thoroughly diced. The woman running the workshop said, hey, how about we take a break, and everyone trooped off into the kitchen while I sat immobile, staring at the carpet. A minute or so later, the workshop leader came back and handed me a glass of wine.

"Christ," I said. "Does it ever get any easier?"

She gently patted me on the shoulder and said, "You better hope not."

Writing Furiously without a Pen

For a writer, it's important to have understanding people in your life because a good part of what you do looks like goofing off.

That is, you may appear to be sitting on your porch and watching the breeze sway the poppies while listening to Dylan and The Band play "The Basement Tapes," but, in reality, you are deep down in some inner movie, watching scenes you don't understand appear and fade. In short, a lot of writing is not knowing what the hell you're doing and being okay with that. Right now, I'm chasing something. I don't know what it is, but I can feel it. And it's giving me pictures and little snippets of dialogue, but I don't know what it's going to be, how it's going to emerge, and it's necessary to kind of operate on faith--faith that your mind will let the rest float up to the surface when it's ready.

I mean, I don't have time to write at the moment. For the next couple weeks, my day job is going to be very demanding, and then I'm producing the End of the Pavement festival, and the two take a great deal of energy. I don't even want to think about how tired I was yesterday and how tired I'm going to be by next Friday. So I can't really write. I scribble down little bits of stuff in the mornings or lunch hours, but I can't sustain the kind of extended concentration writing requires. I'll get there, but the unconscious, after awhile, knows not to let loose until it's ready. I guess I've been doing this long enough that it's well trained.

And then it'll be: bam! And you're off, trying to keep up with the goddamn thing before it can get away from you. In the meantime, you just have to kind of roll with this twilight state where you get glimpses but they're gone before you can do anything with them. In a way, it's kind of enjoyable. I get to see the preview reel, unedited, before anyone else. And it looks fun and weird and spooky and intense and, best of all, new...but, of course, I'm sworn to secrecy. There's nothing worse than talking something out before you can get it on paper.

So I'm sitting on the porch. Watching the poppies dance. And way down underneath, something unknown is taking shape. It just looks like nothing. And, as Dylan sings, too much of nothing makes a man ill of ease....

Learning from the Movies

A few years ago, I was musing about the usual stuff--writing, Bob Dylan, whether life has any purpose--and I had an odd sort flash into my own writing. Hadn't looked at it for some time, but I thought about it this morning and went back in the archives, and damned if it was still kind of interesting. I sometimes think on school where students are asked to explicate at heme for a piece by, say, Gogol, and, as a writer, you think: I'll make you bet Gogol never sat down and said, "I think I'm going to write to this theme." It just happens. Usually, the last person you want to ask to explicate a theme is an author.

Anyway, here's the piece:

This morning, I was listening to Bob Dylan's soundtrack from the Sam Peckinpah film "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid," one of those films that has always resonated with me on a level that's sometimes difficult for even me to understand, and I found myself pondering: who's the main character in this story? Pat or Billy? Or are they equally weighted?

I finally decided it was Sheriff Pat Garrett's story as his narrative opens and ends the film, and it is his dilemma whether or not to track down his former friend (Garrett was an outlaw before becoming sheriff) and kill him. Pat changes with the times--the closing of the wild American West--and lives; Billy does not, and, in the end, is killed. Wistfully, these days I identify more with Pat than Billy.

And I thought how, in a way, Billy is a part of Pat that he has to subdue to survive, an aspect of his young, free past, and that they are two parts of the same character. In that way, they sort of represent what Freud called the ego and id, with the ego having to tame the id's powerful, basic impulses, or--in a model I more readily identify with--Carl Jung's framing of conscious and unconscious mind, the unconscious being the vast mind that lurks beneath the surface of ordinary consciousness and comes through in drives, neurosis, dreams, fevers, intoxication, etc.

That's a great theme, I thought. A conflict that I feel in my soul. That'd be a hell of a theme to write about, and I realized it underlies two of my other touchstone films, "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" and "Apocalypse Now." That's when it struck me: it is my theme. It runs through much of my work, some of which, like "Delusion of Darkness," give the advantage to the unconscious, and others of which, like the war plays (in which the characters' rationality must overcome their attraction to the raw madness of violence), give the conscious mind the winning hand.

To give creedence to the power of the unconscious mind, I was not fully aware of the theme until now.

Why Write

It's so damned difficult, both doing it well and getting it to the stage. But once a picture appears in the mind and characters speak and become real, there's such a compulsion to see it become flesh. It's hard to explain. Productions seldom live up to those images, though once in awhile they transcend it. But the odds are long. What's that Villon quote Hunter liked? "Life is short, art is long, and success is very far off." No kidding.

Pause to crank up "Have You Ever Seen the Rain." Heh.

You have to believe in yourself. Not always easy. Self-doubts come with the job too or else you can't judge what's working and what's not, and that's tough because you have to fall in love with each play a little bit to get it written, to sustain the process. Love it, measure it, hate it a little. All the while, it's replaying, replaying, replaying in the mind's eye/ear, like a video loop. You're ready to scream if you see it one more time but you can't look away. Hello, Alex. Ready for a little Ludwig Von? Definitely fucks up your perspective.

When it gets that muddled and you can't tell what's working, what's wishful thinking, what's inspiration, what's madness, it's time to walk away for awhile. Go to the beach, crack open a bottle of Cuervo, slip on the shades, light up, and watch the waves. All goddamn day if necessary. Until the sun goes down and the rain comes, and you sit in the dark, in the rain, listening to the surf, until finally that deep breath lets loose, sometimes tears, sometimes laughter--you are completely nuts, thank you, emotions climbing and crawling and falling on their backs and wiggling their legs like helpless beetles--and you gather up your stuff, and trudge back to the motel, where the open page awaits.

Brick, Mortar, Memory

It must be winter: I’m listening to Leonard Cohen again.

Who was it who wrote something like: “…we are all boats beating forward, ceaselessly borne into the past?” James Joyce? No, Fitzgerald, from "Gatsby." I can’t remember the quote exactly, but I can see that flotilla of rowboats on a flat green river, and I can feel my own boat wobble in the current.

Our entire economy is built upon buying things. In some way, that’s what provides and fills the larder, yet when the current finally carries you away, those things become inert boxes and odd objects, stripped of memory and resonance, in drawers someone will one day have to empty.

The common bromide says live for the moment, even though we can live nowhere else. But memory (or nostalgia) and hope (or worry) distance us from the present.

Perhaps architects are happy. They do their work, and their imaginations become part of our mindscape. Doctors, for all the good they do, ultimately lose. Lawyers, soldiers, and police we frankly need only when things go awry. Teachers transmit ideas, which do last, then release them, like caged birds, to go where they will. And the clergy, whose whole business is predicated on the eternal, operate solely on faith, which is all any of us really have.

Sometimes I think the restaurateurs, distillers, and tobacconists give the most to our present, even as their wares draw it away.

And the artists? We have the promise of the architects, but the odds are long. In that way, we’re closer to the clergy. Our job is just to shape and color what we ought to already know. Amusing (I think) to remember the many times people have said to me, in one form or another: how I wish I could do what you do.

It is winter.

Sympathy for the rare Picasso Shark

So the reading of "Turquoise and Obsidian" went well last night. The turnout was pretty good for a Sunday when all the clocks had been scrambled, and the audience was very responsive. Cast was superb, and I'll send them a thank-you when I can pull together a conscious thought.

Where the play stands at this point? Pretty well, I think. I expect I'll get some decent notes, probably have to tweak a few things, but, when it comes to be big global changes, well, I doubt it. There's a certain point where you have to go: that's as good as it's going to get. Move the hell on!

Writers are kind of like sharks: if we don't keep moving, we die. Or at least we do a decent impression of a dead person who still drinks and smokes and burns holes in ratty recliners.

Though he was kind of reprehensible in the way he treated others, especially women, I've always admired Picasso in that he was never afraid to try to new things. So many artists achieve a certain success and freeze, terrified to slip outside of their hits. But, firmly established post-World War II, Picasso, arguably the most famous painter in the world, pulled up his roots and moved his whole family to the south of France so he could study pottery with noted artisans in this one town. So he did pottery, and it was brilliant and still distinctively Picasso. When he got old, he amused himself by repainting famous paintings by other, older masters, seeing them through his style and poking fun at both the canon and himself.

I don't know if he died with a brush in hand, but there are worse ways to cash out.

Steve

Gore-Tex Dreams

Traditionally—and who knows if tradition applies to weather anymore—the Northwest rainy season begins on Halloween night and ends April 15th. Oregon children trick-or-treat in Gore-Tex. That doesn’t mean it rains every single day, but...well, yes, it does.

And though it’s said true Oregonians don’t squint in the rain, the rainy season is really not all that much fun, and consecutive gray skies lend themselves to a certain introspection. Maybe that’s why so many Oregonians write. I knew a handsome old gent in Oregon logging country who said it was too risky to go to town because “there’s a widder behind every stump.” Much the same can be said of Northwest writers.

So it’s not surprising that we’re home to Powell’s Books, possibly the best independently owned bookstore in the U.S. (unlike The Strand, you can find things) or that winners of the Oregon Book Awards consistently produce work of such quality. But it may be surprising to know Portland is increasingly known as a home for new stage works. There are some very fine playwrights here—many of them are friends of mine—and artistic directors around the country are looking to Portland Center Stage’s JAW Playwrights Festival as a source for hot new plays and playwrights, with JAW plays and authors being picked up by the regional theatre circuit. My suspicion is that trend will not only continue but grow.

Another notable Portland characteristic, which I think fuels new work development, is that there’s a very strong DIY spirit here. Toss any three people together at a Portland coffeehouse—and we are rotten with coffeehouses—and you’ll end up with either a band, a restaurant, or, possibly, a theatre company. You can produce a play here for a fraction of what it costs elsewhere, and, if the local critics slaughter you, you don’t have to throw yourself in front of the MAX train—you just mope for awhile, listen to too much Elliott Smith, then begin writing again.

Oregon’s mountains, particularly the Coast Range, are unbelievably verdant, overflowing with life and pocketed with thickets rich with mood and mystery. If there’s a relationship between environment and psychology, perhaps it’s no surprise that Northwesterners inhabit equally complex inner worlds that sprout ideas the way fall rains breed mushrooms: overnight, whole landscapes change.

Flashback: Winter Cascades

rain on evergreens.

trying to start the fire, more and more newspaper, burning, curling faces of politicians, until the kindling finally catches. still wearing your coat until the cabin begins to warm. light a pipe with a heavy, cherry-flavored tobacco. pour a glass of brandy. put on some slow, sad Brahms, shut off the light. watching chill rain, waiting on snow. the feeling coming back to your hands and feet. wet boots steaming before the fireplace. alone. relieved you're alone, but also wishing someone was there. the fit never quite right. here on top of a mountain, thinking of the city, and, if in the city, dreaming of the mountain. never able to be just where you are. waiting for something to possess you, an outside event or idea. ever hanging. forever standing on your toes. and then suddenly, through the fogged window: snow in circles, rush of silence. weight of the brandy, pulling down into cushions. smell or burning pine. skillets on the walls. books. fishing tackle. phone, unplugged. desk with writing tablets, pens. no computers.

rising heavily, feeling the brandy vertigo come and pass, and opening the door to the soft hiss of snow, already filling in your footprints. no need to lock the door, closing it softly, and feeling the forest move around you. a slow-turning vortex of dark green memory. turning, turning, with all the faces past, the lost moments, ghost memories or piercing lost opportunties.

write something. save yourself from yourself.