Follow-up

Since my last posting, I found a couple of pictures of Dr. Dickey that will give you a better representation than the one posted. Even these were taken six years before I knew her.

I'm currently on track with my outline and chapters of Catch a Falling Star. I'll have two entrys fairly close together as next Wednesday, a week from today, I'm visiting my aunt and cousins in Hattiesburg Mississippi, and will dine on barbecue pork ribs and catfish. I'm going to TRY to eat healthy. Either way, though, I will write.

Love of the Written Word

A Shakespearean Tragedy is a representation on the stage of a protagonist of colossal proportion who, through some tragic fault of nature, is brought to destruction carrying others with him. This spectacle arises in the audience the emotions of pity and terror with the catharsis of each.

I learned to recite the above definition in the fall of 1976 for extra credit in my college sophomore lit class. The title: 231 – English Literature Survey to the beginning of the Romantic Movement.

I wrote the above from memory. My notes from 34 years ago have been lost a long time, probably on some move or other. That’s fine, though. I’ll be able to recite it as long as I have a memory. Just as I’ll remember the professor who wrote it on the chalkboard all those years ago.

Her name was Dr. Imogene Bentley Dickey (later Mohat), and she had been on the English faculty of what was then North Texas State University since 1943 (at that time it was known as North Texas State Teachers College). From then until 1968 she also served as Dean of Women and was known by the students as “Big Red.” When she left that post, she returned to teaching full time. Indeed, she was quite tall and regal and had auburn hair (though with distinguishing gray when I knew her), hence the nickname. Her demeanor was of someone considerably younger.

Dr. Dickey was idiosyncratic. Despite the subject range of the course, she also required us to read Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, and Lord of the Flies by William Golding. Dickens was from the Victorian period in the nineteenth century, and Lord of the Flies was published in 1954. Her rationale?

“No one should escape an English class without reading a Dickens novel,” she said. “And I just read Lord of the Flies for the first time last summer and loved it! It is my privilege, then, to foist it onto you.”

She didn’t stop there. She often quoted Dorothy Parker, Edward Arlington Robinson, Mark Twain, all Americans, in this Brit Lit course, so much so that I went out and read their work, though they weren’t required. I’d never read Life on the Mississippi until this British Lit course. Never heard of Parker’s amazing wit, or felt the emotional wallop Robinson delivered throughout his three Pulitzer Prize winning career.

I didn’t just read the half dozen assigned Shakespeare’s sonnets. I memorized those, and read them all. Didn’t just read Othello and King Lear, I devoured all four of the major tragedies plus the major comedies and a number of the histories. All during this semester.

Watching and listening to her enthusiasm for Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (particularly the fabliaux ... which she called “bawdy, but so much fun”) infected me and everyone in that room on the third floor of the Auditorium Building, southwest corner. Not to mention her enthusiasm for Milton. And, let me tell you folks, if you can make Milton interesting, you’ve DONE something.

What she desired most for us was to learn how to think.

She once admonished me in class, “I know what the critics think, Rocky. I want to know what you think.” I was nineteen years old. I didn’t know what I thought. Didn’t believe it was important, anyway. She understood that, too. And the whole class walked out after the semester knowing better how to think. Myself, included.

And now, here I am trying to tell wonderful stories with great characters keeping those lessons in mind. What’s wrong with tossing a little Lord of the Flies with Shakespeare? What’s wrong with a topping of Dorothy Parker on a cone of Beowulf? Not a damn thing, in my book.

Our final exam was an essay. I don’t remember the question, exactly, but it was one of those topics on which volumes could have been written and had been. “You don’t have to complete it,” she said. “Just write for one hour, and I’ll know what you know.”

Whoa! They don’t make teachers like that anymore. I don’t believe they will again.

Dr. Dickey retired in 1979. Passed away in 2000, just short of her 92nd birthday.

I’d loved stories since childhood, could sit and listen to good yarns well into the night. Can still do that. But it was the inspiration of Dr. Dickey and that survey class that took me by the hand and led me to a love of the written word.

So those times when I “go without the meat and curse the bread,” I can fall back, not just on story, but on lovely words spliced together to make a sentence, a paragraph, a page until at the end something wondrous and beautiful is born.

Thank you, Dr. Dickey. I’m learning everyday how to think for myself, and to give less credence to the critics. And after all these years, I still have your definition of a Shakespearean tragedy memorized, though I have long since forgotten most things from other courses. I think the reason for that is what you told us at the time, “Just do it in the spirit of fun.”

Fun lasts.

I worked hard this last week, though I was sick a lot of it. I’m farther along on my outline of Catch a Falling Star, and I created a kinda fantasy story of about 3000 words. It would actually be a cutting from a novel. I like it. I think it has legs. We’ll see what the Wayward Writers think. They’re the ones who have it now. Fingers crossed.

In the meantime, I’ll continue with the outline, creating new scenes for my characters, deleting others. Come back next week, and I’ll let you know how I did. And thanks ever-so-much for reading. It means a lot.

The Art of Handling Rejection

Behind every art is a craft. Period. At least in my view. But for the life of me, I can’t see it where handling rejections are concerned. People talk like there’s a craft to it. “Paper your walls with the rejection letters.” “See them as badges of honor.” “Picture the senders naked.”

Okay, okay, the last technique is for someone delivering a speech to plow through the nerves. It works, as long as you don’t laugh.

But as for the other two, I only have a 990 square foot apartment. I quit counting rejections at three hundred several years ago. Badges of honor? I must be one of the more decorated writers over the last sixteen years, assuming you have to take all of them down after you receive an acceptance.

Are there really ways to handle rejections? Or can we only cope with them?

The truth is, even after all the years of acting and writing, I don’t know how to handle all of the rejections. Particularly with no successes to show for it. I am human. I feel. And every time I send out a round of submissions, I brace myself for the backwash. I cast my fishing net into the ocean, only to be trounced by the returning wave.

And it hurts to be told that your creation is not wanted. That the world can live without the song you’re singing from your soul. That, when you die, nothing you’ve done will have mattered.

I cope. I know how to swim when the wave hits, but that’s all folks. But the ability to keep from drowning isn’t a way to handle the situation. It’s a way to keep from paying the ultimate price. Handling it means, to me, that we somehow gain control. Coping means we fend off the consequences without disaster. And, ultimately, maybe that does mean handling it.

Sometimes I still don’t know which is worse, the kind of rejection I referenced last week that says, “It’s almost there, but not quite enough,” or the kind I got twenty-five years ago that was essentially my query letter with a circle around my name and a line drawn by the editor to his written words, “not a chance.”

I have enough distance from that one to laugh, and regret having thrown it away in a fit of pique.

During what my late grandmother (Mama Drue) called, “them there olden days,” an agent or editor would take a writer under his or her wing, helping them hone their craft until the result transcended the dialogue and conflict and structure into spun gold we sometimes call art.

No more.

We live in a time where agents and editors no longer have time to do that, with rare exception. They require a manuscript that is all but ready to be published. It the NOW factor. It must be salable NOW. It must be publishable/marketable NOW. And that’s a crying shame, but it’s become the reality of the business.

I would do exactly the same thing in their shoes.

I’m bringing all of this up because I received a couple of rejections this week, one from Glimmer Train. I found out by logging into the site, checking the “My Submissions” page and seeing the word “Completed” next to my entry. In Glimmer parlance it means, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

That’s the bad news.

The good news, of course, is that I am submitting.

More bad news is that submissions summon rejections by a factor of almost one to one.

The good news is that I have learned how to swim even if I haven’t learned to dodge the breaking waves.

Back to the term “almost one to one.”

I haven’t seen it yet, but some day, starting with a single submission, the wave won’t break. The sunshine of publication will replace it, and my eyes will create whatever water is there.

Until then, I have to brace myself after each submission batch and struggle through the churning water.

There is no art or craft for handling rejection to my mind. The only way to truly avoid the disappointment is to not walk down that road or cut oneself off from all feeling. Neither produces good and published writers that I’ve seen. Neither is the way to live life.

This last week, I began the new outline for Catch a Falling Star up to and including working out scene/sequel for the prologue/chapter one/chapter two. My goal of completing draft lucky 13 is more than doable. And I will proceed along those lines during the holiday weekend and through the week. I am also going to play around some more with my MacBook Pro, transferring some old files and drafts.

And, later today, I will go see The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. I’m a sucker for stories of misfits finding their world, and for those who don’t see the story that way, I understand. I just ask you to understand that this is what I take from The Twilight Saga.

Have a Happy Fourth of July, everyone. I’ll let you know next week how I did.

Aloha and A Hui Hou to the Maui Writers Retreat and Conference

I am proud of my accomplishments last week. I created a single color-coded index card for each of the 88 chapters plus the prologue, interlude, and epilogue, and a four-page written storyboard for Catch a Falling Star. I also completed the prologue and transferred it to my new MacBook Pro.

Now, to Maui.

I’m going to miss the Maui Writers Retreat and Conference and probably won’t realize how much until years down the road.

No. That’s not true. I miss it now. Wish that I could have one more chance to attend with the wisdom of eight conferences behind me. I would do it right this time, the whole thing, instead of doing just a few things right by pure accident. I wouldn’t make the mistake of shoving my novels willy nilly under the indulgent noses of agents and editors before knowing to a moral certainty that they were ready.

Looking back, I know that they were not. They showed talent, but lacked the polish the professionals sought. So I became known to many as perseverant and determined and talented, but not quite ready. One agent even wrote to me, “This is 109.8% there. Unfortunately, I require 110%.” That one drove an iodine coated knife into my solar plexus and twisted. Looking back, I see that it’s best to stay under the radar until ready to make a splash. Looking back ... well, it’s time to stop looking back. And I will after considering the good things about my experiences there.

At the retreat, I had the opportunity of studying with some amazing writers like Gary Braver and Steve Berry, and was selected for Jacquelyn Mitchard’s masters class where six of us in addition to Jackie went over each other’s full novels in great detail. I learned more in those few weeks than in years on my own.

Most importantly, the retreat and conference afforded us all to mix and mingle in a magical setting of palm trees, breaking waves, and trade winds. Someone once said, “The paradox of the writer is how much time s/he spends alone trying to communicate with others.” These annual get-togethers let all of us know that we are not alone, that others know the agony of rejection on top of rejection, and a few the thrill of success.

I met so many wonderful people and made a few lifetime friendships there, including my amazing friend Dawn Ius, who was the first person to hear my true writing voice and made me listen to it. She did that at the retreat and conference in 2006.

I don’t mean to make light of my own writers group we call The Writerie, headed by my friend Kat Goldring, and including Glenna, Shirley, and Jane. In fact, I always look forward to my treks to Cleburne, Texas for our semi-monthly meetings and gain enormously from them. I’ve grown logarithmically under their eyes and hope I have helped some of them along the way.

I also don’t mean to slight the Wayward Writers online class headed by Ariel Gore. It’s so wonderful I can’t give it its due here. Soon. But as much as we comment on each other’s work and have our once-per-session conference call, I’ve never physically met any of them. I know many through their writing and comments, and they know things about me that few (if any) others know, but it’s not quite the same as in person discussions over lunch, drinks, or walking the beach at sunset.

Make no mistake, I need The Writerie and the Wayward Writers. But there is something special about a pack of writers converging on a place and hanging out that is nourishing and healthy. The Writerie and Wayward Writers are the meat and bread of my writer’s life diet. But the retreat and conference were the fruits and veggies. Maui itself, the dessert.

Looking forward, I need to find another conference, one where writers commune, both the highly successful and the not yet or not so successful. One where agents and editors gather to help us with valuable information on the business end that only they will know and look for that next bestseller. I’m not sure exactly how to look for that replacement yet, but I will start with Google, and see where the breadcrumbs lead.

I will find one somewhere, but it won’t have the spirit of aloha, or ohana. At least not in the beginning.

When I logged onto retreat and conference website and saw the cold letter from a law firm announcing that it was helping “... the Hawaii Writers Foundation with winding up its business operations,” my heart broke. I couldn’t believe it could go on and say that, “In light of this termination, there will be no further HWF sponsored Retreats or Conferences in the future.” A tiny little piece of me died that day.

So, mahalo nui loa to John and Shannon Tulius for all of the years of joy. Aloha mai e. And to Sam Horn, the presence of the retreat and conference. And to all the wonderful writers I met, and/or studied with and under, and/or had a drink with, and/or communed with. I hope to see all of you somewhere down the road.

I hope to see Maui one day soon as well. Because Maui no ka òi. And, what is a meal without dessert?

This week, I will begin the new outline for Falling Star and work on scene/sequel structure for the first few chapters. I’m setting myself a goal of two months to complete lucky draft 13.

I’ll let you know how I did next Sunday the Fourth of July.

Murder Your Darlings

Last week’s assignment: I submitted one of my short stories to Glimmer Train, and seriously rethought, Catch a Falling Star. And I cleaned my apartment. BOY did I clean it. It looks good, but I’m walking like a cowboy who rode one bull too many. More now on writing ...

I promise the blood flowed this past week, but it flowed from the past. How many people do we learn from over the course of a life? I have to say thousands. And each contributes in his or her own way.

Every writer has heard from every other writer, “You have to kill your babies,” or some variation on a theme. I traced the saying to Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch in his book “On the Art of Writing,” published in 1915. There, he states that, as a writer, you must, “murder your darlings.”

THAT was the toughest lesson I’ve had to learn so far (apart from overwriting). I didn’t want to get my characters into serious trouble. Plain and simple. Like a parent wants to protect his or her child, so, too did I want to protect may main characters.

I wrote the first novel manuscript I will admit to in 1994. It was loosely based on my experience working as a driver on a television show and was – take a guess – about a driver on a television show securing a deal to direct a movie by the end of the first season. Besides being a tad long at a tad over 384,000 words, the worst thing that happened to my lead character ... not the worst thing he observed ... the worst thing that happened to him was that the director of a particular episode yelled at him. I was right there with him. I FELT the humiliation my character experienced, too.

I knew in my soul that this novel was worthy of Dickens and, closer to what I was going for, Thackeray. After all, ol’ Bill Thackeray wrote huge books where not a whole bunch happened, just magnificent characters relating to each other in humorous ways. Gotta love Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair. Had to love Cary Clark in Transpo (my tome). That’s right. Hatley and Thackeray in the same breath. Can you dig it?

Well, William Makepeace Thackeray died in 1863, just shy of ninety-four years before I was born, and can anyone name a friend, colleague, or anyone outside of academia who has even heard of Vanity Fair or William Makepeace Thackeray?

I didn’t think so.

I have gotten better about putting my characters in peril, but not good enough yet. So draft thirteen of Catch a Falling Star is where I get good at sadism. Because that’s what Quiller-Couch was saying in a way. The actual quote referred to taking out brilliant writing that doesn’t fit the story. I can do that. That’s not a problem. But I’ve been letting Jerry and Gina and Chris and Shirley off the hook emotionally for twelve drafts. I’m going to put them through absolute hell this next draft, because that will keep the reader turning the pages. Only that will get a publisher. Only that will secure an agent.

So I become the sadist. At least until the climax. And I start at the beginning, when Jerry meets Gina.

Over the next few weeks, I want to take a little bit and acknowledge some people who have opened my eyes to my creative potential. I’m going to start by referring back to Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. No, I didn’t study with him. Q, as he was known, died in 1944 at the age of 80. But this person did study with him, albeit briefly. He is best known as an actor from the Old Vic in England who appeared with Olivier, Gielgud, Guinness, Vivien Leigh and so many others. He also appeared in a number of Hammer Films in the 50’s. His name is Richard Wordsworth and yes, he was the great-great grandson of the poet William Wordsworth.

The first class I took from him was “Shakespeare,” and he was the first teacher from whom I got it. Who brought me underneath Shakespeare and let me grab a few handfuls. Even still, he told me, “Rocky, if you really want to truly understand Shakespeare, you have to be part of a production. I’m directing The Merchant of Venice. Come audition for me. I’ll give you a part.”

He did. He cast me as Tubal. The only scene I had in the play was a rather lengthy one with Shylock, played by Richard. Wow! He did that, I’m sure, because this was my first appearance on stage ... ever. I held my own, even covered for him one night when he forgot his lines. After all these years, nearly thirty, I can say that I appeared on stage with an actor who appeared onstage with Olivier and Gielgud, Guinness and Vivien Leigh.

I spent more time with him in the summer of 1981 in Grasmere, England at the Conference on Romantic Poets. There, he told me I was a good actor.

Wow! Me!

And it was through this connection that I met my longtime friends Chris and Bruce.

Richard died in 1993. I’ve attached his picture.

Next week’s assignment: I will begin a detailed outline of Catch a Falling Star paying particular attention to getting my leads into real trouble.

Risking The Blood

Boy did I stink on this weeks assignments. I barely managed to keep up with my class’s assignments. So, here is what I learned, though.

Coach John Wooden passed away a week ago this past Friday. He coached basketball at the college level for nearly 30 years, lived nearly 100. And just listening to all of the comments and interviews and tributes this past week and two days, I was struck by what a genuinely decent, kind and thoughtful person he was. As a coach, he won ten national championships in twelve years with UCLA, a feat never likely to be equaled, much less surpassed, but most of the comments and interviews and tributes focused on his accomplishments off the court. As a human being.

So what does that have to do with my journey toward publication? Not a lot, I suppose, outwardly. But looking at Coach Wooden’s life through the eyes of others holds a mirror up to my face and shows me the kind of person I would like to be, and the kind of person I’m just not.

He spend 54 years with his wife Nellie, before spending another 25 without her after she died. If I married today, and stayed married fifty-four years, I would be nearly 107. Many of Coach Wooden’s sayings have become platitudes. Like “Be quick, but don’t hurry.” “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.” And, from the basketball coach, my favorite, “Love is the most important thing.” As my friends will say, my most oft repeated line is, “I’ll have one more Chardonnay.”

Many of his actions should become platitudes. One of his last requests was for a good shave because he wanted to look his best when he next saw his late wife Nellie. Wow!

On the other hand, though, I wouldn’t be able to tell the stories I want to tell had I experienced that kind of life or any other, for that matter. My stories come out of the life I’ve lived. Then again, no one has shown interest in publishing my stories so far. So there’s the real fear, isn’t it? That no one cares. That I’m that tree in the middle of nowhere that no one has ever seen.

Do I exist?

So I ask, are my stories interesting/compelling/poignant enough to present by the publishing world to the reading public? My answer is I think so … I hope so. But can a writer really know until the public sees his or her stories? Until it chews them up and, either swallows them or spits them out?

I want a chance to find out.

So, Coach Wooden wouldn’t have shied away from submitting manuscripts had he manuscripts to submit. I haven’t submitted in several weeks. Why am I lollygagging around and not jumping in and submitting to at least agents even though I set myself the task?

Actually, Coach did shy away from submitting once. After his wife died, on the 21st of every month (the day of the month she died), he visited her grave the went home and wrote her a love letter. The sports writer Rick Reilly suggested fifteen years after that he and Coach publish those letters as a testament to love. Coach finally told Reilly, in tears, “I can’t. It’s too soon.”

In other words, it hurt. And that was when he had a guarantee to publish.

Wow! Despite my protestations to the contrary, each rejection takes a couple of drops of blood out of me. Weakens me just a little. Makes me wince a lot. So Mutiny on the Bounty last week really was important … even more important that even I was willing to admit to myself at the time. It let the wounds heal from the last round of rejections.

So, plunging in means risking more drops of blood. So be it. I begin a seven day weekend this next Wednesday. I’m risking the blood this time.

I mentioned my favorite Coach Wooden quote earlier, but another of his has haunted me all week. “Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.” I have been in the same routine for several years now. Some circumstances have caused some change. But I think I need some all out changes in a number of different areas of my life. More on that later, because, I’m really not sure yet what those changes might be. Rearranging my apartment might be an option. At least a good spring cleaning. And in the next few days, I’ll let my stories call me to them. They always have. They always will. And when they do, I return to them with all I have.

Oh! One more detail … Coach Wooden passed away 100 years and 1 day after William Sydney Porter … better known as the master short story writer O. Henry.

Assignments this week: Keep up with the Wayward Writers assignments. Clean my apartment. Allow my stories to call me, then heed the call. ONE submission to an agent. We’ll start there then see how it goes. But, I’ve got to risk the blood. I've got to!

I’ll let y’all know next week how I did.

Reading is Nourishment

Assignments: This week was good for everything except writing. I broke down and bought a MacBook Pro which I barely had time to register, much less play around with. Work was a little on the crazy side. Wednesday evening, I began an extended journey down the lazy river with a complete paddle complement. I’m barely going to finish my assignment for Wayward Writers to post this afternoon. So what can I claim to have accomplished this week?

Well, my assignment for Wayward Writers had nothing to do with Catch a Falling Star, and is, in fact, a 2700 word short story. Whew! I didn’t TOTALLY blow the week.

A confession. The paddle used on that extended journey down the lazy river was a novel ... Mutiny on the Bounty to be exact, one third of what, to my mind, is the greatest sea story ever told. Oh, it was amazing to shake mental hands with Roger Byam again, as he unfurled the mainsail of the Fletcher Christian led mutiny against the tyranny of Captain Bligh. Of how he, himself was hauled back to England in irons and condemned to death.

If you only know the story through the films, please read it. I’ll beg if I have to. In fact, read the whole trilogy, which includes Mutiny on the Bounty, Men against the Sea, and Pitcairn’s Island. It’s more than just a sea story, it’s a story of human interactions, of consequences, of relationships. Just as the women of Jane Austen’s novels are far more complex than most people think, so, too are these men Fletcher Christian and Captain William Bligh. The gentleman Master’s Mate and the blue collar Captain locked in a battle of natures.

My point is that I have to recharge my writing batteries from time to time by reading, by diving into the sea of someone else’s world and letting it permeate me and brine me to the core. And working a full time job means that the writing may suffer for brief periods of time to get the reading in. That happened last week when I devoured Mutiny on the Bounty. I’m not completely recharged, but I feel so much stronger and viable.

Here’s a question. Can a writer truly be good if s/he doesn’t read, at least in his or her writing sphere? Somehow I don’t think so, though rumors claim otherwise. Every writer I know craves reading. Whether they devour fiction or non-fiction doesn’t seem to matter. It doesn’t to me. It’s the stimulation, the synthesis of new ideas and perspectives It’s the other writer crossing time and distance to tell me her or his stories. I love that mystical and magical telepathy that happens between one person and another through the printed word.

Reading is more to me than just scanning words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. It takes me by the hand and walks me into different places and times. Writing does the same thing, but I need more than just my own worlds. I am best friends with David Copperfield and Harry Potter and Elisabeth Bennett and more recently Bella Swan (Team Edward), and they are there for me whenever I need them. Never would these people replace my corporeal friends, but I hold those from novels close to my heart as well.

For me, living in the worlds of others for a time helps me create my own like walking into people’s homes gives my ideas for my own. Reading a book about the sea can remind me of breezes blowing through the tree tops, or the undulating Hill Country of Texas, or any number of things. It doesn’t necessarily spur me to send my characters out to sea. Though that would be be fun one day.

Some may call me borderline insane, but my memories of these people’s worlds rivals real world memories in intensity and emotional impact. What keeps me on the sane side of things, I think is that I KNOW the difference between real and imaginary. The dividing line is as thin as cheesecloth sometimes, but it’s always there.

My goal this week is to keep chugging away. Three submissions to agents. More polishing. Keeping up with my assignments.

Take care, and I’ll let y’all know how I did next week.