Soil for a great story

As I write the final chapter, I am reminded of that funhouse trick you get when you look in the mirror while holding another mirror behind you. You’re looking at yourself, who’s looking at yourself, who’s looking at yourself…
Writing, by its very nature, is an isolating process. When I sat down to write this chapter, I had little to go on in terms of plot and theme. But when I took a deep breath and realized that for four hours a day, every day, for the past several months, I have been immersing myself in my own imagination, I felt incredibly lonely… And I could think of no better way to express that than to give my characters some time in prison. Prior to writing the chapter, she was to be faced with the possibility of going to prison. But now that she has actually gone there, doing the hardest time they have to offer, the story has taken on a life of it’s own. How is a person affected when isolated 23 hours a day in a cell? Moreso, how does one feel when spending 23 hours in their cell seems like a luxury compared to time in the hole?
How do you stay sane in a situation like that? How do you keep your anger from eating you alive?
Is it possible to find some kind of redemption within these walls that doesn’t ring of other prison stories I’ve heard? To plan an escape would be the ultimate cliché, especially if the goal is to have the characters redeem themselves. We’re not dealing with an innocent, ala Andy Dufresne, who breaks out because he shouldn’t have been there in the first place. Here are two characters who have offended, and who must face those offenses in spite of a system that exists solely to provide their suffering.
If true character is revealed in difficult times, then for these characters to redeem themselves in spite of this institution is soil for a great story…
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-JJ McMoon
5/12/09

Music and the Path to Righteousness

I saw an interview with Bono and The Edge of U2 not too long ago where they were talking about their songwriting style. Someone asked them how they wrote the song, Bad, and Edge was first to comment. He said something to the effect of how it started out with a jam, but when Bono added the words, it just clicked.
When pressed for more details, he said something that would forever change not only my songwriting style, but my storytelling style as well. Paraphrased, he said, “If you just allow yourself to listen to the song, it will tell you where to go.”
For the past three weeks, I’ve been poring over the most emotionally draining chapter of the novel so far. It started out with a simple theme of right and wrong, of law vs. outlaw. An FBI agent is assigned to investigate an arms dealer / suspected assassin, who, unbeknownst to the FBI, she knew from high school (for those of you who are sticklers about facts, she lied on her background investigation and it was never picked up. This haunts her later, but I digress). My idea in the beginning was to have her exploit an unrequited crush he had on her back then, but that theme didn’t fit in with the rest of the story. So, within five pages, I had completed the most shallow and pointless chapter so far. She arrests him. He goes to jail. Big deal.
What does that prove and why do I care? Why would someone waste their time reading it? What bothered me most was that I had a great setup, but no payoff. I wanted more and was stuck.
I cannot adequately express the depression I feel when I’m stuck on a story. Everything looks bleak and dark and hopeless. I get agitated and antisocial, yet lonely, and I hate it and so it gets worse. I lose sleep. It becomes all too easy to find something else to do, anything else, rather than face those words on the page – each one of them proof that I should be doing anything besides telling stories for a living.
However, there are two life lessons that carry me through these times. The first, is that consistency produces results. No matter how high the mountain, if you take a few steps each day, you will eventually reach the top. It’s simple math. So as long as I sat down every day for my four hours and put something on paper, eventually I would reach the end.
The second life lesson is that I have a pretty decent imagination, if I tap into it correctly. If I run into a creative block, more than likely, it’s because I’ve put too many restrictions on myself, or too much goal-oriented pressure.
Or, to bring back Edge into the fold, I’m not listening to where the story should go.
I finally realized towards the end of last week that this wasn’t a story about law and order. The fact that Tabitha Banks was an FBI agent was incidental, but not the soul. This story was about righteousness. This story was about a code of honor among friends that was violated. It’s about first love, and how such feelings can defy logic. It’s about how you can look back, years from now, and wonder how you could have possibly fallen for that person… that yearning to feel it again to justify it to yourself that it was real, that you loved once… yet the revulsion you feel for ever having thought you were in love in the first place. Sure, beaurocracy sets free the criminal she’s after, but when others cut corners to get her target, she feels compelled to warn him… or does she feel that way because he was her first love? Tabitha struggles to choose the righteous path, in the face of extreme consequences… Is it worth losing everything to prove a point?
The music that helped inspire this story was both plentiful and mixed. Firstly, I think that I listened to just about every pre-1982 ZZ Top song while writing the scenes of Tabby and her friends bonding at the river. There’s something so perfectly fun about old ZZ Top records, especially Deguello, that I could think of no better music to set those moods, especially during Thomas’ drinking contest against the dorks…
To write the scenes for prom, I listened almost exclusively to U2’s Joshua Tree, since it took me back to my prom without feeling dated. Joshua Tree is passionate, but for me, it’s not very romantic. So for the scenes of Tabby falling in love, I put together a mix of Stone Temple Pilot’s “Sour Girl”, as well as several of the mellower cuts off of Brian Fechino’s newest CD, namely “Window Seat”, “Kmas”, and “Manhattan Clouds”.
And for the clouded justice scenes, I listened to a mix. Tulsa Drone’s latest CD, “Songs from a mean season” was great for writing about the secret agents; Lotion’s “Full Isaac”’; and Lush’s “Lovelife” were great for her “present-day” struggles.
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-JJ McMoon
April 16, 2009

Writing and Music…

I listen to a lot of music, especially while I’m writing. Sometimes, it helps set the mood for what I’m doing, and at other times, it helps me get out of a rut I’m in with a story.
In this project, several pieces of music have strongly influenced the outcome of chapters (and thus the entire novel), so I thought I’d share some of them here:
Chapter One (My Brother’s Cool Car) was written while listening to Soundgarden’s “Down on the Upside” and Nirvana’s “Nevermind” CD’s. In my opinion, that’s both of their best works, and together a hallmark of the nineties sound. The chapter is about a guy who is lost and confused and bruised by a bad turn of events, and I can’t think of any better way to describe the mood of these CD’s than by using those words. Some of the lyrics even began to tie into the work after a while. “I shot my love today… won’t you cry for me?”… “He’s the one who likes all the pretty songs… but he don’t know what it means…”
Chapter Two (Prom Queen) was written listening almost exclusively to Brian Fechino’s “Painting a Dream” CD. I was reviewing it at the time, and so I was trying to learn every nuance I could by deadline. The CD grew on me quickly and as I was writing the climax of this chapter, the song that most haunted me was “Window Seat”…
Chapter Three was difficult to write. I had a lot of trouble getting into the character of Billy Cobb. I tried many music titles and none seemed to help. Finally, I threw on a Grateful Dead show I hadn’t listened to in a while (October 25, 1989), and it all seemed to click. Billy is a “present tense” kind of guy who winds up living in the past without even realizing it. With all due respect, I can’t think of any other band that more represents this mentality than the Grateful Dead in the 1980’s.
Chapter Four (a piece about a rock star) was a piece that flowed very easily. I listened to a variety of industrial music for this one, namely The Matrix soundtrack.
Chapter Five (about an arms dealer) is a story about a passionate love affair with a Puerto Rican woman. For me, there is only one foreign language CD that awakens this kind of passion, and that is Robi Draco Rosa’s “Vagabundo”.
Today, I’ve been working mostly on Chapter Six, (about an FBI agent) and I started off listening to U2’s “The Joshua Tree”. As much as I love the sound of Bono’s voice, it’s easier for me to write during instrumental parts, and so after a while I switched to Tulsa Drone’s “No Wake”, which sounds dark and mysterious and midwestern to me. It had been a while since I had turned it on, and since it’s at the forefront of my mind, I think it would be very appropriate to listen to when I rewrite Chapter One…:)
-JJ McMoon
March 30, 2009
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Going down the home stretch…

This week has been a turning point.
When I started, I had a structure in mind that was very loose. I knew where I needed to end up, and I knew which characters I was going to use to get there. But I also knew that I’d be making a lot of the story up as I went along.
As I wrote last week, I found that many of the pieces didn’t fit, and under more critical examination, much of it wasn’t compelling enough. This forced a mid-novel rewrite, as well as an examination of the original structure I’d started out with.
The “hook” has become more important, and I’ve gotten more ideas for twists and turns in the main storyline that the original structure simply wouldn’t allow for. So, I’ve changed a couple of things. Firstly, I’ve decided that the chapter I was planning on the serial killer would throw everything off. I’ll probably write that story in another work someday, but in “9 Lives”, I’ve replaced it with “The Arms Race” (more on that in another post). Like a domino effect, this will also force changes in the remaining four chapters, but I think the more elaborate “hook” justifies those changes.
The story has become a mystery that you don’t know is a mystery. What I hope to have is a literary version of those pictures that if you look at it one way, you see one thing, but change the angle and you see another…
PS: The new target date for the first draft is April 15, 2009:)

-JJ McMoon
March 15, 2009

Mid-Novel Crisis

I finished the Jock’s story earlier this week, and decided to spend a day or two re-reading the other stuff I’ve put together. I feel that “Prom Queen” flows very well, as does “Jock”. I also think the “Goth Hero” and “Doc” pieces are strong, but need some modifications due to plots that have evolved.

However, I had a hard time with the first story. How is this compelling? What is interesting about the main character? Why continue reading about him? Why do we care what he has to say? He talks about some other people that may be interesting, but he does so from a distance.

What I realized was this: If I hadn’t written it, I would not be interested in reading it. There was no way I could lead off the novel with it.  Not as it’s written, anyway.

I spent a day or two feeling depressed over this, but this morning, I’ve woken up with a fresh motivation to succeed. I’m going to have to rewrite that entire chapter, but that’s not a bad thing. Since I know what comes next in the Prom Queen and Jock chapters, I can lead towards that and still have the inner conflict that I was trying to get the first time around. I can also focus on action sequences and dialogue, rather than straight up prose, and make it much more readable.

Its problem is not in its voice, but in its content. When I wrote it, I was fishing around for an idea, and so it comes across as very wordy. But now I can focus in on what’s important and make it shine.

So, this week is for rewriting the first four chapters to fit together like a neat puzzle. New creativity will be confined to notes, and I will start anew on Chapter 5 next week…:)

9 Lives – Chapter 9, “Let’s All Give the Doc A Mighty Hand”

I have always loved psychiatry, especially criminal psychiatry.  I’m not sure why.  But serial killers have always fascinated me, most notably the ones that I believe really were sick.  In the interest of political correctness, I won’t name any names, but I really would like to know what compels a man to eat another man when he’s not starving to death; or to chop up a fair-skinned woman and save pieces of her in his freezer.  It’s this kind of abhorrent behavior that completely escapes my level of understanding, and I find myself asking the same question over and over again whenever I read about it:

“Why?”

In this chapter, I thought of a psychiatrist who’s bored with his life.  He follows the same exact routine every day, and wonders what the point of it all is.  In an effort to relieve his boredom, he takes a post in a hospital for the criminally insane and meets a truly fascinating patient.  In an effort to “cure” the patient, he makes the mistake of getting emotionally involved…

Obviously, since this is the last chapter, I can’t give too much away.  But I will say that it will probably require the most rewriting of any of the chapters because so many details are joining the plot every day that need to be accounted for in the final act.  I like that it has a nice rhythm, and is told mostly through dialogue.

-JJ McMoon

2/28/09

9 Lives – Chapter 4, A Goth Hero’s Tragic Fall

This guy, called TX, was supposed to represent the turning point in the story.  At the time I wrote it (it’s the first of the 9 chapters that I wrote), I had a different idea for the ending than I have now.  However, with a few word changes here and there, I wound up with a humorous tale of rock star cliche.  A guy shows up to perform at a concert, and suddenly the concert is cancelled and the police are after him.

What I like about TX is that nothing rattles him.  Whether it’s the bouncers not recognizing him without makeup and refusing to give him entry to his own show, spending the night in a coffin, getting accused of being a serial killer, having a groupie go nuts on him and trashing his dressing room, or getting kidnapped by the real serial killer and facing certain doom, TX handles it all matter of factly, as if it’s all in a day’s work.  In his final encounter with Murphy’s Law, he’s presented with a delicious irony that only a character with as strong of a sense of self as TX has can answer:

Is it better to die a horribly painful death, or to live and spend the rest of your days in prison with the world knowing you are guilty of horrible crimes?

-JJ McMoon

2/28/09

9 Lives – Chapter 3, “A Jock’s Life After High School”

In this novel, the task of starting new chapters has provided me with the greatest challenge so far.  Because I’m coming off of the high of having completed a chapter, and I’m used to producing upwards of four pages a day, it’s difficult to start anew.  So many questions are unanswered when I sit down and look at that blank page that I have to switch gears from “production” back into  ”imagination mode.”

The problem with this week’s character, Billy Cobb, is that you’ve heard so much about him in the first two chapters. That kind of ties me down a bit. In this novel, I’m telling many sides of the same story, so it’s entirely plausible that one character speaks ill-ly of Billy while another claims him as the love of her life. However, all along I’ve kinda fostered the impression of his being an abrasive personality, and that does not bode well for entertaining writing. One of the cardinal rules for a good read involves characters that people like. They can be flawed, but overall, they need to be likable, otherwise why would someone continue to read about them? Readers want to read about character that they want to be, or hang around. When you’ve got a guy that is completely unredeeming, telling his story in the 1st person, it’s important that he’s at least respectable.

When I sat down today to write about him, I spent about 3 tedious hours trying to find his voice. Make him too jock-like and he’s stereotypical; but make him too human and his role in this tale becomes too watered down. He needs to be a jerk to perform his role in the story, but how much is too much? I saw him as a guy who is naturally likeable, but who’s character flaw is his cluelessness towards the feelings of others. He takes it for granted that people gravitate towards him, and doesn’t understand how it hurts their feelings when he loses interest in them, or doesn’t love them as much as they love him. Or how anyone could possibly have a different opinion than himself and be anything but “wrong”.

Billy is high energy, charismatic, and very physical in both his speech and mannerisms. He’s the kind of person you cannot help but stop and listen to, and then follow to the next party. But by the same token, he is also doesn’t understand why his best days were had in high school and how he just can’t seem to get his life together.

Today, I came up with his voice, but I also came up with his motivation and vehicle into the main plotline. No pun intended, he becomes obsessed with finding the Lincoln his best friend in high school used to have, convinced that if he can somehow acquire it again, he will find himself living the good life he had back in high school. To his excitement, he is able to buy the Lincoln, and his life does improve. Everything seems to come together.

For a short while, anyway…

-JJ McMoon

2/28/09

9 Lives – Chapter 1, My Brother’s Cool Car

The first story is where I have to build everything. I have to create characters, action, sprinkle in a bit of drama, and set the pace. More importantly, I have to set a first impression that’s going to last with the reader probably until the end. Do I want them to feel angry? Sad? Do I want them to laugh?

It’s a fun job to do this because you can’t possibly go wrong in the first draft, so the pages flow very easily. Usually, I’ll get anywhere from three to five pages done in a 4-hour block (my allotted daily writing time). But when I’m doing something from scratch, I can often get twice that. It’s in the rewriting that it all comes back to haunt me and I realize that I’m going to have to get rid of this plotline because it leads away from that and this character needs to kill so and so in chapter four, so he can’t do this in chapter one… So I’m sure that what I’m about to write about Freddy McDaniel will be completely different than what winds up in the final release. After all, they say write the first draft with your heart, and turn off your inner editor until the first draft is complete.

Freddy is the youngest of three brothers, each of whom are at least 10 years older than himself. Kyle, he idolized, while he barely spoke to Michael. Their father had a 1973 Lincoln Continental that he loved, but which winds up being an omen of terrible things to come; of youth and innocence lost, and finally, of life itself lost. Freddy inherits the Lincoln, unable to part with it because of the memories associated with it, but also unable to respect himself for not getting rid of it. One night’s mistake haunts him for his entire life, and he winds up leaving his life on the East Coast behind in favor of the glorious sunset offered by the West…

I set most of the story in the Arizona desert, in order to paint a picture of vulnerability. It’s a beautiful part of the country to see, but if your car breaks down, you could very easily die out there. Each of the characters starts out in a vulnerable place that they have to work their way out of. But Freddy’s unique challenge is that he’s the only one that has to do this completely alone. Without help from any of the passersby, and without companionship, he becomes lost mentally as much as he is physically. And as he becomes less sure of the difference between what is real and what is a heat-induced hallucination, he is less able to rely on himself.

Finally, he is forced to face his most traumatic memory, and rectify it.

Structural and Plot Notes: It’s not the kind of piece that would make a great movie, as the struggle is mostly internal. But on the page, I really like the pacing of it. I haven’t changed the language much in subsequent reads, either, as I think the characterization is solid. I am, however, waiting to do anything major with it until I’ve finished all of the others as I can already see some details that may need to be changed.

Also, during the first draft of this story (before grammar, or any other rewrite), I came up with a list of details that seemed insignificant when I wrote it. I almost cut them out on a second read because they didn’t contribute to the story. But for now I’m leaving them in, with the intention of expanding on some of them in the stories to come. It’s a nice, natural way of linking everybody together that I expected to have to work a lot harder on to achieve.

-JJ McMoon 2/27/09

9 Lives – Chapter 2, Prom Queen Trials and Tribulations

Just to get it out of the way, I foster no opinions of prom queens (or of prostitutes) in general, so please don’t take offense:)  I like writing about characters no one else writes about; people who aren’t necessarily good-intentioned, and who, in spite of justice saying they need a break, don’t always have happy endings.  It adds to the suspense, since you don’t know how it’s going to end, and I think it gives my plot lines more of a “real” feeling.

I started out writing this chapter as more of a shocker than anything else. I wanted to present a character that people don’t like and then make her likeable. The best stories are borne out of conflict with extreme resolution, and I couldn’t think of a better vehicle for showcasing this. Sandra is angry, bitter, corrupt, yet self-confident. She’s honest about who she is and what she does, and she expresses little shame over it.

She’s crass, rude, vulgar… everything a lady isn’t.

However, she’s also been in love and is able to redeem a little of her humanity by allowing herself to believe in love again. I was happy when, on my final read, I found myself touched by her revelation. This one, more than the others, truly goes the distance, and I felt everything from disgust to hope in listening to her tell me about herself.

In my travels, I’ve found that a person’s character presents itself in it’s purest form only when there’s a tremendous struggle involved. For example, I’ve hung around people that were in Sandra’s situation and found that some were broken, while others weren’t. I wanted to write about a woman in this situation who wasn’t broken… yet. I wanted to show a person so intent on NOT being in denial that she falls into the greatest denial of all: The denial of her own humanity. In fact, I don’t even give her a name until halfway through the piece, because until then, she doesn’t even view herself as a person, but as a piece of meat.

In closing, I’d have to say that the biggest challenge in writing this chapter was to stop writing this chapter. I could have told the entire novel’s story just from her point of view, so I had to force myself to end it at 20 pages and let one of the other characters pick up where she left off. I may change this strategy in the final draft, but for now I think that it works. Leaving some loose ends isn’t necessarily a bad thing in storytelling, and I do hope people will discuss the love triangle between Sandra, Kyle, and Billy long after I’m on to my next book:)

-JJ McMoon

2/27/09