Take this journal entry: "Writing is shoving a hand in a pocket, tumbling around gems until they fit just right in the hand."
Or, take this addendum to said journal entry: "Of course, the better writer is not so quick to pull said gems out of said pocket. First, he must slip in a sheet of sandpaper, take off some of the shine that comes from over-tumbling."
Bob was always criticizing my over-use of adjectives. "Why add a load to a pair of pants when the pants alone are enough to keep the reader reading?"
Bob was big on keeping a reader reading. "What better reader's going to cross Hells Canyon if the writer builds a bridge out of match sticks?"
Bob, of course, was referring to the Fine Craft of story telling. Interesting, though, that he'd used the bridge analogy. For it was by design that I used match sticks instead of I-beams. Where reliable Bob offered his better reader safe passage, I carrot-sticked my better reader out onto a bridge that couldn't bear his big head, let alone his high horse. Which begged the question: Why did I want to see my reader hit bottom? I didn't. I only wanted to give his miserable spirit something to climb.
Bob, of course, put our disparate objectives another way: "There's two kinds of writers, Anton. There's you, and the guy who has a chance in hell of getting published."
And that's when it hit me: My Great Work couldn't do it's great work unless it got published. And it wouldn't get published if it didn't meet the mean standards of the publisher--safe passage for the mean reader in America.
I looked at my working-man fingers lying on my PowerBook 190.
Job one; remove match sticks over Hells Canyon. Job two; steel work I-beams in their place. Job three; lay a level road of asphalt across the Snake River. Job four; dress up like a nurse, place my dear reader's hands on the titty grips of the state of the art walker, get him shuffling west. Job five: Get out my pushbroom, sweep the bridge of every gridiron filing that might roll under a shoe, cause my better reader to fall face-down on the hot asphalt. No, the last thing a writer wants his dear reader to face, is the gum bubble the dear has for a soul.
By the end of the day, I had my first chapter reworked. Of course, a chapter rife with safe passage wasn't exactly scintillating. No, perhaps my Go West Young Man, Go West chapter wasn't the best way to start my novel. Far better to flash back to a staid chapter like that later. Ya, after the reader was hooked.
Here, let me fast-forward, start my novel with the young man already west.
I spent Tuesday bowing to my laptop. I'd hoped to get that new first chapter banged out by bedtime. But here it was already; past my bedtime.
There was a little ritual I performed to mark the end of a productive weekend: Doing a little reading in front of the harshest critic of the land: Sarah Bernhardt.
I tipped my Maalox bottle one last time, read aloud the first paragraph of my Great Work--all I had so far.
"Never had one realized such peace as I had realized in the shack I had built at the end of the Oregon Trail. So much peace, I named the horse that brought me west, Peace. Tying Peace to a pine nearby, I got to thinking how fortunate I was to call this neck of Eden home. This neck out west where a man could make a new name for himself. Huck, I'd call myself. But then a woman happened by, stirring a lock of hair so bad, I tied a slip knot instead of a square, and that's how I lost me horse."
I looked up from my laptop.
Sarah didn't say anything.
Then again, what was there to say? I looked down at my laptop. I mean, look what I'd done: In one congealed paragraph, I had fully cooked the hotdish that was America.
I grabbed a sheet of paper, time to practice signing copies of my book.
Anton Blue Celadon. Anton Blue Celadon.
It was then that I heard stirrings from across my one room. It was the dead actress, coming to life.
"My, my," I had Bernhardt say, "the great author on book tour already. Too bad the great novelist skipped lit class the day the lit prof declared, 'A paragraph does not the novel make.' Ha, ha."
And so the evening proceeded much as in the past; Sarah nailing me to the cross for the great work I'd never get off the ground. Never get off the ground for the muse I saw fit to throw out the door like a dog. Which got me pissed off to the point where I got in Sarah's face, gave the gardenia on the side of her head the look my giving dad used to give the side of my head just before he gave me the back of his hand.
Sarah didn't say anything.
I rolled my head that I might get the ringing to stop. The ringing didn't stop, but finishing up a roll my eye settled on my sponge. My disgusting blue sponge.
Anton Blue Celadon.
What I needed was a blue that had more regal going for it. Which brought to mind Coral; her god with the blue neck.
Anton Shiva Celadon.
Oh, what fortune had I stumbled upon. No, if you want to adopt a middle name that sticks, reach for something deific. Then again, hard to savor your new name with that old ringing in your ear. Which gave me the bright idea to give the name back to the gods. No, if you want the ringing in your ear to stop, make a sacrifice to the gods.
Sacrifice made, I hit the futon. But, no--still, the ringing in me ear. So I put the spin to that. No, that's what I had in there--my muse, laying fertile eggs at such a rate they were yolking up the works.
And that's when it struck me; the cause of my indigestion. It wasn't the stew I was eating of an evening. It was the abuse the dead actress was subjecting me to of an evening.
I rolled over, talked to my pillow as if it were my girl: "Maybe it's time I got me some new wallpaper."
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