Category Archives: Writing
I’m No Candle, or There’s No Honor in Martyrdom
I believe Harlan Ellison said something like the starving artist is a myth perpetuated by those who don’t wish to pay the artist. I believe he said something to the effect of, “There’s no nobility in starving for one’s art.” He was talking about writing, of course. But it came to me a lot a couple of weeks ago as a quote that was been being posted and read at my school for Teacher’s Appreciation Week compared teachers to candles, who “light the way while being consumed.”
I loathe this idea. I love teaching, but it’s a job. I don’t want to be consumed by it. A candle gives light until there’s no more left. This is not honorable, it’s only the way of things. If I light the way, it’s with a flashlight, which needs taking care of and a recharge. Of course, teaching technology and media, my flashlight is on my phone. I will do whatever I can to help my students find the river and drink, within reason. That, I hope, is honorable. When it comes to my personal health—mental or physical—or it comes to time with my family, or it comes to my other calling, writing, I draw the line.
All the other ”appreciation?” Keep it. Want to show appreciation? Time or money, that’s how. For all teachers everywhere.
The myth that “teachers are candles,” or any myth that teachers should give so much more of themselves than nearly any other career–without the corresponding pay of, say, a doctor–is perpetuated by people who do not actually respect teachers, but choose to believe that they should give more of themselves than they should. And this includes administrators.
Administrators love to point out how they have to be on-call all the time, and do this conference or that conference, etc. Considering they’re paid far, far more than those in the classroom (and so many of them have not been in a classroom, of have only taught a little while), that’s their choice. Teachers should not be expected to do what the administrators are willing to do without the same benefits and pay.
And this is not school specific, but all schools, all districts.
Just a thought.
This was originally posted on my Patreon page, as a Patrons Only post. If you liked this post, please consider becoming a Patron.
The Early 2022 Post, or Man, I Really Need to Step Things Up
Happy New Year! We made it through 2021 and that’s probably as positive as I can be about that experience! I mean, I guess it wasn’t worse than 2019 or 2020, but it wasn’t great. Teaching during the 2021-2022 school year has so far been the most difficult I’ve experienced. We here at casa de Gauthier are still somewhat hunkered down. I haven’t been to the movies since January 2020, for instance, and only go to stores when absolutely needed. Yeah, I’ve gotten my haircut and we’re a little more willing to some things, but we’re still being pretty careful. My nine-year-old, Genevieve, is being homeschooled until the Massachusetts DESE gets their heads out of their asses and do what’s really right for the protection of students (and teachers, but who cares about them!). Still, 2021 saw some exciting things.
In January, I sent a query/proposal to an agent for my middle grade space adventure novel. Having not heard anything for months, I queried other agents, who promptly said, “Thanks but no thanks.” In the last week of December, the agent from January got back to me. While they passed on the novel, they told me that they’d had it on their “maybe” list. So I came thiiiiiiiis close! It’s much-needed validation for the book, so I’m looking forward to looking into more agents and querying.
In February, I went on a limb and emailed Crossroad Press to ask if they’d be interested in bringing out my backlist and maybe a new novel, and they were interested! So that’s the beginning of the journey of the rereleases of Catalysts, Alice on the Shelf, and Shadowed. Alice on the Shelf has been in ebook pretty much since it came out in 2011, but the new versions of Catalysts and Shadowed are currently available, and the new print edition of Catalysts is, too, which is really exciting.
I started editing the new adult horror novel in August and am almost done with the line-edits. December became the month of the Lego Star Wars Advent Calendar and the new novel took a backseat while I wrote mini-stories and photos, which I did minor editing to in Procreate, spending from 20 minutes to 2 hours working on the stories. Mostly, they were about an hour or 90 minutes, which is the time I’d usually work on editing the novel. Now that the advent calendar story is over, I’m back on novel duty. I have about 25 pages to edit, and hope to get it done in the next few days. As far as the Lego Star Wars Advent Calendar story, that can be seen on my Instagram. If there’s interest, maybe I’ll collect the stories on a page here or on my Patreon.
I’m looking forward to what 2022 has in store and hope I can up things a bit—getting more Patrons, selling more work, and generally getting more stuff done. Echoes on the Pond will be released this year, which is exciting. I look forward to holding my first published novel in hands. I’m hoping to get more things going on my platforms. Part of that is health, too. I need to work on exercising and eating better, so that’ll be on the agenda.
If you’re so inclined, becoming a Patron of my Patreon page will help. I’ve been posting more there than on here, and Patrons get the inside scoop on things, including the titles of the works, occasional previews, excerpts, and perhaps more this year, especially if I get more Patrons.
It’s been a rough few years and I’m hoping 2022 will begin alleviating our pains. Thanks for reading, and I hope we’ll continue this journey for a long time to come. Again, happy New Year.
Gabby Ray Arrives!
Gabby Ray has lived in my family since 2007. It began as a joke but I’ve used the character as an example for years in my class when I teach Photoshop, InDesign, etc. Last year, I did a project with the students and actually did the project with them. Writing, drawing, all of this comic book.
The assignment was to take a myth, fairy tale, folktale, or legend, and adapt it as a story for an original character the students created. So I did this. It features Easter eggs of my sister, her partner, my wife, and both of my daughters. Han Solo and Harlan Ellison might also make an appearance. Most importantly, my mother makes an appearance.
My Patreon Patrons got to see it first. I hope you enjoy it!
Writing for Fun and Nightmares, My 1st Attempt at Fan Fiction
I have never written fan fiction. The idea idea of fanfic as a major thing is, to me, a fairly new thing, definitely since the rise of the internet. When I was of an age to really want to write fanfic, the internet was in its infancy and I didn’t have a computer. By the time I got my first computer and access to the internet, when I was 21, I was too busy writing Bill Gauthier stories to try my hand at fanfic, preferring to wait for the day that I was hired by a licensed property to write stories. Sometimes, though, an idea comes and it just won’t go away.
In the last few years, I had an idea regarding A Nightmare on Elm Street. Longtime readers know I’m a big fan of the movies, particularly the first five. Except the second movie. It’s bad. But, what if those stories could be told in a way that they were like five parts of a bigger story? This idea wouldn’t leave me alone. Finally, I decided to try my hand at fan fiction.
I haven’t done much, focusing on my other projects. I don’t really have any plans of sharing any more of this fun writing with anyone except–maybe–close friends. But here is what I did for the beginning of my unofficial fan-novelization of Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. I hope it’s mildly enjoyable, at the very least.
Prologue — A Dream
He feels like he has lived to reach this moment. Everything that happens afterward hinges on this particular moment in time. As he steps into his workshop, his work shoes shuffling against the concrete of his area, he chuckles. The chuckle comes from the throat and sounds a little phlegmy. That’s all right. It is as it should be.
He approaches a workbench and grabs a grimy old leather work glove from a shelf that’s against the wall across from his cot. Because the boilers need constant attention, the owners of the power plant let him live here. No, lets him live here, present tense. Right? He lifts the canvas bag up, the items inside clanging together as he upends the bag. Knives fall onto his workbench near the copper plate he’d put aside. He lifts the brim of his hat and wiped the sweat beading on his forehead on the red sleeve of his sweater. Not wiped but wipes, except, he’s not sure that there is sweat beading on his forehead.
It doesn’t matter, though, because he has work to do. Thinking about it makes him chuckle again.
He picks up a knife with his dirty, fingernail-bitten hands and begins the process of disassembling. He looks at the sketches he made on the old notebook, his crude drawing more detailed than almost anything else he’s ever done. He chuckles. That’s not true. As he disassembles the knives, he remembers the dream that brought him here, the dream that was so intense that it almost had to be more of a vision than a proper dream.
In the dream, a child ran from him, laughing and smiling. He laughed and smiled, too, and said the same sorts of things he’d said before when he’d play around with the children (sometimes he remembered the child being a little girl, sometimes it was a little boy) in the neighborhood. He knew he had to wait for the real fun to begin, his fun. For the child, it was new. Being at the power plant, being in the boiler room was exotic, fun. The ultimate playground. It was the kind of place Mommy and Daddy wouldn’t allow them to play. Soon, though, the child grew scared.
He heard the child call out for him. He didn’t respond. He stood, back against a metal wall, barely containing the laughter he felt building up in his chest. As the child grew more panicked, he grew happier. His wheezing breath grew quicker. He followed the sounds of the child’s mewling until he saw the small boy/girl in her/his Sunday Best. It sickened him, really, how prim and proper these children could be.
He chuckled and the child turned toward where he’d been. The child saw nothing. He saw them, though. He slowly, silently crept behind the machines, and when the child stepped toward where he’d been, he leapt out and struck.
He chuckles now, as he welds metal to more metal. In his dream, he’d killed the child with a claw on his right hand. Long, deadly fingernails, like a bear’s or a lion’s tore through the pale flesh of the child. His other hand had held the child down. That’s when he knew what he had to do, what he had to build.
After warming the metal, he shapes it on an anvil. He uses a stone spinner to help shape the already curved knife blades. He then welds the blades to more metal and tests the feel against his fingertips. A surge of energy and excitement pours through him and he chuckles again. He can’t help it. At last, he will do what he’s needed to do in the way that he’s needed to do it. At last he’ll show them.
And they need to be shown.
He thinks of them now and anger bubbles in the pit of his stomach. They smile at him, and the children are kind to him, mostly, but he remembers when the parents were children themselves and how they weren’t kind to him at all. Oh, no. He’d never really been one of them, though he grew up around them, somewhere on that long street ran not quite through the center of town, but almost as long parallel to Main Street, a few streets over.
He’d been an orphan in the small town of Springwood. Somehow, most of the time his foster parents lived on Elm Street. Though he lived on other streets in the small, suburban town that lay to the northeast of Los Angeles, it was Elm Street where he’d spent most of his childhood.
Elm Street was comprised of four basic sections that were almost separate neighborhoods on their own. The northern most end of Elm Street were mansions. It was also the smallest part of Elm Street. Some of the residents in those large houses wrote N. Elm Street as their address, though there was no official North Elm Street. He’d seen these houses as a child, and had even done some odd jobs in them as an adult, but he’d never lived among them. Not that he’d ever wanted to. The children and teenagers who’d lived in those large houses and mansions were amongst the cruelest he’d had to deal with throughout his childhood and adolescence.
The next section, moving south down Elm, was the largest section. This section was home to the upper-middle class houses. He’d lived in two of these houses growing up, 1570 and 1428. The people of 1570 had been horrible. The man of the house was considered a stellar citizen of Springwood, even sat on the town council, but would put his cigarettes out on him. He’d only been eight years old and had already known pain. This same great denizen of the town would also make nighttime visits to both of his daughters. He’d been a rotten man. As a child, he eventually got out, but he’d had to kill a cat to do so. He’d lived at 1428 when he was seven and the people there had been terrific. Still, his anger could sometimes be too much for them and he’d been removed after a particularly bad tantrum.
Driving south down Elm Street, the houses grew smaller. As he checks the hinges on the fingers, he muses that he’d spent three years in one of the houses. The family had been okay but didn’t really give much of a fuck about him. This was where the middle-class and, eventually, the lower-middle class families lived. The cars weren’t as nice as the other section, and there were more divorced parents and trouble down here, but not much. As he’d grown up in the forties and fifties, things were still pretty good. As those who lived in that section Elm Street were fond of saying, they didn’t have much but didn’t need much. It was funny, he‘d noted as a child, how those who said that always looked north, up Elm Street and to where they dreamed to live.
The blades were sharpened and on the finger pieces, the finger pieces were hinged together, and now came the time to rivet each finger to the copper base. He takes a straight razor that he’s had since he was a teenager and cuts into the metal. He cuts and cuts until time passes and he’s left with a three-by-four-inch plate that covers the back of his hand perfectly. Throughout the cutting process, and into the mild shaping process, he remembers where lived the longest on Elm Street. The South Section, as it’s often referred to. No need to say “of Elm Street” afterward. If someone asked, “Where’s this freak from?” and another replied, “Oh, he’s from the South Section,” everybody knew what that meant.
The South Section was the small section of Elm Street that was, quite literally, on the other side of the tracks. The West Station train cut through Elm Street, running parallel to Spruce. This small part of Elm Street (though larger than where the mansions and enormous houses were) was all lower-lower-class. Generally, if you were a child who lived in the South Section, children from the other sections couldn’t play with you. Sometimes, if you’d come from one of those other sections and hard times had fallen on the family, then maybe things would be all right and you could have friends, but you always played in their backyards or out on the front lawns or sidewalks, never in the house, and your friends were never allowed to go to your house.
This is how he knew the truth about Elm Street, about Springwood. He chuckles as he rivets the fingers to the plate. Certainly, they’d call him a monster if they knew what he plans to do with his new toy, if they knew what he’d done on the outskirts of L.A. a few months back and over in the town of Longmeadow a year before. The impulses are too strong to ignore anymore and besides, they have it coming. Sure they smile and wave at him. They grew up with him, but he’ll always be the weird guy.
He attaches the plate to the work glove. It’s careful work, he doesn’t want to wreck the old glove anymore than it already was wrecked. And, finally, it’s done. His heartbeat rams in his chest and he feels an erection grow in his work pants. He flips the glove over to look at it palm-side up.
He slides his hand into the glove and it feels like coming home. He lifts the hand and is surprised by how heavy the glove is. Good. Momentum will help cut through cloth and then flesh. He looks at the clawed glove from one side to the other, wiggles his fingers, and chuckles and the sound the metal makes on metal.
He flicks his hand and splays his fingers simultaneously.
The sound is deadly and frightening. He imagines what the sound alone would do to a child and he laughs.
Yes, he thinks. This is where it begins.
Funding My Art in the 21st Century, or I’m on Patreon Now
It seems appropriate on what would’ve been Harlan Ellison’s 85th birthday to tell you about my Patreon page. Harlan was big on making sure writers and artists were paid for their work and this is something that, having been publishing for 20 years, I am really in need of. While my teaching career pays well for being a public school teacher, the writing part isn’t earning enough, and since I’ve been pretty busy writing and trying to get my career back on track, I’ve been playing with the notion of starting a Patreon page. I didn’t think I had a big enough following to go there, but an artist friend of mine, Kim Gatesman, suggested that I didn’t need much of a following. After asking on social media, I had several people urge me to create one, so I did, about 21 days ago.
It was a difficult decision but it’s made. I’m still working out the wrinkles, but I have some ideas. Possible chapbooks of my stories. Maybe a collection of the reviews that I have done here, like A Nightmare in Gautham, Friday in Gautham, From Gotham to Gautham, and From Krypton to Gautham. Or even just continuing to do more reviews or studies or whatever you call them. As summer approaches, I’ll be playing more on Patreon and thinking of perks or whatever they’re called there.
And that’s why I’m writing about my Patreon here. I feel bad that I have followers here on my blog but I don’t blog as much as I once did. I’ve been focusing on my novels and work-related things. If you’re interested in what I write, if you like what I write, I strongly urge you to become a patron. It will do two things. 1) It will show me you’re not just interested in reading what I have to say but you’re willing to sustain my ability to write it, and 2) It will guilt me in having to post more. If I have people willing to part with their hard-earned money because they like what I write, then I will be more likely to find time to write the blogs.
Thank you for reading, and I look forward to your support.
And now, here’s Unca Harlan Ellison talking about this very thing. Man, I miss him.
Aftermath & Updates
Today is Dad’s birthday. He’s 78. I talked to him tonight and made him laugh a few times. It’s a gift, this ability to say the thing to make him not cry. It was a gift that I used during the two days we stood by Mom’s deathbed. I helped my sister through, too. So that was my present to Dad tonight. I made him laugh. It was something small, but it was something.
I’m numb. It’s been a month and five days since my mother died and it feels…wrong. Strange. Inconceivable (and, yes, it’s okay if you read that in Wallace Shawn’s voice, I did, too, as I wrote it). She was a force of nature. And now…
I’m told I haven’t been the same, that I’m not myself. Everyone expects it, of course, but still. I haven’t had a full breakdown moment, yet, where I wept and cursed the heavens or anything like that. My crying has come in moments, flashes, and then gone. I have laughed a lot, telling funny stories about Mom, which I think she’d prefer anyway. But still, I’m numb.
Very quickly, I found the one thing I could do was write. I’ve been working on the new novel pretty well. I’m just over 64,000 words into it and know the story is rolling. It’s mainly telling itself. I’ll call it The Monster right now, because it fits the book, though that’s not the working title. I haven’t worked on it as much as I’d like because I’m taking a state-mandated course for my teaching license, and the general exhaustion I feel through this time of melancholy, but I’m still doing well. I submitted Echoes on the Pond to an agent. Well, the query letter and first ten pages. I’m hoping he’ll bite. It’s a good book that I think deserves a chance in the sun. Once I finish the first draft The Monster, I’ll begin editing/revising my middle-grade science fiction novel, which I’ll call SpaceGirl for now. G and Pamela loved it and I think it also deserves its moment in the sun. It feels good to be wordslinging again. It’s falling into place in a way I haven’t felt in a long, long time.
One of the things I’ve done as I mourned is listen to Bruce Springsteen. All right, let me revise that. If you’re a reader of this blog (or my social media, or you know me personally), you know that I listed to Springsteen a lot. Well, of course I’d listen to him during this trying time. I’ve found The Rising to be an album that rises to the challenge. No pun intended but feel free to laugh. “The Rising” itself is a song about having died and going to the Great Beyond, whatever that is. But songs like “Lonesome Day,” “Countin’ on a Miracle,” “Mary’s Place,” and “You’re Missing” are built for this kind of thing. Maybe I’ll write about these songs in regards to this.
One of the things I’m afraid of is that I’m talking about (or writing about) Mom too much. I’m worried people will think I’m trying to play a pity card or something. I’ve been assured by friends that it’s natural, but it’s still a fear.
Anyway, I’m bouncing along, doing what I can. I feel lost, still, most days. My mind allows me to jump to jokes and stuff like that to protect me, I guess. Either way, I’m working on a dream (to steal from Springsteen again) as I write, and I’ve been very lucky to have a good support system around me. That’s where I am right now. I hope you’re well. And I’m glad I got to make Dad laugh for his birthday. I did something good today.
In 2019, I Promise to Something or Other, or I’m Here, See?
As has been the case for the last few years, I’ve meant to write here sooner. When I think I might, though, I think of Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancin’ in the Dark,” the opening lines of which are, “I get up in the evenin’ / And I ain’t got nothin’ to say.” That’s how I’ve felt. At least a little. I have things to say, but are they worthy of being said? Now right there is a problem that the internet has created, isn’t it? Lots of people saying shit that doesn’t need saying. I certainly do that enough on Facebook and Twitter. And even Instagram, when I think about it. But this is my space and….
And I’ve been working on other things. Here’s what’s gone on:
I started writing a middle-grade science fiction adventure novel in July because my youngest daughter asked me to write a story for her. At four years old, we began reading junior novels to her and she loved them. That summer, she asked me to write her a story but with grad school going I didn’t have the time. I began it this summer but once she was out of daycare in August, I didn’t have the time or energy. Then school started. I got back into writing in the fall, though, when I edited and rewrote Echoes on the Pond. Right around Thanksgiving, I began submitting it. I’m still waiting to hear back from an agent but we’re very close to the two months where I may not hear anything. But either way, Echoes on the Pond has begun going out there.
In December, I finally finished the middle-grade science fiction adventure story. It’s about 21,000 words and I read the first draft to Pamela and G and they loved it. G was so happy, she kept hugging and kissing me. She’s six now and she loves those longer books even more. So that’s the next to be revised, right after I finish…
A new novel I’m writing! This one is an adult novel, horror/supernatural suspense/dark fantasy. I’m only about 25,000 words in so far but I feel like I’m digging well and may not break the story too much.
I have a short story I need to put into rotation, too. The other stuff I’ve written about? Well, I still need to work up my druthers to pitch column ideas, but it’s there. The main thing is that I’m writing again and having fun doing it.
As far as other things in life, they’re fine, I guess. Medical bills and student loans both suck. I’m sick of dealing with those people. The world seems like it’s ready to fall apart around us but there’s also an energy and hope that I’ve never seen before. My depression has been pretty bad for the last month or two, but I know that’s how it works. Depression seems like an ocean, to me, with the waves ebbing and flowing and right now, it’s stormy and the waves are big. My job is to ride them. My mother has had a rough go of things and that hasn’t been fun. Things could be improved upon in my family’s lives but overall, I’m happy.
The main thing, for this blog, is that I’m writing again. And I hope that this means I’ll be here more. Time will tell. Take care of yourself and happy 2019.
Harlan Ellison
“René Descartes walks into a bar. The bartender says, ‘Would you like a drink?’
Descartes says, ‘I think not,’ and disappears. A moment later he reappears and says, ‘On second thought…’
Anyway, Bill, this is Harlan Ellison.”
That was how my second voicemail from Harlan began. It was a moment that knocked me out. I’d already received a call from him the prior fall, in November 2006, but there I was leaving work in the spring of 2007, hearing the gruff voice again. A voice I’d heard in audiobooks, CD recordings of lectures, and on television was, again, coming from my phone. At the end of the message, he left his phone number.
I never used it.
Harlan Ellison died on June 27th. I heard about it on June 28th, which happens to be my wedding anniversary. I am heartbroken.
It’s taken me almost two months to write this because I wanted to get it right. I don’t know that I have. Harlan’s work has amazed me since I first started reading it when I was 19 years old, in 1996. I have trouble believing that I’ve been a reader and fan of the guy I first saw on television through his commentary on Sci Fi Channel’s Sci Fi Buzz when he was in his 60s and I was at the end of my teens. Turning 41–an actual friggin’ adult!–and Harlan is gone. People talk about their favorite Harlan Ellison stories. Of course, “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman.” and “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” are classics and I love them both. I am partial to “Jeffty is Five” and “The Resurgence of Miss Ankle-Strap Wedgie,” and also “Incognita, Inc.” But trying to list favorites is a mug’s game, as Harlan might say. Every time I think of a few, a few more pop up that I love. His nonfiction was amazing, too. It made me want to try my hand at nonfiction, which is how I got into blogging, and even had the nerve to pitch my column to Dark Discoveries Magazine back in 2004.
But his writing, which was how he defined himself, was only a part of what I loved about Harlan. His personality seemed very similar to mine at times and I loved that he would say what he believed, throwing the chips into the air and letting them fall where they lay. For a kid who spent too much of his adolescence trying to figure out who he was, just living your life by your rules and to fuck with anyone who didn’t agree was refreshing. Looking back, I realize I may have taken this too far at times because Harlan had something I lacked: courage. Or the stupidity of just not being scared by anything. He was a Force of Nature, I was a Fart in the Wind. I look back on my column, American Gauthic, and some of the things I wrote online and said in real life during my early-to-mid-to-late-20s and cringe. I should not have gone there. I was not then, and am not now, Harlan Ellison, who could mostly get away with it. That said, the column did build some bridges and it is the thing that got me the voicemails from Harlan.
In the fall of 2006, upon renewing (or changing my address for) my HERC–Harlan Ellison Recording Collection–subscription, I sent a letter saying I was writing an essay about him if he’d like to read it. Harlan (or, more likely, Susan) sent a Post-It attached to an issue of The Rabbit Hole saying yes, so I mailed the manuscript to him.
A few weeks later, I was leaving work at my newish job as a teaching assistant and I saw I had a voicemail. It was Harlan, thanking me for the essay, telling me it was good, and correcting some mistakes that I’d made. I was thrilled. I wish my phone company at the time had let me keep the voicemail. I revised the essay and sent it to the magazine. The next spring it was published and I mailed the copy or two that Harlan had asked for to keep in his files.
Spring of 2007 was a good time for me. I had met the woman I was pretty sure I was going to ask to marry me. I had been hired as a teacher. Things were looking good. As I left school, I saw I had a voicemail. I opened it and heard, “René Descartes walks into a bar….”
Harlan Ellison had a large impact on my life, just as he did on many readers’ lives. His words, his personality, his performances, his life helped me through difficult times. Harlan’s message in his writing and in many of his lectures and public appearances was to be ourselves, to not take shit, to learn and think and love and help and basically try to be our best. And that was a message I needed at critical times in my life when, as someone coming from a lower middle-class background, elitism was a definite no-no.
Harlan and I had a few exchanges via his bulletin boards, but I was never able to bring myself to actually call him after he gave me his phone number in the spring of 2007. I was just too goddamned afraid, which would have disappointed him. I wasn’t afraid of him, I was afraid of me. It was stupid, and I should’ve listened to everyone around me, but I didn’t.
And now, Harlan is gone. I didn’t know him. I wasn’t a friend. I was a reader who admired his work and what the man did in his life. There are many out there who can tell stories of bad behavior and this and that and fuck them all. Harlan Ellison was a great man. His stories could cut you, make you feel, make you laugh, make you cry. He always believed in the possibilities of human beings. Harlan wanted what was best for us and for us to live our best lives with ethics, and for us to also know we’re all broken to a degree. We all have ugly sides that are part of being human. He wanted us to experience good art, good food, the best of what humanity had to offer. He knew, though, that there was violence beneath it all, and he had no problem revealing and, in some ways, reveling in it.
Harlan Ellison is dead. Words I knew I’d have to write someday but still feel strange to see together. Like Robin Williams and Wes Craven, another of my heroes gone. But, never truly gone. Because the work remains. And that is what Harlan wanted, for the work to last far longer than he did. I’m up to carrying it along. Join me?
Tippity-Tapping While the World is on Fire, or I’m Here & I Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere
Do you want the general update first? Yes? All right.
I received my Master’s Degree in May. I am officially a master. I get a seat on the council without whining. So there’s that. I’ve been catching up on reading that I put off while reading for the graduate program. Don Winslow’s The Power of the Dog and The Cartel…holy shit! These are good books. Stephen King rewarded me for the Master’s by publishing The Outsider in May and kicked my ass with it. Jeremy C. Shipp’s The Atrocities was a hallucination nightmare and recommended. There are other things, too, but we’ll worry about them another time, if at all.
I’ve been writing, too. I’m editing Echoes on the Pond and should be doing revisions next week. I should be able to begin submitting to agents/publishers by August. I also started a new novel, which is a middle readers novel. My youngest daughter loves novels as much as she loves picture books. At five years old, she’ll sit and listen as her Mom and I read a chapter or so a night. This has been going on for about a year. While I was still in grad school, she asked me to write something for her. Well, it just so happens that I had a story I came up with when I was between 10 and 12 years old, I even drew a picture of it. Funny enough, I found the drawing about four or five years ago in my parents’ attic and brought it home. It’s a slightly revised version of that original idea but I’m writing it now. I also wrote my first (good) short story in a few years and submitted that. It feels good to be back on the horse.
And that’s the thing, that’s the real topic of today’s post. It feels so good to be writing again for me and, by extension, you.
I’ve spent the last two-and-a-half years writing academic papers with only a few small forays into my own writing that I feel like the world is mine for the taking. But it has also led me to think about (or rethink about) (or re-rethink about) some things. This blog is one of them. Now, before you get all sweaty and freak out, having waited oh so long for a new post from me and now you’re afraid I’m about to say I’m going to stop, calm down. If there is anyone out there reading these posts, I assure you, I intend to keep them coming. I’ve thought about several topics to write here on the blog in the last few months. They include:
- How the deaths of Carrie Fisher and Margot Kidder made me realize how their characters taught me about women when I was a child
- Writing about keeping the dream alive when everything seems to be working against it
- General observations about the world
- A remembrance of Harlan Ellison
The first and last things especially have hit hard. The thing is, though, as I look at the time that I have, it’s limited. I can either work on my novels, stories, general fiction that I hope to submit and get paid for, or I can write blog posts about things that I’d love to talk/write about but there’s no chance of getting paid for it. Money is very much in my mind right now. I owe over $100,000 in student loan debt. And even though on paper my wife and I make a pretty good income, the cost of living is rising ridiculously. This past month alone, I’ve found myself tight in the wallet, and I foresee next week is going to be really hard. Part of this is that changes will have to be made, and I dig that. But I also need to be able to earn some extra income. So while I’d love to be able to write more here, I think I’m going to look into turning these ideas into essays, columns, whathaveyou.
Now, I may look into Patreon at some point, once I’ve hit my writing groove again, and if I do, you will be the first to know. I may pitch some ideas for columns, too. Maybe bring back American Gauthic or something else entirely. I don’t know. But if going through grad school taught me anything, it taught me that I can juggle some of these things more than I ever thought I could. And if the last three weeks have done anything, they’ve lit a fire under my ass.
What happened in the last three weeks to do this? 1) The money thing. 2) The death of Harlan Ellison
If you’ve been a longtime reader of mine, you know how much Harlan Ellison meant to me. Since his death, I’ve been watching commentaries and listening to his lecture CDs put out by Deep Shag Records. It has reinvigorated me. I’d like to write more about Harlan but I think that should be its own post, and I also have another idea. You’ll know when and if I pull that other idea off.
So there we go. As the world burns around us, I am doing my thing. Writing, telling stories, and watching. I will report back, I promise. How and when is the real question.
You Mean It’s…2018?!, or Just WHERE the Hell Have I Been?!
I am a little shocked that I haven’t posted here since last New Year’s Day. I mean last New Year’s Day, 2017. A lot has happened…and not much has happened, too. If you want the short of it: I’m doing well, so is my family, and I’m nearly done with grad school. Once I am, I’ll post here more. I hope you’ll forgive my lack of posting (though I’m not entirely sure anyone really cares about these blog posts). And that’s it! See you when I see you.
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All right, that was the short of it. I didn’t do the thing with the ellipses up there to be cute, though. They’re there if anyone doesn’t want to read beyond that brief, general update. If you’re still here, it might get long. We’ll see.
Anyway, 2017 was an interesting year, wasn’t it? We went from having one of the best presidents in modern history to…well…HELP US!!!
Yeah, and that was just January 2017.
I had a not-so-great year at the day job. Being a teacher is great, but sometimes things are tough, mainly from adults. Still, that wasn’t the only problem, because I was having issues, too.
As I mentioned in my last post, I thought I may have been suffering from depression. Well, in May I finally saw my doctor and spoke to her about. She said, “You’re a textbook case of depression.” We talked about mental health and how even that can be “broken” or something like that. She prescribed something and by the summer, I was feeling better, and by late summer I was feeling the best I’ve felt since I was a little boy. Things at work got better and–most importantly–things inside me got better.
Most of my free time was spent working on grad school through 2017, or grading. I turned 40 in August. Forty. I mean…I’m an adult now. Except that…well…you know.
There was a leeeetle Bill Gauthier writing done here and there, though nothing finished. Grad school and papers took up too much of that time. And grading. And being a father to a 19-year-old. And being a father to a four-now-five-year-old. And being a husband. And a dutiful son. And… You get it. Still, don’t you worry! My plan is to finish grad school–I should be done by May–and then take a few weeks just to veg out. Then I’ll be jumping right back into Echoes on the Pond, making another sweep through, and attempting to submit it. I’ll start working on other projects that have been on the back burner for far too long. We’ll see how everything goes. One thing that grad school taught me was that I was capable of far more than I thought.
Let’s see…what else about 2017…?
Oh! The Dark Tower movie! Loved it. Justice League! Loved it. Wonder Woman!! LOVED it!!! Coco! Loved it! Star Wars: The Last Jedi!!!! Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ me?! I LOVED it! Oh! IT! Loved it! I could go on, by why bother? I enjoyed most of what I saw. And as far as The Last Jedi, I feel as though I could write my master’s capstone on that!
Am I missing anything? Except for the fear of the impending End of Civilization®, not much else. Of course, I’ll post this, walk away, and think of seventy other things, but for now, I’m going to take my leave. I’m looking forward to getting my Master’s Degree and getting back into writing for myself and, hopefully, for you.
Until next time…
Wait? You Mean…It’s 2017?!
How have I not posted anything since July?! Well, there were a few abandoned posts that I just didn’t like the sound of before posting them, and the many ideas for posts I either didn’t have the time, energy, or wherewithal to write and post. There were the posts about Star Wars, or politics, or the depression/anxiety I’ve been going through, or…. Well, you get the idea.
…A pause…
…Another…
Those pauses are as much for me as for you, because I realized as I was writing that last paragraph that I’m falling into a voice I employ on this blog which is usually fine but isn’t right now. It’s more chipper than I wish to sound. The fact is, I’ve been in a mental storm for over a year now. Closer to a-year-and-a-half now. I’ll be calling my doctor soon. When I checked a list of symptoms of depression, I’ve had almost all of these on a nearly constant basis since late-summer of 2015. Naturally, 2016 really helped with things. As my graduate studies progressed, and my grades have been superb, my personal writing and reading went down, down, down. Maybe this is part of it. But I don’t think it’s all of it. I found myself sitting around on the days my now-four-year-old was at daycare not writing, not doing homework, not doing anything. Toward the end of my summer vacation, I forced myself out of the apartment to get pizza. It was my birthday. Whee.
There was my oldest daughter graduating high school and moving on to college. I’m so proud of her. I worry about her, though, because I’m her Dad. I also worry for other reasons. But I’m proud of her and happy to see the young woman she is and the woman she is becoming.
There was work-related stresses. Some of those will hopefully be put to rest soon as I apply for a teaching license extension, but until it’s in my hands, I’ll be terrified worried.
In late October, doctors thought they found ovarian cancer in my mother. They did. They also found a pulmonary embolism, or a blood clot in her lung. They treated the clot and she had the cancer removed. They believe they got it all but she’s going to have to go through chemotherapy soon.
My wife has work-related stress.
Did I mention that I hardly have time to write my fiction as I write my papers, discussion posts, etc.? It’s not simple time management, either. There’s no energy or time. Not in my current life.
I won’t even mention the “election.”
All these could be factors. But….
Look, 2016 wasn’t all bad. There was a lot of good, even great. My family life is amazing. I’m relatively healthy. So are my daughters and my wife. I have a job I really enjoy. I still have the ability, up here in my head, and down here in my heart, to write my stuff. I’ve seen some good movies and read a few of my books, and have been exposed to a helluva lot of good books for my classes that I haven’t really been able to read because of time/energy. By next Monday, I’ll be halfway through grad school. I don’t quite see the light at the end of this tunnel, but I think I see something.
But this…depression? Anxiety? Both? Melancholy? It’s been bad. I’m trying my damnedest in public and with friends to hide it, more to keep myself from falling too far into the chasm, but it’s growing harder to keep it at bay. It really is.
So that’s why I haven’t posted since July. Time, energy, self-doubt, and this funk.
I hope 2017 will change that. I have my doubts. But I will do my best.
I’ve been called pessimistic by some people I know. I’m not pessimistic. If you saw how dark things are in my head, you’d know I was an optimist. I have to be.
So thanks to all who cared enough to show me this past year. Thanks to those who have made me feel like a good man, husband, father, teacher, even writer. I will try to do better in 2017. In these uncertain times, it’s all any of us can attempt.
Peekaboo!, or I’m Right Here, Now Calm Down
Wow. I haven’t been here since April! What’s up with that? If you actually follow and read my blog, you’ll know that I’m a full-time teacher, father of an 18-year-old high school graduate and soon-to-be-college freshman, a 3-year-and-9-month-year-old, a husband, and going through my master’s degree program online. I’ve been busy this summer, too. It will end, someday. Truth be told, by the end of this school year, one which was one of the worst of my career, I was ready for a nervous breakdown. I’m really not exaggerating on that, either. But here I am now, and here you are now, and I thought I’d skip the homework I promised myself I’d do to say hi to my old friends, my blog readers.
I’ve had so many ideas that I wanted to write and post here. Whether I will or not remains to be seen. I’ve got just over a month of vacation left and my little one goes to day care two days of the week, but we’ll see. For today, I wanted to say hi, give a few updates, and maybe talk a little about writing. You with me? All right. As my little one says, “Let’s do yit!”
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First the update. I’d sent a query off to one agent so far for Echoes on the Pond, and that was back before Christmas. Since then, classwork has kept me busy, as well as waiting for a few friends to read the most recent draft and give me their feedback. The feedback in question has me on track for One Final Draft. I’ll pause so you can join me in laughing at that. Done? All right, let’s carry on. This final draft shouldn’t take long, as I pretty much know where to go in with the knife, and also what needs rewriting. It’s not an overhaul by any means, though the ending will change a little to be stronger. Trust me. When the book comes out, you’re gonna love it!
I also started a new novel. I wrote a bit back in late winter, February through March, and only recently was able to return to it at all. More on that below. Besides those things, I also have an idea for a new short story that is so weird, I may just have to write it just to see what the fuck it’s about!
However, most of my writing these last few months has been for my master’s program. I have an 18-to-20-page paper due next week. Tonight I have a discussion board post to write and put up about the 1777 play The School for Scandal by Richard Brinsley Sheridan. It’s an enjoyable play, but it held me from seeing Ghostbusters yesterday, a movie I can’t wait to see.
All this leads me to….
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The common advice you see from professional writers to beginning writers is Read every day, write every day. This is awesome advice and I agree with it wholeheartedly. I also know that it can be difficult when you’re working full-time, parenting, expected to be an active participant in your relationship, etc. Before my grad classes began, writing every day was a challenge but doable. Since it’s started, it’s damn near impossible. In the past it would’ve depressed me, angered me, and got me all ready to join the Dark Side, Dim Side, or just plain Hulk out. It still does sometimes. When the voices in my head, all characters from current and future projects (and the occasional past project) who want to be heard, want a chance to run in the sunshine, become too much, I can be nasty, depressed, unlikable. Well, more unlikable than normal, anyway. Still, I’ve come to understand something about myself: The stories are still there when I’m ready to return to them.
Look, I’d love to sit down every night after Pamela and G go to bed and work on the books and stories (and blog). I’d love to try writing articles to make some side money and get my name out there more. But I can’t. I have a discussion board to write. Or a journal about this play or that story or that novel that I didn’t get to read all of. I have a major paper to write. Vacation time with a toddler is hardly a vacation. My two days with her at day care are mostly catching up on school work. I did get to write a little bit in the new project a week or so ago, but only a little.
I was asked by a friend last week, “How do you finish what you start?” Because of two little ones running around, I don’t think I actually answered, but the main answer is: Determination. I want to see it through to the end. There have been plenty of stories that have fizzled out on me before I got to THE END, but even those usually reserve a room in the back of my brain and wait for the right time to be written, like Under the Dome and 11/22/63 did for Stephen King. I sit down every day that I can and work on it. And work on it. And work on it. I may work on something else between drafts or because I need to at a certain time, but usually it’s just work on the project until you can’t anymore.
Which is why, unless an agent or editor asks for rewrites, this next draft I’ll do for Echoes on the Pond will be my last. I thought of a few things I can do to make the story stronger based on having it sit here so long as I attend to educational matters, and based on what friends have suggested that are good. See, not every suggestion that’s made gets followed, but when one comes in that gets you excited, you’re a fool not to follow it.
That’s how it’s done. I can’t write fiction every day right now, but when I can, I do. I know that once grad school is over, I’ll be back in the saddle every day. Once my little one is a little older, I may be able to easier, as well. But right now, I do what I can. And I’m all right with that.
Discover Me…Again, or Buy This Book, Please&ThankYou
It’s here! Discoveries: Best of Horror and Dark Fantasy, edited by James R. Beach and Jason V Brock, published from the great Dark Regions Press. Not only can you get it through the above links, but you can order through Amazon as well. Besides my story “The Umbrella People,” which I wrote about last time, there’s a ton of great stories in the book. So go get yourself a copy, already.
A Few Words on “The Umbrella People”
That handsome cover belongs to a reprint anthology my story “The Umbrella People” is a part of. There are stories by others whose names make me giddy, like Ray Bradbury, Kealan Patrick Burke, Elizabeth Engstrom, Tim Lebbon, John R. Little, William F. Nolan, John Shirley, Tim Waggoner, and so many others that my head’s a-spinnin’! I’m very proud to be a part of this group of writers.
This will be the third printing of this short story. Its first publication was in the first issue of Dark Discoveries, which is what qualified it for this antho. Its second publication was in my short story collection Catalysts, which was actually published by James R. Beach and Dark Discoveries Publications. I decided that, in honor of this publication, which is due to be released from Dark Regions Press this Tuesday, that I would write a few words about the story.
“The Umbrella People” came to me around 2003. At the time, my parents took me, my then-wife, and my older daughter out to dinner every Saturday to a pizza place in a nearby town. It was a good little restaurant. Their pizza was great, and so was a lot of what they cooked, comfort food meals. It was raining and as we sat in our booth, my mother put her umbrella under the table.
“Don’t let me forget my umbrella, people,” she said.
“Where are they?” I asked.
“Where are what?”
“Your Umbrella People.”
She called me a smartass, we all chuckled, and went on with the meal. For some reason, though, the idea stuck with me. And, like most ideas, the longer it stuck, the darker it became. The world itself was growing darker. I was unhappy in my marriage. I was restless and confused. And the world was going crazy. We were about to go to war over lies that our own government was telling us and things seemed, at the ripe ol’ age of 24, bleak. A storm was coming, it seemed.
And so I began writing.
At the time, I worked at a bus station, behind the counter. An entire wall was made of a mirror above the counter if you stood in the waiting area. From my vantage point behind the counter, it was a window. I would bring my Olivetti manual typewriter to write, after January 2003, I brought my notebook computer, a Toshiba Satellite that lasted me until 2010. I wrote the story at the bus station.
It was during a fairly productive time in my life and I was doing a lot more writing than I have time for now. The story flowed out without many issues. I remember thinking how odd the tale was how strange. I was very proud of it.
Now, thirteen years or so later, I’m still very proud of the story. I know James Beach loves the story, and it was a major impetus for him allowing me to write a column for Dark Discoveries between 2004 and 2011, as well as taking a chance on my first collection of stories. Others who’ve read it also seem to really like it. I wrote a short film script based on it and intended to try to make the movie myself for a long time. These days, I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to make it happen.
I also think about the Umbrella People sometimes, and wonder what happened after the story. I think there may be a novella there, but it’s still unknown to me, foggy. Maybe someday, a character will speak to me and I’ll be able to find out what happens next, and then let you know. Until then, I’m happy the story has found a new, really cool home and I’m looking forward to you making this particular Discovery.
One Term Ends & Another Begins, or More Random Stuff For Your Entertainment Pleasure
All right, let’s do this!
Yeah, I don’t buy that enthusiasm, either. Term 1 is done and so is my first grad class, which I passed with an A. I’ve already begun term 2. Go me.
Echoes on the Pond, aka the novel, is finished. For real this time. It now weighs in at 114,800 words, which is still long for a “first novel” but it’s what I could do right now. I think the novel is strong and, as of about two minutes ago, I just sent a query letter to an agent. So we’ll see where that goes. I suspect that by next week, I’ll have signed the Standard Bestselling Writer Contract. Yeah, and maybe pigs will fly outta my butt.
Star Wars is opening tonight. I’m here. I’ll see it tomorrow. I’d planned on doing my movie essays about the previous six, but, as the lady said, “Ain’t nobody got time for that.” This is the first Star Wars I haven’t seen opening night since I was a kid. Ah, well, that’s what happens when you grow up and your friends move away.
I already know the next novel, so I’m itching to begin it. I want to do a little more work on synopses for Echoes before I begin the next novel.
I’ve had a lot to say lately but little time to say it. I began first drafts of two posts that never made it here because I didn’t think they were good enough. So here’s what you get.
Take care, and have a great holiday season!
Wherein I Peek Out, Blink, & Weep, or What the Hell Is Going On, Anyway?
I posted a quick update at the end of week 1 of my grad school online course and wrote, “when I look at the syllabus, I see that the remaining nine weeks are going to be very busy.” I am at the start of week 8 of 10. I haven’t completed week 7 yet. I shouldn’t be here, but fuck it. I drank coffee between 8:30 and 9:30 so I could work on a paper that was due tonight by midnight and that I’m still working on because…well…I’ll get there. I promise.
First, the good news. I’ve been maintaining a mid-90s grade. For weeks I was at 94. I dropped to 93 last week, then to 91, and now back to 93. I’m happy. Considering I have little idea of what I’m doing, I seem to be doing it well. I do feel as though the readings have been sinking in, though I rarely understand what I’m reading. I keep looking at the novel I began reading in August, The Girl in the Road by Monica Byrne, which I’ve read tiny snippets of in between Freud, Marx, Lacan, Jackson, Conrad, Woolf, and many more, and want to cry. I’ve loved Byrne’s prose since beginning it but, goddamn, no time. I have Stephen King’s new collection, The Bazaar or Bad Dreams, Christopher Golden’s new novel Dead Ringers (about doppelgangers, which I fucking love), two collections by Charles Beaumont, and more novels that I’m eagerly awaiting to read. Shit! I forgot! The PS Publishing collectible re-issue of Harlan Ellison’s Ellison Wonderland that I’m so eager to read….
But…work. Work-work. School-work. Report card grades were due in the last few weeks. Discussion posts, prospectuses, proposals, analyses were all due in the last seven weeks (and still more are due in the coming three), and that’s not the personal stuff.
Pamela’s car died at the end of September. My computer died this past week, which means this is the first thing I’ve truly written on my brand new HP Pavilion All-In-One desktop computer. Whee. Well, that I’ve truly written that wasn’t for my class. Oh, and my teenager got her driver’s license and my toddler turned three. I found out that my sudden (and by sudden, I mean since the spring) exhaustion is not anemia but may be related to my Crohn’s Disease, so my meds have changed a little, but only in the last two days. So I’m still a refugee from a George Romero flick most of the time.
But, Bill, I hear you say. What about the novel? Are you working on that? We’re waiting for this masterpiece you’ve spent the last century or so talking to us about!
First, it’s not a masterpiece. It’s good, I promise, but not masterpiece material. Maybe future classic… But seriously, I’ve worked on the last edit three times since starting the course. I intended on working on it this weekend when my notebook died. That threw out that idea. However, perhaps later this week. I have about 50 pages left to edit, and then I’m bringing the edits to my manuscript. I still have to check to see if my queries that I’d written had been backed up to Dropbox. I believe they were but I’m not sure. Honestly, I’m afraid to check. I may try to see if I can get the stuff from my hard drive soon.
Anyway, I’m still alive and still dreaming. My goal is to have the novel completed and have begun the query process by the end of the year. I can’t wait to start writing the next book, too. It’s about a man and his child and…oh, you’re going to have to wait. In the meantime, I’ll be returning to the world of the girl, her therapist, and the ghost to tie up loose ends, and working on my grad school work.
Be good to yourselves and good to others. The world needs more of that right now. I’ll try to check in again around Thanksgiving.
Don’t Make Me Angry, I’m Always Angry, or Why You Should Go Eff Yourself
It was about a week before the new school year was to begin, this past summer, almost two months back now. Pamela and G had just gone to bed so it was sometime between 8 and 8:30. I was in the kitchen, reaching for the sugar to make my tea and thinking about the following week, the big ol’ return to school and another year as The Best Teacher You Will Ever Have when I had an epiphany: I’m a really angry guy.
If you chuckled when you got to the end of that paragraph, shame on you. This thought chilled me. I mean, I know I’m angry in the same way I know I’m a man, that I have brown hair, too many moles, and ten fingers (one of them weirdly crooked). I know this like I know I have a wife, two daughters, living parents, and friends. But every now and then I still look around and think, Damn! I have a beautiful wife who is able to deal with my stupidity! or Damn! My teenager is pretty freakin’ awesome! or Damn! The toddler is really smart and beautiful and empathetic! It dawned on me that the years of therapy, the growing up, and the calming down that I have endured have simply really been sleight of hand. The anger is still there. And it scares me.
I have near my workspace a quote from Nikki Giovanni that goes, “Rage is to writers what water is to fish.” This seemed really cool when I first found it and taped it to my notebook computer (dead five years now) ten years ago. At 28, being an angry young man seemed like the thing to be, which was good for me because I was an angry young man. I saw all, knew all, and wasn’t afraid to let you know it. At 38, I don’t want to be angry.
I know the anger is a part of me, and it’s a large factor in why I write, why I create, why I insist on trying to succeed in my goals and dreams. I’m still working on grudges that began in elementary school. It’s such an ingrained part of who I am, that I forget just how angry I am, all the time. It’s exhausting.
There’s a scene in Marvel’s The Avengers that comes at the end. There’s been talk throughout the movie about how Bruce Banner is able to not be the Hulk all the time, and he said he had a secret. It all comes to a head at the end of the movie.
When Banner says that line, “I’m always angry,” the audience erupted in applause both times I saw the movie. It’s become a popular meme on the ‘Net. For some reason, anger, and the lack of control of anger, has become a sort of thing people are happy to have and will applaud.
It fuckin’ sucks, though. To have this fire burning in the pit of my stomach, day in, day out, never quite sure when it’ll flame up…it’s tough. People will say things like, “You need to learn to chill out,” or suggest meditation and all that, and I do it, man. I do deep breathing exercises, I write, I journal, I go to happy places, I look at all the good things in my life, all that stuff. But the anger is still there.
I’m angry right now. Something at work got me angry. A few somethings, actually. I’m angry about grad school. I’m angry for no real reason except…well…look at the world!
I’m only writing this because I want you to know that this is not fun. I don’t consider this a plus to anything in my life. I think my writing would be just as good without the anger in the same way that I do my best writing when I’m happy and not depressed, despite what the popular mythology surrounding writers is.
So, yeah…that’s my secret, I guess. I’m always angry.
I’m Going Back, or Return to the Novel Again
This is the last time, I promise. Until the next time, anyway. I’m currently printing out the 3rd draft, the “final” draft, of my novel Echoes on the Pond. It’s not so I can just look lovingly at the brick of pages but so I can do another draft. I know, I posted that I thought I was done back in May, but I’d said I was 98% sure I was, and, well….
But that’s my method. Until the piece is published, I tinker. Maybe not in any kind of routine way, but whenever the fancy strikes. In this case, it’s because I’m gearing up to look for a home in it and I had a fateful conversation with one of my readers that corroborated a few things in my head and something my wife kind of pointed out.
My goals with the 4th draft aren’t too drastic:
- Tighten up the story a bit…look for typos and silly turns of phrases that I may have missed the last two times, or created during the last draft
- Make sure the characters are being themselves and are true to form
- Specify a few vague places (and I can only think of two that were mentioned)
- Delete a character’s onscreen presence
That last will be the closest thing to real rewriting that I’ll need to do. Pamela had mentioned the character in question as early as the 2nd draft, and when my other reader mentioned her, I knew the small feeling in the back of my mind was right, she needed to go. This means several deleted scenes and one heavily rewritten scene. Basically, this 4th draft should take long and it shouldn’t hurt the work I’ve done on the query letter or synopsis.
It’s the game we play, trying to make sure the story is what we want it to be. You have to be passionate about this if you’re going to try to make a go of having a career in the arts.
This Is Where the Magic Happens, or How I’m Obsessed with Writers’ Workspaces
I’m rather obsessed with writers’ workspaces. Their desks, offices, writing sheds, whatever it is they use, however they use it. I know I’m not alone on this, but I think the first manifestations of this obsession occurred before I was even aware of it.
Stephen King’s novel The Shining made me want to be a writer, which I’ve written about. I’ve also written about the television segment that led me to buy the book. It was an episode of ABC’s Primetime Live that aired on August 23rd, 1990, the day before my 13th birthday, that got me interested in buying King. As I was reading The Shining the following day, I turned to the About the Author page and saw that King lived in Bangor, Maine, which had to be nearly as uncool as New Bedford, Massachusetts, the small coastal city where I lived, if not even more uncool. Beyond that, though, there was an image in the Primetime Live profile that kicked open the doors of my mind. The image was of King sitting at a manual typewriter, clacking away. He was in a dark room, alone, with no other apparatus around him. Even at 13, I understood this was a set-up shot, done strictly for the television piece.
The power of that image rocked me, though. It made me think of Billy Crystal at the end of Throw Momma From the Train, where he’s sitting at his desk, finishing the last paragraph of the novel he never thought he’d be able to write. It made me think of Chevy Chase in Funny Farm where he’s trying to write a novel that never really seems to come out for him (though his wife writes a children’s book). I’m sure it made me think of Richard Dreyfuss in Stand By Me, working on his tale. Who knows? Maybe somewhere in the flotsam of my mind was Kathleen Turner at the beginning of Romancing the Stone, finishing her novel in a most unglamorous way. The thing with the image of Stephen King sitting at the typewriter, though, was that he was a real writer. He wasn’t an actor playing a part, he was a guy who was paid (a lot of) money to write books. And from what I’d seen that morning at Waldenbooks, he wrote a whole bunch of them, too! There was even a book club devoted to his work that ran commercials on TV! Remembering that image and reading a novel by him walloped me like a trailer truck come to life to mow me down. Later that day, I set up two or three milk crates, put my Royal Quiet De Lux manual typewriter on top, and began writing.
Something very similar, yet very different happened, happened several years later, again involving King. For a time in the 1990s, former King chronicler George Beahm, who’d written three books on Stephen King, began publishing a fanzine called Phantasmagoria. I don’t know how I came across it. Maybe from the Stephen King column in Cemetery Dance? Probably. Anyway, I subscribed to it. In one issue there was news that King was one of many writers who were featured in a photograph book about writers at their workspaces. It was called The Writer’s Desk and it was by a woman named Jill Krementz. I’d find out soon enough that Ms. Krementz was married to the writer Kurt Vonnegut (who appeared in the book, of course). I was working at a big chain bookstore at this point and decided to order it. It must’ve been summer or fall of 1997 because my girlfriend (who would become my wife, and then my ex-wife) was pregnant with my teenager. I remember that because the book was $35, which was too much money to spend considering how my life was really about to change. But I ordered the book because I knew that I wouldn’t have to buy it (it was the company’s policy) and I figured I’d look at it on break and then shelve the book for someone else to discover and buy.
Before I even opened the book, the cover mesmerized me. I had no idea who the woman on the front cover was (it’s Eudora Welty) but on the back cover was Toni Morrison, whom I knew though I hadn’t read yet; Tennessee Williams, whom I also knew but hadn’t (and still haven’t…and I don’t think I’ve seen any of his plays, either, which saddens and shames me); and Stephen King. I began looking through the book and found the huge quantity of writers and pictures that went back into the early 1970s. The photos were accompanied by quotes, or small musings on writing, or their desks from the writers. There were many writers whose names I recognized even though I hadn’t read their work. There were many more who were introduced to me by this book. I knew before I got halfway through flipping through the book during my break that I needed to have it.
It gave me a charge. To see where these people produced their work made me want to work. To see how simple it really was, this so very difficult task of wordslinging. Some of the writers have work spaces that are stately and well put together, organized. Some are a mess. Many used typewriters (remember, the book was published in 1996 and many of the pictures were taken in the ’70s and ’80s) though quite a few used computers. There was even a few who had notebook computers. Quite a few of the writers were working longhand.
I found myself cutting out pictures of writers at their desk should they appear in magazines or in the newspaper. Once I got a computer I began finding writers at their desk online and, for a while, kept a folder of images. I still have the folder though I hardly save to it anymore. There’s no need. A quick Google search (or a few, depending on your word-use) will come up with thousands of pictures. I’ve also discovered I’m not the only one obsessed with this. There are at least two blogs I know of, Write Place, Write Time and Writers at Work, that share photos of writer’s work spaces. Write Place, Write Time was cool because it had photos taken by the writers they featured, as well as a small piece about their work environment. Unfortunately, after a strong 2011, the posts began to be few and far between until they seemed to stop in June 2013. Still, it’s fascinating to take a look at. Writers at Work collected photos from around the ‘net and posts them. Some of the pictures are sent in by blog readers.
As I said, a quick internet search will show that writers and their workspaces are quite popular. Why is that? I think it’s partly because writing is so solitary, and so personal, that one wonders if they’re weird. So to see the famous French mystery writer George Simenon has an arsenal of pipes ready to go while he works, or that Tennessee Williams has another typewriter leaning back behind the one he’s using in case there’s an issue, he can just swap out (anything from a bad key to a change of ribbon; there’d be no slowing him down when he was hot!), makes me think maybe my rituals and quirks aren’t so weird.
I think the other thing it does is inspire. And I don’t mean that in some mystical, mythical sense of the word, either. I mean seeing writers, past and present, at their desks and knowing that from that person came a body of work, sometimes huge, sometimes not, all important, really makes me want to sit at my modest space and work. It makes me feel like if they can do it, and they basically have the same tools I do, then maybe–just maybe–I can do it.
This is my current workspace in the corner of my living room, behind the couch and loveseat. This provides easy access to the kitchen for coffee or tea.
Live from Comic Con, or Lies I’ll Tell for Fun & Profit
Writers have been called professional liars. I know I’ve heard Stephen King and Peter Straub say it. I think I’ve heard Harlan Ellison say it. And there’ve been others along the long, long road I’ve taken from the age of 13 to now, a month and two weeks away from my 38th birthday. Hence, the lie in the title. I just wanted you to read my blog. But while I have you here talking about the lies writers tell, I want to remind you that while fiction is (usually) wholly made up, the real reason fiction is important is for the truth it tells. It doesn’t matter what genre you write in, what kind of story you’re telling, the truth of the characters, the situation, the emotions are what keeps the readers coming back.
Anyway, I haven’t posted since May because I lose track of time easily, it happens, but I’m here now and I’m working on an essay for the blog that’ll go live either tomorrow or Sunday (Monday at the latest, I promise). It’s not one of my movie series essays, though I plan on writing about two different series this year (I’m sure you can figure them out considering my nerd pedigree), but I think you’ll like it. For now, a small update.
As I mentioned back on May 12th, Echoes on the Pond is (I think) done. I’m sure I’ll be called back to tinker here and there, but I’ve begun the process of writing a query letter for possible agents or publishers. If you don’t know what a query letter is, it basically pitches your book to an agent for representation in helping sell it, or to an editor, in the hopes of buying and publishing it. Think of it like this, Echoes on the Pond weighs in at 126,500 words. In it’s current manuscript state (Times New Roman, 12 pt font, double-spaced) it is about 490 pages. The query tries to boil that down to 150 words. I have a few other things I want to work on regarding submission, like a synopsis and outline, in case they’re asked for. I already have a few agents I’m interested in querying so we’ll see how that goes.
I also wrote a short story. The first draft weighs in at a hefty 8,400 words, which will definitely be whittled down later, after it’s been given time to settle. The story came to me one morning while driving to work. The teenager was sitting in the passenger seat, quietly hating Monday (or Tuesday) morning, and for some reason, the idea came and I instantly knew I had to write it. I didn’t start until the end of June and finished it two nights ago. It’s an unpleasant little ditty with unpleasant characters and chocolate, and that’s all I’ll say right now.
So right now, I’m trying to decide which big project to work on next, since there are several that I’m pretty passionate about.
Anyway, that’s the check-in. We’ll talk soon.
Gautham: Bill Gauthier.com 