For the past 3 days, I’ve been on my back. It goes out like this at times – literally, my torso is pointed somewhere diagonally into the universe. There are spasms and pops and, if I lift up my shirt, you can see the alien nature of my body. We had to go and do our taxes this weekend, and my wife had to help me just to sit down on the subway. The pain medication I was taking was making me ill after the effects wore off, so I had to stop.
No writing. No emails. Nothing but just laying on the floor doing nothing was the only way to get better. It was intense because I always worry that at some point, it’s going to stay like this and I’ll be in alien form the rest of my life, unable to do what normally is so easy to do: Take a step without pain.
So, I laid there and watched Mad Men on my Netflix streaming for the last few days. Like many folks out there who work or have worked in advertising, I enjoyed the first go-round of that show because it allowed me to enjoy the fantasy’s of actually being able to tel clients to go back to their caves. This time around, being still and unable to move, there was something else there.
It unfolded like a symphony for me: The development of the characters, the attention to detail on the set, the subtlety of how race is treated, the underlying Atlas Shrugged themes – everything done here could only be accomplished in the format of a long series that, for me at least, is the closest resemblance to a novel there is outside of book forms. Now of course, there are the facts that everyone is so beautiful on set – it’s TV after all, and you’ll have to allow for that.
There is something so special about that show though – and this time around, even though I have seen every episode, I’m able to follow certain characters and I find myself thinking about them all – why they must have been feeling – what they want and are afraid of – and I just have to stop and tip my hat to everyone involved because they managed to do something quite impossible: The made the show real. You believe each move they all make – each word they say is coming directly from them, and lines that come from the actors mouths are so stunning at times, I find myself saying God Dam quite a bit.
“This is America. Create a job and become the person who does it.”
Stunning. Of course, I have been a captive audience the past few days, struggling to stand straight and walk to the kitchen without letting my wife know the amount of pain that randomly shoots through my spine, but still, I am in this world, watching for the hints. Writers are competing with books that influenced them: Atlas Shrugged Vs. Meditations on an Emergency.
All of the characters are mirrors of each other – exposing both sides evenly and making it difficult to judge. For me, that’s the true value of a character – not knowing what you feel for them. It’s essential to have those sides, but getting at it, making it real, is so difficult. There must be some formula for doing so, and I’d like to find out what it is. How can the characters have so much depth? That may be something I look for in real life when talking with people – searching for that depth in conversations – trying to make it real – to make each person a round character that can be fully understood and felt. Maybe that’s what writers are after in this world: Roundness.
One thinks many thoughts while on the floor with their back out. Perhaps the universe slammed me down and said: Take a moment and look at this structure. That may be the thing to look at when discovering character arcs. After all, once you provide the setting for someone, your characters can help to decide the story. People writer tales in real life – there is no script that they follow. I wonder if that may be the key after all – to create the right playground, the right characters – and then let them have at it. Today the back is popping into place.
I think I’ll be able to walk into the world pill free and function without spasms. Still though, I wonder if these long spanning shows like Mad Men or the Sopranos are the new novels – ever unfolding and taking the time to create complexities.
The second one was easy. The third one, or getting started on the third one, not at all. I’ve tried two different subjects and two different time periods and two different countries but they weren’t working. You know when it’s all working and know when it’s all falling apart. Still, you need to keep going and smashing into those walls because there is a black cat buried beneath even if you can’t hear it screaming.
This weekend, I may have found what I was looking for. I took the train up out of the city to visit my grandmother’s cousin – He was the man who helped her and my grandfather get out of Germany during the war. A few years ago I had started talking to him about perhaps putting all of his stories down into a book, but it never came about. I still had Sarah Striker and Pharmacology in my head and heart and needed to put that out.
Now though, this time, I took the train back to Brooklyn with a purpose. This man had pretty much saved my family and myself – I would not be here writing if it weren’t for him, so I owe it to him, to my grandfather, to my father and, I guess in some ways, to myself to write this story. He was an amazing man, this man I went up North to see. I say up North because any time you take a train you are going North.
I’ve had glimpses inside the story over lunches and talks in an afternoon, but to get under the hood of this, I’m going to need to do a bit more. Tons more. Time will have to be sacrificed and life will need to be altered a bit, but I believe that it is worth it. What better way to spend time than to honor the memory of the person who made the time you had possible. Now comes to the process of doing something like this. The preparation and structure that I have yet to ever really produce.
That lives in fiction. I’m about to introduce truth and it feels so right. The book is now in my chest ready to fly through my rib cage and I have no intention of ignoring this feeling. Finally. I think I search for this feeling – it’s the only form of satisfaction that I truely get and really want other than laying next to my wife at night.
The margins are narrowing a bit. Yes they are.
Click here for this week's #sundaymorningstory
@sarahstriker continues to do a great job with the #sundaymorningstory. Having trouble keeping up with everything I need to write, so it helps that one of my characters has come alive and actually pitched in to the effort.
This week we got pictures from Portugal, Manilla, New Zealand, Australia and the Great Mid-West of America. Also, a little bit of drink from New York. Nice. Such a pleasure to see people joining in to this thing. Please jump on in next Sunday if you’re so inclined.
How can you be a part of #Sundaymorningstory? Click here to find out.
@sarahstriker is still taking care of the #sundaymorningstory duties for now, but it could be on its way out. Folks are not doing their part in passing on information and bringing others from the world into the fray.
That was the point all along.
Let’s see what happens in this world of click-throughs and Retweets – as that now determines how content is received and digested.
Click the Lamb to view this week's #sundaymorningstory
Saviors of the Underwood 319 Typewriter Spool
Finally, the search is over. Much thanks to the folks at Brady & Kowalski writing machines who had that magic missing piece that was nearly impossible to find:
A Spool that fit on my Underwood 319 Typewriter.
Work to the unwise: Don’t toss out the spools your ribbons are on because they just don’t make them anymore.
Head on down to the Brooklyn Flea in Fort Greene, which has moved inside for the winter, if you’re in need of any typewriter advice, parts or even a new machine.
I’ve had my Underwood 319 with me since Los Angeles, when I found her in a thrift store on Western Ave. for 12 bucks. Two novels later, I can’t write without her. Now that it’s winter and I’m driving everyone around me crazy with the release of Pharmacology, it’s best to just get writing again to preserve sanity.
As best as it can be preserved.
Can’t wait to hear those keys making their music again. If you have a typewriter and feel it’s a beauty, feel free to send me on in a pic and I’ll post it up.
