Heath Dollar: Across the Texas Line: Book Contract: Waylon County

Congratulations to my friend and compadre, Heath Dollar. This collection of stories is going to knock people on their ass.

Heath Dollar: Across the Texas Line: Book Contract: Waylon County

The Lindbergh Baby and Blank Stares

I've been writing all day, which means the laundry is done, dishes are washed, and I finally changed the burned out bulb in the shower. When I told my daughter I had changed the bulb she was shocked and asked how many dead bugs I found in the globe. I told her I found 17,612 dead bugs and the Lindbergh baby.
Blank stare.
I need to update my references.

Writer’s life, a constant struggle.

I’m writing the next to last story arc in We’re for Smoke: Outlaws and Outliers in Fort Worth. It is the story of a woman named Mary Rea. Mary married into a prominent family in Fort Worth with a long and storied background in law enforcement. Mary’s story is sad, she suffered from mental illness her entire life. Mental illness was poorly diagnosed and treated at the turn of the last century. Mary was luckier than most, since she had money she was merely shunned and ignored. If you were from a lower case you were likely put on the streets or dropped off in jail.

I have had a hard time wrapping my mind around Mary and the other major character in the story, Judge Swayne. The Judge figures in other story lines and should be a strong character throughout the entire book. Problem is he is not. I simply cannot find his voice. I don’t know why, he should be low hanging fruit for a writer. He has a strong personality, he was Fort Worth’s first progressive voice. He moved the city into the 20^th century in many, important ways, both from the bench and as a major player in the good ole boy circle. For whatever reason he seems to fall flat with me.

Mary Rea also is giving me a bit of a fit. I’m not sure how to properly portray her illness and situation. I have been putting off writing the section for weeks, waiting for them to make themselves better known.

They have not shown themselves. So I soldier on. I am putting words on paper. Telling their story best I can. I am hoping for that eureka moment when maybe they will take over. It has not happened yet.

It is a great feeling when you slip into a story and it flows like a river.

But a writer, writes, so I’m writing. In film if things don’t go perfect on set, the catch phrase is, ‘we’ll fix it in post.’ In writing, when the first draft is less than hoped for, well, there is always a second draft.

Or a third…

Or fourth. 

No excerpt this week. It is not ready for daylight. 

When Spirits Sag

When I made the decision to concentrate on nothing but my writing, I set a goal of finishing my novel, We’re For Smoke, by the end of October. Now, in mid August, that self imposed deadline is looming. Halloween will be here in two shakes of a lambs tail and I still have approximately 15 to 20 thousand words to write.

Sitting down at me desk has become as inviting as crawling into the dentist’s chair. I keep telling myself it won’t hurt, but I don’t believe it. The words have been slow, the dialog seems stilted, I haven’t been hitting my word count, but I have been getting words on the page.

This installment of the blog is a day late. I have a guest blog written by an extremely talented writer friend of my waiting in the wings for just such an emergency but I didn’t publish it yesterday because I didn’t miss the deadline because of an emergency, I missed it because I didn’t force my tail to sit in the chair and write.

But here it is, such as it is. I’m calling it a blog post.

The story arc I am writing for Smoke is about a mentally handicapped woman named Mary Rea. In 1915 people with mental diseases were treated a might differently than they are today. I understand that in 1915 cowboys did not have electric cattle prods. That will be changed.

Mare about Mary later, when I get my gumption back.

  Mary Rea lay in her bed like a corpse. She slept very, very, little but when her mind did let go it fell into the inky abyss of sleep like a granite boulder falling off the cliffs of the Trinity. She did not dream, she did not toss nor turn. The sheets and blanket were strewn and twisted but strewn and twisted from before she fell asleep. Once she was under, Mary Rea lay in her bed like a corpse.

When conscious, Mary’s mind and body were tortured by emotions. They were not her emotions for she did not control them. Quite the opposite, in truth, they poked and jabbed her thoughts and body like a sadistic cowboy wielding a high voltage electric cattle prod. Most nights she prowled her home, Mary always looked as if she were either prowling or running, for she was either attempting to flee the emotions or doing their bidding. Always in haste, Mary was always in haste.

When she did succumb to bed she did so begrudgingly and with a look of dread and terror in her eyes. Sometimes, as she tossed and twisted, she cried. Loneliness and fear where the only emotions Mary owned.

Cold comfort for Mary Rea.

If You Don’t Sh*t a Little, You Aren’t Doing It Right

Last week I discussed the important role of naps to the writer’s act of creation. This week I’ll address the need to embrace and trust fear. 
That’s right. Fear is good for you, if you have put in the work. 

Athletes put in hours and hours of repetitious work and drills in order to develop muscle memory. The payoff comes in game time when the body simply reacts, no need to think, just perform. It is called muscle memory. 

Writers need to develop the same type of muscle memory with their writing. When you are starting out, read everything you can, and then read some more. Study what you read. Break it down. Learn the structure of storytelling. Practice what you learn. Write stories; be structured in your writing.

Then, eventually, let it go. Forget about structure. Concentrate on character, plot, and developing your own voice. That is when the fear comes in. Sometimes when I’m writing I feel like I’m walking a tightrope with no net. I honestly do not know where the story will end up, I just trust that it will end in a good place. 

I have written several stories this year based on personal experiences. Eastern Shore was about the death of my father, Out of the blue was about a family dog. I just finished one about my first kiss. A few months back I set out to write about my favorite uncle and it took a bizarre turn I never imagined. This little voice in the back of my head kept telling me to write things that seemingly had nothing to do with the story at hand. I’ll often get an idea, different from what I’m writing about. When that happens I open a new document and jot it down, save it and get back to the task at hand. This time was different. They were not separate ideas, the voice told me they belonged in the story about my Uncle Paul. I decided to listen to the voice. I wrote down the disjointed scenes and tangents. Over the course of the few days it took to write the story, a structure and plot began to come together. It was actually very exciting when everything fell into place. It was a story unlike anything I had ever written. It is my favorite, so far, this year.

Your subconscious is always working for you. Learning to tap into it and trust it can be scary. If you aren’t a little scared, if you don’t feel a little trepidation about what you’re working on, you are probably not stretching your imagination far enough. You have to trust that your subconscious will lead you to safety.  Don’t be afraid to follow your subconscious down the dark alley, it will be alright… most of the time. And if the alley turns out to be a dead end, well, that is what the delete button is for. 

Here is an excerpt from The Man in Dick Van Dyke’s Hat:

The Man in Dick Van Dyke’s Hat

The man leaned against the Knights of Pythias Building in downtown Fort Worth and seemed oblivious and invisible to the bustle about him.

Don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t invisible, he was there all right. It’s just he and each and everyone else walking by was encased in their own personal bubble. All unaware of each other.

The man was in bad need of a shave and his clothes had seen a lot of miles. He wasn’t dirty so much as unkempt. He was dressed like he had two part time jobs, one as a circus ringmaster and the other a maître d’ at a restaurant where the prices are not printed on the menu. He wore a tattered, battered and torn straw hat that once belonged to Dick Van Dyke. Everyone’s seen it. It was the one Van Dyke wore in Mary Poppins. Not one like it, the very same hat. The man and Van Dyke had been friends at one time.

But that is a different story.

This is my Uncle Paul’s story. Great Uncle Paul to be genealogically precise. He was my maternal grandmother’s brother in law.

Uncle Paul was my favorite uncle. He looked out for me. He was about the only male relative I had who spent much time with me. It was Uncle Paul who taught me how to tie my shoes. He showed me how to kick a ball. Most importantly, he answered my boyhood questions.

My father was absent most of my childhood and my grandfather, I called him Da-dad, was, well, a man of few words. Da-dad spoke in concise, blunt sentences, most of which were either declarative or imperative.

Uncle Paul was career Army and did four tours in Vietnam. The first two tours he was ordered to go. The last two tours he volunteered.

On the day before Uncle Paul was to leave for his fourth tour. Aunt Nita was pissed. For weeks I had heard her and my mom talking about Uncle Paul leaving. Aunt Nita was worried and scared. She did not want him to go. She did not understand why he kept volunteering to go back.

It was 1967 and young men were avoiding the draft by heading over the border to Canada in droves and most career Army personnel were hunting cushy, safe deployments stateside. Meanwhile, Uncle Paul had already been in combat three times and returned from each tour without a scratch. Aunt Nita felt Uncle Paul was pressing his luck.  

Napping and Other Writing Secrets

I have been given a ton of grief over the years from telling my children and significant other, “I’ll be working on the couch, so keep it quiet please.” To the untrained eye it appears I am napping, nodding off into Lala land, but to other writers, it is recognized as work, a necessary and important part of the writing process.

I sometimes think the subconscious is where the real work gets done. It is for me where the originality, if I have any, and uniqueness of my work emerges. Every artist I know has experienced ideas seemingly appearing out of the ether. Sometimes a line, melody, or idea just pops in their head as a gift from the gods. I say it isn’t a gift at all, but rather the fully formed work of the subconscious bubbling up to the conscious. Who knows how long they have been working down there, hours, days, weeks, months? Bottom line it is still a product of the artists mind, just on a deeper level. I think an artist’s real talent isn’t necessarily their ability to write, paint, sculpt or whatever their discipline, but rather their ability or openness to tap the subconscious.

A few months ago I was doing some editing on a legal brief for a lawyer friend of mind and came across the practice of soring a horse.

Soring Definition: 

Soring involves the intentional infliction of pain to a horse's legs or hooves in order to force the horse to perform an artificial, exaggerated gait. Caustic chemicals—blistering agents like mustard oil, diesel fuel and kerosene—are applied to the horse's limbs, causing extreme pain and suffering.

I was at first repulsed by the practice then fascinated. A day or two later I thought a super villain with skin like sandpaper would be interesting. The image of a big brute attacking people and rubbing them raw between the thighs or under the armpit would be repulsive and funny. So, I started writing. I had no plan, no characters, except the villain and no plot. I just started typing, almost reading as I went along. I knew it had to be noir, then it fell more into hardboiled pulp. I pulled some Fredric Brown off my shelf and reread some of his work. I researched hardboiled pulp slang.

The words just kept coming out. Characters developed and started doing things. I just followed along. My short stories usually run about 3,500 to 4.500 words but this story blew by that word count with no ending in sight. It actually began to get annoying. There are very few publications that accept stories longer than 4,500 words. Finally, the ending showed itself and I wrapped up The Soring at around 6,500 words. Even at that it felt truncated. I plan, at some point, on going back and letting it loose, maybe see if I can get a novella out of the idea.

My point is I didn’t really try and force a plot on the story, I just let my subconscious lead the way. As a teenager and into my early twenties I loved pulp science fiction and detective fiction. I had read tons and tons of the genre. Fredric Brown is an idol to me. The rhythm, pacing and style was still in my brain, just buried. When it was triggered and let loose it bubbled up and wanted, until I choked it off, to keep going for who knows how many more thousands of words.  

So, open yourself up, get to work and take a nap.

Here is an excerpt from “The Soring.”

     By 11pm the alley rats began to scurry behind the Major and the streets were completely empty. Only three people had entered the building on the Major’s watch. Two women and one man. They all had keys; no one had to be buzzed up and no one had exited. 

     The Major began to fidget. He had neglected to bring a flask or buy an extra bottle at the package store. Without a few pulls of whiskey the tremors would begin to set in soon.

     Sudden movement caught his eyes as the suspect walked in front of the left window shade. His gait was jerky and when only half in the frame he collapsed and fell. The Major stood straighter. The shades on both windows shook. Apparently the suspect was rolling violently on the floor, hitting the wall periodically. The subject was down, out of frame for a full fifteen seconds, then, a second figure, much larger than the suspect, rose from the floor and passed, unsteadily, by the right window shade. 

     “What the hell…” thought the Major. 

     This unexpected action brought the tremors on full force. The Major cursed. He knew the location of most every liquor store in LA but had no mental map of Compton. While he contemplated leaving his post in search of a bar or package store, the hulking figure passed, from right to left, by both window shades, a few seconds later the lights in the apartment went dark.

     The Major was now in a pickle. 

#

"The Soring" will be published in the new pulp magazine Crimson Streets in October or November.