How They Scored

1:30pm on Sunday afternoon. I've been wasting time, avoiding starting. I better try to focus. Q: What is the next thing to write? A: The scene in the strip club, followed by a scene in the hotel. Q: What is the name of the woman Hap goes to bed with? A: Becky. Q: Tell about her. A: She is of college age, with straight blond hair, 5'5" and slender, though not athletic -- more of a teenager's body. Think Becky Becker only with straight hair. Tanned and smooth. She goes to Eastern Oregon State and is in town for the summer, making money at the strip club, because there are no strip clubs in Ashland. She is a biology major and was supposed to be pre-med only she has decided she doesn't want to be a doctor, though she hasn't told her parents yet. That may be enough to get going.

I began actually writing the book today, with a 2,048 word session. I mixed what I had intended to write about the road trip with something I invented on the spot -- a girlfriend for Hap, named Meeghan. I modeled her on the girl I ran into last weekend, K., but K. is such a strange name that I made it a little more common. I also made her enamored of "the angle" of fucking Hap energetically on top. I got all the way to the opening of the section set in the strip club in Bend. I think the writing's a little flat but on the other hand I didn't really get bogged down. I'll have to do a little more reading every day; I'm taking the Miller with me.

OK, first two chapters... What do I have to cover? Chapter 1: The main premise, i.e. he and several others are invited up for week at cabin by Don Who Don is and who, in general, the others are Hap's main problem -- losing his apartment Geographical setting: the drive north, cutting off I-5, the strange grassland, Klamath Falls, Bend Action in Bend Chapter 2: Driving through forest, then fields, then over the Columbia River, then Washington. Wenatchee: picking up Denny. Driving with Denny to Chelan Meeting Seth and Shaun in Chelan. (That leaves Greg and Bart already up there with Don.) Mischief in the small town. Seems all right. I wonder how much I need to expand most of those before actually writing them. Perhaps I should consider what gets revealed when. That always seems like one of the keys to a book.

Just got back from a late lunch and a coffee. There's a cafe called Little Spot a block away. They have free wireless and that's about all you can say for it; it's extremely sleepy, run by a lanky, long-faced Arab guy in the afternoons. I go over there with my laptop when I need to get on the internet, since I usually can't get a connection at my office. I was over there just now and a fetching lass in her mid-20s came in and politely asked if there was wi-fi there. I said yes, and it's free. I worked for another 15 minutes while she pulled out her own laptop and had coffee. When I was finished, as I was standing up and closing my laptop, I turned and asked the girl if she was visiting the area. No, she smiled, she had just signed a lease nearby. I introduced myself and she said her name was K. I only mention it because it's been about 5 years since I last met a stranger in a cafe, and a lovely young lady at that. She had a dancer's ponytail and was working ...

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I had two ideas early in the morning: The character of Shaun still being hard to pin down, I ought to have him appear first of the other characters. Perhaps Hap picks him up in Wenatchee and brings him up to Chelan and they talk. This establishes his character in readers’ minds before they have a chance to focus on anyone else. Secondly, I need to begin the book with a problem for Hap, a problem he seeks to solve throughout the narrative. He will be tempted to solve the problem by submitting to the temptations offered by the other characters. Perhaps Shaun is one who does not offer an explicit temptation, but then we find out that the temptation he offers -- whatever it is -- is more insidious than the rest.

It sounds hokey, but I wonder if I could somehow tie the sex stories that people tell into the whole business development scheme. Could the sex-talk spree possibly be a competition, with the winner being somehow rewarded with the business deal? No, it's too too corny. Sex is too subversive. What I should do is have the sex talk somehow go against the grain of the whole business atmosphere.

In order to have a business idea for Don, I could cannibalize the bit from the cut section of Bangalored when they were joking around about spy software that would report back what songs people were listening to on their iPods during which activities. In that book, it's raised as a joke and then Jed starts going with it, to Stella's disgust. What I could do is, instead of spyware, have it work on the Twitter model where you opt in. In fact, let's say it's a plugin that works with Twitter. When you send a message on Twitter saying what you're doing, it pings your iPod to find out what you're listening to at that moment, and matches them. Almost too realistic!

I had an insight on Saturday when I was working on HOW THEY SCORED that the name of Hap's character and his strong sexual nature suggests a link to Henry Miller, whose motto was "Always happy and gay" (back when gay meant merely ebullient). This is potentially very helpful. It not only gives me a handle on his character but on the narrative voice I can use in the book -- a copious realism that is just as likely to veer into a philosophical issue as into a description of direct and enthusiastic screwing. And there's so much in the Miller oeuvre that I can read him for hours on end, if I want to, and never get to the end of it, while soaking up the Millerite voice for use in my own book. This also has the advantage of imbuing my usually inert first-person voice with more energy. One of the best writing experiences I remember was the evening I went to see Stanley Kubrick's "Killer's Kiss" at the Castro, and came home so full of energy that I wrote the f...

Setting up office. Thinking about characters, what their stories are. Theme emerging: temptation. Each character either/both is tempted or tempts others (sometimes other of the characters, sometimes only those in his story, sometimes those in his job). Nascent outline: Friday. Drive up to Bend. Introduce main premise, the weekend with college buddies hosted by one of them who’s rich. Meets a girl in Bend and has an erotic encounter. Saturday. Arrive in Chelan, meets three of the other men: Seth, Dusty and Bart. After the two others go to bed, Dusty tells a story. Sunday. Ferry ride up the lake: Hap witnesses a conversation between Dusty and Bart. Seth inside looking a little green. Arrival at dock. Doc and Greg there in an SUV. Arrival at cabin. Shaun is alone there. Dinner. General ribald atmosphere, no long story, but a lot of dirty talk. Monday. Hap glimpses Bianca early morning, no interaction. Golf. Continuation of ribald atmosphere. After match, mixed talk of business and sex. Pe...