How They Scored

Friday of a long holiday weekend. I should have come straight here to the office after leaving work, but I felt some resistance. In fact, I spoke of it last night to A.: I said "I actually don't want tomorrow to be Friday because I don't feel like working on my book already." After I left work I went home, took a shower, tried and failed to nap, and left the house; but even then I drove around unwilling to go straight to my writing office. Nevertheless, I drove up the block, and there was no parking place, and I felt vaguely hungry, so I finally drove to Noe Valley and had something to eat at Pomodoro, a chain Italian restaurant on the corner of 24th and Noe. It's cheap but good, and neighborhoody enough that I don't feel bad about going in there wearing only a t-shirt (while I would never wear just a t-shirt to Bar Bambino). After eating I felt more like working, so I came to my office at Bob's house. I have a couple of hours to make a few notes, and then...

Underway no sooner than 11:20, despite best efforts. I have as much time as I need; still, I find myself wishing I could take Monday off. Today I'm supposed to write about Denny, but I have the feeling it will take me a little bit of time to work up any momentum. I'll try reading a little. 4:15 pm. I wrote 1600 words and got a good start on the chapter, but now I'm stuck. Somehow I feel I've backed myself into a corner... Maybe I should have Shaun take up the part of Denny's backstory that comes after college. I have: They meet in a bar, both are underachievers of a sort; they do drugs together. 4:40 pm. Okay, I did another 325 words, but I'm really dried up for the day. I'll knock off. Almost 1900 words for the day -- above average, the way I'm going.

I didn't get right back to it. My head of steam, such as it was, wore off and instead of getting right back to it, I did something else -- exercised and watched baseball on television, or did not exercise and still watched television. Then during the week I found myself feeling a little bit creatively tired and even depressed. I brought my laptop to work most days but I found myself resistant to thinking about the book or even opening the notes file. Friday came, and I found myself busy at work and with things to do during the evening, so I did not fuck off and come over to my office to write. So while I worked for four different days last week, this week will have only two. And I'm getting a late start today, a muggy Saturday where the fog never quite burns off but forms a glary haze. I woke up reasonably early but because I was determined not to spend time sleeping during the day -- because I have to knock off in late afternoon and go see A. -- I stayed in bed and slept until...

I got a very late start today, and was very slow to warm up. But once I read some Miller I found myself in a much better mood. Finally I did about 850 words in about three hours. If I was sure where things were going, I'd do even more. And I might get right back at it, in fact.

Early start -- 10:50, anyway. A sunny, warm day with a cool breeze -- perfect summer weather. Me in my little green cave (the office is painted green; when I finish this book, I want to repaint it so it's not quite as underwater-feeling). I feel like starting something fresh. Instead of doing the scene about Bart's first time, told at the party -- which I am having trouble getting a feel for -- I want to attack from a different angle, write a dialogue scene between the travelers. Above all, change the tone. The idea will be to show some character traits through dialogue, with a little exposition along the way. It's also important to introduce a constant sexual tone, not just from the narrator, but from the others. I'll read a little Henry Miller to prepare.

Late Friday afternoon -- I came to my office at Bob's a little before 4:00. I want to think just a little about this section, then lie down. Random thoughts about Bart: He is a GEEK, he must be strange, but he is also a SUCCESS. He is not immature. As shown by his attraction to Jennifer, he seems to like women who are very straight -- or maybe that's just one of the types he finds attractive. I should think about why he was attracted to Jennifer, the annoying super-straight HR manager, and not Stella, the kooky San Francisco girl. Perhaps Stella is too similar to all the girls who are naturally attracted to him, whereas Jennifer, strangely enough, represents -- not a challenge, but something different. Similarly, he has also had an affair with the bored wife of a Chinese-American dry cleaner. In fact, taken together, all these represent a quirky, eclectic bunch, even if alone set against American culture they are anonymous and straight. Hmm, that's kind of an interesting id...

I'm thinking that I should try doing something a little different for Bart's story of how he got laid the first time. I can have a little more dialogue and give-and-take between Hap and Bart, and I can also stage it in an interesting place -- M.'s parties, I'm thinking. That will allow me to relate backstory as well as create this Bay Area atmosphere. Keep in mind that M.'s parties were a pre-dotcom phenomenon. They were more related to the RDBMS- and aerospace-heavy high tech industry of the early and mid-90s than they are to the dotcom era. Make that clear. So let's see... Who should I use (from my own history) for Bart's first? Has to be somebody young and impressionable... J., or that noisy little Berkeley girl with the jewfro. Yeah, that's it. Bart can tell this story to Hap at the party and they can have a big laugh over it. Then I can immediately transition to them standing at the dock the next morning ready to board the ferry. This means there wi...

I was listening to the sports radio program this morning and I thought, I should have a character -- either Greg or Don -- just talk like Gary Radnich, where everything is a sort of catch phrase or sports cliché offered in an ironic tone. It's a good template for an aggressive man who needs to be in control. Somehow I feel it's better for Greg than for Don because I feel Don doesn't exert power that way. I put a few words to the end of chapter 2 and this afternoon wrote a paragraph about Bart to begin chapter 3. I thought he would be a stronger character to continue with than Seth. And I quickly decided that I could begin with a sex story about the first time he got laid. But I need to figure out a little about that. When I wrote the sentence "he real reason he stuck around long after the faculty had run out of things to teach him was that it took him that long to get laid" I drew a slight blank and I realized I had to do some thinking about it. However, the bit I...

5:15 pm -- I got though the part about picking up Shaun and I found myself basically giving his whole backstory. The chapter is up to 6000 words and I feel it needs another sex scene; I think what I need to do is get them to Chelan -- which I am changing the name to Lausanne for some reason I haven't really thought out. However the next thing that has to happen is that they have to meet Bart and Seth. Since that would feel like too many new characters I think I'll remember what happened in Catch-22 and just let this be the Shaun chapter. I can bring in Seth and Bart at the end, maybe, but I don't need to talk extensively about them and fully introduce them as characters. So I guess the next thing to do is to wrap up this chapter with some action or dialogue that helps illuminate Shaun. And ideally it should foreshadow or indicate some crucial character trait of his that will become important later. To do that will take some thinking. Up to 12,271 words. About 2800 today, 60...

Yesterday I wrote about 2500 words as a backstory to Shaun... this morning I wrote another 2000, and I only now have just picked up Shaun. Most of that was a story about a girlfriend they shared, Robin. I modeled her on the real Robin I slept with only once or twice back in 1980 -- a cheerful blond girl who had not lost all her babyfat, whom I met doing contact improv. There was one memorable moment in my affair with her -- the moment I came inside her. Other than that, I remember walking her to her place over on Parnassus afterward, and running into her and her mother on a Muni bus some time later after we had mostly lost touch with each other, and trying to keep up a correspondence with her when she moved back to Washington, DC. She was someone I never really knew much about -- I don't know whether that was because she was rather young and unformed, or because I was too self-centered to pay attention. Probably a little of both. Anyway, I kept the blond cheerfulness, the blandness...

I keep making notes on this chapter but I'm clearly having trouble with it. The main problems are that it's an interstitial chapter -- it's between the road trip and the arrival at the cabin -- and that it has to bear a lot of burden of exposition. In the past I would have simply tried to write through it, painstakingly leading the reader through moment after moment more as a way to discover for myself what happens than to actually say anything interesting. But I don't have time to do that, nor would it be interesting. Get to the point! -- except that I'm not sure what the point is. Q: What are the points? A: First, introduce three characters. Second, Shaun's antipathy toward Seth. Third, the setting. Fourth, Hap's dilemma. Q: What else? A: Each time a new character is introduced, must reveal -- through language -- Hap's attitude toward him. Q: But what is important about that? A: Because of the male readership this book is supposed to ...

Another thing to remember: oblique dialogue. I'm not actually sure how to go about writing oblique dialogue, since I almost always write standard, natural dialogue, but I'll have to figure it out. Not only will it lend the writing more style, it will help me be more interested in the sound of the language. And the interpersonal relations between the characters might be suited for oblique dialogue because it will show how they can only approach each other indirectly. I haven't read any Don DeLillo in preparation. Perhaps I should, but I'm already doing enough reading. I'm feeling antsy about the project already. This is a good sign; it means I have some pent-up energy and will make progress the next time I sit down. I've been trying to write just a few notes every day, to keep the project in the front of my mind, and the anxiety shows it is working. The first chapter was a piece of cake, but it's actually not like the succeeding chapters. I think that once I ...

This morning I thought: Remember your idea to approach some of these chapters the way Heller approached the chapters in Catch-22: each chapter highlights a different character. This was emphasized, to a misleading degree, by naming chapters after the character. I don't have to name the chapter after the character. But I can privately think of it as Shaun's chapter, Denny's chapter, etc.

Over the weekend I wrote the entire first chapter's first draft, about 6100 words. Lots of sex and not a huge amount of exposition. Some of the writing struck me as a little flat but I should be able to fix that. Now it's Wednesday, and I'm spending the day at home on a sick day. I have little energy but I think I can still make notes on the second chapter. The second chapter has to accomplish a few things. First, I have to get Hap and at least some of the others a lot closer to arriving at the cabin. Originally I had everyone arrive at the same time, but when Cris suggested that it would be interesting to suggest remoteness by setting the cabin way out on Lake Chelan, so that you'd have to take the ferry to get there, I decided Hap would meet a subset of the other characters in Chelan. And a little after that, I decided it might be good for me to have him pick up Shaun in Wenatchee on the way to Chelan. (Why Shaun? Because he doesn't have a car, and has to take the...