Pablo the Writer

First Impressions and the U.S. Mail

2011-08-31T21:55:00.000-07:00

The first batch of query letters is in the mail. If this works the way I think it does, between 9:00 am and lunch tomorrow 10 people with a serious amount of influence over the direction our lives could take will be opening envelopes, then judging me.

A query letter is essentially a job interview. If you do well, if you stand out, then you get a second interview. More than likely, however, the response will be a form letter, or worse – nothing.

I’ve taught a few semesters of an employment preparation class to college freshman and sophomores. The syllabus I created was pretty straightforward: resume basics and interview pointers. Don’t lie, don’t misspell, don’t use an idiotic sounding email address. Dress well, look people in the eye, don’t chew gum.

In a more general way we discussed how to stand out…but in a good way. “Yes, an interesting font will make you stand out, but may be hard or annoying to read.”

One thing we never discussed was stamps.

Most resumes these days are emailed or posted online, so maybe the stamp thing is a moot point. But any way to stand out, right? When I asked the woman at the post office what my options were at the current rate (I didn’t know how much a first class stamp costs) she seemed almost happy to pull out the book and show me. She flipped the pages, sort of softly narrating, like she was going through a photo album.

Nothing struck me until she said Mark Twain. What says, “Hey, look at how clever I am,” more than a Mark Twain stamp? Then two pages later she opened it up to Legends of Hollywood. Gregory Peck.

Done!

Of course, in the end what really matters is the letter. That makes or breaks the deal on its own. But like in an interview, if you can make someone smile for even a second right when you meet them, that’s irreplaceable. Everyone knows first impressions matter, but few people (in my experience) appreciate how much it matters.

Maybe they won’t even notice it; they open a thousand letters a day. But it’s a damn good looking stamp, a good size too. No offense to anyone else who’s played the role, Peck is Ahab.

But if they look, and if they see it, and if they’re a movie fan (as you'd expect at an agency that reps actors and screenwriters), then maybe they pause for a second, linger on Peck’s face, think about his place in the history of film, and that makes them smile, then when they start reading the letter I have them right where I want them, if only subconsciously, of only for a second.

I’m thinking about ordering the Cary Cooper stamp for the next batch.

Deconstructing the Query: or Query for the Leery

2011-08-24T12:28:00.000-07:00

Dear Whomever

The one thing any letter has to have going for it is sincerity. If it’s not honest in content and tone, then it’s built on a shaky foundation; this seems obvious, and maybe even like an oversimplification, but it bears keeping in mind. More than the thesis, more than erudition, if a letter’s not honest then it’s worthless. The best thing this letter has going for it is the sincerity and earnestness of its author. The trick is getting that across without using either of those words.

Beyond the obvious and general tenet of honesty (a characteristic many people seem to be lacking) a letter must be keenly focused; what is your thesis? (Or, as I used to ask my ENG 101 and 102 students, what’s your fucking point?)

The point here is to garner interest; interest in our work and talents as screenwriters in particular, but as dramatists in general: we can write for film, stage, comically, dramatically...you want it, we’ll put it to words. We’ve written great stuff and will continue to do so. Now pay us.

With the poignancy of a character-driven drama and the tension of a great thriller, This isn’t a poker game, we’re not romancing agents; we’re trying to convince them. And like a script (or a short story, or novel, or play, or joke...) if you don’t hook them immediately then you don’t have them at all. There’s no second chance. What’s your script? It’s poignant, character-driven, dramatic, and thrilling, that’s what it is! Aftermath, Inc., follows the lives not a day in the life, but their lives of brothers Patrick and Andrew Sullivan who specialize in sterilizing crime scenes after homicides, suicides, and “bio-hazardous events.” The unrelenting violence in Chicago that toddlin’ town with one of the highest murder rates in America is great for business, but it threatens to shatter the lives, and even sanity, of everyone it touches, especially those paid to clean up the mess. Aftermath, Inc., was a quarterfinalist in the BlueCat Screenwriting competition, earning praise from its judges, who said it was “a rewarding read,” with “great tension” and “great dialogue” “created[ed] with a highly enjoyable style and the polish of a professional storyteller.”

There’s nothing like third-party affirmation. Yes, it’s important to think your work is good. And it’s great when friends and family think it’s good (“seriously, it’s reeeeally good”), but when outsiders, especially professionals, tell you it’s good, then you might be on to something.

Since completing Aftermath, writers Ken Gayton and Pablo A. Rajczyk have gone on to complete four full-length screenplays, Armchair Quarterbacks, David’s War, Official Rejects, and Rednecks vs. Zombies.[1]

Yes, that’s a footnote in a query letter. In the research I did I found nothing about pitching multiple scripts or multiple writers. By simply adding two biographical paragraphs we solve the latter problem. It’s a little more complicated with five scripts and this is our intelligent but hopefully successful strategy. Query letters are supposed to be one page, and this one is. The script summaries will also be one page.

We don’t mention ourselves until the second paragraph. It would be easy to jump in and say, ‘Hi, we’re Ken and Pablo and we rock the shit.” But, like a good screenplay, we start with the action, and the story is the action. We’re selling ourselves (there’s a loaded sentence) but what matters is the work, so that’s the starting point.

Pablo Rajczyk was awarded the Harold Washington Scholarship, a full academic grant, to attend Wright College, earning a degree in journalism with honors. Penny thinks I should eliminate the previous sentence. No one, she says, cares if you earned an associate degree in journalism. While I get that point, and it’s probably true, it’s not the degree I’m trying to showcase here, but the fact that A) I have a degree in journalism, AGS or otherwise, and that B) I finish what I start and seek betterment. I also don’t think it hurts to point out that I earned a full academic scholarship in a city-wide program. He went on to receive his BA in English from Columbia College. Sadly, the Columbia in Chicago, not the one in New York City. There’s nothing wrong with Columbia College, there’s everything right about Columbia University. Pablo then earned his MFA in creative writing from the New School University in New York City. You know, of Inside the Actor’s Studio and Project Runway fame. Pablo won 2^nd place in Writer’s Digest Magazine’s play writing competition for his play Living with Women. His second play (in a planned trilogy), Holding Court, was produced by La Costa Theatre in Chicago.

In the first draft my biographical paragraph was too long (and was actually two paragraphs). It’s a weird thing pitching yourself to strangers with money. How much information is too much, and conversely, how much is too little? Should I include my years of teaching college? I think not; who wants to hire an English teacher to sell sex, drugs and rock and roll? Should I mention that I’ve had a couple short stories published (online)? Definitely not. I mean, shit, who hasn’t had stuff published online? (I love Divine Caroline, but does an agent really care?)

Ken Gayton studied comedy at Second City, Comedy Sportz, and Improv Olympic in Chicago. He co-wrote, starred-in, directed, edited and independently produced his first film The Truth About Average Guys, which was awarded multiple prizes at the East Lansing Film Festival including best feature. Is there anything this guy can’t do? His second film S.O.L., also featuring Ken in numerous creative roles, won the Audience Choice award at the Trail Dance Film Festival. I’ve read that winning the Audience Award at a film festival is better than winning Best Feature because that’s who buys the tickets. I think I read it in an interview with Ken, actually, but fortunately Boy Wonder has done both.

Ken’s bio was also longer, but for the same reasons I kept mine brief, I did the same with his. Ken’s accomplishments can easily fill half a page, but the question every writer needs to ask of every scene, every page, every word is a simple ‘what’s relevant?’ That’s the only question that matters.

Compelled to create, This is true...we are compelled Ken is currently preparing to film his script Wingmen, Inc., while Pablo is putting the finishing touches on his play Dadville and working on the nearly two dozen screenplays he has in various stages of completion. Ken and Pablo are currently writing episodes and three-season character arcs for a potential television series based on The Truth About Average Guys. I’m fully aware that the ‘a’ in ‘about’ should not be capitalized: don’t capitalize prepositions in a title. But it looks better capitalized, and it’s as much a logo as it is a title – TTAAG looks better than TTaAG. To paraphrase Melville in Moby Dick, aesthetics is a part of everything.

What have you done for me lately? That’s what most people want to know. In friendships, relationships, even parenting (at least so far) the unspoken (and sometimes spoken) question is the same: what are you doing NOW? For us this isn’t about selling a script, or even a handful; it’s about making careers. If you like what we’ve written so far, wait to see what we're truly capable of doing.

We would be grateful for the opportunity to send a longer synopsis or the full script of any of our stories.

Finally, we get to what I call The Ask. When I was teaching college prep (BUS 200) we did a lot of work with cover letters and resumes, and one of the things I always emphasized was The Ask. It’s like a date...you want a second one, you gotta ask. “Can I see you again?” If the date is going well and you don’t want it to end quite yet, “Can I come up for a drink?” It’s really hard to get to yes if you don’t ask the right question the right way.

Sincerely,

Ken Gayton and Pablo A. Rajczyk

We’re hardly the first to struggle (emotionally, at least) about the seemingly opposing forces that are Art and Commerce. As any writer (from Nobel Prize winner to closet scribbler) knows, it’s easy to become emotionally attached to every word put on paper. Self editing is hard, outside critique is even harder (and sometimes harsher). But as the cliché goes, writing is rewriting. That applies to everything. Of course I’ve made typos in blog posts or emails, dropped an occasional preposition or ‘s’ when meaning to pluralize, but that’s not an option in a letter like this. We’re writers, and even the smallest grammatical error can mean the difference between a form letter and a phone call.

[1] Please see second page for a synopsis of each script.

That Damn Query Letter | LinkedIn

2011-08-23T14:40:00.000-07:00

I just posted a sort-of open letter titled That Damn Query Letter | LinkedIn to two of my LinkedIn forums, Screenwriting and Fade In. I haven't used LinkedIn to find a job, which seems to be its main purpose, but I've been accumulating connections and perusing (and occasionally) participating in the forums.

The problem with these forums is that a lot of the time they're filled with people who have such an inflated view of their own skills and knowledge married to (an apparent) self loathing that can only be exorcised by being shitty to everyone except for a select few who genuflect before their missives. Of course, there are times when the help of fellow travelers and those who are (or have been) where you want to go is the greatest help one can find.

If you don't have a LinkedIn account, the following is the text of my post.

After finishing our fifth screenplay my writing partner and I have decided to begin searching for an agent. Our first script (written two years ago) made it to the quarterfinals of the BlueCat competition, and though we didn't win we received some very quotable praise. So my first question is should we drop a couple of the juicer quotes into the letter?

While there are a few decent resources, almost all the query letter writing information I've seen falls into the basic category of structure: polite greeting, story hook, short bio, etc. but none of them says squat about trying to get representation for multiple scripts. Obviously, we could write the logline for each of our scripts, or write five different letters, but if anyone has another suggestion we're all ears.

Finally, none of the information I've seen says anything about submitting a query with multiple writers attached to projects. Again, we can just write two bio paragraphs, but are there are other considerations, such as the fact that if they signed us they'd be getting twice the talent for the same price (put, of course, more politely and professionally). Or is it sufficient to just let it be known that there are two writers?

I've written two award winning plays and my writing partner has independently written, starred-in, edited, directed and produced two films that have done well in the small film festival circuit, including winning a best-of award and an audience choice award. We' re confident (though perhaps delusional) that the writing is there and will continue to improve. What we're not so sure about is this infernal process of gaining representation.

Thanks in advance for your help

The Great Agent Hunt

2011-08-18T12:20:00.000-07:00

I love it when a sentence has multiple meanings.

I'm currently in the process of trying to find an agent. I have next-to no idea how to do this other than researching the process, which means reading lots of articles authored by people I've never heard of, (thus making me reflexively wonder what the hell they know about it) and Google. (Anyone know a good literary agent?)

The process seems simple enough. Write a brilliant query letter. Send to agents. Await glowing replies. Make lots of money (or, at least, a half-decent living) writing full-time. Live happily ever after.

This schematic, obviously, omits certain significant points. Such as, A) have sizable body of quality material. Check. B) Emotionally prepare for an avalanche of rejection. Check. C) It's a one-in-a-million shot. Uh...well, I don't really have a response to that other than see B).

Wish me luck.

What If?

2011-04-07T10:20:00.000-07:00

(A journal entry from April 2008)

Five nights a week I ride the #22 Clark Street bus home from work. Depending on how busy it is I catch the bus somewhere between midnight and 2:30 am. My route is pretty much the same; I walk up Rush Street, turn left on Bellevue, cross State Street and walk about a block-and-a-half to the bus stop at Clark and Maple. Sometimes, if I've got the munchies, I stop at White Hen and get something chocolate.

If I miss the bus, or if it's particularly cold, I'll walk to the Red Line station about three blocks north of Maple and catch the train. I prefer the bus because at that time of night it's actually quicker than the train and leaves me considerably closer to my front door.

Most of the time I sit under the closet-sized shelter and read or do a crossword puzzle. Some nights I bundle up against the cold, some nights I just watch it rain. Rarely I'll chat on the phone or with someone at the stop (there's usually no one else there).

Tonight I saw a woman get robbed. More precisely, I heard a woman screaming bloody murder while getting robbed.

I was sitting at the bench on Maple and Clark when I suddenly became aware that a woman was screaming. At first I thought it was one of the drunks stumbling home from a night on Division Street.

I looked up and I heard it again, and I realized it wasn't someone who was drunk but someone who was scared. I looked right, saw nothing. I looked left, and about a half-block away I saw a woman standing in the middle of the sidewalk, moving toward me and a guy running between two parked cars into an idling sedan waiting in the middle of the street.

I grabbed my cell phone, stood up, then started walking toward her. She picked up her pace and the car accelerated in my direction. There was no front plate on the car, and all I could see of the driver or passenger was an outline. I tried to catch the back plate, but if there was one person in the area just then with worse eyesight than me I challenge them to step forward.

My lousy vision, the steady drizzle, the speed of the car, my exhaustion (after working 9 hours in a smoky bar) and the fact that I haven't changed my disposable contact in a week-and-a-half (it's starting to feel like a piece of aluminum foil in my eye) conspired to keep me from seeing the back plate. I think there may have been an 8 in it. Or maybe it was a zero. It's hard to tell.

The woman trotted up to me, and I have to say, quite calmly, asked me to call 911. Which I did. She told the dispatch where she was and what had happened. There were wide, red scratches on her neck, and she was obviously experiencing a massive adrenaline rush (though she kept herself incredibly composed).

She was worrying aloud about her lost ID (her passport, she said) and the fact that the person who had just robbed her at gunpoint now knew where she lived. She was thrilled he didn't take her iPod. She said, "He had a gun, and I was screaming." She looked at me wide-eyed with the realization that she could have been shot. "I'm really lucky," she said...and I knew she meant she was lucky she hadn't been shot (or worse), but it was almost absurd to hear someone who had just been assaulted and robbed say they were lucky.

My first thought was that the gun probably wasn't loaded. Armed robbery carries a much stiffer penalty than plain-old snatch-and-run robbery (I think it does). Murder, or attempted murder carries a much stiffer sentence (and I'm damn sure about that one). One way to make sure no one gets shot is to not have a gun at all (kind of like burglary abstinence).

Of course, not having the threat of a gun might make committing the act a little more difficult. After all, if someone walked up to you and said "Give me your money," while simply standing there, it might make a potential victim less likely to comply. But if someone has the business end of a .45 in their cheek, they might be more inclined to hand over their purse (or what have you).

I've been robbed. Burgled, actually. Fortunately, no one has ever stuck a weapon in my face. But my place was broken into once and for the following week I barely slept. It's a sickening feeling, really.

My second thought was, 'Wow, she is lucky.'

My third thought, and the one I couldn't shake until I was halfway home, was what if he had shot her, and what if he'd seen me as he was driving past, wandering into the street to try and see his licence plate...

Not Knowing

2011-01-14T07:35:00.000-08:00

I recently read Carl Sagan's The Dragons of Eden, digesting it in tiny two-and-three page bites. In the first couple of chapters he writes about the structure of DNA, relating in great detail the amount of genetic information locked within our biological hardware. His analogy is made through books. There are 200 billion binary digits (bits) worth of information on only one strand of DNA...in more human terms that's the equivalent of 4,000 500-page books. I just finished reading Jonathan Franzen's Freedom (560 pages), which took me about a month to read. At that rate, it would take me almost 350 years to read the information encoded on just one strand of DNA.

If you read every single book in even the largest Barnes&Noble (assuming approximately 150,000 books) and memorized it all (every recipe in every cook book, every line of every poem, every word of all the histories of every country on the planet), if you listened to every song and memorized every note of every opera, concerto and rock and roll anthem that's about the equivalent of 100 strands of DNA.

The genome is an organism’s complete set of DNA. Humans (and mice) contain approximately 3 billion base pairs. Except for mature red blood cells, all human cells contain a complete genome.

In other words, there's a lot going on in there that we just don't know yet.

I almost drowned when I was 11 years-old. I was swimming in a small lake up near the Wisconsin border. I'd gone up there with my friend Phillip's family for a day trip. Moored at some distance from the shore (the number I remember is one hundred yards (about half a city block) though I can't say with total certainty) was a small raft with four diving boards at varying heights. You couldn't dive close to the shore, but at that distance the lake was probably close to 20-feet deep.

I'd waded out to about waist high, where the drop off was more than twice my height. I'd spent some time in pools as a kid, and even swam in a race or two (I was much better on land where I'd won my share of park-district sponsored 50 and 100-yard dashes).

About halfway to the raft a pain shot through my right hamstring as if I was a speared trout. I reflexively reached back with both hands and immediately sank completely below the surface and took in water. I gagged and sank to the bottom where I became entangled in thick seaweed.

The burning in my leg intensified and my flailing left foot became tangled in the seemingly reaching blades of the seaweed. My gasps of panic pulled more water into my stomach and lungs.

I was drowning.

I could see the surface but was not nearly tall enough to reach it. I'd probably sank some seven or eight feet (a distance that my 11-year old mind exaggerated into 100 feet).

I stopped moving. I don't know why. My foor became untangled. I let go of my cramped hamstring and slowly floated to the top.

I surfaced spitting and sputtering and looking for the lifeguard who had to be, must be swimming toward me at this very instant to rescue me.

No one saw me.

I circled my arms in figure-eights and tread water until I caught my breath. I was much closer to the platform than the shore so I paddled strongly,

Is my DNA encoded with that memory? Did that rush of chemicals racing through me at the time mutate a few cells? Can my physical being be infused with the fear that I felt when I thought I might die? Is that why children are afraid of the dark? Is it some deeply ancestral recognition that we are little more than soft tissue attached to fragile bones?

It's frustrating to have more questions than answers. I'll just keep reading (and writing) until the answers present themselves or I've come to terms with not knowing.

Time On My Hands

2011-01-13T14:10:00.000-08:00

I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse (not that I ever use such religiously-inspired language, but it's a very convenient shorthand), but I have more ideas than time to write them. Or is it that I have more thoughts than motivation?

When I do the math it seems easy to explain; There are 168 hours in a week, seemingly plenty of time to work, sleep, commute, watch a Cubs game or two, shit, shower, and shave and so on.

I've been working a lot lately. I mean way too much.

The last couple of weeks I've been scheduled 50 hours, which usually turns into 55. 168-55=113.

There's my 10 hours of commuting every week, which leaves me at 103.

Ideally I would be sleeping 8 hours a day (whoever came up with that number is a cruel bastard because I don't know anyone who gets that much sleep). But that's just not gonna happen. We'll call it 50 hours of sleep, or, at least, 50 hours in bed trying to sleep. That takes almost half of the "free" time I have left and leaves me with 53 hours.

In an average day I spend a little over half-an-hour "grooming," that is brushing my teeth, showering, shaving, changing, and whatever else people do in the privacy of their own (and the occasional public) bathroom. We'll call it 4 hours, leaving me with 49.

I probably spend about an hour a day eating (3 meals @ 20 minutes each, plus snacks). I'm down to 42 hours.

Three Cubs games a week eat up another 9 hours knocking me down to 33.

I need a good hour a day to decompress; from work, from my commute, from the world at large, or I will go completely, utterly, bat-shit crazy.

26 hours.

Finley gets taken to the park every day. I don' take him as often as I used to, but I could fairly say I spend 6 hours a week with the dog.

20 hours.

Then, of course, there's time for family and friends. No less than an hour a day between talking to my brothers and mom, hanging with my wife and, of course, Jack and baby Riley, who deserves no less than my full attention. 13 hours left.

There's always something to get for the house: groceries, toiletries, cleaning supplies, all requiring a trip to Target or Walgreens or Whole Foods, which means another 5 hours a week.

That leaves me 8 hours a week, or a little over an hour a day, to write. Unless something comes up. And there's always the random stuff: laundry, haircuts, taking out the garbage, consoling a friend who was just dumped...and so on.

There are times when I'm "multi-tasking." I read a lot while I'm commuting (or "grooming") and I watch the news or sports or whatever while I'm eating. But generally I try to stay focused on the task at hand...not easy to do when all these ideas are rolling around in my cranium, trying to find purchase on a piece of paper (or computer monitor) which I usually don't have at hand.

What it boils down to is this - I have no time to write, the universe, at least for right now, is conspiring against me. (Actually, the universe is indifferent, but whatever). So I have to make time, or, more accurately, find time in this crazy schedule to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard.

It's either that, or move to Venus (where a week is 40,824 earth hours long - really.)

Small Thoughts - DivineCaroline

2010-07-23T17:41:00.000-07:00

Small Thoughts - DivineCaroline

Balance

2009-10-02T18:22:00.001-07:00

I used to be a huge Clive Barker fan, but I've since lost weight. (Sorry.) Seriously though. He was among the first writers whose work I impatiently anticipated. When I heard he had a new book (or movie) on the way I ran out and picked it up (or saw the movie) right away. I've seen him read twice, and he was great both times.

But somewhere along the line I stopped reading his books, though I would still pick up copies of his stuff that I hadn't read. Granted, I no longer spent $24.95 (or more) on the hardcovers; I'd usually find them at the Brown Elephant for a buck or two then place them on my too-read stack, only to move them to a bookshelf after not even opening the cover for months.

Last week I found a copy of one of his more recent titles, Mister B. Gone. The premise is clever enough; a demon (from the Demonation, of course) tells his (first person) tale of, well, demony deeds, while repeatedly (and repeatedly) imploring you to burn the book, his manuscript, you now hold in your hands, for he is trapped in the pages and is just trying to save you from your own morbid and dangerous curiosity. (Why couldn't someone have done this with the bible?)

I'm about 100 pages in (more or less halfway) and the only word I can think to describe my thoughts is 'disappointing.' The demon has no demonic powers other than a high threshold for pain (inflicted in either burns or cuts) and a piercing scream that he calls his mommy voice, or some such thing.

While researching other readers' responses (on Goodreads and Amazon) I noticed a peculiar balance of responses. It seems that there's no concensus on this book whatsoever:

105 Reviews

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(19)
1 star:		(20)

Now I don't feel so bad about my ambivalence.

To Kill a Mockingbird

2009-08-30T17:40:00.000-07:00

2009-08-26T18:48:00.000-07:00

I'm enmeshed in a project for work. A writing project that could be considered only marginally creative. It's rewarding, and occasionally satisfying. But it's never uplifting.

Jung

2009-01-28T18:48:00.000-08:00

I took a few minutes and filled out a Jungian personality quiz. Here's what it said:

[I am] an initiator of change, keenly perceptive of possibilities. I energize and stimulate others through myr contagious enthusiasm. I prefer the start-up phase of a project or relationship, and are tireless in the pursuit of new-found interests. I am able to anticipate the needs of others and to offer them needed help and appreciation. I bring zest, joy, liveliness, and a zany sense of fun to all aspects of my life. I am at my best in situations that are fluid and changing, and that allow me to express my creativity and use my charisma. I tend to idealize people, and can be disappointed when reality fails to fulfill my expectations. I am easily frustrated if a project requires a great deal of follow-up or attention to detail.

Too Easy?

2009-01-16T08:18:00.000-08:00

I'm sure that by now everyone has seen and/or heard about flight 1549's amazing landing in the Hudson river. While this was happening Dubya was giving his farewell speech to America (and apparently no one was watching). What's interesting to me is the metaphor invoked (coincidentally or not) by a line in this article:

Something unexpected and awesome had happened to shoulder him out of the picture: a jet gliding to a stop in the middle of the Hudson River, with everyone emerging safe.

How crazy is it that while Bush's reign of error was coming to an end (a plane crashing), something "unexpected and awesome had happened" (the election of Obama)...and everyone emerged safely from what by all accounts should have been a life ending disaster.

Maybe it's the writer in me sees metaphors in everything. Maybe this hope thing has gotten into my bloodstream a little to emphatically. But I can't help but see this is as an all-too-obvious analogy for the immediate past and the not-too-distant future. I would say it was a sign, but anyone who knows me knows I don't believe in omens

Homely Spinster

2009-01-02T23:51:00.000-08:00

I was hanging out with a friend today and he was talking about his family, people I've never met and knew nothing about. He'd mentioned that his brother was married and lived with his wife, Cande (not short for Candice) and her daughter, Kat (not short for Katherine). They also lived with his wife's mother and sister. The writer in my quickly assessed the scenario (including the fact that they live in the south) and blurted out, "...the pole-dancing college student?" (as I imagined the sister to be). He responded, "Homely spinster."

I was suddenly struck by the idea that anyone who has ever met me can probably sum up the entirety of my life in a short, hopefully witty, accurate and complimentary, sentence.

I admit it, I went through a Rolodex of names in my head and summed them up in a sentence or two:

"Talentless, wannabe actress."

"Pretentious, ego maniacal chef."

"Republican nut job."

"Drunk."

I'm fully aware that none of these descriptions is all-encompassing (they may not even be accurate), but each one is evocative of a person, or, at least a type of person. But I have to remember always that no one is that simple, no one can be encapsulated in a sentence. Well, maybe some people can, but never a fictional character, because when a character is that simple, then they're never interesting or worth caring about. And who the fuck wants to read about them?

Great Review

2009-01-02T23:14:00.000-08:00

I received one of my best reviews so far. Unfortunately (humiliatingly) it wasn't for a photo I've taken or something I've written. It was for bar tending.

The praise came from a user review on citysearch.com that read, in part:

The apple tart with ice cream and caramel was a good ending for the meal. We then stopped at the bar for a after dinner drink. That is where we met a really cool bartender, Pablo. I think that is his name. He can converse about anything. Fun guy. The only shortfall was the wine list. It was limited in selection, but adequate. I am going back tonight for their $5 house martinis.

So there I am, sandwiched between apple tart and $5 house martinis. My dad would be so proud.

Snow

2008-12-17T18:20:00.001-08:00

We had our first storm of the winter, and I was lucky enough to have had an appointment during the very heart of it that I couldn't reschedule. A trip that should have taken 35 minutes each way was slowed to four hours, split almost perfectly at two hours each way. I listened to a lot of news radio (NPR and Air America). As a kid I distinctly remember thinking, who the fuck gets a radio then just listens to people talk? The radio, I believed, was at its very essence, a musical instrument.

Three Days to L.A.

2008-11-18T18:22:00.000-08:00

I wrote a short piece that DivineCaroline.com was kind enought to feature.

"A promise we make to our children."

2008-11-12T09:59:00.001-08:00

Cool. Unflappable. Suave. Stately...

2008-11-11T22:04:00.000-08:00

I'm going to spend way too much time at this website over the next few years.

A Room With A View

2008-11-11T19:24:00.000-08:00

The view from my writing chair, 11.08.08.

I Voted

2008-11-11T19:20:00.000-08:00

R.I.P David Foster Wallace

2008-09-19T09:00:00.001-07:00

It's a goddamn shame.

Shadow8 Productions logo

2008-07-13T20:53:00.000-07:00

Time in a Bottle

2008-05-06T11:54:00.000-07:00

Scary

2008-05-03T01:32:00.000-07:00

My writing space is the scariest fucking room in my apartment.

The street light hangs at shoulder height, hovering like some mechanical all-seeing eye outside my second floor window.

The closed curtains hang unevenly, a jagged crevice of cloth allowing only a sliver of light, as if peaking through a cracked door (like Poe's deranged tenant in the Tell Tale Heart).

Even during the darkest hour of a man's soul (it is currently 3:36 am) you can still hear the comings and goings of people as far as a half-mile away. If the breeze is right I can hear the elevated Red Line stop at Loyola and the robotic voice of the conductor, "Doors closing, Granville is next," in that menacing monotone.

It's alarming to know that there are people moving through the city at this late hour. Cars, trucks, the occasionally cranky motorcycle, roll within yards of where I sit. (I can't imagine how close they must feel to people living on the first floor.) No wonder the impulse to climb mountains or the increase in rent as you ascend (the penthouse always costs more than the first floor), the higher up you are the less you hear, and the safer you feel.

If I can hear them, see them, hell, sometimes smell them (or at least I can smell whatever they're smoking) then they can just as easily observe me.

I'm exposed up here in my glass bubble. We've hung no curtains or blinds. Each window is as wide open as a field with nothing to keep someone from watching me closely with even the cheapest binoculars.

It's scary up here. I've never felt so exposed in my life.

A Room Of My Own

2008-05-03T01:16:00.000-07:00

My office is the sun porch of our Rogers Park apartment.

My monitor faces a window some six feet tall and half as wide. A window the same size stands to its left so that I essentially face a wall of approximately 36 square feet of glass. Immediately to my left (so close if I reach toward it I don't have to fully extend my arm to touch the glass) are three windows, each the same six feet high, though slightly narrower. Six feet behind me is the mirror image of arranged glass as the side-by-side mirrors in front of me.

Eight feet to my right hangs a heavy curtain of luxurious red and gold, separating me from the rest of the house.

We're on the second floor some twenty feet off the ground and thee tree outside the window is twice that tall. In summer the thickest foliage abuts the building at my eye level and squirrels scamper from the trunk to my sill on a daily basis, occasionally pausing to use their little hands (with the most delicate little fingers thin as claws) to eat some found treasure (and maybe contemplate the guy on the other side of the glass...sitting in that chair and tapping his fingers against that contraption).

In the winter the trees, of course, are bare and the lower sun throws long, thin shadows., like abstract, fine lattice work.

It's very much (I imagine) like living in a glass house. When people speak of rooms with "good natural light" they're talking about my office. It's like writing in a tree house.

It's the most creation-inducing space I've ever lived in, my 50 or so square feet of sun porch.

Something I Learned Today

2008-04-23T01:19:00.000-07:00

For me to be successful as a writer it helps me to think of writing as a daily practice, like yoga, or tai chi. If you move in a certain way enough times, like practicing free throws, you create what's known as muscle memory. Your body learns to do something so well you don't have to think about the act, but can instead perfect (or as close to it as we can come) the art of it.

There are cooks and there are master chefs. There are writers and there are authors. There are basketball players and there is Michael Jordan. To reach that next level you have to learn something new about your craft every day. Either by reading someone else, by writing something you've never written or by learning a simple fact, intellectually you have to be more than you were yesterday.

Today I learned that Canada has two national sports - lacrosse is the official summer sport and ice hockey is the official winter sport. The US has no official sport, but baseball, that greatest of all games, is the national pastime, I don't care how many people watch the NFL or NASCAR.

New Yorker Covers

2008-04-15T23:19:00.000-07:00

Need to kill some time? I spent a decent portion of my evening (at work) browsing every single cover of the New Yorker, starting with the first cover February 21, 1925 and going through April 2007. (I guess they haven't uploaded the last year's worth of issues.) That's 3,699 covers.

And why would someone spend the time to do this? Because he wanted to see every baseball themed cover. Of the nearly 3,700 covers I found 29, starting with this cubist-inspired bad boy from May 8, 1926.

Chicago Reader Review

2008-04-01T19:05:00.000-07:00

One of the more nerve-wracking aspects of the show was anticipating the review (my first ever!). Granted, it's super cool that there even was a review, but that doesn't change the fact that while I was waiting, and rationalizing every mean-spirited, spirit-breaking, just-plain-shitty thing I imagined the reviewer would write, I was a little anxious. Yeah, yeah, I know it's just one person's opinion. But I comforted myself with a million little reassurances about how well structured, funny, and most of all, well acted the show was.

It turns out, that for the most part, my fears were unfounded.

Holding Court

Clocking in at a little less than an hour, Courtney Arnett's solo piece about her many trials as a single woman looking for a decent date feels at once too short and too long. Although the show is packed with examples of awful dates, many of her tales consist of little more than a quick costume change (into a prom dress or a bridesmaid outfit) and a few brief, if funny reminiscences before she moves on to the next loser or asshole who hurt her or didn't quite measure up. The show just doesn't build dramatically, and Arnett never seems to learn. Still, Arnett does have a strong, likable stage presence, and most of her material avoids being too self-indulgent--the result, perhaps, of its having been edited and shaped by local writer Pablo Rajczyk and director Joe Lewis. --Jack Helbig Through 3/30: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PM, La Costa Theatre Company, 3931 N. Elston, 773-866-0200, $10-$15.

Production Stills From Holding Court

2008-03-20T12:48:00.000-07:00

2008-03-20T12:46:00.000-07:00

2008-03-20T12:45:00.000-07:00

2008-03-20T12:44:00.000-07:00

We're A Metromix Pick

2008-03-19T10:44:00.001-07:00

I watched the first dress rehearsal of the show last night, and I have to say that I was a little emotional, and not just because "my play" was being performed. Courtney nailed it. The emotional punch she's able to bring to her performance is impressive.

We open in about 24 hours and, of course, we're hoping for a big turnout. Our chances are improved by being a Metromix Pick.

We also have listings at Broadwayworld.com, Goldstar.com, Time-Out Chicago and the Sun-Times.

March 10, 2008

2008-03-13T13:25:00.000-07:00

7 Days Until The Opening

2008-03-12T22:22:00.000-07:00

Holding Court opens a week from today. With that in mind I re-visited the first play I wrote. I had submitted it to Writer's Digest for their annual writing competition and was awarded second place. I was so stunned I wrote an email to the two judges. One wrote back to me within a few days. Basically, she said 'keep it up.' I never heard from the other judge.

Dear Miss Ryan,

As the final-round judge in this year’s Writer’s Digest playwriting contest, you selected my play, Living With Women, as second-place winner. The confidence this recognition has given me is immeasurable. The act of writing is a daily re-commitment fueled by mood swings caused by things as varied as nice weather, bad weather, finding love, losing pounds and especially receiving recognition.

I am currently in my thesis semester seeking my master’s degree in Creative Writing from the New School University. Grad students can be as miserly with praise as they can be grandiose in admiration of themselves.

Writing is a selfish act the writer is hoping (expecting?) to get praised for. We’re appalled when readers don’t get it, and somehow almost as appalled when they do, or at least surprised, and grateful. The objective affirmations one receives throughout their lifetime can usually be counted on one hand.

The only other personal experience I have with the stage was as an under-age bass player in a rock band in the late ‘80s, so I suddenly find myself being presented with one of the central questions in writing; What happens next? Do I seek an agent? Production? A director? There are innumerable and often unreadable how-to books written for a general audience of “writers.”

As someone who has seen my work, any advice or guidance you can offer is greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

Sincerely,

Pablo A. Rajczyk
Shadow8pro@yahoo.com
718.267.7733
25-76 44th Street #2F
Astoria, NY 11103

Holding Court

2008-02-14T11:16:00.001-08:00

No one said art was easy.

The play formerly known as Dating Courtney is now called Holding Court. I was reluctant to change the title because, frankly, I thought it was perfect - it was an accurate description of the show and it was succinct.

But Courtney wasn't thrilled with it. She was, in a way, embarrassed that her name was so prominently displayed.

My argument was that it not only described the show, but also that it’s a showcase for her, so why not put her name in the title?

But when I spit out 'holding court' during a brain-storming session it seemed no less accurate, and still included Courtney's name, thought more subtlety.

So the name, the postcard and the play itself have gone through multiple drafts. The first two will stay the same; the play still has a few tweaks to go.

So, here’s the newest (and final) postcard for Holding Court.

Zombies Ate My Brain

2007-12-17T09:11:00.000-08:00

Not literally of course, but I have to say that I've had zombies on the mind for the last couple weeks.

I can't remember what triggered it, but if I had to take a guess I would say it started when I read The Road. There are no zombies in the book, but it put me in a post-apocalyptic mood. I recently read World War Z, which I enjoyed. I asked my Librarything compatriots for suggestions along those lines and someone said I should read Cell. I hate to say it, but it was the most unsatisfying read I've had in as long as I can remember; psychic, floating, pseudo-zombies "infected" by cell phones? Not exactly what I was looking for.

A book I read shortly after it came out was Everything Is Illuminated (about an entirely different kind of apocalypse). When I met Jonathan Safran Foer he said he'd merely written a book he wanted to read. That's the best advice I've ever heard about writing.

So here's my plan. I'm going to write my own zombie story, in serial form. I'll post it here and to my website as I finish each chapter. I have no timeline and only the vaguest idea of a story. I only know that the infestation has begun and is in full swing and the first-person narrator is a journalist housed inside a concentration camp, not as punishment but for his own protection, along with a number (hundreds? thousands?) of other refugees.

Wrrrrgghh!

More Cormac

2007-12-16T13:15:00.000-08:00

I found this interesting link. Wes Morgan apparently walked around Knoxville taking pictures of settings from Suttree.

If you want to know with what frequency and on what page a particular word occurs, John Sepich has put together a concordance for Suttree.

If yyou're really interested in such things, you can find a concordance for each of McCarthy's novels.

Cool.

At Home Without The Man

2007-12-16T11:19:00.000-08:00

It's been said of Cormac McCarthy that he is such a reclusive writer that he's not even famous for it. Well, that's all changed.

Maybe it was the Oprah Effect, or maybe the great mass of people have caught up with the writer, but it seems these days you can't step out of your house without hearing or seeing his name. I guess winning a Pulitzer, having your book picked by Oprah (or is it 'blessed' by her?), and having a recent novel turned into one of the most universally praised films in a decade will get your name out there.

With all the exposure (hell, people even know where he hangs out), there's still a lot about the man most people don't know.

The Knoxville News Sentinel has apparently been trying, unsuccessfully, to get an interview with their hometown hero for a while. Even without his input they decided to run an interesting piece, including some old photos of him and the houses he lived in.

Top 10 of 2007

2007-12-11T18:31:00.001-08:00

Time Magazine has released its list of the top 10 books of 2007. Sadly, I am not on it. Just as sadly I haven't read any of these books. (I'm so embarrassed.)

1. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao By Junot Diaz.
2. Then We Came to the End: A Novel By Joshua Ferris.
3. A Thousand Splendid Suns By Khaled Hosseini.
4. Out Stealing Horses: A Novel By Per Petterson.
5. Tree of Smoke: A Novel By Denis Johnson.
6. House of Meetings By Martin Amis.
7. No One Belongs Here More Than You By Miranda July.
8. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows By J.K. Rowling.
9. Like You'd Understand, Anyway By Jim Shepard.
10. The Post-Birthday World By Lionel Shriver.

8

2007-12-05T10:09:00.000-08:00

Things can get a little, uh, boring at work.

Other than paying my bills (and some measure of social interaction) my job is a humongous waste of time. Sure, I get a lot of reading done during my daily 90 minute commute (which the CTA has kindly extended to two hours on occasion...you know, to allow me more time to read), but other than that, it is essentially a giant pain in my ass.

My biggest decision is usually what time to eat lunch.

But today was productive. Hell, by my usual standard today was a red-letter day. I decided I'm going to change the way I write the number eight.

I've always made my eights as two small circles, one above the other like a tiny, headless snowman. But today I decided that was too sloppy and inefficient. From now on my eights will be made with one stroke of the pen, a small, upright infinity symbol.

Who says a day at work can't be productive?

Coming Soon

2007-11-04T20:07:00.000-08:00

Dating Courtney. March 27-30, 2008. La Costa Theatre Company
A coming of age story about a girl learning to find her way in the world of relationships.

These are a couple of very (very) rough draft mock ups for postcards and the poster. The idea is the pics would be of the five different dresses Courtney wears during the course of the show. This is just a dress Penny pulled out of her closet so I could play with the layouts.

America The Ignorant

2007-10-24T07:47:00.000-07:00

A teacher in Texas (does the city really matter?) has been suspended for the unforgivable crime of allowing a student to read a book.

Kaleb Tierce "is being investigated for allegedly distributing harmful material to a minor after the student selected Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Cormac McCarthy's "Child of God" off the list and read it."

Tierce, an assistant football coach, is a third-year teacher at a place named Jim Ned High School and is apparently popular with the students. But that's beside the point.

Coincidentally I recently re-read Child Of God.

Now that I have a son people ask me if I would allow him to do this or that, often these questions are directed at things that I have done, not books I've read. Would I let my son read a book about a necrophiliac murderer who lives in a cave where he stores his victims?

The answer is unequivocally yes. I will let him read anything he is capable of. If he wants to read Child of God I will not only allow it, I will encourage it (after all, McCarthy is my favorite author). Here's my question for the idiot parents of this poor kid - is Child of God anymore violent than the book allegedly handed down by God? A book loaded from front to back with infanticide, genocide, fratricide, war, incest and more miscellaneous murder and mayhem than anything else written since the advent of language?

Are these people afraid their son will start murdering people and having sex with the dead bodies? If that's the case they need to look a lot deeper into their lives (and their son's) than a high school reading list.

The Nobel Prize

2007-10-23T12:25:00.000-07:00

Doris Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature.

What does it take to win the Nobel? Here's a list of Lessing's works in English:

The Grass is Singing. 1950
This was the Old Chief's Country. 1952
Martha Quest. 1952. – (Children of Violence; 1)
Five : Short Novels. 1953
A Proper Marriage. 1954. – (Children of Violence; 2)
A Retreat to Innocence. 1956
The Habit of Loving. 1957
Going Home. 1957
A Ripple from the Storm. 1958 (Children of Violence; 3)
Fourteen Poems. 1959
In Pursuit of the English : a Documentary. 1960
Play with a Tiger : a Play in Three Acts. 1962
The Golden Notebook. 1962
A Man and Two Women. 1963
Martha Quest and A Proper Marriage. 1964
African Stories. 1964
Landlocked. 1965 (Children of Violence; 4)
A Ripple from the Storm and Landlocked. 1966
The Black Madonna. 1966
Winter in July. 1966
Particularly Cats. 1967
The Four-Gated City. 1969 (Children of Violence; 5)
Briefing for a Descent into Hell. 1971
The Story of a Non-Marrying Man and Other Stories. 1972.
Collected African stories. Vol. 1, This was the Old Chief's Country. 1973
Collected African stories. Vol. 2, The Sun Between Their Feet. 1973
The Summer Before the Dark. 1973
The Memoirs of a Survivor. 1974
Stories. 1978
To Room Nineteen : Collected Stories Volume One. 1978
The Temptation of Jack Orkney : Collected Stories Volume Two. 1978
Shikasta : Re: Colonised Planet 5. 1979 (Canopus in Argos: Archives; 1)
The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five. 1980 (Canopus in Argos: Archives; 2)
The Sirian Experiments. 1981 (Canopus in Argos: Archives; 3)
The Making of the Representative for Planet 8. 1982 (Canopus in Argos: Archives; 4)
Documents Relating to the Sentimental Agents in the Volyen Empire. 1983 (Canopus in Argos: Archives; 5)
The Diary of a Good Neighbour. 1983
If the Old Could ... 1984
The Diaries of Jane Somers. 1984
The Good Terrorist. 1985
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside. 1987
The Wind Blows Away Our Words. 1987
The Fifth Child. 1988
The Real Thing : Stories and Sketches. 1992
African Laughter : Four Visits to Zimbabwe. 1992
Shadows on the Wall of the Cave : a talk by Doris Lessing delivered 19 January 1994
Conversations / edited by Earl G. Ingersol. – Princeton, N.J. : Ontario Review Press, 1994
A Small Personal Voice : Essays, Reviews, Interviews 1994
Under My Skin : Volume One of My Autobiography, to 1949. 1994
Spies I Have Known and Other Stories. 1995
Playing the Game. 1995
Love, Again. 1996
Play with a Tiger, and Other Plays. 1996
Walking in the Shade : Volume Two of My Autobiography, 1949-1962. 1997
Mara and Dann : an Adventure. 1999
Ben, in the World. 2000
The Sweetest Dream. 2001
On Cats. 2002
The Grandmothers : Four Short Novels. 2003
Time Bites : Views and Reviews. 2004
The Story of General Dann and Mara's Daughter, Griot and the Snow Dog. 2005
The Cleft. 2007

Dig in.

Process

2007-10-18T14:33:00.000-07:00

When I was in grad school there was much heated debate about the process of writing. Or, more succinctly, Process.

These self-important and masturbatory conversations usually centered around the physical process of placing words on paper.

Keyboard, pen, pencil, tape recorder, hammer and chisel, crayon...

Computer monitor, legal pad, lined white paper, cocktail napkins...

While I wanted to discuss mental and emotional aspects of Process everyone else seemed caught up in the minutiae (and pretense) of what mechanical tools were being used, as if somehow the 'magic' was not in your head but in the material objects used to record it.

I often wondered (and still do) whether this avoidance was due to a serious interest in the physical act of writing or a serious lack of consideration about motivation.

People would tell me the more they thought about writing the more they became blocked.

Blocked?

What are these people? Toilets?

That's like saying the more they thought about food the less hungry they'd become Or the more they thought about sex the more impotent they became.

The old saying goes that writers write. I believe that writing is not so much a physical act as it is a form of thinking out loud. When people think of writers (and of course I'm speaking in general terms) they don't think of someone who is physically capable, they think of someone who is "smart" (and boy is that a mistake).

So while others discuss pen vs laptop or PC vs. Mac (as if the brand actually matters) I'll turn my attention inward. And see what I can dig up from the deep (and maybe not so deep) recesses of my consciousness.

20 Books

2007-10-04T07:44:00.000-07:00

The 50th Anniversary issue of GQ (they've been making men feel bad about themselves for 50 years?) includes their list of "20 Books that Changed Men's Lives."
What men they are talking about I can't say, but here's the list:
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
Moneyball by Michael Lewis
Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung by Lester Bangs
The Sportswriter by Richard Ford
The Joy of Sex by Alex Comfort
Trump: The Art of the Deal by Donald J. Trump
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
The Universal Baseball Association Inc. by Robert Coover
Portnoy's Complaint by Philip Roth
Roots by Alex Haley
The Stories of John Cheever by John Cheever
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
The Boys on the Bus by Timothy Crouse
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Rabbit, Run by John Updike
Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller
The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe
Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer

The Greatest Living American Writer

2007-09-10T18:04:00.001-07:00

Dissapointment

2007-08-19T00:30:00.000-07:00

Very few things promote creation like disappointment, depression and drugs.

Fortunately for me I've experienced very little of the first two of these and generally shied away from the last one (at least lately).

By most objective measurements I have a pretty good life (though, admittedly, even the most objective measurements of "quality of life" are very subjective). Is my life perfect? Far from it; I'm overworked, underpaid and generally unappreciated (though, thankfully, not by my family).

If my first statement is true (that the 3 Ds are good for creativity), and you couple that with my second statement (I'm a generally happy dude) then, by extension, I must not be very creative lately.

Happily I think I can say that this is a case where 1+1 does not equal 2. (I've never been good at math anyway...I hate all that linear thinking and certitude.)

Disappointment, depression and drugs may promote creativity, but they sure as shit don't do a damn thing for productivity.

Self Portrait #14

2007-08-17T23:46:00.000-07:00

Management

2007-08-16T00:42:00.000-07:00

I came home tonight and these 1,001 words are what came out of me. (It's not hard to find my motivation.)

This is my first draft of the scene complete with syntax errors, tense disagreements, and questions about where, exactly, to place it in the manuscript. Numerous typos habe been corrected by the grace of Microsoft.

[George used to manage a big corporately owned bar or restaurant, some Lettuce-type place. A themed “restaubar” – loud and bustling]

They had studied the “art” of ahm-bee-ahnss (or at least they hired someone who claimed to study it) and had combined it with precise mathematics and had created a place where sound bounced and echoed. The music was up-tempo jazz, a seemingly innocuous music that in its cadence occasionally flirted with frenzy, causing all around it conversations to accelerate, personal volumes to rise and all manner of pacing to hasten whether it be those of the diners (table turnover is how you make your money, baby) or the bussers who flitted from table to table like nectar-ingesting birds.

They had counted the tables and chairs in their most symmetrical arrangement and had realized seven servers and three bussers could run the place with incredible efficiency. So they zigzagged the tables and nightly scheduled six servers and two bussers, They hired managers who drove them all like dog-track greyhounds – front of the house managers aggressive as pit bosses and kitchen managers angry as put bulls. And like those infamous dogs, they were castoff if deemed incapable or unwilling to perform.

Why would you go back to waiting tables after being a manager? Isn’t that going backwards?

You don’t step down from restaurant management; you step away from it.

Management in the restaurant industry is not like managing in the real world. It’s not anything like people’s perceptions of what it means to be in charge. It bears no resemblance to being a manager in a large bank, or a headge-fund manager, and nothing at all like managing a baseball team. In a restaurant you’re not in charge of anything – at best you’re a shepherd, nothing more than a wrangler of people, people who are often insecure or egomaniacal (very few restaurant people are in anyway moderate) and sometimes both.

Waiters are generally not much more than transients, and like transients they are often aloof or indifferent to the ways of the larger world; they seek no more than a modicum of stability in the most basic necessities – housing, food, love. And how do you motivate a person with so little too lose and only a pocketful (at best) of cash to gain? Often they are incompetent, unable to keep anything resembling a regular job and even less competent at keeping regular hours…regularly going to sleep when most people are getting to work.

Why would I quit? The place was a cave.

How do you mean?

It was a loud, unhealthy and generally dangerous place to work. The place could kill you. Second hand smoke, easy access to alcohol and attractive, insecure females were among the most obvious of the dangers. He often wondered why they gave helmets to miners. If a cave, located sometimes hundreds of feet underground, collapses, the only thing a helmet is going to do is provide a convenient place to store what’s left of your head when they eventually dig you about, assuming they even bother.

Every night the rattle and crash of seven or eight or even ten hours would stow away in him, hiding until he eventually laid his head down on a pillow or the armrest of the couch, remerging as a constant high-pitched ringing in his ears like the chirping-whine of late-summer crickets nesting in his head. It was slowly making him deaf as he monthly lost a tiny bit of hearing capacity in his upper register.

Most nights he would lay in bed, thumbs jammed into his ears, fingers splayed across his scalp as if he was keeping his cranium from lifting off, and he would listen as the ringing was eventually replaced by the hollow, bellowy rasp of his own breathing. After a bit he hears the blood coursing through skull. Eventually the rising and falling of his chest fall into sync with his steadily beating heart. He falls asleep that way most nights, on his back, elbow bent, hands loosely cupped around his ears as his fingers slowly release his scalp from its trembling, white-knuckle grip.

But the place worked in even more insidious ways, luring with cash and rich foods and friendships with too many people as neurotic and unstable as yourself, a veritable circle jerk of co-dependency. What was at first exciting became frustrating, then depressing, then mind numbing and the numbness eventually becomes comfortable. There’s a reason so many people take anti-depressants…it’s just plain easier.

It’s a trap. You learn to love it or you get the fuck out early. You love it, if for no other reason, than it’s different. It’s only marginally different…after all, most people work for the profit of someone else, usually many someone elses. He didn’t have weekends off, but at least he didn’t have to wake up early.

Manage? Never again. He’d done the math. If you made an average of $150 a night, and worked 260 days you cleared 40 grand a year, and you still got to take off over a 100 days a year…that’s like taking three months off work. If you worked at a nice enough place (or at least busy enough) and averaged over $200 that was over 50 grand a year. What’s a manager make? Forty thousand. What’s that after taxes? Not even twenty-seven grand. Fuck that. I’d rather do without the responsibility and have the flexibility if having a shift covered if I don’t feel like working. Or the flexibility if being able to tell someone to fuck off. In Chicago there are over ten-thousand restaurants. Whey deal with the bullshit when it’s a buyers market?

In the restaurant business you’re really nothing more than a day laborer, and he knew it. At least as a manager he received his money in the form of a paycheck. And no one he knew could save a dollar to save their life. In the hands of most servers cash was as good as gone the second it was earned.

My Mind...

2007-07-24T23:16:00.000-07:00

...
...
...
...
...wanders.

Swearing Redux

2007-07-09T13:16:00.000-07:00

Three different people have openly called me out.

Shit, piss, fuck, cunt...these are the words with which the the road to disappointing your friends and family is paved.

I have no intention of teaching my son to swear. I don't think it's cute or funny when a three-year old says shit.

He's going to hear bad words, probably sooner than I did - and I learned so early I don't even remember how old I was when I first heard someone say fuck. (It's all uncle Eddie's fault...he's 6 years older, so when I was only 10 I was regularly exposed to the world of a 16 year-old in the late 1970s...and that's all I'm gonna say about that.)

What I was trying to say (apparently I was unconvincing) was that of all the concerns I have about Jack's future, swearing is way down the list.

I'm not sure what, exactly, bothers people so much about potty language. It's not like swearing is the kind of thing that can keep a kid out of college (unless, of course, he swears at someone). Hell, swearing got Joel Goodson into Princeton. (There I go, defending swearing again.)

Seriously, I'm not condoning swearing amongst toddlers. Or even pre-teens. But teenagers, in any country in the world, are going to hear swear words. What's a parent to do? I accept it, and I plan to be an active participant in my son's life. When he says those words I won't over-react and wash his mouth out with soap (does anyone actually still do this?), or yell at him. I plan on helping him understand what's meant when people say these things, that words are almost never to be taken lightly, that you should mean what you say.

I can pretty much guarantee that even prince William has heard his share of people use unprincely language. In England, swearing is almost the national pastime...and unlike the U.S. they have a seriously long past time...they invented that damn language and they swear like, well, drunken Englishman.

Dog Days

2007-07-08T22:32:00.001-07:00

It’s the middle of July and the only thing I want to see in the high 90’s are fastballs, but the warm summer is hitting its stride (just like the Cubs ) as we approach the All-Star game and the temperature is a near-record 96 degrees.

I’ve started reading three different books in the last week and I’ve put them all down. Between Jack, work, and day-to-day distractions (it’s amazing how quickly laundry, mail and un-returned phone calls can pile up) I don’t seem to be able to focus on anything for more than ten seconds – books, movies, conversations, even sleep exist in a world of fits and starts and seemingly endless beginnings without a single conclusion (it’s a near-miracle I can finish this sentence).

I still have an uncanny ability to amass scraps of paper with notes for current and future projects. Receipts, envelopes, the corners of newspapers are scrawled in barely-legible pen scratchings, occasionally disintegrating in the pockets of jeans tossed into the hamper and jackets hung in closets months ago.

The summer makes me lazy. I know I’m supposed to love it. As a Chicagoan I’m almost obligated to look forward to these balmy (muggy, sticky, sultry) days and nights as if they only come once a decade like some constantly deferred birthday party. But I don’t. I prefer it cooler, rainier, greyer; maybe it’s my eastern European lineage. Not all the time. But if I had my way it would be 58 degrees with passing fronts of enormous clouds, clouds as big as entire states stacked like plumes of chimney smoke.

Tomorrow it’s supposed to “cool off” to 89 degrees.

October can’t get here soon enough.

My First-Born Son

2007-06-08T23:24:00.000-07:00

26 Letters

2007-06-03T12:41:00.000-07:00

Language.

Foul language, foreign language, body language.

"Communication of thoughts and feelings through a system of arbitrary signals, such as voice sounds, gestures, or written symbols."

Whatever the fuck that means.

It's all inadequate; feeble, really, when you think about it. In English we have 26 characters mashed together into combinations that are supposed to represent everything - every object, every distance, every thought - every emotion, sensation, color, sound - every vein of every leaf, every crest of every wave, every sea creature, mammal, alien creature imagined or real. EVERYTHING that ever was, is and will be.

That's a lot to ask from 26 letters. But it's what we have, so it's what we use.

As for what we will teach Jack the one topic that seems to come up most often is swearing. I have to admit I'm torn. As anyone who knows me can imagine, I believe words have massive power (for both good and evil) so they must be wielded with caution and as much precision as possible.

At the same time, I'm not particularly enamored of the parochial and hypocritically pious nature of American society and am just as inclined as anyone (more inclined) to say fuck-all in front of anyone I goddamn well please.

I'm not going to encourage it, but I don't plan on making a big deal out of it the first time Jack says 'shit' in front of grandma or 'fuck' in front of the neighbors. If he's a perceptive kid he'll learn how and when to use it, just like you and me and millions of other verbally responsible adults.

Crossover post.

Writing Is Re-writing

2007-05-29T23:21:00.000-07:00

Keep saying it to yourself. Writing is rewriting.

When the inspiration seems to have drifted away, or to another idea, remember: Writing IS rewriting.

Pick an inspirational font, put a fancy border around the page, and in 120-point letters type it and print: Writing ... is rewriting.

Put it on a bracelet: W I R

Whatever you do...don't forget it.

Writing. Is. Rewriting.

The End Is Very Fucking Nigh*

2007-05-14T22:17:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Cormac McCarthy (the greatest living American writer) I’ve been on a bit of a post-apocalyptic bender lately.

I’m reading The Road for the third time in the last two months. I’ve never read a novel more than once, though I’ve re-read parts of books, namely Walden. I’ve re-read short stories and poems, I’ve watched a handful of movies multiple times, but the time investment for a novel is so massive and there are so many books I’ve never read that the impulse to go back to a novel I’ve read simply isn’t that strong compared to the impulse to read one of the thousands of great books I haven’t gotten to yet.

28 Days Later (which I loved) was recently on television in anticipation of the release of the sequel, 28 Weeks Later (which I can’t wait to see).

Though I’m a (relatively) firm believer that there’s an impending global catastrophe on the way, I can’t say that I’ve been doing much planning for it. I’m not hording water, I haven’t collected a cache of weapons, I don’t even own one of those batteryless, hand-cranked flashlights.

The impending apocalypse has not dimmed my enthusiasm for the future, as evidenced by the fact that we recently got a puppy and we’re having a baby. Babies and puppies have a way of softening the blows of harsh reality.

What would I do if hordes of marauding cannibals or troops of zombies began shambling through the streets of the world?

Frankly, I have no fucking clue.

But I have some great fiction to offer me some suggestion.

*Graffiti on a church wall from 28 Days Later

I have an idea...

2007-05-12T19:35:00.000-07:00

...for this novel. Maybe it would work better as a screenplay, or a stage play.

There's probably only enough material for a short story.

Now that I think about it, maybe I should just write some notes and see how I feel in a couple of days.

Now if I can just find a pen, and some paper.