Looking Ahead

I always feel a kind of heaviness at the end of the fall semester. Every year as it winds down, and as my students work diligently (I hope) on their final papers, projects, and revisions, I can't ignore the fact that it's the end of another year as well. With its shorter days and chillier air, December provokes sobering reflection on the previous months, and--like usual--I have very mixed feelings about this particular year. On the one hand, it brought some incredible joy--the publication of my second book, That Hidden Road, for one, and the all-but-improbable World Series win of my beloved Chicago Cubs, for another. Yet there has also been the bleak political landscape and all the mess stemming from what has been--in my opinion--the most chaotic and meanest Presidential election of my lifetime.

For these reasons, 2016 stands as a year I'll regard with much more ambivalence than normal. And of course, the New Year is an arbitrary point; the repercussions of the previous year always continue into the next. But right now, the fear and uncertainty is way too big to take on, so I'll concentrate on something a lot more manageable (and self-serving)--some upcoming events early in 2017 where I'll be reading from and/or signing copies of That Hidden Road. Sometimes all we can do is share a little bit of ourselves with other people in the hopes of making a connection, and it's in this spirit that I look ahead to these places where I've been given the opportunity to do so:

On Thursday, January 12, I'll be at Anderson's Bookshop in Downers Grove, Illinois, at 7pm. For more info, click HERE.

On Sunday, February 5, I'll be at Warwick's Books in La Jolla, California, at 12 noon. For more info, click HERE.

On Tuesday, February 14, I'll be the featured author at the "Writers Read" program at the Fallbrook Library in Fallbrook, California, at 6pm. For more info, click HERE.

In addition to their intrinsic rewards, I've always found teaching and writing to be distractions from the sometimes oppressive onslaught of daily life, and I'm certainly hoping that they continue to be in 2017.

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You

Well, it’s almost here. In less than three months, on October 1st, my second book—That Hidden Road: A Memoir—will be released. It’s the story of a lot of things (and I’ve excerpted parts of it on this blog), but the framing narrative is the two months that I spent crossing the U.S. on my bicycle. Incidentally, if you’re interested, you can read the first chapter ON MY WEBSITE and preorder the book HERE.

It’s hard to put into words what it’s like to hold an actual copy of this book; for me, doubting that it would ever see the light of day became a twice- and sometimes thrice-daily activity.

In truth, I thought the whole thing would be a lot easier.

I don’t mean the bike ride. I knew that would be tough and it was. No, I mean writing this book. Way, way back, I thought, How hard could this be? I blogged regularly when I was on the road, and I kept a journal, too, so the book was pretty much already written. All I had to do was string together the posts, add a few things from the journal, do a little editing, and ta-DA…a book!

Well, it didn’t work out that way at all, and I’ve been writing and teaching writing long enough to have known better. In fact, I shouldn’t have been surprised to discover that in every way except for physical strain, the riding was a lot easier than the writing. It certainly took a lot less time. I’m reminded of something I wrote very late in the book, something about being incredibly innocent or stupid or (most likely) both as I stood on my bike, Rusty, at the beginning of the ride with no real idea of what I was getting into.

Turns out, that’s a pretty accurate way to describe writing a book, too. Not a single word written, and all those pages to go…

The truth is that I wouldn’t have gotten through either journey without a lot of help from a lot of people.

First, the ride. Deep thanks to everyone who helped me along the way—the people who stopped to see if I was all right or needed anything, the people who housed and fed me, the people who read my blog and left a comment or two, and the many people who just saw a guy with a ton of crap on his bike and decided to talk to him for a few minutes. All of them made a lonely endeavor a lot less so. I especially want to thank the people who were a big part of my trip but—due to the mercenary demands of storytelling—didn’t make it fully into the book: Brian and Angie McNeece; Eileen and Richard Travis and family; Jody and Dave Travis and family; Dave and Pamela Craig; Paul Winer; Daniel Young; Tom and Stanna Galbraith; Jake Heath; Karen and Jeff Wilson; Ron from Boulder (I never did get his last name); John and Sharlene Sampson; Bill Haddan and family; Alan White; Lance, Michelle, and Christian Freezeland; David and Erin Anthony; Eddie West; Christine North; and Chris Nielsen.

Special thanks to Jan and Bill Montgomery, who were the perfect guides through the “heart” of this journey, and to Tom and Ann McConnell, who were the perfect guides through the “tail” of it.

Thanks to all my family and friends who helped me recharge during my Chicago “intermission”: my brother Vince, his wife Jean, and their kids; my mom and dad; Pat Gonder and Teresa Aguinaldo; Jerry Karlin and Karen Klebba; Paul Sternenberg; Marc Kaplanes and Julie Hubbard. And a special thank you to Greg Hart for the dance and plane ticket (two separate things).

And the ride would have been possible but a lot harder without the work of whoever created the iPhone apps for “Track My Tour” and “Warmshowers,” so thanks, Anonymous Programmers.

Along those lines (and as regards the book), I owe a big debt to whoever created and maintains Google Earth and Wikipedia; both were instrumental when my memory or perspective failed, or when I needed to find out something about Dodge City, or the Irwin Cobb Bridge, or the Tennessee Valley Authority. I’m also indebted to Elliot Willensky’s When Brooklyn Was the World (Harmony Books, 1986) for helping to add a little color to my dad’s memories.

Big thanks and an even bigger hug to my favorite geologist, pseudo-sister, and dear friend Suzy Gonder, who patiently answered all my questions about rocks and geological time.

A big thank you to Lawson Mabry, who closely read and reread the sections about his family and its history and has offered nothing but hospitality and encouragement to me since I met him. Thanks also to Brian McNeece and Erin Anthony for their generous and rigorous readings of an early draft of the book. Big thanks to members of my Palomar family for the same: Barb Neault Kelber, Deborah Paes de Barros, Jack Quintero, and Carlton Smith. My colleagues are, quite simply, the best, and I’m also grateful for the friendship and encouragement of Leanne Maunu, Andrea Bell, Teresa Laughlin, and Jenny Fererro (to whom I might still owe a Clif Bar). And thanks, too, to my other readers: Pat Gonder, John Lucas (who also helped with the comics), and Colin Rafferty.

In terms of reading, I owe quite a bit to two assistant agents at two different agencies—Jennifer Herrera and Lena Yarbrough—who gave me invaluable notes that resulted in a much, much better final version.

Special thanks to Robert James Russell and the editors of Midwestern Gothic for publishing sections of this book. Many thanks to Hannah Krieger and the editors of the Georgetown Review for the same.

A big thank you to the good folks who run the San Diego Book Awards for honoring my work at a time when I needed some encouragement.

Huge thanks to Kevin Atticks, Alexandra Chouinard, Nicole DeVincentis (and her infinite patience with me) and all of the other hard workers at Apprentice House Press for their support, insight, and direction—all of which helped turn my dream into the reality of the book.

Thanks, too, to my Aunt Angie McConnell, who provided stories and details about my maternal grandfather. And a big thank you to my dad, Thomas Versaci, who patiently retold many stories, answered a ton of questions, enumerated details, and didn’t really care when I added some of my own. One of the gifts of this entire journey has been to sort through his memories with him.

As always, I’m deeply thankful for my students, many of whom were interested in my trip and some of whom had the energy and patience to read parts of this book—I’m thinking especially of Sarah Bates, Nolan Turner, and Deb Ebert. Working with all of my students inspires me daily.

And finally, I am grateful beyond words for Shannon Lienhart, Nick Versaci, and Tony Versaci—without them the book wouldn’t exist.

#AmWriting, #AmReading

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There's no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.”

                                                               --Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

This is a different kind of post—one that is much more rooted in my teaching than in random occurrences from my everyday life. For that reason, it might not be for everybody. But, if you’re at all interested in reading, writing, and the connections between the two, then step right in.

Every semester, my creative writing class is packed to the rafters (well, acoustic ceiling tiles) with students eager to become better storytellers. They come for a variety of reasons. Some are there to fulfill a requirement (which it does). Some are there because they think the class sounds fun (which it is). Some are there because they love [INSERT LATEST FANTASY SERIES HERE] and are writing their own fantasy series (which, sadly, I don’t allow in workshop…yes, I know, I’m a monster). And some are there because writing creatively is a part of their lives, they want it to continue to be so, and they’d like to know how to do it better.

To all of these students, I say there’s no real secret to becoming a better writer. Really, you only need to conscientiously and regularly do three things:

1. Write
2. Share your work
3. Read

Let me quickly break down the first two before I get to the third, which is the real subject of this blog post.

Number One. “Write” actually encompasses two things—drafting and revising. Of these, the first is necessary, painful, and usually not very good (“shitty first drafts,” to use Anne Lamott’s priceless phrase). The second—revising—is where it all happens. I like to remind students that “revision” means “to see again”; in other words, they shouldn’t confuse revision with proofreading. The latter is like sprucing up a room with some spackle and paint, while the former is gutting and rebuilding a functionless room with sledgehammer, reciprocating saw, and a dust mask. That spackle and paint will come much, much later.

Number Two. It’s  important for writers to get over the understandably high levels of anxiety that go along with sharing their writing. Even more important is that they share that work with the right kind of readers—readers who are smart, honest, and aware of the aforementioned difference between proofreading and revision. Such readers are more rare and valuable than a Dodo bird that shits gold, so if you’re lucky enough to find any, hang onto them with both hands, both feet, and a prehensile tail if you’ve got one.

Number Three. As the most prolific and successful writer this or any planet has ever known says (see my cold opening), reading is vital. Yet there’s a little more to it than that. Someone could be an avid reader and still not be able to write a compelling opening paragraph, let alone the rest of the story that needs to follow it. Reading is important, but more important is rereading (every bit as important as rewriting) and how we read.

Settle in, because this may take a while.

Let’s start by considering the opening paragraph of  one of my very favorite short stories—Tobias Wolff’s “The Chain”:

“Brian Gold was at the top of the hill when the dog attacked. A big  black wolflike animal attached to a chain, it came flying off a back porch and tore through its yard into the park, moving easily in spite of the deep snow, making for Gold’s daughter. He waited for the chain to pull the dog up short; the dog kept coming. Gold plunged down the hill, shouting as he went. Snow and wind deadened his voice. Anna’s sled was almost at the bottom of the slope. Gold had raised the hood of her parka against the needling gusts, and he knew she couldn’t hear him or see the dog racing toward her. He was conscious of the dog’s speed and of his own dreamy progress, the weight of his gum boots, the clinging trap of crust beneath the new snow. His overcoat flapped at his knees. He screamed one last time as the dog made its lunge, and at that moment Anna flinched away and the dog caught her shoulder instead of her face. Gold was barely halfway down the hill, arms pumping, feet sliding in the boots. He seemed to be running in place, held at a fixed, unbridgeable distance as the dog dragged Anna backward off the sled, shaking her like a doll. Gold threw himself down the hill helplessly, then the distance vanished and he was there” (199).*

In our first read of this, we probably READ LIKE A FAN

Well, maybe “fan” isn’t the best word. The point is that when we read in this mode, we read to be entertained, to consume. Most often, that thing we consume is the plot because a) we expect things to happen and b) we like to know what those things are. If a piece of writing is compelling, we don’t always notice or appreciate what makes it compelling; instead, we let ourselves be carried away, having gladly accepted the writer’s invitation into what John Gardner refers to as the “fictive dream.” There’s nothing wrong with this kind of reading; in fact, it’s this exact kind of reading that makes us love reading. And, perhaps, want to be writers.

In a first rereading of this paragraph (and with the benefit of having read the rest of the story), we might start to READ LIKE AN ENGLISH MAJOR

I use this term a little facetiously, but what I’m getting at is that when we read like this, we read beyond the page. We find deeper meanings and patterns and connections. Since this is a rereading, we now know that “The Chain” can be seen as a tragic tale of seemingly justifiable revenge gone awry, and as we look back at the story’s opening, we notice a few things. First, of course, is that chain. In the story’s opening paragraph, it’s a literal object, but upon further examination we can now appreciate it as metaphor (or symbol—a word I loathe but seem unable to escape). It’s not just a metal chain, it’s the chain of events that poor Gold will set in motion and watch spin out of control. It’s also a symbol (damn it!) of restraint, and its inability to restrain the dog in this opening will be echoed later by Gold’s inability to restrain himself. The wolf, too, can be seen as something larger. Our base animal aggression, maybe? Finally, there’s the business about Gold’s daughter’s coat. In the ensuing story, Gold’s pursuit of what he feels is right leads to trouble, and this drama is foreshadowed and encapsulated neatly in the detail of the coat. He does something to protect her (“Gold had raised the hood of her parka against the needling gusts”), but now that “protection” renders her deaf to her father’s insistent shouts and blind to the dog’s imminent attack. Later, in doing what he thinks is right, Gold will open the door to all kinds of wrong.

But it’s the third way of reading that I’m most interested in, and that way is to READ LIKE A WRITER.

I tell my students to imagine a beautiful watch. Some people might use this watch only to tell time. Some people might also admire its shape and fine lines. Still others—some few others, I would say—want to take that watch apart and see how it works. That’s reading like a writer.

Let’s take the first line of the story:

“Brian Gold was at the top of the hill when the dog attacked.”

It’s a sharp, concise line that's elegantly symmetrical as well--eleven one-syllable words bracketed by two two-syllable words. The line also packs a punch, to be sure, but what’s most intriguing from a writer’s perspective is how Wolff packs that punch and how much he accomplishes in such a small space. The first words establish character and point of view, the next few words establish a setting, and the final words introduce conflict.

About conflict, writer and teacher Janet Burroway says it best: “In literature, only trouble is interesting.” It’s an obvious lesson, but like most obvious lessons, it’s easy to forget. Too often, early drafts of stories wade through pages and pages before the writer even suggests that there’s trouble afoot. If there’s no trouble, nothing’s happening, and if nothing’s happening, few readers are going to stick around to watch the paint dry. Writers must promise conflict, and they must promise it early. Like first or second sentence early.

By the end of Wolff’s first sentence, we know there’s going to be trouble. Moreover, those details of character, setting, and conflict that he introduces are broad enough to give himself room to subsequently answer the questions that the reader inevitably asks—What’s the hill like? What kind of dog? Who’s being attacked? Finally, there’s the overall momentum of this first line; because Wolff drops the “weight” at the end—“the dog attacked”—the reader is compelled to read on:

“A big  black wolflike animal attached to a chain, it came flying off a back porch and tore through its yard into the park, moving easily in spite of the deep snow, making for Gold’s daughter.”

Here we have a longer sentence that begins where the first one ends, developing “dog” into “big black wolflike animal” and “attacked” into “came flying off a back porch and tore through its yard into the park.” We get an added bit of setting—the “deep snow” tells us it’s winter—and the conflict is delivered (and intensified) again as a weighty surprise at the end of the sentence, where Wolff reveals what’s at stake: “Gold’s daughter.” More of that momentum. Now we really want to keep going.

“He waited for the chain to pull the dog up short; the dog kept coming.”

Yes, we were wondering about that “attached to a chain,” which Wolff buries in the second sentence but focuses on now in the third. He returns to a short, clipped sentence to develop a staccato rhythm. Also, as with the previous two sentences, this one ends in a familiar place. Consider the pattern:

End of sentence one: “…the dog attacked.”

End of sentence two: “…making for Gold’s daughter.”

End of sentence three: “…the dog kept coming.”

With this repetition, Wolff keeps us focused on the image of a dog charging toward a helpless little girl.

Having firmly established that, Wolff now shifts his focus, moving Gold into action with a few details that further develop the space in which the action is unfolding:

“Gold plunged down the hill, shouting as he went. Snow and wind deadened his voice. Anna’s sled was almost at the bottom of the slope.”

Three short sentences. Direct and to the point. Also, Wolff moves us away from the dog; there are, after all, two other characters in this scene. Yet he chooses his words carefully so as to continue the tone of dread and danger initiated by the (for the moment) absent dog: “plunged,” “shouting,” “deadened,” and “bottom.”

The next sentence reads,

“Gold had raised the hood of her parka against the needling gusts, and he knew she couldn’t hear him or see the dog racing toward her.”

Here, Wolff delivers a brief bit of backstory that ups the ante of the situation—his daughter can’t hear him as danger closes in. Wolff continues to intensify the initial conflict with this detail, and also by returning to the dog, who once again appears at the end of the sentence.

Then, this:

“He was conscious of the dog’s speed and of his own dreamy progress, the weight of his gum boots, the clinging trap of crust beneath the new snow. His overcoat flapped at his knees.”

There’s a fluid transition from “dog racing” at the end of the previous sentence to “dog’s speed” near the beginning of the first one here. But by and large, the focus is on Gold. Specifically, as a counterpoint to the dog. Wolff does this overtly at the beginning, where “the dog’s speed” is set against “his own dreamy progress.”

Also, he focuses on details that at once reinforce the snowy setting and concretize Gold’s slowness: “weight of his gum boots,” “clinging trap of crust,” and “overcoat flapped.” These details represent a true economy of language as they serve more than one purpose (something writers should strive for in their revisions).

Finally, by shifting the focus to Gold temporarily, Wolff leaves us worrying about how close that dog is getting to his daughter.

Creative writing teachers like myself will often draw something on the board that looks like this:

We use this image to represent the classic structure of narrative: rising tension/development of conflict (the upward slope), a climax/crisis point (the peak), and the denouement/falling action (the short dropoff). Wolff, in this opening paragraph, delivers a miniature version of this structure—a smaller story within the larger one—and his next few lines reside squarely atop the point:

“He screamed one last time as the dog made its lunge, and at that moment Anna flinched away and the dog caught her shoulder instead of her face. Gold was barely halfway down the hill, arms pumping, feet sliding in the boots. He seemed to be running in place, held at a fixed, unbridgeable distance as the dog dragged Anna backward off the sled, shaking her like a doll.”

A few things to notice here. From the beginning of this paragraph, Wolff has carefully choreographed his three characters—father, daughter, dog—and in the first sentence here all three converge in a fairly breathless fashion; it’s a long sentence (a compound-complex sentence for all you grammar nerds) that unfolds across a series of actions: Gold screams, the dog lunges, Anna flinches, and the dog catches her. Then, Wolff leaves us momentarily wondering what the dog is doing with Anna by focusing again on concrete details of slowness (“barely halfway down the hill” and “feet sliding”). In fact, Wolff stretches the scene out to an excruciating degree by continuing these kinds of details (“running in place,” “held at a fixed, unbridgeable distance”) at the beginning of the final sentence before returning to the attack and  delivering the action we’ve been dreading (shaking her like a doll”).

Finally, like Gold, we arrive at the end:

“Gold threw himself down the hill helplessly, then the distance vanished and he was there.”

Note how his arrival is anti-climactic, rendered so because Wolff uses the accursed passive voice (“he was there”). Consider the difference, for example, if he had ended the sentence with “…the distance vanished and he pounced on the animal.” This crisis isn't yet over, and just as one sentence of Wolff’s urges us to read on, so too does he design paragraphs that push us into the next one.

Action doesn’t just write itself; it needs to be carefully constructed and developed by an attentive writer with his or her finger on the pulse of the story. But something else, something even more subtle, is going on here. By starting at this particular moment, Wolff patches the reader into his main character’s perspective at a moment of crisis so that Gold’s fears and feelings of helplessness become ours as well. This identification and sympathy is absolutely crucial to the rest of the story because it prevents us from judging Gold’s later actions too harshly. The readers are, in fact, the only ones who can truly sympathize; as Wolff writes about the aftermath of the attack, “[Gold] had been alone in his anger for a week now and wanted some company. Though his wife claimed to be angry too, she hadn’t seen what he had seen” (201). But we have seen what Gold has seen. And we have felt it, too. Wolff’s skillful writing makes sure of this.

Obviously, reading like a writer can be a bit tedious if we subject a story’s every sentence to the microscope, and I offer this close reading merely as an example and model for a general principle—that there is much to be learned by looking at craft and much that we often miss. If you want to become a better writer, then you should develop the skill of reading from a writer’s perspective. If you find yourself caring for a particular character, go back and see if you can figure out how the writer made you care. If you find yourself thinking about a scene or conversation in a book, go back and examine how the writer choreographed that scene or phrased and presented the dialogue. Every good story is filled with lessons about how good stories are told, and for the writers among us, these are treasures well worth unearthing.

*All quotes taken from Wolff, Tobias. “The Chain.” Our Story Begins. New York: Vintage, 2009. 199-213.

Some Good News

I’ve been on a brief hiatus. Last fall I took over as department chair, and I’ve been busy figuring out my new duties, at least one of which is to figure out how to sleep during meetings without calling attention to myself (hint—it’s easy; that’s what everyone is doing).

Anyway, I’ll be back with more posts soon, but I wanted to get something quick out to share the good news—my book, That Hidden Road, just won the San Diego Book Award in the “Unpublished Memoir” category. I was selected as a finalist earlier in the spring, but I didn’t want to say anything until they selected the winners (a complete list of which can be found here).

Parts of That Hidden Road have appeared on this blog, and I’ve been fortunate to publish a couple of stand-alone chapters (in slightly different form) in the journals Midwestern Gothic and the Georgetown Review. My job now is to get the whole thing published. There have been some close calls (stories in themselves), but no go. Maybe now luck is on my side…

The Evolution of a Page

Time has really gotten away from me. I can’t believe that my last entry was way back in June. Between now and then I’ve been to Chicago twice, taken a trip up the California coast to look at colleges with my high school senior son, and waded through armies of costumed fans at Comic-Con.

Oh, and I finished my book.

To recap, the book is called That Hidden Road, and it’s about my solo cross-country bicycle ride, which I made in the summer of 2010. It’s also about those parts of my life that made me think I needed to go on a long, long ride by myself.

I knew from the start that I wanted comics in the book, and I knew that I wanted to draw them myself. Problem was, my drawing skills were a little rusty and I’ve never made comics before.

As I drafted and revised the manuscript, I played around with some ideas for comics and eventually came up with three main types. Backin early December, I posted a few pages from one of these, which I called the “StuffI Saw” pages. Pretty simple idea—one page of six panels each in a more or less “realistic,” sketchbook-y style. The second group of comics I called the “Voices from the Road” pages. These would also be single-page comics, but have only four panels. The style would be a little more cartoonlike and focus on some people I met along the way who made brief but memorable impressions on me. I finished these over the summer. Finally, the third group of comics would be more sustained narrative; there’s a brief two-page story in the prologue called “Pre-Ride Jitters,” and there’s a longer (eight pages) story in the middle of the book called “Welcome to Springview Farm.”

This story covers the few days that I spent on a farm in Missouri—a farm that belongs to Jan and Bill Montgomery, who happen to be the mom and stepdad of my best friend. I didn’t want to fold that story into one of the other chapters; instead, I wanted it to stand on its own even though I couldn’t—at least early on in the writing—say why.

Now, with the benefit of hindsight, I decided to write a blog post that went into some detail about how part of this story came together, and I thought that the easiest way to do that would be to document the evolution of a single page from “Welcome to Springview Farm.” The page in question is the third of the story, and it covers part of the tour that Jan gave me of the farm and house.

In writing this and assembling the materials I used, I found it very helpful to me as a writer to step back and examine my creative process a little more closely. As I said before, despite my lifelong love of comics and the fact that I teach and write about them, I’ve never—until this book—tried to make comics myself, at least not in any organized way. So I thought I’d give a shout-out to several helpful sources along the way, including Scott McCloud’s Making Comics, Barrington Barber’s How to Draw Everything, Bruce Blitz’s The Big Book of Cartooning, the many Facebook postings by Ed Piskor of his work on Hip Hop Family Tree, several Youtube videos by Alison Bechdel about the construction of Fun Home, my friend and comics goddess Mary Fleener, and conversations with students much more talented than I am in this regard.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how the story came into being. I think I got the idea within the first hour or two I spent with Jan and Bill. They're incredible people who are also pretty wacky, and as Jan showed me around and told me stories, I realized that the written word alone couldn’t do justice to this bizarre and comic experience. I was going to have to tell the story through comics.

Coming to this realization was the easy part. In writing this book, I’ve found that the most challenging part of memoir comes in trying to shape and narrativize your experience. Fact is, there’s a lot of dead time in our lives, but story demands at least some kind of structure. To get there, we need to arrange, amplify, and discard the pieces of our experience and hope to hell that in doing so we arrive at a meaningful truth. With comics, one’s experience becomes even more fragmented—literally, by individual panels. Plus, the canvas is much smaller, and the words that make it in must be pared down yet still work effectively in conjunction with the corresponding image.

Because I’m a textual kind of guy, I started with a script, though that’s a little generous of a description. It was really more of a sketch with words—lines of dialogue loosely coupled with some ideas for images. The draft was long and rambling, and like most drafts, I ended up axing close to half of it. The section of the script that covers this particular page reads as follows:

Springview Farm is filled with strange and wonderful creatures…

Underfoot, the invisible barn cat

Goosey and Goofy (two llamas)

??? (pygmy goat)

A Watusi bull (image of me taking its picture while it’s trying to mount cow)

      Jan:  “Oh for the love of Mike, don’t show them that.”

      Me:  “Why not?  It’s nature!”

Jan:  “It’s Eskimo!”

Me:  “Huh?”

Jan.  “I don’t like the word ‘nasty,’ so I say ‘Eskimo’ instead.”

Inside the house is just as interesting…

Fisherman lightswitch

Stuffed owl that watched me.

Jan’s closets

      The Fairy Closet

      The Shower Closet

      The Memories Closet

            Closeup of Chuck and Dewey poster

Jan’s dolls

The events depicted on this particular page took place in late June of 2010, and I didn’t really start drafting this script until almost a year later (fortunately, I had my photographs and journal from the trip). Like most of the drafting I do, I didn’t pause too much to double-check details. For example, I couldn’t remember the name of Jan’s pygmy goat, so I let that go. I also didn’t know what kind of bull they had (just that it looked really strange), so I let that go and filled in “Watusi” later, after calling Jan. At that point, I knew that the goat wasn’t going to make it on the page, so I didn’t bother to find out its name (sorry, pal). As I wrote, I also knew that part of my brain was thinking in terms of comics. I had an idea about what to do with that bull, and I see in the writing that I had an idea for both the image and the word balloons.

The next step was to sketch the panel breakdowns. I  saw that there was way too much material here to fit coherently, so I had to narrow it down, to start shaping the experience into narrative. I wanted to make this part of the story unfold as a kind of a “walking tour,” but the big question was, What to keep? Two parts of this section jumped out at me: the Watusi bull and the dolls. For the moment, I put the dolls aside. I knew that I wanted the panel with the bull to be big—the width of the page. In part, that was out of necessity; there was too much image and dialogue to cram into a smaller panel. I figured the rest of the page would break down in a steady rhythm of three equal-sized panels per row. I laid out the panels as textboxes in Word, and they came out like this:

To accommodate this layout, I had to start this page with the bull scene, so I moved the the material in the script that comes before—the cat and the llamas—onto the previous page. That seemed to work well in terms of rhythm, where my introduction to the various animals would climax with the bull, and he’d be at the top his own page in a panel befitting his size and, uh, horniness.

Now, back to those dolls. Sifting through photos, journal entries, and memories, I recognized that the real “punch” of my tour of the farm was Jan’s collection of creepy dolls. Anyone who knows me well knows that I’m terrified of dolls; it all dates back to an episode of Night Gallery that you can read about here.

Because I wanted the “weight” of the page to come down on these dolls, I reserved the bottom row for them. With three panels left in the middle, I had to pick and choose from the remaining details. I knew I needed one of Jan’s closets in there (she has an interesting array of closets in the house), and I went with the converted shower closet, because it’s just so Jan. I also liked the light switch cover where the switch became the naked fisherman’s penis (again, very Jan). It seemed like it would be an interesting visual to pull off, so to speak. I also liked that it comes right after the bull trying to hump the cow. For the third image, I decided on the owl. I originally picked it because my plan was to make it the third image in the row so that two figures—a naked man and a bird—would “frame” the closet. Only later did I come up with a better use and reason for that owl. I did a very rough sketch of how I saw the panels:

The drawings are intentionally primitive; my purpose here was simply to get a very rough sense of what’s going to be on the page.

Now I had to decide on text and put the words into boxes and balloons. By visualizing the “containers” for the text, I’d get a better sense of how much space I had to work with and how to compose the panels. By sharpening the text into the exact language, I’d get a better sense of what exactly to draw. At this stage, I started to think more about that owl and what I was trying to do with the story as a whole. I said earlier that I didn’t want to fold my time at Springview Farm into a prose chapter and I wasn’t sure why. In actively mapping out the story, though, it came to me that it was about finding a substitute family on the road. In fact, “Welcome to Springview Farm” is split into two parts, and they bookend the very central chapter of That Hidden Road, when I drive to Chicago to see my real family. Thus, “Springview Farm” serves as a kind of counterpoint to that experience.

Anyway, back to that owl. The very end of the story is the day I leave the farm. It was raining when I left, and I wound up spending that night in a tiny Missouri town named Houston. I called Jan and Bill to let them know I made it to my next stop in one piece, and Jan confessed to me that they followed me for a few miles in their truck, just to make sure I was okay. As I was writing this part of the script, I wanted to convey that feeling of being watched over, and I remembered the owl, stuffed and staring at me in my room at the farm. Now, the thing about Jan is that she names everything, but I couldn’t remember if the owl had a name. Indulging a little bit in the “creative” part of “creative nonfiction,” I decided to name it “Mama Owl” and attribute it to Jan. I mention Mama Owl again on the last page of the story. At this point, I knew that I had to move Mama Owl to the middle of the page, which is the most important space in a comic. The panel breakdown with text inserted looked like this:

It’s worth noting here that once I typed the text on the page, more revision was needed. I had to shorten some lines, move some of the dialogue around, and play around with font sizes. The point here—and one that I stress to my writing students—is that revision is ongoing and the writing process is recursive; you take two steps forward and one step back almost constantly.

Once I was happy with the page, I printed it up, taped it to my drawing board with artist’s tape and the help of my t-square, boxed and ballooned all the text, and got ready to sketch my pencils. To help with this, I had two main tools at my disposal. First were the many, many photos I took at the farm. Here are some of the ones I used:

    

The second tool was my sketchbook. I’ve found that it’s been indispensible in testing out different visual ideas and to practice drawing different things. Here are a few of the sketches I made while penciling this particular page:

  

In the original sketch, I had Bill standing there, too, but the panel was getting a little crowded. Plus, the dialogue focused more on a back-and-forth between me and Jan, so I cut Bill out. But not to worry; Bill is very present in the rest of the story. And he knows I love him.

The next stage was actually biting the bullet and getting the pencils in the panels. I decided that I wanted to have some fun with the style, so I made the top panel more cartoony and the bottom six panels more realistic. I wanted to give those six panels more of a documentary feel to them—like a camera’s eye roving around the farm—so it made a certain sense to me that the art should reflect that. After the better part of a day filled with plenty of erasures, here’s what the page looked like with the text, boxes & balloons, and pencils:

The final stage was the inking. This is where pencil lines get sharpened and more depth is added through line weight and shading. I’m not yet completely confident with this very difficult skill, so I turned over inking duties to my talented buddy John. He threw my pencils on his lightbox, inked it up (without the text), and scanned it for me. I then opened it in Photoshop, retyped the text (and, yes, revised it some more), and performed some minor tweaks to the images. Here, then, is the final product:

All told, there are over thirty pages of comics in the manuscript of That Hidden Road, and I’ve developed a newfound respect for the work that comic book artists do. I knew intellectually that it was difficult work, but until I tried it myself, I had no idea how difficult.

But it’s also incredibly rewarding, like any kind of creative activity that allows you to “disappear” inside of the work. Entire afternoons would evaporate as I’d get my drawing supplies out, set my iTunes to “shuffle,” and get busy turning my life into story.

Well, if you've made it this far, I thank you. I'd love any feedback on what I have here or on your own process of writing, drawing, or both.

Beaver Bites Man, or, An Eel in the Butt Is Worth Two in the...

            Like a lot of people, most of my exposure to news today comes from social media. Someone will tweet a headline or post a video on Facebook, and then I can kiss the next fifteen to sixty (or more) minutes goodbye as I delve into not just the original link but any and all things even slightly related to that topic.

This week, there were two stories that cost me productive morning hours. The first was a story about a Chinese man whose, ahem, “offbeat predilections” resulted in a20-inch eel burrowing into his large intestine. The writer of one story about this incident mentioned that eels like to burrow in “muddy places,” so the introduction of this creature to one’s anus is even less advisable than you might think, if that’s possible. (Fun fact, which I discovered at minute seventeen of my eel exploration: electric eels are not really eels. They’re knifefish).

            The second—and more interesting—story this week was about a beaver attack. Someone in my Facebook feed who enjoys wasting time even more than I do (you know who you are!) posted a video about a guy in Belarus who saw a beaver waddling its way down a road and thought, “Hey, what a great video opportunity.” It probably sounded different in Russian. Or Belarusian. Or whatever they speak in Belarus (note to self: Google this later). Anyway, things didn’t work out so well for him. The video is scary; what begins as a cute nature video becomes, in an instant, an outtake from The Blair Witch Project: the beaver charges, and the image goes blurry, then frantic, and finally static as the camera falls. Cut to black.

            It maybe goes without saying that after watching it several times, I headed straight to Youtube and searched “beaver attacks.” Turns out, there’s a lesson to be learned. Don’t get close to wild animals.

            But the real story is not my penchant to follow trivial and tangential paths through the Internet; in fact, I think I may have covered that in an earlier post. The real story is about truth.

            If this story is true, the man died, having bled out when the beaver severed his femoral artery. When I showed the video to a colleague—not with any particular purpose in mind—his immediate response was, “That’s fake.” I asked why, and his only reason was, “C’mon!” We happened to be with some of our creative writing students, so we turned the question to them. After watching the video, they were split. Some laughed, and some cringed. The ensuing debate—if you could call it that, which I wouldn’t—led to two important and paradoxical questions, especially if you’re someone who is working on the craft of writing.

Is everything believable today?

Is anything believable today?

            In his excellent book The Art of Fiction, author and teacher John Gardner calls the world the writer creates the “fictive dream.” A writer’s job, therefore, is to invite readers into that dream. It’s a backbreaking chore with not a whole lot of payoff, this business of creating worlds out of words. And I wonder if the job is made harder or easier by our internet culture—have we become more willing to believe the stories that abound out there, or have we become cynical that any of them are true?

            I’m not sure what the answer is to this question, even for myself. I know, intellectually, that there’s no such thing as Hogzilla or the Montauk Monster or the Derbyshire Fairy, but part of me wants to believe in them. Wouldn’t that be cool? Who doesn’t want to live in a world with chupacabras or with a horse-sized dog named Hercules? And sure, I believe in science, but I still want to charge my iPhone with an onion.

            Exactly where I range on the continuum between absolute gullibility and jaded cynicism varies, but I do know that whether I’m trying to write the fictive (or non-fictive) dream or getting lost in it as a reader, it helps if I want to believe in the world’s possibilities, even if some of those possibilities are downright scary, like beavers who attack or eagles who fly off with children.

            I’d love to keep going, but during one of the fifty-seven breaks I’ve taken while writing this, I checked Facebook and read another story that I need to follow up on (right after I find out what language they speak in Belarus). Seems that there’s a guy in Australia with a rare genetic condition. Every part of him has aged normally except for his head. Instead of jumping right to “Aha! Photoshop strikes again!” I find myself wondering what life is like for him. What does he go through each day? What trouble finds him because he has the head of a baby? Can’t there be some kind of truth in all of this?

            I’ll keep you posted.

Yet Another FAQ (Plus a Few Words about Revision)

            I tell my students that writing is all about revision. All writers’ drafts are crap at the outset, and it’s only through careful, astute revision that strong writing emerges. But what is revision? One thing it’s not is proofreading; correcting spelling and grammar mistakes, changing a word here and there, maybe adding a sentence are all final steps in the writing process, and jumping directly there from drafting is to leave out the part that involves the real work. That work—revision—is like radical surgery, the kind involving amputations, resections, grafts, and reconstructions. And when you’re performing such procedures on something you love…well, it can be difficult.

Difficult but necessary. And the best way to approach the task is without emotion. Yes, you may have worked hard to write that particular scene, but that doesn’t change the fact that it might not help the story and therefore needs to go. The same might apply to a character you happen to like. Or the narrative point of view. Every great novel has its phantom limbs, which are felt most keenly by the person who did the messy business of removal—the author. My own approach to revision is best summed up by a line from my favorite movie: “it’s not personal…it’s strictly business” (if I have to name the movie, then I don’t even know what to say to you), and I’ve been repeating this line to myself ad nauseum over my winter break, which I’ve spent cutting and slashing material from my book, trying to get it down to a reasonable fighting weight of about 100,000 words. It’s slow going, but not because of the emotion; revision is hard work even without that.

So with all this said, I’m presenting another installment of my “Frequently Asked Questions.” One caveat, though. These short pieces might not be the “sneak previews” as originally billed; they may very well end up being deleted scenes.

Without further delay, here is today’s question:

“What Did You Eat?”

            Lots and lots of crap.

When I told people that I was going to bike cross country, alone, they pictured vast expanses of nothingness where I’d have to dig for water and forage for meals. I have to admit that I’d pictured a little of this myself. Chopping wood for a fire, clambering down rocks to get water from a reservoir, cooking up a nutritious gruel made with whatever roots and berries I could scavenge.

But I never cooked a thing while on tour.

The vast majority of my food came from gas stations or grocery stores with names like “Piggly Wiggly,” “Ingels,” “Loaf ‘n’ Jug,” “Shnucks,” and “Harris Teeter” (I thought that this last one, when I first saw it, was an upscale furniture store).

Also, I didn’t carry a lot of food with me.

In the morning I would eat and drink leftovers from the night before. A bottle of Vitamin Water, a banana, maybe half a bagel. Throughout the day at various stops, I would load up on the same and indulge every now and then.

I went through a Milky Way phase in Kansas and switched to Three Musketeers in Tennessee. About 90% of my gas station stops resulted in the purchase of a cherry pie. The Hostess version had better icing, but the Little Debbie ones were cheaper and came in a box that kept them from being crushed in my overstuffed handlebar bag.

In Arizona I discovered the single greatest beverage in the history of beverages: The Vanilla Rockin’ Refuel from Shamrock Farms. Sweet nectar from the heavens. In addition to taste, it had everything I could hope for in a road drink: calcium, vitamins, fat, sugar, and a shitload of calories.

And then there were Clif Bars. I always had one or two of these tucked away somewhere on my bike. Unlike so many other protein or meal replacement bars, Clif Bars don’t pretend to be candy bars, so there’s no chocolaty coating to degrade into a gooey mess after sitting in my handlebar bag for more than twenty seconds. I ate so many Clif Bars that I can no longer eat Clif Bars. Just typing the name makes me a little queasy.

I didn’t carry food, but I met a few bikers who did. One was a young guy heading from Orlando to San Francisco. Stashed in various places on his bike were two family-size cans of vegetarian baked beans, cups of instant mac ‘n’ cheese, cans of soup, a couple of boxes of rice and beans, a loaf of bread, and a huge jar of peanut butter. On top of this, he had a small cookset and stove. He was obsessed with caloric intake and kept to a schedule where he ate five meals a day, making sure that each one packed at least two thousand calories.

I met another biker who always had a bag of bagels with him. We bunked together one night, and I watched him work his way through half of it. He washed it down with a half gallon of orange juice. "Eating for tomorrow," he said, juice running down his face.

Food was sustenance, and I’d shovel it in like coal to a raging furnace. But once in a while it seemed to be something more. A bag of pretzels from a guy named Pete at a gas station just over the Kansas-Missouri border. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich from a mom at a scenic overlook in Tennessee. A bottle of water from a guy named Sam at another gas station, this one in North Carolina. Whenever strangers stopped what they were doing and gave me something to drink or eat, I’d feel a little less alone.

I met Alan in the Ozarks. He was in his late fifties, worked for the forest service in New Zealand, and was on his way from Astoria, Oregon to Yorktown, Virginia. Our paths crossed for two nights running. On the first night, I learned about how his wife had died of cancer, how he’d felt lost after that, and how he found his way back on his bike. On the second night, I dragged him through rain-soaked streets to a $4.99 all-you-can-eat pizza buffet. I was in the mood for some serious eating, and it turned out that Alan was, too. We very nearly cleaned them out. Between the nine different kinds of pizza, the pasta (with a choice of marinara or alfredo), a loaded salad bar, and stacks of crunchy-on-the-outside-chewy-on-the-inside brownies, we racked up over a dozen plates of food. By the time we were done, our table looked like the wreckage from a little league team after its end-of-season party. We shared some of the stories from the road and our lives in that brightly lit booth, and in the morning we would part ways, Alan heading north to St. Louis and me due west to Chester, Illinois. We never saw each other again—I knew we wouldn’t—but when I remember our brief friendship, I can still see those steaming platters of pepperoni pizza, the heaps of salad and toppings, those plates overflowing with sugar-dusted brownies.