Leaving the Make Believe Believable

I remember reading something a while back, something that had to do with arguing.  It is true that with some people, it doesn’t matter how well researched and put together your points are, because they will ignore your point of view and keep pushing their stuff at you over and over, whether it’s the topic at hand or not.  When reading about this, there was a quote offered that pretty much summed up the futility one might face trying to deal with someone who isn’t listening, but rather keeps on talking.  The quote was something like, “Don’t take my sudden silence as proof you’ve won.  It only means I can no longer take your bullshit.”

I ran into something similar to that yesterday, when a point I was trying to make was met by a lot of hoary old talking point that had little to do with what I was trying to say.  After the second time the same points came back at me I gave up the ghost on the argument–which didn’t address anything I was saying–because at some point you realize that no matter what you say, it’s gonna come back to rehearing something that could have been taken from a paragraph found in one of the fifty page admonishments of John Galt.

Strangely, I was thinking of this when I was working on Chapter Sixteen of Suggestive Amusements last night.  My characters were using talking point on each other as they walked through the Valley of Fire, but the discussion between them was as such:  Elektra, one of my female characters, was telling her erstwhile boyfriend, Keith, my main male characters, that his in-world logic was bullshit.

Early on in the story it’s established that Keith is a long-time resident of Las Vegas, while Elektra comes from “Scorpionville, New Mexico”, and she couldn’t wait to get out of there.  Keith has decided that he’ll leave Las Vegas one day, after he’s made it “big” as a writer.  Along comes Elektra, who has used a bit of her wanderlust to move west, young girl, and she tells Keith that his mindset is holding him back, that he’ll never be a “big time writer” because he’s stuck in Las Vegas, and maybe he needs to get the hell out of Lost Wages and gather a fresh perspective on life if he wants his stories to soar.

I know this feeling, because I’ve been there myself.  I’ve said a number of times in the last five years that I need to get out of my little corner of Indiana.  At one time I said I’d cut and run the moment I hit it big, but that was like twenty years ago, and I’m still here.  I still want to leave one day, but I wonder if it will really happen . . .

Because most of last year I was working in another city for the first time, and I didn’t handle it well.  There could have been a number of reasons for that, but had it not been for my writing, I might not have made it out . . . in one piece is the best way to describe the situation.

Was I writing about the plight of a fictional character?  Or was I putting too much of myself there?

If so the later, what should I do about it?

I do love the desert, after all.

Bedroom Recollections

You want to get ahead; you want to keep pushing forward.  But this week–let me tell you, it seems like every time I turn around, there’s something in real life that’s keeping me from writing my next great novel.  Assuming that it’s going to be great . . .  Recollections

Still, you write.  I get on the computer and start putting words into the machine.  I left my couple in bed, making small talk, mostly about my main female character getting tired of where she lived and taking a job in Las Vegas.  Where do I go from there?

Well, I had a few hundred words to make my main male character feel a bit of envy.

See, my male character is a Las Vegas native.  Born there, schooled there, worked there.  His dream is to make it “big” as a writer and move the hell out, but neither has happened yet.  He’s starting to feel like a bit of a failure because he’s stuck in the City of Big Dreams and Drained Bank Accounts, and here he’s hooked up with a woman who one day said, “Screw it, I’m outta here,” packed her crap inside her car, and hit the road because someone offered her a job.  Good job, bad job:  it didn’t matter.  It was a job, and it wasn’t in New Mexico, so she said, “Yes”.

In a way I feel like my main male character.  I’ve lived in Red State Indiana my whole life, up in the northwest part near Chicago.  There was a time, years ago, when I wanted to move out, when I wanted to head west and keep going until I hit the ocean.  One time it was California, one time it was Seattle; these days I’d love to live in Portland, where I almost did have a job in 2006.

From time to time I do have a dream of getting the hell out of the state and heading towards the mountains, towards the desert, towards the forests, and not stopping until I see a lot of water standing in my way.  I feel as if I outgrew Indiana a long time ago, but one thing or another has kept me from moving on–

Maybe I’ve been waiting to hit it big.

Were it not for certain obligations, I think I would have blown this pop stand a long time ago.  Jean Shepard–he of A Christmas Story fame–grew up in Hammond, IN, so he’s mostly known as an Indiana Writer, and a number of his stories take place in northwest Lake Country.  A writing instructor once told me that they went to a reading Shepard gave on one of his infrequent visits to Indiana, and during the question and answer section at the end, someone asked him what his favorite part about returning to Indiana was.  The instructor told him his answer was, “Getting on the plane and leaving.”  Needless to say, he didn’t endear himself to anyone at the reading.

I’ve had moments where I’ve thought about getting “known” through my writing, then leaving the state, settling somewhere else, and having to field the requests to return to my old stomping grounds to talk about what it’s like to “be a writer.”  Oh, the things I could do, the things I could say, the trouble I could get into.

So I need to do a few things first for that to happen . . .