Launch for The Ghost of Milagro Creek 07/09/2010
 The Ghost hit the road this week with Mel at the wheel of the Honda Element, daughter Zoe in the passenger seat learning how to read maps, and son Rider in the back, feet up, asking if we were there yet. (see pic). We made it to the Fox TV station an hour early, but got lost when we went down the road for breakfast. Mel had a frantic breakdown at the wheel on 285 (the map says north but the sign says west or east). "I had to be the mother," explains Zoe, who got on the cellphone and directed us back to the station. They let us in, offered Zoe a modeling job, and presented Rider with a plate of chocolate chip cookies. Then I was on the air with The Ghost of Milagro Creek. Next day: Buddied up with my old friend, the actor Robin Bloodworth, to do a reading with the Georgia Center for the book in Decatur. Driving to the Toco Hills library, we divvied up the parts: he was Mister, Tomas, and some of the male law enforcement officers, and I was Abuela, Ignacia, Rocky, and Yolanda. Robin is teaching me to differentiate voice (yeah but that's embarrassing, Robin), and push out from my gut (not so hard.) Here's the cool thing: Me and Robin at fifteen. "I'm gonna be a writer." / "I'm gonna be an actor." Ended the day with our gang's old song, Don Mclean's "American Pie" on vinyl, oh yeah. 1 Comment Beware "The Thinker" in Your Short Story 06/27/2010
 If you want to sustain your reader’s interest, don’t leave your main character alone too long in the story. When one person is alone, nothing happens. Bring in a second character, and you might have dialogue. Bring in a third, and you have conflict, and thus a story. Here are some ways Thinkers like to disguise themselves: * He is at a bar, but he is alone, drinking and thinking, and doesn’t talk to anyone. * She is in a coma. Perhaps she can vaguely sense the other people in the room, but she cannot interact with them. * He is on a mission. He will get back to his community, or meet his enemy, at some point, but first he has to go on this long mission, all alone, thinking all the while. * She is in jail, trapped in a basement, locked in a car, hiding in the attic. She is in there for a long time, thinking. Like the coma victim, she may sense the presence of others, but cannot interact with them. * He is the lone non-human in a human environment, or lone human in a non-human environment. Interaction is impossible. * She is waiting for someone to arrive. She waits for pages, pondering. * He is writing a story or making a sculpture or painting a picture and can’t be bothered. * She is driving a car. There are other cars on the road, but there is no one else in this car. * He is dreaming. We may or may not know this at the beginning. We probably don’t know until the end, but the point is, nothing actually happens because all interactions are in the dream state. Don’t feel bad when The Thinker pops his head up on your page, and stays and stays and won’t speak to anyone ever. He or She is you, the writer. She is shy. He is lazy. He or She fears splitting off into a quarrelling threesome. Something might happen. Someone might fall in love or get killed or raise a nation. Things could get messy, loose, wildly out of control. And only then will the reader keep reading. |
