No Actors to Bail You Out (Or, You’re on Your Own)

There is a scene in the 1954 classic movie On the Waterfront that, one can argue, introduced the world to the art of modern, naturalistic acting.  Terry Malloy (played by Marlon Brando) is talking with Edie Doyle (Eva Marie Saint) in a park in the city.  He clearly enjoys her company–they only recently met.  But she isn’t sure about him, especially because they met in part due to the death of her brother.  Not exactly an auspicious way to start a relationship.

 

And Edie, at this point in the film, has no intention of starting a relationship with Terry.  But as they walk together, he talks a mile a minute, engaging her, trying to break the ice.  At one point, fiddling with a fashionable pair of white gloves, Edie drops one on the ground.  Terry quickly picks it up . . . but doesn’t give it back to her.  Instead, he caresses it, explores it, and then puts it on his own hand, all the while continuing with the conversation.  Edie doesn’t acknowledge it, though she shows through her glances and body language that she is very aware he now wears her glove.

 

Terry continues to fiddle with the glove as they talk, even as it’s wrapped around his hand.  The message is clear–Edie is not prepared yet to hold his hand.  But Terry simulates that action by wearing her glove.  It is a subtle, romantic gesture.  Eventually, Edie says she has to go, and she reaches for the glove and pulls it off his hand, reclaiming it.  They go on talking, as if nothing has happened.  It is a remarkably natural scene.

 

But what makes it more remarkable is . . . none of it was scripted!  Sure, the dialogue was.  But not the glove.  The actress, Eva Marie Saint, did not drop one of her gloves on purpose.  It was an accident.  Undoubtedly, she thought the director, Elia Kazan, would yell, “Cut!”  And they would need to reshoot the scene.

But Brando reacted with lightning-quickness.  Without missing a beat, he, completely on his own, picked up the glove and proceeded to do everything just described above.  Nowhere in the script did it say, “Edie drops her glove, and Terry places it on his own hand to simulate holding her hand.”  That was 100 percent Brando ad-libbing in the moment, so invested in his role that he simply responded naturally and had the instincts to understand his character, his motivations, and the dynamics of the scene.

 

Eva Marie Saint responded with aplomb as well.  She had no idea Brando was going to do that–neither did he, until it happened!  But she played off of him, without a script, perfectly.  And then when she reached to retrieve her glove from him–all in one fluid motion, without mentioning it–just 100 percent natural–that, too, was obviously unscripted.  Just pure instinct.

 

For his part, screenwriter Budd Schulberg wrote a first-rate script.  But he can’t take credit for this scene.  It was all the actors ad-libbing and playing off each other.

Of course, even beyond a scene like this one, where the actors, literally, create something out of thin air, a screenwriter is dependent on the cast delivering their lines well.  A movie script is words on a page.  It is designed to come alive on the silver screen (or on your TV, or on your smartphone).  It requires the actors to do their part.  The best script can fall flat in the hands of untalented actors.  And a so-so script can resonate and move an audience to tears if the performers on-screen bring it to life and make the words sing.

 

Either way, a screenwriter is dependent.  Their words are not enough.  In the hands of a Marlon Brando or an Eva Marie Saint, a scriptwriter can appear to be a genius.  And Schulberg deserves plenty of credit for his script.  But let’s not kid ourselves.  On the Waterfront is one of America’s all-time great movies because of the actors.

************************************

For a novelist (or short story writer, or any writer who relies exclusively on the written word), there are no Brandos or Saints to weave their alchemy and turn the words on the page to gold.  If you intend for a character’s dialogue to be funny, the words need to convey the humor on their own.  There are no gifted actors to deliver the lines and make them their own.  It is all on you–the author.

 

Creating mood, character, subtleties, innuendoes; depicting sarcasm, tone of voice, disbelief.  These are things an author needs to do through the crafting of a scene on the page, through the dialogue itself, the setting, the narrative, and a few well-placed and strategic descriptions–as much by showing as possible, keeping the telling firmly in check.

It is an enormous challenge.  If you don’t come right out and tell a reader, “Character X is sad” (and you shouldn’t), you have to show the reader–and, again, you need to do it exclusively through your words.  There are no shortcuts, no actors to bail you out.  No director whose unique camera angles and visual storytelling technique lift your words to the stratosphere.  It is all, and only, your words.

 

That is both the blessing and the curse of writing for the written page.  You have 100 percent ownership of the material and the characters.  It is your creation; no one else’s.

And, when you think about it . . . that’s pretty exciting.  Much more a blessing than a curse.  The opportunities are as endless as your imagination.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

 

 

 

 

 

Terry Malloy

Edie Doyle

Through the Wisps of Time (the Past and the Present Merge)

Just the other day, I stumbled upon something I hadn’t seen in years.  I was cleaning out an old dresser drawer, and at the very bottom, like a treasure hiding beneath mounds of stuff, shyly avoiding discovery, was an old cassette tape.  Yes, a cassette!  A relic.  An artifact from a distant age, from a previous century.

Scribbled on the tape’s label, the words “Dave the Great” greeted my gaze, in my older brother’s neat, distinctive handwriting.  Dave the Great.  He used to take on that persona as a kid and perform interviews–often with himself.  He’d pretend to be Howard Cosell and he’d interview, well, himself, as a professional baseball player, offering a running commentary of his latest triumphs.  Or he’d simply introduce himself as Dave the Great and interview anyone who happened to be with him when he clicked “record” on the tape player.

 

And for this particular cassette, hiding in my dresser for years, I was the person he interviewed.  The catch?  I was five years old!  Indeed.  The cassette bridged the gap between centuries, taking me back, back, back, forty-plus years, to a January morning long before email existed for just anyone . . . or blogs, or the internet as a household medium, or smartphones, or social media, or self-driving cars.  It was a world full of landline telephones, handwritten letters, a world where, when you needed to discover something, you called up the reference librarian at your local library or maybe looked it up in a hard-backed encyclopedia.  Years ago, a chasm of time between then and now.

 

Curious to see if the old cassette still worked, I discovered a dusty tape player and inserted the cassette into it. And sure enough.  The old analog technology was working, a warrior of the decades, grainy and not as clear as it might be, but good enough.  It was my brother’s voice, at thirteen.  Clear as day.  Penetrating as the frost on that day four decades ago when he made the tape.

 

A few minutes in, he introduced . . . me.  And then I spoke . . . or who I was spoke, when I was five.  As I listened, I laughed out loud.  My voice was so high, a little kid’s voice, as if infused with helium.  The give-and-take with my brother echoed across the deep recesses of my mind, traveling through the years like a time-traveling space ship.  So long ago.  And yet, there we were.  Having a conversation in the very same house I’ll visit again sometime this spring, where my father still lives.  Past and present merging into one.

 

Many details are forgotten.  Most, sadly.  Forget four decades.  What did I do last week?  It’s a struggle to remember the day-to-day events of our lives.  They happen in an instant, replaced, inevitably, by the next moment, and the next, and the next, and the next, in an ongoing catalogue of movement and motion.  Nothing stays still.  Nothing stays frozen.  We are always stepping forward, second by second.  Individual moments, those pixels that make up our lives, dissolve into invisibility before we know it.  What did I have for breakfast last Monday?  Who knows?

 

But as I listened to the old cassette, from so many years ago, there were actually snippets of the conversation I recalled.  I could see us there in my brother’s bedroom, the snow falling outside the window, the slight hum of the heat through the vent.  Some of the things we said on that cassette–they brought me back to that moment, to being a little kid again.

 

And maybe, as much as I might wish I could remember everything . . . maybe that is enough.  Though details fade away into oblivion, the main story line lives on.  What the brain forgets, the heart remembers, and if we take a moment to be still (even though that moment will instantly melt into the next one), we can access the emotional memories of our heart, and we can capture them with our words, or our pictures, or our dance steps.  We can represent.  We can share with the world–or whoever is listening–something about our truth.

For now, I will just play that old cassette again, and I will listen to my brother at thirteen and myself at five.  Will something creative come out of it?  Maybe.  Or . . . maybe it already has.  I just need to find it.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

One Step at a Time (Or, the Link Between “Drop Foot” and Creativity)

Until this past October, in the shadows of Halloween, I had never undergone surgery.  I’ve been lucky.  But this fall, that changed.  I had a fairly straightforward and noninvasive surgery done on my lower back called a microdiscectomy–where the surgeon makes a small incision and then goes in and removes the extruded matter from a herniated disc, freeing up the lumbar nerve root that had been severely compressed by the herniation.

 

In my case, this disc herniation in the low back resulted not so much in sharp pain, but in a condition known as “drop foot.”  Drop foot results in an inability to dorsiflex–or lift your foot up at the ankle, making it very difficult to walk with anything resembling a normal gait.  All the research I did (and the fact that my own brother had the same thing in 2018!) made me realize that surgery was needed, and quickly, to minimize the the chance of the nerve damage being permanent.  Some of the nerve damage to the L5 lumbar nerve root in my lower back likely *would* be permanent.  But a prompt surgery would, with hope, bring back at least some of the functionality of my affected (right) foot.

 

The surgery went well.  I had never been “put out” before, and it was an interesting sensation.  There was no sense of time having passed.  I closed my eyes, and–it felt like one second later, I opened them.  I soon realized I had been out for close to three hours.

 

The weeks directly after the surgery were challenging.  At first, you’re feeling worse, not better.  But slowly, as the days bled into weeks, and as I tried acupuncture for the first time in my life, I began to regain a little bit of strength in my right foot.  First, the ankle was offering more support, then I was able to raise my toes a bit more, then flex the foot up a bit more.  By the time the holiday season was in full swing, I was able to walk without a foot brace, and had regained perhaps two-thirds of my natural gait.

 

And that’s about where I still am today.  I can move around quite normally and don’t feel all that restricted.  As the long Vermont winter eventually recedes, I will again take the mile-long round-trip walks to the mailbox every day, and mowing the lawn is actually something I am looking forward to, come May!  I look forward to putting the foot to the test.

Throughout this process, it’s been important not to rush things.  The damaged lumbar nerve root needs to time to heal.  The weakened muscles that raise the foot need time to regenerate and strengthen.  It is a process, a step-by-step approach, literally!  And it made me realize–recovering from drop foot and writing a novel (or any long creative work) are very similar!

 

With a novel, you often get an inspiration.  An idea flashes.  Scenarios merge.  Characters form out of the creative ether, ready to come to life and populate the story.  But the novel isn’t written in a single day.  It takes time, multiple drafts, edits, starts and stops, and to see it through, you must persevere through the doubts that inevitable arise, the nagging insecurities that at times scream like a howling wind racing down the mountain passes.

 

“Will the story come together?”  “Will the characters pop?”  “Will readers like it?”  “Will anyone even read it?”  “Will I even finish it?”  Or . . . “Will I be able to walk again?”  “Will I be able to mow the lawn, get around without a brace?”  “Play sports again?”

The questions nag and persist, trying to trip you up, sometimes seductively subtle, weakening you piece by piece; other times, they are loud and obnoxious, in your face like a schoolyard bully.  The only thing that matters is how you respond.

Keep going.  Don’t stop.  Don’t give in to the doubts.  Just keep grinding through.

Step by step.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

“Suddenly Seymour” Moments (Or, On Epiphanies)

Before the start of fifth-grade, I was afraid.  Granted, I never wanted summer vacation to end, but that year, I was filled with an unusual dread.  My teacher that year would be Mr. Bansbach.  He’d been teaching the fifth grade since the time of Confucius, or so it seemed to my ten-year-old sensibilities.  He was old-school, even when old-school was still in vogue–this was the 1980s.  He was tough.  He was no-nonsense.  But, more than anything, he was strict.

 

Not that I was a troublemaker.  Shy to the core, I said little at school and was a good student.  But I still worried.  Stories about Mr. Bansbach circulated through the school.  He was as feared as any teacher I ever had.  I dreaded that first day.

When it arrived, Mr. Bansbach introduced himself and, standing at the front of the class in his suit and tie, his thick glasses reflecting the fluorescent overhead lights, his thinning, dyed-black hair combed back on his head, he called us “preteens.”  “You’re not ‘kids,'” he said.  “A ‘kid’ is a baby goat.  You are preadolescents, you are growing up, and you will take responsibility in my class.”  Great, i thought.  The rumors were true.  This guy was going to be a nightmare.

 

One day, about a week into the new school year, I finished an in-class assignment early.  Not sure what to do, I just sat there, hands folded, waiting for the other students to finish.

Mr. Bansbach was not impressed.

“Class,” he said.  “I want to direct your attention to this young man.” He pointed at me.  “He finished his assignment early.”  That was good, wasn’t it?  I was on the ball!  Evidently not.  “Don’t do what he just did.  Ever.  When he finished, he sat there, blankly, wasting time.  Next time, young man”–he stared right at me–“take out a book and read.  Make use of your time.  Understand?”

 

I did.

And I didn’t like Mr. Bansbach.

A few weeks later, before class, Mr. Bansbach pulled me aside in the hallway, just outside his classroom.  I stiffened.  What had I done now?  Finished my homework too early the night before?  Did he have some way to monitor me at home?

“That was an impressive victory last night,” he said.  “Maybe your Steelers will win a fifth Super Bowl this season.”

And he patted me on the shoulder and winked.  Then he went into the classroom and I followed.

What had just happened?  And how did he know I was a Pittsburgh Steelers fan?  And why did he care?  Was he a sports fan, too?

 

He was.  Throughout that fall, he would talk to me about the Steelers games.  Win or lose, he always took a few minutes early in the week to go over their previous game with me.  I didn’t say much.  I was still nervous around him.  But it impressed me that he was so in tune with his students.

As the year rolled on, I genuinely learned to like Mr. Bansbach.  And he seemed to like me.  He congratulated me on several homework assignments, when I went above and beyond the parameters of the assignment.  The following year, when I entered sixth grade and had a new teacher, Mr. Bansbach would still seek me out in the hallways on Monday mornings and talk about the most recent Steelers game.

And while I learned to like him more and more as my fifth-grade year progressed, it was that first kind gesture, that initial time he talked to me about my favorite football team, that stuck with me.  I can still remember it–the way he stood there, outside his classroom, waiting for me.  His way of letting me know we were okay.  That I was okay.

 

You might call it a moment of epiphany, a realization, that the rumors were false, and that Mr. Bansbach was different from his reputation.  Oh, he was strict.  You definitely did not want to slack off in his class.  That part was true.  But no one ever said he was nice, that he cared.  That he would take the time to learn about his students and show them he was on their side.  I had to learn that for myself.

There are moments like that throughout literature and film–moments of awakening, when a character learns something about him- or herself, or someone else.  Indeed, The Eye-Dancers and The Singularity Wheel are chock-full of such moments–Joe Marma learning that he doesn’t even like football, a sport he pursues with reckless abandon, but only plays it to best his brother; Mitchell Brant finding out that his long-distance (a multiverse away!) relationship with Heather doesn’t mean what he’s thought the past five years; or Marc Kuslanski coming to grips with his guilt over the accident he feels responsible for with his little brother.  The characters realize these things in a moment of revelation, a tipping point in the symphony of their lives.  Epiphanies are real.  But they are also hard to pull off in literature or on film.

 

You want to say so much without, well, saying so much.  You want the scene to speak for itself.  You want the reader or the viewer to feel it right along with the character.

Like the performance of “Suddenly Seymour” in the 1986 remake of the musical Little Shop of Horrors.  Throughout the film, Seymour (Rick Moranis) and Audrey (Ellen Greene) work together at a florist shop.  Seymour is shy and awkward, but clearly carries a torch for his coworker.  She, however, is in a relationship with someone she, herself, describes as a “semi-sadist” (an outrageous dentist played by Steve Martin).  Audrey thinks lowly of herself, and she gets involved with abusive men like the dentist.  Throughout the movie, she speaks in a squeaky, mousy voice, almost as if she doesn’t even feel she is worthy to say anything.

 

But then this scene happens.  Seymour encourages her, praises her, and expresses his true feelings for her.  He stands, and sings “Suddenly Seymour.”

Audrey is touched, listening to him.  Then she joins in the song.  At first, her singing voice matches her speaking voice–timid, lacking in confidence, unsure.  But then, when she hits her own “Suddenly Seymour” note, there is a transformation, an awakening.  An epiphany.  Audrey finds her voice, literally, and she belts out the rest of the song in an astonishingly strong, beautiful, and full-throated rendition.  Before our eyes, without any speeches, without any blaring announcement, she and Seymour have changed.  They have awakened.  It is a cinematic performance for the ages.

 

And that’s how epiphanies work–in life, and in story.  They hit you with the force of a tidal wave, but, counterintuitively, they also do so quickly, quietly, in a moment, without any narrator making a bold, big proclamation.  There is no need to tell or exclaim or pontificate.  There is only a moment, the moment, when everything becomes clear.

Even just a moment in a song, or a moment when your fifth-grade teacher shows you–rather than tells you–that he’s had your back all along.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

An Unscary Halloween

I freely admit, over the years, I have often gone with the flow on Halloween, watching scary movies, creepy episodes of The Twilight Zone, reveling in ghost stories and monster yarns.  This year, though, I will go against the grain.  Maybe it’s the state of the world, the precarious position of our institutions and structures, the downright disturbing events that we’ve all had to deal with on a national and global level.  Whatever the reason, I am going to go with lighter fare this All Hallows Eve.

 

After all, there will be more than enough people watching horror movies.  Who needs Michael Myers when you can have Ralph Kramden?  Who needs Jason Voorhees when you can tune in to Forrest Gump?  And who needs Rick Grimes when you can watch Cary Grant or Johnny Carson?

 

I remember one Halloween when I was a teenager, I invited some neighborhood friends over (some of whom were inspirations for the protagonists in The Eye-Dancers), and we had a horror marathon, watching Psycho, Halloween. and Dawn of the Dead back-to-back-to-back.  It was well past midnight when we were through.  No one wanted to leave that night–the wind was blowing, the temperature dropping, and we all knew the ghosts and goblins of the season were lurking out there in the dark.  So they stayed and slept over.  The next morning, with the clear, crisp light of day bringing in the month of November, we all felt better.  The sun was up, you could see up and down the neighborhood streets–the spooky atmosphere of the previous night had passed, evaporating like smoke on the wind.

 

This year, though, I am vowing not to have to recover from anything.  Why scare myself with ghosts or killer dolls or axe murderers?  Why not break the ghoulish tradition and play for laughs instead?

 

I don’t mean to discourage you from filling up on frightful movies this Halloween.  If that’s your preference, drink deeply!  Enjoy.  Tune in to a Vincent Price masterpiece or a Hitchcock thriller, or a classic horror film from yesteryear.  Turn off the lights and dare yourself to watch in the dark.

 

But not me. Not this year. This year, I’ll watch an episode of Cheers, the “old” Cheers with Shelley Long as the costar–when the show was at its best.  I’ll watch The Honeymooners–maybe the episode where Ralph is being investigated by the IRS, and employs Norton to help him figure out what he might have done wrong with his income taxes.  And then?  Maybe an old Happy Days or an Everybody Hates Chris episode.  Maybe an old Cary Grant classic where Cary climbs buildings, dodges crop dusters, or saves the world–all without breaking a sweat.  In short, I will keep it light, corny, and optimistic.

 

Because, when you come right down to it, the world can use a little optimism right now . . . even on Halloween!

Enjoy the holiday!  And enjoy the coming of November.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

In Praise of Clark Kent

Among the pantheon of comic book superheroes, Superman is the greatest and the first.  Indeed, prior to Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster’s super creation in the spring of 1938 (in Action Comics number 1, DC Comics), comic books were decidedly ordinary with characters like private detective Slam Bradley and Scribbly the boy cartoonist.  Nothing wrong with old Scribbly!  But those early titles lacked the pizzazz and punch of the hero age.

 

Superman changed all that.  The world had never seen anything like him, and his popularity took off like a runaway locomotive.  The character’s popularity quickly led to the emergence of a star-studded lineup of other DC universe heroes:  Batman, the Flash, and Wonder Woman, among them.  Not to mention a collection of villains such as Lex Luthor, The Prankster, and Mr. Mxyzptlk.  The Man of Steel’s superhuman power and abilities, coupled with his otherworldly adventures, mesmerized readers every month, providing needed entertainment and relief as the 1930s bled into the war-ravaged 1940s.

 

But what truly made Superman so memorable?  What enabled him to transcend time and place?  How did he remain so popular decade after decade, despite changing styles, new generations, new worldviews?  I would argue that his alter ego, Clark Kent, had a lot to do with it.

 

Clark is the complete opposite of Superman.  Where Superman is brave, bold, daring, strong, Clark presents himself as hesitant, soft-spoken, bookish, and gentle.  Obviously, he does this as a guise, to conceal his identity as Superman.  (Incidentally, I have always thought it hilarious that Clark’s only “disguise,” when out of costume, is a pair of thick glasses.  As if observers wouldn’t be able to discern that Clark and Superman are one and the same merely on account of a pair of spectacles.  But, this, too, is part of Clark’s enduring charm.)

 

Clark, of course, is a reporter for the newspaper the Daily Planet, where he consistently acquires the best stories and photos–obviously because he is Superman and therefore is right in the middle of the action.  But no one ever figures this out.  Clark has his super intelligence, of course, and he is always one step ahead of those who would discover his legendary secret.

 

Clark Kent is a study in quiet, in calm introspection, in everyday blandness, in hominess.  He is the antithesis of the action hero.  He is milk and cookies at 8:00 p.m. while settling in to watch PBS.  He is a quiet evening in front of the fire reading Dickens or Austen or Montgomery or Hardy.  He is a weekend at home, writing in his journal, making a homemade meal, sipping hot chocolate, tending to his garden, walking to the mailbox, and heading to bed early.  He represents our home self, our quiet self, relaxed, in contemplation, at rest, still, taking a step back and allowing the world and its noise to slip on by.

 

And we need that.  Action stories need pauses.  Novels need moments of introspection, where characters reflect and where we get to know them better, settling in beside them as they sit back, recline, and let their guard down.  If Superman were only, well, Superman, all action and fighting and saving the world, it would be too nonstop, too frenetic, too loud.

We need Clark Kent to hit the pause button, ground us, make us smile, and charm us with his quiet, steady presence.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’ll always be a Superman fan.  The Man of Steel’s adventures never disappoint.

 

But if it weren’t for Clark Kent coming onto the scene from time to time, those adventures would surely be less enjoyable.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

She Called Me “Decade” (Or, Ten Years! Thank You for Still Being Here!)

When I turned ten years old, back in the 1980s, my older brother’s girlfriend at the time called me “Decade” to commemorate the milestone.  Little did I dream at that time that, many years hence, there would be an internet and a blogging universe and a way to publish posts for anyone, anywhere in the world, to see in real time.  I also never would have dreamed that I’d be doing such a thing for, well, a decade.

 

Indeed.  When I began The Eye-Dancers blog, I did so without much of a plan–except I knew I had just finished a novel of the same name and wanted to “get the word out” to would-be readers.  I had never blogged before, had no idea what I was doing, but decided to take the plunge.  At the time, I figured I’d write a few promotional posts–maybe for a few weeks or months–and that would pretty much be it.

 

That was in the summer of 2012.

And now, here we are, ten years older.  In the summer of 2022.  Never at the outset of this blog did I think I’d still be here a decade on.  I suppose something I wasn’t counting on when I began this cyber-adventure was the friendships and online connections I would make.  I didn’t realize how special and loyal and stellar the WordPress community was, and is.  But I found out in a hurry.

 

This blog turns ten years old this summer, and you all are the reason I am still here.  I don’t post as often as I used to–not even close.  A quick check of the archives would tell the tale.  Back in 2013, at the height of this blog’s output, I would publish multiple posts per week.  As time went on, that dipped to two per week, then one per week, then one every two weeks, and now it is one per month.  But I’m still here, still enjoying this wonderful online literary adventure, and still trying my best to come up with posts that are interesting and, hopefully, sometimes encouraging.

 

I cannot thank each and every one of you enough for welcoming an online neophyte a decade ago and, through your ongoing support, keeping me writing and blogging all these years.  Whether or not I am working on a novel or short stories–whether I am in a literary whirlwind of ideas or a dry, barren desert without a story to be seen or discovered for miles, one constant has been posting on this blog.  And you are the reason for that.

 

So, again, my deepest appreciation to all of you.  If you’ll keep reading, I will certainly keep posting.

 

Thanks so much for reading these past ten years!  And now, on to the next ten . . .

–Mike

 

The Adventure of the Beagle and the Pilfered French Bread

It’s funny, the things we remember.  There are the big things, of course–weddings, funerals, graduations, disappointments, loves, rejections, triumphs.  But there are little things, too, small details that live on in our consciousness like echoes reverberating through the decades.  Sometimes it’s hard to figure out why we remember the things we do.  At some level, some things–even what, on the surface, appear to be minor things–affect us in such a way that our minds hold onto them, tightly, as if grasping a precious jewel.

 

And these memories are not buried, hidden beneath the surface, like trinkets in a dusty attic chest.  They whisper into our ears, make subtle suggestions when we least expect it, and, for those who create stories, they sometimes weave their way into our narratives–not always exactly as they happened, but close enough to inspire a scene or a chapter.

 

One such memory for me involves our dog when I was eight years old and a loaf of French bread.  I don’t believe it’s ever worked its way into one of my stories–but it likely will.  And it is the focus of this post.

 

First, allow me to back up.  For years, going back to before I was born, my mother always named the family dog “Poopsie.”  Don’t ask me why–I don’t know.  And I never asked.  But “Poopsie” was a given in our family.  If we got a dog, male or female–didn’t matter–we didn’t have to wonder what the dog’s name would be.  The first two Poopsies were before my time. But when I was eight years old, we adopted a beagle and named her Poopsie III.

 

Now, Poopsie III was athletic!  And naughty!  She spent much of her time in our backyard, which was fenced.  We figured this would keep her safe and prevent her from running away and exploring the neighborhood.  We were wrong.  Almost every day, it seemed, Poopsie would hop the fence, spend a couple of hours doing we could only guess what–and then come racing back down the street, usually cresting the big hill in the distance and sprinting down its slope, eventually reaching our driveway and hopping the fence again to head to the rear corner of the yard, where her doghouse was situated.  She sometimes dug under the fence, too, and crawled underneath–just to mix things up.  A lot of times, we’d keep her on a leash so she couldn’t get out of the yard.  But Poopsie was a dog built for running.  So my mother was adamant that she shouldn’t always be constricted to a ten-foot-by-ten-foot circle of yard.  That didn’t stop my mother from scolding Poopsie, though, every time she came back home from one of her adventures through the neighborhood.

One such adventure stands out above all the rest.  It was a pleasant summer afternoon back in the 1980s, and, looking out the back window, I stated, “Poopsie’s gone.”  Indeed.  Her doghouse was abandoned, and she was nowhere to be seen.  Evidently, she had hopped the fence and was out in the neighborhood, somewhere, doing something.

 

About an hour later, we learned what she’d been up to.  My parents, my siblings, and I were all out front–I’m not sure what we were doing.  Maybe peering down the street, wondering when Poopsie would be back.

And then, sure enough, there she was, cresting the hilltop up the road.  She then raced down the hill, heading straight for us.  But . . . was there something in her mouth?  There was!  Though she was still too far away to discern exactly what it was.

Seconds later, as she raced closer, closer, we all saw it.  A large, long, full loaf of French bread.  She carried it dead-center, the loaf sticking out half a foot on each side of her mouth.  And as she neared us, running the whole way, she was undoubtedly smiling.

 

“What did you do?” my mother yelled at her.  And then, as she often did when Poopsie came back from a neighborhood run, she pointed to the backyard and commanded that she “get in [her] house.”  Poopsie didn’t hesitate.  She raced to the backyard fence, and like Superdog, bolted over it in a single bound.

 

We were all shocked.  How had she gotten hold of an entire loaf of French bread?  There were no grocery stores in the direction from which she’d come–not close enough, anyway.  But there was a small, family-owned bakery up that way.  Had she entered the bakery and pilfered a loaf of their bread?  Or had she taken the bread out of the hand of a pedestrian walking home from the bakery?  We never found out.  Certainly no one was chasing Poopsie, attempting to reclaim the bread.  It was a mystery.

 

We all had a good laugh about it, right there in the front yard.  My mother, even while yelling at Poopsie, was laughing.  We decided to go inside and see what the dog was up to.  Looking out the back window, we saw Poopsie trying to enter her doghouse, but she couldn’t.  She still carried her loaf of bread in her mouth, and as she tried to enter through the small opening in front, the bread would ram up against the front of her doghouse, pinning her in place.

Eventually, she dropped the treasured bread directly in front of her doghouse and then went inside.  But she’d left the bread close enough to the open doorway where she could lean out and take large, gluttonous bites of it.  In just a couple of minutes, she ate the entire loaf.  She had a good nap after that.

 

And still to this day, all these years later, I can recall the smile on her face as she ran down the street, bread in mouth.  It will stay with me as long as I live, the memory like an old friend ready and waiting to cheer me up whenever needed.

“Thanks for the memories, Poopsie.  You will not be forgotten.”

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

 

 

The Sibling’s the Thing (Or, Broken Bones and Unpaid Bets)

In The Eye-Dancers novels, siblings play a sizable role–and a dominant one in Joe Marma‘s case.  This naturally evolved during the writing of the stories, but also it is a reflection of the siblings in my own life.  As the youngest of four children, I know firsthand what it’s like to share a household with multiple siblings growing up.

 

In my case, I am more than seven years younger than my next-oldest sibling, so there is an age gap–nothing that matters now that we’re adults, but back when I was a little kid, my siblings were already in high school.  They seemed like full-fledged grown-ups to me.  And sometimes, they were tasked with watching me–especially when we visited the neighbors’ pool across the street.

My family used to have a pool when I was too little to swim.  But by the time I could actually use a pool, it was long gone.  And so we’d use the pool in the backyard of the neighbors’ house–kitty-corner and across the street. (In fact, these neighbors were the same family the Marmas were inspired by in The Eye-Dancers!)

 

I remember especially the summer I was eight years old, I would go over to their pool every day.  Joe and his brother did not use the pool much, and so it was usually just me–and sometimes my brothers.  My mother would often be there, too, to supervise.

But one time she tasked my brother Dave to watch me.  He was outside the pool.  I was the only one in the water.  “Don’t throw anything into the pool!” my mother had warned us before we crossed the street and I jumped into the pool.  She knew I liked to play “diving catches” in the pool, where someone would throw a ball several feet away from me and I would dive to try to catch it before it hit the surface of the water.  As luck would have it, that day, there was a volleyball in the neighbors’ backyard, not ten feet from the pool.  How could we resist?

 

“Dive!” Dave said, and whipped the ball just out of reach.  I dived, reached for the volleyball.

Crack!  My left pinky snapped back, the force of the ball rivaling a Nolan Ryan fastball.

Houston Astros Nolan Ryan pitching

 

“Ow!”  I grabbed my finger, the pain immediate and sharp.  The game ended as fast as it had begun.

I wound up with a broken pinky for the summer.  My mother was not pleased.

Another time, later that same summer, once my pinky had healed enough for the cast to be removed, my other older brother, John, made a wager with me.  He was in the pool with me. He knew I liked to submerge and swim underwater from one end of the pool to the other multiple times, seeing how many laps I could complete before needing to come up for air.

“I bet you ten bucks you can’t make it across the pool underwater six times,” he challenged.  My record was four.  Six was a stretch.  But I accepted the challenge.

“Ten bucks?”

 

“Ten bucks,” he reiterated.  In the 1980s, to an eight-year-old, ten dollars was a fortune!  I was all in.

“You’re gonna owe me,” I said, and dove under.  I made the first two laps easily.  The third was a little harder–I was starting to feel the lack of oxygen.  The fourth lap–my old record–was harder still.  Then the fifth–I was venturing into uncharted waters, never having stayed under this long before.  But I made it, tapping the far end of the pool.

Can I make this last lap? I wondered.  I seriously considered coming up for air, losing the bet.  But I wouldn’t give my brother the satisfaction.  I kicked off the side, determined to complete the final lap.

My lungs felt like they would rupture; I was getting woozy.  But I made it, tapping the side of the opposite end and surfacing.  I gulped in the air, letting it slide down into my lungs like a healing balm.  I couldn’t talk for several seconds, gasping, regaining my wind.

 

Finally, I said, “I want my ten bucks!”

My brother swam up to me.  “I can’t believe you did it!” he said.  “I didn’t think you had a chance.”

“Fork it over,” I said.  “When we get home.”

“What?  The ten bucks?”  He smiled.  I didn’t like the looks of that smile.  “Here.  Ten bucks.”

And he proceeded to hit me on my upper arm.  Ten times.

“There!” he said.  “There’s your ten bucks!”

I laid into him, told him it wasn’t fair.  But all he did was laugh.

Now, decades later, I look back at both of these scenarios and smile. I sure wasn’t smiling when they happened!  But now they are treasured memories.  It is memories such as these–little things, anecdotes, small events really, but monumental in their own way–that inspire me to write.  To capture something of the spirit of youth, of my past, of life in a previous century.

 

I am grateful and blessed for the memories.

And yes.  My brother still owes me ten bucks.

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike

People You Know, Characters You Create

Have you ever wanted to write–or actually written–a piece of fiction that featured characters based on actual people you know?  Now, granted–even when we create our characters “out of thin air,” there are elements of people we know in them.  Or, sometimes, a composite of several people’s characteristics rolled into one.  This may be on a subconscious level–you’re not necessarily trying to base your characters on anyone.  But it’s inevitable that traits from some people you know (or you. yourself, as the author) will find their way into some of your characters.

However, that’s not what we’re talking about here.  What we’re talking about is . . . you know Jane from across the hall in your apartment complex, and you want to create a character “based” on her.  Or perhaps someone from school–a bully, your best friend, a teacher, a nerd–whoever it is.  You want to feature them in your next novel (with a different name, of course).  Can you literally have at it, and re-create the real-life person in your fictional story?  Or do you need to add several layers of a literary buffer, effectively “disguising” them, perhaps even from themselves should they read your work?

 

The interesting thing about that is–whatever your intention, it likely doesn’t matter because as you write, as you go forward with your literary endeavor, creative elements will take over.

As I’ve posted about in the past, the main characters in The Eye-Dancers were based on friends I had growing up.  Specifically, Mitchell Brant was inspired by Matt B.; Ryan Swinton by Rick S.; Joe Marma by, well, Joe M.; and Marc Kuslanski by MattK.  The supporting character of Matt “Grronk” Giselmo was also inspired by a Matt–Matt G.  A lot of Matts!  As for last names, of course I changed them, though I matched the first letter of the fictional characters’ last names with their real-life inspirations.

 

And, honestly, when I set out to write the novel, my intent was to keep the characters relatively close to my real-life friends.  I wasn’t aiming to incorporate much “separation” at all.  Sure, I’d change details and respect their privacy.  Of course.  But as for their personalities, quirks, inside jokes, nicknames, and even physical tendencies, I was drawing form the real thing.

But then, as I continued to move forward with the story, a funny thing happened.  I began seeing the protagonists solely as who they were, and wasn’t even thinking of the real-life Matts or Rick or Joe.  Ryan Swinton was only Ryan Swinton.  Marc Kuslanski was only Marc Kuslanski.  At a certain point during the writing process, it was as if the characters weren’t inspired by anyone.  They had matured, grown, morphed, and become exclusively who they were.  Obviously, even with this development, the characters retained elements of their real-life inspirations.  How could they not?  That’s how they were “born.”  But they had fully and completely become their own entities.  As I wrote their scenes, I no longer even glimpsed the actual people they were based on.  I saw only the protagonists themselves.

 

It was a revelatory experience, one I honestly did not expect.  At the outset, I was “seeing” them so much as offshoots of the people I knew; I assumed it would remain that way throughout the process.  But as so often happens with creative endeavors, the process, the experience, the flow, the wonder takes on a life of its own and leads you where it will.  The writing is in charge.  Not the author.

So, if you are in a similar circumstance–about to begin a novel or a fictionalized work of some sort and are basing your characters on people you know (or knew), and you’re wondering how “close” to cut it . . . you probably have nothing to worry about.

Because as you begin, as you wade through the literary waters, as the bones of the story fill out with muscle and sinew and soul and emotion . . . the characters will become who they decide to become, and the initial inspirations will fade into the background.

So write.  Let your characters lead on.  It promises to be a journey as exciting as it is unpredictable.

 

Thanks so much for reading!

–Mike