Monthly Archives: September 2002

A Year Later

By lytspeed Posted in Signs o' the Times, Writing Leave a reply

For many U.S. citizens, the most tragic news to report on September 11, 2002 is that Johnny Unitas has died of a heart attack at age 69. However, I think many more U.S. citizens are breathing a collective sigh of relief that the anniversary date has come and gone without a significant terrorist event taking place. At work today, a few people with ties to the east coast were understandably emotional. Aside from that, it was a pretty normal day for me, and I’m thankful.

The Writer’s Circle group met this evening at a member’s home in the mountains. Rain fell the entire time, and a significant thunderstorm developed; it was wonderful. It was also a bit synchronistic; two of the stories we critiqued dealt with rain and lightning themes. I committed to having a story ready for next month’s meeting, which means I need to finish “Chesterfield Gray” in the next couple of weeks. It’s not a genre story, but the group is willing to read it anyway. As Ed jokes, “Sure, you can submit a non-genre story. It just has to be twice as good!”

One of our members is making significant strides in publishing, with several different white-hot irons in the fire. I won’t go into more detail than that, because it’s not my place to do so, as Brian Plante has ably demonstrated with his Chronicles of the Garden Variety Writers. But I will say that it is inspiring to see one of our own climbing the rungs. It’s also clear that he’s working very hard at it — much harder than I am. It’s probably not fair to compare our situations, because we have completely different schedules and family requirements, but it does make me look at my time and efficiency, as well as my commitment level.

Yes, I think it’s safe to say that I will be a published writer someday. But the examples have made it clear that this won’t happen at my current level of quality or output. I need more practice, and I need to lick some stamps.

Johnny A at the Gothic Theatre

By lytspeed Posted in Music Leave a reply

The Gothic Theatre is a great venue. I’ve seen a few acts there, Willy Porter, Indigenous, and The Rock Bottom Remainders among them. Tonight, I was fortunate enough to see Johnny A, with Liz Clark and another act opening. (Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get the name of the first act clearly, but he was a good guitar player with a beat up cowboy hat, glasses, a cane, and a three-word name with “Toby” at the end. If any of you know who I’m talking about, please let me know so I can update this page.)

Liz Clark is a talented young singer/songwriter from Denver, with strong pipes. She plays multiple instruments and, at age 20, she already knows how to handle a crowd. During her set, she noted that there were a couple of hecklers in the crowd — I was well aware of this, since they were sitting two chairs from me — and they quieted down for a while. There’s nothing like directing all the attention in the place to the people who are trying to get attention at a performer’s expense. Liz played several songs, one of which was a cover of Concrete Blonde’s “Tomorrow, Wendy.” All were strong songs, with well thought out lyrics. Her voice sounded at times like a couple of other female pop/rock stars, but she does have a distinctive, plaintive wail she sometimes throws in that sets her apart. I look forward to seeing Liz perform again at some of the many local venues where she appears.

Johnny A is amazing, as you might expect me to say. He’s from Boston, and currently has one release called Sometime Tuesday Morning, which spawned a local hit, “Oh Yeah.” He played two custom Les Paul guitars, strapless, with Bigsby Tremolo units on each, and he’s the first guitarist I’ve ever seen play live without an amp cabinet or at least a miked combo amp. He plugged his blonde Marshall 30th Anniversary head directly into the sound board and used the onstage monitors and stage speakers as his cabinet. This created a great tone, and when he used stereo effects pedals he was able to create a huge, swirling sound that filled the whole venue. His sound man definitely had a handle on his art.

When Johnny came on the stage, he picked up a microphone and said, “You guys are too far away. Come down here!” Many of us left our seats and gathered around the edge of the stage, and I was lucky enough to have a clear view of his hands from within ten feet. You would think maybe I learned something from that, but I can honestly say that it went right over my head. Virtuoso musicians like Johnny A and Eric Johnson approach their instruments in ways that I can’t yet comprehend. It’s like reading another language; I recognize the letters, and sometimes I pick up on a word or two, but the grammar never goes where I expect it to. It’s a humbling experience to watch someone so far beyond my abilities.

I know enough to say that Johnny’s playing is silky and fluid, with a liberal use of legato and bends. It is sometimes staccato, with funky double-stops and string snaps. I think I was most amazed when he played “Wind Cries Mary,” using a call-and-response format. He would play one phrase in his own style, then answer with Jimi’s style in the next phrase, and alternate back and forth. He carried on his own conversation with Jimi Hendrix onstage, and I was privileged enough to watch and listen. For an encore, he essentially played an extended Hendrix “Voodoo Child” medley, again incorporating his own funky style, but throwing in the occasional Hendrix lick for those of us in the crowd who hadn’t caught the initial hook.

Of course, these are the things you expected me to say. I can also say that he’s a pretty cool cat. He signed autographs after the show, and someone mentioned the “asshole” who wouldn’t shut up during the shows. (This is one of the guys Liz Clark had mentioned, earlier.) Given the opportunity to grouse about hecklers, Johnny took the high road. He said, “Oh, no, he was just having a good time. He wasn’t a problem. He was a good heckler, not a bad heckler.” When a guy is beat from a year straight of touring, can still put on a high energy show, and have nice words to say about hecklers, you gotta know there’s something more than just a talented guitar player inside him. He’s a good human being, too.

Often, after shows like this, I get bummed out about how far I have to go to be an accomplished guitarist. I started to get that feeling as I was driving up Broadway, but then I passed by Herman’s Hideaway and started to smile. You see, the last time I went to a show at the Gothic, I hadn’t played Herman’s yet. This time, I had. I guess maybe I am making some progress.

Old Possum’s, Paula Guran, and Quality

By lytspeed Posted in Writing Leave a reply

The Old Possum’s Writing Group met tonight, and for the first time in recent memory, no female members showed up. That was a little strange, and slightly changed the dynamic of the group, I think. It wasn’t a significant change, but it did have a bit more of a locker room feel to me. Maybe I’m just being hypersensitive, though.

After the critiques were done, we discussed Paula Guran’s article “Tribal Stand” on the Locus Magazine website. In short, the article laments the current state of the horror genre, pinpointing incestuous webzines and “miniscule press” magazines as being at fault for the large volume of substandard writing being published. Basically, because anyone can now be publisher on the Internet or use print-on-demand and self-publishing services to create a work of fiction, no one has to enforce industry standards or pay respects to the masters of the genre.

This is interesting, since Paula Guran is, herself, editor of a genre magazine, Horror Garage, and has also produced an electronic newsletter, Dark Echo, for many years. A quick look at the Horror Garage submission guidelines shows that Guran is not being hypocritical, though. Horror Garage, in its early issues, published a wide variety of quality writers in a wide variety of styles; Paula wasn’t just printing articles by her friends. Also, the guidelines make it clear that literary quality is a requirement for stories published in Horror Garage. The article also has a great quote: “Real writing happens when your blood meets the bayonet, when your bone is nicked with the blade.” It sounds to me like Guran thinks there are too many rubber bayonets out there right now.

So where do I stand on this? Certainly, by posting this journal and by linking to writers, magazines and bloggers on the Internet, I’m participating in the sort of networking that enabled many of the Buddy Publishing cabals to come into existence. However, I also believe in writing standards, and I do my best to adhere to them. To me, the most basic of these standards is the proper use of grammar, spelling, and punctuation in a submitted manuscript. Occasionally, I come into conflict with people in my writing groups because of this. Their argument is that those little things really don’t matter much; what matters is the story structure, plot and characterization. Ultimately, I agree with them.

However, I also find it very distracting to wade through an unclean manuscript, and though I try not to focus on the mechanical problems, I am never successful in doing so. As a result, I sometimes miss the point of a story, or I miss clues in the text that illuminate why what’s-his-name did such-and-such. I feel more like a copy editor than an evaluator, and I’m sure that reflects in my critiques. The guideline I use is this: If I’m submitting a manuscript to a critique group, I pretend that every member is an Ellen Datlow, a Gardner Dozois, a Gordon Van Gelder, a Paula Guran. I want to make the best impression I can on these “editors,” so they will give me good feedback on the story, rather than just reject it out of hand or focus on mechanical faults.

If I succeed in turning in a presentable manuscript, I am much more likely to get meaningful critiques of the important things, the things that are the most difficult to learn: structure, plot, word choice, characterization. To me, these are the aspects of writing that really determine whether or not a story has literary quality.

I guess this puts me pretty firmly on the side of Paula Guran and other “tribe” members. Some may see this viewpoint as elitist or snobbish; that’s unfortunate, but it won’t make me change what I believe, and it won’t keep me from doing my best when I critique a manuscript. If doing my best means copy-editing a manuscript so that it’s readable and then re-reading it for content, that’s what I’ll have to do. But rest assured that I will tell the writer that the amount of mechanical problems distracted me from focusing on the main story elements, and that I probably could have given a more fair critique if the manuscript had been cleaner.

Garage Sales & Source Enlightenment

By lytspeed Posted in Friends, Gaming, Reading, Writing Leave a reply

Today I picked up a bunch of great books at a garage sale, including another copy of Ellison’s Angry Candy, Datlow’s Alien Sex anthology, several issues of Glimmer Train, a Leslie Marmon Silko book, the screenplay and director’s journal for Darren Aronofsky’s p(Pi), and Philip Toshio Sudo’s Zen Sex, the companion volume to Zen Guitar, which I reviewed on this website. My friend Dave also went to that garage sale, and purchased The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, Volume I. I saw him walking down the sidewalk, and asked if they had anything good at the sale.

“They did. But it’s yours, now. Happy early birthday present.” He handed me the book.

Thanks, Dave. 🙂

In the afternoon, I watched the Broncos-Rams game, glad to see that Brian Griese pulled through for the team. I get sick of the media hounding him, and it was nice to see him prove — again — that he’s a world class quarterback. During the game, I told my wife that I was going to either write or critique stories tonight, and that’s exactly what I did, after losing a close game of Literati to her. I beat her sister, though. (It’s strange to play a game over the Internet with someone who’s in the next room, but by doing so, we were also able to play with her sister in Phoenix. Pretty cool!)

I worked on “Chesterfield Gray,” getting into the swing of it by revising the three pages I had written before. I then continued for another page and a half, fact-checking WWII on the Internet as I went. I still didn’t know where the story was going, or why a WWII story was coming out, but I made a passing reference to Kamikaze attacks, and started exploring the main male character to see what made him tick. I decided that he had seen real death, and it had affected him deeply, and got to wondering which battles would be the most likely for him to have been in. I wanted it to be a battle where ships were known to have been directly hit by Kamikaze pilots, and the only ship that I knew off the top of my head had been hit was the U.S.S. Saratoga. She was badly damaged near Iwo Jima in 1945, with seven direct hits by Japanese aircraft. Three of those direct hits were Kamikaze strikes.

I know this because I dug out the obituary for my Uncle Wayne Johnson, who passed away in July. He was on the Saratoga on February 21, 1945, and was one deck below a direct Kamikaze hit. He spent the next ten days in a Hawaiian hospital, getting a glass eye and reconstructive surgery.

As I was reading the obituary, it hit me why I am writing this story. It’s my way of grieving for and paying tribute to my Uncle Wayne. Of course, the events in the story will only be tangential to his life, but I understand now why the story is coming out of me. I have a direction, now, and I can work on shaping the story into something worthy of his memory.

Wayne (sitting) and Lyle Johnson, brothers.  Cutter, New Mexico, March 2002
Photo © Stace Johnson, all rights reserved.

Commitment Conflicts

By lytspeed Posted in Family, Writing Leave a reply

Today, we celebrated my friend Jackie’s birthday by going to a mini-golf course and out to dinner at Pizzeria Uno. That didn’t keep me from getting some reading done, though. I also read about half of Trey Barker’s chapbook, Where the Southern Cross the Dog. The book consists of three horror stories tied together by old blues songs, and I’m enjoying it so far.

One thing bothered me while I was at the mini golf outing, though. I was invited to my god daughter’s 2nd birthday party on an upcoming Thursday night, but I’m already committed to a writer’s group that night. It’s not really a session I can skip, like I did the Old Possum’s session last month, because I will be assisting in the delivery of the material. This is the class where I will be accompanying Melanie Tem on “Ode to Billy Joe” before we discuss the storytelling aspects of the song.

“Waitaminnit,” you’re saying. “I thought you did that last week.” Good catch. I was scheduled to, but that class was pushed back a couple of weeks, and I forgot to mention it in this creativity journal.

Most writing books state that if you are going to be a successful writer, you have to be prepared to sacrifice some time with friends and family, and that conflicts will inevitably arise. This is one of those cases. I haven’t been there much for my god daughters since I embarked on this writing thing, and that eats at me, especially at times like this. I justify it by saying that, at this point, I’m not really needed in their lives. When they are older, and need someone to relieve them from the stress of dealing with parents day-to-day, I need to be available for them. But I also realize that if I don’t have a long-term relationship with them, they won’t trust me when I will most be able to help them. I hate that struggle.

I feel guilty about something else, though, too. We could probably work something out for the writing group so that Melanie could continue it without me and my guitar present. But, when I honestly examine which I would prefer to do, I want to perform at the writing group more than attend the birthday celebration. That sounds harsh, but it’s honest. If my god daughter were older and we were closer, I would have a tougher time with the decision. Admitting that, I feel very guilty, but I also feel that I’m being true to what I want to do. I don’t know which is right.