Method to my Madness Monday: Build Your Story/Build Your Barge

Building your story is like building a floating concert hall: neither one comes finished.

This is kind of what Aunt Olga's barge looked like when she bought it.

                This is the beginning of Saved by the Music, chapter two – when Willow (aka me) sees the interior of the barge her aunt wants to convert into a concert hall:

 

                Maybe the inside looked better.

                Aunt Agatha yanked open the thick metal door of the cabin.

                Any hopes I had were swept away in an explosion of dirt and dust. Particles went up my nose and down my throat, sending me into a coughing and sneezing fit.  “Sorry, Love. I’ll have to remember to clean up around this door,” Aunt Agatha said.

                Once the cloud and I cleared, I saw a cavern, big and dark and spooky. That’s all it was — one huge, bleak steel room, about the size of my school gym, with a regular sized door at either end, and gigantic sliding doors on each side. The walls, floor and ceiling were covered with grime. Piles of wood cluttered the room, plus other construction-type junk.

                “What do you think?” Aunt Agatha chirped, propping the door open with a crowbar. “Isn’t she a beaut?”

                I cleared my throat. “It’s not what I pictured.”

                She laughed. “What is?” She tweaked my nose. “You didn’t think the place came all finished, did you?”

            Your story doesn’t come all finished, either.

            Just as my aunt saw the potential in the dreary cavern, so must the writer see his completed work through the jumbled mess in his mind.

            Aunt Olga enjoyed restoring each piece of wood for the walls and the floor. She reveled in painting the roof. The whole project was a labor of love. And she was no spring chicken.

            So here’s a clue: If you don’t love the writing process – maybe you’re not a writer.

            Sure, there’s frustrating moments. Many.

            Soooooo many.

            “Oh my god,” you may scream, “I have to revise that #?!@!?# scene again?”

            But once you sit down and work on it, you’re happy. This is what you were meant to do! The fun is in the revision. In finding “le mot juste,” as Flaubert called it: The perfect word.

            If you don’t enjoy going over the same sentence seventeen times (bare minimum) to make sure it sings, you might want to reconsider your path.

            Go find something else that makes you heart sing – life is too short.

            But if you identify with these words, then go forth and write! Build your scenes, bird by bird (once again, I urge you to read Anne Lamott’s beautiful book.)

             You are the pig who built his house out of bricks, not straw or sticks.

You are taking the time to build the strongest story ever!!!

           

             Remember my aunt and her dark cavern.

            She believed she could build it into a concert hall.

             See the metaphor?

“Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.”

-Henry Ford

If you'd like to read my novel Saved by the Music, here's the link for Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Saved-Music-Selene-Castrovilla/dp/1934813141/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322498010&sr=1-2

There's a lot going on in this cover, if you look closely. See the face, the music strings, the skyline, the water...and the barge?

Requiem for my Aunt Olga Bloom

           

           My friend Orel called me last night and told me I’d been omitted from my Aunt Olga Bloom’s obituary in The New York Times.

            It upset me. She was the most influential person in my life, and I was the same in hers. She'd said it many times.

            But Aunt Olga would say, “Let it go, love. What does it matter? We hold the truth in our hearts.”

            She would be right, of course.

            She was always right.

            It was maddening, sometimes.

            But oh so comforting, as well.

            In my dark childhood Aunt Olga would arrive outside my house, shouting, "Hello, Old Chum!" She'd whisk me away in her battered Volkswagen Beetle, riding shotgun in a seat with no back. She’d removed it to carry planks of wood for her barge. Off we roared! On expeditions. It didn’t matter where. It only mattered that it was the two of us. She was the only person in my life who made me feel special. I would be locked in a mental institution right now pounding my head on the padded walls if not for her.

            We did not agree musically. She loved classical music, obviously. I adored rock & roll. But I did like Chopin, I admitted grudgingly – for teenagers hate to enjoy anything adults treasure. I also came to look forward to “The Four Seasons,” which they performed on the barge every Easter. And, at Christmas and New Year’s, The Brandenburg’s were pretty okay, too.

            I guess it was all pretty okay. It just took me a while to appreciate it – like many things in life. Rarely do we comprehend the beauty of what is right in front of us.

            I did appreciate Aunt Olga, though. We loved each other madly. She tried so hard to get me to play the violin – she even bribed me, paying me ten cents per line – but all I wanted was to write. It took her so many years to accept that. It wasn’t until she read my manuscript Evolution that she embraced me as a writer – a real writer. “My God, child,” she said, “I stayed up all night reading. I couldn’t put it down. You’ve written something worthy of Shakespeare. And the insights into humanity...You are so young for them...”

            That was one of the happiest days of my life: When Aunt Olga approved of my work. I don’t know if I could’ve found the strength to write such a gut-wrenching thing, if not for her love.

            Then there was the book I wrote about us: Saved by the Music. She couldn’t get past the opening at first, saying “I can’t bear to think of the sadness in your life.”

            But I told her she was the one who got me through, and she was able to read the rest. And she was proud – of me, and this tribute to her.

            Because she was proud of me, I was proud of me, too.

            My aunt taught me that there was no such thing as "no." There was only “not yet.”

            When people laughed at her dream, she laughed louder, agreeing that it was indeed a funny thing – but knowing that all great accomplishments started out with something humorous, or even ludicrous.

            When she brought me to her barge – the barge she was inspired to buy because of me, to give me a safe, creative haven – she stretched out her arms and declared, “Welcome home, love!”

            It was a disgusting, grey place – but it was home because she said so.

            My aunt was my home.

            And then, because I wanted so badly for her vision to come true, I helped her. I didn't love doing it, but I did it anyway. With me by her side, Aunt Olga turned that atrocious barge into Bargemusic.   

             Aunt Olga and I did share the same romantic tendencies. I read a love letter she wrote to her second husband, Toby: “I worship you,” she wrote. “You are God.”

            I so could have written that.

            She was a free spirit who truly lived the life she wanted, and she didn’t give a damn about what anyone thought about it. She was a floating, Russian Auntie Mame.

            She was Aunt Olga.

            Thank God, she was Aunt Olga.

            My old chum.

Tomorrow: A Revolutionary Life Revisited

Aunt Olga and Lovely Bloom during the early days of the barge

I apologize for missing today's Revolutionary Saturday.

On Thursday - Thanksgiving Day - my aunt, Olga Bloom, passed away.

To say she was beloved is an understatement.

My aunt's concert hall, Bargemusic, was known the world over.

My aunt brought joy to this world.

Tomorrow, I will hopefully be able to get my thoughts together and write a suitable tribute to Aunt Olga.

They don't make them more revolutionary than her.

As Aunt Olga - first and foremost a musician - was fond of saying: "I love you darling, but the season is over."

It was a helluva season.

Method to my Madness Monday: Grammar vs. Voice

Welcome to Method to My Madness Monday!

On Saturday I Facebooked a couple of comments my 92 year old aunt Olga Bloom made.

Bargemusic - my aunt's world-famous floating concert hall, which I helped build

This reminded of me of Aunt Olga’s reaction to the beginning of my novel, Saved by the Music – which is autobiographical, and also a tribute to her.

Aunt Olga in the early days of Bargemusic, with her dog, Lovely Bloom

Here’s the beginning of my novel:

The taxi’s spinning wheels spit pebbles and dirt as it left me behind at the marina’s gate. The dusty haze was a perfect fit for my state of mind.

I wobbled across the driveway and into the marina, trying to balance with my heavy suitcase. Sweat beaded under my bangs.

It was unbearably bright, like the sun was aiming right at me. But looking around, I decided that the marina needed all the brightening it could get. Damaged boats lined the gravel-filled boatyard, all of them in dry dock, up on stilts like big crutches—a nautical hospital. Their exposed insides were like my wrecked life. But at least someone cared enough to fix them.

The sounds of saws, drills, and hammers punctured the air as I passed the workers using them. I tried tuning out the men’s jeering whistles.

One yelled out, “Nice ass.”

Another called, “Hey, Slim.”

Some people really got off on taunting strangers.

I crunched though the gravel, kicking up pieces as I moved toward the water. Sailboats, cruisers, and yachts were all tied with rope to the docks.
So where was my Aunt Agatha’s barge? What did a barge even look like?

Aunt Agatha had told me about the barges that kings rode on centuries before, but she’d never actually described their appearance. There didn’t seem to be anything worthy of royalty bobbing about in this marina, at least not anything I saw.

“Over here, Willow!” a scratchy voice called out.

There was Aunt Agatha, waving from the deck of a huge and hideous metal monstrosity. This blows, I thought, doubting there’d be any cable TV on this scow.

My aunt hurried off the vile green vessel, prancing along a wooden plank across the water to reach me.

“What is that ugly thing?” I asked.

“That barge is our future concert hall!”
She couldn’t be serious.


You would think Aunt Olga would react in some personal way when she read this intimate story – which she was a part of!

But the first thing she did when she finished reading this opening was to look at me intently and ask, “Do you know the proper use of a modifier?”

This may sound harsh, but it was done with love. My aunt is old-school about grammar.

I said, “Not really.” I didn't even know what a modifier was, let alone the proper use of one. “But this is in the first-person voice of a fifteen year old, and they don’t tend to use modifiers correctly¸ either.” At least, this fifteen year old didn't - as she was based on the teenaged me.

She considered this for a long moment. Then she said, “Oh! I get it.”

This exchange illustrates today’s focus:

Sometimes, voice and grammar are at odds.

Sometimes, proper grammar kills.

I just ran my opening through an on-line grammar check service. It called my writing “adequate,” saying it could benefit from a revision.

It didn't like my modifier choices, either.

Furthermore, it recommended that I avoid contractions because they make my writing “too informal.” As a matter of fact, it called by use of contractions “a critical issue.” They were the largest reason why a revision would prove beneficial.

Guess what? A teenager’s voice IS informal.

To me, first person is like a running dialogue with the reader. However the person speaks, that’s how the writing should be. Once again I’ll use my favorite book The Catcher in the Rye as an example:

“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”

First page of Catcher - the underlining was done by someone else.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say this writing is less than adequate, according to the grammar checker. But as an opening, you can’t get more perfect than this. We know this kid – just from these few sentences.

This is what my oldest worn-out copy of The Catcher in the Rye looks like

Here’s another passage:

“Old Selma Thurmer - she was the headmaster's daughter - showed up at the games quite often, but she wasn't exactly the type that drove you mad with desire. She was a pretty nice girl, though. I sat next to her once in the bus from Agerstown and we sort of struck up a conversation. I liked her. She had a big nose and her nails were all bitten down and bleedy-looking and she had on those damn falsies that point all over the place, but you felt sort of sorry for her. What I liked about her, she didn't give you a lot of horse manure about what a great guy her father was. She probably knew what a phony slob he was.”

Ouch! The on-line grammar corrector would probably malfunction from overload here. But man, this is good stuff!

Everyone loves Catcher - even Chuck Schulz!

It would be fun to paste famous openings in the grammar checker and see what their “faults” are. If I had time, that is. (If you try any, let me know what happens!)

Bottom line: Be real. Unless your character is a grammar stickler like my aunt, don’t worry about modifiers – whatever they are. And embrace contractions. They are your friends.

Readers embrace authenticity.

That’s all I have to say about that.

J.D. Salinger's letter rejecting a film offer, which has nothing to do with this topic, but I found it on Google Images and I love it!