Wanting Willies

Okay, the title of my blog post here is a bit playful as a lot of fun things could be said about a certain kind of willy, let alone about wanting them. But here I'm meaning the kind of willy that for whatever linquitic reason always travel in packs.

It is the hair-raising kind of willies that can scare the bejesus out of you, which is yet another strange fear phrase we have. I'm not sure if Be is a twin to the Nazareth one or not, nor if Jesus stays when Bejesus leaves, but such things are for another blogpost.

Here, willies is not only a neat term, but also the title of a 1991 movie; an admittedly very cheesy movie and highly predictable if you're paying attention. But so what? It is still a fun one. And I love how it involves a story within a story: a story of boys camping out and trying to "outscare" (and outgross) one another with a scary and/or gross story that can top the previous one told.

Such a scenario isn't just situated in the realm of horror. Nor is it kept even in just the realm of fiction in general. Storytelling itself is the fundamental way we communicate, whether it is the fact-based storytelling of science, the faith-based storytelling of religion or the outright Mr. Roger's neighborhood full of make-believe.

It is an excuse to a boss of why we were late, yet also it is telling our spouse about the day we had, letting a friend know about a nice vacation spot, or letting others know about how you see the world; the good, the bad, the ugly and the beautiful.

We make up stories thoughout the day, some of us spinning truth with a little fiction, others of us with more fiction and a dash of truth, but the overall goal is the same with wanting the listener to share in what you have to tell, whether for a momen, an hour, a day, or a lifetime.

How incredibly wonderful and precious it is for us as humans to have such a device at our disposal. Every story we tell, even if just for a good scare, or to invoke a "gee whiz, that was lame" connects us humans with its common ground language that we are blessed to be able to interpret together.

"Dad, can you tell me a story."
"I always do son, I always do."

Overcoming Can't

So the Draft of Hello Kitty is done. Now what?

Which really isn't a what at all now, but more of a how.

For the plan after I finished Thumbs, the work before Hello Kitty, was that I would revise. Not Thumbs, which needs to ferment some more before such revision. Not Jeff of Yellowstone, which needs revision, but more of the fine-tuning kind. And certainly not yet Hello Kitty which has just been finished. Instead, I had/have my sights on the novel That Fargo Kid, which not only needs revised but in some places fixed.

In fact, I intended for Hello Kitty to be just a short story to end 2011 and act as a buffer between the long work of Th and the expected long work of revising TFK; however, HK turned out to be a fairly long work in itself. Sometimes stories are like that, making me cautious to do another buffering 'short' work before such revision, as it could easily take up another few months or more.

Yesterday towards that end I moved TFK notes, an attempted formal timeline and incomplete reverse outline to OneNote (an amazing program) along with the current draft to the Working file on my computer. Everything is set. So what now?

Well, I should probably: read all 468 pages (134,000 words) of TFK first to get my mind back into that groove; take notes of certain sequences and/or details which I will likely need to change, delete, or expand; kill darlings that don't fit; and generate copy that fixes some things.

However, all of the above are wide-scope strategies that intimidate the daily. When I'm in the midst of writing a novel, my day-to-day goal is straightforward: 1,000 words a day and I feel like I'm making progress on the story.

Here, the envisioned work ahead is more difficult for me to break up into daily chunks that will leave me feeling satisfied with that's day's output. Heck, it is downright overwhelming and the urge to drown in a sea of can't washes over me: The story is broke; it's unfixable; go on to something else, something that will get you back into the bliss of 1,000 words a day.

But in the end I don't want to just write 1,000 words a day. I want those 1,000 words to be good words; the best that I can create. So I owe it to my craft and to my story to make every effort to thwart that nagging can't.

An effort that overcomes can't and takes do all the way to done.

That Fargo Kid - Draft Thoughts

That Fargo Kid post-draft thoughts.
Draft 2, 134,016 words.

A bit late on getting this down, but I call Draft 2 from March 3, 2011 of 134,016 words the first official draft. Draft “1” was more a rough cut, so hence draft 2. But draft 2 “finished” has several loose ends and an unconvincing ending. The ending in itself I like, with Randy’s realization of his deeper feelings for Donnie that transcends the physical, but that outcome’s credibility is stretched based on what has come before in the form of Randy’s behavior.

The problem is twofold. The first involves the original length and the second involves what type of story I want to tell. Right now the novel seems an unwieldy, bastard child containing too many different stories; I mean different stories pulling at the protagonist in unhelpful ways, not just via entwining fictions or internal character conflicts.

I wrote D1 with a short story in mind, but then after completion decided it didn’t probe deep enough for the story I wanted to tell: a rich, complicated relationship between Randy and mentally-challenged Donnie that changes/develops over time. So I set about expanding elements; going way back in time and moving forward literally year by year. But in the course of expansion, some of the already written components of the story had to be tweaked or outright omitted.

Some of my original sequences were downright off and when I went through with the expansion I also worked to make everything more logically consistent with respect to school time, calendar, days of the week, etc. The problem is, I really liked the language of some of those written parts and labored over how to make certain passages fit in the revision. It maybe would have been better if I had never finished the rough cut version, leaving me with less of a structure in place…

The second fold of the problem is Randy becoming too worldly in terms of sexual experience. As such experience unfolded, I though this could work, making him into an anti-hero. After all, the cornerstone of the story is his relationship and possible abuse (depending on perspective) of Donnie; make him into the kind of person that is using pretty much everyone, male and female, for gratification, including Ken’s younger brother Carson.

But in retrospect, that seems to make the story less about That Fargo Kid and more about That Randy Kid. For how do I get someone who is using people in that fashion to really care what happens to Donnie at the end when the others attack Donnie? And the addition of Carson as told seems to take the story in a different, unwanted direction. Carson might be better as an outtake – a dark short story in itself. I might have to deconstruct this draft and mine it for different story strands:

Story 1: Original, Randy taking advantage of Donnie and also, later, Andy. Exploitative with respect to Donnie and Andy, but Randy retaining an innocence where it seems the events have sucked him in (the power of circumstances) rather than his actively being (merely) an exploiter himself.
Story 2: Randy becoming (more) corrupted and using others besides Donnie and Andy; more exploitative all around with Randy being conscious of his exploitation and working it.
Story 3: Cookie Monster (Dark short story, involving Ken’s younger brother Carson and Randy’s abuse)
Story 4: Tree (Dark short story involving Richard, Robert, Kevin and Randy)
Story 5: Nerds (Dark short story involving Kevin and Carson)

For the ending to play right, I need to strengthen Andy and Randy’s scenes together. And I’m thinking now such scenes would be stronger if they didn’t ever have sex during the course of the story – leaving that unrequited urge untapped and pushing a jealous Andy to incite the crowd against Donnie.

There are multiple loose ends, particularly involving the different levels of abuse (or use, depending on perspective) that take place throughout the story. I should either refine them or eliminate them altogether:

1) Andy’s physical abuse by his mother
2) Andy’s emotional abuse by Randy
3) Carson’s abuse by Randy
4) Carson’s (near) abuse by Kevin
5) Randy’s abuse by Kevin
6) Randy’s abuse by Robert.
7) Margaret’s role in things
8) Andy and Randy’s boyfriend status
9) What happened to Richard and Robert?
10) What happened to Kevin?
11) Need to hint more about the thematic meaning behind Donnie’s collection of rocks.
12) Need to hint more at the meaning (and symbolism) of Keebler and its significance with regards to Donnie’s understanding of boyfriend.

The story focus has moved away from Donnie into a less literary and more boysploitation realm. I need to reel it back in; not for qualms about writing such things, but simply because the increasing worldliness of Randy has diluted my original story, which requires more subtlety as things change between Donnie and Randy (and eventually Andy too).

I haven’t developed the non-amorous portions to the extent they should be developed. There are a lot of different components – and expressions -- of intimacy and I need to show their more nuanced aspects. I especially need to nail the ones that contribute to Randy’s taking advantage of Andy’s liking him. I also need to make the symbolism in the story clearer without being explicit or obvious to the point of distraction.

And, of course, I need to ensure the final story is ultimately about That Fargo Kid!

Something About Pumpkins

ENGL 3050 Assignment
Write a (exactly) 500 word opening, starting with this sentence:
“I don’t know where we used to get our pumpkins when I was a kid.”

Something About Pumpkins
JD Fox

“I don’t know where we used to get our pumpkins when I was a kid.”

A pause hung in the air as if it weren’t sure of its purpose. But before it could be hijacked by his companion, Kyle Lampier sent it on its way by filling it in with an added chuckle. He then grabbed hold of the rigid stem and began to scalp their recent purchase. The outer shell was no match for the sharpened Cephalon blade and he got halfway though the flesh when James took hold of his arm.

“Don’t know or don’t remember?”

Not looking up, Kyle used the pretense of continuing the beheading of the pumpkin to shake both hand and question off. Sitting at James’ kitchen table, Kyle sawed with a purpose: one that said, let’s not go there. I’m a man with a mission.

James Greeley watched him work, Kyle’s fingers turning white from gripping the blade so tight. His own fingers curled and uncurled as if they were loitering; hanging out on a limb and waiting for him to act. To do something, like maybe take hold of Kyle’s arm again. But coming up on their one year anniversary together – less than two months, on Christmas Eve, as hokey as that sounds – James knew better.

It wasn’t fear of response, but the opposite. When pressed about certain things from his past, Kyle would go armadillo with his emotions, curling up good and bad ones alike into an impenetrable ball. His defenses had been down enough at last year’s Christmas Eve party, no doubt due to wine, to toss James his phone number in an uncharacteristically flamboyant gesture made less elegant by subsequent vomiting. But sober as a saint most of the time and stomach contents generally contained, their relationship moved in slow increments.

Which actually suited James just fine. His eight-year-old son, Dennis, had seen enough of what wrong relationships look like, both when James was with the former Mrs. Greeley and also when he was with a post-divorce rebound that shouldn’t have happened. During the three years since then, James had only dated two other guys. Kyle is the only one that Dennis had ever met. And that was after six months.

James watched Kyle a moment longer, his lips struggling to keep from repeating his question. But he decided that now was not the time to press for revelations and risk spoiling the mood. Not with it being his weekend with Dennis and Trick or Treating just a few hours away. Sometimes it’s better to let things drop.

So it surprised James when Kyle spoke.

First, though, Kyle cut all the way through the pumpkin, pulling the top off and holding it up like a botanical souvenir. He studied it a moment, then set it down, along with the knife.

“What’s the difference? It amounts to the same thing, doesn’t it?”

As he began degutting the pumpkin, James moved behind him, placing encouraging hands on his shoulders.

“Not necessarily…”

WorkFoRcE

Aaron had his headphones on when the world began to end.

He sat in his cubicle working his way through email.

He tried to think of the best response to a request asking him to assist an item forwarded to him by a senior process analyst who had received a request for assistance on an issue brought up to him by a coworker who had received a request from a customer transferred to him by one of the several dozen customer service representatives that answered the one working number of the two toll-free numbers the company listed.

The customer apparently knew someone who had a friend who said her cousin was told by his wife that she had gotten a good deal once on something similar to what the customer wanted, and the deal was much better than what the customer currently was receiving. The customer wanted to know if they could do that.

Aaron found the email address for a staff process analyst and entered it in the To box.

Aaron typed:

Dear Joe,
Not sure about this.
What do you think?
Regards,
Aaron

Outlook automatically populated the space below his name, giving crucial details such as Aaron being a lead process analyst and the company’s slogan:

We Work So You Don’t Have To

Someone had sent an anonymous complaint to the employee suggestion mailbox complaining about the dangling preposition in their slogan, but by the time it got passed along to the branding department, there had been another major reorganization and the branding folks got let go.

The senior management team assumed marketing could take on that role; that there didn’t need to be a separate department for that function. Everyone who worked in marketing assumed it was someone else in marketing who had assumed those duties that branding did. After all, things were still branded, weren’t they?

Sometimes someone would comment that someone should go down to the former branding floor and see if there was anything important that had been left behind. But after some general talk and a meeting scheduled and rescheduled and finally canceled due to a change in job functions, it was more or less decided that someone was probably taking care of it already.

A funny noise came through his speaker that sounded a lot like an intercom. Aaron paused a moment. Some of the streamed electronic audio he listened to was experimental, so he decided the sound must just be part of the feed.

His next message was an updated meeting request to change next Wednesday’s afternoon meeting to Friday morning, unless the software design team needed to have the space for a review session regarding the project underway. In that case it would be rescheduled for next Monday, and a time would be given once the organizational training group had finally decided on a time for their Improving Productivity Seminar.

Aaron accepted.

It sounded like the grounds crew was mowing the yards again. At first he thought it was just more experimental electronics, but paying attention, he realized the noise was external.

Aaron grimaced and turned up the headphone volume.

He continued to answer his e-mail.

And he thought of the cheese and avocado sandwich waiting on him.
His phone rang. With a click of his mouse, he changed the audio from Music to Telephone.

“Constant, Inc. Aaron here… No, I haven’t gotten that report yet. You’ll need to talk to Bill… I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Bill about that. Or maybe Ed. Ed usually knows… Well, yeah, of course, I’ll call you when I find out… Okay, then… Have a great day.”

He clicked the audio back to Music. A meeting reminder popped up reminding him about cake being served in the Indigo conference room to celebrate Amy Gorgoth’s 30 years of service. Aaron took his headphones off and hung them on the side of his cubicle. He got up and took the elevator down to the thirteenth floor where the main conference rooms were. It took him a moment to find the right room, as now the conference rooms were all named after trees. The Spruce room looked like the correct one and had a cake on a table at any rate. There had been something written on it, but most of the slices had been cut and placed on individual plates, making it unclear what the message might have been.

It probably didn’t matter much, though, since Amy had been in Branding and was no longer around anyway. The cake must have been ordered by her assistant who was no longer around either.

Aaron took a plate holding a nicely frosted corner slice with a red plastic fork sticking out of it. He ate while watching all the other Constant Inc. employees do the same thing. He finished his cake and looked around for a trash can to put it in, but they had been removed as part of an effort to “go green”. He placed his now empty plate back onto the table, laying the fork on its side.

As he started to leave, Tom from real estate came over.

“Hey, Aaron.”

“Hey, Tom.”

“Do you have some time today to stop by my office and take a look at something?”

“Sure. How about this afternoon?”

“That would be great.”

“Okay, then.”

Aaron took the elevator back up to the forty-fourth floor and stopped by the break room on his way back to his cubicle. There were no cups on the counter, so Aaron opened up a new package he found in the storage cabinet. He pulled out the cups in bunches and ended up with three stacks in a nice row. He threw the left over plastic wrap away into a yellow waste can. Then he filled a cup with coffee, adding cream and sugar from cylindrical canisters. He thought of getting some chips from the vending machine, but decided it was too close to lunch.

He started to make his way back to his cubicle, but found he had finished his coffee before he had made it there. So he went back to the break room and filled another cup. This second time he made it all the way back to his desk and sat down. He set the cup next to a yellow legal pad that was at the moment blank.

He started to get back to work when he noticed there was an odd light coming in from a nearby window. He noticed it because it seemed to be flashing to the point of distraction. He frowned and got up, walking over to the window. He had to shade his eyes as some of the lights – it turned out not to be just one light – were too bright to look at directly.

There seemed to be some chaos on the streets below: wreckage and fire dominated the view along with people running about waving their arms. The glass that separated him kept most of the noise outside, but he thought he heard the occasional stray shout. Aaron sipped his coffee trying to think of what it might mean.

That is, whether or not there was something he should do.

Oh, yeah, he thought.

He walked back to his cubicle and sat down. He opened up Outlook and a blank e-mail. He looked in the directory and found Tom’s e-mail address.

He typed:

Hey, Tom,
Good to see you today.
Can I come by tomorrow instead?
I think I might take this afternoon off.
Aaron

He then shut down his computer and closed the lid to his laptop. He normally took it home with him, but decided to leave it in the docking station.