Chris Orcutt, Writer

There are many drawbacks to being bipolar, but probably the most insidious is that when I'm on the cusp of, or in the midst of, a new manic cycle, I can become extremely irritable.

Petulant. Combustible.

When this happens, anything can set me off, and I have to exercise every fiber of self-restraint in me to keep from tearing people's throats out. I don't mean for this to happen, I honestly don't. I'll lash out at people and fifteen minutes later, like a summer thundershower, it passes and I don't know what I was so upset about. Like today with parking my car.

No Parking, biotch!

Since I moved back to my high school town of Millbrook, NY a year ago, I've been parking across the street in an empty spot behind my parents' building. It was convenient, and in exchange Alexas and I shoveled out the parking area that we shared with my parents and their elderly neighbors. A nice little arrangement.

Today when I returned home from the errands that a working writer/house husband does (speed grocery shopping, banking and office supply purchasing), I went to park my car and discovered another one in it. We've all had this experience. I hate fighting with people over knucklehead things like this, but I chose to confront the wrongdoers. I found out the vehicle belonged to a woman who works in a day salon across the street and went to their office and politely asked that the car be moved.

The woman said, as women have been wont to say to me from time to time, "Don't yell at me." I wanted to say, "Bitch, please...if I was yelling, honey—you'd know it." But Alexas has pointed out to me over the years that such behavior on my part is alienating and divisive, so I've worked hard at not doing that. Instead I just said (in an admittedly sharper tone), "Move the car."

The upshot was that the owner of the business, a usually pleasant enough woman, ran out and confronted me, stating that she had a commercial lease that entitled her to that spot behind the building. I replied that I found this interesting, given that I'd been parking there for over a year and during all of the blizzards last winter, I didn't see her once out there asserting her right to that spot by shoveling the parking area.

The bottom line here is, as soon as I cooled down below my melting point, I realized that she was right and immediately wrote an apology letter. But the first draft of the letter was only 10% apology and 90% "Take that, biotch!" I emailed the draft to Alexas for her thoughts, and as she pointed out with her always level head, the first draft would leave both of us feeling bad, and wasn't the idea to settle this amicably? Here's the 1st draft of the letter:

Dear Darlene,

I want to apologize for my confronting you about the parking behind the building. Now that I’ve had a chance to think about what you mentioned regarding your lease, I realize that you have rights to that spot.

My only wish is that you had said something a year ago, when my wife and I were out there, storm after storm, shoveling out that entire parking area (including your own spot closest to the back door). I find it interesting that when it was inconvenient (i.e., covered in a foot of snow), you didn’t make an issue about our parking there. But now that the weather is fine, well….

Now that we know you have rights to that spot, we will no longer be parking there. However, we won’t be shoveling any of it either. With the right comes the responsibility. Enjoy it.

Sincerely,

Chris Orcutt

Now the edited version:

Dear Darlene,

I want to apologize for my confronting you about the parking behind the building. Now that I’ve had a chance to think about what you mentioned regarding your lease, I realize that you have rights to that spot.

My only wish is that you had said something a year ago, when my wife and I were out there, storm after storm, shoveling out that entire parking area (including your own spot closest to the back door). I find it interesting that when it was inconvenient (i.e., covered in a foot of snow), you didn’t make an issue about our parking there. But now that the weather is fine, well….

Now that we know you have rights to that spot, we will no longer be parking there. However, we won’t be shoveling any of it either. With the right comes the responsibility. Enjoy it.

Sincerely,

Chris Orcutt

Whereas the first draft was the equivalent of taking a pup and pressing its face into its "accident" on the rug, the second draft was considerably toned-down. Which leads me to my point for this piece—the importance of always writing in drafts. It is very difficult to get it right the first time, and any piece of writing, even a lowly apology-complaint letter, benefits from a second pass.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go slash that bitch's tires order a fruit basket for my lovely neighbor.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 04:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's raining today in Millbrook, New York. When I lived and worked in the Big City, I enjoyed rainy days because they gave you the feeling of, "Screw it—what else am I gonna do today? Might as well work. At least it's dry."

But when you live in the country, and you work at home, you've pretty much got three choices for places to go when it rains: the diner, the library and church. On dry days, I'll often hit all three during my daily walk, but when it's raining...well, I'm stuck inside.

Which leads me to the subject of this entry: Richard Scarry's Rainy Day Book. I loved it as a kid, and it's tough to believe that it's been around 30 years. I must have had one of the originals.

The rainy day savior by Richard Scarry

The Rainy Day Book I remember was chock-full of fun activities for a kid stuck in the house—especially a house in the country, like my grandparents' estate, which was in the sticks. Here's just a taste of the jolly activities offered in the book:

• Thank-you notes
• Greeting cards
• Finger puppets
• Color-mixing
• Connect-the-dots
• Valentine's cards
• Easy recipes (like "Mustard on Crackers!" Yum!)
• Making a model town

I'd love to see somebody come out with a Rainy Day Book for Grownups. As a writer I am infinitely imaginative when it comes to contriving ways of avoiding writing, but having an activity book would help.

Here is a sampling of the activities my "adult" Rainy Day Book would have:

• A Letter to the Editor "kit"—complain about local issues in five easy steps!
• Angelina Jolie & Johnny Depp cut-out finger-puppets (imagine the possibilities)
• Design your own Avatar!
• How to organize your closet
• Balance your checkbook
• Rate nude scenes from movies
• Prank phone call scripts
• Cocktail recipes (it's past noon someplace in the world!)
• An "Am I Depressed?" Questionnaire
• Stupid computer tricks
• And much more!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to get back to work.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Like a lot of writers, I'm a cinemaphile. I love everything about a good film—the characters, plot, setting, direction and pacing—but what I especially appreciate is the dialogue. I live for the great line.

I always know when I'm enchanted with a line because I'll quote it to myself or Alexas for days, sometimes weeks, afterwards. We all have our favorite lines, but not many of us have a list of them that we can't wait to use. I'm one of these freaks.

Trouble is, in order for these choice lines to work, everything must line up perfectly. The situations are so specific, and the conditions so rare, that the opportunity to use the line will probably never come. Still, the readiness is all...

Below are the lines I can't wait to use, along with the situation in the film and THE BAD NEWS—the reasons I'll probably never get to use the line in a real-life situation.

THE MOVIE: Chinatown

THE LINE: "Forget it, Jake—it's Chinatown."

THE SITUATION: In the film, Jake has just seen his lover, Mrs. Mulwray, shot and killed in Chinatown. The cops tell Jake to get lost, and his partner, attempting to drag him away, delivers the line.

THE BAD NEWS: The problem is there are too many variables. First, I'd need to be in a Chinatown someplace (New York is most realistic because it's closest to me, although San Francisco isn't unrealistic because my in-laws live there). Next, I'd have to be in Chinatown when something bad went down AND a good friend of mine or business partner is involved in it. Then, in order for the line to be effective, my friend's/business partner's name ideally would have to rhyme with Jake (not many names fit this criterion) or at the very least have a hard consonant at the end: "Forget it, Jack—it's Chinatown." Nope, never gonna happen.

---

THE MOVIE: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

THE LINE: "Think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?"

THE SITUATION: In the film, Sundance chides partner Butch Cassidy for using so much dynamite to blow open a train safe that it ends up blowing up the entire boxcar.

THE BAD NEWS: First of all, while I do have a friend who knows how to use dynamite, I don't see myself tagging along anytime soon if he was using it to blow open something of value. And even if I did accompany him on such an adventure, because he knows what he's doing, I doubt he would use enough of it such that the item in question is completely blown to hell, thus making the line ironic. Finally, my friend is not named Butch. I don't know a Butch and am not likely to know one in the future, so this line, too, will never happen.

---

THE MOVIE: Dirty Harry

THE LINE: "Go on out and get some air, Fatso!"

THE SITUATION: In the film, Dirty Harry has cornered the Scorpio Killer in Kezar Stadium (in Golden Gate Park) when his partner, Frank DiGiorgio (a.k.a. "Fatso") asks if he needs any help. The implication is that Frank is trying to prevent Harry from doing something he'll regret—torturing the killer. As Harry marches toward the killer with his gun drawn, he yells back to his partner, "Go on out and get some air, Fatso!"

THE BAD NEWS: The big problem here is, I don't know anybody with the nickname "Fatso". I don't even know anybody fat enough to warrant such a nickname. Next, my "Fatso" would need to be my partner in something. I suppose it's possible that one day in the future, I could have a heavyset man as a writing partner on a screenplay, and the producer does something to piss me off. Brandishing my Mont Blanc, I head towards the producer's office. I see my partner following me, so I say, "Go on out and get some air, Fatso!" But I'm a realist. Chances are, this won't happen. However, if it does, I'll be ready.

---

THE MOVIE: Used Cars

THE LINE: "Now wait just a goddamn minute, what the hell is this? Is this a 1977 Mercedes SEL convertible for twenty-four thousand dollars? That's too fuckin' high!"

THE SITUATION: In the film, one of the used cars salesmen, Jeff, disguises himself in western garb, calls himself "Marshall Lucky" and, with the help of Lenny & Squiggy, interrupts a Presidential address to do a guerilla car commercial. Jeff then proceeds to shoot a bunch of cars on the competing lot across the strip, culminating in the above exclamation before blowing up a particularly overpriced automobile.

THE BAD NEWS: Lots of problems with this one. For starters, I don't sell used cars, and I never have. I dislike selling of any kind, so that's a major drawback. Second, even if I did sell used cars for a living, and even if I were willing to dress up as a mock "marshall" and jam a Presidential address for free airtime, I doubt I'd ever find a 1977 Mercedes SEL convertible for $24,000. And if I did happen to find such a gem at that price, I'd probably buy it, not blow it up. Finally, there's that dynamite issue again, which I don't see a way past.

---

THE MOVIE: The Natural

THE LINE: "You've got a gift, Roy, but it's not enough. You've got to develop yourself. Rely too much on your gift, and you'll fail."

THE SITUATION: In the film, Roy Hobbs's father is playing catch with him, and he sees his son's potential.

THE BAD NEWS: Besides the rub with the name again (Roy), in order for this line to really work, it needs to be used in the context of sports, not day-trading. And with sports, it would have to be a classic sport, not something like Jai-alai. Also, I don't plan on having children, so unless a "surprise" happens along, I wouldn't get to use this line in its most "natural" (ha-ha) context.

---

THE MOVIE: Goldfinger

THE LINE: "Ah, but you're forgetting one thing...if I fail to report, double-oh-eight replaces me."

THE SITUATION: In the film, Bond is strapped down to Goldfinger's laser-cutter and is desperately trying to give the villain a reason to release him.

THE BAD NEWS: Although my Social Security number starts with "007", even if I were one day captured by a megalomaniac, I doubt he would use my SSN as the means to identify me; and even if he did, he'd know how unlikely it was that my replacement's SSN would start with "008". You just can't win.

---

THE MOVIE: The Untouchables

THE LINE: "You wanna get Capone? Here's how you get him. He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue! That's the Chicago way! And that's how you get Capone!"

THE SITUATION: Malone, the beat cop played by Sean Connery, is instructing wet-behind-the-ears Treasury Officer Ness on the lengths he'll need to go to if he wants to get Capone. I love everything David Mamet has ever written, and the fact that he sets this short scene in a church makes it all the more ironic and delicious.

THE BAD NEWS: While it's certainly possible that an antagonist named Capone could surface in my life sometime in the future, it wouldn't make sense for me to say, "That's the Chicago way...," and without that part, the entire line loses its force. Mamet has constructed a tidy little self-referential argument here, and substituting another three-syllable place name like "Wash-ing-ton" or "Man-hat-tan" just wouldn't work.

---

THE MOVIE: The Empire Strikes Back

THE LINE: "We can still outmaneuver 'em!"

THE SITUATION: Han Solo, Chewie and Princess Leia have just escaped from the ice planet Hoth when several star destroyers race in to intercept them. Han realizes he can't outrun the much larger space ships, but he can outmaneuver them, so he sends the Millennium Falcon into a dive. (Seconds later, as two star destroyers scrape against each other, the Admiral aboard one of them announces, "Take evasive action!")

THE BAD NEWS: Plain and simple, I don't have a space ship, and to my knowledge there is no Empire ruling over our galaxy with star destroyers either. The line doesn't work with smaller craft like boats or snowmobiles, so alas, I will never get to use it—at least with the full force of its meaning in the film.

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Posted by Chris Orcutt at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm not sure why, but I do. I have a thing for Alices.

A little self-psychoanalysis here. I think my interest in Alices started as a child, when I first read Alice in Wonderland. I remember being a boy and admiring this cool girl and her amazing adventures and all of the great lines she had.

Years later, as an undergraduate philosophy major, in a course on logical fallacies, we read Lewis Carroll's story again, and I was even more amazed by the playful, brilliant mind of Alice. Here are just a few of her better lines:

"Curiouser and curiouser!"

"It was much pleasanter at home, when one wasn't always growing larger and smaller, and being ordered about by mice and rabbits."

"It would be so nice if something made sense for a change."

"If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?"

Then at some point as a child I saw the movie, and I remember being spellbound by Alice's hair and eyes. I'm quite sure that these features of hers, beyond her clever brain, are why she has been so popular among little girls for generations.

Women everywhere have forever wondered, "What
product is this bitch using to get a sheen like that?"

Boy or girl, how could you not fall in love with Alice?

Okay, so now it's back to college for the next Alice. Two Alices, actually.

While going to school in Boston, besides my share of girlfriends, I had three gal-pals. The great thing about gal-pals when you're a heterosexual guy is that your respect for them and your enjoyment of their company outweighs your desire to sleep with them. Billy Crystal's character in When Harry Met Sally is right when he says, "You pretty much want to nail them, too," but again, you quell this desire in the interest of friendship.

Even though the first two aren't Alices, I'd like to mention them. Number one was a woman named Kate, a pallid, goth-ish English major with a wonderfully wry sense of humor. And Margie was the second—a Southern belle (Georgia, land of Scarlett O'Hara) and fellow philosophy major. Since I was a multi-generational New Englander, we clashed beautifully. Margie and I loved to argue; we'd go to movies together and afterwards argue about the film, go to the MFA together and argue about the paintings, go for coffee at the ERC and argue about that, too. Last I heard, she's now a successful lawyer in Phoenix. You go, girl!

And then there was Alice, who was something of a bad influence.

Daisy Buchanan's on Newbury St. in Boston: Where
Alice and I tore it up many an afternoon.

Alice loved alcohol as much as I did, and senior year she frequently talked me into cutting class so we could go drinking. We drank Bud at Fenway, G&Ts at Daisy Buchanan's on Newbury Street, Murphy's Irish Red at Tommy Doyle's in Cambridge, Bushmills Irish Whiskey at my apartment while listening to The Doors, and, three or four times (I forget—I was drunk), Stoli shots at The Foxy Lady, a strip club in Providence, RI. (Alice was either bisexual or an undeclared lesbian. Characteristically coy, she would never say.)

To this day, I don't remember how we got to Providence and back; I think Alice drove, and probably while drunk at that. I ended up using Alice as the prototype for the femme fatale in my novel A REAL PIECE OF WORK. I considered briefly naming her Alice, as my homage to the original hell-raiser, but I went with Shay Connolly instead.

Another Alice that stirred my imagination in college appeared in the 35th Anniversary Edition of Playboy. Her name is Alice Denham, and she was the July 1956 Playmate.

Once again, however, it was more than her looks that interested me. Yes, she was a gorgeous redhead, and yes she had a figure that could make a blind man weep. But she was also a talented writer and the only woman, says Publishers Weekly, "whose fiction and breasts have appeared in the same issue."

Thank God we can't say the same of Norman Mailer.

Alice Denham, working on a story in her bare feet. HOT!

Alice, looking over her work. Two major turn-ons
for me: a hot woman in a pickup truck, and
a hot literary woman at a typewriter.

Alice Denham wrote other work, too, including a widely praised novel, My Darling from the Lions. She wrote for television for years, and recently she came out with a "kiss-and-tell" memoir entitled Sleeping with Bad Boys, in which she dishes the dirt on all of the literary and film stars of the fifties.

I really shouldn't be speaking of her in the past tense because, to my knowledge, she still writes and does readings in New York City from time to time. Alice, if you're out there and reading this, I'd love to meet you—maybe at a reading of my own in the future.

The final Alice for whom I've had a thing is the inimitable Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the unruly daughter of Theodore Roosevelt. Ever since I read this biography on Alice, I've had something of a crush on her.

Alice Roosevelt, TR's daughter, and
my love from another lifetime.

Alice Roosevelt was the original Paris Hilton, but
with an IQ 100 points higher and not at all slutty.

The woman was brilliant, witty, beautiful and irreverent. They named a color for her—Alice blue (similar to the color of postal uniforms). When her father forbade her from smoking cigarettes under the roof of the White House, she said, "Fine," and went up on the roof to smoke.

When TR was leaving office in 1909, she made a voodoo doll of Taft and buried it on the White House lawn. And while on a Far East good will delegation for her father, she acquired so much free loot from heads of state that one member of the party wrote a satirical poem called, "Alice in Plunderland".

And with that, my story of Alices has come full-circle. Why do I have a thing for Alices? I'm still not sure, but I enjoyed sharing this with you.

Here's to Alices everywhere.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A cardinal rule among writers is that you NEVER let family members critique drafts of your work. Invariably they will either praise it beyond its worth or shred it (and you) to ribbons.

My father, Al Orcutt (a.k.a. "Big Al" and "Broken-Down Old Dad"), is a retired school principal and avid reader. Although most of his reading is in American history and contemporary politics, he does enjoy the occasional novel and is a rabid fan of one of my favorite writers, John Irving. Until recently, Al had a retiree dream job—"working" in the Millbrook paint store. Since foot traffic has never been overwhelming in the village, Al got a lot of reading done.

Dad posing at the paint store. I was going for the look of those
antique photographs, in which the proprietor is expressionless.

But Al got bored with it, and the woman he was working for, although a savvy businesswoman, has a reputation for annoying her employees over time. So, for the first time in his life, Al actually QUIT a job.

The trouble is, now Al doesn't have a lot to do during the day. If I drop by (we live in the same town, across the street from each other—purely coincidental), Al is usually ranting at CNN or MSNBC about some new "damn bullshiit thing that idiot Bush is doing." I'll sit with Al for half an hour or so, during which time each of us will test our blood pressure twice, then go home shaking my head. What's becoming of my poor old broken-down old dad?

So...I've decided to break the Prime Directive and give Al a copy of my latest novel to read and critique. He needs a project, and although I've had several readers, I need a reader of his type, somebody who will read it purely for the story and who will tell me if it bores him at any point.

Al's verdict on the book will likely be one of two exclamations (spoken with a thick Downeast Maine accent):

"Jeezus Christ, Chris—how do you do it? Jeezus, if I tried to come up with a story longer than a page, my goddamn eyeballs would explode."

OR

"Jeezus Christ, Chris—it was good, but so many characters. I mean, Jeezus, how many of the fuckers do you need?"

I printed out a copy last night and will hand-deliver it to him this morning. While I'm over there, I'll test my blood pressure. I'll probably need it.

I'll report back to you in a couple of weeks, when I'm making this little project due.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 07:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Because I spend 75% of my time on the computer writing, for years I've allowed myself to get suckered into purchasing (yes, actually buying—I refuse to pirate software) the latest version of Microsoft Office. Now that Office 2008 for the Mac is out, I briefly considered picking it up. Very briefly.

In a previous entry I described the three writing programs I use most often: WriteRoom, Pages (part of Apple's iWork suite), and Final Draft. Conspicuously absent from that list is MS Word.

Office 2008 for the Mac. I'm
running out to get it now—NOT!

Unless the fellows in Redmond, Washington get their heads out of their asses and figure out what people who actually write want in a program, Office 2004 for the Mac will be my last Microsoft purchase.

I'm tired of their shipping faulty software and letting "early adopters" (never me—I know better) find the glitches and essentially fix it for them. I'm tired of "productivity software" that is anything but productive and in fact ends up wasting your time as you jerk around with it, trying to get it to behave the way you need it to. And I'm tired of programs like Word that are written for the lowest common denominator—for people who don't know the difference between a gerund and an ampersand.

So, listen up, Microsoft. In case no one's told you before (like they haven't), here are the features writers of book-length work want in a program. In some cases, Word has these features, or similar ones, but they're so deeply buried in the program, or presented via a clunky, obtuse interface, that they're useless. Here's my list:

THE LIST

1. Make a special version of Word specific to writers of book-length work and/or scripts.

2. In this version, have the ability to shut off ALL auto-anything. No auto-correction, auto-character substitution, or auto-"I see you're working on..." dialog boxes.

3. Get rid of all "Wizards" or template choosers. Allow the user to designate the type of document he's writing based on a function key selection at the outset of the program (e.g., F8=Novel, F9=Script, F10=Nonfiction book, F11=Doctoral Thesis or Academic/Scientific paper—both require massive footnotes).

4. Built-in support of the three major citation and style systems: APA, MLA and Chicago. These should be selectable in Preferences.

5. A side-window, like with Adobe Acrobat, in which you can instantly search for any word (a character name, a place, a verb, anything) and get a list of ALL its occurrences in the text, the pages it appears on, and the contexts.

6. Recognition of fictional dialogue attribution conventions, so the program isn't falsely declaring there's something wrong with the sentence. "Please listen, Microsoft," he said.

7. One-click tagging and formatting that MAKES SENSE. For example, I make one click and tag a line as a Chapter heading. In Setup or Preferences, I create a stylesheet, much like you do with CSS, in which Chapter headings, book titles, word counts, page headers, etc. are designated ahead of time. Then, if I want to make changes, I make them in ONE place and have the changes CASCADE (CSS, get it?) through the entire book or script.

8. Pre-programmed formatting conventions for each type of work mentioned here.

9. Built-in multiple dictionaries and thesauri: American Heritage & Oxford American English; Rogets & The Synonym Finder.

10. A usage finder built-in: Fowler's and/or The Careful Writer.

11. An editing and polishing "engine". This is my big idea. I'm not talking about simple spell-check or stupid "grammar check" here. These are the features of my fantasy editing & polishing program:

a) First, it should operate the way real writers work when they write, which is to focus on one, or a couple, of items each time through the manuscript. The writer should be able to select from a variety of choices for editing: adverbs, adjectives, dash usage, that/which hunting, past progressive (e.g., was running) usage, etc.

b) The writer should be able to get counts of any and all of these items. Book-length work is all about these counts: word count, how many adjectives or adverbs the writer uses, how many times/frequency the writer uses other forms of punctuation, etc. Sometimes seeing the sheer number of times you do something makes you reconsider it.

c) What I call "repetition alerts"—using the same word more than twice in a row or beyond a designated limit in a chapter or page; repeating sentence structures; beginning two sentences the same way; opening two chapters the same way; etc.

d) A polishing component done in split-screen: on the left, your original document sentence or paragraph; on the right, the modified version.

e) The ability to highlight text on both split-screens and have the computer read it back to you aloud; often you don't notice good or bad writing until you HEAR it. (By the way, kudos to Microsoft for the Speech playback function in Word 2004 for the Mac. This was a step in the right direction.)

I could go on and on, but why bother? I doubt Microsoft is listening. However, maybe you work for one of the other writing software companies—Nisus, Scrivener or OpenOffice—and you'd like to take these suggestions. Fine, but if you do, please make sure you take my editing/polishing "engine" idea because that's the one I'd really like to use.

Thank you for reading this rant.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Once upon a time, there was a writer. He lived in a small house in the country, and each day when he finished his work, he would walk his little town, saying hello to all of the wonderful people—the postman, the fireman, the doctor, the grocer. Life was very good for the writer.

Each day, when the writer edited that morning's work, he printed out the pages, put them on a clipboard and went through the material with a red pen. The red pen was a nasty throwback to his teaching days, but he liked it because he could always see marks made in red. The writer, you see, was slightly colorblind.

Clipboard in hand, the writer would go to his neighborhood diner and drink 3-4 cups of coffee while editing his work. Stimulated by the din of his fellow townsfolk, the writer often came up with insightful edits, and in some cases whole new scenes. The diner was always where the writer outlined and planned a piece of writing. Maybe it was the worn Formica tabletops, maybe it was the comfort of being in a place where everyone knew him and left him alone. Whatever it was, the writer liked it.





Once finished at the diner, the writer went on his long daily walk and returned home to his snug, gold-painted office with the fancy desktop computer. When he was younger, the writer had always fantasized about having a real home office with a door that closed, but the gods had never blessed him this way. Now, however, the writer had a marvelous space in which to work, with two computers, two typewriters, two printers, and a dedicated hard drive for backing up his work.

Merrily would the writer enter his edits into the computer. With each line he entered, the writer pressed CMD-S to save his work. Not that it mattered because the fancy computer also auto-saved his work every 2 minutes. And each day's work was saved with a suffix, thusly: MY_WRITING_MMDDYY.

At the end of each day, the writer would upload his finished work to his best friend's server. The best friend was profoundly generous and gave freely of his bounty of bandwidth and mass storage capability. And all the friend ever asked for in exchange was some cash when the writer had it and the occasional case of non-alcoholic Pinot Noir grape juice.

Nothing could impinge on the writer's world.

So the writer grew smug, smug in the belief that he had shielded himself from any possible disaster.

"Fires and floods and tornadoes and blizzards—blow, wrack and rage!" the writer yelled. "Fuck you all! I'm covered!"

Meanwhile, Zeus and his daughters, the Muses, did not take kindly to the writer's arrogance. For years they had immersed him in a delightful fog of never-ending inspiration. One of Zeus's daughters, a comely redhead, was especially hurt by the writer's haughtiness because she was the one who had been charged with ensuring the safety of the writer's work. And now for the writer to suggest that it was technology—mere flecks of silicon—that was protecting him....

The redheaded goddess seethed.

One evening, as the writer was finishing up a particularly large stack of edits—several chapters of changes—the Muses decided to teach him a lesson. The writer was giddy with how well his writing had gone that day, and he had decided to clean up his workspace and the computer desktop to make everything tidy for the next day's work.

While dragging some files to the trash, unbeknownst to him the writer's mouse hand flinched ever so slightly, grabbing hold of that day's file. Because the writer prided himself on decisiveness, he emptied the trash immediately.

And at that exact moment, the writer realized what he had  done—deleted that day's work (at least 50 pages of edits) before he had backed it up to his best friend's server.

The writer spun around in his chair and looked to the dedicated hard drive, the backup device linked to a program called Time Machine on his fancy computer. The light wasn't on. For weeks, the writer had left it shut off because the little noises the drive made distracted him when he was trying to write.

The writer was fucked.

So, the writer had to start over again, entering every single change into the computer.

From that day forward, the first thing the writer ensured at the start of every workday was that the backup drive was on and working.

Today the writer lives on, enjoying his snug little office and enjoying his work, but he died a little that day. A piece of the writer's heart was pierced and will never live again.




MORAL:  IF YOU HAVE A BACKUP DRIVE, MAKE SURE
              THE FUCKER IS TURNED ON.  ALWAYS.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Even though success with my own writing—my fiction—continues to elude me, I'm very fortunate in so many ways, and I know it.

I have my health. I have a terrific, supportive spouse, a nice place to live, food on the table, and I'm well-paid for my words. Even if it's writing speeches, scripts, websites and technical docs for now.

Oh, and there's one other thing I have to be thankful for: a new computer.

Make that the new iMac. Pure aluminum-encased hotness.

With the 24" screen, I can have two complete pages of text visible at once, which makes it a lot easier to see what you're working on. You also get a better sense of the flow in a chapter, scene or stretch of dialogue.

The Delicious New iMac Keyboard

Truly, it's a pleasure to sit down to work every day knowing that you won't have to fight with your tools. For the record, the keyboard is the best I've ever worked on. I can't explain why; just go to an Apple store and try it yourself and you'll see what I mean. I won't go into detail about the computer and all its features, but I will mention what writing software I'm using because I've discovered that so far these programs work flawlessly with the computer:

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For bare-bones writing, I use a sweet little program created by a guy from Bangor, Maine. It's called WriteRoom. If you're looking for something that is truly "distraction-free", check it out.







Once I have some text and need to form it into something longer and more structured, like a book, I move my work over to Apple's iWork, specifically the word-processing program, Pages. Unlike working with MS Office, it's seamless, with none of the compatibility issues you always seem to get with Word.







Finally, for any kind of script work, I go to a workhorse of a program—Final Draft. This is a great tool for any kind of scriptwriting because it automates all of the formatting. It's the one all the pros use.

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A major event in the life of any Mac owner is the arrival of a new Mac. With this in mind, here's a cheesy photo essay documenting the morning mine came:




The workspace, before

The outer box containing the iMac box





A knife, to cut the box open





Cutting the outer box open





The first hint of the inner box





The inner box in all its glory





A groovy Styrofoam tray greets you






More boxes within boxes: the keyboard





The keyboard, revealed





The iMac assumes its new place on the desk





The iMac beside its outdated cousin, the eMac




I know this entry was incredibly self-indulgent, but I promise you, if you get yourself a new iMac, you'll want to do the same thing. You'll want to savor every moment of the computer's newness.


Here's to the pleasure of having the right tools.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Giving titles to your writing is a bit like knighting somebody. When you do it, the object of the knighting or the title-giving isn't intrinsically changed by the act; if the person's a jerk, he's still a jerk; if the writing stinks, it still stinks. However, what the title can do is make others take notice of something they might otherwise ignore, whether that something is an obscure person from Southern England or a boring book.

The best titles do several things simultaneously:

1. Arouse interest.
2. Encapsulate the story.
3. Include some kind of symbolism.
4. Become their own ideas.

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I'm pretty good at coming up with titles for my own work. If nothing else, they're often intriguing. Usually they're based on a catchphrase or a line of dialogue, or they're "homages" to other creative works I admire. Here are a few of my favorite titles of short stories of mine, and the stories behind them:

TITLE: "I Hope You Boys Know What You're Doing"

STORY: My friend Carl and I were doing some "landscaping" for a 98-year-old woman, which basically meant we would cut down anything living. At one point, concerned that we weren't doing a very good job, the old woman shuffled out onto the porch and yelled, "I hope you boys know what you're doin'!" Here it is, from the collection of the same title, on Google Books: IHYBKWYD!

TITLE: "You'll Be Fucked for the Rest of Your Life"

STORY: This is an Al-ism. Al is my inimitable father, and I got this title from a time when he gave me the talk. I was in high school, going out with a senior from Vassar, and my father became concerned that I might get her pregnant. So, loaded up on vodka and tonic, and after having thrown the cat in the pool ("He can swim fine..."), Al said to me (in a thick Maine accent), "Chris...if you get her pregnant, you'll be fucked for the rest of your life!"

TITLE: "Whose Van is that on Fire Out There?"

STORY: My friend Tony and I were in a deli-slash-video store when a man in overalls (I swear), stood in the doorway, clutched his overalls straps and boomed out, "Whose van is that on fire out there?" I went to the window (we were on the 2nd floor), and sure enough, the flames were about 20 feet high. Here it is, if you want to read it (or don't believe me).

TITLE: "Sonata for Knife and Violin in F Major; 'Revenge'"

STORY: This one came to me two or three summers ago when I listened to Beethoven's "Sonata for piano and violin N 9 in A major, Op.47 'Kreutzer'" about 200 times. I wanted to write a story about a homicidal violinist who kills with a chef's knife for the creative power it gives him. I wrote it in four "movements", where each movement has notes to the "conductor" in Italian. Sounds pretentious, but it's not. Oh, and the F Major stands for "majorly f-cked".

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As far as other writers are concerned, I'm interested in the stories behind their titles, as well as the titles that might have been. Here are a few examples:

TITLE: The Great Gatsby

ALTERNATES: Among the Ash Heaps and Millionaires, Trimalchio in West Egg, Gold-Hatted Gatsby, The High-bouncing Lover

TITLE: All the President's Men

ORIGINAL: At This Point in Time

TITLE: Jaws

ALTERNATES: Leviathan Rising, Great White, The Shark

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My favorite "title story" though, has to be for James Cain's noir masterpiece:

TITLE: The Postman Always Rings Twice

STORY: While writing this book and others, Cain had worked out a system with his mailman where he would ring once when it was good news (checks or an acceptance letter) and twice when it was bad news (bills or a rejection). The postman, he said, always rang twice, so he decided to name the novel for this and the frustration it gave him. There have been a few geniuses in American literature, and Cain is one of them.

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Well, there you have it. A couple hours spent writing about titles. I especially like the title of this piece because that's how I want to die—by redheads, baby.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 07:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Having trouble sleeping? Disenchanted with life, your writing, your sneakers? Are you between writing projects, suffering from a peculiar brand of postpartum depression that only writers of long works understand?

If so, you may suffer from In-Between Syndrome. Ask your doctor if alcohol, bipolar meds, or a gun may be right for you.

The other day I finished the fifth, and what I hope will be the last, draft of my newest novel and sent it off to my agent for her comments. Every time I finish a book, I find myself moping around for the next two weeks, saying things to my wife like, "I feel lost," or "What do I do now?"

Invariably, Alexas makes the mistake of trying to be rational with me. "You're always happiest when you're writing," she chirps. "Why not start a new project?"

Thanks for the tip, bitch.

The upside to In-Between Syndrome is that I have time to do some entries on my blogs (like this one) and update my websites in general. The downside is that I begin to wonder if shooting myself or being mauled by wild dogs would be so bad.

Regardless, I'm back for a while. At least until I start writing again.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 09:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)