Chris Orcutt, Writer

I received an email today from an old friend whose company just cut all employees' pay by 15%. It's a damn outrage, and I really feel for this person.

At the same time, when I see people I know (not nameless, faceless statistics) being treated this way by corporations, it's a reminder to me of the advantages of self-employment. The advantages are few, but there's one that's tough to beat: a company can't suddenly decide to pay me 15% less than the rate we agreed to. That's what contracts and purchase orders are for. The disadvantages are obvious: sporadic work (unsteady paychecks), fewer opportunities for socializing, and no cafeteria. The killer is the no cafeteria.

A super informative article on companies screwing workers.

Back in 2002, when I took a voluntary severance package from Merrill Lynch (sweet!), I wrote an article about how companies could give a shit. It appeared in a few online publications back then, but I'd like to share it again here.

Self-employment isn't for everyone. You have to be content spending A LOT of time alone. And you need to be able to be productive without having a manager with a whip and a chair standing over you. If you can meet those two criteria, and if you can live without the cafeteria, then working for yourself might be the answer.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 02:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This five-minute entry is to explain why my entries have been sporadic lately. It's simple: Alexas and I are engaged in a West Wing marathon.

We were West Wing junkies when the show was on the air, but since it was canceled, none of the cable networks has carried it. (Bravo did for a short time, but I suppose the show wasn't enough like Queer Eye for their tastes.)

Besides the sharp-tongued dialogue that requires some knowledge of the Constitution, The West Wing has so many fine qualities that make it an absolute joy to watch:

• Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Lyman's profound knowledge of Congressional procedures (for outmaneuvering those pesky lawmakers).
• Donna Moss's kooky crusades and her lovely tight sweaters.
• Sam & Toby's ability to write speeches on the fly, often while walking down the hall.
• CJ's bitch-slapping of the press.
• Leo's iron-will when dealing with subordinates.
• Charlie's earnestness and integrity.
• Jed Bartlet's ability to quote at length from The Bible.

The cast of my favorite modern TV show, The West Wing.

Alexas and I have been at this marathon since last Thursday—my birthday—and since we're only up to Episode 7 of Season 3, and since each season is at least 22 episodes and there are 7 seasons in total, it's gonna take a while....

Well, gotta go. Time for the show.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 08:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today is my 38th birthday. I know...thrilling.

As I near 40, I imagine I should feel old. But I don't. In fact, I've never been healthier—physically, emotionally or spiritually. I've learned to stop fighting Life and to allow things to happen in their own time. I've taken up golf and show some promise in the sport. And I've been alcohol-free for five years now, so I haven't woken up in alleys in Boston for quite a while. I haven't done that in 18 years, so that's something, right?

I contemplate immortality as a comic book character.

In my writing, I've made great progress in the past few years, both in terms of craft and the business. And even though my mystery novels have yet to be published, I'm not discouraged. My idol, Raymond Chandler, didn't get his first novel published until he was 50. There's hope for me yet.

And maybe it's fitting that, like Chandler, I should have to wait to be published. I want to bring to detective fiction the same high standard of style and artistry that he brought. And make no mistake, Chandler was a literary artist. A true original.

Whenever composition notebooks go on sale, I buy the suckers in bulk because I keep notebooks on every conceivable subject that interests me. One of my favorites is titled "Great Writing Examples," and it's loaded with lines by Raymond Chandler.

The notebook, in case you didn't believe me.

Most of my writing idols are Old School guys' guys: Hemingway, Parker, Doyle, MacLean, Brewer, Westlake, Fleming and Chandler. But especially Chandler. He's my touchstone.

I've read and re-read every one of his novels several times. Why? Because of my love of the line. Chandler's novels are loaded with lines that are so apt, so deliciously evocative, that I'll quote them to myself for weeks afterwards.

When I finish with one of Chandler's novels, I type out a page of
my favorite lines and tape it in my notebook. Hot, right?

Because I'm feeling frisky and generous today (after all, it is my birthday), I'm going to share a few of Chandler's best with you. Consider them a gift.

She was a blonde all right. The kind of blonde that would make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.

She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.

Her voice faded off into a sort of soft whisper, like a mortician asking for a down payment.

He hoisted a couple of eyebrows that would have interested a Fuller Brush man.

The house was leaking guests out into the evening air now. Voices were fading, cars were starting, goodbyes were bouncing around like rubber balls.

She went out slowly. The way she did it hadn't been learned at business college.

And the help was round-shouldered from carrying trays with drinks across the terrace to a swimming pool about the size of Lake Huron but a lot neater.

She leaned back and a pulse beat in her throat. She was exquisite, she was dark, she was deadly.

Her hair was a hot sunset.

I believe I've written a few lines as memorable as Chandler's, but you'll have to wait until the novels are published so you can decide for yourself.

Thank you for spending part of your day with me, on my birthday. The thought of your visiting makes being 38 a little more tolerable.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 03:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A recent survey of teens in Great Britain by the newspaper The Telegraph came out with some interesting results. Of the respondents, only 25 percent believed that Sir Winston Churchill really existed.

On the other hand, many more respondents believed certain fictional characters had actually lived. For example, "Sherlock Holmes, the detective, was so convincingly brought to life in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novels, their [sic] film versions and television series, that 58 percent of respondents believe that the sleuth really lived at 221B Baker Street."

The Troublemaker: the homepage for Dakota Stevens Investigations.

This fact caught my eye because yesterday I received an email from a private investigator in Houston, Texas asking Svetlana Krüsh, my fictional detective's fictional Gal Friday, if she would be open to a link exchange. Here's his email. Here's "Svetlana's" reply. And here's a PDF of the PI's links page so you can see his description of Dakota's site.

Over the past couple of years, since I first launched Dakota & Svetlana into the cyber-ether, I've had several people in emails or on websites thinking they were real people. Take this chess blog entry, for example. I felt bad, so I finally had to intercede and tell them the truth.

A chess club thought this was Svetlana Krüsh.

I've also received 10-12 requests from people for advice on their cases. (I wish I'd saved those emails. I lost them when I changed accounts.) The most memorable of these came from a desperate husband who believed that his wife was not only stepping out on him, but also prostituting their daughter. Ouch! He wanted to know if this was a case that "Dakota" would be interested in. "Dakota" considered it and said to himself, "Fuck that." My fictional PI replied that the man should probably go to the police.

Aside from the people in pain part, this is exactly what I was hoping for when I created these two characters. They're real to me, so if others think so, that's great. With this in mind, I'd love for two people to have a conversation someday similar to one I once had with my step-grandfather Cecil.

Back when I was 13, I read the Sherlock Holmes stories in their entirety. At the time, I was visiting Cecil in Vinalhaven, Maine, and the conversation somehow drifted to Sherlock Holmes. I went on and on about the stories and how much they meant to me and how I wanted to create a detective like him someday. Yada, yada, yada. The maunderings of an eager 13-year-old.

Anyway, Cecil interrupted and said the following (in a thick Downeast accent):

"Yessir, I remember my teacher tellin' us bout all those cases that there Sherlock Holmes was solving. Boy, he was one smart fella, wasn't he, Chris?"

"Uh, Cecil...you realize he's a fictional character, right?" I said. "He was made up. All of it."

Cecil gave a start in his chair like he'd just seen a ghost.

"You don't say!"

"They were all stories, Cecil," I said. "Every word was make-believe."

Now, even though Cecil had limited education, he's no dummy. He believed that Holmes and Watson existed because his teacher probably gave him that impression. Anyway, he's no worse off than the 58 percent of those Britons I mentioned above.

It's nice to know that Dakota and Svetlana are in good company.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 05:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Like a lot of writers, I keep a stone on my desk to use as a paperweight. But mine has a special meaning to me because it's a chunk of granite from one of the quarries my grandfather and great-grandfather worked, and every time I look at it, I'm reminded of how far the Orcutts have come.

Last summer, while working on a story that takes place off the coast of Maine, I spent some time on the island my family comes from: Vinalhaven. Tooling around the island in a friend's pickup truck, I visited the places my ancestors had lived and worked—especially the granite quarries.

My great-grandfather (far right) was one of the men who cut
the columns for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

In the early 1900s, granite from Vinalhaven was used for a lot of important buildings in the Northeast, including the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. My great-grandfather was part of the small crew that cut and shaped the columns for that impressive structure.

My grandfather also cut granite for buildings, but he did something else that I find just as impressive and that's cutting paving block. In those days, many of the streets in Boston and New York were still cobblestone, which meant that somebody had to cut those uniform-sized blocks.

According to my uncle Harris, my grandfather made 2 cents for each block. "This was during the Depression you see," Harris said. "He'd bring home forty, fifty dollars a week. Do the math. That's two thousand to twenty-five hundred stones a week. And if they weren't perfect, he didn't get paid."

Me, admiring a piece of granite one of my ancestors cut.
I wanted you to see that I really do have a granite paperweight.

Where am I going with this entry, you ask? What's my point?

My point is this: Every time I sit down at my computer and get to use my brain to make a living, I pick up my granite paperweight, feel its roughness and its heft, and think about the hard work my ancestors did that enabled me to be where I am today. Because they worked their asses off cutting stone, I'm able to indulge in creative pursuits. I like to think they'd want this, that they'd want me to do what I loved instead of just working to survive.

I'm incredibly proud of them and grateful for the sacrifices they made. The success I seek with my writing isn't just for myself. It's for them.

One of the oceanside quarries on Vinalhaven where
columns were cut. Photo by Arcadia Publishing.

A blurb from the New York Times about how one
of the columns was nearly lost in a storm.

Some of the columns in the great nave of
the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

My great-grandfather Orcutt.

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

I'm in the middle of polishing my latest novel, and because I find the process so onerous, I've decided to take a break from it and write about it instead.

Polishing should in no way be confused with editing. When you edit, in addition to moving passages around and trying different ways of saying the same line, what you're really looking for are opportunities to cut words. Once you're able to do what William Faulkner said ("kill your darlings"—those precious pet phrases that don't add to your story), you begin to look forward to hacking out large chunks of material. Adjectives, sentences, paragraphs, scenes, and sometimes whole chapters can be yanked and you don't notice. In fact, the work gets better through omission. You're chipping away everything that doesn't resemble an elephant. That's editing.

But polishing is different, and in many ways more difficult. A pain in the ass, actually. It reminds me of something the inimitable Oscar Wilde once said:

"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again."

I'm not a Jedi writer yet, but back when I was still a Padouin Learner, I thought the above quote was ridiculous. Someone couldn't possibly have spent that much time debating the merits of inserting or omitting a piece of punctuation. Come on. The fact is, I didn't know enough about writing yet to understand how true it was.

Polishing anything has a way of aging you.

In the early stages of writing a book, like a burgeoning romance everything is beautiful and full of potential. You're enraptured by the Idea. The characters pulsate with energy. The possibilities are endless. Then you write a draft. And another draft. And another draft. And each time you create a modified version of the Idea, you deface the Idea a little bit, until you reach a point where you realize your creation will never match up with the Idea, and that the best you can hope to do is present your sullied thing in the best light possible.

By the time you reach the polishing stage, you're sick of the book. But you have to read it one more time—at least. You literally get nauseous. The process is made even more poignant because you know you're going to have to face all of the imperfections and failures that, at your current state of writerly development, you are unable to fix. The feeling you get is, I imagine, a lot like the feeling a divorced person gets when forced to see his/her ex-spouse at child visitations.

"Hey, I'm sorry. I did the best I could. Why are you bringing that up again? We've gone over this. What do you want from me? I said I was sorry. Goodbye."

If your story is tight and fairly well-told, by the time you get to polishing, you know you can't radically improve it. You know that no matter how nicely you buff the sucker, it's only going to gleam so much. And if it's a turd, well, forget it. A turd polished is still a turd.

Here are some of the things I focus on during polishing. I call this my Hunting List:

• Removing every unnecessary adverb, which means virtually all of them.
• Removing unnecessary commas to increase reading speed, or putting some in (see above) for clarity.
• Removing extraneous dashes and semicolons.
• Changing verbs from past progressives (e.g., "was running") to simple past tense (e.g., "ran").
• Eliminating small, extraneous "word packages," which often start with prepositions.
• Eliminating as many attributions (i.e., he said.) as possible, but not to the point where it's ever unclear who is speaking.
• Substituting more picturesque verbs and specific nouns for the lamer ones on the page.
• Clarifying anything confusing and "planting" information that becomes important later in the story.

I read somewhere that every book teaches the writer what he needs to learn to tell that story, but one thing I've found is that polishing never gets any easier.

Some of you may be reading this and saying, "Quit your whining. At least you're working on a finished book." And you'd be right.

But this still doesn't change the fact that what I'd rather be doing is staring at a New Idea. A New Idea, standing on a hill in the spring sunshine, the sweet nectary breeze blowing her ginger hair around. She waves to me. The breeze flaps her sundress. She laughs, beckons me with a finger and departs over the hill. I'm about to run after her when I hear Old Idea, my battle axe of a book, screeching at me to come back down and clean the gutters.

I'm feeling ill again. Must be polishing time.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today I finished the second draft of the synopsis for novel #2 in my PI series. The event passed without fanfare. No parades, no emails from admirers, not even a pat on the back. But that's okay because the synopsis is one of the necessary evils of the fiction-writing business. As much as it sucks to write it, I'm afraid it just goes with the territory.

Every time I finish a novel, a wave of dread passes over me because I know, sure as Sunday, I'll soon have to write the synopsis. Believe it or not, I actually prefer going to the dentist over writing a 2-page double-spaced Reader's Digest version of my 75,000-word book. I'd rather clean my office than write the thing, and I have. You get the idea.

Not a lot of pics out there illustrating détente.

After writing synopses (awkward word) for four novels, I've reached a Synopsis Détente. Like the U.S. and U.S.S.R. in the early 80s, I still dislike the synopsis, and the synopsis still dislikes me, but in the interest of our mutual betterment, we've decided to compromise with each other. Whereas I used to sit down and attempt to recount every one of the novel's plot points in the synopsis, I have learned to embrace the limitations of the form by summarizing only the key events.

The most comprehensive book out there on writing the synopsis and presenting your novel to agents and publishers in general is Elizabeth Lyon's The Sell Your Novel Tool Kit. I've read or browsed others, but hers is the one I referred to during my early attempts at the synopsis.

Based on what I learned in her book, and from my own experience, let me give you the most basic guidelines for the synopsis:

• Summarize the most important plot elements in present tense.
• Write it in narrative form, like a story, not in bullet points or in a chapter by chapter description.
• Use active, picturesque verbs.
• Refer to characters by name only when necessary for clarity or brevity (i.e., to avoid cumbersome constructions like, "The doctor's brother's girlfriend...")
• Indent the first line of each paragraph.
• Use 1" margins all around. Try to keep the synopsis to one page single-spaced or two pages double-spaced. (I prefer double-spacing because I think the white space makes it read faster.)


• Add page numbers at the bottom, but don't put a header on it. Instead, use the title of the novel and your name in the first sentence: "AN EXCELLENT NOVEL by Jane Doe is an 80,000-word historical romance that explores...."
• Avoid adjectives that tell. This is the old "show, don't tell" advice. In other words, don't tell the agent or editor reading the synopsis that your novel is a "riveting tour de force" or a "sweeping epic"; rather, let the reader get that feeling on her own through your masterful condensation.
• Try to have the synopsis mirror the tone of your novel. For example, if your novel is a mystery, make the synopsis read like a mini-mystery. Describe the happenings in your book so that they form story questions in the reader's mind: "Will he solve the murder?" "Will Jane lose the farm?"
• Where possible, incorporate snatches of dialogue from the main characters so the reader can get a feeling for them. Honestly, I find this difficult to do most of the time, for the simple reason that you're trying to keep it to two pages.

The last piece of advice I have to offer is one that will help you reach détente with the synopsis much sooner than I did. Simply put, be patient. Unless you're a Mozart-like freak who can churn out a brilliant essay in one pass, plan on writing it in drafts.

In her terrific book Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott talks about the importance of writing "...shitty first drafts. All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts." (If you'd like to read the complete essay from the book, here's the PDF. Or buy the damn book. It's great, and so is she.) The point here is that you need to suspend your judgment and recognize that there's NO WAY you can be comprehensive AND brief AND scintillating AND compelling in the first draft. Instead, write a draft, print it out and put it in a drawer for a day or two. Then take it with you to a diner (what I do) and edit it.

As a part of being patient, DON'T try to bang out the synopsis the second you type "THE END" on the last page of your novel. Give yourself a couple of weeks to let the novel's events settle in your subconscious. Then when you start on the synopsis, you'll only be able to remember the truly important parts. Oh, and one other thing: don't try to write the synopsis as you write the novel, even if you take it up on the second or third draft of the book. Why? Simple—you're apt to change the story, and if you do, bye-bye synopsis.

Good luck and happy summarizing. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to start a fire in the wood stove with mine.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 06:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Some of you will disagree, but I believe we don't have as much choice about what we write as we might think.

For years, my father, Al, encouraged me to write about sex because he was convinced that sex sells. He was right, of course—sex does sell—but he was wrong, as all non-writers are when they suggest ideas or subjects for writers to use, in thinking that I could instantly adopt his idea with the enthusiasm necessary to create a book-length work.

Now, I realize that all writers have to be able to get into ideas that aren't wholly their own, but we can usually only do this when there's an outside motivator—like money. Getting paid, whether as a newspaper reporter (which I've been) or as a speechwriter (which I've also been), has a way of making you excited about whatever topics interest the client.

But more than the kind of writing we writers do, I'm really talking about the ideas we find ourselves attracted to, and where this is concerned, I believe we don't have much choice. The writing heart wants what it wants.

An HD still of me from Get Lamp, my friend Jason's upcoming
film about text adventures and interactive fiction. I used it
because my didacticism in the still matches this piece.

In my own case, part of me wishes I were more attracted to non-fiction. As a writer seeking publication, just from an odds standpoint life would be easier; there are far more nonfiction books than fiction published every year.

But again, we don't get much say in what captivates us. I have no idea why I find redheads so damn alluring, but I do. Similarly, I don't get to choose the ideas or characters or voices that grab me by the lapel and either shout or breathe hotly in my ear. Nope, they choose me.

What we write is also determined by something much more prosaic: how our brains work. I have friends who think in data, in facts. Jason, mentioned above, is one of these guys. He and people like him amaze me in their ability to consume vast quantities of information, categorize it, assimilate it, report on it, etc. This may explain why Jason leans toward documentary filmmaking and internet history/archiving. Suffice it to say, I'm not one of these fellows. I like to do what Sherlock Holmes did, which is to keep all but the most essential tools out of my "brain-attic." I have to, in fact.

I am a heavily right-brained, lateral thinker. With the exception of a few subjects that I know a lot about, I don't have a lot of information on file. The best way I can describe my thinking process (and other fiction writers I know have described a similar process) is continuously asking myself, "What if?" A person's quirky mannerism makes me wonder, "What if he did that in a bank and they misunderstood him? What would happen?" Frequently these "what-if's" lead to imagining a character, who routinely manifests as a voice. Each voice has a particular rhythm and diction, and she might be be cunning, shy, unstable, or selfish.

Why this photo? Simple: I love redheads.

The thing is, I don't get to choose the idea. The idea floating around in the ether, the one that insists on being written, chooses me, and that's that.

And as much as I'd like to write a chapter for a nonfiction book and bang out a proposal and have my agent sell the book—often just on the basis of a proposal—I can't because the writing heart wants what the writing heart wants.

Posted by Chris Orcutt at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the Book of Genesis, God tests Abraham's faith by requiring him to bind his son, Issac, to an altar and sacrifice him. We all know how the story ends: at the last minute an angel intervenes, telling Abraham not to harm the boy.

The point was that God used the thing that Abraham cared the most about—his son—to test his faith. This act has been scrutinized over the centuries by the best thinkers. In fact, one of my favorite philosophers, Søren Kierkegaard, dedicated a very good book to the subject of Abraham's faith and what it means for Faith in general.

The sentence on the cover says it all: This ain't light readin'.

The idea of putting our dreams on the altar comes from Abraham's act. Lately I've begun to wonder whether I should be writing fiction, or at least whether I should be making it the main thrust of my writing. I think my fiction is good, and this view has been corroborated by many professionals in writing and publishing, not to mention a number of readers I respect. But as good as it may be, sometimes it's a question of timing. Folks just ain't buyin' what you're sellin' right now.

I believe that everything happens for a reason, and to the point of unanswered prayers or unfulfilled dreams, I believe that sometimes God, Spirit, the Force, or the Universe (or whatever you believe governs our cosmic soup) delays giving us our heart's desires because He or It wants to give us a chance to change our minds. Imagine for a moment if we got everything we wanted exactly when we wanted it. Remember the saying, "Be careful what you ask for because you just might get it"? Being made to wait for our dreams to come to pass gives us an opportunity to change our minds, and I think that's important.

In my case, I've begun to wonder if I want to be writing mystery fiction. I've already begun to feel stymied by the genre in that the conventions are pretty rigid and formulaic, and if you have anything serious to say about the world, this clearly isn't the forum for it. I've also begun to question what good my fiction would be doing for the world.

How will another murder mystery help people to improve their lives? How will this kind of writing do anything other than provide people with a temporary escape from the drudgery of everyday life? Not that the ability to do this has no value. It does. I just don't think I'm content with that.

A part of me misses teaching. Inspiring people. Awakening people to new ideas, things they've never considered before. Raising people's confidence and self-esteem. In short, I've been wondering if I should be writing work that teaches more than it entertains.

Today I made a decision. I'm taking what has been my most precious dream for a long time—becoming a successful published author of commercial fiction—and putting it on the altar. If I need to sacrifice that dream to find my true purpose, my true calling, then I'm willing to do it.

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

A classic problem given to first-year philosophy students is Buridan's Ass. For those of you who don't know it (or knew it and forgot), here it is:

A hungry ass stands between two piles of hay, both equally large and equally fresh. Because it has no rational reason to choose one over the other, it chooses neither, and as a result starves to death.

Although I consider myself a decisive person, I've thought about this problem a lot over the years and quite often find myself in similar situations. This morning, at the grocery store checkout, both registers were available, and both of the cashiers are equally pleasant, competent people, so I was frozen between the two for a few seconds. At the diner, I've been faced with this problem when both of my preferred seats on either side of the diner were open, and the two waitresses were equally attractive. What usually happens is that I catch myself in an endless loop, like the old BASIC routine of

10 PRINT "I can't decide!"

20 GOTO 10

I mention this because lately I've been stuck on what I should be writing about. I have several equally interesting projects to choose from, all at the same point in their development, and for this reason I find myself, like the stupid ass, unable to choose any of them.

The cubbies where my piles of hay are stored.

Yet I won't be stuck like this forever. Ultimately I'll sense myself leaning towards one project more than another, and the farther I lean, the closer I'll be to that project and the more sense it will make to go with that one instead of the other.

While many philosophers have critiqued the problem of Buridan's Ass better than I ever could, the issue I've always had with it is that it fails to take into account the concept of entropy. Just about any system, if left alone for a while, will tend toward disorder, and the more disorderly a system becomes, the greater likelihood there is for imbalances—one option becoming more appealing than another.

In the meantime, I'll let myself be stuck, just like that ass.

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

Yesterday I alluded to John Gardner's book on writing, The Art of Fiction, and casually mentioned syntactic slots. Since then, I've received a few emails asking me what these are. I'll do my best to explain.

Mind you, although I taught college English for several years, I am not a grammarian. That being said, let me refer to the book where I first learned of this concept, Gardner's The Art of Fiction.

Although heady, Gardner's book is remarkably thorough.

For those of you unfamiliar with Gardner and his work, he was an English professor at SUNY Binghamton who had achieved literary fame from his novel Grendel, which was the story of Beowulf told from the monster's point of view. Earlier in his career, he had taught at the famed Iowa Writers Workshop. He died in a motorcycle accident in 1982.

On page 104 of his fiction writing classic, Gardner wrote, "Sentences in English tend to fall into meaning units or syntactic slots—for instance, such patterns as..." (Below, the numbers in superscript indicate the start of a new syntactic slot.)

Gardner's main idea is this: "A writer may load one or two of the slots with modifiers, but if the sentence is to have focus—that is, if the reader is to be able to make out some clear image, not just a jumble—the writer cannot cram all three syntactic slots with details."

So I'm not borrowing exclusively from his book, I'll give you my own made-up example:

Okay, there's our sentence with the slots empty of modifiers. Now, let's load up slot 1:

See how only modifiers were added to the first slot? Those details only modify the subject. Now let's load up slot 2:

As you probably noticed, loading up slot 2 (the verb) makes for awkward constructions. My example is not the best, but of the three slots, I've found the verb slot to be the most resistant to modifiers. Here's the sentence with slot 3, the object, loaded up:

There it is with the object heavy with modifiers. Finally, to prove Gardner's point, let's see what the sentence would look like if all three slots were loaded up:

I rest Gardner's case. The same is true, by the way, if you invert sentences to form "Yoda Talk"—¹Object, ²subject, ³verb. ("To the moon he goes!")

So there you go—syntactic slots. I hope this has cleared matters up. Enjoy them in your own writing, and remember, you can load up one or two, but three, unless you're William Faulkner, probably won't work.

Just for fun, here's an example of a long sentence from Faulkner's The Hamlet:

Hill-cradled and remote, definite yet without boundaries, straddling into two counties yet owing allegiance to neither, it had been the original grant and site of a…plantation, the ruins of which—the gutted shell of an enormous house with its fallen stables and slave quarters and overgrown gardens and brick terraces and promenades—were still known as the Old Frenchman place…and even some of the once-fertile fields had long since reverted to the cane-and-cypress jungle from which their first master had hewed them.

Good luck beating Willie. You'll have to get juiced up and write on your wallpaper first.

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

Dean Koontz wrote somewhere that "the first half-million words are just practice." I agree with that. I have a garage full of boxes of my writing, and a filing cabinet drawer jammed with notebooks, all of which prove his point.

Most of what I wrote there was crap because I was trying too hard. I hadn't learned the importance of restraint and proportion in a piece of writing. I hadn't read John Gardner's The Art of Fiction and learned that sentences are comprised of syntactic slots, and that when creating a sentence you shouldn't overload more than one slot with information. There were a lot of things I hadn't learned, and still haven't.

There are a few gems in the old notebook drawer.

Much to the annoyance of their spouses, most writers never throw anything away. We hoard everything graced by our words—pocket notebooks, hotel stationery, cocktail napkins and business cards. I suppose the thinking here is that one day we'll remember such-and-such a line and want to use it in a new piece.

I've had this experience a couple of times, but the problem was, when I when to my "archives" and read the piece of description, dialogue or journal entry, the moment the piece was removed from its current context, it didn't have the same meaning. Like the famous iceman found in the Alps, my notebook entires are moments frozen in time that require some forensic reconstruction to understand their larger meaning. The Zeitgeist is lost, and as time goes on, the fire that compelled me to jot them down fades away.

But as the title of this entry suggests, buried within those million words are a few diamonds. I plan on dipping into my notebook drawer once in a while to share some of these snippets with you. Think of it this way: if a writer's creations are his children, these are my lovable and kind-hearted, but clueless, kids whom I want to have every opportunity. They may never go anywhere in life, but I still want them to have their 15 minutes. So, here goes:

Writing Advice
I open a tiny CVS pocket notebook and discover some story principles I paraphrased from somewhere. I have no idea what book these came from, but they're good and here they are:

• Start with a change, a lack of harmony with the environment—a threat to the central character's self-concept.
• As a result of the change, the character will create a goal—a story goal.
• Get the change shown as swiftly as possible and show the character beginning to react with predictable unease—or worse.
• Most "setup" stuff are author concerns. The reader just wants the story to start.
• You have 25 words to engage a jaded editor's interest.
• Arouse curiosity.
• Grab the reader and give a hint of what to expect.
• Some editors claim they can be sure if a book is going to be well-written and exciting enough to publish by reading just the first sentence or paragraph.

Quotes
In an interview once, David Mamet, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and one of my idols, was asked if he ever used the conversations of regular people as the basis for dialogue. He replied, "Have you ever listened to subway talk? Subway talk is boring. I'd like to think I can come up with better dialogue than the crap people say on the subway."

I agree with Mamet that most overheard conversations aren't good enough to be used as dialogue in a story or play. (At least not without a lot of work.) However, sometimes people can surprise you, saying things that are incredibly apt or funny. Here's my favorite eavesdropped line from the Overheard in NYC website.

Dipping into my own collection of snatched things that people have said, here are a few of the best:

[Guy in his 30s talking to a male friend about women]

"They're gonna see what they want to see. You can come home with fucking flowers every day and it won't make a bit of difference."

[Elderly man on train asking other passengers the same question at every stop]

"Is this Scarsdale?"

[On line at Boston Market; one fat man interrupts another]

"Wait, is there meatloaf in this story?"

[No idea where I heard this]

"You know...you two are standing just far enough apart to form an ellipse."

[In a toy store; one man in his 50s to another]

"Toys these days? I've never seen such wimpy shit. Political correctness, I'm telling you. Now, back when I was Lou's age, know what I had? I had a Big Bang Cannon. And you know what the slogan said? You know, that italicized type? Yeah, it said, 'Big noise for boys!'. Toymakers back then, they didn't give a shit if you lost an arm."

[Some young lady—maybe one of my gal-pals in college— wrote the following in my notebook]

"I cleaned my room! I found my checkbook! I fucked my professor!"

[My friend, Tony]

"I hate these friggen diner owners. They think they're all such deep thinkers, when they're really just deep fryers."

[My friend, Jason]

"It takes a certain kind of guy to wave to a security guard when he's got a disk drive down his pants."

[My friend, Paul]

"Poor Hamlet. You know, he really bought a little...he bought a lot."

[My father, Al]

"If a guy's a prick, it's really tough for him to hide it."

[A college kid talking to a friend about his new summer job with a fencing company. Of the pay, he said,]

"It's enough for me to stay drugged up all summer long and have enough for a car!"

[A social studies teacher when I was a substitute]

"Never fire the last bullet until you're sure the battle is over."

[Two guys in a bar]

Guy 1: "You have an Aryan attitude."
Guy 2: "Hey, I take that as an insult."

[I was Katie Couric's personal guest on the old Today show set; Bryant Gumbel reacts to an interview he just did with Lindsay Wagner]

"What the fuck was that?"

[While exiting a reading John Irving did at Vassar College; two girls talking about him]

Girl 1: "He was hotter than I thought he'd be. Does he have a ring?"
Girl 2: "Yeah, unfortunately. I saw it glinting."

Poetic Lines
Not whole poems. Just little lines that came to me here and there over the years. Most of these go back to the early 90s. They're jejune, but interesting I think.

[When I was substituting]

In tattered tile classrooms,
kids with constipated faces
and suffocated eyes.



[Doing laundry in Cambridge, MA]

He watched her reflection in the polished chrome of the triple loader.
He wondered for whom she folded those jeans, that underwear.
He curled into the wooden bench and stared into the washer,
and he wondered what she,
a loose-bloused woman, all long hair and red creeping curls, thought too.



[Pining away for a girl, obviously]

I've forgotten what I was angry about
And can only remember
Your smile, your wit,
Your svelte kitty-cat body
And your brown, brown eyes
Like earthy magnets.

Character Ideas/Descriptions
Not even sketches. Just flashes of characters when they came to me.

The postwoman looked exactly like Yoko Ono, except that she was heavy in buttocks, giving the impression that the former spouse of John Lennon had just shoplifted two plump hams.

Guy who tries to rob a KFC with a golf club.

A band of RV-riding senior citizens who park at the WalMart lot on the U.S.-Mexico border to get cheap pills.

There you have it. Straight out of the Orcutt files. And there are a lot more where those came from. A lot more.

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