Brevity: Need I Say More, Writers?

Apparently, I love the sound of my own voice. Same goes for my writing: I love to read my own words. What can I say? There are times I think I’m the greatest thing since sliced bread.

And when I get on a roll, Faulkner ain’t got nothing on me. I can easily make one thought, one sentence fill three pages… front and back.

For readers, it is pure agony. You might as well ask them to sit in a chair and read all that piled up nonsense with a metal tray of hot coals in their laps. It’s that enjoyable.

I’ve been thinking a lot about storytelling and how it relates to writing a novel. I say novel because that is truly my favorite form. I had written three novels before sitting down to write my first short story. In writing the short story, I felt constricted and longed for elbow room to develop my story and characters.

After completing a few more stories, I began to appreciate the challenge of getting the “story” across in thirty pages, instead of three hundred. The tightness of a thirty page story provides a powerful impact not as easily attained or sustained in a novel.

As I’m in the development stages of my first new book in gabillion years, I find myself hesitant to follow the same process as previously taken with my other novels. As the story takes shape, I’m conscious of the short, powerful punch I want to make. I want this book to hit the reader in the gut, to stun and astound. And maybe induce vomiting.

Sounds like a compacted story is the way to go. Only, it may not be so simple whittling the four hundred pages of story in my head down to two hundred and fifty pages.

And yet, I think of conversation I had once with a professional songwriter from Nashville. After twenty years writing songs for some of the top country stars he was taking a shot at screenwriting. He was interested in the chance to tell a story in a format longer than a three and a half minute song. He wanted more elbow room.

But the more I think about story, and structure, and emotional impact, I can think of no other storytelling format that has the impact a well written song has.

What four hundred page book could add anything to the song, Ode to Billy Joe? Do any of Bob Dylan’s songs need additional material to impart the tone, setting, and plot intended? Who hasn’t heard Eleanor Rigby and not felt what it was like to be her?

I believe when I was a less experienced writer, I felt I had to get everything into a manuscript; every word, thought, and feeling. But now, I’m at a point where I’m interested in what does not make it into the manuscript. I’m seeing the beauty in less is more. And I think I like it.

Writing is a solitary expedition that starts at one point and ends in a place completely unimaginable. As I dive deeper into this latest book, I believe my expedition is taking me away from the familiar path I’ve worn thin over the years. Now into my fourth novel, I am heading into a jungle of gnarled trees and twisted roots that must be hacked and hacked and hacked to proceed.

And I am most excited.

As much as I’d like to go into more detail, I think I’ll keep it brief and get my machete out. Let the hacking begin.

I Don't Normally Pimp Myself Out

I’m sure you won’t expect this from me at all, because I certainly never, ever do this type of thing. But I am in dire need of reviews for my short story collection, Headshots, and I have reason to believe you may have read this fascinating literary fiasco sometime in the past. If you haven’t read it, then please disregard this once in a lifetime invitation.

I wouldn’t normally pimp myself out so flagrantly but my agent instructed me to do this – at gunpoint.

Would you mind clicking the following Amazon link and leaving a review. Be honest in your review, if you just want to give it some stars that is fine, too.  Anything you can do is greatly appreciated.

http://www.amazon.com/Headshots-ebook/dp/B006PTQ0ZY

Would it be too much to ask you click the Barnes and Noble link below and leave a review as well? If you do mind, please remember, I know where you live. Well, not really. But I can find out. Then maybe we can have lunch sometime. Wouldn’t that be nice?

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/headshots-idabel-allen/1021375231

If you just can’t stop yourself from leaving Headshots reviews, there’s like a gajillion other places online to leave reviews. Just look up Headshots in Google and knock yourself out. But I be pleased as peaches with just reviews on the above sites.

And if I haven’t said thank you, I’ll say it now. Thank You. You are a credit to the human race and a much better person than those who choose not to leave a review. Actually, I don’t know if that’s true or not. But I sincerely appreciate your assistance.

Idabel

Dear Published Authors: Stop Stealing My Unpublished Writing, It’s Getting on My Nerves

This one time at writing camp, I wrote short story about undead beings that glitter in sunlight and the next thing you know a little book called Twilight is published chocked full of GLITTERY UNDEAD VAMPIRES.

Okay, so I never wrote about glittery vampires and Stephanie Myers did not steal from my unpublished writing. And say what you will about Twilight, it wasn’t too bad (for a third grade primer).

But I have had instances where my characters show up in print or on television while I’m still in unpublished edit mode. And I’m getting pretty sick of it.

In my novel, Rooted, my villain was powerful, viscerally cruel, dark and cunning. I had every aspect of his character down: his accent, his hand made clothing. The way he moved like a bull in one scene and Fred Astaire in another. This man had any women he wanted, and he wanted all of them, often. He was an animal.

Thinking back on him, I miss him terribly. Of course, I can visit with him anytime I like. All I have to do is watch an episode of the Sopranos and there he be, the physical version of my solitary writings. Only, I wrote the durn character a couple of years before the Sopranos debuted. By the time I got around to watching the Sopranos, several years later, Rooted was pretty much solid. Only, my villain was now such a cliché he would never work in the story.

It was back to the drawing board. I changed my villain from a charismatic mob boss to a revenge seeking coal miner from West Virginia. I’m taking a gamble that HBO does not intend to develop a series about a coal miner with a mean streak and missing fingers. This, I hope, takes care of any future infringements on what I have already written in my unpublished novel, Rooted.

Two weeks ago I listened to the audio version of The Help, only to discover that one of my main characters currently in development has a name very similar to one of the main characters in The Help. And like the character in “The Help”, my character is a black female in Mississippi.

How in the world did The Help’s author know I am currently developing the most tragic literary figure of all time with a name very similar to Abeline, one of the main characters in The Help? My character is a black child in Mississippi, but her timeframe goes back to the 1880s. Her speech is so similar to Abeline’s from The Help, that I can’t get Abeline out of my head.

It’s like I’m now writing the child version of Abeline from The Help. Which makes me wonder, how did Kathryn Stockett know that one day I would develop a character so similar to her published Abeline? And how dare she write Abeline knowing I would be writing a similar character so soon after the publication of The Help?

To be plagiarized prior to anyone reading my work is quite unnerving. To be plagiarized before I even write anything is downright spooky.

So I beg all you hotshot published authors, have pity on this struggling writer. Please do not beat me to the punch. Leave me a few crumbs of my own writing to be sprung on the unsuspecting masses like a tiger from a bush.

For if you do, there will be a special place in heaven for you. And 36 virgins. I promise.

Winter: The Official Writing Season

When the air dips into sub-zero temperatures, there’s only one sure way to save those fingertips from frostbite and your head from brain freeze and that is WRITING THE NEXT GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL.

So what are you waiting for? Go lock yourself in a room and get to writing! Success may be just days, months, okay, years away.

So fire up the computer and let the words flow. Don’t let anything stop you from pounding away on your masterpiece.

But first:

• Chop a bit of wood and get a nice roaring fire going so that when you come out of your writing room, exhausted and depleted, you’ll be greeted by a warm fiery breath.

• Once the logs are crackling nicely in your fireplace, please take a second to make yourself a cup of homemade hot chocolate. Don’t waste your time on bland hot chocolate mix, but treat yourself to real chocolaty goodness. Don’t have the cocoa on hand? Best run to the store and stock up. Again, you want everything just right when you step into your writing retreat.

• With that steaming cup of cocoa in hand you might be tempted to take it with you to your office. But please, I beg you, take a moment to sit by a window and watch the soft white flakes float effortlessly down. Let you mind wander. Relax. If needed, doze a little. Again, you want to be fresh and ready for the writing storm that is about to commence.

• When you take your empty cup to the kitchen and are confronted with the mountainous stack of dishes you’ve been ignoring for the past twelve hours, don’t fret. Even though your mind is overflowing with the tenderest text ever imagined, you know deep in your heart of hearts you will not be able to concentrate on plot and character and narrative when you’ve got lasagna petrifying on your dinnerware. Go ahead and knock the dishes out. You’ll feel much better.

• Now that the dishes are washed, and the refrigerator cleaned out (because really, how long has that science experiment been going on), everything has been taken care of to really allow your mind to settle into the most poetic prose the world has yet to see. Or will be, once you call your insurance agent and inquire into possible rates for the two seater convertible you expect to purchase once your book is a mega bestseller.

• Finally, in your author’s chamber, you settle in for a long winter’s day of writing, luxuriating in the knowledge that it is just you and your characters. Thrilling a little with the expectation of all the unknowns you are about to unveil to yourself and the world in general, after you check Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Amazon, the weather forecast, and find a dessert recipe that calls for cocoa.

• With all this settled and done, the curser placed at the beginning of the first word of the day, your eye catches on the clock and you curse desperately.

Time to pick the kids up from school.

Is it True That Slade Pooped on Glass Tables?

If You Search For My Website With: “Is it True That Slade Pooped on Glass Tables”…


Apparently and unfortunately, you will get my website. But I do not understand how. Sure, I’m glad it gets you to my site, but really, how embarrassing to search for me with such an unflattering question.

First off, my character Slade is a washed up drugged out punk rocker, prone to violent outbursts and the most offensive behavior. But he certainly has not pooped on a glass table. I’m not ruling out other types of tables, rugs, socks or small furry animals. But I assure you, he’s not defiled a glass table. At least, not yet.

Secondly, if anyone were to associate the word “poop” which one of my characters at least get the character correct. When I think of my writing (which I assure you if of the highest caliber) and poop, I think of Chigger “FreckleFart” Larson who was caught praying on the pooper.

Quite scandalous, I know. In Chigg’s defense, the bathroom stall was the only place she could find for such a private moment. The praying, I mean.

As a writer, I’d like to think that readers could find my website by searching for any of the following:

• “Greatest writer on the face of the earth.”

• “Winner of every Nobel Prize for Literature for the next eighty years.”

• Or simply, “She who’s name cannot be spoken.”

As a realist, I’m pretty certain the last selection would not direct people to my website. But as my literary career progresses, I’m fairly confident readers will be able to find my site using the first two selections.

But until then, I guess just search for me with, “Is it True That Slade Pooped on Glass Tables”…

You’ll get me every time.

A Bunch of Dead People on the Prowl

My new novel, Incinerate, is one dark read. In fact, I do not foresee one amusing word or anecdote finding its way to the page in this bad boy.

What can I say? It’s a book about a bunch of dead people on the prowl. It’s not a vampire book, or a ghost book. There aren’t any zombies save for one zombie voodoo child with aspirations beyond her years.

The setting of this morbid tale is post civil war Mississippi. A place and time where things were pretty bad for a lot of people. But for the residents of a utopian black planting community, life was difficult but rewarding.

UNTIL the price of cotton hits rock bottom, and the Mississippi river changes course, and flood and pestilence all combine to threaten the survival of this utopian community which had outlasted slavery, war and reconstruction.

Unwilling to give up the land they’d fought and struggled to make their own, the community desperately turns to Doc Creole, a New Orleans voodoo priest known for his powers over heaven and earth.

And that’s when things really get bad.   More to come as things develop.

As always, thanks for your continued support.

Methinks I’m going to need it on this one.

From My Folder Titled: Vampire Crap

I completely forgot about this.  My attempt at total pulp fiction.  I guess I've decided not to pursue this, so I don't mind telling you the main character wakes with her face planted in a pizza box full of pizza.

And now, my gift to you:

VAMPIRE CRAP

When the door closed, Harley Hendrix stood dizzily for a moment, as if the earth had shifted in some noticeable way beneath her. Then she realized she wasn’t breathing. She wasn’t breathing, but stood, holding her breath, waiting, expectant for Bill to swing the door open and sweep her off her feet. She was waiting for what she had waited for her entire life. A door to open, a man to enter and her real life to begin, finally at 39.


The door did not open.

Instead, she turned the radio on, fifties rock and roll her mama used to play on Sunday mornings as she burnt the breakfast sausage. Harley did the ‘mash potato’ into the kitchen and retrieved the frozen bucket of premixed margaritas from the freezer; her emergency ‘stash’. She left it on the counter to thaw as she pulled the pan of fresh turtle brownies from the oven. She pushed her finger into the center of the brownies and then quickly removed it. Done!

While the mix melted and the brownies cooled Harley kept busy. Too busy to think about how much fun she’d had with Bill over the past four months. Too busy to think about the life she had already imagined and planned with Bill: the small house in the country, matching quarter horses and a couple of goats, some barn cats. Harley hadn’t imagined a small child, she wanted to see how the goats worked out first.

But now she was thinking of the goats, thinking of Bill saddling the horses and a surge of panic well inside her. She’d ruined it with Bill. She didn’t know how but he was gone now. Moving in with some woman, or skank ho’, he’d met online two weeks ago. Talking marriage, as if seeking Harley’s advice on how to proceed. As if Harley had any experience with that!

“This calls for an exceptionally large, overloaded, everything and your brother pizza,” she determined in a quiet, fierce voice to Pepe, her quiet, fierce schnauzer. Pepe barely paid Harley any attention, having been through this routine many times before.

After ordering her pizza, Harley’s eyes landed on a picture of her and Bill at their favorite Italian restaurant called ‘Noodles’. The waiter had taken their picture. Bill hadn’t wanted to recreate the famous scene from Lady and Tramp, the two dogs sharing the same long noodle until their lips touched. Bill had thought it was stupid, embarrassing. But when he saw how much it meant to her, saw the tears glistening in her eyes he had complied with her wishes.

Only, as Harley looked at the image with the lens of love so ruthlessly stripped from her eyes, she realized the grin on Bill’s face was actually more an angry grimace, a really, really, really angry grimace. How had she not noticed that before? His eyes, those deep grey pools of warmth and understanding seemed to hold daggers pointed at her idiotic smiling face. It was there, in the picture, the truth that they would never be together, never enter into marital union. Never own goats.

But Harley did not despair, not yet. Despair would come in a little over five months, when she turned forty, if nothing happened soon. And it had to happen soon.

Until something happened, Harley slipped a dvd into the player, determined to not dwell on the wasted evening. There was no chance Bill would re-enter her mind tonight, not after a billionth showing of Interview with a Vampire. And a couple of margaritas. And a pan of brownies. And a medium pizza, the works.

Harley was well into her second margarita, dancing to ‘Jumping Jack Flash’ and slicing a lime when the doorbell rang. One thought blazed through her heart, her mind and her soul: Bill! In her excitement Harley sliced into the lime too forcefully, cutting deep into the meat of her thumb.

“Ow, ow, ow, owie,” she muttered as blood ran freely down her arm onto the cutting board, discoloring the limes. Then it hit her, Bill wasn’t at the door.

“Idiot, its only the stupid pizza,” she said as she grabbed a paper towel and pressed it to her thumb. But it did little good. By the time she opened the door to the hippie pizza guy, the paper towel and her entire arm was a bloody mess.

She said, “Hey, hold on,” as she fumbled around in her jean pockets for money.

“Dude,” the pizza guy said, his shining eyes glued to her injury.

“Oh, its nothing,” she said with a laugh, “nothing a little tequila can’t cure. Lime injury, happens all the…”

The words died on Harley’s lips as the pizza guy pushed the pizza box and himself forward into her living room.

“Hey, well okay, come on in,” Harley said, startled by the intrusion.

The pizza guy was now inside the house. He looked quickly over his shoulder through the doorway and then shut the door behind him.

“All I have is twenty, just, uhm, just keep the change. That’s fine.” She held the bill towards the pizza guy and placed her hand on the pizza box. But he did not take the bill.

“Just keep the change,” she pulled the pizza from his hand, “and I’ll keep the pizza. That’s generally how it works.” She was about to add, “crazy pizza guy?” beneath her breath when he pulled his lips back, reminding her of a snarling coyote she’d seen once as a child on Little House on the Prairie.

He was now crazy pizza snarling coyote, with a little spittle running down the side of his open mouth. Which, by the way, revealed a set of very long incisors, long and pointed. They weren’t particularly clean teeth, not bright white and shiny and why should they be? He was a pizza delivery guy, his dental insurance had to be pretty crappy.

Harley said, “You need to leave now. I have…” she reached into her purse on the coffee table quickly and pulled out a can of deodorant. “Mace, this is deadly, blind your ass mace, Mister, and if you don’t leave now, I’ll spray it right in your eyes and in your mouth.” She found herself wondering if the deodorant might help with the coyote’s putrid breath, if somehow she would be doing him a great service right before he… he what, she wondered.

Then she knew.

He intended to eat her.