Some days just get away from you. Today was just one of those days. I need music more on these days than others. And it’s not just soul-revivers or some Kenny Loggins’ soundtrack jams. Any music can movie you. Even parody.
I’ve been re-watching all of the episodes of Flight of the Conchords while I work out recently and I’m once again in awe of this show. I never make a weekly ritual out of watching a particular TV show. Certainly I look forward to catching up with Don Draper every Sunday but, as it generally goes, I don’t get to watch the new Mad Men until Wednesday or Thursday. I made watching Flight of the Conchords a priority. I watched it when it aired live and I recorded it on my DVR so I could watch the episode again during the week. My obsession with Community comes close. As funny as many of these FoC songs were, they had a depth beyond mere parody. They had heart and reverence. Jemaine and Brett deconstructed the genres, but still managed to respect the source material.
While I ponder how to kill a character with a string trimmer in my horror/coming-of-age/literary short story I felt compelled to share the song that kept me sane today. I had my daughter bobbing along with my own rendition tonight, and she, of course, latched on to one of the more inappropriate lyrics (Who’s touching these monkeys, please / leave these poor sick monkeys alone / they’ve got problems enough as it is) and repeated it, ad infinitum. To me, this song is the pinnacle of the Conchords’ songwriting and video production powers. And it makes me happy. Here’s the live version, just in case you hadn’t seen the stage show performance. I’m also assuming you’ve seen the show. You’ve seen the show, right?
So I have this story of mine called “Shoot Like You’re Awesome.” The story concerns a cog in the roshambo (read: Rock, Paper, Scissors not Eric Cartman’s version) tournament circuit. I wrote it as part of my MFA thesis in 2007. It’s always been, in my mind, the best story I’ve ever written. Nevertheless, this story has garnered 50+ rejections.
One kind rejection a few months ago, one of those “I loved it but…” rejections, mentioned a flaw in the story that caused something to click in my head. The editor of the rejecting lit mag suggested that though she loved the story’s humor and the depiction of the main character’s eccentricities and single-minded obsession, the ending failed to deliver a punch worthy of the rest of the story. I’d always been reluctant to change the ending. The story is analogous to my own experiences as a writer: struggling to place my own work in literary journals, disappointment, unjustified rejection. I wanted the main character (Westinghouse) to lose and then soldier on, silently, resolute and without emotion. As writers, we’re trained by seemingly endless failure that we can’t get too high or too low… that we just… keep… writing. And for a long time this is how I felt. Resolute. Confident. Every so six months, I contemplate giving up writing altogether but after a few days of inactivity I’m drawn back to the blank page. There’s just too much going on in my brain to walk away. Writing is a disease I endure, for the most part, willingly.
After receiving the aforementioned rejection and another half dozen or so in close proximity, I forced myself to pause and consider that this story I loved so much might need to be retired, for good, and never thought of again. But I couldn’t do it. Not yet. I decided to give it one more edit, one more last ditch effort to save “Shoot Like You’re Awesome.” I considered all angles. And the more I hemmed and hawed the more angry I got about my experience trying to find this story a home. The culmination of this rage resulted in this post back on March 14th: Putting Fun Back in Short Fiction? In summary, I lamented the boilerplate-loving nature of many of the major lit mags who refuse to give off-beat, humorous fiction an audience.
Vader chokes the bitch that steps out of line.
The click came when I embraced this anger and gave myself an outlet for my frustration. The grind of submitting work to literary magazines wasn’t about “enduring.” It was about fighting. It was about raging, but ultimately continuing the grind after coming back down to Earth. Even Steven wasn’t the answer. So instead of the story ending with reluctant, silent hope, I harnessed my more honest recalcitrance so that Westinghouse might rebel, if only briefly, in a fleeting moment of weakness. And there it was. Weakness. I had thought Westinghouse’s weakness had been his single-minded obsession that lead to social and emotional inadequacy. It turned out, his obsessions, like my own pursuit of writing, had been his strength. It could be a tantrum in the wake of failure that would make him human. With this in mind, I re-edited for the billionth time, but instead of cutting (as per every other suggestion) I added three full pages to the short story, pushed the word count over 3500 and slowed down the ending to give Westinghouse a chance to lash out, somewhat irrationally. After the new edit, I sent another round of submissions and went about working on other projects. Hope had been restored, at least until I started receiving those brand new rejections for a story I felt had become stronger than ever.
Late last night, after an epic four hours of watching the highly entertaining The Hatfields & McCoys (coincidentally, a story all about irrational rage), I checked my email before going to bed and received that long awaited acceptance for “Shoot Like You’re Awesome” from the literary magazine P.Q. Leer. Visit their site. Feed them some traffic. I really dig their style and sense of humor. That they had enough sense to publish my favorite story is just extra sauce.
Writers, if you love a story that no one else loves, stick with it. Listen to the criticism but don’t necessarily take it to heart. If you really love a story, there shouldn’t be a such thing as a last chance. Also, Star Wars wisdom aside, maybe sometimes it’s better to give in to your hate, if only just a little while. Also, at some point, make some time to watch Kevin Costner, Tom Berenger and Bill Paxton go all dueling hillbillies against each other.
Taken from an interesting bit about the intersection of creativity/spontaneity at http://the99percent.com/
As much as I like to be spontaneous (I’m really not) and as much as I like to make last-minute, spur-of-the-moment plans (I generally won’t) and as much as I can make split decisions… meh. You get the picture. I often look at a perfect opportunity, last night for example, to escape from the daily grind. Everyone’s got a daily grind, be it a 70-hour-per-week job, a litter of kids at home, a work-from-home situation that feels like the end of sanity. If you’ve read a sizable portion of this bl-g you’ve probably read a few posts that encourage active participation. It’s just so much easier not to do things. To not go see that movie. To not attend a band’s show because I just don’t have the energy. Staying home is almost always easier. But do you make memories, entertain new experiences?
A few weeks ago, I Shazammed a song by a band called Dry the River. I finally had the opportunity to listen to the full record sometime last week. From the very first spin, I was hooked. Full-on, hooks through the gills. I’ve been pushing the band on Twitter (@drytheriver) whenever possible. They remind me vaguely of Shearwater (probably because I’ve been listening to Shearwater a ton lately) if Shearwater were enamored with some Scandinavian folkies like First Aid Kit. They’ve mentioned the influences of Leonard Cohen and At the Drive-In, a comparison I quite like. So yesterday I received one of those concert announcement emails from one of the local promoters. I don’t always skim these things because I’m usually aware of a show before it arrives in my inbox. Well, there at the bottom of the page was a small blurb mentioning Dry the River playing at the Club Cafe, that night. Ugh. Overlooked, likely because they just recently became a name on my radar.
I wanted to go, of course. The rules of Interweb hyperbole permit me to claim that Dry the River’s Shallow Bed is the OMG best m’f’in album of 2012. But I just couldn’t muster the gumption to go last night. A night in which I had nothing doing, nowhere to be, no immediate responsibilities to undertake. And I make these grand speeches about making the effort on this bl-g. I’m a hypocrite.
It takes energy and time to go out into the world. It seems silly but it’s true, especially when days are filled with other responsibilities. Work. Kids. Wife. Coffee consumption. Fiction writing in between all of that. I build myself up for going out. I look forward to my dates with live music for weeks in advance. Could I talk myself up in one day? Ehhh, not so much. All I wanted to do was get the kids to bed, do my workout and catch up on some Sherlock, some baseball watching and maybe paint the attic stairs. Some nights you’ve talked yourself up for a night of nothing whatsoever. And when you’ve talked yourself up for nothing whatsoever that something that comes along, even something as fated as a Dry the River show the moment after discovering the band, just needs to take a night off.
Have you caught up on your Sherlock? If not, stop reading this and go watch some Sherlock! What's wrong with you?
To be fair, I almost talked myself up. The wife even told me to go. After all, I could have written a spectacular bl-g proclaiming my love for this soon-to-be buzzband, touting their brilliant mishmash of folk and rock. I could have marked off another venue on my Pittsburgh concert-going to-do list. Somehow I’ve never been to (or don’t remember) the Club Cafe. It would have been glorious, I assure you. But on the other hand, I’m writing this instead. And while it’s not as glorious as a night out with live music, some contemplative time about choosing to squander opportunities can almost be as valuable. I’ll go out there and get ’em next time. I promise. I might just need someone to remind me about this post, three years from now when I’m complaining about how I didn’t go to that Dry the River show on some arbitrary, ho-hum Tuesday back in Oh-12.
