O N W R I T I N G All of the good opening lines have been taken. I'm not kidding; just try to come up with something that is poignant and witty, that draws the reader to the novel and keeps them from putting it back on the shelf, that sums up all of the wonder and awe in the world and ties it to your unfolding fictional setting. And keep it brief. It's not easy, let me tell you. Even when a line creeps up from the depths of your mind, dripping with wit and force, sharp and simple like the blade of a good knife, drawing you into the world of the author with such a grip that is all you can do to hold the book at arm's length--even then, a quick re-read will bring the cold awareness that this is something you've read before, back in high school or on the bus or while browsing in an old book store. There's just so many good ones already... "Two days ago I decided to kill myself." Iain Banks. You can't put it down. "I only slept with her once." Ellison. Must keep reading, I told myself on that one, but the cashier wouldn't let me trade my watch for the book; I had to let it go. But a good intro is like that: if you don't keep reading, that line will haunt you forever. I still wish I'd bought that Ellison. An opening line doesn't have to be brief, either. Pratchett. "The wind howled. Lightning stabbed at the earth erratically, like an inefficient assassin." Angela Carter. "Sad; so sad, those smoky-rose, smoky-mauve evenings of late Autumn, sad enough to pierce the heart." Come on , like I can top that ? "The weight of knowledge bore down on him like the heaviness of a dead man." That's what I'm stuck with. Mailer writes "Crude thoughts and fierce forces are my state" and here I am trying to win the audience over with a passing metaphor about the price of knowledge and the death of innocence. And not even a good one, at that: what knowledge? Maybe I should change it to wisdom. "The weight of wisdom..." too much alliteration. Knowledge it is, then. So I've got this opening line. What am I going to do with it? I mean I have this vague idea for a story in mind, high-tech action with intrigue and enough sophistication to allow me to wax philosophical and poetic at whim. But no detailed blueprints. There's a world of difference between the skeletal plot and the fleshed-out tale, many specific details to create from nothing. Like characters. Who is this guy lugging knowledge around like a Samsonite? And for that matter, just what sort of knowledge are we talking about, and why does it weigh so much? These are issues I have to deal with, now; I'm committed. Or I should be. Or I should ditch that opening line, come up with something even more profound. The burden of knowledge bore down on him like the weight of a dead man. He forced his legs to move him forward in a weary, lumbering pace; his jaded eyes tracked along the stained concrete ramp of the bus terminal as he made his way into the city. Nobody caught his eye; the few that even looked at him were struck by the colorless aura that seemed to surround the tattered figure. At the corner the cold night air hit him, awakening him; the man straightened his back, arranged his battered charcoal greatcoat, glanced about with ever-sharpening eyes as he waited for the light to change. Not too shabby. He seems to have a sense of purpose, and I kind of like the battered vagabond motif. But still, who is he? I'm going to blow the whole thing if I just keep writing, winging it, but somehow that seems to be the easiest way. Easier than thinking. Hell, I don't even know if I want this to be novel or a short story. "You were writing last night." Paul, my roommate, sitting on the couch with the tail end of a German six-pack lurking within easy reach. I squinted: pilsner, welcome on any hot August morning. I grabbed one of the last green bottles, cracked it with my keychain. "What makes you so sure?" "Jazz," he told me, dipping into his brew. "You always listen to jazz when you write." "Not really," I told him, wandering over to lean by the open window, let the faint breeze rustle through my open shirt. I took some beer to stop sweating. "Really," Paul argued. "Jazz when you write, metal when you exercise, classical when you meditate." I meditate? "What about blues?" I rallied. Counter and riposte. "When you drink." I laughed. "Fair enough." Paul sat up, looked around the room for ready food, gave up and sank back into the couch. Welcome home, weary hunter. "Well, you do listen to the same album over and over," he pointed out, and this time I knew he was right by the all but unnoticeable twinge of guilt (somewhere beneath the left kidney where the conscience is located...). "That's how I know when you write." "Sorry." " 'Ts okay. Just gimme some of that first royalty check." He looked around again, unconcernedly, like a trapped animal in a room full of sedatives. I took pity on him and got some sourdough from the kitchen. The cars were the only things that seemed to have any substance on the noisy streets: great weaving hunks of brightly-painted metal and glass that streamed by in vivid blurs of yellow and red light. The people out in this early evening were like shades, silhouettes, wraiths; not really there, not really seeing, not really knowing at all what they had immersed themselves in. One by one they stalked briskly to their seperate destinies, these lone denizens of the bustling city. No words spoken, no looks exchanged, no eyes met. The most dense, most accelerated society on the planet and it wandered alone in fragmented, solitary monuments to antisocial behavior. He looked around with his greyed face, nodded to himself solemnly. It was as it should be. Dim, alienated, divorced from contact; it is such that humanity endures the abrasive contact with itself. Of a sudden he was awash with humanity, dirty humanity, glaring and leering at him, the first social communication showing up in the worst possible way. "Money for a Beer?" He keep walking. "Spare change for a phone call?" Nothing. "Got anything for a vet? For a cripple?" He shook his head. "My car's at the meter, man, you git a quarter? A dime? ...A dollar?" No response. There were thousands of them, some bold and assertive, some sullen and withdrawn into darkened doorframes; others silent with imploring eyes, holding up carefully prepared, poorly- written cardboard signs; still others leaning against the mirrored glass panes of the towering monoliths and carrying on animated discussions with their reflections. The tricksters, the jesters, the beggars and the thieves; on every street. The thought sprung upon him: just how many of those make their money simply by being the only person to speak with a citizen on a given day? How many are paid a modest fee for making that essential eye contact that keeps one human, for providing a small bit of casual conversation, however trivial, to a lonely worker starved for attention? "C-Can you help me?" He looked up, saw a man approaching him earnestly, nervously. "These guys...I was down by the docks, my brother had his boat there...they had a knife, I was scared, I didn't know what to do...they took everything, my wallet and my money, I couldn't get back to the boat in time..." He nodded slowly, listening vaguely to the man, wondering if he's heard this particular pitch before. "The cops, they couldn't give me anything, said there was no way they could find the guys. I asked them for a place to saty and they gave me this number to call, but the place is closed...they took everything...they, they had a knife, man, I didn't know what to do..." He waited patiently, still walking slowly, until the man finally asked for assistance, for money, any money, then kept walking while the man stared after him helplessly. Nothing could be done. Just got back from a wild weekend. All of Saturday and most of today spent downtown, some of it stumbling drunk, some of it stumbling tired, the rest a jerking blur of coffee and Mini-thins. People were using the most persuasive techniques they could muster to get money off me, like they didn't know that you don't get something for nothing. Several people were selling street sheets, a few tried the change-for-a-phone-call routine, one guy even told me he had just been busted for DUI and the cops had kept his wallet. Not to mention the streetcorner types with their signs and their roses and their windshield washes... I came back tired, hung over, with a $150-sized hole in my wallet. And the memories, those cocky city women, the devious urban males, the ear-ringing clubs and the all-night diners lit with a ghostly pale. I'm thinking of writing first person. It seems to flow easier, but lends itself too well to describing your own life. Distance, that's what I'm after. Or at least something other than blatant autobiography. The bus sped off along the oily asphalt ramp, leaving me shrouded in the black cloud of its exhaust, alone and tired in the midst of the busy inner city. I scanned the terminal quickly, looking for threats and marks, my eyes sliding easily over the time-stained walls that could hold no attention. Place looked pretty clear; nothing but derelicts and bewildered foreigners, plus the occasional disgruntled youth trying in vain to look invulnerable and intimidating. The few, the loud, the ignorant. I took a few slow deep breaths, calming the anxious thoughts within me and bringing into full consciousness the primeval alertness that comes with city conditioning. Speak not and be not spoken to. See not and be not seen. Prey be not, and predator be. The outside world hit me with all full-sensory overload; the fumes, the ashen sky, the noise of traffic both motor and human; the buzzing electricity, the persistent ads, the unrelenting concrete and the harsh hyperreal glare of glass and steel. Not to sure about those results. Maybe I should launch in a new direction, make the character a writer like me, a sort of mirroring effect. I could even have him writing about a character who is a writer, who is maybe also writing about a writer, and so on mirroring to infinity.... Nah. Sounds more redundant than profound. And who would get it, really? Sometimes I take my work too seriously. Like I do everything else, that is, compounding matters with needless worries and intricacies that leave things ten times more complicated than when I began. There was this girl I knew for awhile, striking in a way that was attrractive without being glamorous--i.e., just my style. She saw me for about a month before she told me I was too serious, and never spoke to me again. One time we were sitting there eating Chinese food after watching a Woody Allen tape. The silence was dry and foreboding, like she'd leave if there was no further entertainment. I never wanted her to leave. "You're one of those people who has goals, aren't you?" I asked. Not serious, just musing, but like most she couldn't tell the difference. "Yeah,' she said, stretching enthusiatically. Like a cat. "I want to learn, to travel, to teach, to become a jolly great force of Good in this world." Okay, so I made up that last part. But you get the idea. I shook my head, in effect somewhat sadly. "Not me." This was back in my so-called Dark Period, i.e. before I learned what not to say in front of people, especially people you were trying to bed. You can have soul, but not too much, and not too troubled; like Diet Soul, the Cliff Notes version of a sensitive man. You can be careful and caring and even a little wounded, as long as there's no real reason why....To continue, I continued: "I've never had much in the way of ambition. Or goals." See? Too dark, too much self-awareness. Better to say something like "I have so many goals but am afraid they'll never come to fruition"--that way they can give you a pep talk and nurture you forever, etc. But back to the dialogue as it, more or less, happened. "No goals?" she repeated. "Ever?" "I used to be after some sort of absolution," I told her. "But I think I got that." "Absolution for what?" Ever the therapist. But, after all, an amateur therapist. I took a dark delight in knocking her off-track as much as possible. Usually by pretending to be serious... "For that I might rest," was my flat reply. "And not be disturbed." "And are you resting?" A slightly amused tone, a little lift of her eyebrows: signs that she's not quite sure if I'm playing with her or not. She's trying to see the joke, and not even sure where to look. "I'm a burnout." I informed her. "That's as resting as you get." I looked down to attack my cooling chow mein. "Christ," she muttered, exasperated. "Why can't you talk about anything normal?" Hell, if I could answer that, I wouldn't feel the need to write, would I? I walked from the bus terminal until I came across a civic park a few blocks away. Nothing much to look at; an abstract fountain piece with people milling around: lovers arm in arm, solitary artists perched amidst the statuary, kids screaming about in circles while their parents milled aimlessly and tried to look cultured. I settled onto a concrete bench, enforcing my squatter's rights by streching my legs out across it. One leather- gloved hand dug into the wide outside pocket of my faded greatcoat and withdrew a tattered notebook in fingers that trembled with the chill of the air. I managed to uncover my pen, a cracked and ink-stained Parker that I'd had for years, and started recording the narrative that I'd composed along this latest long bus ride. The days of this world pass silent and slim, speeding by frame by frame like the reels of ancient theater. The more I wander this tired beaten earth, the more I unearth and behold with eyes ever glazing with the film of jaded vision, the less I feel for what I behold, the less I own of what was once my humanity. Since the days of the Vikings have I travelled this plane, a vagabond damned by the mark I bear. To live friendless and homeless, such is my lot 'till the time when my liege-lords can bear to absolve me. The loneliness and the heartbreak I feel, the longing with which I yearn for the red-sanded hills that rolled about the valley of my youth, such can only be relieved by the spreading of my tale, by measuring the length of my word at each small haven I find. "I was born in the Valley of the White Mare, where the wind blows with the coldness of iced steel and the sun beats down pale and ruthless from an unfathomable distance. The underground villa that spawned me was originally the lair of a herd of primate hunters; during the severe droughts of the millenium my people co-opted the caves and learned to eke out a meager farming existence from their underground streams." Ad Infinitum. I guess you can kind of lose interest by adding too many narrative layers. I mean, by the time I stopped I was confused and I'm the one writing the damned thing. Paul strode through the kitchen, waving a handful of envelopes triumphantly. "It's here!" he shouted, tearing one of them open and unfolding the contents. I peered over the open door of the fridge, one hand rooting blindly for edibles. "What's here?" One hand shoved an overdone certificate in my face. "My ordainment," he explained with a smile. "I am now officially a priest." "Yeah," I muttered, giving up on the idea of food and closing the fridge. Religion always puts me off my lunch. "Of what?" He looked at the certificate and frowned. "Hmm. They screwed up." He squinted slightly, eyes scanning the page. "It's supposed to make me a high priest of the Church of Dionysus Incarnate." "What's it say instead?" "Church of Dionysian Inviolate." I thought it over. "Got a nice ring to it," I offered. "They mock my faith," Paul growled. I'm still not sure what turned me on to writing in the first place. It'd be nice to say that I covered the walls of my crib with giant crayon scribblings, or that I entered a school writing contest on a whim and took first, or that I got so desperate for cash that I tried my hand at turning a tale. But I really don't know how it happened; it just seems like something I always did whenever I had spare time and a cool thought or two. My earliest inspiration, funny enough, was movies. When I was a kid I used to re-write the end of movies I didn't like--make the good guys lose, make the bad guys die more horribly, that sort of thing. Around the time adolescence hit I went on a huge testosterone binge: page after page of violent battles and lusty women, taking form as stories, novels, comic books, ink drawings, even the occasional crude attempt at a painting. Eventually I grew out of it and realized I didn't know how to write worth a damn. This coincided with the revelation that most of the books I read were, I guess, below standard. I put down my trashy adventure novels and my trashy sci-fi and started delving into fiction, where writers use wit and mood and timing and metaphor in an attempt at literature. All of a sudden I was reading Proust, deVries, Borges, Kafka, Goethe...and trashy sci-fi. There's some things you just can't get rid of. But I never really decided to "start writing". I'd been keeping a journal ever since it had been required in a wacko Psychology class, and I would more or less write in it every week. When my reading improved, so did my writing. I began relating events of the day in prose rather than in haste, and before long my long rambling musings became long rambling stories. I added characters, loaded in some decription, faked a plot, and soon had built up enough of a collection of short works to call myself a writer. Eventually I felt good enough about my stuff to actually show it to the people who expressed interest. Most of them seemed to like it, which probably meant that I really sucked but they didn't want to hurt my feelings. I started getting those annoying "Have you got anything published yet?" questions from friends and other writers; when I began getting them from myself I sent stuff out--only things I was extremely pleased with, like the one about the guy that didn't want to live forever, or the one with the battalion scattered through space and time, or the gothic ones from when I was going to all those blacklit clubs. I didn't get a whole lot of response, so I sent out some hack stuff, clockwork plots with mildly intriguing characters and more witty banter than social commentary. Some of those sold, after a while; I began to write what were in my opinion "good" and "bad" stories, sending the bad ones out for publication and keeping the good ones in case I got any book offers. But that's my writing: half work, half hobby. Some of it art, some of it assembly-line. It's nice when something sells, but there's no way I depend on thehaphazard tastes of publishers to pay my rent. There's maybe a tenth of one percent of all writers which can afford to live off their work. The rest of us have a simple choice: starvation or employment. Ever the practical one, I choose the latter. Granted, spending forty hours a week playing the part of American Drone leaves you feeling a bit tapped and useless, and I would love to have an extra day or two off a week in order to shake off the effects of the workplace and get some actual writing done; still, I value my paycheck. It keeps me in the running as far as the human race is concerned. I have, however, made a few concessions that make writing easier. These days I punch ten to six as a graveyard warehouseman for a company down on Olympic, essentially trading any chance of a luxurious salary for a more comfortable schedule. I used to do the nine to five thing, but found that I wrote even less in my sedated evenings than when I was strung out on too few hour's sleep. Everything that happens to you affects your writing. Turns of phrase you hear in passing, arguments you have on ethics and theology, insults and the come-backs you could have said. Life is, after all, the primary source of writing material. Imagination plays a serious role in designing a plot, but most characters, scenes, and dialogues are patched together from a number of real experiences. And it shows. I've seen it come through in everything from sci-fi and horror to those two- dollar adventure novels that come in numbered series. A bar scene, the too-romantic depiction of a woman's silhouette, the political discussion written in long block paragraphs that no-one in the world could finish without being interrupted. It's a tone that is at once sculpted and inspired; it is what drives the writer to the page. And it's not fiction. I cannot relay how tempting it is to write about characters that mirror your own life, to allow yourself to directly discuss your experiences as if they happened to somebody else. Reality is, as they say, stranger than fiction, and I know my personal life would read like the darkest satire you could find. But it seems like cheating, like drawing from a photograph instead of a model so that you just have to copy the lines, not capture the essence. Then there is also the danger of not knowing what to leave out. One weekend recently I had three dates with three different women, and all of the evenings ended, shall we say, abruptly. I was tempted over the following week to write a story called Blueball Express about a guy who has every "prospect" terminated in a more and more ridiculous manner, with his frustration building to a high tension by the end. I hadn't thought through to the climax, so to speak, but I might have made out that the guy was in hell, cursed, maybe trapped in some broad psychological experiment on sex deprivation that he had unwittingly signed up for. Or maybe the gods hated him. I don't know, I didn't write it; I figured it would be just like bitching, a sulky artist's reaction to a trying reality, like a political cartoon or a caricature. And I was right. A friend of mine looked at my stuff once. Pretentious, she said. What? Your writing. I thought about it. Dark, yeah, nonlinear, okay, but pretentious? It's the characters you create, she told me. They're so...full of yourself. I must have looked at her funny 'cause she continued. You're a flawed creator, You give them life, but look at the life you give them. Oh. What mad god indeed would belabor a creation with the burden of knowledge? Self-indulgent, okay, but pretentious? Inspiration hath struck at last. I spent the early evening in a park a few minute's drive from work, took advantage of the extending daylight to work on my tan. Joining me in this endeavor were a Lord Dunsany novel and a bottle of iced tea. Needless to say, it was the Dunsany that did it; all that talk of elf and troll and the fey folk, the lands beyond mortal experience: it brought back my taste for the fantastic. Scratch the changes I've made so far; I feel I have the right track here. What else to say? Time to begin sketching. The dog sniffed (Alczor). "Human," it growled. "That's right," came a voice from above them. The trio looked up as a dark shape dropped down into the alley from its high perch. Three soft shaaks pierced the stillness as Bogmn extended gleaming curved needles from its palm. "I can take him out in three breaths," he hissed. "Don't even try it, mojo-boy," warned the human. "I'll have you gutted before you know where to swing." Too early to tell on this one, I'll need a few pages to lay down the vague characters just formed. It smacks slightly of melodrama, but a few blocks of description should break that up nicely.