In high school a friend had a button that he wore on his Levi's denim jacket that read 'FUCK 'EM IF THEY CAN'T TAKE A JOKE'. They couldn't. Each time he wore it and was summoned to the principal's office or a teacher wanted to 'discuss' it he had conveniently handed it off to a friend or hid it somewhere on his person so it would not be confiscated. So what happened to the 'FUCK 'EM'? The joke had become trying to hide the button itself - the button that was supposed to refuse to be hidden. The shrewd conservative guerilla tactic allowed the button to make an appearance now and again but the meaning behind the button was negated.
I did not know that there were so many periodicals in publication just on the topic of writing. There are several. I picked a few up two weeks ago and I started running through some of the articles and the lists and guidelines for writers. I had just read Chuck Palahniuk's book on short stories and he talks about how he uses stories he hears from friends to work into his books. It might be that the same party joke that a friend keeps telling and that you have heard for years is your vehicle to a novel. You just need to steer it in a direction.
In the last week I started reading an unauthorized biography on Jerry Seinfeld. A Christmas present that is just now being put to use. What was amazing is reading how many women thought they were the Elaine character and how many events from Jerry and Larry David's lives were written into the show. Each person interviewed by the author was delving into stories about Jerry and stripping away that last vestige of privacy. Not Jerry's, but their own. Seinfeld had already done that and made hundreds of millions of dollars. These friends and acquaintances were doing it probably for a free cup of coffee or just to have someone to listen to their tale.
The problem I have to deal with is that I write about the people I know and who are reading this right now. I shouldn't have to worry about it, but I do. Most people would never bother to write about people they breathe with or try to gussy the whole situation up into a different tune and hide. Trust me, the stuff you read here really isn't given a whole lot of thought. The way I write it is usually a coincidence if there is a point or if semantics change the whole meaning of what I was writing about in the first place. I just sit and type and whatever finds its way out finds its way out. I never proofread. I rarely even scan. It is pulp. Raw.
I haven't been doing much so the ideas are few and far between. You really don't need to read about my conversations with the supermarket clerk or the internal math that goes into figuring out the MPG on the most recent tank of gas, you can wait to read those later. I've been taking things that have happened to me recently and then looking for the hinge; the thing on which the story either closes shuts or swings open to something more. A writer's construct that I have come across is to take a swipe at the hinge by tacking on something for effect.
Fight Club had liposuctioned fat used to make soap, the hinge; the fat came from a character's mother. There's a fact - fat can be used to make soap and then stretching the truth - guy makes soap from someone's mother's fat.
Take a string of sexual episodes and see if there is a commonality then exploit it. Make a search for someone a search for anything related to that person and try to walk away from it. Take a few emails, string them together and then launch into something. Mix their meanings. Semantics. Think you can take anything and make it have a sexual connotation? So can everyone else. Make an uncomfortable situation comfortable and make an innocent conversation sinister.
There I am at some single digit hour in the AM pounding away at the keyboard without any real guidance or reason. Just slapping the ends of my fingers to plastic in the hopes that something makes sense when my hands decide to stop. For the most part it is just something that came out because I couldn't sleep. And then I'll tack something on the end of it to see if it works as a launching point. If there is a vehicle there that can be driven for a bit.
Apparently the vehicle is being taken out for a drive by the people reading and not the person writing. That is all very well and it is probably a good thing for me to try and deal with now. I don't plan to stop writing so I might as well get used to people not understanding or misinterpreting what I write. Or jump to the conclusion it was about them or how dare it not be about them. I am sure somebody is going to take matters into their own hands eventually. Fine.
FUCK 'EM IF THE TRUTH CAN'T BE STRETCHED
The other day I wrote "FUCK 'EM ALL"
Sometime I just write things, feelings, whatever.
It helps.