Archive for the ‘Piece of Mind’ Category
I decided to rework the piece below and submit it to the Bonner Springs newspaper, The Chieftan, later this week. Far from masterful work, it’s a fairly decent piece that might be uplifting for the townsfolk who are particularly proud of the quaint downtown environment and its impact on visitors. Also, as a former weekly newspaper editor, I remember what a lack of actual news and content there was in some weeks. Unsolicited pieces like this – if the editor is tuned in – can give the reporters and assistant editors a break from scouring city council, planning and zoning, and school board meetings in search of controversy.
Overall, it’s a little long and there are passages that I’ve included to keep a record of the evening but that do not serve any real narrative value. Those chunks will need to be edited before submittal. Space in weeklies is precious, so my perspective on the town needs to be concise and yet still might not warrant inclusion with the other events of the week. But even so, the night was perfect and, best of all, I’ve done the hard part. There’s no harm in sharing the words.
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Tags: Business
Corner Cafe
Saturday, August 16th, 2008
We took a table on the corner next to wooden box planters with purple salvia. The kids sat in the wrought iron chairs at one end and my wife and I on the other. Historic buildings streched down the long hill lined with full and shapely pear trees. At 5 p.m., the middle-August sun was warm on our shoulders and bare skin. For the Midwest, there has been a relative cold spell the last few days with temps topping out in the low 80s when normally the grass has been roasted and starched yellow – the same consistency as cigarette paper.
We’d never been to this place before and, in fact, we had only decided to stay under the auspices that we would be able to find a family-friendly place to eat. We’d been shopping for knick-knacks and antiques at the Goodwill in Bonner Springs on the strip close to the main drag and the interstate. Bonner, as the locals refer to it, also has a small historic district that sits on limestone hillsides overlooking the river. The drive is only 20 minutes or so from our house, but it’s just far enough away and different enough to feel like a mini-vacation. Neither my wife nor I expected that we would come to care so much about this town or a few of its residents in the short three hours we’d spend there. (more…)
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Tags: Family Life
The last few weeks, I’ve been researching different philosophical writings, from Thoureau’s cabin ponderings to Nietzche’s thoughts on artistic expression. But the idea that impressed me the most I found in a book on my bedside bureau, where it was promptly buried in drawings and library check outs.
I bought Gary Snyder’s A Place in Space earlier this summer in a discount bookstore the same size and dimensions as an airplane hanger. The book is a collection of the poet’s assorted writings, including articles, essays, speeches and book prefaces. The following quotation is from the essay Language Goes Two Ways:
“Wildness can be said to be the essential nature of nature. As reflected in consciousness, it can be seen as a kind of open awareness – full of imagination but also the source of alert survival intelligence. The workings of the human mind at its very richest reflects this self-organizing wildness. So language does not impose order or a chaotic universe, but reflects its own wildness back.”
I’ve found, as others have when writing, that the mind brings its own natural order to thought, prioritizing and arranging the events and details of a story as they rank for you. Sometimes the end is the beginning and the beginning is somewhere near the middle. Achiveing this automation, though, requires freeflow of thought – or wild writing – so that the mind can sort itself out. This process eliminates supernumerary revisions and frustration.
To stem a bout with writer’s block a couple of years ago, I enrolled in a junior college writing course. The session lasted only one night, but it was immensely beneficial. At the end of the three-hour class, I approached the writing instructor – an adjunct professor and graduate of the creative writing program at the University of Kansas – and told her I was having trouble starting my stories in the wrong places. She asked, “How do you know where the beginning is?” I was cured. I knew where the beginning was all along … it was where my mind started, where the thoughts were still wild and untamed, and all I had to do was reflect the moments back to paper.
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Tags: Books, Philosophy
My work on the September issue of Urban Times is almost complete. I am 700 words into my final piece, the cover story, the subject of which I can’t divulge at this point. But look for the posts here to pick up again after tonight.
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Tags: Urban Times
The guys from Lil’ Guy Productions left a voicemail message for me this afternoon. If you’ve been following the posts here, they were the subjects I interviewed for Present Magazine at Prosperos Bookstore last month. They’ve asked me to help them write a proposal to promote their graphic novel series to Marvel, DC and at least one other comic book publisher with which I am not familiar. Maybe King’s Press?
In any case, the proposal is really just a brief summary of the Lil’ Guy comic’s plot line. Creator Chuck Smith said he feels a little too close to the story to summarize its broad scope and the pain he survived. Based on his teenage years, the graphic novels tell a dark story about an under-sized junior high kid who’s bullied by his affluent classmates and step-father. The boy eventually learns to defend himself, which is when the books turn violent and also are oddly at their best. It’s clear the comic book has become a natural cathartic outlet for its writer.
Smith and colleagues James Rider and Mike Valverde are in the middle of completing the six-issue series, but it’s evident the comics will close in a blood bath. I’ve agreed to help out with the summary so the Lil’ Guy story might move on to a much larger stage. I’ll keep you posted.
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Tags: Business, Comic Books
