Tongue In Face, Part 5

Here's part five of "How to Write: A Guide."

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Step Five: Stay In

Although it’s good to go out and experience things, it’s not advisable when you’re working on a story. This sentiment shocks most people because writers are, on the whole, tanned, good-looking alpha males who spend the majority of their lives outdoors. But it’s true. Distractions will only hinder your creativity.

The great works were all composed in monk-like environments that offered the fewest outside influences. Do you think F. Scott Fitzgerald went out and partied every night when he was writing The Great Gatsby? Was Hemingway cavorting around Paris when he wrote The Sun Also Rises? Nope. They stayed inside and wrote their brains out.

But don’t worry. You can still go out and experience things. Just wait until your work is finished.

One more thing: Never stop working!

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To be continued next week. Don't forget to become a follower of this blog! Have a good weekend.

- TJG

Tongue In Face, Part 4

Part four of my essay, "How to Write: A Guide."

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Step Four: Steal Something

Still stuck for an idea? Experience got you down? Just can’t bring yourself to lie? Have no fear. There is still an option for you. Theft.

I’m not talking about products from your friendly corner store. That’s wrong. (Unless, of course, you’re writing a story about shoplifting.) I’m talking about stealing stories.

Are you boring? Are the stories that make up your life dull? No problem! You’ve got friends, don’t you? Of course you do! You’re a writer! Aren’t your friends stories interesting? Take them. Your friends won’t miss them.

Rookies will often make the mistake of asking permission to use episodes from another person’s life in their work. Don’t give in to temptation. It will only arouse the contempt of your friend. Instead, just take the story. They won’t mind. Trust me. In fact, they’ll probably admire your tenacity. Just imagine the delight on their face when they find a story they’ve been telling people for yeas is I print in the latest edition of Harper’s or The Atlantic Monthly. They’ll probably call you to schedule a lunch where they can thank you in person.

If, for some reason, they are unhappy about it, you should sever all ties with them. A true friend wouldn’t mind. They would feel a sense of pride for their role in your success.

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Part five tomorrow.

- TJG

Tongue In Face, Part 3

Here's part three of my essay.

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Step Three: Ingest Something

Always remember: You can’t write on an empty stomach. If you’re hungry, you better eat. Otherwise, food will insert itself into your story in unexpected ways. This could negatively affect your reputation as an author. William Carlos Williams got hungry for plums one night, and consequently, it’s all we remember him for today. Don’t let this happen to you!

How about thirst? It’s okay to drink, so long as it’s something good, such as milk, water or lemonade. You should never ingest alcohol when you’re writing. It makes your brain foggy, and your pencil hand clumsy. You need to be able to cross those T’s and dot those I’s, so cut out the vino. It’s not worked for one writer yet. Writers are many things, but they are not drinkers. Just try to name one. Can’t do it, huh? It just proves my point.

While we’re on the subject, you probably shouldn’t ingest anything that could affect your brain function. Are and questionable substances don’t mix. They never have. And don’t let any hippy tell you different!

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More tomorrow.

- TJG

Tongue In Face, Part 2

Part two:

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Step Two: Experience Something

A famous person once said the best way to write about something is to experience it first. They weren’t wrong, but they weren’t completely right, either. Sometimes you just can’t experience your stories first-hand. But that’s not always a bad thing.

Example: If you’re going to write a story about the Donner Party, that shouldn’t require you to rush out and buy a bunch of pioneering gear and get lost in the mountains. That’s just ridiculous – especially when we consider the current state of the economy, which has driven the price of both time machines and human meat out of most people’s buying ranges.

So what to do? Write about what you have experienced? Hell, no. There are only so many tales you can spin about going to the grocery store or eating in a restaurant.

My best advice is just to lie. That’s what writing is all about. Ever read an autobiography? Good, wasn’t it? Ten pounds of bull, every single one of them.

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See you tomorrow.

- TJG

Tongue In Face, Part 1

Here's the first part of my essay, "How to Write: A Guide."

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Lots of people want to write, but many of them don’t seem to know what to do about it. For them, I have drawn up a list of helpful suggestions to make the process run a little more smoothly.

Step One: Procrastinate

For a writer, there’s nothing scarier than sitting down to work and seeing that blank sheet of paper staring back at you. Every sheet of it in your possession symbolizes a massive failure on your part. It’s like a bakery without bread. It just shouldn’t be.

That being said, the fear aroused by those white sheets is highly conducive to creativity. You want something to show for your day’s work? Good. Start writing. Working on a deadline? Even better. Don’t start until five minutes before it’s due. You’ll be so ready to prove you’re not a complete hack that the words will come shooting out of your at a rate immeasurable by modern science.

Don’t worry if it’s full of grammatical, spelling and punctuation errors. People will be so impressed by the speed at which you work that it won’t matter. “Garsh!” you can almost hear them say. “You wrote that whole story in five minutes? You must be a genius!”

That’s the part when you lean back and flash a humble smile. Shake your head a little bit, too.

“That’s just my job,” you will say.

This is what a real writer would do.

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Part two tomorrow. Don't forget to become a follow of this blog. Thanks.

- TJG

Break

Work is kind of busy this week, so I'm taking a break until next Monday. See you then.

- TJG

Camp, Part 6

Here's the last part of my essay, "Notes On Church Camp." I'll post something new tomorrow.

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Lesson 5: There’s No Place like Home

I have a theory about why camps exist. I can tell you they don’t exist to instill in kids a sense of the outdoors and a love of nature. The only ones who could possibly think any camp I’ve ever seen constitutes a real outdoors experience would be a 5-year-old whose idea of camping is to pitch a pup tent in the back yard, or a suburban couple who thinks roughing it is what happens when their favorite restaurant is closed and they have to prepare their own dinner.

Camps exist to make kids miss being home with their parents. Be it through dilapidated facilities, lousy food, or the threat of death by livestock, camps are designed to make their daily lives seem better than they’d previously thought. And if it takes a couple of near-death experiences to make them see the light, so be it. They’ll be happy to see their parents again – they might even stop complaining. In other words, they’ll just be glad they’re home.

At least until school starts again.

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That's it. See you tomorrow.

- TJG

Camp, Part 5

Here's part five. To be continued on Monday.

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Lesson 4: Camp as a Near-Death Experience

I think part of the reason I was sent to this camp was because I was relatively familiar with how to ride a horse: Sit in a saddle, pull the bridle this way, that way. Pretty simple. With sane horses, anyway. For some reason, the horse that was chosen for me to ride throughout the week – Doc – was young and suffered from an advanced case of what appeared to be the horse equivalent of ADD. Whenever I would ride him, something would catch his attention, and he’d investigate. No amount of whining, bridle-pulling, or kicking could convince him to do otherwise. When he wasn’t walking where he wasn’t supposed to go, Doc was standing still, often snorting and trying to snap me in the back with his long brown tail.

In short, Doc was an asshole.

He was also fast, and unfortunately, he knew it.

Doc’s favorite (and my least favorite) part of our daily rides together was when the whole group would gather at the bottom of a hill to trot up to the top. Doc would treat each trot as though it were his last, and not trot at all, but run up the hill full-gallop, as though he were a part of the team on the Western Union stagecoach.

And each time, his eagerness to get to the top of the hill would annoy our riding group leader, a small 20-ish woman employed to look out for our safety.

“Stay behind me!” she would shout each time Doc, and by extension I, lunged out ahead of her.

“I’m trying!” I would shoot back halfheartedly, hoping I wouldn’t fall of the saddle and be trampled by the other horses, which were 25 feet behind us by now.

I remember feeling after our first ride that I had been screwed. I hated this stupid horse and made an oath to myself that I would be able to control him by the end of the week.

Unfortunately, life is not a 1980s teen movie, and nothing of the sort happened. Doc and I never became the perfect blend of boy and horse, and instead maintained our current persona, Special Olympics Kentucky Derby.

The kicker came on the second-to-last day of camp, the last ride we would ever have together. The group gathered at the bottom of the steepest hill we had come to all week, and the riding group leader reiterated her mantra: “Try and stay behind me,” while I repeated mine: “Rub a lamp.”

Of course, as soon as the rest of the group started trotting, Doc began a wild gallop toward the top of the hill.

“Stay behind me!” the leader shouted.

I would have shot back a witty response like, “I hate this fucking horse!” had the hill not been so steep. Trying to maintain a grip on the saddle, I began to breathe a sigh of relief when I saw that we were almost to the top. But just then, I saw something else. Instead of the peak sloping down gently like a hill is supposed to do, it just stopped altogether. It was then that I realized this was not a hill we were running on, but a cliff.

I knew then that my life was over. There is no other way to describe it. You know you are going to die, and you become suddenly, strangely, serene. “So this is how it’s going to end,” I thought to myself. “Off the edge of a cliff, trapped on a runaway horse. Not what I’d pictured.”

Fortunately, it wasn’t what Doc had pictured, either, for he made a swift, 90-degree turn, running parallel to the edge of the cliff for nearly 50 yards.

By this time, I had lost all semblance of control. No longer facing death, I felt I had nothing more to lose. I also forgot I was at a church camp and began expressing to Doc my true feelings about his character.

“You stupid fucking horse!” I shouted. “What in the fuck is wrong with you, you cocksucking motherfucker!”

By this time, the rest of the group had gathered at the top of the cliff and were watching Doc take me off across the edge, before he eventually slowed down and stopped.

I continued to scream at him the entire way. Although I don’t remember my comments exactly, I do remember it was something along the lines of, “Motherfuckinggoddamnstupidfuckinghorsefuckfuckfuckfuckingstupidfuckinghorse!”

Or something like that.

Once Doc finally stopped, I turned him around, and he slowly began to walk back to the group.

When we arrived, one of the guys got a stupid smile on his face and began to speak. “Hey, Travis –”

“Shut the fuck up,” I told him quietly.

He did.

The group began the slow ride back to camp when, at the bottom of another hill, the riding group leader had the brilliant idea of letting us trot just one last time.

The word trot, of course, was not in Doc’s vocabulary, and he ran full-speed up the hill again, and down the other side. It soon occurred to me that Doc could at any time trip, fall end over end, and crush me underneath him. By this point, I was on the verge of tears, pulling Doc’s bridle back as firmly as I could to prevent him from running any more once we had reached the bottom. For whatever reason – possibly because these were the final minutes of our last ride – Doc obeyed. The riding group leader soon came down on her white horse and asked if I was okay. I decided not to dignify that question with a response.

“I’m really sorry about this,” she said. “I shouldn’t have let them trot this time.”

“No shit,” I replied.

I turned around to see the rest of my group walking, leading their horses down the hill by their bridles. About a mile away, my brother Brian was having “Bible study” with his group, and someone noticed what was going on.

“Why are they doing that?” the person asked.

“Someone wasn’t listening, or one of the horses was acting up,” their counselor said.

Being a comedian, my brother said, “Yeah, it’d be funny if Travis came back with a hoofprint on his forehead.”

Yeah. Funny.

I remember reading somewhere that after people have a near-death experience, they are often overcome with a sense of exhilaration. Now that they’ve cheated the Grim Reaper out of another acquisition, they feel they can do anything. I skipped this phase and went immediately to the second, which is to dissolve into a shaking, quivering mass, emitting the occasional stifled cry or whimper, not unlike Richard Nixon the night he begged Henry Kissinger to pray with him on the Oval Office floor.

I learned something that evening: Not only are the things you are required to do dull, pointless and mind-numbing, they also can get you killed. In other words, always have an exit strategy in case things go south. I keep this lesson in mind every time I vote, go to the post office, or badmouth Jimmy Buffet in a bar.

I have not ridden a horse since that evening. I don’t suspect I ever will. It was never an activity I took a lot of pleasure in, but I would have preferred choosing not to ride, rather than have that decision thrust upon me. I also know that Doc was just an animal, that there was nothing I could have done, and that it would be foolish to hold a grudge.

I don’t care. I hope that bastard’s glue by now.

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More Monday. Have a good weekend.

- TJG

Chuch Camp, Part 4

Continued:

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Lesson 3: Camp, Or, I’m Friends With You Because I Have No Other Choice

I would be lying if I said I was a hit with my peers back home. Sure, I had a few friends, but in a peripheral kind of way. We rarely did anything together outside school, partly because I lived out of town, but also because I really didn’t have much in common with them. If it were a sitcom, I would have definitely been one of those characters who are always just hanging around, not really doing anything, occasionally getting a good line in. Shows would rarely revolve around my character, and if they did, it would only be once or twice per season. Kind of like Klinger in M*A*S*H, but without the dresses and all the references to Lebanon.

In camp, however, the social pool was much, much smaller. And since we were only there for a week, I wouldn’t have enough time to alienate everybody. But even keeping this in mind, my group’s reactions to what my mother sensitively described as my “weirdness” were not what I had come to expect. My hobbies (which included such friend repellent as silent film, Jelly Roll Morton, and museums) were seen as being at best, quirky, at worst beating-worthy by my schoolmates. (In all fairness to them, interests like mine would have been better suited to a nursing home resident than a middle-schooler.) My fellow campers, by comparison, seemed almost mildly interested. Some of them even asked questions, as though I were some type of repository of archaic cultural information. While some people might have been offended at being reduced to the status of walking parlor trick, those people weren’t as starved for attention as I was. They also had a thing called pride. Luckily for me, I’d had mine removed over a long period of time characterized by shouting, taunting, and name-calling, much of it provided by non-relatives.

Looking back, I think the (admittedly low) level of interest in me could have been due to the fact that I was the most mature male (of the three) in my group. Of course, it’s hard not to look dignified when the kid sitting next to you is writing a letter home using bug guts instead of a pencil like everyone else.

Nevertheless, I do remember one girl actually took my address so she could write me letters to ask questions about obscure films. She never wrote, and I think this is when I learned another lesson: Being in camp is like being stuck in a hostage situation (albeit a hostage situation with sing-alongs). You don’t contact each other afterwards and say, “Oh, man, you remember when they put that gun to my head? Let’s go have lunch some time.” In other words, since their real friends were nowhere in sight, most people jut decided to make due with what they had until the week was up. Which was me.

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More tomorrow.

- TJG

Camp, Part 3

Here's part three:

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Lesson 2: Avoiding the Task At Hand

Although the purpose of this camp, ostensibly, was to learn about God, He definitely took a backseat to no less than three or four other areas of concern. First and foremost were the horses, of which there were dozens. I haven’t mentioned it before, but the camp was actually a co-ed organization (I’m assuming it had quite the legal team behind it), and there were many more girls than boys in attendance. The reason for this is, of course, one of the oldest truths known to man: GIRLS GO APESHIT OVER HORSES. I don’t get it myself, but I know it’s true because I saw it proven repeatedly throughout the week. Indeed, you always knew if one was clopping around within nearby, because you’d suddenly hear a chorus of maybe ten to fifteen girl-voices chiming in unison, “Awwwww.”

The campers were organized into about four groups based on age, and each group would take the horses out for a ride at least once every day. We’ll get to more of that later.

The second major focus of the camp was Bible study, which could more accurately be described as avoiding Bible study. The counselors (usually college kids who’d failed to get jobs at Kmart) had no problem with this. At least mine didn’t. I can remember more than one study session quickly devolving into a discussion of pop culture. Being that we were out in the middle of nowhere and the counselors had been there for about three months, they were desperate to talk about anything not related to the camp. One day it was discovered that someone in my group had brought a Blues Traveler CD along with them. It was immediately borrowed (and played nonstop) by the guy who ran the mess hall. This should tell you how dire their situation was: They were happy to repeatedly listen to “Runaround” because they had not yet grown to hate it through constant radio overplay.

Since the camp was co-ed, the third priority (okay, probably the first) for almost everybody was thinking about – and doing things with – members of the opposite sex. Not for me, though. You know.

Maybe after all that stuff we’d think about God. But probably not.

That is not to say I feel I lost anything by not discussing theological questions with my counselor. I think I had more fun by avoiding those questions altogether. In our culture, spirituality is most often reserved for the dying, those who have just given up a long-time addiction, or conservative political candidates. It’s not something for fourteen-year-olds. Sorry, God.

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More tomorrow.

- TJG

Camp, Part 2

Here's part two of my essay, "Notes on Church Camp."

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Lesson 1: Camp as a Home Away From Home. No, Seriously.

After they get acclimated to their surroundings, the first thing most campers do is complain. They hate the cabins, hate the food, hate the fact that there’s not a bathroom within spitting distance. Surprisingly, I did not share their vitriol for our lodgings. Having attended more Scout camps than I could count in the years previous, it seemed I was going a step up from what camp had come to personify in my mind.

Instead of sleeping in tents so old that Lord Baden-Powell himself could have used them, we slept in a cabin that had once been a barn. Sure, it still smelled of straw and stale horse apples, but almost everything at the camp did. We did not have to assemble the cabin to be able to go to bed, it did not leak when it rained, and, most importantly, did not blow over in the slightest breeze.

While the food left something to be desired (How many times can you eat Spam in a day? Three, it turns out.), it was not Scout cuisine, which is located on the food chain somewhere between dirt and freeze-dried chicken.

Also appreciated was the plumbing – actual toilets compared to the Scouts’ hole in the ground with a tin tube and toilet seat affixed to it. You really can’t appreciate what you have until you’ve stood after using the commode and found there were not one, not two, but twelve mosquito bites on your ass.

So when most of my campmates would sit around and complain how they missed edible food, their Gameboys, and bedroom-adjacent bathrooms, I would sit back with a smug smile and think, ‘You have no idea.’

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More tomorrow.

- TJG

Camp, Part 1

Here's the first part of my essay, "Notes On Church Camp."

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Like most children, I never went to church gladly. While you could say that two of my hobbies during my childhood were sitting still and being quiet, I found it impossible to do either once I was in the confines of a House of God. My mother still recalls with embarrassment the times she would take me to morning services, only to have me shout repeatedly and at the top of my lungs: “I don’t like this! I don’t like this!” Not much had changed by the time I reached eighth grade, except that I no longer verbalized my discomfort. Rather than whine about boredom, I now used the pastor’s sermons as opportunities to indulge in fantasies which, based on the church’s teachings, would get me condemned to Hell immediately if I acted on them.

When I wasn’t taking mind-trips to the land that dare not speak its name, I was mournfully pondering the fact that now, as a 14-year-old, I was being forced to undergo the torturous process known as Confirmation. As a result, I was required to come to church not only on Sunday mornings, but for two hours each Wednesday night, as well. While designed as an opportunity for youths such as myself to better understand what our church was all about, and thus come of age spiritually, I saw it as more proof that God was going out of His way to make my life a Hell on Earth.

For starters, after the Confirmation class’ opening hour of Bible study, we were segregated by both sex and grade for private instruction. While I was on limited speaking terms with some of the girls my age, the only role I played among the boys was that of human punching bag. Coupled with this, Wednesday tended to be the biggest homework night of the week, so by the time I got home at about nine, I had only an hour to do everything. (Why didn’t I do it when I got home from school, you ask? You shut up.) And – possibly worst of all – while I was busy trying to fake an interest in things like Zaccheus, the Sacrements, or manna, the rest of the nation was able to stay home and watch The Drew Carey Show.

But this was not all. Rather than just steal two hours of my Wednesdays away from me, the church’s Confirmation program promised to sink its talons into my summer vacation, as well. One of its main requirements was that each student spend at least one week of their summer at a church-sanctioned camp. It was a rule that seemed murky at best, as paying to attend said camp was also a requirement. But, because attendance was mandatory, logical arguments would not get me out of it. No camp, no Confirmation. It was as simple as that. Flimsy as they may have been, the rules were law, although I remember thinking at the time that another set of (much more important) church rules had no mention of camp in them. At least they didn’t in that Charlton Heston movie.

Anyway, it was decided that I would attend a camp that doubled as a horse ranch. We always had at least one horse when I was growing up, so the surroundings weren’t as foreign to me as they may have been to other campers. But it still seemed an odd choice. Although I was able to ride, I was never overly fond of it. I was always more interested in things like counting and shelving my many books, reading about and watching old movies, and listening to old music. While I didn’t grasp it at the time, my parents’ intentions in sending me to this camp/ranch may have been an unconscious desire on their parts to try and toughen me up. I don’t really blame them. What else can you do with a 14-year-old boy whose favorite singer is Billie Holiday? And so, toward the end of August, I was driven, along with my older brother, to the camp, which was located in the north-central part of South Dakota. For those who’ve never been there – and you haven’t – it is a land as flat and dry as a Triscuit, hotter (in August, anyway) than a cramped auditorium, and about as densely-populated as a theater showing a Paris Hilton movie. As my parents drove away, I hoped I would be able to write this wasted week off as a good learning experience, and luckily, I was. While I’m still not a proponent of the enforced-fun factor a summer camp exemplifies, I have realized there are several lessons that can be learned from attending one.

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Lesson one tomorrow.

- TJG

Buster Keaton

On this day in 1895, Buster Keaton was born. I wrote this piece a couple years ago for a different project, but I think the points it makes are still valid.

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Buster Keaton saved my life on the night of October 15, 1995, even though he had died twenty-nine years before that.

Between 1920 and 1928, he was an independent filmmaker and produced a body of work that, for sheer originality and overall quality, is unmatched before or since in the history of movie-making.

Then in 1928, his producer, Joseph Schenck, sold his contract to MGM, and he never had creative freedom again. Within five years, he’d become an alcoholic, was divorced by his wife, and was fired by MGM after making a whole series of shitty movies for them.

After that, he starred in low-budget shorts, wrote gags for Red Skelton, eventually quit drinking, and married the love of his life. He found personal happiness.

But he never got the chance to make another one of his movies.

People spend a lot of time talking about it, and about how it wasn’t fair. They’re right – it wasn’t fair, but so is dwelling on it. He never did. When someone asked him if he was bitter about going back to MGM years later to write gags for two hundred dollars a week after having been paid three thousand dollars a week by them when he was still a star, do you know what he said?

“If I’m worth more, they’ll pay me more.”

For a little while – in his career, at least – he got to do exactly what he wanted. Luckily, we still have his work from that era. Nineteen short films and ten features. That’s what we should dwell on – the fact that he had total freedom for eight years of his life.

Most people don’t have it for one.

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Happy birthday, Buster.

- TJG

Nothing

Nothing today, but I'll post something special on Sunday. Don't miss it.

- TJG