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18. A photo of you at work. 3/15/09 In the office at Morseland.

It’s not all pouring drinks, making friends, and living the glamorous life. Sometimes I have to do actual work.

No, I’m just kidding. Here I am, in the office at Morseland, where I do work on the website, and send out emails, and research new beverages, and try not to make Dave angry. Also, I drink coffee sometimes.

So, ok, the old novels have been posted. There’s a link over there on the sidebar on the right.

Proceed carefully.

Word count stands at 34,011. I’m falling behind the goal pace (36,000), but still ahead of the minimum pace (30,000). It’s always been important to me to get way ahead of this thing. The last couple years I’ve finished a few days early. Prior to that, it was mad writing sessions on the 30th. Nobody wants that.

Also, the prose style has taken a distinct turn. Where the beginning of this thing was structured prose, with complete sentences, the current state of affairs is that I’m just typing out these fragments with long strings of modifiers. To wit:

And came to, thrashing wildly, lashing out, eyes wide open but not seeing for a moment, spitting, trying to get rid of the cicadas in my mouth, but there were no cicadas in my mouth, just Stella, standing back, looking horrified, probably sorry she stopped to try to help me, but saying my name quietly, repeatedly.

It works, sometimes, especially when in the heat of a scene, but let’s try that differently:

I came to, thrashing wildly. I lashed out. My eyes were wide open but I wasn’t seeing anything. I spat, trying to get rid of the cicadas in my mouth, before realizing that there were no cicadas in my mouth. Stella stood above me, at a safe distance, looking horrified, looking sorry that she’d stopped to check on me.  She was quietly repeating my name.

More words. Less…fun? Dunno. But I do know easier to write. Been having a hard time escaping scenes lately, not knowing how to get from one scene to the next. Been just leaving them for later. Maybe slightly-in-the-future Adam will know what to do. I sure hope so. I’m counting on that dude.

The road I was on twisted. Turned. Doubled back on itself. Became a cruel joke of a road designed years ago by city planners who had waited all this time for me to arrive and take it, my desperation providing them with unceasing joy and amusement.

Wasted

17. A photo of you drunk. 2/22/09 Chris Chateau and me @ Morseland.

I can’t be sure that I’m drunk in this photo, but certainly my expression would suggest that I was. Those who know me know that I just don’t get drunk that often, and when I am, the rest of you are way too drunk to be taking pictures. I think someone said “make mean faces!” and Chris won because he actually looks mean as opposed to looking like a complete goofball. But, of all the pictures I have of me, this is the one most likely to represent drunkenness. I guess.

Unless you count this.

So yeah. I wrote some wacko shit today. We’re talking cicadas crawling in the narrator’s mouth kinda wacko shit. Yeah, I said it. Also, originally, the lamppost in this excerpt did reply. But, I deleted that.

Word count: 32,048

The noise was faint, barely audible over the sound cars driving on Route 130 at my back. But I heard it again, and realized it came from the woods. And normally, I wouldn’t pay heed to a noise coming from a forest; forests make noises. Regardless of whether anyone’s around to hear them or not, trees fall, birds chirp, animals howl. Even the long, slow process of a plant growing is noisy, creaking, groaning, stretching towards the sun. But this noise was different, deliberate, a click, a whisper, a summons. I took two steps across the lot towards the woods, and suddenly felt the alcohol catch up with me, staggered, steadied myself on the trunk of my car, deep breaths. The noise came again. I gathered my wits, my strength, most importantly, my balance. Surveyed the empty space in front of me, the lot almost empty now, nothing between me and the woods but a lamp post and faded white lines painted on the pavement. I took another deep breath and left the safety and support of the car, the first two strides strong and sure, but once again my balance left me, my legs trying to go in two different directions, I somehow managed to lurch to the lamp post, leaned heavily against its concrete base.

“Well, I definitely shouldn’t be driving,” I said to the lamp with a comical shrug. “That would be bad.” Fortunately, the lamp didn’t respond, even in my drunken state, I knew that would be a sign of more bad things to come. I leaned against it, once again gathering the troops for another assault on the woods. The noise kept coming, slightly louder now, more insistent. It was a tapping, a siren, a steady breeze, white noise, black noise. Calling to me. Drawing me to it. And there I went.

I went more carefully, rightly figuring that slow but steady would win this race. I made it to the edge of the woods, the toes of my shoes just kissing the dirt where it met the pavement of the lot. The noise, loud now, drowning out the cars, a gunshot, a coyote, a promise, a nightmare. I took a tentative step between two trees, looking up, they towered above, blocking out the sky.

My eyes forward, struggling to make out more than shapes in inky blackness, I shouldered my way past tree trunks, through the undergrowth, there were no paths here, just trees, growing too close to each other, struggling to suck up enough resources from the soil, like a reservation, as if trees too had been forced from their land, uprooted, made to move, a trail of tears and leaves, crammed into smaller and smaller plots, truces broken, treaties ignored.

My mind racing, now the thoughts in my head generating enough volume of their own to drown out the noise that brought me there, I stopped, pausing against a tree, waiting, looking for some reason that I had come into the woods at all.

And slowly, my eyes adjusted, and what had seemed to be leaves gently moving in the wind — and there was no wind, the night was still, serene, except inside my head — were them, were they.

It’s Party Time

16. A photo of you at a party. 6/11/2005. I turn 30.

The amount of effort that went into throwing this party for me still boggles my mind. It was an amazing mesh of friends from different spheres. Here we have Karen & Dan, Margaret & Michael and me. Then there’s Dave D, Sean and Sarah. And much joy and love.

Some folks have been asking about this photo-a-day thing and how it relates to NaNo, so I’ll put it out here in case anyone else is wondering. You might recall (or you might not) that a few times I’ve done photos of myself every day during November, just as something else to do in conjunction with writing the novel. This year, I came across this meme which lists 30 photo subjects and I thought that would be more interesting to do than posting what amounts to the same photo of myself for 30 days. So there you have that.

Up over 30,000 words (around 30,800 as of this writing) and I get an idea that makes me want to start all over again. I think I’m going to shoehorn it into the thing I’ve already been writing, but I’m afraid of ruining it for future use. I think it’d be really fun to write though. It’s called Me Talk Zombie Someday. Tentatively.

Anyhow, you’re probably sick of these, but I’m not, so here’s another bit of witty repartee between Paul and Arthur.

We headed outside, into the night and parted ways at our cars.

“See you Sunday?” Paul asked. He was planning a barbecue for Sunday and his wife had promised that some of her few remaining single friends would be there. The idea of a set up excited and frightened and terrified me. It was an amazing opportunity, rife with possibility, but somehow juvenile, unattractive. I had agreed to go, to give it a shot, to make the effort.

“Of course,” I said. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“And be on your best behavior,” Paul reminded me.

“You know, I’m not always an asshole,” I protested.

“Be on your best behavior,” he repeated.

“Alright, alright. I’ll leave the clown shoes and the taser at home,” I said. “But your kids are going to be sorely disappointed.”

“They’ll get over it,” Paul said. “It’ll be nice for them to see Uncle Arthur behaving like an adult for once.”

“They call me Uncle Arthur?” I asked, shocked. “They don’t call me Uncle Arthur.”

Paul sighed, caught himself, like he’d let something slip he hadn’t wanted to. “No, man, it’s just a figure of speech.”

My eyes widened with realization. “They do call me Uncle Arthur. Holy shit!” Impulsively, I threw my arms around Paul. “This is the greatest thing ever!”

“Yeah yeah,” Paul said, escaping from the hug. “Hooray for you, my kids think you’re the ‘shinzle’, or whatever it is they say these days.”

“It’s shizzle.”

“Shinzle, shizzle, what’s the difference? They’re all ridiculous words. Everything they say is gibberish, what’s it matter if I can accurately reproduce it or not?”

More Love? It’s unpossible!


15. A photo of you and someone you love. 12/2009 Tony and I hug.

That right there? That’s love, and there ain’t no denying it.

Not much writing yesterday (580 words) due to circumstances beyond my control (i.e. madness at Morseland->3 hours of sleep->bartending->just wanting to sit on the couch and let the world entertain me [instead of constantly entertaining it.]) So. This is why the big buffer of words built up at the beginning (all Bs included at no extra charge) is so important. Was feeling very discouraged until 2 things happened.

The first was that I read a pep talk email from the NaNo folks. I didn’t even really read it. I don’t know who wrote it. I think it was just the idea that someone else who was writing was saying, “Hey! Keep going!” It was the spirit of the letter, much more so than the content.

The second was that I now have a reason to finish. Incentive. Motivation. Drive. People often ask if there’s a prize at the end of NaNoWriMo; if you “get anything” if you finish. Well, yeah, you do: you get a rough draft of a novel. Congratulations! But now, there is something else. Now, there is hockey.

The other reason for not having written much yesterday was lack of inspiration. Kinda hit the wall with ideas of what to make these ridiculous people do. This morning I had some ideas while driving to work… So, we’ll see.

Current word count: 28311

This excerpt is about a headache I…I mean…the narrator had…last night.

The headache was alive, was wet and liquid and slimy, oozing around on top of my skull, between skin and bone, over one eye, then the other, tears flowing freely from the right one, salt sting causing me to squint. The pain throbbed in my ear, silent, but speaking to me in ways I couldn’t have ever hoped to understand. Telling me things I shouldn’t know about myself like, “You are weak,” and “It would not take much effort at all for me to kill you.” I was at its mercy, and the headache, it knew it, could taste my submission, I gave up everything I had, everything I was for it, and still it pressed on, bending my neck, forcing my head into my hands, my fingers massaging my temples, tracing patterns that in other situations could summon Gods or cast spells.

Relatively Speaking

14. A photo of one of your relatives. 10/8/79. Gerald and mom playing Clue.

It says “one of your relatives” but here are two of them. This is cousin Gerry playing Clue with my mom. What you don’t know about my mom is that she was the Clue champion. Nobody could beat her. This photo is amazing because it absolutely captures how Mom played the game. She was relentless. She looks like she’s actually interrogating Gerry. “We have your buddy Professor Plum in the other room, and he left you high and dry! He told us all about how you did it with the rope in the Ballroom. ”

14. A photo of one of your relatives. Undated. (Grandaddy) Paul & (Uncle) Paul.

And looking through all these photos, I found this one as well. I think it’s an absolute fantastic father & son moment. I suppose part of this photo-a-day thing is picking the one photo you want to represent each of the days, but hell, I just love the stories each of these pictures tells….

Word count: 28,044.

Here’s an excerpt. Paul & Arthur are still at the faux-Irish bar (Paddy O’Irish). Arthur’s favorite Cola employees (Cheryl, Tammy, Kelly) are there as well. Charming as ever, Arthur has once again raised their ire…. This whole bar scene was written just so that I could have Arthur say the very last line. This is how far I’ll go for a joke.

Kelly was out of her chair faster than I thought was humanly possible. Her hands flew towards my throat. I instinctively jumped back, but she was a woman on a mission. She was just about to wrap her hands around my neck when, fortunately for me, Paul stepped in between us. He managed to separate Kelly from me and make her take a few steps back.

“Come on, Kelly,” he said, using the voice I recognized as the one he used to defuse potential explosive situations at home. “You know he was just messing about.”

Kelly was still seeing red and was not hearing a word Paul said. “That fucking asshole.”

Paul persisted. “Kelly. It’s Arthur. He does this. He can’t help it.”

“It’s true!” I offered. “I can’t!”

Paul waved me off. “Go sit down,” he ordered. But his parental voice didn’t work on me. I wanted to watch.

Kelly did seem calmer. Her voice was so quiet that I could barely hear her when she said, “I’m going to kill him.”

She sounded serious. I almost believed that she had it in her.

“Kelly, he’s not worth it,” Paul said. “Come on.”

Somehow, that had the desired effect. Kelly cast one more glare in my direction and then returned to her chair. It wasn’t until everyone started talking again that I realized that the crowd at the bar had gone silent as soon as Kelly had erupted. Now the world around us resumed. Paul put a firm hand on my shoulder and lead us back to our stools.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were trying to get fired. Or killed,” he said.

“Did you mean it?” I asked.

“Mean what?”

“When you said that I wasn’t worth it. You don’t think I’m not worth it, do you?”

Friendshiiiip. Friendship.

13. A photo of your best friend(s). 2009. Sean, Jake, Tony, me. Sean's backyard. Photo by Sarah Larson.

Over the years, I’ve been blessed with many great friends, and these are amongst the best.

Today, for the first time in the 6 years I’ve done NaNoWriMo, I actually wrote with another Nano’er. Wendy and I met over at Stella for gigantic bowls of coffee and some writing discussion and some writing. As much as I talk about NaNoWriMo with people, I don’t know a whole lot of people who are actually doing it. It was nice to get out of the house, off the couch (and onto another couch), break some of the isolationism of writing, turn it into a social event, exchange some ideas. Wrote exactly 1000 words. Here are a few of them:

“Company policy,” Tammy started, “is that salaried employees don’t receive overtime. End of story.”
“I see. And yet, I know an employee who is salaried and also receives — “ I stopped mid-sentence. “Tammy, we’re going around in circles here.”
“If Therese has a different arrangement, that’s her business. If I were you, like I said, I’d pay more attention to my own business.”
Under my breath, I said, “If you were me, you’d be good looking. And thinner.”
“What was that?” Tammy asked, her face reddening.
“I said, ‘Stiff blue per three, stewed see wood cooking. Bland dinner.’”

Sometimes I amaze even myself.

Self-Portrait

12. A picture of you. 11/12/2010. I couldn't find any pictures of you, so I used a picture of me.

I’m guessing that whoever came up with this Picture-a-Day meme was feeling uncreative when they came up with number 12. “A picture of you.” That’s cool, I know the feeling.

Passed the halfway point early this morning. As always, the milestone word was a barn-burner. It was “and.” Makes me wish I’d been writing an incredibly long compound sentence with this “and” being the pivot point for the whole thing. But, we can’t always get what we blah blah blah.

Not a whole lot to choose from for today’s excerpt, but I don’t want to disappoint, so: Paul and Arthur have left work and headed over to Paddy O’Irish, the local faux-Irish pub. The joint is crowded (it’s happy hour!) and conflict’s a-brewing (for the faint of heart out there, fear not, the conflict is swiftly and peacefully resolved.)

“We were waiting for those chairs,” said a vaguely familiar looking 20-something to my right. He and his buddy moved closer to me than I felt was socially acceptable. I sized him up, figured I could probably take him so long as Paul took care of his friend. I was a lover, and not a fighter, and also, most of the time, not a lover. Usually it took three or four drinks before I started thinking about how awesome it would be to get into a fight, but I’d had a hell of a day, and I wasn’t above doing things out of their usual order.

“Oh, sorry,” I said. Paul started to rise, but I put a hand on his shoulder, pressed him back down into the stool. “Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere?”

The guy studied my face. “I don’t know.”

“I swear I’ve seen you before,” I said, stroking my chin. I had no beard at the time, but it was useful as a thinking aid nonetheless. I snapped my fingers. “I’ve got it! You work for PackCo, don’t you?” PackCo was a box company in the same industrial park as Cola.

“Yeah,” the guy said. “How’d you know?”

“We,” I indicated Paul and myself, “work for Cola Industries.”

“Bully for you. I said my friend and I were waiting for those chairs.”

“He said ‘bully,’ Art,” Paul said, his voice full of awe. Ironic awe. “Did you hear that? He actually said ‘bully for you.’”

“I heard him, Paul.” I turned back to the PackCo employee. “Say, do you remember that wicked kickball tournament last month?”

“Yeah, of course.”

“Yeah, see, do you remember how Cola kicked PackCo’s ass?”

“I don’t see what this has to do with those chairs.”

“Well, we won the Cranbury Cup. You remember that, right? Yeah. And the winner of the Cranbury Cup automatically gets priority seating at O’Irish. It says so right on the trophy.”

“I don’t remember hearing that,” the guy said.

“Oh, it’s true,” Paul affirmed. “It’s tradition. Goes back twenty years.” Never mind the fact that Paddy O’Irish opened 18 months ago.

“Sounds like bullshit to me,” the guy’s friend said.

Just then, Stella, O’Irish’s friendliest and most attractive (yes, I asked her out; yes, she said no; yes, I explained it away by telling myself that I didn’t want to go out with her in the first place) bartender approached and said, “Hello, boys, what can I get you?”

“Stella, could you explain to these gentlemen here about how the winner of the Cranbury Cup gets first choice of seating here?”

Stella looked at me, and then at the two gentlemen in question. “Oh yes,” she said, “it’s a long-standing tradition. Goes back twenty-five years.”

Disheartened, the two PackCo employees retreated to the other side of the bar.

“So long boys,” I called after them. “Better luck next year. We’re big fans of your boxes!”

Paul and I ordered Yeunglings and drank them in comfort and style.

“That, my friend,” I said, “is why I always tip my bartender generously.”

1997

11. A picture of you in your 20s. 6/97, my 22nd birthday.

Turning 22, graduating from Northwestern. Those were heady days indeed. This picture proves two things:

1. Judging by the hat, I’ve been a Blackhawks fan for a long time, so take that all you bandwagoneers.

2. I’ve also been a hairy bastard for a very long time as well.

The picture doesn’t reveal much else. It was taken at my studio apartment in Evanston (722 Clark St). I am seated on my futon (recently discarded) wearing a 30/06 shirt from my brother (which I still have) and jean shorts (which I definitely do not still have) and socks (which I have many of, though likely not that pair.) On the futon behind me is a corner of my Bugs Bunny throw pillow (location unknown.) I am holding an ice cream cake. It has construction vehicles on it. I am 22 years old and the world is my oyster….

To understand this excerpt, I guess you’d have to understand that earlier in the story, the narrator (Arthur Traum) has made up a story about Heidi Swanson, who has some rare disease (Flombosis) and that she would be devastated to know that he had done some work while at work. Just another little bit of fun play between Paul and Art. I really actually enjoy writing these bits of repartee between Paul & Art. They are extensions and exaggerations  of how Dan (on whom Paul is based) and I would interact during the work day, and they’re very fun to make up. This is 340 words out of 24,153.

“Heidi Swanson is going to be so disappointed,” Paul said from the doorway. I looked at my watch. Barely half an hour had passed, but I had managed to finish with the crystal pieces, all of the picture frames and nearly the entire bag of magnets.

“Oh, fuck her, man,” I replied, snapping off another photo. “To be honsest with you, I think she’s faking.”

“Kids these days,” Paul said, looking through some old, broken picture frames that were stacked in a corner. “It’s amazing what they’ll do to get a little attention.”

“I blame the parents. They’re so concerned with their own lives and their careers and who’s going to win this season of America’s Next Favorite Grape Stomper, or whatever, that they don’t spend enough time with their kids. Children end up being raised by television and heroin. It’s no wonder that they turn to things like stealing postage stamps, plagiarizing presidential speeches, falsifying election results and faking made-up diseases.”

Paul nodded solemnly. “I lose sleep at night worrying that my own kids will end up the same way. Do I spend enough time with them? Do I pretend to be interested enough in whatever ridiculous shit they tell me? Am I too protective? Not protective enough? Being a parent isn’t easy, Art, no matter what they tell you.”

I put a supportive hand on Paul’s shoulder. “You’re a great father, Paul,” I said. “I’ve seen you with your kids. You’re amazing with them. There are so many times I would have told them to just fuck off, or at least that they were dumb dumb stupid heads but not you man. No matter what happens, you just seem to smile and nod and take another shot of Jim Beam.”

“Ahh, sweet bourbon,” Paul said. “Of all the things I keep in the first aid kit, I think it’s the most important.”

“Paul, I’ve never told you this before, but….”

“What is it, Art?”

“If I could have picked my father,” I said, “I would have picked you.”

Childlike

10. A photo of you as a child. 9/1/84. Return trip on the ferry from Lonz Winery.

This is perhaps the best photograph ever taken of me. Those eyes have already seen it all. There is the hint of a smile there, but the whole look just says “I know something you can never know.” Or perhaps it’s “I’ve planted a pound of C4 on the ship’s engines and unless I get $20 million, I’ll blow us all to kingdom come….” Actually, funny story: strongest memory of this boat trip is a bunch of drunken fools, one of whom took a dump over the side of the ferry. Classy!

Word count: 24,555

Ridiculous factor: Off the charts.

The bigger question was, what the hell was Stephanie Green doing with magnets? Candle holders were her domain. Was she branching out? Was Cola branching out? It was a mystery that I had to get to the bottom of.

With my theme music playing in my head (“duh duh duh da duh dun da duh dee duh dah duh dee duh da da da duh dahhhhhh”) I stole over to the PD room, knocked on the door frame (did not say “Knock knock!”) and entered. The Four Shoppers looked up at me, acknowledged my entrance and went back to whatever it was that they called work.

Except for Kelly. Ostensibly their leader (though not the department head; just the Alpha Female in the room.) She fixed me with a glare and beckoned me over. Kelly was all about mirrors and clocks. Fucking mirrors. Want to sell a mirror? Take a picture of it, then select the shiny, reflective part — the part that makes a mirror a mirror — and make it look like clouds. That’s right, I said clouds. Photoshop has a handy filter for this. I never knew what it was for before I started at Cola. Apparently it’s for mirrors. Clocks are generally easier — just make sure the hands are at 10 and 2 (positions that aren’t just for driving — with hands at 10 and 2, the clock evokes the golden ratio, making it more attractive to the customer.) Head bowed and humble, I approached her desk. It was best not to make eye contact, or really, to look at anything but one’s own shoes. Risking her ire was a dangerous game, one that I played almost every day, but always from a distance. Face to face, Kelly was a force to be reckoned with. I preferred passive aggressive measures, at a safe remove.

Family

9. A picture of your family. January 8, 1978. "A Family Portrait"

Another tough one. Raises questions of what family is, and so on and so forth. Back when I was 2 and a half years old, it wasn’t so complicated….

The novel, if that is its real name, has gotten weird. From mystery-of-an-ethereal-candleholder to zombie/cicada story to now….some sort of Mark Leyner-esque megalomania-filled rant…. But, I wrote a couple thousand words today. Next year? Back to historical fiction. Or another Baywatch novel. Easier to keep on track.

Words: 20,639. Here are 348 of the more ridiculous ones.

“I do not sound like him,” Therese protested. “His ‘they’ is a non-existent shadowy cabal made up of elected officials and corporate bigwigs. His ‘they’ is the product of watching too many movies, playing too many video games, and smoking too much dope.”
“Hey!” I exclaimed. “I stopped smoking dope years ago. It made me paranoid.”
“Well, I think it stuck, Arthur. You’re obviously delusional.”
“Delusional? Me? Just because I think there are better ways to run a business? And because I think — no, I know — that while it appears that we live in a democratically governed free market society that there are actually five people — Donald Trump, Bill Gates, Ted Turner, the cryogenically stored brain of Dick Cheney, and Wesley Thomas, a 53-year-old farmer from Akron, Ohio — that are secretly in control of everything?”
Paul added, “You also think that all the hot sales assistants want to sleep with you.”
“Alyssa totally does. She told me so last Thursday.”
“I think that must have been a dream.”
“No, it was definitely real. We were walking down the street and she said, ‘Arthur, I need you to make me a woman.’ And I said, ‘Alyssa, I’m not God. I can’t just make you a woman.’ And she said, ‘No, stupid, I want you inside me.’ And I said, ‘You mean you want me to like climb inside your skin.’ And she said, ‘No, dummy, I want you to take me to bed.’ And I said, ‘But it’s only 11:30, you can’t possibly be tired yet.’ And she said, ‘No, you idiot, I want you to have sex with me.’ And I said, ‘Oh, yeah, I knew that’s what you meant.’ And then all of a sudden, we were in Detroit, only it wasn’t really Detroit. And she turned into Hilary Clinton. And there was a talking rabbit. Now that you mention it, that was probably a dream.”
“Probably. That’s a good one though.”
“I have to remember to write that down in my dream journal.”