Archive for the 'writing' Category

Vasyl

Published
by
Fritz Bogott
on November 28, 2007
in outlining and writing
. 4 Comments

In preparation for next month’s draft, I am outlining a story loosely based around the Baba Yaga / Hansel and Gretel stories, in which a teenage boy (rather than a girl, as in Vasilisa the Beautiful, or a brother and sister as in Hansel and Gretel) with a difficult relationship with his father (rather than stepmother) discovers a hermit (rather than crone) living in the north woods and decides that he and the hermit are modern-day Cossacks: wild men, raiders and runaways from the serfdom (as it seems when you’re sixteen) of modern life. As Vasyl crawls deeper and deeper into this fantasy, he fails to consider that the hermit may have his own agenda.

By coincidence, Nadya Lev at Coilhouse also has Baba Yaga on her mind this week. (Perhaps she is also menaced by eerie, spindly buckthorn limbs spontaneously uprooting themselves and forming knobby matted fortresses in the woods surrounding her house?) The Bilibin illustration in her post is the same one that inspired me to start work on the Vasyl story a few weeks ago.

A Grappling Hook

Published
by
Fritz Bogott
on November 6, 2007
in workspace
. 1 Comment

Holy Hannah! I just looked up at the ceiling, and there is a GRAPPLING HOOK hanging on a nail driven into the center beam of the woodshed, right above where I sit to write! What’s THAT doing there?!?

I’m a Rotarian.

Published
by
Fritz Bogott
on November 2, 2007
in workspace
. 1 Comment

The phone in the woodshed is a rotary-dial model, and I sit out here tempted to phone people just to hear its sound. Once I get a dial installed on my cell phone, my life will be complete.

Busted Novel Repair Month

Published
by
Fritz Bogott
on November 1, 2007
in editing and writing
. 2 Comments

The whole world knows November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), but I’m at a juncture where I don’t need another month’s worth of first draft. On the other hand, I really could use some time to fix all my busted-ass first drafts and get them ready for publication. I therefore declare November to be my own personal Busted Novel Repair Month (BuNoReMo).

I’ve got baling wire, elbow grease and gaffer tape all lined up on my bench in the woodshed. Wish me success!

Here’s what I’ve got up on blocks:

Boggle and Sneak
This story was formerly known as Troll Story, but the Folklore Enforcers tell me the eight-inch-tall creatures in the story most closely resemble imps or bogles (which is a bit of a disappointment: I was sort of hoping to be able to call them boggarts). They bust into houses and bogotify stuff, i.e. leave stuff on the fritz.

This is really coming together (thanks to incisive reads by Ryeon Corsi, Josh Ferguson and the Bisco Kid) and may just need a push over the finish line.

Pismo
A family of compulsives tries to escape certain death in a car that only turns left.

This is mouldering in manuscript. Once I type it, somebody can read it and let me know how it looks.

Lime (That’s the working title because that’s what’s written on the cover of the first notebook in the stack.)
The CIA’s Directorate of Operations is outsourced to a reality show.

This has a beginning and a middle, but no end.

The Derby Ram

On a visit to the Minnesota State Fair, ten-year-old Al runs off from her parents. Lost, she wanders into the Coliseum, where she discovers a twenty-foot-tall ram about to be slaughtered before a roaring crowd. She frees the ram and the two of them make a run for it– following the Burlington Northern tracks west-northwest toward the mountains, pursued by the furious Butcher and his thirsty knife.

Again: A beginning and a middle, but no end.

Over the River (a ghost story for October)

It is the hottest night of the summer. Nick is parked at Porky’s Drive-In on University Avenue, pretending to tune his 1928 Model A Roadster Pickup (which doesn’t need tuning). Suddenly a rangy, weather-beaten woman rides up on an impossibly-cherry 1914 Michaelson Big Twin, grabs him by the penis, and drags him across the Mississippi to the Underworld.

October spilling into November.

In the Loop

Published
by
Fritz Bogott
on October 25, 2007
in reading and writing
. 3 Comments

My old friend Joe Weismann fronts the band The Smarts, which is the house band for the Minnesota Public Radio show In the Loop.

“In the Loop” did one of their occasional open-mic Story Slam tapings last night, and Joe encouraged me to show up and perform. Theme of the show was “Disguise,” so I told a story (perhaps not mine to tell) my high-school guitar teacher once told me, about the time she attended a costume party dressed as God.

She bound her breasts, wore baggy clothes, pulled a paper bag over her head, and refused to speak. This was met by universal hostility, as each guest demanded to know, “Are you a man or a woman under there?” and “Who are YOU supposed to be?” Eventually one of the guests became so upset by the ambiguity that he squared off and tried to fight her.

I’m ambivalent about appropriating her story, and I’m not sure I rendered it particularly well. The best I can say is that I fought down stage fright and spoke slowly and clearly. Beginner’s mind, beginner’s mind…

Accelerants

Published
by
Fritz Bogott
on October 23, 2007
in workspace and writing
. 3 Comments

I spent half an hour today cleaning the last of the poisons and explosives out of the woodshed where I write, in preparation for firing up the Ashley Automatic wood stove that is sure to be my best friend over the winter. The collection was impressive: gasoline, two-stroke oil, lighter fluid, lacquer thinner, Japan Drier, Naphtha VM&P, Naval Jelly… I spent the rest of the morning striking matches, drinking kerosene and sucking on a leadsicle…

October Ghost Story

Published
by
Fritz Bogott
on October 8, 2007
in first drafts and writing
. 3 Comments

October gets a ghost story:

It is the hottest night of the summer. Nick is parked at Porky’s Drive-In on University Avenue, pretending to tune his 1928 Model A Roadster Pickup (which doesn’t need tuning). Suddenly a rangy, weather-beaten woman rides up on an impossibly-cherry 1914 Michaelson Big Twin, grabs him by the penis, and drags him across the Mississippi to the Underworld.

Green Glow

Published
by
Fritz Bogott
on September 18, 2007
in first drafts
. 0 Comments

I’m sitting by a window with my notebook. It’s raining. Most of the leaves outside the window haven’t yet changed color. For some reason, most of today’s rain fell out of quite a bright sky, so the whole day has been charged with a beautiful green glow I can’t recall ever seeing before. My story’s protagonist is on the moon at this point, wrapped in its (quite different, I imagine) glow, trying to prevent the killing of any more of the Man in the Moon’s dairy goats. She has just crossed over to the Dark Side, following the goat-killer’s tracks. And as far as the Dark Side goes, the sun here has finally yielded to the rain clouds, and the glow is gone. I want it back.

The Derby Ram

Published
by
Fritz Bogott
on August 25, 2007
in outlining and writing
. 1 Comment

My kids are off at the State Fair with my parents, so it’s fitting that I’m working on the outline for September’s story, which starts there:

On a visit to the Minnesota State Fair, ten-year-old Al runs off from her parents. Lost, she wanders into the Coliseum, where she discovers a twenty-foot-tall ram about to be slaughtered before a roaring crowd. She frees the ram and the two of them make a run for it– following the Burlington Northern tracks west-northwest toward the mountains, pursued by the furious Butcher and his thirsty knife.

Near Frazee, she escapes by climbing up the ram’s horn until she reaches the moon, where she finds that the Man in the Moon and his dairy herd are being menaced by a deadly shadow.

Near Surrey, she climbs down the ram’s fleece until she reaches the center of the Earth, and she will be forced to remain there forever unless she can fetch the Devil a glass of ice water.

Near Bainville, she flees by running around the ram until she reaches the kingdom of Srivijaya*. There she catches a glimpse of the Butcher, who is there himself on a dark errand.

On the bank of the Two Medicine River just outside Browning, she and the Butcher will fight a final battle for ram’s life– and her own.

*I took a globe, stuck my finger on Bainville, spun the globe 180 degrees, ran down into the southern hemisphere, and found that I hit Palembang, Sumatra. A quick Googling showed that Palembang was once the capital of the Tantric Buddhist maritime empire of Srivijaya… and that sounded like good fairy-tale fodder to me, so I grabbed it.

Scenes in a Sack

Published
by
Fritz Bogott
on August 21, 2007
in first drafts, pessimism and writing
. 2 Comments

I spent most of the day blocking out a sequence in which our contestants try to track a gang of rogue librarians from Belarus who are trying to sell a shipment of library materials on the black market in contravention of international bibliographic-proliferation agreements.

When the caffeine wore off, I became convinced that I don’t have the draft of a book; I have a bunch of disconnected scenes in a sack. Rachel and I then spent an hour sitting outside Broders’ Southside Pasta Bar brainstorming how best to bond the scenes together.

Presumably this was just my regularly-scheduled second-act crisis. I am now standing up to go schedule next month’s panic attack on our family calendar.