Dave's Anatomy: My History As a Writer #44, "And Your Bird Can Sing."

A lot of my writing is inspired by music. The story "And Your Bird Can Sing" is one of these.  

John Lennon and Paul McCartney had an agreement on songwriting:  whoever wrote a song, or most of it, got to sing it, and by this tool you can tell who wrote the different songs the group released. Lennon sang "And Your Bird Can Sing," and its writing bears his mark. I recently read one of those online pages that was titled "10 Things You Never Knew About John Lennon," and much of it pointed out what a jerk he was:  didn't like kids, constantly did drugs, mistreated his first wife—all things I had heard and things that were probably true about him (geniuses are often like that). But one that left me shaking my head in disbelief was a screen that said, "Really, He Wasn't Much of a Songwriter." That part of the page went on to say, Yeah, he wrote a few good ones, but most of the group's really outstanding songs were written by Paul McCartney. To his I had to say—well, I usually omit salty language on my blog, so I won't repeat what I said. I would not consider "Nowhere Man," "Strawberry Fields Forever," "Help," "In My Life," "Norwegian Wood" (which has been recorded by other artists more than any other L/Mc song) and, for that matter, "I Want To Hold Your Hand" mediocre songs!

"And Your Bird Can Sing" 

contains the Lennon wit: 

it has word play (Lennon was a writer who wrote two books—read them, they're very good). He does wordplay in this song:  "You tell me that you've got everything you want and your bird can sing, / But you don't get me—you don't get me." You've got everything you want, but you don't get (you don't understand) me;  you don't get me (you're not going to share my love). And so throughout the song. Lennon wrote more "literature" songs. And the song gave me an idea.

The story is about a musician who gets a request from a drunken customer for "And Your Bird Can Sing." Requests are risky. If you don't know the song, it's an embarrassment to say so from the stage. In this case, the man begins to boo and the audience, for a joke, joins him. The musician—Martin Rollins, an ongoing character of mine who appeared in my first published story, "The Girl Who Knew Nick Drake," and, subsequently, in my first novella, The Gallery, the story "The Space Between" and others—has a girlfriend name Charlotte Carver who likes to shoot dope. They've been over and over the issue, but she will not give it up and he realizes she is on the stuff that night as she watches him. That same night, a former girlfriend who has the nickname "Island" (because she is from Prince Edward's Island, Canada) also shows up.

Char

Martin knows the drill with Char. She likes to get laid when she is high and he goes through the routine. After she has gotten her joy and is asleep, he goes to a coffee house where Island said she would be. It becomes apparent that he never stopped loving Island and wants to renew the relationship. This is made easier when Char is busted for drugs and facing a prison term. He decides she needs to deal with the issue herself. If she turns in her supplier, she will get a lighter sentence, but whatever happens she will be in jail a few years because the city they live in is cracking down on heroin users. Time to dump her, he decides, and take up with Island once more.

Some stories are plot-driven and some are character-driven. This is the latter variety. Not a lot happens. Some writers are very good at this. I once mentioned a story by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami and said it was one of the best I had ever read. My friend asked, "What happens in the story?" My reply:  "Well, this guy goes for a walk. He sees a cat and he talks to a girl." My fiend was a bit puzzled, but, really, not a lot "happens." What goes on in the main character's mind is what is most important. But somehow Murakami makes this so fascinating you can't take your eyes off the page. The interest does not lie with the action but with the character. The same could be said for what I consider one of the best short stories of all time, "Fat," by Raymond Carver. Really, not a lot happens, but the story is powerful. "And Your Bird Can Sing" is like this. It focuses on the reader's apprehension and understanding of the characters more than on the plot, which is thin by design so the action of the story does not detract from the reader's understanding of the characters.

"Island"

Character-driven stories are found in literary fiction more than in genre fiction. When I bring a story that is character-driven to my writer's group, many say it "bored" them. They want gunfights, sex scenes, and high-speed chases. Many of my stories contain these, but it's too bad a lot of readers today do not have an interest in psychomachia (the war of inner feelings) or portrayals of a character's moral and emotional disposition. Still, stories have their own lives and they must be what they must be. If people don't like one, they can read another. It may be they've got everything they want and their birds can sing, but they don't get me—or my story! Their loss.

"And Your Bird Can Sing" appeared in In Stereo Press. There is a journal with that title being published today, but I don't think it's the one I placed that story in because I can't find it in their archive.  You can read about Martin Rollins in "The Girl Who Knew Nick Drake," the story "The Space Between," and the novella The Gallery.

Check out my full-length fantasy novel, The Sorceress of the Northern Seas.

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Dave's Anatomy #7: My History as a Writer: Seeing My Character from Another Character's Point of View

Sossity

As my writing developed, I set down several more stories about my ongoing character, singer Sossity Chandler. She seemed a good bet. Several stories about her went to press, and I had begun to get a sense of her as a character.  But a good idea is to get as many perspectives as possible to know the character better. I wondered how she would look through the eyes of another figure in a story.

I follow strict rules with Sossity. The stories that feature her are always third person, never first. They are from her point of view, but you never get inside her head. She is a mysterious figure. In my favorite novel, The French Lieutenant's Woman, the omniscient narrator gets inside the head of every character except Sarah, the French Lieutenant's Woman. She remains a mystery and, to an extent, so does Sossity Chandler.

In her character biography, she marries a guy named David Urbanic. But before David there a couple of long-term relationships. She dates Diggory Marks, who will return to her later life as a love interest; and she dates Jerry Watanabe for eighteen months. Their love affair and their split-up is part—though not the entirety—of my story, "Being Caught up with My Ego, I Leave Behind a Beautiful Girl Who Eventually Becomes Rich and Famous."

Quite a title! I did this because Jerry is Japanese-American. There is a

Jerry

tradition in Japanese haiku poetry of long titles. They are sometimes longer than the poet itself. Hence, the title, which nods at Jerry's ethnic heritage but also suggests his lack of connection with it in the slightly parodic use of such a title to tell the story of his lost love.

Jerry dates Sossity Chandler when they are students at Purdue. When she drops out, they start to lose contact, though they do see each other from time to time. Jerry is with her when she get her "big break." They are in his plane (he has a pilot's license) flying above Beaver Island, Michigan, when Sossity gets the call that one of her recording is getting lots of airplay, is selling well, and has the makings of a hit. The two of them spend a weekend together and go their way, Sossity to fame and fortune, Jerry to a job in a computer company in Chicago.

While there, Jerry gets caught up in the pursuit of success. He also begins to have an affair with Anna, the woman who runs his company. He and Sossity drift further away from each other.

Anna

The affair with Anna, though, has a dark side. She is into S&M and slowly drags Jerry into the practice. Like a frog in a kettle, her preferences take him over. She uses her position as CEO of the company to coerce Jerry into servicing her. He has started to like Cynthia Ku, a Chinese-American girl who works in the firm. Anna threatens to fire her if Jerry does not cooperate.

Cynthia

Jerry and Sossity finally break it off. The trauma of this makes him see things clearly. He realizes what he has got himself into and refuses to come to Anna's house. She sends a local thug to beat him up. 

Mistake. Jerry is a martial arts expert. He knocks the thug out and calls Anna, telling her he has recorded incriminating pictures of her from her cell phone and will make them public if she doesn't desist. Knowing she is beaten, she give him a severance package. Jerry eventually marries Cynthia and starts his own software company, which is successful.

He never forgets Sossity, though he knows it is over for them. He sees her at a concert later. She sings a cover song, Neil Young's "Birds," dedicating it to him by name, and gets tears in her eyes when she sings the refrain, "When you see me fly away without you. / Shadows on the things you know. / Feathers fall around you and show you the way to go. / It's over. It's over." The last lines of the story are poignant. They show something of Jerry's personality (and I find them poignant because he is a lot like me).

She cried too. I could not see it when she sang the song, but the next day I came across an item on the internet news:   a close-up shot of her with big, glistening tears on her cheeks. When I read the caption, Sossity Chandler sheds tears during Neil Young song, I wanted to put my fist through the computer screen and wanted to find the correspondent who had written that banal tag-line and pull his arm out of joint like I had for Anna’s hired thug. Of course I did neither. I had a family now and responsibilities. Sossity had gone her way, I mine. But she had given voice to what would have otherwise been inexpressible. That is her talent. That is the direction her life should take. The realization of this enabled me to let go of her.

Like me, Jerry is talented, formidable, and tough. But he is also indecisive and allows himself to be bullied by other peoples' expectations. He is too restrained. Worst of all, he allows his ego to get him into trouble. But he is also able to accept loss and to see the good even in a loss, though this is a sad consolation.

Through this story, readers and an author get a viewpoint on Sossity Chandler through the eyes of someone else. In a later story, "Jergen Kohaut's Blues," and in the two stories "Qualities of Light" and "Mood Indigo," Sossity is seen from the POV of other characters. If you are writing an ongoing character, it's a good thing to do.

I have a new book out! It is titled Mother Hulda, a science fiction story based on a tale of the Brothers Grimm--but with an intergalactic twist. Kindle only. You will be surprised.

                               

Dave's Anatomy: My History as a Writer, Number 1: First Fiction Publication

Hemingway

In outlining his development as a writer, Ernest Hemingway remembers his early days in Paris:  "Up in that room I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about. I was trying to do this all the time I was writing, and it was good and severe discipline." When I began writing fiction, I followed that path. I had read the quote and thought it was a good idea. I, too, began to write about the things that I knew.

One of the things I knew was music, and I thought this was a good bet. The first story I published was a story about music and musicians.

I play guitar. I've played in pop bands, cover bands, folk ensembles, and I've done blues and ambiance music. It seemed logical to write about music and musicians. And I also knew a lot about the music scene and some of the artists who made it great. There are artists whose lives are upfront and public. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Cream have been in the public light for so long there is little mystery about them. But other artists are mysterious and intriguing. That is why I chose to write about Nick Drake for a story I began working on back in 2008.

Nick Drake ranked as a great songwriter and a marvelous guitarist. His music, however, did not do well. He released two albums that did not sell. After a third release met a similar fate, he became depressed. Reclusive and private, he eventually refused to perform or be interviewed. He died of an overdose of antidepressant drugs. Whether the overdose was accidental or a suicide has never been determined. A small but loyal fan base kept his music alive, and artists in the 1980s began to notice and admire his recordings. The popularity of his music increased. By the 1990s his music had become popular again. By the new millennium all his recordings had been re-released.

I loved Nick Drake's music, spent time learning his guitar style, and had all his recordings. And the mystery of his short, secretive life produced intriguing questions that could become plot lines. Had he loved anyone? Was there a woman in his life? People researched Drake's life. Occasionally someone would discovery new photographs or, more importantly, new songs. A minor Nick Drake "industry" existed consisting of people who wrote on Drake and recorded his music.

Thus was born my first fiction publication, "The Girl Who Knew Nick Drake."

The story is about a guitarist who plays Nick Drake's songs a lot and has discovered some photographs of him. One is of an unknown woman photographed with him during the time he spent in Morocco. The artist gets a call from a woman who claims to be the figure in the photograph and also says she has a set of songs by Drake that no one but she has ever heard. She would the artist, Martin Rollins, to visit him.

Good so far, but what else? Well, what else did I know?

Henry James

I've taught literature all my life. I've read a lot of books, and when I contemplated this tale of never-before-heard songs, it brought to mind a story by Henry James called "The Aspern Papers," about an editor who is trying to get his hands on a cache of letters by a deceased English author. The letters are in the possession of a woman who hints she was his lover and has a whole trove of his unpublished writing. I deliberately modeled my story on this one. The editor in James' story runs into a complication; so does the main character in "The Girl Who Knew Nick Drake." This complication, as in the Henry James story, is the woman's daughter.

I'll leave it at that. There is a link if you want to read the story. Two elements went into it:  music and my knowledge of literature. They produced a long story that was accepted by a journal called Amarillo Bay. I was elated to get the news. I had published poetry and scholarly articles; I knew the thrill of getting a positive response and having things published. But this was fiction. It was about things dear to my heart. So my response held more emotion and excitement than my previous writing successes.

I go back to the story and think it's still pretty good. And it teaches me a lesson. Hemingway was correct. Write about what you know. Rely on your foundations as a writer. I am tempted to say write about what you love, but you will most intimately know what you also love. This may not be your job. Though I love music I have never made a living playing it. I became a teacher instead. But the love is there. In my early career as a writer, I wrote almost exclusive about music and musicians. And still do, though that is not the only thing I've written about.

My love of music made me create an ongoing character about whom I have published thirty stories. More about her next time.

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More anatomy to follow.

Characters Who Want Something

When I was first learning to write fiction, I came across a formula for organizing a story. Formulae, of course, can be dangerous, but this one held up pretty well. It came from the book Immediate Fiction by Jerry Cleaver, and for the sake of simplicity he reduced it to an acronym:  WOA—Want, Obstacle, Action. A good story will have someone wanting something; there is an obstacle to the person getting what he or she wants. He or she will take action to get the thing. Cleaver added that the action the person takes to get what he or she wants will also reveal their character.

The book is a good book on writing, and the formula suggests an important thing. Characters have got to want something. In great literature (this is also true in film), the characters desire. Furthermore, their desire is not casual. They really, really, really want the thing. This, I think, is what makes some characters from literature enduring. A sampling will suffice to illustrate the point.

Let’s start early. Romeo. He wants Juliet. Does he want her just a little? He wants her a lot, so much that he immediately forgets

Rosalind, the girl who would not return his love and made him depressed. He is willing to risk a beating to talk to Juliet at a party off-limits to him and members of his family. Later on, he risks his very life to talk to her in the famous “balcony scene.” Eventually, he will marry her, knowing it will bring about retribution. He doesn’t care. He loves her. He wants to share her life. We all know how it ends.

Captain Ahab. He wants to kill Moby-Dick, the white whale 

who chewed off his leg. Does he have a casual desire to kill the whale? If he can get him, great, if not, well, there are lots of other whales in ocean? No. He is obsessed, fanatical, and willing to destroy his ship, his crew, and himself to even the score.

Ebenezer Scrooge wants money. He doesn’t want money just a little bit. His whole life is consumed with avarice, the desire to get money. When he is young, he does not marry the girl who loves him. She says a “golden idol” has replaced her. Scrooge complains about giving Bob Cratchit Christmas day off (and won’t give him a bit of coal to keep warm at his job). And he blows up with rage when men come to his door soliciting a contribution for the poor and destitute. “Let them die,” he says, “and reduce the surplus population!” 

Examples could be multiplied, but the point is that characters must want something and be willing to risk everything to get it. They will expend all their resources to overcome the obstacle standing between them and what they want:  the risk of death in an ancient feud for Romeo, the dangers of the sea and Moby-Dick’s skill at ripping whalers to bits (Ahab meets a British sea captain who has lost an arm to the same white whale); Scrooge faces the censure of a society that considers money-grubbing immoral, underpaying employees despicable, and indifference to the poor reprehensible. Their obsession to get past the obstacle and get what they so tenaciously want is what makes the characters absorbing. Without this desire, characters are dull and insipid. And without fascinating characters, you cannot have a good story.

I’ve tried make the characters in my novels obsessive and driven. In The Gallery Martin Rollins wants the love of Siobhan O’Conner and will risk fighting one of the undead to get her. Strange Brew has Andrew Cabot willing to travel time and face the dangers of the pre-segregation Southern USA to help Lybecca. In The Sorceress of the Northern Seas, Lybecca (long before she meets Andrew) fights and struggles to win power and dominance as a sorceress. None of these things are bought at a small price.

Your characters must desire. They must want something and be willing, like Hamlet, to even “couple hell,” to get what they want. No one is attracted by insipid desire. Make your characters want something. Make it real desire. That is how the pot gets boiling.

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