Dave's Anatomy: My History As A Writer #3: "The Karmic Quarterback"

I am not a sports fan. That's not to say that I never enjoy watching baseball, soccer, basketball, or some other sport, but I don't care who wins. To me, as long as the game is played well, it's worth watching. I attended Purdue University but if Purdue is playing and loses, it doesn't upset me. 

So I surprised myself when, early on in my writing career, I wrote a sports story and got it published in a magazine called Aethelon. The title of the story was "The Karmic Quarterback." If sports is not my forte, human endeavor is. Though we make them into heroes and icons, athletes are people and are subjected to the same quirks as we are, though this is not often written about. Two of the few sports I participated in were yoga (the most popular sport in America if you count the number of people who participate in the sport) and running. Though I never did either of these sports competitively, I participated in both regularly for many years. This is where imagination began working to produce a story.

The athletic character in fiction very often falls into a stock figure, and we know what he or she is like. But I've known some athletes who were pushed by their parents to play sports but didn't like it and threw off the yoke of sports as soon as they could. As the story formed in my mind, I decided to write about a young man in a small town who is a star quarterback because his father has relentlessly pushed him to be as much. He is good, he is not really bitter or resentful about what his parents have done, but he is restless and unsettled—and does not quite know why.

The character, Jeff, lives in a small town. What he does resent is everyone making him a hero and the expectation that under his leadership the team may win the state championship. I grew up in Indiana, and in small towns there, sports reigns and local heroes are enshrined if the team does well. If you've ever seen the film Hoosiers you'll know what I'm talking about. One night at a local hang-out, though, Jeff runs into Lena, a fellow student.

Lena isn't just your ordinary student. She practices yoga and eastern spirituality. She is a vegetarian. But she is also one of the top runners in town, having led the women's team to two state titles. People don't know how to think about her. She and Jeff begin to date. She introduces him to yoga and meditation. To the horror of everyone, he begins to change into what a local newspaper calls "the karmic quarterback." But the team begins to win, defeating larger city teams that always take them out of the playoffs.

People move against Lena. They find a book in her locker on Shakti, the female principle of yoga. The book has photographs of women doing yoga nude and she is expelled for three days and suspended from the soccer team. Jeff refuses to play despite all the pressure put on him to do so. He will not go on the field unless Lena is acquitted and put back on the team.

What makes an athlete tick? A lot of things, but unless his or her heart is in what they do, he or she will not excel. "Ya gotta have heart," the baseball coach in Damn Yankees sings. Jeff learns to yoke together (the meaning of yoga) his ambition as an athlete, his physical and spiritual make up, and his love of Lena, into a single stream of energy. When he does, he is unstoppable. But to do this, he must go outside the limits set by traditional sports philosophies and practices.

"The Karmic Quarterback" was an exercise in taking a subject in which I'm not particularly interested and making it my own by bringing my scant experience, my observation on the topic, and some quirky "spin" to the topic. Try this in your own writing. The story, though an early endeavor, and though written about a subject I don't have a lot of expertise in, is one of my better ones—at least I think it is.

Here is a link to the story, though you can only read part of it for free and have to sign up as a member of the magazine group to read the whole thing (or take their free trial, read the story, and then say, No thanks to the subscription).

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Dave's Anatomy: My History as a Writer #2: Creating an Ongoing Character

 

Janis Joplin

After the initial publication of a fiction story, I began to write more. I had learned to write about what I knew, and what I knew was music. I began to think of characters and character profiles and thought, simply by accident, that a female blues player would be an intriguing figure. Not many women do blues. Of course, there are notables: Bonnie Raitt, Janis Joplin, and, going back a few years, the incomparable Memphis Minnie. Still, blues is largely a male domain. And in the pop music scene of modern times, few people, male or female, play blues, so it seemed like a good role if I wanted to make a character unique.

Next I had to choose a name. I came up with a name I thought was unique:  Sossity. Those who are Jethro Tull fans know he had a song called "Sossity, You're a Woman." Ian Anderson, lead singer for the group, said he got the name from a yacht a friend of his owned and says the name is quite common in Scotland. I've since researched the name and found it is rare. Most people who name their girls this usually do so because they know the Tull song. I have never confirmed that it is popular in Scotland, though I do remember seeing a British movie once and, in the credits, about three women named Sossity were listed. But it was a good name, like April Dancer or Pussy Galore (both Ian Fleming creations). I stuck with it.

I would go on to publish over thirty stories about Sossity Elizabeth Chandler. The next four stories I got in print or online were about her.

For any character, you've got to create a character biography. Hers came slowly, and I won't try to rehearse it all at once, but a couple of things come into play. Sossity comes from a fairly wealthy

middle-class home. Her dad is a patent lawyer. Her mother stays at home but is trained as a nurse. Her mother is British, her father American. She has four brothers and she is the oldest and the only girl in the family. Like most first-born children, she is an achiever. She does well in school and is a capable athlete. She is beautiful. Her parents want her to become a doctor (her father's brother is a doctor) and she enrolls at Purdue University in their pre-med program. She also wins a track scholarship so that paying the bills is not an issue (though this would not have been an issue any way because her family has money).

There is one glitch, however. At age ten, Sossity's father takes her a to John Denver concert. She is enraptured by the singing and says she wants to learn to play the guitar. He buys her one, she learns to play it and begins to sing and play at school and, later, around town in coffee bars and at events. When she goes to Purdue, she begins to play even more. Halfway through her sophomore year, she drops out of school to pursue a career as a singer.

Needless to say, her parents are not happy. A violent rift develops between her and her father. And things are not easy for Sossity. She has to struggle to get enough money. She has determined she will not work part-time or get public assistance. She will make it as a musician on what she earns as a musician. The first several years, it is a struggle.

Sossity Chandler is wild at heart. The first story I published about her, "Son of a Preacher Man," catalogs her lack of inhibition. Another story, "Norwegian Wood," talks about the rift with her father. After that came "The Snow Demon" and "Retreat at Abby Path." I had struck on something with the character of Sossity Chandler. Her character biography became more complex.

And, with the story, "The Snow Demon," I began to write horror stories with her as the main character. This trend would continue.

If you want to read the stories, here are links. "Son of a Preacher Man," unfortunately, was printed in a journal that is now defunct and does not maintain an archive. So was "Retreat at Abby Path." "The Snow Demon" appeared in a print publication. But below are links to one of the stories I mentioned above and a couple of more I feel were good. I won't talk about all the Sossity stories. There are too many of them to do that, but I will have a couple more blogs on her. So more to come. 

Here are some Sossity stories for your reading pleasure.

Norwegian Wood is the first story I published featuring my on-going character. Scroll past the poem (I hope you like the poem too) to read it.

The Loss of Good is said by many of my friends to be the best "Sossity story" I've written. Judge for yourself.

Bambukos is also a favorite of many of my friends. 

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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.