tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68793454405427317352024-03-13T05:23:18.514-07:00Drew Attanalike some great white jaws.Drew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6879345440542731735.post-28929972533987723642016-03-02T10:47:00.001-08:002016-03-02T10:47:47.479-08:00The Jump-Off<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;">I thought I knew a thing or two about cruelty. To be honest, I might have called myself an expert on the subject. I mean, I’ve seen movies like Pasolini’s <i>Salo</i> and Noé’s <i>Irreversible</i>, and I’ve read everything I could get my hands on that’s been deemed transgressive or cruel. I’ve even tried emulating it in my fiction—one short piece about a man whose fingers split and cracked and fell from his body with each keystroke, or another about a car thief who moonlights as a life thief. All for the fun of it. So, I’m an authority on what it means to be cruel, right?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Here’s what I’ve been learning over the past few weeks. Cruelty, at least in the theatre (though it’s tenets would appear to be entirely fruitful in all mediums), isn’t about pain and suffering. True cruelty isn’t a splatter film; it doesn’t exist simply to turn a stomach. But to turn a heart, a mind. When I watched those films, read those books, and imitated them in my own work, it was a matter of exploitation, a search for a higher body count, more red dye and corn syrup (ex. Peter Jackson’s <i>Dead Alive</i>). There was nothing provoked in me other than a drive to see <i>something </i>I hadn’t seen before. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Where the theatre of cruelty differs, is that the cruelty isn’t limited to the content, and is certainly more than mere acts of violence. The cruelty, at least for me, lies within the audience’s response to the performance. Are they uncomfortable? Do they feel queasy? Is everyone dying to run from the theatre? Now, is this because there’s a bloodbath on stage? It can’t be. We’ve seen </span><i>Saving Private Ryan</i><span style="font-size: large;">. This is nothing new, we’re used to gore. In fact, I’d argue most of us are less interested without it. Instead, if we’re feeling tense, it must be a product of how it’s presented. That lack of content, the tilting off center, is the cruelty. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">What I found interesting was this: as I went into writing my first scene, I wrote with the word “cruelty” in mind. I thought, <i>let me take all the violence I’ve internalized over the years and boil it down to a single act of violence. </i>I thought I’d shock the audience by staging a murder without reason or purpose, and the cruelty would pump out like a torn artery. I still thought that the cruelty was in the act, rather than the presentation. To add a spin, I made the murderers female, because that never happens, right? After, however, and continuing to think about the theatre of cruelty, I realized that this was just like all those exploitive pieces I searched for. I was trying to shock, not move. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">And so I set out with my second scene. This piece, I, much like the other scenes brought to class, featured very little, if any, violence. It was as if I shied away from violence, with purpose or without, simply because I recognized my reliance on it. Strangely enough, a suicide to end the scene would have tied in perfectly with the cruelty I’d been aiming for. I wanted the audience to be forced to crane their necks to see the actors up on the catwalk. I wanted them to dodge the trash and debris being thrown at them. I wanted them to get off their phones on the stage, in the line of fire. Letting the character with seemingly no intention to do so, jump straight at them would have capped off the discomfort and movement (emotional or otherwise) I’d been seeking in my audience. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">Cruelty then, I’m continuing to discover, is violence and it isn’t. It’s the discomfort found in extended silences, in contorted bodies, both physical and emotional. Cruelty is found in what isn’t said, and whatever is elicited in the audience. I was blown away by Josie’s piece because I was forced to answer the questions myself. We’ve seen the scenes in movies, and heard the news reports. We’ve listened to lawyers and fought through testimony and such inundation has made us immune. All we have to do is change the channel or walk out of the auditorium. But with the theatre of cruelty, if done right, you can’t. You have to step into the shoes and feel the production strum a nerve that had otherwise been desensitized. </span></div>
Drew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6879345440542731735.post-48463094614319522002016-02-13T11:17:00.000-08:002016-02-13T11:17:25.714-08:00Little Blue BoxesI had a workshop leader, Frank, who, during the discussion of my work, laid out the pages side by side, three rows of five so that my fiction formed a rectangle on the long conference table. This was his copy, and justifiably covered with the blood of a red pen. I’d seen this with plenty of my fiction teachers—slashes through sentences and whole paragraphs and notes like “could cut” or “What are you thinking?”—but there was something different. Frank had drawn large blue boxes around blocks of text, and most of the bloodshed remained in the spaces between each box. “These,” he said, by his estimation, were “the active scenes of my work.” They drove the story, propelled the reader forward. From that moment, I began to focus my efforts on the crafting of scenes and stringing them together to tell the story. Everything else, all the expositional nonsense in between became superfluous and excised when I began drawing my own boxes.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Because of this, I thought I had a handle on writing scenes, and in the realm of fiction, I still think I do okay. Though, in attempting to write my first scene for the stage, a short two person scene, I realized just how limited I am. This isn’t just to point out my downfalls with putting the actual words on the page, but with all the other details one needs to account for when writing for the stage. I’d like to equate to process of writing fictional prose to a digital art program like photoshop or the archaic MS Paint.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I begin with a blank canvas, and an idea of what I’d like to create, and for the most part I can dive right in. What aids this process, is the available tools surrounding the white space, the fills and splashes and borders, all at the click of a button. With fiction, if I have scene in a bathroom, I can describe the lighting, the putrid, jittery flicker of aged fluorescence bouncing off the cesspool of stained, green tile, the beads of sweat and spatter of blood contrasting the vivid blond of the woman standing and deepening walnut brown of the kneeling brunette. The hammer she drops can be as big or as small as I want. The dead man in the bathtub can be anywhere in the room, because I, with all my readily available tools, am the architect.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>When writing for the stage however, I found myself really starting from scratch. The luxury of free-roaming creation wasn’t available. This isn’t to say that anything your mind can fathom couldn’t be performed, but instead, that everything you fail to consider when writing fiction comes into play.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>My process for writing fiction is as follows: roll out of bed, smoke, guzzle coffee, smoke, put on a Vangelis record, open up the document, bang on the keys, smoke, smoke, guzzle more coffee, write a page I think is brilliant, then delete it upon further reflection, smoke, nap. I do all this from the comfort of a shabby blue leather couch with my feet propped on a repurposed coffee table. I don’t need to leave, save for research if necessary, because everything I’m creating exists in my mind, and my job then, is to appropriately transcribe this to the page all the while considering the mythical reader in my mind—a cross between the subway commuter reading my work on the way to the drone factory and the delegate sent from the canon to judge my level of worthiness. This person doesn’t exist, and never will, but as I sit here on the couch, I’m writing to them.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The first difference I discovered when writing for the stage began with the confirmation that my fiction instructor was still correct—the scene is paramount, and the words between prevent the audience from being propelled forward. The second, and more terrifying but essential difference, is that another step is needed for the stage. Now, the world in my mind must be transferrer to the page, then transferred to the vast expanse before a viewing audience. No longer am I writing for the mythical consumer/critic beast I’ve imagined, but now I have to write for the public. The world I’m used to laying out for the reader to fill in the gaps crumbles as I fumble with props and lighting and lines of sight.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>What I tripped over was tangibility. I can’t just write in a lamp, or the glaring fluorescence, but now I must write the physicality into my scenes. I have to consider not only the fictional world, but how it will translate into reality. Will everyone in the audience, from the back corner, to the front row, get the same experience based on my stage directions. Can everyone see? Can they hear? In a short story, no characters need to face one another, or position themselves in such a way that the general public can watch their lips move, but on the stage, these amount to only a fraction of the necessary considerations. Where editing my fiction is for flow, for syntax, grammar, the hunt for the most beautiful sentence, it has grown to include not only all of that, but also the daunting task of editing to create a performance. And even further, an accessibility for every attendee.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>In a way, writing for the stage, to me, removes some of the, for lack of a better word, laziness that I’ve grown accustomed. I can’t let my reader to the work. I’ve got to get up there, walk around the creaking stage, blow the dust off old props, move actors around like rooks and bishops, then return to the page to make adjustments. It is the ultimate recursive process, one that reflects, maybe, the very thematic elements of all creative endeavors—the arduous slog of trial and error, of success and failure—and in doing so, I might be able to create something that has the ability to transcend medium and speak to more than that invented reader I have been pandering to. But first, I’ve got to get up off the couch, hop onto the stage, and put in the work.<br />
<span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Frank, my instructor, had the right idea: break everything down into scenes and see where your story takes you, but I’m learning now that within those little blue boxes, amidst the bloodshed of hacked away prose, the real action isn’t simply text, but must encompass every single seemingly insignificant detail that creates a new reality.Drew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6879345440542731735.post-80379934252972067732015-09-04T14:07:00.000-07:002015-09-04T14:07:32.621-07:00New Found Pride (or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Lions) <div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: 'Times New Roman';">
<span style="font-size: large;">Everyone—teams, coaches, fans, and every bartender from New Orleans to Anchorage—is gearing up for the season. I can feel it, that same electricity that permeates the waking hours of Christmas day before your parents get out of bed. A new year, another chance. And another few weeks of people looking at my funny when I tell them I’m a Lions fan.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Growing up, I didn’t play sports. There may have been a kickball game or some pick-up touch football I was picked last for, and sometime during middle school, I begged my folks to get me a basketball hoop for the front yard, but really, I just wanted to neighborhood kids to be my friend, even if they were only pretending. And I was happy to bribe them with a shiny new Plexiglas backboard, and unlimited cans of Surge from inside the house. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>As a family, we didn’t watch sports either. My mother and father didn’t grow up with any allegiances in their own families, and with my father’s military career taking us to various points around the country, I never had enough time to form one of my own. I remember watching Super Bowls—the earliest being Bills-Cowboys in the mid nineties—but instead of actually watching, I was busy sneaking sips of beer from uncles and making my G. I. Joes tackle each other, and kick field goals with tiny plastic footballs through cardboard uprights. The World Series played in the background sometimes, and I even cheered at the bar during NBA playoffs. Once I met Gordie Howe and got him to sign a poster, but let’s be real, I only liked hockey for the possibility of thrown gloves. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>So, how the hell did I become a diehard Lions fan?</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I’ve never set foot within the Detroit city limits, not even with a layover at the airport. I’ve only driven through the Southwestern corner of Michigan on a road trip. None of my family, or friends really, are from that far north. The closest I’ve lived to Ford Field was a little town outside of Akron, Ohio. And living there, it would stand to reason I might form an affinity for the Bengals, the Steelers, or, the closest, the Browns. But, as a kid, I had no idea what any of those team names meant. The following may have resembled my feelings on those closest teams: <i>why is Steelers spelled wrong? There should be an A in there, </i>or, <i>a Brown? I get called worse in the locker room, but not by much. </i>I know the references now, but they were lost on me then. And in hindsight, if I knew what a Bengal tiger was, I may have been swayed to Cincinnati. No, I looked to our neighbors across the lake. Lions? They’re the king of the damn jungle. Now <i>there </i>was a name I could get behind. Still, thoughts of football on any legitimate level took up very little space in my head. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Fast forward to my time in Oregon, a state in desperate need of a professional football team. A number of years ago, I took a bartending gig in the Northwest neighborhood of Portland. The bar itself was on the second floor of a converted Craftsman, and was wallpapered with a dozen TVs. Signs were posted behind the bar, in the men’s room, and a flag hung outside telling the anyone who was walking by that they could watch every game, every Sunday. The owners wanted me to tend a few nights a week, and all day Sunday. I thought the tips would be good. I thought I’d pour a bunch of beers, some shots, and take out a few sloppy burgers and orders of chicken strips. What I didn’t plan on, was having to “talk football,” with the clientele. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>From the first kickoff, I was bombarded with terms I’d never heard, like <i>Pick Six</i> or <i>Intentional Grounding </i>or<i> Bubble Screen</i>. I’d be covered in sweat and ketchup, carrying out four full pitchers of Pabst and think, <i>what the hell is encroachment?</i> (If I’m being totally honest now, I still don’t have a proper working definition.) But I did my best, smiling and nodding at the varying levels of anger or excitement from these droves of football fans, and on occasion, I’d even try to engage when they asked their barkeep what I thought of the last play, using terminology I’d heard along the way. <i>Yeah, that was a total chop block throw, </i>was one. Another, <i>he should totally have just kept throwing to the pocket. </i>I was hopeless, and my customers smelled blood in the water. I needed to do some homework, some serious study on this foreign language. But where does a twenty-six year old start? There were too many teams, too many rules. And far too many names to keep straight. I half considered giving my shift to someone who could keep up. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Then, a few weeks into the season, there was a flood of blue and silver on the bar stools. All walks came into my bar. Bears fans. Ravens fans. Even a Bucs fan. The majority were Seahawks of Niners fans, but we had them all. And suddenly, I was inundated with Lions fans. The core group numbered eight—a couple, a pair of friends from the midwest, and four other random folks who made my bar their spot to watch Detroit on Sunday. Thing was, none of them knew one another, but by the end of that game, you could have swore they’d been friends since diapers. They shared something, an unspoken bond. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Every fan, of every team, had their passion, their sudden outbursts and near breakdown inducing depression as they left the bar after a loss, but I was drawn to these Lions fans. By this point, I’d heard about Bobby’s curse. I’d always known to think of the Lions in a certain tier, to consider them of a certain caliber. This was, after all, very soon after going 0-16. On paper, they weren’t exactly the team with the right bandwagon to hitch onto, but the more I was drawn to the Lions fans, the more I found myself drawn to the team itself. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>One Sunday, maybe six or seven weeks in, I slid a pair of beers in front of the couple sitting at the far left of my bar. They both had vintage logos on jackets, and hats, and T-Shirts. The outfits were stained and frayed, and seemed to cling desperately to their bodies. I said, “I think I want to be a Lions fan.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The bar was quiet, most of the games having reached halftime. The couple, in unison, said, “how are you with humility?”</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>The rest of the Lions fans nodded and watched for my answer. I told the couple that, <i>yeah, I could handle it.</i> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Then get ready,” they said. But they weren’t snobby about it. They weren’t trying to sway me either way. In truth, they were preparing me for the peaks and valleys of one of the oldest teams in the league. And for heartbreak.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>As that season progressed, I looked forward to the their arrival, eager to here more about the Den, about the best stadium in the NFL, and about Detroit itself. In listening, taking mental and sometimes physical notes, I found myself picking up the lingo, and eventually utilizing the terminology (properly) in conversation.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>By the end, the Lions finishing with a decent record, I’d developed a new passion, and a somewhat healthy obsession with a sports team. I began doing my own research, checking stats and even watching the moves made in the offseason. I was a officially a Lions fan, and I had a whole new group of friends to watch the games with when the next season started. And I’m not just talking about those whom I’d met at my bar. Everyone wearing that bright Honolulu blue, in every bar and restaurant from Oregon to my new home here in Louisiana, each and everyone one of them is my friend. We’re all in the same pride. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I’m in. I’m hooked on the Lions, their history and their future, but I also love their fans. There’s a familial vibe with those in the pride, and even though I didn’t grow up with them, I feel honored, now, to count myself among their numbers. And what’s more, that camaraderie, that inclusive spirit, gave me more than a love for a team, but for the whole sport of football.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Now, all I have to figure out, is how to continue dating a Packers fan.</span></div>
Drew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6879345440542731735.post-66550316924219500902015-01-26T17:35:00.000-08:002015-01-26T17:38:15.649-08:00Neighborhood Watch.<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0px;">Every morning, I’m greeted by one of two things: a wet nose and a “sudden” sneeze, or a steady whine, a whimper starting in the subconscious recesses of my dreams, like an approaching siren or wailing bank alarm, then breaching reality when I realize the sound is actually coming from the beast at the foot of the bed. My dog doesn’t have to go out or need his bowl filled, though he’d go for either if given the chance. No, Jackson is ready for his walk. He’s gotten spoiled. This, he’s grown to think, is how a day should begin. I try to take him every morning, which translates to four or five times a week. Sometimes we leave before the sunrise, and get home as it begins to peer over the Cajundome, and others the sun paints the whole path before us. He has a certain pride to his stroll, his head held at the same upturned angle as his fluffy, flag-like tail. We see other dogs, behind fences and on leashes, but Jackson never barks at them—though he will pee on the nearest tree to let them know he was there. If he finds discarded food, left over Taco Bell or chicken bones that have been tossed out of a car window, he vacuums them up. There are smells. Everywhere. And Jackson investigates them all.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">He’s got a route, he’s got a neighborhood to patrol. And when he gets home, after a period of pant and shake, he collapses on the hardwood floor. Most often, he spends the rest of the day there. His job is done for the day. Sometimes, I watch him when he sleeps, watch his breathing hitch and paws twitch when the dream hunt is on, when sheep or goats or maybe even people need to corralled and brought back in from the pasture. And honestly, I’ve never seen a more perfect picture of contentment. He seems to sleep like he’s got nothing plaguing him, no worries or anxieties. Sure, I know I’m talking about a dog here. What <i>does </i>he have to worry about besides the next bowl of food, or how far the ball has been thrown? But you know what I see? I see a certain calm, a serenity that comes from doing exactly what you were meant to. </span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">That’s how I feel when I finish writing, after I’ve gotten on a roll, when I see a story taking on a life of its own. When I’ve saved my progress and closed the laptop lid. There’s a sense of: <i>okay, now I can relax. </i>Because I’ve done what I <i>know</i> I’m supposed to. It is, for lack of a better term, my job. The save button is how I punch out. And the paycheck? That doesn’t find its way into my mailbox every two weeks, and I shouldn’t expect a W2 anytime soon. Christmas bonus? To me, that just means more days off, which translates into more time to write. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0.0px;">So why do we do it? Why do we stick with a position that is devoid of medical benefits, and 401K plans, and two weeks paid vacation—where there isn’t any room for “advancement” or managerial training? This is a job that pretty much every person in our lives (save for those along the same path), thinks is more of a “hobby” than a career, though they would never dream of saying it aloud. There are conferences and retreats and Facebook pages and support groups to remind us that there are others like us, that share the drive, the desire to create, but really, writing is a solitary endeavor. Because at the end of the day, after the line edits and end comments and networking with agents and publishers and the inevitable off site conversations about what Camus was <i>really</i> trying to say, we go home to our saved manuscripts, our misplaced commas, and our unparalleled insecurity about the ability to create the world, the characters, and the lasting impressions that only <i>our </i>minds can see. So, again, I could have been a firefighter or an astronaut. Why the hell did I decide to be a writer?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large; letter-spacing: 0px;">Because when I’m done for the day, after I’ve carved out five pages or two or even a single snippet of dialogue, I can circle the hardwood, pick the most comfortable spot and fall down, relaxed enough to let my paws start kicking, and dream of chasing down another story tomorrow.</span>Drew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6879345440542731735.post-66489780546685469622015-01-13T10:03:00.000-08:002015-01-13T10:03:35.009-08:00Absolute Beginners.September 2nd. That was the last time I posted on here. And it seems every time I do, I make these promises about posting more. This time, however, there will be no promises. I'm just going to start anew. And to celebrate my newfound foray into the blogosphere, here's a list. This isn't a best or worst of list, but some confessions, admissions, and discoveries. Like getting back on the treadmill after too many years (or beers) away, I'm gonna take it slow.<br />
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1. While driving to Florida with a friend, we were caught in traffic for some time. When we reached the origin of the stoppage, there was no accident, no overturned semi or crushed Volkswagen. A massive crate had fallen from a truck bed and scattered what looked to be five, or six inch nails across the interstate. Nails. Thousands of them. The next ten mile stretch was littered with hobbled vehicles on the shoulder.<br />
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2. Linklater's <i>Boyhood</i> deserves all the attention. Also, with the exception of <i>Alien 3</i>, I could watch all of David Fincher's films on repeat. In fact, for the past few weeks, I have.<br />
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3. The worst thing about Louisiana isn't the oppressive heat in the summer months (which, I can only equate to being buried under a pile of wet towels) or, now that we've entered the new year, the extreme shift into near freezing temperatures, but the red light / speed cameras that reside at every single intersection. In the immortal words of Mr. Sammy Hagar, I can't drive 55. Or pretty much any limited speed below that.<br />
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4. After much anxiety and reservation about my (lack of) skill in front of a classroom, I discovered that I really enjoy teaching.<br />
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5. The Lions had their best season since the mid-fifties, but in the end, were eliminated by America's team. And rather than the majority of this blog raving about the terrible referee calls and near conspiratorial robbery of the game's outcome (of which I could write volumes), I'll simply say: next year. Man, I should get that tattooed on my knuckles.<br />
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6. I've traded energy drinks for coffee. Cigarettes are still a problem.<br />
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7. All systems go on my first trip to AWP. I have no idea what to expect, but I hear Minneapolis is beautiful in April.<br />
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8. Speaking of writing, and conferences about writing, I've begun a new project. A novel length work taking place here in a the great state of Louisiana. And while we are at it, here's a confession: as much as I revel in the horror genre—film and fiction and so forth—and as much as I've always wanted to <i>be</i> a horror writer, I've begun to stray. I'm becoming less and less interested in writing gore and shock.<br />
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9. Listen to Run the Jewels. And Amusement Parks on Fire.<br />
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That'll be it for now. I'm already out of breath. More soon.<br />
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<br />Drew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6879345440542731735.post-85292482458643048462014-09-02T09:25:00.000-07:002014-09-02T09:27:55.212-07:00Who Will Survive, and What Will Be Left of Them?<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">We left Portland three weeks ago today. Our friends, Miles and Amy, had been gracious enough to open their home, hearts, and liquor cabinet to Paige and I, and we spent the last week engaging in as many “Oregon” activities as we could. Restaurants we hadn’t tried, trails we’d put off hiking. We finally got around to trying craft cocktails at new (and old) hipster bars we’d never set foot it in. We made the rounds with our border collie, Jackson, letting him say his goodbyes to his furry friends and the street lights and sign posts he’d left his mark on. Paige put her toes in the foam of the Pacific while I took her picture and she took mine while we filled inner tubes on the banks of the Clackamas river. There were going away parties and BBQs, concerts on the sprawling lawn of Portland’s backyard, and goodbyes. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">And then it was time to go. What we couldn't fit in the moving truck, or deemed too vital to our lives (everything from birth certificates to signed books), we shoved into the back of our car, coaxed Jackson in with a month's worth of MilkBones and started out, careful not to spend too much time looking in the rearview. The first day we listened to a good chunk of Gillian Flynn's <i>Gone Girl</i>, barely looked out the window at the state of Idaho, and ended up at a Best Western on the Utah/Wyoming border. Behind the hotel was a manicured park where Jackson saw his first school of Koi fish swimming in a clear pond and promptly looked at me as if I'd been depriving him his whole life. The first (and probably the greatest) surprise of this stop was that the town had an In-N-Out Burger. Oh, how that neon sign gleamed like the waters of an oasis. It took some effort to stop eating when shredded wrapping paper was all that remained.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Day two brought the expansive beauty of Wyoming, the "Wild West" I'd always pictured in my mind, followed by the mind-eroding traffic of the greater Denver metropolitan area. In a flash of stupidity, I decided I could keep driving, put another hundred miles in our rearview, and we ended up in a small Eastern Coloradan town where the locals stop their conversations when you enter the room, like a priest pushing through swinging saloon doors, where hastily typed "Boil Water Due to Contamination" notices are posted on the windows of the only businesses within fifty miles, and where insects—fellow travelers themselves I assumed by the town's minuscule population—crawl through the massive crack in the door frame, seeking shelter and sustenance in the same lodgings you and your family have. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Flynn's novel came to an end just as we rolled into Tulsa on the third day. We'd burned though most of Kansas and Oklahoma, on a few hours a fitful sleep from the night before, and pulled into another hotel parking lot. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">To make up for the previous evening, I secured a room with air conditioning, a jacuzzi tub, and a reliable pizza delivery service. We gorged ourselves, had a drink or two, then crashed hard while a marathon of home remodeling reality shows flickered on the TV. In the morning, we left the city along with the ice cream we’d been pining for, forgotten in the hotel room’s tiny refrigerator.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Texas was exactly as I’d hoped, small towns with burger joints, populations hovering in triple digits, and tremendous amounts of love for their high school football teams. Even as we blew through each burg, the highway doubling as Main Street in most, we saw the blue and red and green banners hanging in store windows and down from old-fashioned lampposts. License plates and rear windows smeared with shoe polish, showcasing jersey numbers and crudely drawn renderings of mascots. Life appeared to be simpler, more focused, and just as I began to think that might the sort of lifestyle I’d been looking for all along, we crossed a line—from one state to another, from a county to a parish. We found ourselves in the dense green of Northern Louisiana. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Jackson, relatively comatose in the backseat for most of the trip, began to perk up, pacing back and forth between the windows sniffing at the thick, humid air. It was as if he knew the journey was almost over, that we’d soon be in the next place he would call home. Little did he know: the three of us still had a few nights of hotel life ahead of us. Without a book for us to listen to, we flipped on the radio, trying, as we closed the gap between us and Lafayette, to program in new stations into the preset keys. We found a multitude of great rap and jazz stations, with decent classic rock sounds sandwiched somewhere in there, and the DJs spoke of cities we’ve never heard of and festivals we’d never been to. They talked football and shrimp. These were the voices, the instructions, of our new home.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The sun was reduced to a sliver when we pulled off the highway. The haze burned on the horizon, deep reds and oranges like the high octane swirl of color in frozen daiquiri machines. We booked a room, decompressed for a few minutes, then took a tour of our new city. Lafayette. Colorful beads hung in the trees around campus. Billboards and banners advertised upcoming music and food festivals. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The fleur-de-lis was everywhere, etched into the skin of the city. Nearing nine, ten in the evening, the temperature was still in the B+ range. We’d entered a whole new world. And I felt, above the anxiety of change, simply electric with possibility. This was a place of culture, of heart. And I now called it home.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The first few days were a blur of carpet replacement, parking permits, get-togethers with other new students, school orientation, grocery shopping with Mom and Dad (without whom none of this would have been possible), getting lost in the car and on foot, more school orientation, sweating while standing still, unpacking and the discovery of what had been broken in the move, dinner with old friends and new, office and classroom assignments (after still more orientation), and the thrill of a real thunderstorm. Then suddenly, there I was, babbling in front of twenty-five freshman students, telling them I would be teaching them how to write college-level essays. It felt as though I’d just been on the Clackamas river, somewhere between Barton and Carver parks, ropes tied between my tube and Paige’s, between mine and the floating cooler, between us and the world we knew. Then, I blinked. Just a fraction of a second and I was here, telling a room full of strangers to call me Mr. Attana. Or Mr. Drew. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I really have no idea what to expect. There is no way to tell what I’ve gotten myself into—on a teacher, student, and social level—, but I feel so blessed to be a part of this program, and a part of this thriving culture. Leaving behind our lives in Portland, the wealth of friendship and memories, has been more difficult than we could have imagined. Much harder than we pictured when I received word that I was accepted, back when a new life was only a theory. When we were doing Google searches about alligators and Cajun county. When we were deciding what we should take with us, and what we should leave. Back when we were making our friends promise they’d come to visit, and assuring them, in turn, that we wouldn’t be gone forever. It felt like a dream, something intangible, always on the horizon. In the <i>future.</i></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Now that it’s here and our little family unit has boots (or paws) on the ground, the ethereal, pixelated images of the fourth largest city in the State of Louisiana, have begun to sharpen. This is all real now. There are alligators here, though they aren’t waiting on the new carpet in our apartment when we get home. The humidity is rough, unlike anything we’d ever experienced on the West Coast, but the air conditioning works just fine most places. And hey, a second shower never hurt anyone. Standing in front of a classroom of freshman really is just as terrifying as I pictured it would be, but what I hadn’t factored into those fever dreams, was the support of my new classmates and colleagues. We truly are in this together.</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">And what has lessened the severity of this entire transition, the reality of what our family has undertaken, is the warmth of not only the friends we’ve made—folks from here, and from across the farther reaches of the country—but of the city of Lafayette. Everyone here is smiling. They’re sweating, but smiling. New friends and strangers alike seem like they <i>want </i>us to be here, to find the beauty that they have. They’ve made us feel welcome, a part of. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">At home.</span>Drew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6879345440542731735.post-3644440872421756122014-06-03T10:14:00.000-07:002014-06-04T19:11:05.221-07:00Sweets to the Sweet.I know, I know. I keep saying that I'll come back more often, I'll post more, I'll keep whoever is happening upon my website or blog abreast on the current state of my life. Of my career. But I haven't. My most recent post was the last day of February. I aim to rectify that. Let's check the pedals and get up to speed. Today, let's talk school.<br />
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To my credit, I <i>have</i> been busy. For a good chunk of the last few months, I have been engaged in the application process for the Creative Writing PhD program at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. This was a battlefield of deadlines, essays, and lost transcripts, but with the help of those on staff in LA, and the support of my friends and family at home, I got the letter. Well, I received a phone call first, telling me I'd been accepted, but I don't think I fully let myself celebrate until the letter came in the mail. Official Letterhead and all. And riding shotgun with the letter was the terrifying notion of leaving this city behind. Portland, the place I call home. </div>
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I came to this city almost a decade ago, with little more than a backpack full of cigarettes and paint pens. And the youthful lust that urges a twenty-year-old boy to leave everything in Southern California behind after a chance encounter. That tryst lasted, as you can assume, the appropriate three week period and I was left, by myself, in the City of Roses. I've lived in every neighborhood, drank in every bar. I've lost almost as many friends as I've made. This city helped me find the love of my life. Paige, my partner, a woman without whom I would never be the man I am today. And here I discovered who I want to be. Not the guy I pretended to be, not the badass I thought I was, but who I <i>am. </i>I'm a writer. </div>
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We've got two months. Eight weeks to figure out the move, to pack our books and spatulas. To fill out change of address cards and say our goodbyes. But I'm not ready. Not yet. We've got the summer to hash out the details. And to spend as much time as we can on the river, around the bbq, at the old haunts. And I plan to savor every last second.</div>
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So, where does that leave me right now? Well, the clock is creeping up on 10am and my dog is stretched out on the hardwood like a rug, panting. Candyman, the criminally underrated horror masterpiece, is chugging and burning on the TV just beyond the glow of my laptop. Paige is plugging away at her work in the other room, finishing her last week of undergrad. And I couldn't be more proud. In a little more than a week, I'll lose myself in the clapping, the cheering, the shimmer and sway of her gown and she walks across the stage and receives her degree. </div>
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And then we are off, off to the land of crawfish and glittery beads. To Southern hospitality and thunderstorms. To make new friends, and to encourage the old ones to visit. I cannot wait to see what life will bring next.</div>
Drew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6879345440542731735.post-41992093646688159382014-02-28T13:43:00.000-08:002014-02-28T13:43:05.422-08:00Don't call it a comeback. Months of radio silence. Though, it hasn't been because I am opposed to updating this blog. No, I've been busy finishing the novel. I haven't been doing much else besides the continual polishing and shaping of what is now known as, FLAT BLACK. But now that the manuscript is finished, I'll be back on here.<br />
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For the foreseeable future, I will be posting about my experiences with finding an agent, including query letters, novel excerpts, etc. The whole nine. I want a record of this process, because I'd like to look back at all this, no matter the outcome, with fondness. And maybe the occasional grimace.<br />
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Here's my new goal: I hope to receive 100 rejection letters from literary agents by April 1st. I just got my first—a short, kind "no, thank you"—which I aim to print, frame, and hang next to my desk. I'm looking forward to the coming months, and hope that anyone reading will enjoy following along with me as I navigate the treacherous terrain of the publishing world.<br />
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Also, watch True Detective. That's all.Drew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6879345440542731735.post-2851149469099794432013-08-01T12:20:00.001-07:002013-08-01T12:22:05.490-07:00The Red Flags of Elodie Lane.<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Since my folks moved to the Florida panhandle four years ago, my mother walks to the end of the driveway every weekday morning at eleven to get the mail. After their respective retirements, the hustle and structure of their previous lives has been replaced with the shifting white sand of the gulf coast. Besides bible studies and doctors' appointments, the only constant, really, has been the mail. In their little town, you could set your watch by it.</span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Gulf Breeze is a small suburb of Pensacola with a population of just over five thousand. People know most of their neighbors. They know the high school kid bagging their groceries. They wave to the sheriff as he cruises the boardwalk. They know their postal driver's name. On Elodie Lane, the woman who always came bumping around the corner every morning, the back of her white, boxy truck filled with bundles of magazines and credit car pre-approval packets and pizza coupons, was Carol. In their neighborhood, the one thing that changed the most, my mother said, was the style of Carol’s hair.</span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Three weeks ago, my mother pulled into the driveway a little before noon and walked down to the grab the mail. The box was empty. She saw that the other mailboxes on the street still had their red flags waving. Carol must have been running late. She began running through scenarios as she went back up the drive: engine trouble with her mail truck or a late delivery at the distribution center in Pensacola. Or worse, trouble at home. A fight with a boyfriend or husband. My mother knew Carol enough for the pleasantries if they happened to be at the mailbox simultaneously, but it was my father who talked with her more often. He was always outside waxing the car or mowing the lawn and he would undoubtedly hold up her route as they conversed. Maybe he’d have some insight about her delay. She planned to ask him when he returned home. </span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>As she closed the garage, the sound of a siren crawled under the door and echoed off the posters of cars and vintage aircraft my father had mounted all over the walls. A fire station is within earshot of their house, so sirens weren’t unusual, but for a moment she had a feeling this particular call had some knowledge of her husband. He was, after all, getting older and this was something she had to consider. But it couldn’t have been for him. He was at the VA hospital anyway, he’d taken the scooter up to see the doctor about his gall bladder. So, if there was a problem, he'd be in good hands. There was no reason to think the worst. She let go of the feeling while she changed into a swimsuit. When he got back from his appointment, they were going to the beach to look for seashells. But my father, like the mail, was late that day.</span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>And then the phone rang. A young male voice asked if her husband was Bruce, and when she confirmed this, he informed my mother that my father been admitted to the emergency room with serious injuries. The clerk had no further knowledge other than my father was alive, the stability of his condition was unknown. She was backing down the driveway again in a matter of seconds.</span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>As she turned onto Midway, the main street out of the housing development, she saw yellow tape crisscrossing the next intersection. A line of waiting cars and a firetruck blocked the view of whatever lay beyond the tape. My mother pulled over, tires against the curb, and got out. She left the motor running. </span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>When she ducked beneath the yellow tape and came around the side of the firetruck, she saw three things at once. Like a simple formula. (A) = Late model Suzuki Scooter, or what was left of it. My folks used this hog for solo trips to the beach or to buy milk at the Publix a mile away. (B) = Ford box truck swathed with flaking red, white and blue, pulled at an angle on the sidewalk. The sliding side door stood agape. A plastic bin was overturned, its contents strewn out onto the asphalt. A few envelopes lay in the grass nearby. (C) = A man in Post Office blues sitting on the curb, arms wrapped tightly around his legs, face burrowed between his knees. His body hitched with sobs. </span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>(A) + (B) + (C) = the red flags of Elodie Lane.</span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Did you hit my husband?” my mother asked. </span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Her voice must have broke him free of the spiraling train of thought, because he jerked his head back like someone had a handful of his hair, and he squinted against the sun for a moment, straining to make out her face, before he could respond. And when he did, he made no excuses or justifications. He didn’t blame the blind spot of the sun or the brakes of the Ford. He said simply, “Yes, ma’am. I did.”</span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>My mother took this is, and absorbing it she looked around at the scene again. From (A) to (B), then back to (C). The sheriff’s deputies had left their notepads and conversation on the hood of the cruiser and had turned in her direction. They made no attempt to block her from the area, to push her back beyond the yellow tape. It was as if they knew.</span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>There were a hundred questions in her head, begging her to scream at the folded man, but she quelled them and asked, “Did you kill him?”</span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“No, ma’am. I don’t believe I did,” the man said and dropped face face between his knees again.</span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>She turned from him and got back into the car, the same Kia my father had spent the morning cleaning while she was at bible study, and drove to the hospital. </span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">When I was five, my father was in his first motorcycle accident. He was barreling down the highway with Los Angeles in the rearview. He was heading home. Something caught his eye from the side of the road, a reflected light or maybe a broken down car on the shoulder and he turned his head to look for a only a second. When he refocused on the fast lane ahead of him, a car was at a complete stop in front of him. He didn’t even have time to grip the brake or let go of the throttle. Investigators judged that he hit the back of the stalled car at roughly 80mph and was airborne for roughly eight car lengths. He broke his arms and his legs, his ribcage and collapsed both lungs. He spent months in a full body cast and I spent that time next to his bed, drawing on his cast with magic markers.</span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Twenty-one years before I was born, my father spent a year in Southeast Vietnam. He was a door gunner on a Huey, with the burn mark on his neck as a reminder. During that year, he was assigned to three different birds. The first two were shot down. In each, my father was the only survivor. </span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Today, my father is back home on Elodie Lane. His foot is broken in three places and his pelvis in three. He has bruised kidneys and a significant stitches on his scalp. His left shoulder remains separated, hanging on by tendons and ligaments. Fading road rash covers most of his body like a tattoo. In his words, “As the test results clearly show, the unprotected human body is no match for the Ford built U.S. mail delivery vehicle.”</span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>But he has, once again, survived. My folks attribute this to God’s love and protection. His continual survival truly is a miracle. Someone or something is looking after my father, and if it really is the hand of the divine holding on with a tight grip, then right now, I’m thanking God for protecting him.</span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>I still have no idea if there is a creator, and I’m not sure I ever will. I went to bible study while growing up and I thought of myself as a Christian, but it didn’t stick. I came back to the church when I hit bottom on my own and tried again. I still can’t say I believe in God above, but after my mother found the empty mailbox, I was absolutely certain about the one thing: the faith I have in <i>my </i>father. In his courage and in his strength. His love.</span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>He is a man that, no matter what happens, I will never<i> </i>stop believing in.</span><br />
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Drew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6879345440542731735.post-90759248813076953982013-07-26T14:15:00.001-07:002013-07-26T14:15:09.673-07:00Repost: Retweeting Hawthorne (Blog Post from Spilt Infinitive)Repost from <a href="http://www.spiltinfinitive.com/retweeting-hawthorne/">Spilt Infinitive</a>.<br />
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Retweeting Hawthorne</h2>
<dl class="article-info" style="background-color: whitesmoke; border-top-color: rgb(221, 221, 221); border-top-style: solid; border-width: 1px 0px 0px; color: #444444; font-family: PTSerifItalic, helvetica, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 20px; margin: 10px -15px; outline: 0px; padding: 10px 20px;"><dd class="create" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; display: inline-block; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Published on Friday, 26 July 2013 03:31</dd> <dd class="createdby" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; display: inline-block; margin: 0px 10px 0px 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">by Drew Attana</dd></dl>
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<a href="http://www.spiltinfinitive.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Hashtag.jpg" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.1s ease-in; background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0d7516; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;"><img alt="Hashtag" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-2061" height="212" src="http://www.spiltinfinitive.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/Hashtag-300x212.jpg" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; float: right; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;" width="300" /></a>Three years. Four drafts. Enough revision that I could feasibly switch the suffix of the word from re- to de-. I’ve lived and breathed the same story before and after work, during the course of an MFA program, and through the tumult and pleasure of getting married. Yet, I still can’t see the finish line. But something’s been running through the back of my mind, a notion that’s been powering me through nearly as much as the desire to write itself: with enough of myself poured out onto the keyboard, my novel will undoubtedly be on the shelves within my parents’ lifetime. And glean me all the adoration I’ve ever dreamt of.</div>
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It just has to, right?</div>
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<span id="more-2059" style="background-color: transparent; border: 0px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"></span>Wrong. Unless you’re one of the select few who’ve found the path to publishing as easy as emptying your trash folder (and I’ll refrain from namedropping because, let’s face it, our jealously of their barometric rise knows exactly zero bounds), then completing your book is only half the battle. Getting published isn’t about hard work anymore or the near fictionalized, serendipitous moment when your heavy childhood memoir or zombie love story lands on the desk of some hapless intern reader at Penguin who just happened to get laid the night before and felt generous enough to send it upstairs. No, these days, the world of success and publication starts with your name. More specifically, it’s about your online brand.</div>
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A fellow writer opined that the propulsion of your literary career is based on the italics, what your name carries around like the frilly streamers on a girl’s bike. Ex:</div>
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JACKSON Q. McPUBLISHME</div>
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“Sweet, Brainy Short Story,” Published in Prairie Schooner, Nov. 2011</div>
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“Equally Enthralling Literary Think Piece,” Published in Tin House, Jan, 2012</div>
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“Clinically Detached Personal Essay,” Published in Crazy Horse, May. 2013</div>
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Agents and readers take note. This writer has got some impressive notches under his belt, based mostly on the quality of his writing. With these credits, he may deserve a second look. Now, tack these on:</div>
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Regular Contributor / Blogger at Gawker, TheMillions, ESPN</div>
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2,147 Twitter Followers</div>
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1,793 Blog Subscribers</div>
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This burgeoning new novelist has gone from a noteworthy literary voice to a sellable literary voice. The followers of this author’s many cyber handles already supply a potentially multi-thousand strong fan base that could not only buy the debut novel, but promote, tweet and tumble every word of the prose. And let’s not forget the benefit of a reliable Instagram account where a well placed semi-colon could be photographed, slapped with an artsy filter then shared, liked and hash tagged until well after the first pressing sells out.</div>
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The emergence of this pseudo-cyber self-promotion is of course recent, a healthy twenty years after this new pixelated reality, but the reliance on such viral hype has become paramount. A strong, collated SEO (Search Engine Optimization, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Google) carries more weight than a state driver’s license. The successful writers are doing it. The less successful writers are doing it. Gone are the days of writing on parchment next to candlelight and having that be enough (but while we are on the subject, imagine if Hawthorne had a Twitter: @NattyIceHawthorne “Check out this sweet sentence I’m working on: ‘No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude…’ #thescarletletter #page20). Readers aren’t satisfied only with what you create; they want a glimpse of who you are. But what does this mean for all of us introverted misanthropic literary types who refuse to let even our significant others read the paragraph we labored over for a week? It means that as the times change, so must we. There’s only one Cormac McCarthy allowed per generation to deactivate his Facebook account and stay off the grid.</div>
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When Bret Easton Ellis’ Less Than Zero hit the shelves in 1985, it spoke to a generation: the zombiefied consumer culture of the cellphone-less 1980s. But that book hasn’t been forgotten today, and not because it’s been hailed as a classic of American Literature and taught in high school classrooms across the country, but because Ellis has kept himself in the shiny glow of every young American’s laptop screen. Sure, not every tweet has to do with his writing (though he does keep fans updated on the status of his current project), and he’s continually in the headlines for his brash, offensive statements (one tweet of his compared watching the show “Glee” to stepping in a puddle of HIV) but his online persona, his SEO, is unparalleled.</div>
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Ellis’ image is as controversial as those he creates in his fictions. More importantly, he is talked about. Any insider would be hard-pressed to deny that the clamoring of the many activist groups outraged over the content of Ellis’ work hasn’t contributed to his sales. Today, American Psycho has gotten dangerously close to sixty pressings. Sure, the grotesque thematic content has something to do with that, but I would contend that the nearly half-million Twitter followers Ellis currently has plays a large part in his continued relevance. His last book, 2010’s Imperial Bedrooms, a sequel to his debut, wasn’t met with the same success as its predecessor, nor the few books he has published since the MTV decade, but he’ll still have a bevy of buyers for his next tale. Why? Because he’s still got the world talking, and the more people talk (retweet), the longer his name is remembered. In turn, Ellis’ work stays in print. And the line grows for his next release.</div>
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I’m not advocating we go out and put hashtags around a hundred and forty character slur in an attempt to get the internet repeating our names like a mantra, but I am suggesting that if any of us, however deeply introverted we claim to be, want to draw attention to the writing we’ve spent years obsessing over, then we have to start working this online angle, and doing so much louder than the blog, Tumblr or Twitter that’s waiting just one track pad click away.</div>
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An instructor of mine, Frank Gaspar, once offered this advice: “Touch it everyday,” the “it” referring to the project you are currently consumed by. Be it a new chapter, some 500 words, or merely moving a comma around the landscape of the page, the idea is to keep your brain and fingers engaged in the work, a sort of holistic immersion. This advice got me though a few rough patches (and by patches, I mean nuclear fallouts) where all I could do was move a comma. But I contend Frank’s sound advice should be expanded to include all the rivers and valleys of your online persona. When those nagging questions that fill the disquiet before falling asleep arise—Did I write today? Did I move that comma? Did I cut that hack sentence I’ve grown so attached to?—consider adding a few more: Did I tweet today? Did I post a blog? Did I share the links on my Facebook? Am I getting my name out there?</div>
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Now that I’ve gone on about the importance of the internet, I have a confession: As of today, I have a mere 35 Twitter followers and this right here is the first blog post I’ve written outside of the ramblings I sporadically post on my personal blog. So, whatever advice might be gleaned from this post should be followed first by its author.</div>
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Website: <a href="http://www.drewattana.com/" style="-webkit-transition: color 0.1s ease-in; background-color: transparent; border: 0px; color: #0d7516; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">drewattana.com</a></div>
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Drew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6879345440542731735.post-9995348490217563292013-02-03T10:59:00.001-08:002013-02-03T10:59:21.631-08:00Scrapped Novel Title: "Does This Rag Smell Like Chloroform?"Yesterday morning, bleary eyed from the night before, I took a long walk. I do most of my best thinking walking around the neighborhood, headphones in, cigarette lit. I sometimes come up with character names from cross-streets and childhood histories from the weathered plastic jungle gyms in the backyard. Conversations heard from patios and bus stops often give me fuel for possible plot devices and dialogue. Graffiti provides relevance to this world. And for some reason, I never think to bring a journal, so I'm always feverishly typing these notes into the notepad of my iPhone. But the thing is, yesterday's notes were filled with horrible, horrible ideas.<br />
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Here are a few of those ideas:<br />
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1. After snapping a photo of a soiled, beaten teddy bear lying on the porch of an even more soiled and beaten home in deep SE Portland, a notion came to mind. I should write a young adult novel about a, wait for it, <i>TEDDY BEAR</i> who makes his living as a hit-man. But hold on, he's got back story—Charlie (yeah, that was the name I also came up with) is a recovering addict who botched his last hit without his snow, and is both on the run from his employers and his own demons. Bestseller?<br />
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2. I also came up with a title for another novel, not the content, characters nor the plot, just the title. And for some time, I was sure that title was the best thing I'd ever come up with. This was, until my wife just shook her head at me and repeated the title slowly back to me. "Does This Rag Smell Like Chloroform?"<br />
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3. For a good ten minutes, I convinced myself I should write romance novels. Enough said.<br />
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What did I glean from these amazing ideas? I should be spending more time in front of my keyboard, banging away at my current projects. So here's to following through (::raises coffee mug to laptop screen::), and getting the work done.<br />
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<br />Drew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6879345440542731735.post-54023242604305011632013-01-19T17:18:00.001-08:002013-01-19T17:18:54.741-08:00The Road Ahead.This whole "readjusting to normal life following a ten day residency which represented the culmination of a two year MFA program" thing is tougher than I thought. More than simply drying out from the copious celebratory drinks, it's all on me now. I'm without a faculty member approved reading list, free from weekly reading commentaries and annotations. I've got zero deadlines. I have no one to answer to except myself. <br />
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I am an eternal student who has suddenly found himself without mandatory homework. Bitchin', right? No way. <br />
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This writing thing is all me now. Getting pages written and revised, books read and studied, and meeting deadlines is solely my responsibility. That whole structured support system (sans those wonderful friends and colleagues I have been blessed with--they're coming with me) is in my rear view. And of course: I'm terrified. <br />
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But I'm willing to do the work. I'm in this for the long haul.<br />
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Drew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6879345440542731735.post-71250645854903510532013-01-15T12:59:00.001-08:002013-01-15T13:27:49.927-08:00More Than Zero: MFA Critical Introduction<br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">This week I finished up the last few days of my Low Res. MFA program at Pacific University. One of the requirements for graduating was to read from my thesis, "Written on the Walls," as well as deliver a critical introduction to a large group of my friends, peers and faculty. It was wonderful, humbling conclusion to a long, beneficial road. Below you will find the transcript of that introduction. Thank you for reading! And thank you everyone in my life who have supported me through this journey. I couldn't have done it without you.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><b>More Than Zero</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">When he was eighteen, my father was in the skies above Vietnam, a door gunner on a Bell 205 Huey. Before his nineteenth birthday he’d been shot down three times, and twice had been the only survivor. Beyond these few facts, I know little about his time in the war. It’s not a story he has shared with me. Though I do know that no matter what he saw there, what horror he’s carried with him, he never turned from the military, his chosen pursuit. After his tour, he left the Army and joined the Air Force. For the next twenty-five years, he logged over ten thousand hours in the cockpit of various aircraft and embarked on missions so far removed from the world than I—that most of us—can imagine. He spent Christmases in the theater of Desert Storm and Thanksgivings in Panama. After he retired, he worked with Boeing as a flight instructor contracted by the Air Force. My father, like his before him, his grandfather and great-grandfather, is a military man. The same goes for the men on my mother’s side. They’ve all served. These men knew, really knew, what they wanted to do with their lives. Today, as I near the completion of earning my MFA in writing—my own sort of mission—I am struck not only by those who have the nerve to answer the call to action, but by the very act of hearing it in the first place. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">The only times I’ve fired a weapon the target was a soda can in the deep woods of Oregon or the flat plains of the California desert. But when my first semester at community college wasn’t working out as I’d hoped, I met with a military recruiter. We talked enough that the details were hammered out. I knew where I’d be going to basic and when the plane was leaving. All I had to do was sign on the dotted line. I never showed up. If I had, I wouldn’t have been doing it for myself. I would have because I thought that’s what my father wanted: A son who followed his path, who put down the pot, the video game controllers, and served his country.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">The thing was, I had no idea what to do with myself. I was eighteen, stocking appliances at Lowe’s during the week and getting arrested in Tijuana on the weekends. In the eleven years since, I still haven’t finished much. I’ve worked upwards of twenty jobs. From sitting in a cubicle designing multi-million dollars homes for aging rock stars to selling tacky polo shirts at a golf store in a strip mall. For a time I even assembled the timing boxes for sprinkler systems. I’ve started classes at community colleges all up and down the West Coast. In Sacramento, I fancied myself an aspiring Philosophy major until I discovered how much Philosophy I’d have to actually read. In San Diego, I spent two weeks in classes to get my “GPS Technology” certificate. I still don’t know what that is. Nothing stuck. Restlessness kept me always on the move.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">The only thing I’ve ever felt real passion for, the one title I wanted to follow my name in newspapers, was Writer. But two obstacles have stood in the way of that dream. The first was that, without fail, I’ve been told it’s not a real job, seeing as there is no money, and therefore no future in writing. Pursue this life, and I was bound to end up being a bartender or worse. The other issue was that I was approaching the writing life from the wrong direction. I wanted to be a writer, just be one. I never considered that I actually needed to learn <i>how</i> to write.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">During the days of smoking pot out of aluminum cans and trying unsuccessfully to learn the guitar, I came across a paperback in a thrift store. The cover was polychromatic, a pair of Wayfarer sunglasses lay in the center with the grainy patterns of MTV logos on the lens and beneath was the title: Less Than Zero. I didn't know the author at the time, Bret Easton Ellis, but I sure as shit knew who Elvis Costello was and anyone who would name their novel after one of his songs was fucking right on in my book. It was the first thing I read cover to cover without stopping. I was enveloped in the world he created, as well as the life he was leading. I wanted to be a writer like him. I wanted the sequel to Less than Zero to have <i>my</i> name on the cover and to live his Hollywood life style. Releasing titillating best sellers, snorting drugs. Sleeping around simply because my words made knees weak. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">My head was in the wrong place. But the basic tenet was there, so during my first stint at community college I signed up for a Intro to Writing course. There was nothing glamorous about Creative Writing 101. There were "prompts" and "dangling participles" and that little concept my high school teachers had kept droning on about when I had bothered to show up to class: grammar. I didn't even make it through my first semester. Instead, I went in search of the life in Ellis's book.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">I found the bad crowd. The drugs, the streets. I found the death in his version of Los Angeles. And to spare you, I’ll say that I found more than Ellis let on and it came very close to destroying me. Something had to change. Restless still and this time more than a little scared, I took flight. Eight years after that first attempt, I took another Intro to Writing class, this time in Portland, Oregon. And all those pesky writing concepts, the grammar, the punctuation, the dialogue tags, they had followed me a thousand miles north. Flash forward again to my semester with Mike Magnuson and will have I discovered the I still hadn't learned shit about them. But more on my time with Mag later.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">The syllabus in this course hadn't changed, free writing on Mondays and workshop on Wednesdays. And the prompts, the "write about your earliest memory" and the obligatory “craft a two page story with the following ten words placed in the prose," were the same. The difference was in my instructor, Susan Reese, a graduate of this very MFA program. She saw, and helped me to see, that maybe, just maybe, I wanted more than the image of being a writer. Maybe I wanted to write. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Susan became my mentor even when I wasn’t in her classes. I changed my major from botany or pottery or whatever the fuck I was fooling myself into thinking I'd be happy doing with my life to English, with a minor in creative writing. I became passionate about creating worlds, fabricating characters, recording my imagination. And a funny thing happened. I actually started showing up to class. I joined clubs and writing groups. I became the president of the English honors society. I’ve never been president of anything, nor had I wanted to before that point. My GPA inched its way up from negligible, from being less than zero. Like my father, I had discovered what I wanted to be.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">So, this time two years ago I hopped on a bus with a suitcase, a few short stories that had garnered some recognition and an inflated ego that was just begging to be stomped into dust. I figured, I did so well in my undergrad, this program would just confirm that I was the shit and send me out into the glittering world of upscale literary hit-makers with a meal ticket made out to cash. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Holy fuck was I deluded. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">My first semester with Claire Davis I refer to as my semester of missed opportunities. This isn’t to say the semester was a wash. No. Quite the opposite. I couldn’t now imagine having started this program with anyone else. During our first meeting, I ran the idea for a novel I had by Claire and she encouraged me to go with it. I didn’t waste any time. By the the first packet I had fifty pages written, and by the second I was pushing close to one hundred fifty. And that, I soon learned was not a superpower, but a big problem. I was going too damn fast. I wasn’t taking the time to explore the worlds I was creating. Everything was stock, cardboard set pieces. My characters would walk down a “dark alley.” That’s it: an alley, and it was dark. With her urging, I began to see these superficial descriptions as missed opportunities. I missed the slickness of the rainwater on the bricks, the pungent scent of mildew, the audible squish of vomit beneath the narrator’s sneaker. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">I was missing the ability to explore the world of the my story on a basic level, which in turn would have made the place a character in and of itself. This isn’t anywhere, U.S.A. This is Portland, Oregon. This is Los Angeles. And this is the filthy underbelly you never get to see, but your characters do and become, to the reader, so much more rounded as a result. But this only comes from revision, from reworking and pulling out the innards of a specific passage seven, eight, twenty times and there in that pile of worked over intestines lies the beauty. Claire said it better than I can: “That’s the best part of this whole business. Not the publishing (though, yeah that’s pretty cool as well) but the discovery of how much you are capable of discovery. And each work pushes you to be smarter, to be more observant, to think more deeply on what it means to be human, and forces you to face how complicated that task is—being human.” What Claire gave me and will be forever in the back on my mind was the drive to explore, to dig in and engage my reader, by engaging myself.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">I spent my second semester with Mike Magnuson. A name we are all familiar with. You’ve heard the stories about Mag. And if you’re new and haven’t, just wait, you will. And if you’re crazy, nay, brave enough to work with him: You’ll find out first hand. I’m here telling you today that every single thing you have or ever will hear about Mike Magnuson is absolutely true. He’s harsh, he doesn’t pull punches. He loathes the abuse of language. He’ll bring you to the verge of tears again and again. He will, I say without a doubt, make you dread opening emails from him after the second packet. Mike Magnuson will make your wife seriously consider booking a flight to Wisconsin just so she can fight him.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">But why? Why is he so harsh? It isn’t because he is a mean person. He’s a saint, really. It isn’t because he wants to force aspiring writers to tears. He doesn’t have a thing for getting into fisticuffs with 110 pound significant others. No, it’s because every damn word he writes is dead on. During our time together, I had to face numerous problems with my work on a nuts and bolts level, with my grammar in every single packet. I saw the words “clunky” and “comma” in my sleep. He wrote once that the particular words I had chosen were, “Good enough, but perhaps not the most original use of English in the history of English.” He hammered me so hard about these issues that even today when I put down a sentence, I think “What would Mag do?. But really what Mag taught me was the importance of life in my writing. About caring for, and loving my characters.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">This is what he wrote after I decided it was a swell idea to submit to him a brand new story about vampires, and keep in mind, I’ve paraphrased: “I think this story is bullshit vampire garbage devoid of human emotion and humanity. The problem you have with your writing is difficulty with characterization, with creating round characters with complex backgrounds and complex emotional contours - In other words, you are in general having trouble writing human beings. So the WORST thing you can do is write stuff like this - where human life means nothing and where the only intellectual foundation for it is some crap you've read in comic books or seen on TV. Next time: real world, real people, and by God be an artist who values human life.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">Remember, my template for what good writing was when I came into this program was Less Than Zero, a book where true compassion for human life is equivalent to the novel’s title. If it wasn’t for the full on assault of Mag’s approach, the constant wax-on, wax-off of who I have dubbed, Mr. Mag-ogi, I might still be crafting throw-away characters. I might still be embracing death, rather than life. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Over the last two terms, I had the pleasure of working with John McNally. After a few short stories, John encouraged me to get back to the novel.</span> Our exchanges became primarily</span></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> about the scope, direction and thrust of my novel. Most of the ideas, the concepts of that original draft I worked on with Claire and Mag found their way into the trash, but the bones remained. John helped me to discover where the prose was falling short, where my voice lacked strength and believability, where the plot and characters came apart. Even through the novel isn’t fully finished, the first ten chapters are, without a doubt, eighty plus pages of material I could not have more pride in. John encouraged me to keep digging until the pages were the absolute best they could be. And deeper than the page level, John insisted on another type of believability, the sort where I believe in myself. Not the ego I came into this program with, but with the same humble and passionate conviction that everyone in this room has. We are writers, and will continue to hone and practice our craft not for the fame or the money but because it, like my mother has always said, makes our hearts sing.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span style="font: 12.0px Times; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">And here is my shout out to the entire faculty, those I’ve workshopped with or those with whom I’ve shared a meal.</span> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">They could be spending the time, the effort and care they do on our shitty first drafts on a revision of their own work. They care. They want you to succeed, to find your voice, as they continue to shape theirs. That's the beauty of this program: nothing that is shared, exchanged or recommended has, at least in my experience, been said in a fashion that is intended to make you <i>feel</i> inferior. Everything is said to push you harder and further than you'd thought possible. To make you believe in yourself, in your work. We are all in the same boat. And the reason Pacific is such a beautiful beast, is that everyone, the students and faculty have all grabbed an oar and are sweating against the current of an unforgiving industry. And one more special thank you to the angels—Tenley, Colleen and Shelly—without whom none of this would be possible.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">10. “We say first lines all the time.” Bonnie Jo Campbell, on beginnings.</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">9. “The first three pages to cut were easy. The next three pages were like pulling teeth. The last page to be cut seemed impossible, but I'd finally whittle it down...And here's the kicker: those are the tightest chapters in the book, the best written.” - John McNally, on revision.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">8. “Ask more of yourself than this.” - Mike Magnuson, on vampires.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">7. “And of course you know I’m not really yelling. But I am deadly serious, pal.” John McNally, on having to tell me more than once about dialogue tag errors.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">6. “Because it’s written, doesn’t mean it will stay written.” - Claire Davis, on revision.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">5. “Grr.” - Mike Magnuson, in response to me spelling “creepy” as “creppy.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">4. “I used to have an apple orchard, and I liken [writing] to pruning. Take off the crap limbs, open its crown to the light, and the tree bears three-fold. Same with prose.” - Claire Davis, on revision.</span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">3. “I don’t think, based on these first two packets, that you have sufficient skill with narrative to embark on a novel.” - Mike Magnuson, on the disastrous opening chapters of my novel. </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">2. “Put ‘em in a bad place.” - Pete Fromm, on the Swirling Vortex and the concept of making your characters believable. </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">1. “Touch it everyday.” - Frank Gaspar, on what it means to be a writer (though this can be good advice in other ways as well).</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">When he was twenty-nine, my father flew with three other C-141s to assist the evacuation of the 918 bodies from the Jonestown settlement. He had advanced far enough in his career, in his passion to be trusted with a mission so sensitive, and I am proud to know that about him.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span> </span></span><br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">I turned twenty-nine this year and turns out, I did become a bartender. But when I’m not working on new cocktails, I’m working on new stories, on new chapters for my novel. I’m writing not for the money, but because I want to write. I recently was wed to a beautiful woman who supports me, who rests easy at night knowing I’m both a writer and a bartender. She supports my passion. And I’m going to finish something, finally. I might not have the designation of Writer following my name in the papers, but I will have the MFA tag from one of the best programs in the country and to me, that means so much more. It shows that I’ve begun the work. It means that I have the true desire to continue learning about this craft.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">I've finished Less Than Zero a dozen or more times since that first read. It's hasn't changed. What's changed is me. I don't want to be Ellis or Richard Yates or Flannery O'Connor. I don't want their lifestyle or to write exactly like them. I want to be Drew. I want to write like Drew, and most of all I want more for my characters than that book taught me. I want to celebrate them, their lives. However vile they might be.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">I still have guilt or maybe just the capacity to imagine what could have been. Some days I do regret missing that appointment with a recruiter where I would’ve signed my life off to the Air Force. How different would I be today? Would I still be writing? Would it have been fiction? Or Journaling my own experiences? Or, would I have buried my passion? </span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: small;">It isn't that I don’t have the upmost respect for these men. For my father, my grandfathers. I did. I still do. I thank whatever might be up above me in the cosmos everyday for theirs and for the countless others who have served. Who have lost limbs or their lives for my freedom. I just couldn’t imagine myself picking up a gun. But what I can do is pick up a pen. Or open my laptop. And write down his story, if he ever decided he wanted to share it with me.</span></span></div>
Drew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6879345440542731735.post-80035624301717523892013-01-05T23:18:00.001-08:002013-01-05T23:18:27.079-08:00Current Obsession.I cannot stop listening to Macklemore.Drew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6879345440542731735.post-26871900942986184812013-01-04T10:30:00.001-08:002013-01-04T10:30:49.025-08:00Fire Danger: High!The 9-volts in all three of the smoke detectors in our apartment - bedroom, office, spare room - ran out of juice sometime during the night. This meant that sometime around 7am, I woke the harmony of three piercing beeps echoing throughout the apartment. My dog, bless him, was losing his mind. He was running back and forth from the bedroom door to the window (mind you, the fastest way between points A and B is across our bed, and more specifically across my bathing suit region) trying to either figure out where the shrieking alien transmission was stemming from or to escape its reach. When he noticed I was awake, he stared at me with panicked eyes that were, at one point projecting both confusion and sick understanding. He then followed me around the house, while my lovely wife grumbled beneath a sadly non-noise canceling pillow helmet, and watch as I stood with wobbly legs on various chairs to vanquish each of the beeping demons. <br />
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After, once the house was quiet once again, the dog went back to sleep. He too, was quiet, peaceful. I, however, wasn't so lucky. So here I am, banging away at the keyboard. <br />
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I'm going to throw away every alar clock I own. Who needs them? I've got chainsaws, sick dogs and needy smoke detectors to pull me out of bed and get me moving. <br />
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Onward!Drew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6879345440542731735.post-42986213088935955322013-01-03T18:14:00.001-08:002013-01-03T18:14:32.195-08:00Workin' it.Today: sick puppy and work. I've got my hands full, but I promised myself I'd post at least once a day. So, here I am, getting into/maintaining the habit. Hope everyone is sticking to their resolutions an lookin forward to what this year has to offer.<br />
Drew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6879345440542731735.post-36636849162282654322013-01-02T08:59:00.002-08:002013-01-02T08:59:53.570-08:00Chainsaw Dreams.Here's the thing: I can see how quickly you are turning the land around next door. Just last week, the day after Christmas, you began demolition on one of the most dilapidated houses I have ever seen. Online the land's sale profile stated in bold letters, "DO NOT ENTER HOUSE," and from my bedroom I could see the mold and vines growing, twisting in and out of the shack's windows. I'm sure you're in a hurry to get the house taken down and a brand new mold-free house erected in its stead, and I know that legally you can begin jackhammering, bulldozing, and most importantly, chain-sawing at 8am. But seriously, I work in the service industry. I don't know what it feels like to be up at 8am on New Year's Day, or the day after New Year's Day, or any day for that matter.<br />
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Yet, here I am. The coffee is brewing. The heat is cranked. And I am writing.<br />
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It seems when I began this post, I wanted to run outside and rip the chainsaw free from the hands of the man wearing the Carhartt jacket, scream at him to consider the sleep schedule of others and abscond with his torture device, but now, I'm calm. Seems this was a blessing in disguise. This isn't to say I want the whirring of a cyclical scratcher blade as my alarm clock daily, but for today I can drink my coffee and bang away at my keyboard. Thanks, Demo-Man.Drew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6879345440542731735.post-74503540242299748052013-01-01T12:39:00.002-08:002013-01-01T12:41:17.788-08:00New Year - New Goals.<br />
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I will post some of my writing here everyday. Today's sample is pulled from Chapter Five of my novel in progress, "Written on the Walls."<br />
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Hope you enjoy.<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">"Paul watched Helen’s transformation over the years and had, on more than one occasion, considered that what he gave her on a weekly, sometimes daily basis was contributing to her decline. For drug dealers, at least those with some moral compass, justification comes with the territory. Paul had a checklist of responses to each of his own mental accusations: <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">A. <i>I’m not forcing it up her nose, right? </i>B. <i>There’s no gun to her head. </i>C. <i>She’s a big girl and can make her own choices. </i>D. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">I’m a good person.</span> </i>Each of which satisfied him only slightly until the person in question had gone away.<i> </i>If Helen ever told him that she might have a problem, Paul was confident that he’d not sell even a granule to her, no matter how evergreen her trust fund was.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“Whatever. No big deal. She’ll come back. She ain’t gonna find anyone better than me.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>“I’m sure she’ll come back,” he told her, thinking that there was no way in hell that could be true. Paul retracted his arms from around her neck and slid the small baggie into the collar of her v-neck sweater. He made sure that it was tucked securely in her bra before pulling away fully. Paul added a new mental justification then, <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">E. </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">I’m leaving tomorrow, she won’t be able to get anymore once I’m gone. She’ll turn herself around</span>, </i>before settling on <span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;">F.</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"> Fuck it, All of the Above.</span>"</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: red;"><i><br /></i></span></span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Thanks for reading guys!</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Drew</span></div>
Drew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6879345440542731735.post-7600603401722827682012-12-30T14:15:00.001-08:002012-12-30T14:15:14.534-08:00Countdown.One week from today I will be leaving for my last residency at Pacific University. Barring any unforeseen meltdowns, I will have my thesis review, deliver my critical introduction and graduate with my Masters in Fine Arts. I can't believe two years have already come and gone. But in that time I've learned more than I thought possible and made some of the best friends, colleagues, and connections I could have hoped for. The first ten chapters of my novel are truly something for me to be proud of. I worked my ass off to get them into shape. <br />
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It's been an absolute blessing to be a part if this program and to feel a part of this community. And honestly, I don't think I'm ready for it to be over.Drew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6879345440542731735.post-71497628599264404712012-12-28T12:37:00.001-08:002012-12-28T12:37:42.081-08:00And here are a few links to my other outlets (shameless self promotion to cultivate my ecosystem):<br />
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facebook.com/drew.attana<br />
twitter: @drewattana<br />
instagram: drewromance<br />
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Please follow me if you are on any of these, and maybe you'll get a laugh or two from my daily ridiculousness.<br />
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<br />Drew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6879345440542731735.post-90538875004479567412012-12-28T12:33:00.000-08:002012-12-28T12:33:13.044-08:00Rebirth.While this blog will still be tracking the progress of my novel, I will also be posting about my interests, my future endeavors and general "best-of" lists. Basically, I need an outlet and this will be it. I hope you enjoy. Looking forward to this new year. #OwnItDrew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6879345440542731735.post-52474329664877176632011-02-21T20:19:00.000-08:002011-02-21T20:19:57.886-08:00True North.Oh my. It's been too long since I've posted on here. I've been spending all of my time working on the novel--writing a little, stressing more and overanalyzing the most--and not enough time reflecting on the process. At the end of the day, I'm just so tired of staring at the computer screen that I can't bear the thought of writing any more. But! I will persevere! Not that anybody is likely reading this blog, but still. It more for me and my memories than anything else.<br />
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I took a much need mini-vacay this weekend. As a few of my friends wives and girlfriends were out of town (mine was as well), it was boy's night out. For THREE days straight. Everything from fishing to excessive Patron shots. And caffeine and cigarettes mixed with a terribly inadequate amount of sleep has taken its toll. I'm running on fumes today.<br />
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But fumes were all I needed, I got more pages done today and I'm pretty sure I've got an end in sight.<br />
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<u>Daily Update</u><br />
<b>Page Count </b>- 182<br />
<b>Sample </b>-<br />
"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px;">He set the spatula down next to the stove and came over to her. This was the point when the argument could get going. All he had to do was throw another hook and the bell would ring, but he didn’t. They both knew an argument would just be a distraction. Instead, he pulled her up from her chair and wrapped his arms around her. He felt him sniffing her collar softly and knew he could smell the cigarette smoke lingering in the fibers but she didn’t care. Mrs. Lisburn could smell the whiskey that floated out with each of his breaths. Neither of the couple commented about each others scents and after a time, he let her go and returned to the stove. She sat back in the chair and watched him as he scooped a soupy noodle substance onto her plate. He did the same for his plate and poured them both a glass of water. The other two place settings remained untouched."</span><br />
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</span><br />
"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12px;">There was no question if the gun from Bryan’s shoebox worked any longer. He barely graced the trigger and cylinder rotated, the hammer rocked back and forth and the bullet fired true, from the tip of the barrel to the fleshy space between the esophagus and jugular of the man rushing at him on the rooftop."</span>Drew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6879345440542731735.post-73666686816350331582011-02-13T16:04:00.000-08:002011-02-13T16:04:47.073-08:00Photograph.In the past few days, all I've done is work two jobs. One at the bar and the other right here in front of this computer. Writing this has become my full time employment, and at the end of the day when I'm all out of words, I'm very tired. The same goes for right now. The girlfriend has been at work, so I jumped on the opportunity of a quiet house. Not to say that she is loud, but when she's here I have a tendency to gravitate toward her rather than the keyboard.<br />
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The weekend should be for resting but I've squeezed as much creativity out of it as I possibly could. Tonight, will be my rest night. Little TV, little dinner. All right.<br />
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This is coming out much faster than I originally thought it would. And its becoming longer than expected. An event I was leading up to that I figured would happen around page 75 has been pushed back to at least 130. I'm hoping to get a first draft finished within a few weeks then take a significant break. Maybe two weeks, then come back to it for the real work - revision.<br />
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Daily Update<br />
Page Count - 114<br />
Sample -<br />
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<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>As he bypassed the trophy altar he could hear the chk-zzzzz of the poloroid camera, the shutter closing and the picture sliding out from the mechanism. He stepped into the ticket booth and inched to the stairway door. There were a dozen steps leading to a room that looked like it was lit by the same candles as the terminal. When he placed a foot on the first step, the floor flashed brilliantly as the camera snapped another shot. </i></span><i>He took the next steps very slowly, cursing himself for choosing to try and help the owner of the scream. Why had he even gone inside the Pinkston? His brother told him never to go there alone. And there he was, walking down into what, for all he knew could be hell itself. </i></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Chk-zzzzz.</i></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>It was too late to turn back, if the photographer or his subject were to look at the staircase they’d see his shoes and most of his jeans. He just prayed the photo session was satisfying enough that neither felt the need to look away. The artist turned the knife around in his hand so that the blade faced downward. If he were to suddenly be rushed, he might be able to bring the switchblade right down on top of their fucking head. </i></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Chk-zzzzz.</i></span></div>Drew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6879345440542731735.post-63371606052295434422011-02-09T22:21:00.000-08:002011-02-09T22:22:57.732-08:00Party Hard.The past two days have been a whirlwind. I can't stop writing. The story just seems like it's unfolding for me, like I'm not even the one writing it. The character are deepening and the scenes are feeling richer. But maybe thats just the delirium talking. My brain feels a little fried and I've smoked too many cigarettes. Besides working at the bar, writing has become my full time gig and since I got back from my residency at the coast, I've been putting in some serious overtime.<br />
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I might need to take a night off. Clock out early. Even writing this post is tough.<br />
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I've been thinking though, if this were to ever get published, who would I dedicate it to? There's the girlfriend, the parents and the professors and mentors. I'd want to list them all but that wouldn't be special for any of them. Maybe I'll just dedicate it to RedBull and the muted reruns of NCIS that I have playing the whole time I'm writing. Hmm.<br />
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Well, 'til next time!<br />
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<u>Daily Update</u><br />
<u><br />
</u><br />
<b>Page Count</b> - 88<br />
<b>Sample</b> -<br />
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<div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">He parked out of sight and the four young men scrambled out of the Vanda Bear. They walked along the chain link fence looking for any easy place to jump over when they came to a section that had been cut, a flap hung downward like a door coming free from the hinges. Abel stomped the mesh into the ground and stood on it so the other three could pass through easily. Ketch went, then PriM, then Bryan. </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">As he doubled himself over to fit through the space, the gun fell out of Bryan’s pocket and came to rest on the rocky ground with a thud. Ketch and PriM were far enough ahead that they didn’t hear it, but Bryan turned to look at Abel and his eyes were locked right on it. </span></span></div><div style="font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space: pre;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Abel whispered, “I didn’t know it was gonna be that kind of party.”</span></span></div>Drew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6879345440542731735.post-83112848902907837832011-02-08T00:05:00.000-08:002011-02-08T00:05:56.401-08:00China Grove.My goal for today was to write three pages. Just three, not a very large order. But after going to the gym and running all the errands I had to take of, I sat in front of a blank page for an hour. I struggled through two paragraphs and it finally hit me, I was blocked. Gasp! The worst enemy of any aspiring writer is the block that looms just beyond the next sentence. I battled fiercely with my opponent for a few rounds then finally succumbed to its power.<br />
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I was winded. I had to step away from the keyboard and from the few meager and, dare I say marginal sentences I had written and called a time out. I ate something and took a breather on the couch. Zoned out with the remote control and glared menacingly at the computer taunting me from across the room. My laptop and its aluminum grin sat triumphantly and continuously reminded me of my inadequacy. After awhile I became fed up with the non-verbal insults and I rejoined the fight.<br />
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Turns out, all I needed was to regroup. The three pages I had intended to write turned into thirteen. And I love the shit of of them.<br />
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<u>Daily Update</u><br />
<b>Page Count </b>- 68<br />
<b>Sample </b>-<br />
"<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">The house was quiet save for the echo of a dog barking in the park across the street. Paul, outstretched on the couch, looked around the living room. It hadn’t changed for as long as he could remember; the same oak armoire that housed wedding china and little league trophies loomed in the furthest corner, the matching bookshelf rested in the opposite and the mocha-colored wraparound sofa that Paul had slept on took up the majority of the rest of the room. His mother’s collectibles, the little russian dolls that get smaller and smaller still, filled the shelves that framed the bay window above the couch. The three rings from the coffee Paul and his parents shared remained on the oak coffee table but the mugs were absent, taken away and cleaned by his mother while Paul slept."</span>Drew Attanahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10648736880747459247noreply@blogger.com0