One Million Words of Crap.

Georgie, Porgie, puddin' pie. Kiss da girls and make 'em cry.

This is totally off the record.

This is the part that hasn’t been mentioned yet. It’s about the one million words of crap.

They say all writers have to do it. And yet the world has changed. It has changed in a completely Orwellian fashion—at least in the minds of some.

That’s because old patterns of power and dominance are threatened and consequently less assured of profit-taking. In Orwell’s novel the farmer goes away and the dogs and the pigs take over, until they are thrown out of power by revolutionary forces symbolized by the alliance of all the other cute and cuddly little animals in the farmyard.

Once you’ve written your million words of crap, you get to do something very special thanks to the Brave New World of digital publishing, which includes self-published works, as well as that whole other world, of professional websites and magazines, many or most of which now take digital submissions.

You get to edit one million words of crap. You get to spell and grammar check one million words of crap. 

You get to submit a million words of crap. You get to savour and enjoy the feeling of having a million words of crap rejected right back in your face. You get to re-submit one million words of crap and keep moving forwards until you complete your one million words of crap.

Trust me, ladies and gentlemen, I know what I’m talking about. I’ve been there and I’ve done that.

The only difference between the old and the new is that I made my million words of crap count.

What they’re also not telling you is this: it’s a hell of a lot of fun.

Writing a million words of crap is just plain, good-old fashioned fun. Don’t let anyone discourage you. And don’t let them guys hog all the fun.

Shoulder someone aside, as many as you have to, and get in there and have some fun.

***

Yes, you get to proofread, over and over again, one million words of crap. You get to pare, and polish, and revise, one million words of crap. You get to figure out where all the chapters and scene breaks go in one million words of crap. You get to figure out chapter titles, create names and planets and people and towns that never existed and never will exist.

You get the power to create one million words of crap. That power grows in the practice, and you will need that for later, when you’re not writing so much crap anymore, so you must promise never to abuse that power, the power to write one million words of crap…

You get to write the stories, invent the characters, describe the settings and the actions which all go into the process of writing a million words of crap.

You get to decide what literary style, one million words of crap will be presented in. You get to decide in which type-face your million words of crap will be set, and you get to decide whether to go with U.S., U.K., or Canadian English to render your one million words of crap readable.

You will discover readers to actually read your one million words of crap. This may surprise you, but it’s true.

Writing one million words of crap will teach you a lot.

You get to format one million words of crap. You get to stick front and rear matter in one million words of crap. You get to write blurbs for one million words of crap, and talk about one million words of crap on Facebook and Twitter, and, oh, yeah, now you’re starting to get the idea.

It really is groovy, Baby.

You get to assign ISBN numbers and design marketing images for one million words of crap.

You get to publish one million words of crap, earn some small royalties on one million words of crap, and get good and bad reviews on your one million words of crap.

You get to write blog posts about how wonderful it is, having written one million words of crap.

You can feel proud of writing one million words of crap because writing one million words of crap is a rare achievement. Not everyone gets to write one million words of crap; for life is uncertain and some are just unlucky when it comes to the opportunity of writing one million words of crap.

You even get to take a little flak for that one million words of crap.

You get to decide if it’s worth doing, to get through that one million words of crap, so you can forget it, and get over it, and move on, to your next few million words worth of crap.

There are those who feel that writing one million words of crap is an important milestone in any writer’s career.

If this writer was the sort of guy to make suggestions, (which he isn’t) I might suggest a patch or a badge or a medal or something.

(Just a thought for the future, guys. – ed.)

The people who say it are mostly correct, as far as I know.

(It’s not like he actually cares, ladies and gentlemen. – ed.)         

You have to write a million words of crap. That’s how things are done around here.

(I’m sure, somewhere out there on the internet(s) one million words of crap have or will soon be written on this somewhat arcane subject: the subject of one million words of crap. – ed.)

Their perspective is different. They grew up under a whole different ethos of publishing.

I think I got more out of my million words of crap than maybe some other people, because I did it all myself. 

I didn’t get any real help with it. No one held my hand with this little thing, where we all have to write a million words of crap.

That’s what they said, right?

We all have to write a million words of crap.

(Except for that one individual; who won their first contest while they were still an unborn fetus, tapping it out in Morse on the wall of the abdomen so their mother, a pro stenographer, replete  with pen and paper, could jot it down and submit it by Pony Express.)

Anyhow, I figure I earned my million words of crap.

I have earned the right to write one million words of crap.

(Ooh, a sense of entitlement. – ed.)

I did it the hard way. I worked at it. I put some effort into it, maybe even a little enthusiasm.

But I don’t want to harp on that.

I’m just going to sit here and bask in all the reflected glory from my one million words of crap.

The real point of this essay is very simple.

Your one million words of crap goes a lot farther now than it did just a few short years ago.

That is the real revolution here.

The Difference Between Fiction and Journalism

In journalism, you never have dialogue. You quote people, not always exactly. You put their words into the proper English and the style appropriate for your outlet.

You cut out a lot of stuff in the interest of brevity.

You don’t describe people. You might have a picture.

You don’t characterize people in the same sense that a fiction writer would.

Journalism is morally neutral, completely objective when it’s at its best.

“Lizzie Borden was convicted of homicide in the axe-killing of her mother in provincial court today…”

They never say she did it. They say she was charged with it, or convicted of it. One draws a conclusion and the other is merely reporting a fact.

The journalist doesn’t judge. He (or she. – ed.) merely reports, in as factual a manner as he (or she. – ed.) can.

The fiction writer is nothing if not a f***ing moralist.

Every scene, every action, every line of dialogue will go some way to showing character, which I think is a consequence of our actions.

Character may be defined as the result of a person’s lifetime of actions, experiences, perceptions, education, influences, and environment. Character bears on our moral choices.

I just made that up.

I even added something in later.

It’s not fiction and it’s not journalism. What it is in an opinion, and one very quickly formulated to boot.

More than anything, it’s incomplete.

It really doesn’t go far enough in tackling a difficult and fairly large subject, i.e., the subject of character.

***

Thanks for sticking around ladies and gentlemen, and in conclusion, I would say that writing a million words of crap is a character-building experience.

It certainly has been in my case.

END

Comments are always welcome on this blog.

Extracts from Maintenon 3.

“After you.”

With a polite nod, Hubert led the way up to the third floor landing where there were exactly two chocolate brown-painted doors, one on the right and one on the left. The walls were a faded peachy colour. The steps continued switching back and forth up another two floors from the landing.

A radio played softly, but it was in the apartment behind them. The one they were interested in seemed dead silent, but then they heard a clunk and what sounded like a match striking. Someone coughed and that’s when Hubert raised his hand and knocked firmly but not overly-loud.

There came some indeterminate sounds and then footsteps falling on thin carpet over hollow boards.

With no peep-hole, the rattling of a chain—it was probably being put on rather than being taken off, was no surprise, and then one dark eye was peering at Levain and Hubert through a seventy-five millimetre gap.

“Yes?”

The man eyed them suspiciously.

“We are from the police. We would like to speak to an Aron Saunier, please.”

The man uttered a deep sigh of resignation.

“Yes, he’s home.” The door closed and then the chain came off and the gentleman let them in, where a homey smell of cooking, mostly fried meat, and tobacco, and sweat and steam quickly enveloped them in its sticky embrace.

It was the smell of bacon and tobacco, thought Hubert as he waved clouds of stale smoke aside.

The man, shuffling along a short and rather dim hallway, wore slippers, baggy pajama bottoms and a housecoat with an undershirt. Lanky white hair stuck out all round, including upper chest and no doubt the armpits. He had long sideburns and a patch of bushy grey hair that went from ear to ear and nowhere else, not even a vestige of it on top anymore. Hubert looked at his watch, briefly struggling to remember today’s date. He had at least three pens with him.

Stopping inside the front room, judging by the windows and the yellow curtains, the man turned to his right.

“Aron! Someone is here to see you.” He glanced back.

“It’s all right, sir, he’s not in any trouble.” Levain kept his hands in his pockets but Hubert looked around, taking in the seediness of the place.

The couch sagged, the arms were ripped on the armchair, the end tables were miss-matched, the one picture on the long wall was a faded print of some clipper-ship at anchor in a cove with palm trees. The picture hung crooked. The walls showed brighter patches were someone else’s pictures had hung for quite some time. 

The ashtray overflowed and there were several dirty glasses strategically placed here and there. There were no coasters, judging by the prominent rings he saw on the coffee table, mostly on one corner area. Beside the door was a crate full of empty beer bottles, with a couple of much larger ones standing beside it.

It was all very impressive.

The man nodded glumly as ashes grew on the end of his cigarette. When he took it out of his mouth, he held it so very carefully, so as not to accidentally knock it off on the rug, but the rug looked distinctly grimy, pounded black and flat in the entranceway from a thousand people over the years. When he turned, his housecoat was tattered in the area of the behind.

From somewhere off in the distance they heard a toilet flush, very reluctant it sounded, and then then they heard thumps from sock feet as the young man came down a side passage beside what was probably the kitchen.

Judging by the room they were in, someone was sleeping on the couch. The blanket was thrown hastily up over the back of the couch and there were two pillows on the right end of it. On balance, Levain thought it might be the old man, who didn’t seem all that ambitious. He looked to be about forty-five or sixty.

Then Aron was there, freezing on the spot when he got a good look at them.

They flashed their badges in perfunctory manner.

“Is there someplace we could talk, Monsieur Saunier?”

The young man looked defiant and a little bit scared.

“What’s this about?”

Hubert was bang on, again.

“It’s really nothing to worry about. We would like to ask one or two questions about a party you were at.”

The startled look on the kid’s face was priceless. Levain wondered about that as the kid actually relaxed, air coming out in a big rush for some reason.

“What—a party?”

Okay, here’s another short extract:

The boy allowed that his father was ill and had been for some time. A hunted look came over his face upon speaking the words. Nodding, Hubert could think of nothing further to say. It put the peeling paint and shabby furnishings, the smell of grease and cabbage, into a whole new light.

At least in these respects, the kid was paying his own way, or at least Hubert hoped he was.

It seemed likely, but he didn’t want to ask about the financial arrangements. The kid had his dignity and a good cop would leave him as much of it as he possibly could. Until further notice. And a horrible feeling it was sometimes, too.

Hubert put his notebook away and on some odd impulse, maybe to try and take some of the sting out of it, he stuck out his hand.

“It’s been a pleasure meeting you.”

Almost beyond his control, pure reflex, the kid’s hand came up and they shook briefly.

“Thank you, Aron.”

“Ah—you’re welcome.”

Another lost kid.

There was probably something else he should have said, but for the life of him he couldn’t think of anything good. The doorway back into his own life was just ahead.

“Hey!”

He spun.

“What’s your name?”

“Hubert.”

The kid dove into the bedroom and came out with a sheaf of pamphlets.

He thrust a small bundle of them into Hubert’s hand and then his hands dropped helplessly to his sides.

Without even looking at it, Hubert nodded in a friendly manner and then went looking for Andre, who was most likely down at curbside by this time. Aron was about four years younger than Hubert. What a gulf that was sometimes.

Another extract:

Gilles sat at his desk, waiting for a friend from another department to call on him, reading reports, going over his thoughts on several outstanding cases, and writing up a final report on an arrest he had made last week. 

He had a few files like that to do, a small stack on the left front corner of his desk. File folders held shut with rubber bands. A man’s life, summed up in an instant for judge and jury. Those people were at least safely behind bars, awaiting trial, still, one caught up when one could.

From time to time his thoughts returned to the Ducharme case. It was hard to say if they were making any real progress. Not every case got solved, admittedly. The trouble was that for some reason, without knowing her, Gilles somehow liked Muriel Ducharme. He liked her in spite of himself. It was just one of those unexplainable things. In spite of all her faults, barely hinted at by anything so far, he had a sneaking kind of affection for that certain type of battle-axe. They had their rights just like anyone else, and some of them did a lot of good in the world.

If nothing else, they weren’t wishy-washy, weak characters, they knew what they wanted and how the world should be. They needed no validation.

Sometimes the police knew who did it, but didn’t have the evidence to even lay a charge. This was not one of those times. The very class of people they were dealing with made gathering a case together more difficult, cynically it must be said, and he had often allowed that poor people were easier to convict.

But if Gilles Maintenon was to charge someone, he had bloody well better get the right guy. For one thing, he had to live with himself. It was his only proper attitude, and one he had instilled into the heads of his men with a heavy if symbolic hammer.

The case was unusual in the fact that he still had no sense of who the killer might have been. 

As usual, this revolved around the question of why.

No one ever did anything for no reason.

The fingerprint reports were conclusive: no prints that could not be accounted for by family members or household staff. And yet there were even a couple positively belonging to Philipe. For the most part, his prints were on the insides of closets, and inside some little-used drawers in his old bedroom, but there were a couple of oddballs, for example a row of four under the edge of a small brass and marble coffee table downstairs. He’d probably helped move it years before, and now it was a memento of those better times. It was a piece of evidence that meant nothing until some theory of the crime took it into account—and they still had no theory of the crime, although one or two suggested themselves well enough.

Philipe had been gone for years, by all accounts.

Gilles’ head came up and he stared into space again. He was almost certain he’d heard something, a familiar cough that could only belong to one man. His face changed, he was back in the room again, and Tailler saw it happen.

A knock came at the door. Tailler was rising when it opened. At first a head came in, looked around the door and sought out Gilles. A scruffy old man looked around, taking in Tailler as if reassuring himself that this was indeed the place. As Tailler sank down, the hunched form straightened up and entered, gripping the edge of the door with fingers like sausages. They were the hands of an old farmer, and very strong still, thought Tailler.

An unprepossessing figure shuffled in, shaking off a battered fedora and checking out Tailler and Firmin with sneaky, pale blue eyes. His eyes swept the room, taking in everything, and nodding at the open windows and fresh air.

“You guys do yourselves all right up here, eh?” He had just the voice for it, deep and tobacco-brown.

“Alphonse!” Gilles rose to greet his old friend.

“Tailler, this is Inspector Alphonse Durand, a legend in the force.”

Firmin smiled, looking up and down again quickly, intent on his paperwork. Tailler nodded dutifully, bobbing his head in acknowledgement of the gentleman’s second appraising glance.

END

Blue, Man's Best Friend

Huh? Jason was just there a minute ago. (kjhosein. Wiki.)

Tiffany Lambert watched Jason Parker wade into the lake.

“God, they grow so fast at that age.” 

Meg Parker lay on the blanket beside her, propped up on two elbows.

She took an appraising glance at her shoulders, judging whether to apply more goop just yet.

“He won’t want to go anywhere with his mother before long.”

“No. I suppose you’re right.” Meg watched as Jason plunged into the blue sandy depths. 

The water was calm and clear as glass.

Multicoloured rocks along the shoreline, white gulls standing fifty feet away and watching them speculatively, the water, the clouds rolling past on the Michigan side, the somnolent heat of the day, it all combined to give a feeling of comfortable timelessness.

She was tempted to look at her watch, but tried to properly appreciate a pair of white sailboats cruising east a half-mile offshore. What had she been thinking of? Meg wasn’t exactly young anymore, and the beach was just plain boring. Several hours of relaxation sounded so good over the phone, unfortunately it gave a person time to think of all the important things being left undone.

Two hundred yards out, there was a lone swimmer, just a black dot for a head and an arm coming up out of the water in measured pace. Light glinted off his goggles and he was wearing some kind of wetsuit.

Jason’s older brother Tom and Tiffany's son Mark were both fifteen. Strong swimmers with years of lessons, and all the life-saving badges to prove it, they were paddling strongly for a big yellow ball in the water that she thought was for sailboats. It was one end of a triangular course. Meg had read it in the paper.

Tiffany sat up, shading her eyes and looking out at the water.

“Jason!” The boy kept stroking, head down in the water and he probably couldn’t hear his mother.

“Tell him to come back.”

Jason was trying to catch up with the older boys. Meg realized that her own limited swimming skills would be of no use in a real emergency.

“Jason!” Tiffany got up and walked down to the water’s edge as Blue, curled up in the sand with his nose stuck in his behind, lifted his big head and gave a gruff little bark as he stared at Tiffany.

“Jason!” The tone was high and strident, and for a moment, it seemed he looked back at her and waved. 

Meg couldn’t quite be sure.

Then he soldiered on, heedlessly.

“Shit!” Meg looked around.

The lifeguard was half a mile up the public beach, where the city had placed volleyball nets, and there was a chip truck and plenty of parking under the lights. This part of the beach was unpatrolled.

Lips moving silently in heartfelt prayer, Meg Parker watched as the two older boys seemed to meet up with the first swimmer. They treaded water fifty yards from the buoy, but she could catch no sound from this distance, with the waves and the light breeze and the sound of boat motors and airplanes hanging in the air.

Jason was in trouble.

Tiffany screamed and Meg leapt to her feet, running to the water’s edge and screaming and crying before thinking of her cell phone.

Meg moaned and cried and tried to dash into the lake, but Jason was too far out and she just stood there, yelling and screaming as the three swimmers already in the water remained oblivious to the fact that Jason was drowning right before his horrified mother’s eyes.

With a lunge out of nowhere, the dog raced for the water’s edge, legs a blur as it emitted one short, sharp back and Tiffany turned, tears falling down her cheeks and spit flying from her open mouth as the dog splashed into Lake Huron and struck out in a strong manner for where Jason had just gone down for the third time.

“Oh, God, oh God, oh God.” Tiffany was hysterical, shrieking at the people out there, and they just weren’t listening.

The dog left a wake behind it, head held high and eyes riveted on the widening ripples where Jason was last seen.

Meg’s shaking fingers finally managed to get her phone out of her bag, and dial 911. She shouted into the phone and the dispatcher tried to calm her down and get some sense of what was happening.

“Jason’s drowning! Jason’s drowning!” Meg yelled the name of the beach and then ran to the water’s edge. 

“Don’t go in! Don’t go in! Please, Tiff, don’t go in there!”

She put the phone up to her head again as the dog approached Jason’s watery grave.

Finally, Mark and Tom were looking this way and yet they still didn’t move or swim.

Meg waved frantically at them, trying to get the urgency across and finally one moved off and the other two began swimming back to shore.

Meg dropped to her knees in the sand and cried. From the south, behind the beach and somewhere in the city proper, the faint wail of sirens began. They gradually got louder and then the strong voice of a male in a bathing suit was right there at her shoulder.

“Jason’s drowning!” Tiffany pointed, but it was futile as there was nothing to see.

Meg didn’t even see the dog out there anymore, just the one swimmer at the buoy and the other two almost halfway back. The noise and the action on shore had caught their attention, as they put their heads down and struck out more strongly.

“Oh, please, please, please come back to me.” Meg watched her son in anguish.

They must still be in eight or ten feet of water.

The police were arriving, striding calmly through the deep sand with notebooks and radios and one hand always on their holster.

The male in the bathing suit, a muscular young fellow, was in the water, trying to pull Tiffany back in, and her hysteria was making the job very difficult as he pleaded with her.

“What’s going on here, Ma’am?” The two cops, male and female, eyed her and Tiffany.

“Her son went down and never came up.” They reached for the microphones clipped to their lapels.

“And what’s the mother’s name?”

“Tiffany.” The female cop moved to intercept her as she came up out of the water.

Tiffany threw herself into the sand and moaned in her anguish.

Meg pointed urgently. People had been resuscitated before, even after ten or fifteen minutes.

“Right out there…God, maybe two hundred yards.”

Of course the cop had no idea of just exactly what that meant, and they would need to get boats and divers and things…a sob overcame her.

That’s when she saw the dog.

Its head popped up out of the water.

“There! Right there!”

The officer’s head spun to look as he fingered his microphone and began talking into it.

Men dressed in firefighting equipment raced past, four of them carrying a rubber dingy with a motor already on the back and another man followed in scuba gear, plodding along on his huge flippers and with only the mask pushed back, revealing a face and the humanity within.

“God. God. Please. No.” The cop restrained Tiffany from tearing at her hair and two more figures, bearing a backboard, knelt down to talk to her and take charge of her as the cop straightened up.

The officer, a pleasant-looking blonde woman of no petite dimensions, turned and looked out to the water.

“He’s got him!” Meg shouted and jumped for joy, clapping her hands and trying to whistle at the dog but her mouth was all twisted up and it wouldn’t work right anymore. “Blue! Blue! Oh, fuck, what a beautiful dog! Bring him here, boy!”

The officer beside her was speechless, but then he threw his notebook down and began shouting at the dog, the men in the boat and the boys still in the water.

“You! In the water! Get out of the water!” He cupped his hands around his mouth and made it carry.

Everyone, the crowd, other bathers and people from the adjacent picnic area, were all shouting at once, rooting for the boy and his dog.

Meg and the assembled crowd watched in horror and wonder as the dog, who was making painfully slow progress as the boat raced on paddles alone to meet them.

She watched, unable to tear herself away, as Tiff, sedated quickly and strapped to the board, rolled her eyes and gnashed her teeth in low, feral, incoherent moans.

They were transferring Jason into the boat, rocking gently on its own swells.

“Yes! Yes!” Meg couldn’t stop crying and sobbing, but she got it out.

With a gargantuan effort, the dog half-jumped in and willing hands dragged him aboard.

His titanium joints, blue plastic shell and opalescent eyes gleamed in triumph even from this distance. Meg stood with her hands over her mouth and waited.

Blue sat on the prow of the boat with tongue hanging out and a canine grin that was unmistakable.

The men on board had Jason face-down and were pumping water out of him…the bow touched the shore and they leapt out. The dog raced up, tail wagging and face alight with the boundless joy of all dogs everywhere, and Meg fell to her knees and embraced him.

“Good dog! Good dog! Oh, Blue, you’re such a good dog.” His neoprene shoulder and hip pads were almost dry already and he was almost more than she could handle in his excitement.

She clung to him, giving way to her own tears again and she could barely see through the haze.

Another board was right there at the shoreline, and the attendants quickly loaded Jason up and whisked him away up the beach to the parking lot and a waiting ambulance. Other attendants picked up Tiff and in a more relaxed pace, took her off as well.

Meg followed, hoping against hope, and praying that God would intervene and give Jason a miracle.

He was a good boy and too young to die. Please, God.

***

It made all the papers and got a brief spot on the television evening news. There was a half-page photo of Jason in his hospital bed with one arm around the dog, proudly displaying the bite marks on his right bicep, the dog with front paws up on the bed and head turned towards the camera with that irrepressible grin. His mom and dad leaned in on each side of Blue and Jason, pure pride and love and heartfelt thanks just beaming out of them.

The headline was simple enough: Man’s best friend saves drowning child.

End