Mario Milosevic

Though I like observing and looking for birds, I don’t have an extensive life list, and I haven’t even written mine down as serious bird watchers do. My all time favorite bird to watch is the sanderling, a shore bird often seen in flocks on the Oregon coast and other beaches. Sanderlings move rapidly along the surf like wind up toys. They are so charming I could watch them for hours. This youtube video gives an idea of their locomotion, but seeing a flock of them moving rapidly on the sand is a unique experience and always worth a trip to the coast.

E. J. Peiker has a good page of close up photos of sanderlings. He is an amazing nature photographer with, obviously, an extensive life list of birds. He’s put up many hundreds of his photos on his website and indexed them according to type of bird. It’s well worth browsing through his pictures. Some of the photos are so life like I almost feel justified in adding them to my life list. Not that I would. I’m just saying.

I won the lottery. Two dollars. A one hundred percent return on my investment. I was flush with smugness and contentment. Until my relatives found out. Then I had no peace: Can you lend me a dime? Just until payday? Please? I spent hours prioritizing requests for help. And that was before my interview on channel two. Then it got even worse: My son needs more lunch money. My husband can’t buy the newpaper today. How could I choose? I couldn’t. I developed hives. I took my winnings and went into seclusion. Me and my dollar are very happy now.

Here’s Eileen Gunn, in her book Stable Strategies and Others, quoting William Gibson on the secret of writing:

“You must learn to overcome your very natural and appropriate revulsion for your own work.”

When I read that sentence I was stunned. It was like he was talking to me because what I have had to overcome is my revulsion for rewriting. I love doing first drafts. First drafts are fun. First drafts are creative and juicy and exhilarating and intoxicating and mind expanding and liberating, and…well, you get the idea. First drafts are just fun.

But rewriting. Oh boy. That’s where the work part starts because when I go back to all that juicy intoxication and reread it, well, let’s just say there’s a certain amount of Gibsonian revulsion involved. That first draft is always so much less than what I thought it was.

What to do? The best strategy I’ve found is to grit my teeth and do ten pages of rewrite at a time. That’s all. Just ten pages, then put it aside until the next day. (I owe Dean Wesley Smith a big thank you for that suggestion.) It works.

After a while, the revulsion goes away and I actually begin to enjoy the process. Which is a nice happy ending to the story, don’t you think?

Another enigmatic entry from one of my old notebooks:

6 January 2003

He Walked with a lisp.
She Talked with a limp.
Their children went into

A list that must have amused me:

17 Feb 2003 Monday 12:20 a.m.

spots
spat
pot
past
pest
step

Sometimes I see something that sets off strange connections:

5 May 2003

“Doctor Locke”—chiseled into the concrete on the sidewalk next to where we parked.
Doc Locke?
Docke Loc
Dok Lok
Dock Lock

Kim and I thought about doing a Star Trek novel once. We made these brainstorming notes over lunch one day in Portland. We never wrote the novel.

2 Jun 03

Poetry in Motion

signal with poetry
have to answer?

crew speaking in rhyme
interferes w/ ship’s function
Spock figures epic poem of a culture
To free they must come up w/ next verse

Mission before this difficult
Want to go home, told to investigate.
Get closer to signal, poetry instead of crankiness
Everyone thinks calming except McCoy—maybe on last mission no one listened to him.

Poetry weirds out dilithium crystals—no warp
computer shutting down
supplies depleted / no communication

Go to space station to figure it out
Maybe planet is in jeopardy because of Kirk
Maybe they have a time limit
They discover on space station

Maybe last time Kirk acted too quickly, believing crew was in jeopardy, & he was wrong. This time maybe he restrains himself.

Here’s a short item I clipped out of New Scientist and pasted into my notebook:

22 November 2003

LIFE AFTER DEATH
Brain death is not quite what it seems. For several days after we die, new neurons are born in the hippocampus. This seems to be a response to the lack of oxygen, which released a range of growth-stimulating chemicals.

We were a close knit group in those days, spending our working hours several floors underground. We knew close to a hundred languages between us, which allowed us to translate any document that came our way during the conflict. That is, until our commander brought us an intercepted missive and told us it was top priority, very important to the war effort. We took the document and leafed through it eagerly, only too ready to help our comrades in arms. Every page was completely blank. We were dumbfounded and frightened. We looked up, opened our mouths, but could not speak.

If you haven’t seen “Shelf Life” by Adrian Tomine, the hilarious cover of the current New Yorker, it’s worth seeking out. There’s a teeny tiny version of it on this page and a bigger version on the artist’s website here (currently the 4th box in the top row). It depicts the book publishing process in nine wordless panels. 1. Author writes book. 2. Agent presents book (and author) to publisher. 3. Publisher loves book. 4. Publisher prints book. 5. Book arrives in bookstores. 6. Reader enjoys book. 7. Reader discards book. 8. Homeless person finds discarded book. 9. Homeless person and friend warm themselves on a cold evening by burning discarded book in a barrel.

You’ll notice that by the 9th panel the book is serving a very useful physical function, which is something we can all aspire to.

I bring up this mini tragicomedy of authorial effort because I have just completed my rewrite of Art Saves Lives and have sent it off to my agent, which means I am in that anticipatory twilight zone, floating around in the featureless whiteness somewhere between panels 1 and 2, hoping against hope that someday someone will warm themselves by my words. That is, I hope to get the gears rolling so I can make it to panel 9.

Not that I’m sitting around twiddling my thumbs while I wait. I have jumped into the rewrite of the next book, The Last Giant, with wild abandon.

Really now, what’s not to like about the writing life?

The eclipse stained the moon copper, then the color dripped from the moon’s face like water streaming over a stone in a river. We watched as velvet folds of red light draped the sky then slowly descended over us and seeped into our mouths, noses, and ears. A brief panic ensued. But soon we accepted the comfort of invading moonlight. We lifted our heads, smiles on our faces. The eclipse was over, but, inexplicably, the moon was now gone. Tidal upheavals grabbed at our ankles. We lifted our legs. We stepped as slowly and as carefully as was humanly possible.

Continuing my wanderings through some of my old notebooks.

I’ve learned it’s usually best to write down things that strike me as very interesting. Which doesn’t necessarily mean that eight years later it will make much sense to me:

24 March 2000
Use pesticide names for names of villians
Blackberries saved my life

Here are some impressions of the rooms in our house just before we moved in:

31 March 2000
red room — airy light
kitchen — fresh
laundry room — close
right room — dead corner by stairs
left room — open
orange room — light bright
top of stairs — sheltered/safe
blue room — quiet
upstairs bathroom — inviting
downstairs bathroom — mushy, closed in

That same year I was in contact with an actor who did one man shows of historical figures. I saw his performance of Edgar Allan Poe and was favorably impressed. He told me that he was interested in doing a show of Leonardo da Vinci and asked me to write the script for him. The project never worked out, but here is my preliminary attempt at sketching out some details for myself.

15 April Leonardo notes

1482-99 Milan — eye — drawing as knowledge Art & science — together —also, unfinished horse.

1500-1506 FLorence — Borgia — survey to divert Arno — for war — but did sketches for canal that was followed centuries later
Mona Lisa
Studies of body — dissections
bird flight
water

1506-13 Milan
“Battle of Anghiari” — unfinished
Tomb sculpture of
Trivulzio — equestrian — big disappointment— spent years
— A lot of scientific work —
math, optics, mechanics, geology, botany

1513-19 de Medici put him up for 3 years in the Vatican — but he was out of the mainstream
—other artists were getting commissions he wanted (Michelangelo) — so he accepted invitation from Francis I to go to France with Francesco Melzi
“First painter, architect and
Mechanic of the king”
—Given complete Freedom.
did no more painting.
—Plans for palace and garden of Romarantin — halted due to Malaria outbreak.

Visions of the End of the World
Deluge
—powerful late works

Melzi was heir

Here’s another errant scrap of an idea:

28 May 2000
A week after his funeral, my father came back home. “Didn’t like the life over there,” he said.

Sometimes I amuse myself by thinking up titles I might use some day:

17 Oct 2000 Titles
Please See Me After the Revolution
Will There ever be a Time?
The Time We Saw the End
Where We Went the Day the World Ended
The Moment of the Rising
My Mother was Late
The Sound of Air Dropping From the Sky

Here’s some advice from a novelist. I must have thought it was usuful when I wrote it down in my notebook. Looking at it now, I’m not so sure, although I do like the last point he makes.

4 Dec 2000 Monday
“How to Grow a Novel” — Sol Stein
—each scene has to affect the reader emotionally
—Dialog should be adversarial
—The germ of a novel should come from something that the writer feels strongly about
—For plotting — put people in a crucible
—Think of the likely logical next step — then do the opposite

And I’ll close today with some trivial word play:

Tuesday 6 Feb 2001
The Plain Nets
More Curry
Vein Vain Nose
Hearth
Mares
A Steroid
Chew Patter
Sat Turn
our Rain Is
Nap Tune
Play Dough

Drum roll please.

The winner of the first Conditional Realities give away is…… melissa. Melissa, please send your mailing address to mm@gorge.net and I will send you your free book.

Thank you all for entering.

Stephanie: Yes, I used a real live hat.

Paul d.: I plan to mail the book closed so there will be no leakage.

vq: My memory must have slipped a gear. I don’t remember a valentine’s day poetry roundup.

This was fun. Watch this blog for more give aways in the future!

Here’s a first attempt at a poem, back when I was doing a poem a day:

I’m reminded of my sausage comment of a few days ago. This has one pretty good image, but it’s weighed down with a lot of ordinary phrases. I think when I revised it later I pared it down to just a few lines. My instinct is usually for minimilism. Often, the less you say, the more likely you’re saying something worth saying.