three stories

A few publications this past week. Always nice for that to happen. I want to write in depth on two of them as part of the series I started called Practice Series. One is not a practice series, but part of a regular series of interconnected tales, it is part of a small book I am in the second draft of, Tales of the Reanimator's Saloon. Here is that story http://www.everydayfiction.com/the-backup-bartender-prefers-to-keep-his-thoughts-to-himself-by-david-macpherson/

The second story is in yesteryear fiction, I want to write about this in length and the difficulty I have with it, but more later on that, check it out yesteryearfiction.com

The last that got published is in a cute little digest magazine. Poet's Haven Digest #2. Its a werewolf story I wrote a few years back. I had the idea of using heroin to keep werewolf transformation at bay, and wrote this thing, and it was a chore until a line showed up in the last page that I just loved, it was a real moment of the character talking and not me. I finished it with relish and fixed the beginning to have that same attitude as the last page. Happy it is in print and for purchase for six dollars.

http://boutique.poetshaven.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=61&product_id=115

Practice Series 4

This might be my favorite practice series, the Brewer's series. It started when Heather and I would go to the local Border's on Saturdays to write. Heather went into the reference section and found this great large book, Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. It had crazy listings for folklore, first lines, history, just a crazy mix of everything. Cool reference. She would check on the copy every time we went to Borders. Eventually we bought it. Huge book. Bigger than my first apartment.

So a vacation week was coming and I just said "Heather, flip through the Brewer's read me a random entry and I will write a piece." She did. I think that one was on the Greek or Roman guy Cato (that one was not an eventual keeper as you can tell from my strong memory of it) but it was fun to write and with the vacation starting I said I would have her randomly pick an entry a day, I would write it and then at the end of vacation I would have enough for a chap book.

I didn't do that, but I did write 8 pieces. Some were hard. Some I hated the weird entries I was given. But some came out quite well. Three of them were published. One of them was the first story I sold to Every Day Fiction. That one was based on an entry on Irish Rats, which was rats would be killed by reciting poetry to them. Here is the piece I wrote http://www.everydayfiction.com/the-exterminator-by-dave-macpherson/

My favorite story from this series was one called Spaghetti Bolognese. It is not available on line but I did sell it twice. I found the entry myself because Heather was driving and I read it out loud "A pasta dish favored by children." Heather was shocked, "What, did you say that it s flavored by children? That's crazy. That's Hansel and Gretel." Wow. She said that and I had the whole story in my head. I sat down in a Panera's and wrote it. If only all writing could be that easy and fun.

But of course its not that easy. There were some in that series that felt like pulling teeth. There is one story based on a british kids game that was a disaster from start to finish. But I finished it, and that's important to note. Just get the writing done. That's the lesson I learned from this practice. You take the assignment from the practice series and you just sludge through.

Practice Series 3

There was my Shakespeare series where everyone of the pieces in the series was good. This is to easy to say because I only wrote one piece in the series (some series). I was reading a book that came with an art exhibit about the portraits of Shakespeare. It went on about how there is strong doubt that none of the paintings credited to by of Shakespeare are actually him. An essay in the back had a line that I don't recall to strongly, it said something to the effect that every generation makes up their own Shakespeare to adhere to its own outlook. This line, the one I don't recall too well, struck me.

The idea I came up with is a series of pieces where Shakespeare has a menial job in society. A real low level fellow. The first thing I thought of was Shakespeare in my Pocket, he was to be a pickpocket. So I quickly wrote a crime story about a pickpocket crew in New York. It was good and it got published.

But somehow as I wrote, all my other ideas of how to push the series dissapeared. I couldn't remember the rules and the examples I first thought of. Before I started the first story, I had a ton of ideas of where to go with this practice exercise. But as I wrote the story, those ideas dissipated until all I had was just one story. Not complaining. It is a good one and I like it a lot.

The thing I take from this is, just because an idea is good and fertile when it pops in your head, it doesn't make a series unless you have strong rules of how the pieces will be written and created, and you have an idea how it will progress. A cool idea is just that. But the story is good.

http://www.everydayfiction.com/shakespeare-in-my-pocket-by-david-macpherson/

here is a podcast of the story, also at Every Day Fiction

http://www.everydayfiction.com/podcast-edf035-shakespeare-in-my-pocket-written-by-david-macpherson-read-by-matt-cowens/

Practice Series 2

I like the idea of writing as practice. I know other writers talk about practice, but I only glanced at their comments, so I have been allowed to come up with my own thoughts on it. I do know there is nothing wrong with trying to submit things to practice. Most of what you write, or more to the point, what I write is junk during these exercises. I would look at the piece when it was done and quote Alec Baldwin from Mamet's State and Main and said, "Well that happened." And then I would say "It's writing for writing's sake." You write because if you don't write your will never have the chance to be good, to be great, to learn from the crap you threw on the page.

I love the idea of set themes or parameters for writing, because it grounds me. Coming up with something from whole cloth is hard. When I do succeed I get a crazy rush, but when I just keep on looking at the page and scribble nothing or less than nothing, I get the blues for the day. "Look at Dave, he can't even finish a paragraph" Having the set grouping helps me more than it hurts. It focuses the session. But I try not to believe that this is anything but work, that these are finger exercises. Something to hone the skill, to have a good time.

Every time I have written a series that is longer than four stories, or poems, I have always had one piece that is good. One that I can get published and out there. Its funny that the good story is in different places of the series, some I get it the first or second, and some I look at this eighth piece and go, that's the one. (Now it is true that you are a terrible judge of your own work, but sometimes you can just tell it works).

I do try to send out the other practice ones, but I am just happy to put words out there. To see if I can progress. When I look at the broken ones, or the fractured ones, I will ask the question, "What the hell was I thinking with that one?" And that is a crass question and also an important one. You have to ask, what was I thinking. What made me go in a dull or uninteresting manner. Sometimes I don't have an answer. Sometimes I don't have the skills to correct it. Which means it is time to try the next one and hope that I get it better.

Practice Series 1

The first practice series I recall creating was my color spectrum series. This was not a well thought out series, because it was based on me looking at a pile of my finished pieces and going, "Hey now, looky here. There are a lot that have to do with colors. I have a piece called Blue about a girl who wants to be smurfette, I have a piece called Red, about watching someone strut down the streets in a red dress, and I have that thing called Purple that I don't like, but it is a color, so..... How bout I write pieces with the names of colors."

This was so original. Man, I had to sit down and catch my breath from all the exersion of coming up with this idea.

I sat down at Vincent's with my notebook and decided on Green. I thought what could I do about the word green and I thought golf. I never played, but I had friends who caddied during school years and they would complain about it, so I wrote this quickly and it worked/ Read it out a lot at open mics and then got it published. Here it is http://www.everydayfiction.com/green-by-dave-macpherson/

Then I sat down to write another color and I don't recall if I wrote nothing or if it was so labored I realized that this practice series was never going to get off the ground.

But it allowed me to realize that a forced series can generate some interesting work. I also learned that it was valid to take the prompt of the series and go somewhere else. I took a color green and wrote about the location of a golf green. That sideways thinking was valid and fun.

The next series was better.