Tag: inspiration

COVER STORY

Posted on by charliemoore

The current dilemma is in coming up with a cover idea for my upcoming publication, “President’s Day”, the next story in my Holiday Horrors series.

 

The inspiration for this series was the slasher movies of the 80s that I grew up on, FRIDAY THE 13th, HALLOWEEN, APRIL FOOL’S DAY, etc.  I wanted to go down the calendar and write a slasher story for every holiday there was.  So far I’ve written stories for New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Groundhog Day, Ash Wednesday, Valentine’s Day, and now the next in line according to the 2013 calendar I’ve been using (when I started publishing these stories): President’s Day.

 

The story is one of my favorites I’ve written and sums up, I think, perfectly the spirit of the Holiday Horror stories.  But now I need to come up with a cover idea for it, and that sucks.   My first thought for the cover was perfect.  It summed up the story in a singe image and was one of those cases of a picture being worth a thousand words.  I was very excited to see how the cover turned out with that image.  And then I realized that, while it is the perfect image for this story, it also spoils the entire plot, including the identity of the killer.

 

Well, that’s not gonna work…

 

I had another idea that centered around images of President’s Day sales everyone has, but the more I looked into those, the more sure I was they were stupid and didn’t even pretend to lend themselves to horror imagery.

 

And there I was at an impasse.

 

Because, really, that first image was so perfect, anything else I could possibly come up with afterward is going to be weak and, in my heart, I’ll know it’s not as good.

 

And then a new inspiration struck.  The idea for this series came from those old slasher movies I loved as a kid.  And because the very idea of a slasher story taking place on President’s Day of all days is such a ridiculous notion that, in my opinion, works so very well in this story, I didn’t think I was going to find the cover that properly summed up the mood of this story without reaching back to those old 80s covers.

 

And while I don’t actually HAVE the cover just yet, I know which direction I’m leaning now and this is going to make putting my ideas into words that I can then hand over to my cover designer who is, more and more often my 21-year-old daughter (see the “Valentine’s Day” cover), all the easier.  Finally I can give her something to work with.  I’ll pass them over to her today at lunch.

 

That’s a weight off my shoulders and one more thing off my incredibly long and convoluted to-do list.

GENRE-RULE-BENDING

Posted on by charliemoore

I have had a love/hate relationship with genre fiction for as long as I can remember.  On the one hand, I love genre fiction.  It’s my preferred reading, especially horror.  On the other hand, so many people say that to write successful genre fiction, you have to follow the rules of the genre.

“Respect the genre you’re writing in,” says Kathleen Krull.  “In your effort to put your own stamp on it, don’t ignore the established conventions of the genre—or you’ll alienate your core audience of loyal buyers.”

Editor Page Cuddy says, “The best advice that one can give a writer is not to condescend to the genre or try to pack a literary idea into a more commercial form in hopes of selling it.”

I have to agree with what Krull says.  You do have to respect the genre.  But I wholeheartedly disagree with Cuddy.  If you want to write space opera and have the talent to make it a literary masterpiece, do it!    By all means.

Genre fiction gets such a bad rap from people who aren’t fans of the genre—even if those people are fans of other genres.  You read strictly science fiction, but think anyone who reads strictly romance is wasting their time.  You read only romance, but think anyone who tries to put a fantasy element in their romance novel is boring.

And I can’t even say people with those opinions are wrong.  Opinions are opinions, not right or wrong, just opinions.  We’ve all got em.

Personally, I think horror is the most interesting and entertaining genre to read and I can’t imagine spending my valuable time reading something like military history.  But that’s my opinion.

However, when you talk about genre, regardless of what genre you favor, so many people agree with Krull: You have to respect the genre you’re in.

Yes, you do.  A horror story must have some horrific element.  A science fiction story must have some fiction in its science.  A romance must have two or more people falling in love.  But beyond that?  Shit, the sky’s the limit, knock yourself out.

Toni Morrison said “If there’s a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”

And that’s what we do as genre authors.  Hell, as authors at all.  But in genre fiction, we’re allowed a leeway that more “literary” writers are not.  Maybe that’s because it’s genre fiction and genre fiction is the ugly step-relative sleeping under the stairs in the broom closet.  And still, genre fiction outsells literary fiction every year.

Don’t believe me?  Off the top of your head, name your five favorite authors?  I guarantee at least three of them were genre authors.  Quite possibly horror authors.  I know you know Stephen King’s name, and no one can say he isn’t not only a horror writer, but probably THE most famous writer of his generation.

Genre fiction sells.

And still it is looked down upon, sometimes even by the very authors who write it.  I heard a story from a friend once who met a very famous and respected author of religious books that had horror elements.  The friend introduced himself and said he writes horror, too, and the author was shocked, insisting he doesn’t write horror.  But I’ve read his work.  He’s a horror author.

But so many people shun genre fiction, insisting it’s not real writing.

I can think of 20 or 30 genre authors right now who would disagree.  And I have shelves lined with genre fiction in my house and I know those words didn’t just appear on those pages by magic.  Human hands had to sit and write them, one sentence, one word, one letter at a time.

But I’m not here to talk about how popular genre fiction is.  I shouldn’t need to, that fact should be obvious to anyone.  I’m here to talk about the rules of genre.

And those rules are simple.  You know your genre.  At least you should; you really don’t want to tackle writing in a genre you’ve never read before.  So before you write your first horror story, you should be very familiar with what that entails.  But once you have those “rules”—and I use that term loosely—down, feel free to expand from there.

Combine genres.  Get some romance in your horror.  Spill a little scifi in your fantasy epic (Masters of the Universe, anyone?).    Try some western in your space opera (I’m looking at you “The Mandalorian”).  The rules for each particular genre are what they are and Krull is right, they should absolutely be respected.  But that doesn’t mean you can’t write an elevated form of that genre.

Since the day I first put words on a page with the intention of creating a fictional story other people might be interested in reading, I have only ever wanted to write horror.  It’s a genre I have loved as long as I can remember, and one I have the utmost respect for.  Horror is my life, as far as creativity goes.  But I have written in several different genres, including science fiction (“Purple Haze” and “The Foodies of Mars”), superheroes (“Invasion Agents”), and even romance and science fiction (“Epoch Winter”).  But all of those stories still had some element of horror to them.

And as long as I’ve been writing horror, my goal with the genre has always always always been to elevate it to the status of literature.  To give it the respect those “mainstream” novels get, albeit with more recognition and sales (be honest, who actually SEES the movies nominated for Best Picture every year?  No one, we were all too busy at the latest super hero or horror movie).

If you ask me, it’s this attitude that we have to follow the rules of the genre that’s keeping genre fiction from gaining the respect it deserves by non-genre readers.  As a writer, I have all the respect in the world for someone who can write an 800-page scifi or fantasy epic, or the guy who writes two western novels a month.  I couldn’t do it.  But I feel like non-writers who see those books, all they see is “Nope, not my thing” and they move on.  And I feel a lot of that is due to, not just complacency on the part of the reading public, but a lot of it falls to the authors who want to live inside that genre bubble and never risk trying a new concoction lest it drive the readers away.

Learn the rules of your genre, and then break them the first chance you get and give us something new and exciting and interesting.  You owe it to yourself as a creative person, and to the work as an art form.  Or better yet, genre be damned, just write the book that you really want to read.

EDITING–BUT WHY???

Posted on by charliemoore

What’s the most fun part of writing? For me, it’s the editing. I know a lot of writers hate that stage, some refuse to even do it. They’ll finish the first draft, MAYBE read it over one more time to make sure everything’s spelled correctly, and out into the world it goes.

I call those people writers. The people who take the time to EDIT their work, change things, take out the bits that don’t work, emphasize the bits that do, and generally work the story into a tight knot of tension and release, I call those people Writers.

One of the most important parts of editing is the taking out of things that don’t work or that don’t contribute to the story, and a huge part of that process is taking out the pretty bits.

We all do it, we write that certain turn of phrase, that metaphor, that line of description and we think, “Man, I didn’t even know I was capable of coming up with something like that!”

We’ve all done it, and it’s got to go.

Faulkner said “In writing, you must kill all your darlings,” but he’s not the only one.

Samuel Johnson said, “Read over your compositions and whenever you meet with a passage that you think is particularly fine, strike it out.”

Arthur Quiller-Couch said, “If you require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it–wholeheartedly–and delete it before sending your manuscript to press.”

And French author Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette said, “Sit down and put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.”

Why do we do this? More importantly, why MUST we do this? Because they don’t add anything. A lot of the time, they don’t even fit. Be honest without yourself and re-read the story, or the section of the story, without that pretty bit in there. I bet the story makes just as much sense, gets to the point a lot quicker without it, and you didn’t even notice the absence. Now admit the only reason you wanted to keep it is because your ego said it was so much better than what you normally write, you wanted everyone to see how clever you were with words.

Those flowery parts have to go, they only serve to distract the reader, without adding anything at all to the plot, and anything that distracts the reader from the plot is death to the story overall. The reader knows how clever and talented you are, that’s why they’re reading your story.

You don’t need to buy their affection with baubles that sparkle. You want a reader to like and trust you even more? Don’t waste their time. Tell the story you need to tell, tell it as succinctly as you can and let them get back to their life. That is your only job.

 

THIS POST WAS CROSS-POSTED AT WWW.MIDWESTCREATIVITYCOACHING.COM

WHEN YOU GOTTA HAVE THE D … DEDICATION

Posted on by charliemoore

“They can’t yank a novelist like that can a pitcher. A novelist has to go the full nine, even if it kills him.”
–Ernest Hemingway

Let’s talk about dedication and what a pain in the ass it can be.

Being a success at anything takes dedication. It takes getting up every day and doing it, even, and especially, when you don’t want to. It’s so easy to take a day off, but it’s even easier to take that second day, and that third day, and by that point you might as well just take a week off, a little vacation from the thing that’s giving you so much trouble, and by God you can come back to it next Monday well-rested and with fresh eyes.

But then something comes up Monday morning and you didn’t get started as early as you wanted to, and by Tuesday you’ve lost the train of thought you had two weeks ago and you think maybe what I need is to just work on something else, something small and simple, just to get the gears moving again. Maybe instead of writing new words, I’ll just take today and PLOT, so that tomorrow the words will come even easier because the story is already there in rough outline.

And then the next day comes and you stayed up too late and kept hitting the snooze button, or your kid has something at school or a doctor’s appointment you forgot about and you say well, that’s okay, I’ll just get the words done later, after dinner.

But then tonight’s the Survivor season finale and you have to know who won, you can’t wait and be behind the rest of the world; you’d have to avoid Twitter and Instagram for the next few days until you can finally catch up. Besides, it’s one TV show, it’s not like they announce a new winner every week!

Do you see a pattern here? Life happens, there’s nothing we can do about that, but what we CAN control is our own actions and our own level of dedication.

If you want to be a writer, there’s only one thing to do: WRITE. Write every day, especially on the days you don’t want to, because those are the days your dedication comes through, the days you can show yourself just how badly you want this.

It’s so easy to get bogged down and burned out, but when you’ve dedicated yourself to something, it’s easier to fight through the exhaustion and do it anyway.

And for some of us that dedication isn’t even a question, because for some of us, this life, this creative drive, is all we’ve got. I’ve had day jobs my entire adult life, but I still got up every day and wrote because writing is my dedication, my day job is … just a job. I’m not dedicated to my day job the way I am to my writing and I’ve taken way more days off from that job than I have from writing. I’ve never taken a vacation from writing, and when I have a vacation from my day job, that just gives me more time to write. My dedication to writing has never been in question. It’s why I get up in the morning; the words aren’t going to write themselves.

This applies to everything. Whatever you want to be good at, whatever you want to succeed at, you HAVE to dedicate the time and attention to it, otherwise you’re just indulging in an occasional diversion from real life.

“Life can’t ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for like itself is a writer’s lover until death–fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant.”
–Edna Ferber

 

 

THIS BLOG WAS CROSS-POSTED AT WWW.MIDWESTCREATIVITYCOACHING.COM

 

THE FIRST RULE OF WRITERS’ FIGHT CLUB…

Posted on by charliemoore

Remember in FIGHT CLUB when Brad Pitt (let’s face it, more of you have seen the movie than read the book) asked How much can you really know about yourself if you’ve never been in a fight? I’m may be paraphrasing, but you remember the line.

Well, the same goes for artists. I’m not saying whack someone across the face with your keyboard, but I am saying you need to challenge yourself. All artists do. It’s where we find out exactly what we’re really capable of, and where we’re able to raise our standards and our skill level.

Because how much can you really know about yourself as an artist if you never challenge yourself?

What I used to do, back in the days of snail mail submissions with self-addressed stamped envelopes and cover letters was, every so often I’d scour the upcoming anthologies that were taking submissions, many of them themed anthologies, and I’d write a short story to those specific guidelines. And the guidelines were always vague enough they left it open to many different interpretations, but just specific enough you knew pretty much what they were looking for.

Personally, I think some of my best short stories came from these writing challenges. “Working for the Fat Man”, “Maggie Andrews Gets the Facts” and “Terrible Thrills” to name just a few.

One of my earliest writing challenges came after I’d already written the first draft. It was a short, simple, somber story about a man gaining closure after visiting his wife’s grave. The story was called, aptly enough, “Closure”. But I always knew the story was no big deal, would maybe never be published, but that was no reason not to try to make it the best it could be. And with a story this short and simple, well simple was the key word. So I went back and challenged myself to make it as simple as possible. And the best way I knew to do that, with this story, was to eliminate every multi-syllabic word I found. What resulted was an even SIMPLER story that didn’t lose any of the detail or emotion, and told itself in nothing but single syllable words. It’s a detail I doubt many readers would pick up on, but it’s one that stands out to me.

Or there’s the challenges my ex-wife used to hand me, when we were married. Sometimes she would come up with an idea she thought would make an interesting story, a twist on a familiar theme, and I’d write a story from that. Stories like “Birth Day”, “Family Name” and “Luck of the Draw” came about this way.

Now, I know some people are intimidated by the word “challenge”. So let’s change our vocabulary. Instead of a challenge, consider it a mere prompt. And everyone likes a good writing prompt, right?

Writing challenges, or prompts, are an excellent way to motivate yourself when you want to create but have no idea where to start. They’re great exercise in flexing your creative muscles, and a sure way to keep your mind and your creative skills in top form, and every worthwhile artist I know uses them. So the next time you sit down to write, or paint, or whatever, and the drive is there but the ideas are not, try a challenge, a prompt, whatever you want to call it.

Some of my favorites are to write a sequel to your favorite story (book or movie doesn’t matter). If you listen to music while you create, write a story using the same title of the first song you hear, or one using a random lyric from the last song you heard. Rewrite a familiar story from a different perspective. Write a story using only 100 words.

There are any number of challenges and prompts out there, and plenty more you’ll come up with yourself as you get more practice using them. I’m curious to see what you can come up with. Now go out there and make some art.

 

BUT IF YOU’RE BORED THEN YOU’RE BORING

Posted on by charliemoore

You ever get halfway through a particularly long and challenging manuscript only to realize you’re bored? Not bored with the story or the process, just … your mind needs something else to ponder for a minute. Not a week, this isn’t one of those times where you need to take a week off and work on something else. Just a day. Maybe an hour so you can recharge. You don’t want to stop writing for the day, though, you just want to work on something different.

Diversity is important. Variety, as Morris Day said, is the spice of life. At these times I have a list of alternative things I could work on just for a minute, something to kick start my brain, put me into writing mode, but not bog me down in the same thing I’ve been working on for the past three months.

Reviews. I love writing movie and book reviews. They’re a quick way to force you to organize your thoughts, you’re getting to praise something you love, or learn from something that didn’t quite work, and you’re getting your fingers limbered up and your mind focused, ready to get back to work. Sometimes writing something that isn’t the thing you’ve been working on, even for an hour, is enough to make you miss the real work.

Blog posts are another alternative. Sometimes I’ll take a minute to post something quick, like what I’m currently reading, or the posters to any movies I’ve recently watched. I actually haven’t done this in a while, but once upon a time it was a regular thing. Back when I had more time to watch a lot of movies and whatnot. Or you can talk briefly about what you’re working on. No details, but a few words on what research you find yourself doing, just enough to tease.

Have you updated the CTAs (calls to action) in your books lately? This is another quick little job you can do when you need to get your mind on something else for a minute.

Something I love to do when I’m bored looking at the same page for the past two days is CLEAN MY DESK. You know your desk is the messiest part of your house, admit it. And it’s much easier to work on a clean desk. If you’re bored with your current work in progress, take the day off from it and clean your desk. And your office while you’re at it. And your inbox.

Sometimes I’m not bored, I’m just tired. I need to step back, take 20 minutes and rest. I often find when I do that, I can come back to it, maybe not wide awake, but not dozing off mid-sentence, either. Set a timer and close your eyes, the world isn’t going to end. And if it does, at least you didn’t have to see it coming.

And the last suggestion for when you’re bored working on the same manuscript every day: work on it anyway. Seriously, sometimes the best work I do on something is when I really don’t want to and I make myself get the words down anyway. I don’t know where the reluctance to work comes from, maybe I’m only bored with it because I know what comes later and I want to hurry up and get to a particular scene. But that’s not going to happen if you don’t write the damn thing. So the only thing to do is shut up, put my head down, and power through whatever downtime scene I’m on so I can get to the fun, exciting one behind it.

There you go, 6 tips to help fight boredom when you want to be productive but just can’t face that same story AGAIN. A quick diversion will keep you working, keep you productive, but give your brain and eyes the break it needs without convincing you that abandoning it altogether is the only option.

Now stop reading blog posts and get back to work. Slacker.

(THIS WAS ALSO POSTED AT WWW.MIDWESTCREATIVITYCOACHING.COM)

FOR THE “BEGINNING” WRITER

Posted on by charliemoore

What do you like better, writing, or having written?

Me too.

Having written something is always so much more enjoyable than actually writing it. The work is hard, the after is the reward, and are we not a reward-based culture?

So having written is always favorable to writing.

But we can’t have written without doing the writing. So we have to get started. And I don’t know about you, but for me it’s always the beginning that’s toughest.

There are so many possible ways to start any and every story, it’s like a kid in a candy story lined wall to wall with all the best chocolates and gummies and whatever you like, but you’re told you can only pick ONE.

So that one has to be just perfect, doesn’t it?

Welllllllll. See, this is the nice thing about beginnings in writing. They’re just a starting point, but 9 times out of 10, that beginning is going to change by the time the story sees publication. NO beginning is ever perfect the first time through, because at that point we’ve only got the vaguest idea what direction or tone the story is going to take.

I can’t tell you the last story I wrote that didn’t have at least one or two false starts attached to it. Sometimes you just need to work your way through the story and see where it leads, then go back afterward and make adjustments to the beginning so it falls in line with the rest of the work.

There’s no shame in it; sometimes going back and re-working the beginning is a vital part of the process, especially in a longer work where the distance between the beginning and ending is greater.

But sometimes that false start is all kinds of wrong and doesn’t even convey the story you want to tell. That’s fine, too. My short story, “The Foodies of Mars,” I started writing that with only the vaguest notion of what the story was about, and for several days I wrote a solid beginning before trashing it the next day and starting over, because while those false starts could have worked okay, they weren’t the story I wanted to tell.

So I started over, with a completely different angle, point of view and main character, a different location, trying out story openings like school clothes, just waiting til I found the right combination that made the perfect first day of school impression.

Every story has to start somewhere, but don’t feel bad if you don’t nail it right out of the gate. That’s natural and doesn’t reflect on you as a writer at all. It’s much easier to go back after and fix a beginning than it is to keep working the front end of the story and never even getting to the back half.

Just GET STARTED and KEEP WRITING.

 

(THIS POST WAS ALSO MIRRORED ON MIDWESTCREATIVITYCOACHING.COM)

BACKSTORY BLOG: THE CATERPILLAR

Posted on by charliemoore

Back in the days before self-publishing made submissions irrelevant, I used to love submitting to themed anthologies, mostly because I loved the challenge of writing something specifically for those guidelines. One such anthology was called Vile Things, and the guidelines listed a number of old horror anthologies to turn to for inspiration. It just so happened, I had one of those anthologies, GREAT TALES OF TERROR AND THE SUPERNATURAL, edited by H. Wise. So I leafed through the book and stopped on a story called “Caterpillars” by E. F. Benson. All these years later, I couldn’t tell you a thing about that story, but I know where I got the title and the idea for this one.

First I had to get the background details right, so before I even started the story I researched Thalidomide babies and discovered such a condition CAN be genetic. Time to get started.

For main character inspiration I only needed to look to my mother. She had a finished basement with basically a small one-room apartment down there and one day when I went over there I saw the basement was full of someone’s junk. Not her junk because it wasn’t there last time I’d been over, so I asked where it came from.

She had a cousin who had been out of town for years and years and was coming back to town and had decided he was going to be staying there so all his stuff was now in the basement. I’m not sure he ever actually showed up to stay, but his stuff was definitely there.

Check, I thought, one deadbeat cousin who needs a place to stay and comes into this weird situation he doesn’t understand with this Thalidomide baby.

What next?

Well, he has to be forced to deal with the girl, and what better way to make sure he can’t beg off and hide out downstairs or at his buddy’s house than to have the parents vanish in the night, glad to be free of this burden.

But what kind of parents would do such a thing to an innocent girl? Hey, who said she was innocent? What if there was more to this girl than just an absence of arms and legs?

Like what?

I remembered King’s THE DARK HALF and Thad Beaumont’s undeveloped conjoined twin. Holy crap, what a creepy image if, on this girl’s back, there was a whole other girl. One with little nubby limbs she could use to skitter around the house late at night, legs like a caterpillar.

At the time, I was reading SILK by Caitlin R. Kiernan and I think a lot of it went over my head, but I remember something about a pretty girl and spiders and I thought what if this girl coughed up spiders and spun webs.

This would totally freak this guy out, let’s see how he would handle it.

While all of this was going on in the story, though, I also had to tell the story of this innocent girl who just wants to live as normal a life as she possibly can. And having a daughter of my own who means the world to me, it wasn’t hard to write Jessica as a real person. And from there, he relationship between her and the main character developed naturally and, if I do say so myself, quite wonderfully. I’m very proud of the work I did in this story with those characters, and with how dark and creepy it got in the last third.

To this day, in my opinion, Joon is one of the most unsettling characters I’ve written, and I’m happy to have done so.

I don’t know what comes out of the cocoon at the end of the story, so don’t ask. Use your imagination and decide for yourself.

And now, the first scene of The Caterpillar:

IT WASN’T MY FIRST CHOICE, and I was pissed at my parents and my sister for saying no, but whatever. So when I came back to town I wound up staying with my cousin Judy and her husband Jeff in their basement. I don’t think they wanted me there, more likely they were just too polite to turn me away. I showed up on a Tuesday and hauled what I could in through the garage to the basement, then parked the moving truck in front of the house so Jeff could have the driveway and went inside to thank Judy, again, for letting me stay.

I heard a door close down the hall and then Judy appeared, emerging from the dark with a towel in one hand and an empty bowl in the other. I’d forgotten about their daughter. Jessica was ten and we’d never met. But I knew about her.

She was a second-generation Thalidomide baby. According to the FDA, only 17 American children were born with Thalidomide-related deformities. Jeff’s mother had been one of them. While another article, published in DRUG SAFETY, assured the drug did not cause further defects, and yes Jeff had been born normal, Jessica suffered from Amelia, which meant she’d been born with no limbs.

I followed Judy into the kitchen, thanking her, as she put the empty bowl in the sink and laid the towel on the counter.

“No,” she said, “it’s okay. You get settled. It’s good to have you home.”

I wondered how sincerely she meant that. I’d been in Florida for ten years, involved in a number of businesses, all of which had failed. I had a moving company, owned a miniature golf course, a bar, a skateboard shop, just to name a few. I had good ideas, just bad luck. And maybe bad business sense. So after a decade of failure, I decided it was time to come home and just live a life again where I wasn’t dodging creditors all the time or watching my possessions being sold at auction to pay my debts. Not to mention the cost of living is a lot cheaper in the Midwest.

I returned every few years to attend reunions or show off my success for a weekend, but I always left before my cash ran out or the bill collectors tracked me down. I never stayed in town long enough for the cracks to show. And I rarely kept in contact with any of the family. So it came as no surprise when I detected reluctance in Judy’s tone. Not to mention I’m sure she and Jeff had enough problems with Jessica without worrying about me in there, too.

Just a couple weeks, I reminded myself.

Judy said to make myself at home, asked if I was hungry. I was, but I said no. I commented on how they had a nice house. She said thank you. Then I returned to the basement to start unpacking.

To read the rest of the story, you can it as a standalone ebook HERE.

BACKSTORY BLOG: MONDAY

Posted on by charliemoore

This is a blog post I’ve wanted to write for some time, or at least one like it. But I have a ton of short stories and never know where to start. So today I left it up to my team, emailed them and asked which story they would like to read the backstory on. The first answer was for one of my favorite stories called “Cunt”, but that’s a pretty personal one and one I’m not comfortable sharing. Luckily, the second answer was for another favorite, probably my very favorite, called “Monday”. So here it is.

“Monday” was originally inspired by the first line in the song “Working for the Fat Man” (which also inspired another story with the same title) from the band The Escape Club. The line is “Every day is Monday in the house up on the hill.”

For half a decade at least, I carried that line around, knowing there was a story in there if I ever just made time to write it. But the first time I tried, it was a story about a guy who winds up on a crew building a house and every morning when they get to the site, they find all the work they did the day before has been undone, and the job turns into a neverending race to get it built before the end of the day when the work is undone all over again. It wouldn’t have been a bad story.

But it wasn’t THE story.

So I scrapped it and started again. I’ve no idea where the final version of the story came from, I only know I sat down one early morning while it was still dark out and wrote the opening scene of Maddy waking up and getting her day started. Maddy’s morning routine was pretty much the same as my morning routine, so the writing went pretty easy that day.

The part about “every day is Monday” informed the opening about waking up with déjà vu, but I didn’t know with that first scene where the story was going. So I kept writing. I talked about the people across the street who insisted on parking in front of Maddy’s house because at the time I had some neighbors who always parked in front of my house–the orange Mustang, however, belonged to the people who lived across from my mother although I don’t know if they ever parked in front of her house; I just thought it was a noticeable and obnoxious car.

And then, somewhere mid-scene, I realized what Maddy was about to do and the shape of the story, if not the key to it (that calendar page), came to me.

I hesitated a bit, thoughts of “Groundhog Day” in my head, and not wanting to tell a story that had already been told, but damn I was enjoying the writing of this one, so I kept going.

I wrote that opening scene on day one, then came back the next morning and wrote the next full scene. I wrote the story over five days, each day pretty much just repeating what I’d written the day before, then going back to edit some details (I admit I got a lot of the structure for the recap sentences from the SAW movies, the short, clipped way they do the recaps in the end when the big twist of whichever installment it is reveals itself) and add new ones. By day two, I still don’t think I knew the thing about the calendar as the stuff about Maddy’s grandmother didn’t happen until day three. By day two I was still just enjoying the process and having more fun writing anything than I had in a long time.

By day three, when I wrote the part about her grandmother and the calendar, the whole thing came together in one rush of information and the next three days writing became crystal clear.

I have similar thoughts as Maddy sometimes when I have deju vu, trying to remember why I feel like I’ve done something before, and then trying to remember if the outcome had been good or bad and, if it was a bad, how do I change it? It doesn’t happen quite as often now, but once upon a time, it was ALL the time.

But from there, it was just a matter of getting Maddy closer and closer every day until she reached her goal, solved the puzzle of the déjà vu, and was able to bring the story to a close. It was really quite simple, in the end, and I can’t believe every story isn’t that easy to write.

A few key details, all the Ms. Maddy, Monday, May. All on purpose.

“Monday”, along with a lot of other stories are available in my collection THE DICHOTMOY OF MONSTERS here. Now, here’s the first scene of “Monday”:

Monday

C. Dennis Moore

 

She woke with déjà vu, as if she’d been dreaming about waking, and then lay there staring at the ceiling for a minute before managing to climb out from the covers. In the bathroom she emptied her bladder, brushed her teeth, and took some aspirin for her headache. In the kitchen she replaced yesterday’s filter with a fresh one, scooped coffee into it, filled the water reservoir, then turned on the pot. The red-orange glow indicating the thing was on only increased her anticipation of that first cup.

While the coffee brewed, Maddy walked into the living room, past the chair, glancing at the clock on the cable box once to see it was now 8:18, then went to the front window and stared outside. The sight promised a warm May day, and she contemplated a walk before changing her mind; going out would mean getting dressed, and Maddy was perfectly fine in her pj’s, thank you.

She stood there and watched the woman across the street, whose name she’d never bothered to learn, pull her ugly orange Mustang back into her driveway after dropping her two kids off at school, get out still looking half-asleep, and trudge into her house. Maddy had never bothered to learn the woman’s name because when they moved in, for about the first month, the woman’s husband used to come home from work at night and park his truck in front of Maddy’s house. Maddy had her own driveway, but it was the principle. She’d hated them right away. That was last year, and the man hadn’t parked there since, but that first impression had tainted Maddy’s opinion.

In the kitchen, the coffee gurgled, telling her it was done brewing and ready for drinking, so she turned and headed back to make that first cup.

Maddy’s sugar and powdered creamer were kept in similar-looking plastic containers and she had a habit of telling which was which with a shake. The creamer was silent while the sugar sounded like maracas. A hearty sprinkle of creamer and four scoops of sugar, a stir, five times clockwise, five times counterclockwise with three delicate taps of the spoon on the edge of the mug. The spoon went to the ceramic cradle beside the coffee pot and Maddy grabbed her cup and went into the spare bedroom where her computer monitor displayed a series of interweaving designs in various colors until she sat down and nudged the mouse to deactivate the screensaver.

Four new emails awaited her, including a notice she had accrued $5 in Borders Bucks from the book store, and a “get-to-know-me” survey from her friend Anna, which Anna should know very well Maddy was not going to fill out–and scrolling down to the line which read “Which of my friends is least likely to respond”, Anna had entered Maddy’s name.

“Good thinking,” Maddy said out loud.

But she perused Anna’s answers, then the list of other addressees to whom Anna had sent this particular email, always curious about the outside ties people form from their core group.

She sipped her coffee, then, as it cooled, took bigger gulps until the cup was empty. As she stood from the chair, she noticed her desk calendar. Monday. Déjà vu again, but it was only her dream resurfacing for a moment to remind her and suddenly Maddy felt very uneasy, but couldn’t pin down what it was that caused the feeling in the first place. That déjà vu, that dream. Whatever it had been.

Like it matters now anyway, she thought, and realized that was right. Whatever caused that feeling, it was a moot point at this juncture.

She put the cup in the sink, then turned off the pot, always wary of a stray spark setting the house ablaze, but didn’t bother dumping out the remains she hadn’t drank, and got a glass of water.

She had a bottle of pills in her purse, and now she took these out, dumped the contents onto the coffee table, and counted. Twenty.

She tried to swallow three at a time, but that was too much. She settled on swallowing two at a time until they were all gone. Then she set the near-empty water glass back on the coffee table and leaned back into the couch, staring out the front window. She had no idea how long it would be, but it was a beautiful May day. The clock on the cable box told her it was 9:02. Outside the sun sent down brilliant orange rays and the grass had never looked greener, she thought. Soon she found her eyes heavy, her chest thick, and it was a little harder to draw the next breath. She slumped over, groggy, wondering what day it was and how long she’d slept. Then her eyes closed and she fell over.

CURRENTLY READING:

Posted on by charliemoore

THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME, by Mark Haddon

Christopher John Francis Boone knows all the countries of the world and their capitals and every prime number up to 7,057. He relates well to animals but has no understanding of human emotions. He cannot stand to be touched. And he detests the color yellow.

This improbable story of Christopher’s quest to investigate the suspicious death of a neighborhood dog makes for one of the most captivating, unusual, and widely heralded novels in recent years.