A Personal Tragedy Shared

A writer friend of mine is compiling a photoscape of the world’s saddest places. Scenes of executions, mass graves, military cemeteries, places of memorials, final resting spots. The gates of Auschwitz.

For me, the saddest place has become a giant rock jutting out of the Pacific in the California coastal town of Morro Bay.

Morro Bay Rock

Last week my 25 year old nephew, Alex, was found dead on the jagged rocks below it on the ocean’s floor.

No one will ever know if it was suicide—likely—or some final, futile grasp at meaning in his turbulent life that led him to walk out of an unrestricted psychiatric halfway house, snowed on heavy amounts of the anti-psychotic, Seroquel, fix on the massive, six hundred foot rock, try to climb his way up, and dulled and disoriented, fall. In either case, his sad end has left two devastated parents for whom he was their only child, and their only hope of a lasting legacy of their own ruined, bipolar lives. As well as a lot of unanswered questions.

A week before, his mother had found a hastily scrawled application to buy a weapon in Alex’s room. A 20 gauge shotgun. (Thank God the state administered application period delayed the transaction.) And with it, a lot of manic, suicidal writings. About lying down with the devil, taking other people with him. Terrified—there was a history of violence in the house and Alex had been under psychiatric care before—she contacted the police. When they came, Alex, enraged, took her by the hair and threw punches at her. He was thrown into a van, taken to the state hospital in San Luis Obispo, restrained in a cell, medicated, put on suicide watch, his belt and shoelaces removed, under 24 hour watch. Rounds of psychiatric consultations over the next few days indicated he was depressed, suicidal, schizophrenic, a clear danger to himself and those around him. He was dosed heavily with Seroquel. His parents felt relief their son was finally in a controlled environment. (Over 21, it had been impossible to commit him without the threat of imminent danger.) Back in New York, we felt relief too. It was decided he would be transported to a restricted “transitional” facility, where for as much as ten months he would be among people like himself, unable to leave. Receiving medication. Learning a trade. It was a rare moment of hope in his short, tragic life. And calmer, he seemed to be embracing it too. “Wish me luck, Mom,” he said. The last words she ever heard from him. Maybe one day he would have a platform from which to embark from there. A footing for the rest of his life.

Last Sunday that footing forever collapsed.

Two days before he had been released from the hospital into a small, unrestricted halfway house in Morro Bay filled with aged patients coping with Alzhiemer’s. Dropkicked there– without a medical history or any background on him showing suicidal or violent behavior. The home’s administrator said he was “like a stroke victim, snowed on Seroquel.” But he seemed ready to “work it out.” Last Saturday he said he was going for a walk. She thought that was actually a hopeful sign. She didn’t know any better. When he never returned she called my brother and sister-in-law the next day. Looking to put out a missing person’s alarm. By that time he was already dead. He had been found that morning on the rocks at the base of Morro Bay Rock, a formation that seems to majestically rise out of nothing like Ayers Rock in Australia. A John Doe. Two news stations did reports on the unidentified suicide. My brother and sister-in-law saw them, never knowing, sadly, it was their own son they were hearing about. He was identified by his fingerprints the next day.

And their lives fell apart.

So how was this clearly agitated bipolar kid, two days from suicide-watch at the hospital, released into an unrestricted environment with no medical history or background provided to the staff? Only that he was bipolar and on medication. Lots of kids are bipolar, the facility’s head told me, coping, needing a place to come to. Not suicidal. Not violent. Not on the teetering edge of sanity, only a few days after beating up his mother, wanting to buy a gun, rambling crazily about killing himself and his parents, a threat to innocent people as well.

We viewed his battered body at the mortuary. I held his parents up, their legs weakened, from collapsing to the floor. They pawed over his marked-up face in grief, strangely quiet and peaceful for the first time in years. His voices silenced. Anger stilled. It’s a cliché, but in this case, one that works: Maybe Alex had gone on to a calmer place.

Then we went to the rock. To someone who had not seen it before, it is, stunning, majestic, awe-inspiring, rising out of the sea, nothing else around it. There were tourists walking around. We climbed out to where the coroner’s detective said we would find the spot. Rocks so jagged, they are like the gnarled teeth of the sea, gnashing at you. A cliff, rising above, maybe eighty feet high. How did he ever even get up there? What was in his poor head—to finally end his turbulent life, or maybe look up at last and see some clarity, the sun shining, a deluded, final search for God? Did he fall, climbing? Or, like the detective surmised, do a final, backwards dive onto a mangled resting place on the rocks?

What is the saddest place? Where your heart breaks with sorrow from what has taken place? Where the winds seem to carry a hymn. The world has its many spots, its hallowed memorials, its quiet tombs.

But for us, with the sound of the surf beating against the rocks, staring up into the face of something God must have created with something more glorious in mind, this is it. It’s here.

Thrillerfest Talk on PACE

Presented at THRILLERFEST, July 9, 2009

PACE: Ten Surefire Ways to Keep the Pages Turning.

OKAY, HERE’S HOW IT’S GONNA GO. I’m gonna talk about how to elevate the PACE in your books. I’m going to break PACE into two categories: structural, or how you order or organize the book, and syntactical, meaning your sentence structure and prose style. And I’m going do my best and try and say TWO OR THREE smart things in the next forty minutes…That’s all. The rest is just gonna be filler for me to get to the Q and A, where you can say some smart things. And I’m even gonna say those two things up front, so if you’re compelled to leave, to catch someone else’s talk, feel free to go.

And the first of those smart things–I hope—is…There is absolutely no right or wrong when it comes to pace. Slow or fast. It’s only a matter of what you want to accomplish in your book. THE BEST PACE, like a referee in a hockey or basketball game, is the pace you don’t notice. When it never intrudes on your enjoyment of the game. THE SAME WITH PACE.

Another “smart” thing: EVERYTHING IN A BOOK IS A TRADE OFF. A trade off of what the reader will accept and what you  are trying to accomplish. You can layer deeper character detail or richer back story in, have more elaborate scene setting or descriptive passages. You can describe homes in Architectural Digest details, how someone is dressed as if it’s an article in GQ— but everything has a trade-off. And that trade off is - it slows down the pace. Conversely, you can strip down the prose to nothing but simple sentences and robotic, declarative dialogue and action. That may speed it up, but then the book lacks richness and texture. It sounds simple, but it’s about balance. And your goals. If you want pages to turn, really turn, something has to give. SO THE RIGHT PACE IS THE BALANCE THAT’S RIGHT FOR YOU TO ACCOMPLISH YOUR OWN GOALS.

I’m not going to attempt to define what pace is…To me, that’s a waste of time. It’s sort of like pornography—can’t define it, but know it when you see it!

BUT AMERICANS LIKE NUMBERS AND  I HAVE SPENT YEARS WORKING OUT A COMPLEX MATHEMATICAL ALGORITHM THAT DISPLAYS WITH 100% MATHEMATICAL CERTAINTY, PRECISELY WHAT PACE IS. AND I WANT YOU TO MEMORIZE IT AND REFLECT ON IT WHEN YOU’RE STUCK OVER YOUR BOOK AS TO WHAT TO LEAVE IN AND WHAT TO LEAVE OUT:

S (G – B)²

U – N₂

WHERE….:

S = speed

G = the point where the good guy stumbles onto a crime

B = the point where the good guy finally kills the bad guy

DIVIDED BY:

U = defined as the writerly urge to use self-indulgent or overly descriptive language, and

N_s = the number of  times he/she gets to have sex in the book.

THIS IS PACE, ladies and gentlemen. Learn to recognize it when you see it!

It is the speed at which the hero first comes on the crime until he follows the clues, solves the puzzle, chases down and kills the bad guy–over, all that stuff that a good editor editor would eliminate minus the frequency of sex.

HELLO. SIMPLE. Don’t laugh, it’s actually true.

Now if that’s not enough, that may tell you what pace is, but it doesn’t really help you because it doesn’t tell you how to actually measure the rate of pace. For that I have another equally timed honed algorithm.

W (A)

S_k – $$

Where, in this formula:

W = amount of Words

Times, A = the number of Actions, or what, ladies and gentlemen, the duration of your plot.

Over:

S_k  = With apologies to Elmore Leonard, the parts that readers tend to skip! minus

$ = the dollar amt if you happen to have one of those old fashioned contracts where you are actually paid by the word. Which you don’t. So don’t worry about it. That was just a joke!

Now in this formula, it’s important to further define S_k The parts readers tend to skip. In its place you could easy substitute in:

I = too much Information. You do not need to take your reader through complex derivative analysis just because you are going to kill off a hedge fund manager. You do not need to show you reader you’re not really a writer, but an arms expert because your hero uses a gun. You can do it. You can give the historical background to the building your character is walking into, but it does what—it slows down the pace. S_k can also be recorded as

SH = showing off. Or,

B = plain old BORING

SH (showing off)  is when you try to slip in some slick and artsy prose for the reviewers that doesn’t really advance the plot, which is okay, but please, not when the bad guy’s hands are tight around the hero’s throat. That creates I_r. Irritating to the reader.

And trust me, you’re not likely to get reviewed anyway.

For those who think more linearly, another way to look at this is the continuum line between P and p.

Big P———————————————————————————-small p

Big P we will call….Marcel Proust.

Small p is James Patterson. Sorry Jim.

THESE ARE THE TWO ABSOLUTE ANTIPODES OF PACE!

PROUST, as we know, took 30 pages to describe the joy of eating a cracker.

With PATTERSON, In the same thirty pages, you get ten chapters, two murders and three chase scenes!

The point is… THERE’S NO RIGHT OR WRONG WHEN IT COMES TO THEIR PACE. It’s all a matter of what they are trying to accomplish.

Without his pace, Proust would never have gotten a trilogy, and without his, JP might still be in advertising.

BUT WHAT IS ESSENTIAL, Smart Point #3…is to make sure your goals and what you want to accomplish are aligned.

If you go for speed, your prose has to back it up. If you’re going for something else, your sentence and structure should reflect that too. It would not work in a mannered, literary novel set in a languorous garden in Yorkshire, for the character to : “I got to the end of the hedge. I looked both ways. I saw no one coming. My heart started to race. I turned, heading under the rhododendrum…”

Now I said pace is both STRUCTURAL AND SYNTACTICAL.

By structure, I mean how your book is organized or its plot developed. This can be a PACE accelerator too.

By syntax, I mean, your writing style.

How does STRUCTURE help create pace?

CRISP, SHORT CHAPTERS.

CULLING CHAPTERS TO SINGLE SCENES STRIPPED DOWN TO THEIR ELEMENTAL, DRAMATIC CORE.

GETTING IN AND OUT OF THOSE CHAPTERS FAST.

A CLOSE-IN, FIRST PERSON POINT OF VIEW. (Helps make you FEEL what is happening. Creates immediacy.)

And how does SYNTAX help create pace?

Sentence structure should mirror what is happening at that moment in the book. If you’re in a chase scene, don’t weigh it down with turgid, complex sentences. Simple sentences. Short thoughts in the mind of the characters.

It’s sort of obvious except how many times in the heat of a final chase scene, do you come across some endless, weird, overwrought sentence, with a lot of indirect clauses, and by the end of it, someone has a gun you didn’t know even had one, or someone’s lying on the floor I DIDN’T KNOW WAS SHOT!

It makes you go back and re-read the thing and go, what just happened. Which supports my last, obvious but sometimes overlooked thing: If you’re going for PACE, never take your reader out of the narrative.

MAKE YOUR WRITING STYLE FIT EXACTLY WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THE BOOK

Like I said, everything the writer does reflects a trade-off. Yes, I could have spent more time on the hero’s relationship with his brother. Yes, I could have deepened my back story. But I did what I thought was right—given that what’s important for me is for people to keep turning pages. Not to find a reason o put the book down. On the other hand, it seems fair that three page chapters and short declarative sentences will not get you short listed to the National Book Award or Booker Prize!

NOW, I GO FOR SPEED. I like my books to be devoured in two or three sittings. NOT IN ONE! THREE! I GUESS I DO WANT THEM TO BE SAVORED JUST A BIT.

So here we are. I said I was going to give you TEN SUREFIRE WAYS to keep your pages turning. To create PACE. So here they are:

I said to think of them both in terms of structure and syntax. So in no particular order…

1. SHORT, LINKING, DRAMATIC CHAPTERS. End on a hook that makes the reader want to turn to the next page. Enticing the reader to go further than intended is the surest form of PACE.

2.  THE SCENE. Eliminate whatever does not directly advance the story. Cull it down to its elemental dramatic core. Whether it’s two pages or ten.

3. YOUR WRITING SHOULD REFLECT PRECISELY WHAT IS GOING ON. When the scene calls for speed, write with it! Action scenes should utilize crisp, understandable sentences. Not where somewhere in the middle of some LONG, inscrutable, run-on sentences, someone has pulled out a gun. NEVER pull the reader out of the narrative. Do not make him go back and scratch his head, “Where did that gun come from?” Or, “How did we get over here?”

Conversely, it’s okay, of course, to use a richer, more complex style when the situations calls for it—if you can pull it off.

Or unless it’s about SEX. The goal, gals, as we all know, is try and REMOVE too much pace from sex!

4. DON’T BOG THE NARRATIVE FLOW DOWN by showing off, being boring, injecting an unnecessary description unless it is directly called for. If the reader is turning the pages to find out what happens, give them what they want to read! Give them what YOU would want to read!

5. Which brings us to the following, with all credit to Elmore Leonard, “Try and eliminate the parts readers tend to skip.”

6. PARE, PARE, PARE. Learn that there is nothing more fun than the elimination of all those precious, hard-to-come-by words and paragraphs. Sometimes even a single extra word can stand out, slow a sentence down and draw attention to itself. You know, in your heart, when you are being self-indulgent or trying to show off. We all do it. Well, the reader knows it too. Keep it in the first draft!  Again, Do not take the reader out of the narrative.

7. DO NOT OVERPROVIDE INFORMATION. Make sure what is interesting to you is not boring to the reader. I always find there is too much data. Decide what details you need and maybe cut it in half. I sometimes write about financial things, being that my books take place in Greenwich, and my characters can be hedge fund managers or lawyers with appropriate schemes. But I try and give the reader what they need in ONE PARAGRAPH. Not pages!

8. ORIENT THE READER quickly when you begin a scene. Don’t make them guess. Don’t make them figure out, who’s talking, where they are. What may have taken place. Root the reader in the scene immediately .Anytime they are not—it’s taking them out of the  narrative. Slowing down pace.

9. KNOW WHAT EACH CHAPTER, OR SCENE, IS SUPPOSED TO DELIVER. And don’t try and make it do more. Don’t weight down chapters with too many scenes—I do one_- and don’t weight down scenes by staying in too long.

10. And lastly, the final, surefire way to get those pages turning faster, if all else fails. USE A LARGER FONT!

Hope some of this has been helpful, and here’s to your pages speeding up!

My very first blog entry

Well, here it is, my first ever blog, and late in the game as I am, you might think I would opt for the writerly approach and shed some light on my books, where I draw ideas from, the act of writing, etc….

Instead, I’ve decided to run with the topic of mold remediation.

Please, don’t click off just yet. I promise, there’s a plan!

Two weeks ago I came home from playing tennis to a deep rumble emanating from our basement. Left to myself, I might have just ignored it and turned on the news, but since the dog seemed to be getting all agitated and pawed at the door, not to mention the house was rumbling, I went to investigate in the netherworld of pipes and pumps downstairs that I know nothing about, and to my horror, discovered water spewing into the basement from a blown gasket in what I now know as the pressure pump. Not a leak, mind you—more like a fire hydrant left on. Or picture the first release of the Kenebec River Dam in rafting season. Soaked immediately, I couldn’t get myself within three feet of the pump.

If you haven’t yet figured it out, I am essentially useless in these situations. My usual plan when calamity strikes (or even when a large, flying insect finds its way into the house) is to scream at the top of my lungs, “Lynnie…!!” (My wife, who happened to be happily day spa-ing in Greenwich at the time.) In seconds, water had crept above the top of my sneakers. All I could mentally picture was our beautiful home tipped on its side and majestically sinking, like the Titanic, into Westchester County. Frantically, I dialed Robert, our plumber, encouraging the answering service with a few choice expletives that this was not an opportunity for voicemail—“this is a fucking disaster! Do you understand!” In minutes, I got him. He instructed me to turn the water main off. I’ve only lived in our house twenty two years. I had no f-ing idea where the water main valve was! Soaked, frantic, twisting every conceivable lever I could find, I finally found the one and the torrent immediately abated. I surveyed the damage. Six inches—over the carpets, the yoga studio, the universal gym, the couch, the fancy large-screen TV. It was the gloomiest possible scene, made even ickier by water filing up my shoes.

Needless to say, upon returning, my wife’s pedicure high was cut short. As it happened, we were leaving the next morning for LA, to visit two of our kids. In a panic, we called Mike, who for years has washed our rugs, our now-deceased, diabetic Westie giving him lots of business. To our relief, he said, don’t worry. He’d handle everything himself. He does this sort of thing. Our savior! Rushing over within minutest, with two gigantic blowers, drying, dehumidifying, squeegeeing. “I’ve seen a lot worse,” he said, confidently. “Enjoy your trip. I think you’re going to be okay…”

Relieved, we set off for the West Coast, a bon voyage story for the kids, everything being well-handled.  Returning four days later, the whiff we met as we opened the basement door, aligned to dead rats, informs us we might have been wrong.

We now hate Mike. Correspondingly, he is no longer a fan.

It’s a disaster. The carpet is still completely damp, the pads, underneath, damper. Ugly brown trails are creeping up along the walls. Calling Chubb in, and their environmental contractor let us know that our aspergillius count, normally 7, is over 3000 now!

In comes the mold remediation people, wearing scary, Tyvek, bio-protective garb. Their big, new air-purifying engines churning. Taping off the basement from the rest of the house, like we’re living on Love Canal. So much stuff down there, potentially affected. They even want to empty the wine cellar.

So why am I sharing this, other than for a grim laugh? I did say I had a plan!

Everything down there, the mold-covered detritus of our lives, the record of our lives before I ever even thought I would one day write, had to be rescued, evaluated, wiped off with bleach and water. Saved or discarded? The memory of twenty five years.

There are books I once loved I never knew what happened to. Thomas Gifford’s, The Wind- Chill Factor, North of Montana by April Smith. Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks. E.M Cioran’s, The Trouble with Being Born. Each resonates with a singular moment in time. Toss or save? Sadly, we shake out heads.

There’s a pre-reservation, Navaho chief’s blanket. (Fortunately, insured.) Delicate kachina dolls, a hundred year old set of spurs. From the times we used to head out to Santa Fe every year.

There’s a wedding album we hadn’t seen for years. On our friend’s lake in Vermont. Me in a white summer suit with straggly hair. Lynn, in white lace, proudly looking not much different than today. I say we had all of nineteen people there; my wife insists it was twenty three. Over twenty fives years, we’ve re-counted the guest list a hundred times– and never once been able to agree.

There’s the framed invitation for Lynn’s 40^th birthday celebration, a black and white Mardi Gras mask at Paul Prudhomme’s. Even had the famous chef fly up from New Orleans to do the cooking himself. We laugh, recalling the wildly expensive Sylvia Weinstock cake I had splurged for. Prudhomme refused to serve it. We ended up having to cut it up into a hundred servings and drag it all the way home, where it sat in our freezer for the next year. Save!

There’s a file of early rejection letters. Twenty three of them. One, it turns out, I’d forgotten, from an agent in the next office to where my current agent is now! Ha! There’s an Art Monk Redskins football helmet, which, blitzed at a school charity event, I bid over two grand for! There are blankets and sleeping bags, video games and hockey masks and footballs. Each comes with a mental snapshot of one of the kids catching a touchdown pass or getting crunched, wobbly legged, into the boards. We signal thumbs-down. Gone.

We pull out an awful painting of a coq fight my father once brought up one Sunday, when he used to roam the flea markets and buy anything he could successfully bargain down. He claimed it had the touch of a Picasso; we thought the frame would work for firewood. Five years after his death, it makes me tear. One by one, we leaf through the forgotten record of our lives, reliving their importance, then signal to the remediation folk, like Roman royalty, thumbs up or down. A old garment bag, balled up, unfurled, reads Leslie Fay.

So once there was a life before writing. Before I ever conceived a plot line. Before the “me,” the few people reading this now would ever know. One day these images may figure into my books. You will read them, and maybe know where they came from. Nothing will ever be discarded. Because basements dry, clean air is restored. Mold remediation crews in bio-hazard yellow suits leave.

But these relics will never leave. We own them in our hearts and minds.

This painting I once rolled my eyes at, never nice enough to find its way upstairs, yet never discarded, these are our lives.

Hello world!

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!