Requiem for a Burrito

I’m writing this at 11:30 Saturday night. Becky is in the back bedroom trying not to throw-up which she’s been doing all day. I finished doing my work for the day on my novel but I still have a wee bit of writing energy to burn off and haven;t quite figured out how to write the short story I really want to write. So instead I’ll write about the Chilito.

This Taco Bell creation, also known as the Chili Cheese Burrito, is one of the finest delicacies of our time. It’s the nastiest, greasiest chili wrapped in a tortilla with the nastiest, greasiest cheese. Mmmmm. Actually I should say it was. The Chilito has been discontinued. I first got the craving for one of these a few weeks ago when Becky and I were at the mall. They didn’t have it but I mistakenly assumed they just renamed it the Beef Meximelt. So not the same thing. And the tonight I was craving one and decided to get online and see if the little even still existed anymore.  And wouldn’t you know, there’s a website devoted to just this thing. And even better, the site has a locater that shows which Taco Bells in your area still carry the Chilito.

It didn’t take long to find out that the one just around the corner from still carried it. I was giddy. Heaven was just a mere jog away. But, sadly, this is called Requiem for a burrito, not Life Celebration of a burrito. The manager informed me that while they had indeed carried it a few months ago, it had been completely taken out of circulation since then.

So long me cheesy, gassy friend. You’ll be missed.

Memories, photographic memories…

There was a moment yesterday at lunch where I wished I was Matt Damon’s character from GOOD WILL HUNTING. As part of my job, I research and find lots of modern and obscure medical journal articles relating to the field here. And of course, being a reader, I always give the articles a quick read while I’m scanning them or whatever. Well at lunch I ended up at a table full of doctors talking about a particular form of treatment. I’d read enough to understand what they were talking about, which was cool, but the fantasy part of me wished I was a speed reader with a photographic memory so I could read through everything in the field and jump in on the conversation and shock everyone. Instead I munched my meatballs and tried not to look like a total boob.

Good stuff.

The house is coming along nicely, but I really hate painting. It’s not that hard, it’s just tedious. And there are soooo many walls in this house.

Paint the town…primer

Painting is one of the few home type project I truly detest. And here I am stuck with a house in which every wall and the ceiling needs to be painted. Luckily, much of the prep work is not needed because we don’t have floors or furtniture to worry about ruining. Becky’s parents did a bunch of work while we were gone so that was great and my parents are coming up this weekend to help us hopefully get most of it done. This is payback for all of the times I helped my parents fix their houses. Yay.

But I had one of those wonderful epiphany moments at the end of the night. I was standing in what will eventually be the baby’s room and I was thinking about the baby growing up in that room and it turning into the room of a toddler, and then a teenager. It was then I really realized what I’m embarking on with my family and it was overwhelming in a good way.

Snow Bunnies

Sure Easter was early this year, but snow? Come on. I’m just about sick of this state and its weather now. I think Becky and I would both be happy on a beach somewhere for the next few months.  She could enjoy being pregnant and I could get this beast of a book under control.

Zoe Sharp had a post last week at Murderati that totally resonated with me. She said at one point she had stripped her manuscript down to almost half its length to get it under control. I. So. Understand. Over the last month or so though, I’ve been trimming, and hacking, and mulling, and outlining, all trying to get a handle on this story.

Now I think I’m finally ready to move forward again. I wrote about 500 words yesterday while I was waiting for Easter dinner and that was the first substantial writing I’ve done on this manuscript without deleting it almost immediately. I have a clear focus for the remainder of the book and have a solid, hopefully satisfying, ending in mind. We’ll see how I handle the execution.

I hope everyone had a nice Easter. Becky and I had some nice time away Friday night and Saturday. She was craving lamb and there’s no better place for that than Greektown in Detroit. Since the weather was miserable we stayed down at the Courtyard which was very nice. Both of us always enjoy a good ride on the People Mover. And all of the snow would have been gorgeous and lovely…if it hadn’t been the friggin’ end of MARCH.

Anyway, I love my wife and it was nice to have some time with her. Apparently that disappears after you have a baby.

In the kitchen and pregnant

Man, is it really only Wednesday? This week is draaaaaaaaaaging by. But I really don’t want to speed anything up because that just puts us closer to D-Day for the big baby event which I’m still not sure I’m ready for. It hit home in a different way last week while Becky and I were trapsing across the internet looking for cheap last minute tickets to go somewhere and see Laura Lippman (btw, it’s cheaper to fly from Detroit to LAX than from Detroit to Minneapolis).  

Once the baby comes we won’t be able to do this. In fact, the baby was already mucking up the plans because the reason we were looking at flights is because Becky couldn’t stomach the thought of an 8 hour car ride to Minneapolis. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not mad about the baby and I am looking forward to it, but I don’t deal well with change. And this one’s a biggie.

This is why, if it’s at all possible, I want to take the baby and the wife to Baltimore for Bouchercon in October. I want my baby to be well-traveled and I don’t want my life to change very much. We’ll see how that works in reality though.

And continuing the mixed-gender roles theme we’ve got going here this week. Guess which one of us screwed up dinner last night? And it wasn’t the wife. Apparently you can add too much water to a bag of instant fettuccini alfredo. 

Follow the Money

Part of me has always envied the guys who have wives who make more than they do. The dream of the kept man with nothing to do all day but sleep in late, play video games, watch cartoons, and stay up late. My wife makes more than I do and I have to say, in the real world, it’s much less cool than I thought. This is not due to any sort of ridiculous threat to my masculinity or chest beating need to prove who the boss is. It’s mostly an issue of love now. I’ve never been particularly self-less, but as I add a wife, and soon a baby, to my family I’m finding my thought process changing. Other people are dependent on me now and that is frightening to someone who has just barely been able to support himself the last few years.

Of course at times like this, the easy thing to do is wonder about wrong choices or regret stupid mistakes. Yes, I’ve had a healthy share of personal and professional blunders, but honestly I wouldn’t change anything because those are the experiences that have formed me as the writer I am today. And I like the writer I am today. But now it’s no longer just about me. As much as I may not want to admit it, I think this is the reason I was single for so long. Low paying, transient jobs were fine when it was just me, but that’s not the sort of thing you raise a family on. I’m in a good place now, a good job with a good company, but I still make less than my wife.

In my dreams I’d make enough from my writing to support all of us in a nice life style. In my slightly more realistic dreams, I’d be able to support my wife and baby on just my day job salary. I know my parents did it, and I know her parents did it. I’m just not exactly sure how they made it work. It’s a complicated issue and one I’m sure I’m going to deal with for the foreseeable future, but as Guyot said here when he was guest blogging, I’m just “a guy working out his shit in public”

Good news alert: Two of my favorite shows, “The Big Bang Theory” and “How I Met Your Mother” return tonight. That makes me giddy.

I need new suspensions

I’ve spent the last few days trying to expel some sort of creeping flue like crud from my system so I’m not up for a long blog post today. I’m still bouncing back and forth between the screenplay and the book with neither really burning my fire. I’ll have a day where I’m excited about it and it reads pretty good and then the next day it all seems ridiculous.

That seems to be the root of my troubles right now. All of this stuff just seems so stupid in the larger scheme of life. There aren’t any huge plot or logic holes, just a general sense that this would never happen in real life. I have no trouble suspending my disbelief when watching movies or reading other books, but with my own stuff lately I can’t shake this feeling that unless it’s boring and non-dramatic then it’s unrealistic.

Anybody else have trouble with this?

Task Master

I collect writing advice like some people collect spoons. But every once in a while a piece of advice that is so amazing that it completely alters the way I work. The first was when I discovered Syd Field’s description of the four act screenplay structure. That was revolutionary to me and just the sort of thing I needed to get through the mess of writing my first novel.

The second was when I heard Dennis Lehane say that most of his dialogue was unfinished senetences and people interupting each other. Again, that was revolutionary and helped me create the rythms in my dialogue people have commended.

But last week I found one that may be the most important of all. On Terry Rossio’s screenwriting site Wordplayer he was talking about Tasks. What it boiled down to is you have to give your characters something to do while the story is taking place. It may sound simple, but this is what’s been eluding me in plotting. I always have the story there and the ultimate goals and such, but I’ve never really had a single, concrete task for my character. Here’s some examples:

In LEGALLY BLONDE, Elle’s main goal is get back with her boyfriend. That’s the plot. The task is to win her first trial case.

In JUNO, the goal is for her to deal with her pregnancy and survive her life, the task is finding a suitable family for adoption.

Get the idea?

Now you would think that a detective story has a built in task for the hero: find the villian. And that’s true. But the task that’s always eluded me is the villian’s task. My villians have never really being trying to do anything important, so my hero doesn’t have anything important to stop.  So that’s what I’ve been working on is solidifying that task and it’s opened up a whole new fount of possibilties for me. Yay.

In the meantime though, I’m working on a screenplay instead of the novel. I needed to do something that would get me looking at storytelling in a different way and I think this is the perfect way to do it. I’m having a blast, though getting in a screenplay rythm is a whole lot harder than getting into a prose rythm.

What the most life-altering writing advice you’ve ever received?

Mr. Sandman bring me a zzzzzz…

I have not been sleeping well since we got back from Florida. Maybe it’s my body’s way of geeting me used to the sleep deprivation that will come with the baby. Blah. I like my sleep.

The writing is going okay, but I’m still feeling funky about it. I spent some time yesterday going through me email and reading notes from other authors and agents who told me I was a good writer and on the right track. Pathetic I know, but it worked.

I’ve also spent a lot of time at Terry Rossio’s Wordplayer site for screenwriters which has been a huge help. To break up the funk I thought trying something different might help so I started a screenplay. I was never able to really get a rythm going with it but it gave me enough space to look at my novel objectively. And that Wordplayer site had some great tips that helped me get my plotting issues under control.

I’ve also got a short story brewing that might make me feel better so that could be a weekend project maybe. I wish I was still in Florida. Or maybe LA, that would be nice.

Baby, it’s cold outside

The end of a vacation is always bitter sweet. While I’m happy to be home, it was 80 when we left and now it’s cold and snowy. And I have to go back to work tomorrow. Bleh. I’ll update with some more details of our adventures later this week, but you are all here today for the big news.

The rumors are true, Becky is pregnant and Elvis is the father.

Er, okay, maybe that’s not totally true, but she is pregnant. Now before you start doing the math and wondering if that’s the reason we got married, no its not. We’re excited and certainly hoping it all turns out well. But speaking for myself at least I’m scared out of my gourd. It certainly didn’t help that we saw some of the worst parenting ever on display at Disney World, but it was nice to know we’re both on the same page as far as how we want to raise our kids.

The thing I’m most afraid of isn’t screwing up the kid, or anything like that, I’m afraid that all of this is going to hurt my writing. How awful is that? But I’m very lucky that Becky is supportive of my writing and I’ve gt friends and colleagues who will keep me accountable and make sure I don’t  fall off the face of the planet writing-wise.

The baby is due in September and I’ll be keeping you all updated as things progress and I’ll leave you with the first baby pictures.