A Quiet Tuesday Afternoon at the Chiropractor's Office

My son David goes to a chiropractor's office three days a week. Since we commute to and from work together, on those three days, I drive him there after work. On Monday and Wednesday, my wife is there and after their treatment session, she drives him home, but on Tuesday, I sit and wait for him and take him home afterward.

Since I have nothing to do for the better part of an hour, I usually take a book to read, but this last Tuesday was different. Actually, I did have a book. It's Josip Novakovich's Fiction Writer's Workshop (the first edition, not the second...I checked it out of the local public library). I'm finishing up the exercises from the first chapter, "Sources of Fiction." This assignment had me going to a public place and taking notes on the people present, what they were doing, what I could tell about them from my observations...and particularly what was puzzling or curious about them that might make a story.

The story below is a thinly disguised version of the exercise, the casual observances of a writer who does this sort of thing all the time in order to build up a collection of potential characters for his fiction work. I know writers actually do this sort of thing, but for me, it was amazingly difficult to come up with anything coherent let alone interesting. To the best of my ability, these are the people I witnessed (some of them anyway) and these are the mysteries I came up with.

It was a quiet afternoon in the chiropractor's office as I sat in the lobby waiting for my son to be put into his weekly traction session or, as I like to call it, the rack.

Looking around, I kept thinking about Billy Joel's song "Piano Man," how the song describes not only the appearance of everyone in the lounge drinking and listening to the piano player, but their lives, their losses, and their tragedies.

It's harder to figure out the background or mystery of people in real life just by looking at them in a public place, especially if you need to pretend you're not looking at them, let alone taking notes.

But I'm a writer and that's what I do. I observe people, I listen for useful dialog, I make up stories about people based on not only what they say, but how they stand, what they wear, anything I can see about them that strikes me as odd or interesting.

For instance, when he first walked into the office and casually greeted the two women behind the counter, I thought he was the doctor. He had a thoroughly professional appearance, from his close shorn red hair, to his crisp, white, button down shirt, and his freshly pressed dark slacks.

But then I saw him walking around the side of the counter to use the console to check in. Like any other patient, the receptionist, or technician, or nurse, handed him some paperwork to look over. When he sat down, I noticed a flaw in his otherwise white collar uniform; scuffed shoes.

It's not as if he stubbed his toe in the parking lot and scuffed the tip of his otherwise finely polished dress shoe, these shoes were habitually abused, as if the man made his living walking, not in a carpeted corporate environment, but on the floor of a warehouse.

I had a job once, one I held very briefly, thank God, at the local convention center working operations or "ops". I had to wear black, polished work shoes that scuffed the same way as this gentleman's, but my work clothes were equally as durable and took the same punishment, as I manhandled all sorts of equipment from stage parts, to booths, to partitions, to tables. I spent an uncomfortably long amount of time around large garbage dumpsters.

What sort of job (no one dresses like that at home) does this fellow have that requires he look so good from the ankles up but make him punish his shoes so severely?

By the time I managed to jot all this down, he was called back to one of the therapy rooms and I only saw him briefly again when he left.

Business picked up quite a bit as I was waiting, but not everyone is interesting to me, at least not in a way that makes their descriptions worthy of (literally) noting. The middle-aged women who was standing at the counter as I walked in and wearing variations on the color grey seemed ordinary enough until it was time to pay her bill. Then she walked out, presumably to her car, though I couldn't actually see her, and came back with cash in her hand.

She didn't bring in her purse or her wallet as I've have expected, but just had cash. I could see a ten-dollar bill but I wasn't actually able to hear how much her co-pay for $129.13 happened to be.

Some people were absolutely quiet, such as the African-American girl (she couldn't have been older than 18), who came out of the therapy area and sat directly behind me, never saying a word as she sat, got up, went back into the back, and then returned and walked out the front door.

Others were very loud, such as the fellow, who looked like a construction worker or other blue collar laborer, dressed in a bright orange t-shirt and camo cut offs, laughing and joking with various women on the staff. He showed up from the back just long enough for me to witness this and then disappeared again. He must have still been there when my son and I left.

There was an elderly woman named Rebecca or Becky, who entered the office with the most remarkable smile, a smile like she knew a secret, a dangerous secret that gave her power.

Probably the most mysterious couple I saw was a woman and the girl who I can only believe is her daughter, though they made a strange pair. I know it's getting on towards Halloween, but October 13th isn't close enough to start dressing in costume yet.

But both the woman and girl were wearing replicas of what seemed to be 19th century "old west" dresses, as if they had just been a part of some "frontier days" presentation at a local school or park. Outside of the less than professional quality to their apparel, what ruined the effect was their rather modern casual footwear and the cuffs of the woman's jeans peeking out from below her hemline.

But that wasn't the odd part. The woman entered the office a good ten or fifteen seconds before the girl (I'd guess the girl's age between 8 and 10 years old). The thing is, the girl never went near the woman. The woman sat down a few seats to my left, but the girl moved right toward the water dispenser. Even though the woman told the child she could have a drink, she all just about ignored her and moved away from the dispenser, but never closer to the woman.

The girl kept looking outside, as if she were waiting for someone. When the woman was called to the back of the office, the girl went back outside. They obviously had a relationship but why did they seem so estranged? Had they been fighting? Were the parents divorced and the girl closer to Dad than Mom? Was this a non-custodial parent-child visit gone bad?

Oh, the woman's name is Camille. It seemed to go with her faux old fashioned appearance somehow.

There were a lot more people there, including the all too young Dr. Kurt (who looked much less like a doctor than the man with the scuffed up shoes), and I took notes on them as best I could, but I'm writing about the people who made an impression, who made me ask questions and wonder who they were and what their non-fictional stories were really about.

All things end including my son's traction. I'll never know who these people are or what their lives are actually like. But that's the beauty of fiction. I don't need to know. I can just make it all up.

The Fifth Chapter of the Book of Jonah

I was more than interested to find one of the exercises in the "Sources of Fiction" chapter in Josip Novakovich's book Fiction Writer's Workshop suggested reading the Bible and taking a tale, such as the story of Jacob and Esau (which I already did, sort of) or of Joseph and Potiphar's wife, and expanding on it. I especially appreciated Novakovich's mention of midrash, or as he puts it, the "Hebrew tradition of interpreting Biblical stories through filling in the gaps," since my wife is Jewish and I've read midrashim before.

One of the stories in the Bible that's always bothered me is the story of Jonah. The whole book is only four chapters long and it ends on a cliffhanger.

Jonah is tasked by God to travel from Israel to the great (non-Israelite) city of Nineveh and prophesy that if they did not repent of their sins, every living thing in the great city would die. Well, Jonah didn't want to do that because he really wanted Nineveh to be destroyed for its sins, and he was afraid that if he obeyed God, Nineveh might actually repent and be saved from destruction.

So like a petulant teenager, Jonah runs away, hops on the first ship heading out of town, and is soon out to sea.

God is not that easy to get away from though, and Jonah's adventures (you may recall he ended up spending a little time inside the innards of some sea creature) were just getting started.

To get the background for my small missive, read the Book of Jonah first. You can find it online at such places as BibleGateway.com or Chabad.org, depending on whether you prefer Christian or Jewish tradition.

After you're finished reading the fourth and (formerly) last chapter, read my "chapter five" and let me know what you think.

Now it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was grieved.

And he prayed to the Lord and said, "Please, O Lord, was this not my contention while I was still on my land? For this reason I had hastened to flee to Tarshish, for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, with much kindness, and relenting of evil.

And now, O Lord, take now my soul from me, for my death is better than my life." And the Lord said: Are you deeply grieved?

And Jonah had gone out of the city, and had stationed himself on the east of the city, and there he made himself a hut and sat under it in the shade until he would see what would happen in the city.

Now the Lord God appointed a kikayon, and it grew up over Jonah to be shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort, and Jonah was overjoyed with the kikayon.

Now God appointed a worm at the rise of dawn on the morrow, and the worm attacked the kikayon, and it withered.

Now it came to pass when the sun shone, that God appointed a stilling east wind, and the sun beat on Jonah's head, and he fainted, and he begged to die, and he said, "My death is better than my life."

And God said to Jonah; Are you very grieved about the kikayon? And he said, "I am very grieved even to death."

And the Lord said: You took pity on the kikayon, for which you did not toil nor did you make it grow, which one night came into being and the next night perished.

Now should I not take pity on Nineveh, the great city, in which there are many more than one hundred twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left, and many beasts as well?

-from Jonah chapter 4

Chapter 5

And Jonah replied to the Lord, "Did the kikayon sin against you and against your people Israel as did the people of Nineveh? Their sin was very great and yet you forgave them and they live. What did the kikayon do to live one day and then die?"

And God said to Jonah; "Consider the words of my servant Job: 'Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked I shall return there. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.' Are you greater than my servant Job who suffered severely at the hands of the Satan and yet did not lose his trust in Me?"

Jonah replied to the Lord, "Did not your servant Job also say, 'I would set out my case before Him, and I would fill my mouth with arguments?' Hear me and I will speak. If you grant life to the people of Nineveh and yet death to the innocent kikayon, please allow me to die as well, for my life has turned to ashes and my tongue to wormwood."

And the Lord spoke to Jonah saying, "My servant Elijah was one such as you, desiring death in the face of adversity and believing himself the only righteous one of my servants. An angel guided Elijah to Horeb where my servant Elijah found me, not in the wind, not in an earthquake, not in a fire, but in a gently blowing breeze. And while Elijah thought himself alone, I had indeed saved for Myself seven-thousand in Israel whose knees did not bow to the Ba'al nor did their lips kiss him."

And the Lord continued to speak to Jonah saying, "You speak of Hashem, Master of Legions as slow to anger, as having much kindness, and relenting of evil. Do you believe that I in My mercy only forgive the people of Israel? Is not the whole world Mine? Did I Myself not create it? Did I not breathe life into the mouth of every soul? If the people of Nineveh would sincerely repent of their sins, even great sins, should I, the Lord, not forgive them, even as I forgive the repentant of My people Israel?"

And the Lord said to Jonah, "My servant Elijah did not die, and he found Me in the stillness of a gentle breeze, and he left Horab and found Elisha, the son of Shaphat. And behold, I took Elijah up to Heaven in a great whirlwind and Elisha succeeded him, even as Joshua succeeded my servant Moses when the soul of Moses departed him on the other side of the Jordan."

"So what should my servant Jonah do?" the Almighty inquired.

Jonah's chest heaved with a sigh. "What can I do, O' Lord? Though the kikayon is dead, the people of the great city Nineveh live just I live. They have repented my God, just as I repent."

God had said to Jonah, "Now should I not take pity on Nineveh, the great city, in which there are many more than one hundred twenty thousand people who do not know their right hand from their left, and many beasts as well?"

The people of Nineveh, more than one hundred twenty thousand of them, though they repented, though they were forgiven by God and they lived, still did not know their right hand from their left. They still did not know God, for there was only one prophet sent to be among them, and that was Jonah, who had not desired that Nineveh should be spared, at least not until now.

One day, long after the time of Jonah, another servant of the Lord's named Simon who is also called Peter, will witness a great miracle and say, "I most certainly understand now that God is not one to show partiality, but in every nation the man who fears Him and does what is right is welcome to Him."

So Jonah got up and left his hut east of Nineveh and returned to the great city as a prophet of God, and he spoke of the Lord to all who would listen, from the very least of the citizens to the mighty King of Nineveh, and he ministered to the people of Nineveh for many days.

I Want to Write What I Don't Write Well

Allen Steele: Credit: Wikipedia

So I just finished reading a collection of short stories called Tales of Time and Space written by Allen Steele and I discovered I've been bitten by the bug again.

Don't get me wrong, I've been a published author for over a decade and at my "day job" I'm a technical writer for a software company, so I'm writing every day. And although I don't contribute to this blog very often, I'm frequently seen or at least read at My Morning Meditations and The Old Man's Gym, so again, I write very frequently.

But the one thing all of the works I've ever produced (or almost all, but I'll get to that in a minute) have in common is that none of it is fiction.

The first writer who ever made me want to write fiction was Harlan Ellison. I don't know what it was, but something about his style and how easy it was to believe his characters were real human beings you could talk to, touch, and connect with, made me want to create people and worlds, too.

The first (of two) creative writing classes I took was in high school. I think I was a senior. It was for an English credit. We were assigned to write all sorts of poetry, trying to learn the styles associated with, among other things, Shakespearean and Spenserian sonnets. We even got to try our hand at haiku.

But when it came to writing fiction, my big problem was that the characters and the situations I created were too derivative. They were always some variation of something I'd read or seen on TV.

My second creative writing class, the one I took because I'd been reading Ellison, was a UC Berkeley extension class which, interestingly enough, was held in San Francisco. I was living in Berkeley at the time, little income, and few friends, and consequently, I had a lot of time on my hands. You'd think that in my early 20s, being more mature than I was in high school, would make a difference.

So I took this class. I don't remember very much about it except that I had the same problem I encountered in High School. I didn't even believe my own characters were real. How could I expect anyone else to?

I should say at this point that I took another UC extension class from cartoonist Dan O'Neill at about the same time, and this class also addressed fiction writing, but from a very different perspective. I still have an unused copy of The Big Yellow Drawing Book which was the "textbook" for the class (I highly recommend it for anyone wanting to learn how to draw or for teaching your kids to draw).

But while I drew cartoons for family and friends over the next several decades (I only do so occasionally now), I never was successful at professionally writing or cartooning or being published in any sense whatsoever.

The bug that originally bit me in the 1970s buzzed off and only rarely visits its old haunts, probably because it knows it won't overcome my inertia, not for long anyway.

A few years back, reading a self-published online comic strip called Westward resulted in me coming up with a plot line and drawing a series of comic strips I planned to put online. In the end, I realized my story idea and drawings weren't very good and I abandoned the project (and unfortunately, Westward's creator eventually discontinued producing new material for the strip).

I've read two science fiction anthologies before Steele's, one about robots/artificial intelligence, and the other on Mars, but science fiction about Mars that could have been written before the mid-1960s, before we knew that there were no canals, no atmosphere that could sustain animal life, and no hope of finding a "lost civilization" on the Red Planet.

Only these stories were written in the past several years by science fiction writers working in the 21st century.

I could hear the bug buzzing around my ears.

So I finished Allen Steele's collection of short stories earlier today and returned it to the library.

It wasn't just reading Steele's stories that got to me, it was the paragraph or two he wrote to introduce each one. Steele presented the background of each tale, what inspired it, and what (if any) portion of his actual lived experience he injected into his creations. He gave me a taste of how a science fiction writer writes and where it all comes from (at least for  him).

Since I was at the library anyway, I decided to look up "how to write fiction" in their catalog system. The catalog number for books of that nature is 808.3, so, being quite familiar with the layout of the Boise Public Library, I took myself over to the northwest corner of the second floor, found that section, and looked around.

Sadly, books like Orson Scott Card's How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy weren't immediately available, but the first edition of Josip Novakovich's Fiction Writer's Workshop caught my eye (not literally, of course). On an impulse, I checked it out (as well as a copy of Steele's novel The Jericho Iteration which, now that I look it up on Amazon, may not be his finest novel, but I didn't want to wade into his "Near-Space" or "Coyote" series just yet).

I may or may not use this blogspot as the platform for trying out some of the writing exercises in the Novakovich book, but just publicly (to the limited number of followers of this blog) declaring my intentions may push me a little bit farther along this path than I might otherwise go.

I've started and quit a lot of projects over the years, and as far as I know, this is just one more of them. After all, just because I'm reading a book about fiction writing and practicing writing exercises is no guarantee that I have any actual talent at writing fiction.

I'm a writer. I want people to like my writing. I like it when what I write is deemed "good" or otherwise appreciated (I get paid). I've probably got too much on my plate right now to take on anything more, but the bug has once again bitten and until the venom wears off (or it doesn't), I'll go where my low-grade fever takes me.

I just wanted to let someone know.