#artist

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All My Characters Come From Dive Bars

Pretty much any fiction writer will say their characters are as important to them as their kids. Character development is one of my favorite things about writing and I recently came to an interesting conclusion about my process – a large portion of my dramatis personae are inspired from people I met in dive bars. That’s easily where you meet the most interesting people. It’s not the clubs or fancy restaurants or fund raisers or through your college buddies. It’s in real low down places where humanity goes to seek out that which they are looking for – whatever it is, or maybe nothing at all. It’s also where people feel free to show their real selves. There’s no veneer in a dirty, rundown joint that serves the vilest of swill to those either hurting in their souls or merely trying to shake off the weathered skin of real life for a few minutes or hours. Dive bars are where the bedrock of humanity chooses to display their whole beings.

The Anchor

The Anchor – New Haven, CT  – One of my favs – unfortunately gone forever.

I didn’t start frequenting dive bars until my mid-thirties. In my younger days I maintained the public face of a pretty spoiled prick. I would only patronize those places wherein only the crème of the professional crop go slithering about – lawyers, politicians, business people, wannabe business people and that lot. I still go to those places but now it’s with a somewhat jaundiced eye. Those people are a bit boring and ubiquitous in as much as literary interest is concerned. How many different ways can you write folks like that? Desiree became a successful attorney after working her way through law school stripping and tending bar. Conrad always wanted to be an entrepreneur but was only able to afford tuition to the school of hard knocks and had to sell his left shoelace in order to afford the apple that inspired his idea to manufacture left handed apple corers and finally hitting it big.

Barf.

Give me Tanya; a single sixty something diminutive black woman I met in New Haven, CT who grew up as poor as poor could be but somehow saved up her money and scored a gig working at the Social Security office in San Francisco in the early seventies and then after reaching pension age, moved back to New Haven and became a librarian for Yale. Why is that more interesting than the aforementioned people? Because someone like Tanya will give you their real story and let you knead through the clay that made them what they are and what they believe in. Tanya was grateful for everything that happened to her and although I would argue it was all her – she would say it was luck and happenstance. Try finding a lawyer who would say that! Tanya possesses no ego and practices life on a common sense platform. Except for her trip across country to San Fran, she’s never really been anywhere else. Once a year she takes a vacation – thirty miles east of New Haven where she stays in a Howard Johnsons motel for three days (she takes a train by the way, never got a driver’s license) and eats out at a Friendly’s restaurant. If you’re not from the Northeast – Friendly’s is a step above McDonald’s. Tanya’s advice to everyone is that if you can’t afford to spend twenty bucks when you go to the dive bar – stay home until you can.

Does Tanya’s life sound boring to you? Then you’re not a writer. I could build a hell of a character around her life and a great story as well. Her life is full of good stuff to play with. It has morals, in term of morals to the story and regular morals as well. It shows character, strength, quiet rebellion but rebellion nonetheless and humanity. One could make a nice, quiet heartfelt story about Tanya, the kind you could shop to Reader’s Digest or some fluffy literary rag. Or, if you’re like me, add in some darkness and struggle, shore it up with a few lurid relationships along the way and ending up with her alone, but content and willing to go off into the afterlife with little fanfare, but also no regrets. How about this; a fictional historical chronicle of life as a quiet, but astute young black woman making her own way in the drastically changing United States of the seventies. With a little research and some imagination you could have a Gore Vidal-ish novel to beat the band.

What’s the point of this diatribe? I don’t fucking know. I guess I was thinking about my characters and how they were born and felt like passing it along. For all you writers; if you’re in a bind and need to go and toss some character attributes into your arrow bag then take a little respite to your local dive and spend some time talking to real people. Sometimes your imagination needs a little kick in the ass and nothing is as good as taking cues from actual humans. For readers, if you’re enjoying someone’s work keep in mind the arduous process that goes into creating your favorite made up people and understand it’s about as hard as squeezing a watermelon through a hole the size of a lemon. (See what I did there?)

#divebars #newhaven #jbvincent #theanchor #bukowski

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Fearless Writing

The audio version of this post appears below. Just click on “play”.

 

 

I’m a pussy when it comes to writing. I really am. And, it gets worse with age. I like raw…like, exposed nerve, mind-boggling, “can’t believe it went there” kind of raw. Human character boiled right down to its component parts – darkness, fear, topics too weird to think about, explosive revelations about otherwise seemingly normal people that shock and make you really have to think and wonder how you could have been so wrong about them.

 

I love to read raw and I like to write raw. But, I hold back and would bet, hell, I know other writers do the same thing. I truly believe that there is a very small percentage of writing out there that really represents what goes on in the mind of the writer. I read so many books where I think to myself – man, this author could have gone so much deeper and I bet they didn’t for the very same reason I don’t – fear.

 

If only everyone could be like Bukowski – fearless. Bukowski was completely unaffected by the notion that people would find him to be nothing but a drunk, womanizing, sadistic bum. He didn’t care what people thought at all. I need to do that, but I’m far too afraid. Too much of a pussy.

 

My fear stems from the notion that you are a piece of every character you create and there are some pieces I don’t want my readers to know about, or that just don’t exist, that were born from my imagination, but that I worry people will think I have direct experience with. Here’s a for instance: hookers. I’ve never engaged a prostitute before and certainly never will. However, I do have experience with hookers through my former career as a private investigator. I worry that if I write a largely accurate portrayal of a scene with a hooker and bring my readers into that scene, then people like – oh, I don’t know, my mom, the mother of my children and everyone who knows me would think that I have been a participant in the oldest profession. Stupid, just stupid, I know it is, but I don’t want to have to explain myself every time I write something racy, off color – raw.

 

And, that’s just sad. I always have a couple of novels brewing and throughout the process I send passages to my trusted advisors Rose and Holli, whom I’ve mentioned in this blog before. For this one supernatural novel, I have a very graphic scene that takes place in Hell and involves a priest, a little girl and the Devil. The writing is probably some of the best I have ever done. And, when I passed it on to Holli & Rose with a very small exception – I think it was word placement or something, they thought it should stay in and not be changed. Guess what? That paragraph will only see the light of day after either me or mom is safely six feet under.

 

My intention with that scene is to put the reader directly in front of it and instill terror, repulsion and abject hatred. It scores on all of those points. But, my fear is that someone will read it and be like “damn, that JB Vincent is one fucked and twisted individual that he can come up with shit like that.” I realize Stephen King never had that problem and that’s why he’s so rich and famous. I feel like I have to filter my imagination so that when people see me walking down the street they don’t quickly walk to the other side. Or, friends and family will think: “how come we didn’t realize he was so mentally ill.” Unlike Bukowski, I actually do want people to like me somewhat, or at least not be repulsed.

 

So, what’s the solution? I honestly have no idea. Like I said, it’s getting worse with age – there are my kids to think about. I can just see them going through my things after I take off for the unknown. “Wow. Daddy was sure one weird dude.” Perhaps I just need some yoga, more absinthe and vodka, or maybe I need to lose the confines of my conservative being and just go for it. I’m going to have to keep you posted on this one.

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Writers: Ditch Shakespeare

See ya Billy Shake

See ya Billy Shake

 

Enough Shakespeare.

Christ, how long has the guy been dead? I know he was an amazing timeless classic, but criminy how many more books, movies, poems, plays, tv shows, etc need to be based on all those tedious themes of his? It’s time for something else. There must be other more interesting platforms from which one can launch their art, or how about this: your own platform. If I see one more modernization of a Shakespeare theme, I may have to buy a thousand antique copies of his works and burn them on the town square.

 

I’m picking on Shakespeare because his is the most prominent name out there for thematic abuse by artists from the last four centuries. There are plenty of other examples out there with Dickens being one of them, but I chose Billy Shake to rant about because his stuff seems to scream be laborious with your words and situations and beat every scene into tedium as best you can at those who choose to base their art on his body of work. It was bad enough we had to suffer through it the first time let alone having to relive it again and again in the work of many millions of copycat stories throughout the ages.

 

So, what set me off on this tirade on surely the most famous author of all time? I was chatting with some stranger at my favorite watering hole in Woodstock, VT near where I live. The woman sitting next to me started up a conversation and we exchanged the usual “what do you do?” niceties and she said she was a writer. Now, I never tell anyone I’m a writer straight away because I like to study people and once you launch that missive I’ve found people tend to tighten up a bit and not be themselves. I usually use the stay at home dad thing, or go the retired private detective route.

 

The woman seemed pretty interesting so I asked what she was working on and found that she was just about done with her first novel, which was very Shakespearian in nature. Made me want to puke. The worst part being she mentioned a fear that the story may be too recognizable as having its genesis in Hamlet. “Bartender? Check please.” I don’t ever like to be rude and said nothing and instead listened briefly to her outline while waiting for the bill. She was worried for good reason and I really was dying to say something to her about coming up with her own thing, clearly she was smart enough and everyone has their own story in them and blah, blah, blah… But, I really didn’t have the energy.

 

I would rather have heard her say something like: oh, it’s a basic good vs. evil story, or it’s a Cinderella type love story, it’s a rags to riches thing (just don’t say Dikens-like), it’s a supernatural thriller, mystery, self help, calculator manual, Swahili translator – whatever, anything but, its Shakespearian. God, it makes my freakin’ teeth hurt. It’s time to ditch the Shakespeare. There is so much talent out there and so many great stories that surely we no longer need to rely on this dead fossil to be the foundation on which to build our own work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Am I an Artist?

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Just recently I had someone in my office and as I was rummaging through all the red ink laden papers and moving my two Mac Books out of the way and generally just repositioning the debris of writing, she said to me: “It’s hard work being an artist isn’t it?”

I couldn’t really answer her because I’ve never seen writing as an art. I know that seems ridiculous but I came into the writing thing a little late. My problem was I never listened to my mom who spent thirty-five years telling me I was a writer. So, I’ve been slow on the uptake to recognize what I see as a guilty pleasure as art.

I do love art, but I’m no expert on it. I’m a guy who knows what he likes when he sees it, but I couldn’t tell you why. Art has so many forms; I could make this blog post 10,000 words, so I’m going to use painting to make my case.

I have a friend who is a great artist and I’ve spent some time watching him paint. It was fascinating and frightening all at the same time. He would set up these ridiculously expensive canvasses on an antique easel, take a few tokes of weed and then actually squirt a half tube of four or five different colors of oil paint (also insanely expensive) into this absolutely impossible blob of goo. Then he’d take another toke, lean back, look at the mess and start a conversation.

During the confab, which could be on just about anything, my friend is a very interesting guy, he would start working his brush occasionally scraping away excess paint with some sort of knife like instrument. Pretty soon something would start to take form. It’s like watching magic. Without fail on the occasions I watched this process, it would seem to me just as the painting was finished, he would step back smoke some more pot and then put a huge X over the whole thing. That was the frightening part. The first time this happened, I completely freaked. But, he remained absolutely calm – still talking about whatever while he whitewashed the canvas and started the whole thing over again. And once again, out of all that chaos something amazing would be born.

Talent in its purest form is amazing – watching it happen is a privilege. Which is why I never thought of myself as an artist. I don’t feel like what I do is art or drips with talent. I think about my friend being about to talk while he works (I scream at everyone in the house if I hear a glass clink), get stoned and pull this amazing work out of wherever he pulls it out of – that’s talent.

My work product comes out of constant agonizing. My brain is replete with the white noise of stories whipping around and bouncing off of every receptor of my grey matter going into places I never knew existed and then eventually (usually after years) finding its way out my fingertips onto the keyboard and into the Mac. It never stops even when I’m sleeping. Right now as I write this I have three things cramming up my thought process at the same time. I’m thinking about the ending for a short story that’s going into the follow up to 5 Tales, I’m toying with changing a chapter in one of my novels and I’m thinking about tomorrow’s blog post. With all of that there are related notes on each of those topics everywhere – in reporters notebooks, on napkins, in my iPhone, on Evernote in both computers and I’m sure in places I’ve completely forgotten about. It’s a mess.

Obviously, there is a very blatant analogy just pulsing, ready to burst here. The mess on the canvas compared to the mess in my head and on my desk. So, I guess if I really want to analyze what it is I do, one could say it is art. I’m not sure. I can’t decide if I’m ready to call myself an artist. I guess I’m still a work in progress.