Kneeling in the mud

I love stories – the characters and the bad shit that befalls them, conflict up on its hind legs, crowing, and resolution off in the distance, hiding behind a tree, cowering. But a few words, strung along just so, can get me through the day. A sentence can save the month.

And so, here's one from Dan Baum's "Nine Lives," a book about New Orleans, a few of its people and a couple of its hurricanes:

Miss Pie's swaybacked shotgun was knocked clean off its bricks so that the porch seemed to be kneeling in the mud.

Fancy cowboy shirt

I’ve been thinking lately about Porter Waggoner. I’ve been thinking about Webb Pierce. I’ve been thinking about Bob Dylan singing “I’m the oldest son of a crazy man, I’m in a cowboy band.” I tell my wife that when my novel sells, when I get that big ol’ book advance, I’m going to buy a fancy cowboy shirt like those famous Country & Western stars used to wear. Whenever I say this, my wife threatens to shoot me. It’s going to suck, having a hole in such a beautiful shirt.

Drink unto others

A Thursday morning -- close enough kin to Friday morning, which is on drinking terms with Saturday night. I'm making a mix CD for my friend Jon. We'll drink to it Saturday night. It's drinking music. It's talking music. It's brooding music. It's dancing music but we won't dance. It's fighting music but we won't do that, either, unless I say the Beatles are shit, which I'm liable to to.

The song lineup, subject to change:

1. "Psycho Killer," Victoria Vox
2. "See That My Grave is Kept Clean," B.B. King
3. "Jenny and the Summer Day," Avett Brothers.
4. "Pirates (So Long Lonely Avenue)," Rickie Lee Jones
5. "Sky Blue Sky," Wilco
6. "Rave On," Buddy Holly
7. "Rave On," M. Ward
8. "Yoshimi vs. the Pink Robots pt 1," Flaming Lips
9. "Genius of Love," Tom Tom Club
10. "Once in a Lifetime," Talking Heads
11. "Ja naime que toi," Maurice El Medioni
12. "Beyond Here Lies Nothing," Bob Dylan
13. "Things Have Changed," Bob Dylan
14. "Do Unto Others," Pee Wee Crayton
15. "Still is Still Moving to Me," Toots & the Maytals and Willie Nelson
16. "I Shall Be Released," Wilco and Fleet Foxes
17. "When I Grow Too Old to Dream," Nat King Cole Trio

Of baseball and war machines

Monday morning. Gloom seems to have paid off the sun again. Not a good day for a game, by the look of it, but I'm thinking about baseball. The Felice Brothers are on the box singing, "Oh, Ty Cobb, you're dead and gone / you had a game like a war machine." Later, the ball soars and crowd roars and the scoreboard sweetly hums, "and tomorrow you'll surely know who's won." Nobody plays like Ty Cobb any more. That damned ol' cuss. I'll bet he's giving them hell still, where he is.

A saint walks in a bar

Here's how I write: I bang away at something for weeks or months or years (usually, it's months) until happy accidents start to happen. (Mystery characters appear, bearing plot twists; themes wash up on the river banks; conflict walks in a bar, buys the house a round.) Then I know to plug on. Then I know the thing can be done. And months or years later (usually, it's years), it is. Then I'm done -- and just in time to start revising!

I believe in happy accidents. I believe in Old Man Fate and Blind Joe Luck, and in Lucy of Syracuse, the patron saint of writers. I hope to see them all real soon. But first, so much work to do ...