NOTES TO MYSELF

Continuing with the new Perkins short, working title Sticky Fingers. I let air into it yesterday and am just past the dreaded opening; so far, so good. It occurs to me that this type of thing isn’t just about adding / building; it’s also about subtracting / taking-out. What I remove from the work is just as important–if not more so–as what I put in. I love finding these opportunities to take stuff out, to lean the piece up, to do more with less. Especially with exposition; especially with that.

For example, the story takes place during dead of winter, but I never actually say that.

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Down Home Blues is barely cold and already the new one is humming. Goes to show that when you’ve got the voice, the smart thing to do is to keep rolling with it. Mine is not to question why, because all the prerequisites are there: it’s talking to me constantly, I’ve got the ending, and a decent working title (Sticky Fingers). It’s no less obstreperous than the earlier ones but may end up a tad shorter if I ride herd hard enough.

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. . .by my friend Gerald So:

http://nastybrutishshort.blogspot.com/2008/11/down-home-blues-by-rob-kantner.html

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. . .in Lansing State Journal:

http://hub.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081116/THINGS0206/811160315/1104/HUB

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Yesterday the new one just flew. After the morning session I kept getting more all day. On the plane, even, I had the little notebook out and was scribbling like mad. So when it came time to go back to the thing, it was pretty well set. In the ‘final’ product (whatever that is), a lot of scraps get left on the floor. Some of them I quite like but have to go. The draft is done now, pudgy at 8700, but I don’t think there is anything serious I can take out. Well honed, I think it is. Some wiggle and jiggle and then it’ll post up. Two down.

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The new Perkins short, working title Down Home Blues, is really booming. Everything is clicking right now and I almost had a contact high working on this thing this morning. Unfortunately real life intruded, as it always does, and I had to head to my client’s. But some dialogue from earlier in the story started rolling in my head (where it came from I don’t know) and I put a pad on my steering wheel and started taking dictation as I drove down Fullerton and Kedzie and Division Street in rush hour traffic. Dangerous, I guess, but a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.

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I had a couple of hours for the new short (Down Home Blues). Let air into it and it went all right, but almost right away I had misgivings. On the plane coming over here I thought up a better way to structure the opening tighter. I’ll put that in play tomorrow. Oh goody, I have another short to work on for the next 30 days. Life is good!

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The next Perkins short is rolling. Yesterday it commenced to popping like a string of firecrackers. This is the way of stories: a door opens, then another, and another, and another. This one surprised me with a coda of sorts — an ending-after-the-ending, or at least after the one I had pegged. Title’s in place, also, so it’s all go at this point.

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I’ve always relied on the maxim “when in doubt, leave it out.” I’d pretty much finished the new Perkins short, “The Go-To Man,” when I discerned (quite belatedly) that there was a whole scene that did not pull its weight. It would have worked fine in a novel, but in a short, which was already bulging word-count wise, it reared up and said CUT ME. So I did.

Even so, I’ve included a link to the deleted scene in the story itself, just for laughs.

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I’ve been on novels for too long. I’ve lost my edge. This I’m finding out from the initial work on the new Perkins short. Such things require a sharper mind-set. Not just word-by-word scrutiny–that comes later–but episode-by-episode scrutiny. I’m finding all kinds of cuts and compressions that I can do, most of which make all kinds of sense once I see them. Fun stuff. Good to be back on it. To hell with the books.

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