The Things Writers Do

Some of the things I have done make me cringe. Take the time I barged into the winner of the National Book Awards home on a cold day in November with a copy of my small press novel to have him give me a blurb. Where did I get that kind of nerve? He came to the door after his wife stared at the guy in cowboy boots and a long coat and I told him I seen him in the Chicago Tribune and that I was a writer and I wondered if he would give me some pointers or comment on my book.

Yeeeesh. I cringe thinking about what he must have thought. But he invited me in and we sat in his study while he told me the plot of his second novel for the next hour. I sat there with a half smile and listened to him talk about literature and about reading the bible and then it was time to go. I left him my book and I think he said he would look at it. I think I even called him back and he said something like good luck with the book and that was that.

Fast  forward three years later after my second book and a good bit of publicity and a three book deal with Random House. I am sitting in the basement of a library at a kids table in a kids chair with my knees up and and there is another man sitting there. He does not recognize me. We both took the hundred dollar stipend for talking to children about our process of writing. After a few moments he picked up my book and stared at the name and then turned to me.

I owe you an apology he said. I shook my head. No you don't. I owe you one for barging in like that. We talked a little and then after the library thing ended he shook my hand. I hope you make a million dollars he said.  And that was that. I saw him one more time on the streets of Chicago outside Columbia University where I was teaching. He walked by and stared at me...but my name had escaped him by then.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher....Sometimes a dream is all you have
 

Filling up the writing well

The well goes dry quickly. Maybe a couple hours. Those dudes who write all day are amazing. For most writers it is a few hours and the day is finished. All you can do is gas up for the next day. And you really cant cheat it. Internet has to be cut. Problems avoided. Reading increased. Early to bed and you better not drink or the well water slops all over the floor. You have to pull in your antenna and parcel out what little you have like a miser. Even writing this takes some, but this is after the fact.

Writers only have so much psychic energy. So much zap. So that is why it is best to write in the morning before making a living and life takes everything out of you. I used to like to write at dusk with the world quieting down and I could hide in my garret. But that was before wife and kids and mortgage and bills. Life was simpler then so I took to the mornings.

The well is precious and little things can drain it. Too much drama in your life. Lack of sleep. Not eating right. Sickness. Not reading well. Psychological hangups. A pestering friend, lover, wife, husband, who wont respect your right to disconnect from the world. All you are after is a little dance with the Gods for an hour or two and then a long slow period of resting up to do it all again.

Not so much to ask.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Waiting in the Green Room at WGN Radio

You have glimmers of something passing. Sometimes you just know that what you are seeing might not be around too long. Maybe it was the space reserved for the microphone from the Scopes monkey trial. Maybe it was the foundation of the Chicago Tribune building inscribed on Lower Michigan with Culled in 1920. The slight wisp of snow in the cold darkness as a guard buzzes you into the WGN studio in the bowels of the old Tribune building and you follow a man up to the green room, passing the cases where old microphones reside and black and white pictures of celebrities long passed.

Then you sit down and wait and there is no one there in the green room, just you and rows and rows of pictures of people who look curiously human. The celebrity quality is gone and they are just men and women with gray hair, getting old. A thirty minute radio interview on WGN in Chicago is something you want to hang on too. The man doing the interview is the son of a legendary newspaper man from the Chicago Sun Times. You can hear the footfalls and you shake hands and he tells you to relax and do whatever the *&%$ you want. All Chicago old school. Then you are on in front of the WGN microphone telling your story for thirty minutes.

You try and imagine people all over Chicago waking up and hearing your voice, but your mind doesn't work that way. All you think is that it is just the two of you talking and it doesn't go near long enough. There are a million things you want to say, but you just can't get it all in and then you are walking back through the silent building and down through the guard room and suddenly outside in the cold. It's barely eight o'clock on a Sunday morning. Chicago is empty and just waking up. You drive through the streets, knowing you have used up one of the moments of your life that will never come back. You hit the city limits, then slip into the past.


http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Rocket Man will be out in January

Straight Pride in my Son's School and Free Speech

The response from my first essay on the Straight Pride T Shirts http://open.salon.com/blog/william_elliott/2010/11/15/straight_pride_at_my_sons_high_school with the death threatening Bible quote on the back at a my son's high school brought so many interesting responses that I thought I would take it on one more time. Of course the whole issue boils down to our concept of Free Speech. The lawyers who responded make the case that these students with thier death threat T shirts are covered under the right of Free Speech and should be allowed to wear their shirts regardless of how offensive. Others did not agree and this is the jumping off point.

Fag is a word used when I was in school and it was uttered  mightily and in secret. No one would have dared to put the word on a T shirt and they would have gotten about as far as the entrance and then it would have been a short hop skip and a jump to the Principals office sans T Shirt. Now there would have been no open outcry over the T shirt wearers right of Free Speech. No one would have bought it then and frankly no one considered students had any rights at all. They were students in high school and expected to operate under the social mores and rules that govern the school.

Not so much today. We hear more and more of Free Speech rights with the individual trumping the common good. The common good. There is no law book delineating this point but we operate most of our lives under the mores and restraints of the common good. We would  not tolerate Klans Men in our schools going to classes in their sheets and hoods.We would not tolerate White Pride T shirts with a Death to All Blacks on the back. These would be quickly deemed unacceptable for the school, the community and ultimately the common good. Individual Free Speech rights would take it on the chin.

The sad truth is the White Pride T shirts complete with biblical death threat are nothing different that picking out the effeminate boy and calling him a fag. Both actions are coercive, intimidating, and trample on Free Speech Rights of the individual being targeted. As others have pointed out such threats are downright dangerous and if sanctioned by the school give the student permission to take his T shirt mantra a little further. Certainly the school saw the Death Threat component of the T Shirt with a zero tolerance view in mind and had the students black out the quote with a marker.

Again the lawyers will object. There is all sorts of legal precedence giving these students the right to wear their T shirts under the protection of Free Speech. But this should not be the last word. The community does have rights and if we don't operate under a common sense if not decency umbrella then we would all be in court twenty four seven. To say nothing that this school has thirteen and fourteen year olds, children, and I would ask who protects their rights against the threatening incantations of the wearers of Leviticus? Ultimately, we have to decide what type of world we want to live in and what type of world we will accept. Hate in any form should be cast out and made the pariah. So far the school has spoken for the will of the people and maybe the common good.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man will be out in January
http://www.williamhazelgrove.blogspot.com/