flexing the "write" muscles

Though I crammed a lot of books into my suitcase before I left for Korea in February 2012, I've gradually come to realize that I didn't bring nearly enough. I don't know what possessed me to leave my unread copy of The Idiot; but I did, and I'm intellectually poorer for it.

There were some nonfiction works I shouldn't have left behind, either. One of them was The 3 A.M. Epiphany: Uncommon Writing Exercises by Brian Kiteley. Kiteley, a novelist and writing teacher, makes a big promise with that "uncommon" part in the title. But, as one Amazon reviewer states, "he lives up to it." What little I remember from skimming through it last February was promising. They were, indeed, uncommon and thought-provoking activities. I wish I had that book with me now. My prose could use some more pizzazz.

That said, I'm being more productive. I recently finished that big overhaul of the novel that I embarked upon so many months ago, and I am currently about 5,000 words into my current WIP (which is Novel #2 in the same series). Miss H is my beta reader for Novel #1. I'm nervous but excited. It's finally ready for her eyes. I don't feel ashamed anymore.

...but I am ashamed of how lax I've been with my travel writing career.  I haven't sold anything in over a year. But hope is on the horizon, even as trees leaf out and flowers bloom in Olympic Park. When the weather warms up, the sun climbs high and Spring rears her lovely head, Seoul starts effervescing with parties and events. Case in point, I'm heading to the Spring Beer Fest in Itaewon on May 4, and I'm super jazzed. Mass-market Korean beer has driven me to distraction. I'm beyond ready to sample the best suds this country's microbreweries and home-brewers can dish up. I'll have my old Geordie friend Adam (from Geoje Island) beside me, so he and I will paint the town on Saturday afternoon. YEAH!

...the practical upshot of this is that I'll get a humdinger of a travel article out of it. I just need to find a beery magazine to publish it in after the dust settles. Trust me, I'm researching markets as you read this.

And now I'll leave you with a little something. I wrote it early last year, before I left for Korea. I was involved in a writing workshop with a poet, musician and writing teacher (the mother of one of my old high school buddies). This is one of the things which it produced. It was a writing exercise in which we...um...in which we...

You know what? I've completely forgotten what the point was. Perhaps it was to choose a characteristic and then create a character based on that characteristic. Perhaps it was to choose an important piece of information about a character, but keep it concealed from the audience until the very end. Whatever the assignment's original intent, I've reproduced my response for you below. Enjoy.

CHARACTER STUDY #1

     The sun beat down upon the hard, dusty earth.  The air was dry enough to suck the juice out of any living thing, and was hotter than hell to boot.  Not a breeze disturbed the arid landscape, with its piles of white-hot rocks, the waterless streambeds, the stiff and desiccated plants.  The only sound was the lonesome cry of a solitary hawk winging its way through the boiling updrafts.  Silence and desolation reigned over the land.

     In the midst of this parched wasteland was a pathetic cluster of ramshackle wooden buildings as bleached and bone-dry as the country which surrounded it.  Ten or eleven structures straddled a wide main avenue, which came from nowhere and led to more of the same.  “Monson’s General Store” one shop front was labeled.  “Chinese Laundry” hailed another.  “The Golden Horn Saloon” was a third, and it was here that most of the town’s meager activity was centered.  Skinny, rawboned folk, their faces beaten into a mass of crusty wrinkles and wind-burned lines, moved in and out of the creaking batwings at the saloon’s entrance.  Potbellied men with greasy hair, beady eyes and clothes bleached to a grimy no-color escorted women as slender and wispy as straw.

    The bartender stood behind the worn and long-suffering bar, endlessly wiping whiskey bottles free of the choking dust.  Beads of sweat stood out on his furrowed brow.  The air of desperation was thick enough to cut with a knife.  He heard a particularly loud creak from the batwings and looked up from his work. 

     Standing at the door was a man so thickset and long of limb that he looked like an ape on its hind legs.  The entire saloon fell quiet at the amazing sight.  The stranger loped across the room with an easy, lolloping gait, like a man accustomed to venturing into strange and hostile places.   He swung up to the bar and planted himself on a stool.  The bartender stared.  The stranger met his eyes and opened his mouth, speaking in the hard, gravelly tone of a hard-bitten trailblazer.

     “Gimme a whiskey.”

     The bartender put his eyes back in.  He reached around, retrieved a half-full bottle of red-eye from below the mirror, set a shot glass on the bar and poured a gulp.  The stranger took it, knocked it back, and let out a quiet sigh of satisfaction.

     “Mister?” the bartender began, hesitantly, straining his courage to its limit.

     “Yeah?”

     “Why you wearing a clown suit?”