Category Archives: Short Stories

Why Writers Don’t Write (Part 2)

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Of course I can’t blame Comcast that I find it a challenge to buckle down and write. If it wasn’t Comcast, it would be the leak under my kitchen sink, or the incessant barking of my dogs, or any number of things that rudely insert themselves into my life and shatter what begins as a smooth, unbroken sheet of time into a myriad of shards, never to be reassembled.

When I was 21, my Dad’s brother’s wife, my aunt, hired me to paint her kitchen.
Aunt C. was an established, visual artist. Her media were oil and printmaking. She and my uncle were the most unconventional people I knew. They lived close to the beach in LA and their home was overgrown with semi-tropical plants. They listened to jazz and their furniture was handmade in Mexico. They had one child, a daughter, M, three-years my senior. I liked hanging out with M. She recommended books I almost always enjoyed and she offered previews of my future; first in high school, then in college.

Dad and L and C had been housemates during their student years at UC Berkeley. C wasn’t Jewish; in fact her father wrote and published Christian Bible stories. She also refused to wear brassieres or girdles. Mother felt responsible to occasionally remind me of Aunt C’s peculiar religious and wardrobe choices; neither of which held much significance for me but undoubtedly contributed to the smog-like atmospherics when our families got together.

I was happy when Aunt C asked me to paint her kitchen. I liked her and needed the money. I’d just finished my junior year at Berkeley and, partly due to C’s influence, had changed my major from psychology to anthropology; one of the several academic fields in which C had considerable knowledge. The colors she chose for her kitchen were straight from the villages of central Mexico! Clear, strong, and vibrant. I’d never imagined colors like this inside a house. My family’s domestic palate consisted of “off-white” and “sunshine yellow.”
Aunt C. wrote the names of the colors I was to use on the walls and cabinets. Given the number of colors, we estimated that it would take me about a week to complete the project. She would be in her studio (behind the house) and if I had questions or needed anything I should, and this is the point, wait until she came out for lunch. We would have 30 minutes before she returned to her studio. When I was ready to leave for the day, I should. Leave! No “goodbyes.” Just leave. If I came early enough to catch her at breakfast, fine. Otherwise, I was to be about my work without disturbing her. No questions. No phone calls. No visitors.

At our lunches, we talked about my studies. My latest girlfriend. My family. When I finished the job, she told me she was happy with the work I’d done. I was, too. Amazed, in fact, when I saw how it all came to life. On that last day, I did a few touch-ups, we ate lunch, she paid me and I left.

Mom told me she thought Aunt C was selfish to lock herself away and forbid interruptions. Even my cousin, M, had to wait until C came out before she could announce that she was home from school. I suppose Aunt C was selfish. But she’d learned that the only way she could be a productive artist was to guard her time. Treasure it.

Fifty years later, I’m still struggling with what Aunt C taught me; still seeking the balance between my need for solitude and my need for connection and engagement.
When I get it sorted out, I’ll let you know!

Were You Ever a Woman Who Worked in a Paint Department (continued)

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When I realized that this reader was asking me less about the possibility of reincarnation or sex-reassignment surgery than about how I create and develop fictional characters for my short stories, I started an answer in my blog of 7 December 2012. This is a continuation of that answer.

We lived in Eagle Rock from 1986 to 2006 and whenever I needed to buy paint for a home- improvement project, I’d shop at the Home Depot on San Fernando Road. Every winter we battled erosion from the hill that rose up behind our house. We solved the problem by installing a cinder block retaining wall, but it made the view from the kitchen and the patio reminiscent of something you might see from a cell in a state prison.

I decided to paint the wall. I had recently returned from a trip to central Mexico and the amazing colors that bring so much beauty to villages in the state of Queretaro were fresh in my mind.

I selected the colors I wanted from a wall of samples: a fuchsia; a midnight blue; and a sea green and handed them to the clerk. She wondered what I was planning to paint. I told her. She said she liked the colors but was surprised I could “get away with it.” Where she lived, it would be impossible. She said that she took her dog to the Silver Lake Dog Park and there was a house on the way that was brilliantly painted and just looking at it made her smile. I thanked her and headed to the cashier to pay.

Something about that brief exchange touched me and it was enough to get me started. Over the next weeks, I thought about that clerk and the insight her job might provide into the lives of her customers. People looked to her to help them find expression through color.

In general, I knew the kind of personality and range of challenges I wanted to write about, but to do it, I needed a real life. So I named my character “Clarisse” and began to give her a biography; a life story. It was only when Clarisse came to life for me as a person that I knew the shape her story should take. Eighteen months later, Clarisse was born and eventually published in my first collection of short story fiction, Gone to Ground.

I often think about Clarisse and recently decided that it’s time to bring her back. I want to know how things are going for her.

“Were You Ever a Woman Who Worked in A Paint Department?”

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That’s a question a reader asked after he finished my fictional short story “Clarisse” in my first short story collection, Gone to Ground.  At first, I didn’t see the significance.  As far as I knew, I’d never been a woman and I was sure I’d never worked in a paint department.  End of story.  But as I thought about what lay behind the question, I realized that what he really wanted to know was, what was the genesis of this short story and how was I able (if indeed, I was) to write convincingly in the voice of a woman who did work in a paint department.

So let’s talk about where my short story ideas come from.  In fact, most of my short stories grow out of some experience I’ve had or heard about.  I’m an inveterate eavesdropper and take notes of conversations that intrigue me.  One of my short plays, Oakland Triptych, is a good example.  Over a period of several months, I overheard and took notes of one-sided cell phone “conversations” while I waited for flights to L.A. out of the Oakland International Airport.  At night in my hotel, I transcribed these monologues (that’s really what they were since I could only hear one side of each conversation) as accurately as possible.  Then I let them ferment.  When I had three monologues that I thought held promise, I worked through them, one-by-one and tried to imagine what the other party might have said to elicit the speaker’s next lines of dialogue.  Even though I knew they wouldn’t be part of the final product, I needed to have as deep an understanding as possible of each character and his/her motives.  Once I was satisfied that the three conversations I’d created made sense and were as powerful as I could make them, I removed the second (unheard) dialogue and edited the remaining monologues so they would work as very short, stand-alone, one-character plays.  Each of the three needed to have sufficient dramatic structure to keep an audience engaged, even for a short time.  The result:  Oakland Triptych .

I’ll tell you where Clarisse came from  in my next post.