Dispatch #18: Give Me Texture

A writing mantra (plus some events)

Summer is now in full swing. Car thermometer hitting the nineties, bra sweat, neighborhood fireworks every night around midnight, trashy people at the beach setting up pop-up tents right in front of your towels, but the water’s perfect, perfect, perfect. Angry Birds for the zillionth time on the TV, a bowl of nectarines on the kitchen counter, a pile of water-logged books on the bathroom floor, a bottle of red wine chilling in the fridge, the sand-coated bathing suits drying on the deck chairs, and you’re always hoping you’ve got enough limes in the fruit bowl to make that Saturday night margarita. Don’t forget:

1 oz lime juice
1 oz cointreau
2 oz tequila or mezcal

Give me a medal because, since early June, I’ve read my brilliant friend/student Darcy’s novel manuscript as well as six (SIX!) thesis manuscripts for my teaching gig at Ashland University’s low residency MFA program—AND I continued revising my book.

I’m onto reworking part 3 of my book, which takes place in LA in 1996-1997.

To be honest, after my machine-like productivity, I wasn’t very focused this week. I blame having to take Ginger to camp every morning on public transportation and then getting my ass home—it really kills the writing vibe, you know? But next week—next week!—I am WRITING.

Watch out, world!

This first section of part 3 I’m focusing on two things. First, adding some era texture. Second, showing how things between characters are generally, at this stage in their lives, fourteen years since you last saw them: a little summary with scenic moments. Doing that sort of technical scenic summary work feels a lot like playing a game of cat’s cradle: weaving and transferring and holding my breath that the fragile contraption doesn’t fall apart.

Texture is my new favorite craft preoccupation. Is that even a word people use in fiction workshops? Well, they do now, because I wrote GIVE ME TEXTURE! on the margins of nearly every thesis I read. (I didn’t write it on Darcy’s book because she is a goddess of texture; her details about everything, from the desert to famed LA-apartment community Park LaBrea, thrill me to my core.) I like the word ‘texture’ because it signifies something felt, it has an experiential quality, be it silky and smooth, or rough and uneven, or something else altogether. Either way, it’s specific and felt.

For my book, I need more textural details to evoke the Fairfax District (a neighborhood in LA) in 1996. The businesses on Melrose, the house my characters live in, the feeling. I’m always a fan of using objects—the concrete, the physical—to evoke a richness of scene, to make it real. That, combined with all the sensory details, the corporeal reality of moving through the world, makes the fictive world come alive.

(Remember the restaurant called The Burger that Ate LA? Remember the way your earlobe burned and tingled when the guy pierced your ear at Maya? The color of the wooden floors in the hallway. That almond-skin color. Remember and evoke, I tell myself. Do it with texture.)

In two weeks I leave for Ohio. First, I’ll spend two days with Doug and Molly, my friends from Oberlin. We’ll be in Cleveland for a night and then we’ll take a pilgrimage to Oberlin to enter various memory fugue states. Should I go read some literary theory at the library? (I regret to inform Obies of a certain age that A-Level was no longer a study spot by the time I taught there in 2008!) Should I take some mushrooms and stand before Hall Auditorium and say, “This building is raping me”? Should I get tater tots at the Feve? Should I walk across Wilder Bowl, crying at my far away youth? Yes to those last two.

After the great triumvirate (AKA Molly, Doug, and I) walks down memory lane and visits with a couple former professors, I’ll go teach at Ashland for a week. Workshops every morning, craft talks in the afternoons, readings in the evenings. I know I’m going to love the nerdery.

Hopefully, by the time I’m in Ohio, part 3 of my book will be a beautiful infallible contraption of texture. Pray for me?

*

Before I leave you—

A few newsletters ago I said I wanted to more magazine work. Well, folks, fellow fiction writer Lisa Alexander read said newsletter and asked me to write for Edible LA—she’s now the publisher and editor-in-chief! Talk about putting out the bat signal! Thanks to Lisa, you can now read yours truly on natural wines. For this piece, I did a tasting with Kelsey Gray at Los Feliz restaurant Kismet and then Patrick and I took an online wine class with James Sligh of Children’s Atlas of Wines. My fellow Angelenos, I definitely recommend asking for Kelsey should you dine at Kismet; she is also a writer and so she really brings poetry and inspired imagery to her wine descriptions. Plus, she is passionate about the work she does, and she will find the perfect wine for you. For everyone who drinks wine, everywhere: the virtual class is a good deal: $109 for three (gooooood) bottles of wine, shipped to your door, and then a two-hour virtual class with notes and such. Do it as a date, or with friends.

Oh, and I’ve got a couple events coming up:

On Sunday (um, that’s TOMORROW—July 10th!) at 5 pm, I’m going to be reading at a group event for Air/Light Magazine to celebrate their first five issues. My story, currently called “Calistoga,” will appear in their sixth issue, so I’m going to read the opening. It has best friends, one rich, one poor. It has the looming danger of Scientologists. It has a California wildfire and a resort/spa that may or may not be based on Indian Springs in, yep, Calistoga. The story has motherhood, too—of course. I’d love to see any and all pals and/or enemies. (Frenemies, too.) Here’s the info.

Then, on Thursday, July 14th at 7:00 pm, I’ll be at Vroman’s Bookstore to interview my friend and fellow Millions contributor Michael Bourne about his debut novel Blithedale Canyon. I’m going to ask him about writing about California, gentrification, and addiction. And more! Michael has written for Poets & Writers for years, and I think he has an interesting perspective on publishing, rejection, and tenacity. Come on by! Here’s the info.

I hope to see a friendly face!

Tell me about your summer.

xoxo

Edan