Pleasant Fictions

Turns out, once you've spent a couple of months writing fiction, it's a bit of a rocky road getting back on the travel writing wagon. Because, you know, if it's not supposed to be fiction, you're not supposed to just make stuff up. Not that this has stopped some of the more prominent figures on the political stage today.

I'll admit it: I do have a head start in terms of not having to make stuff up - I've spent a good portion of my life wishing I could make up a story with as many twists as what I've managed to lay down in the tracks of my real life. Really, it's been awesome fun - feels like I'm doing field work on material for some future Scheherazade to tell a sleepy and psychopathic sultan some day in the distant future.

Dinner on "The Porch of Indecision"

Speaking of making things up, we're in Orlando for the weekend, heartland of the fabricated experience. Staying at the Hawaiian-themed "Royal Pacific" Resort, visiting Harry Potter World. The illusions of both are equally absurd, but entertaining. In a way, we're wrapped in at least three levels of artificiality before we would break out into what most people would call an "authentic" experience, but with the Royal Pacific, as much as with Harry Potter, we've checked our cultural sensibilities at the door and are allowing ourselves the decadence of make-believe.

The fake, fiberglass seaplane in the hotel "lagoon" is no more real than the fake snow on the vertiginous chimneys of Hogsmeade. It's okay - it's just another form of fiction, and if you don't press too hard, the illusion is pleasantly convincing. For this weekend, getting away with the kids for a few decadent, indulgent days, it's lovely.

Over the years, we've talked with the kids about special effects while watching movies. I've always felt that the emphasis on super-realistic CGI has been misplaced. I always get annoyed when I hear people confusing the quality of a movie, or story, with the quality of its special effects. Great theater happens in the mind - the props on a stage, or the special effects of a movie are there just to help you visualize, and feel what the author and actors are trying to convey.

Folks complain about the quality of a movie's special effects - I always feel the urge to jump in and say "And what was worse, you could tell that the whole thing was just light projected on a flat silver screen. And the images kept jumping around from scene to scene. It was so obvious that the whole experience was faked, and that we were just sitting in a dark room...." [Sorry, little rant there. Got carried away. Back now.]

We accidentally apparate
into Hogwarts

Where was I? Oh, right - willing suspension of disbelief. Great fun. We toured Hogwarts, drank butterbeer (crème soda with whipped cream), and shopped for chocolate frogs at Honeydukes. Then sat poolside and sipped margaritas (real ones) under palm trees (also real) in the cool evening air. A lovely, lovely illusion.

But tomorrow, it's time to go. Pack up and head home to California, peeling off one or two layers of that illusion and returning to the world of school and work. Which is also lovely. Oh, wait - except that while Devon and the kids are headed back to California, it turns out that I've got to take an unanticipated side trip to Pittsburgh for a couple of days (Note to future self on proper packing for the unanticipated: Orlando weather: sunny and 80F; Pittsburgh weather: 36F with snow showers. I may have to pick up something a little warmer at the airport).

Oh, and the Pittsburgh thing? No, I'm not making that up. Who says you have to be writing fiction to have cliffhangers?

PaNoWri2Mo PaNoWri2Mo PaNoWri2Mo

Hiya! Sorry about that. Yeah, I know the blog's gone kind of quiet lately. Since Christmas morning, in fact, right. I've been, um, distracted. Well, not distracted - I think "preoccupied" is a better word. But I can explain.

You know how I always complain about not being able to write anything long form? How I seem to think in 900 word impressionistic blobs? I've always envied those folks who were able to sustain a thought for the length of a novel. And every time November came around, I'd say "This is it - this is the year I'm going for NaNoWriMo!" And about half past November, I'd realize that I'd not ever actually started writing anything, and make wishful promises about next year.

Well, a funny thing happened at the end of December. I challenged another writer I knew (she will, ahem, remain nameless) to write a short story, given only a title ("A Brief History of Time Travel") and a first line ("Okay, so it's... complicated." - a riff off of our favorite Dr. Who episode). Early January, I started harassing her about not making progress on it, and upped the challenge into a competition: *I'd* also write my own version of the story, and we'd compare when we were done. It was a calculated bet - I knew she couldn't pass up another opportunity to kick my literary butt.

So I launched in, taunting her with daily word counts. Next thing I knew, I was up to 6,000 words, and I hadn't actually settled yet on what was going to happen in the story. Wasn't looking so "brief" any more. The second week of January, when MS Word told me I was at 10,000 words, I knew I had crossed the Rubicon. I pulled out my unloved copy of "No Plot, No Problem" (Chris Baty's NaNoWriMo bible), and nailed down my own set of rules.

1. I would write at least 1,000 words each day on this story.
2. They would be complete crap. It didn't matter. 
3. I would silence my inner editor, I would not second guess myself and edit anything I had written before. If by some fluke of finger-keyboard contact, I had my protagonist materialize at a baby shower wearing top hat and a purple emu, so be it. I would go forward making the plot conform to the event. (Don't worry, he didn't) 
4. I would not stop until I had crossed the 50,000 word mark - Baty's nominal threshold for successfully finishing NaNoWriMo. 
5. Ready? Go! 

Okay, so now it's 48 days later. Late last night, while Devon and the kids were glaring at me for not turning off the damned light, I hit a word count of 51,232 words, the last two of which were "The End". I'm done.

I'd actually crossed 50,000 a few hours earlier, as the plane (the real plane I was riding in, not the one in the story) was coming in for landing in Florida, but I had an unresolved purple emu issue to deal with, and had to spend another 1230 words sorting it out. But I did and it is. Whew. PaNoWri2Mo 2012 is complete, and there won't be a 2013 edition.

Wait - now, before you ask: No. No, you can't read it. Remember Rule #2? It's crap - it's a really really really bad story and if I even let my inner editor out of the box to go back and try to fix it, he's going to have a nervous breakdown of epic proportions. So no - you can't read it. Really. No one gets to read it. Ever. Not even the unnamed author who I originally taunted with the challenge (unless, perhaps, she buckles under and writes her own version of the challenge. In that case, I guess I'd have to let her read it, right?) (Ouch, I can feel the angry daggers from here).

Really - trust me: it's a crappy bunch of writing. But the good news, for all of us, is that it's done. And in the spirit of Bre Pettis' "Done Manifesto": done is the engine of more. Which means I can finally, finally start writing about other stuff again. Which is good, because there's a lot of stuff happening. I'll tell you more soon - I promise.

(In unrelated news, the little counter in the MS Word doc I use to draft my Roadtrip posts tells me that I've just crossed 50,000 words since I'd opened this current scratch document, back in Pittsburgh last year. I may be going to Pittsburgh on Monday. Not sure yet, but that's another story)

Christmas Gifts

54 years ago, my parents married on Christmas day. Their friends weren't doing anything, and everyone had the day off, so it seemed like a reasonable choice. And no one ever forgets their anniversary. My sister and I have a tradition of calling on Christmas to thank my mother for her Christmas gift: us.

Twenty five years ago, I had just gotten my pilot's license. I was living in Seattle, but was spending a few days back home in Denver before shipping off to Japan for a year as an intern with Hitachi. I passed the checkride at the last possible moment - the day before I'd had to leave, and had only flown once since: a couple of laps around the pattern with my girlfriend Mary before she dropped me off at SeaTac. Mary had been my encouragement and support throughout the learning-to-fly thing, and it was only right that she got to be the first passenger (note: the weather was awful, and I really shouldn't have been flying that morning - there's a bit of a story there, too. Maybe later?)

Regardless, I had about 20 minutes of official "Pilot in Command" time under my belt when I arrived in Denver. My friend Brian had no idea I'd even been working on the license, and I was determined to take him on a "surprise" flight as a Christmas present. (another note for new pilots: it is generally inadvisable to take the unsuspecting on "surprise flights". But Brian and I had already been party to enough inadvisable adventures together to justify it.)

I called the local flight school to see if I could rent a plane. I don't remember the constraints, but there was only one time they had available: Christmas Day. Problem was, before they could let me rent the plane, they had to take me on a check-out flight - giving your airplane to a novice pilot to operate in unfamiliar airspace entails a little more due diligence than handing over the keys to a rental car.

The receptionist and I pored over the schedule - there really was no time and no one available anywhere to give me a checkout flight. I was nearly distraught - my work to get the license finished before I left for Japan, keeping it secret from Brian. To be foiled so close to having the perfect surprise for him - it seemed unfair (Okay, really, it was just bad planning. But the 23-year-old brain typically interprets "bad planning" as equivalent to "unfair").

One of the instructors nearby was listening in on the conversation - David DeBuire - I've got his name in my logbook. He asked me what I was doing early Christmas morning.

Nothing, really - we're Jewish. Sleeping in, maybe?

"I could give you a checkout then."

The receptionist protested, but David overruled her.

"Listen, my kids are going to be up at six, tearing open presents and screaming around the tree. Once that's done, I'm going to be ready to be out of the house for a while."

So Christmas morning, with frost still on the ground, David and I were circling the prairie south of Denver in Cessna N49858 - a gift of flight from one pilot, a seasoned instructor, to another, just minted.

I took Brian flying that afternoon. His surprise and enjoyment of the flight was gratifying. It felt like I now had my turn to give the gift of flight, to show someone the earth from above. Not from some small round porthole on the side of pressurized metal tube blasting through the stratosphere at 500 mph. But to look out at the expanse of the earth in its fullness. To say "I wonder what's over there?" and, giving a slight twist to the wheel, to go and find out.

It's now 25 years later. I'm a flight instructor with somewhere around 1500 hours in the air. And it's still magic. But as much as I enjoy the magic myself, the real joy still comes from taking someone else up, someone who's never seen the earth like that. Never seen the hills from above, never known the feeling of being able to casually find the answer to that question of "I wonder what's over there?" That for me is the gift of flight, handed to me by a stranger on a frosty Christmas morning, 25 years ago.