Tag Archives: misfits

Date: by | Categories: Empathy, Misfits, My Childhood, On Writing, Uncategorized

Utopia, Dystopia, and A Love of Life

“Life is a precious gift . . .” by Doug88888

“Life is a precious gift . . .” by Doug88888

“Every utopia – let’s just stick with the literary ones – faces the same problem:
What do you do with the people who don’t fit in?” Margaret Atwood

It’s true that the people who don’t fit in – the misfits – are often perceived as “different” by others. But sometimes they’re also the ones who feel that way about themselves.

When it comes to adolescents, quite a few don’t fit in (either when compared to the norm by others or as a result of self-perception and how they feel).

Dystopian novels and television shows and movies are especially popular these days.

Last weekend I saw Divergent with my niece and I will be reading the books soon. I catch Revolution each week with my dad. And I’ve enjoyed reading the Hunger Games and Maze Runner books. Back when I first discovered my love of reading, as a twenty-six-year old, I also discovered Brave New World and Anthem and Fahrenheit 451 and Nineteen-Eighty-Four and Clockwork Orange and The Giver.

One of the concepts often found in these stories is that even in those future worlds that are supposed to be  “perfect,” life is anything but perfect.
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Date: by | Categories: Guest Blogger, Humor, Misfits, My Childhood, On Writing, Reading List, The Writer's Quest, Uncategorized

What is Ron Koertge Writing For?

Batman and Robin by MrSchuReads

Batman and Robin by MrSchuReads

I didn’t grow up with some prized comic book collection, like one of the characters on Big Bang Theory might have, but I’ve always been a fan of superheroes. Still am.

After spending a few years without television, I recently caught up on the final season of Smallville. That’s right. I admit it.

And, yes, as a boy, I did imagine myself saving the world each time I leapt off the picnic table in the backyard, trying to fly.

As a boy, my favorite superheroes were Superman and Batman, sure, but I also used to imagine The Thing and The Hulk engaging in epic throw downs.

Maybe it’s the way each superhero has flaws, vulnerabilities, perceived weaknesses which they don’t just manage to overcome, but which, in the end, often turn out to be strengths as well.

Maybe that’s why Ron Koertge’s poem “Sidekicks” speaks to me so strongly, in part because it’s not a poem about superheroes, but about their sidekicks, characters who tend to exist in the background. They don’t usually represent the best of us, not in a sense of possessing superhuman abilities, but they do represent the best of us in the way they selflessly put the needs of others ahead of themselves, the way they exist outside the spotlight and still do what we need them to do. Not for fame, but because it’s the right thing. In some ways, they are misfits, yet misfits who often save the day.
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Date: by | Categories: Basketball, Events, Humor, Misfits, My Childhood, On Writing, Stories I Inherited, The Writer's Quest, Uncategorized

Laughter, My Favorite Exercise

Laughter by Symphony of Love

Laughter by Symphony of Love

“Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.” – Victor Borge

So many times, laughter has saved me.

And some of my best friendships have been forged over laughter, some of the best moments in my life. Including times I’ve ended up laughing at myself.

I hadn’t thought about that until the other night during one of the NCAA basketball games. A commercial came on and my mom laughed. And I saw her dad in her then, the way he would break open in a soft smile and the way that smile would quietly sparkle with laughter.

And I thought, at that moment, laughter might just be one of the best things ever.

I recall being a boy (no, it’s true, despite the common theory that I just showed up with a receding hairline and a silvering chin) and watching this amazing pianist on one of the shows my parents liked to watch and his fingers were like Olympic hurdlers racing across the keys. And, yes, that was impressive.

Only I was like six and as appealing as it would have been to have fingers that were fast as gazelles (I could imagine their usefulness for hiding peas at dinner or tangling my sister’s hair), but what I wanted most at that time were legs that were cheetahs, so I could run all over the neighborhood (which I did anyway) faster than anyone (which I so didn’t do).

But then the piano guy stops playing and makes a sound or a face or he does some crazy thing or he makes some tangential comment and I laughed. We all laughed. It was unexpected and a bit absurd, given the seriousness of the music, and absolutely wonderful. And it was also something my family and I shared.

Those moments laughing.
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Date: by | Categories: Empathy, Humor, Misfits, My Childhood, On Writing, The Writer's Quest, Uncategorized

Friends

Mickey McKay & Frank Conifrey - Lenox Hill Settle't [i.e., Settlement]

Mickey McKay & Frank Conifrey – Lenox Hill Settle’t [i.e., Settlement]

“Words are easy, like the wind;
Faithful friends are hard to find.” ― William Shakespeare

As a boy, even with best friends, there’s sometimes very little distance between a fist bump and a fist fight. At least that’s how it was for me growing up.

When you’re seven, eight, even nine-years-old, it doesn’t take a lot to turn all that get-up-and-go fueling your youthful exuberance into scowling proclamations of “take that back!”

As adults, a fight between friends can often turn into something much more dramatic and much more personal. There also tend to be less split lips and more ugly words or all-out avoidance. Of course, when adult friends have a moment, it can also seem like nothing at all – no blood drawn, no feelings hurt, just a word or two, an honest reminder, a respectful, loving, setting straight.

I’ve mentioned it before, but it bears repeating. I’m a very lucky guy.

I have some of the most remarkable friends. Ever!

It’s true. Scientists and Historians are still shaking their heads in disbelief. A few of my closest chums have been friends of mine for two or three decades. That’s right, they’re slow learners.

I had some great friends as a boy too, before we moved. It’s that in between time that was a bit more problematic, so it’s no wonder that’s the time I tend to write about.

One of my absolute favorite things to do as a writer is create the protagonist’s friends.

Without consciously setting out to do so, I’ve found that I imbue these fictional sidekicks with many traits my childhood possessed and my adult friends possess. Characteristics like pluck, curiosity, empathy, spunk, humor, and perhaps a slight propensity for mischief (like Webb) or nerdy interests (like Swatch).

Here are a handful of my favorite quotes about friendship (see if you agree with them or disagree):

“A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.” – Elbert Hubbard

“What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.” ― Aristotle

“Silence make the real conversations between friends. Not the saying, but the never needing to say that counts.” ― Margaret Lee Runbeck

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.” ― Anaïs Nin

“We’ll be Friends Forever, won’t we, Pooh?’ asked Piglet.
Even longer,’ Pooh answered.” ― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

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Date: by | Categories: Humor, Misfits, My Childhood, On Writing, Stories I Inherited, The Writer's Quest, Uncategorized

Family, Friends, and Our Stories: Continued

famsmallIn the beginning, FAMILY is pretty much all we know.

While we’re infants, they’re perceived as an extension of us (in regards, mostly, to how they meet or neglect our basic, inherent needs).

Most of the early truths and discoveries we make are learned through our experiences with family. Our values, our beliefs and attitudes, are influenced by them (as we grow to accept or to resist theirs).

As we age, as we approach and then navigate the muddy waters of adolescence, our FRIENDS assume a much larger role in shaping us (or at least in influencing how we shape ourselves) into the people we’ll become.

All of this may be true. All of it may, and does, and will influence our stories.

But, as Willa Cather stated: “most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.” I can say that most of my personal stories, most of the memories I draw upon when I write, are from that time in my life. They’re related to experiences I had with my family, and adventures I had with my friends back then.

A few of them, in particular, have in some way influenced the novels I’ve been working on recently, but not in the ways you might think. Not for the events themselves, in most cases, but for something more.

Here are a few specific events I recall from when I was between six and nine years old:

The Great Carpet Incident
Broken Bones & Concussed Noggins
Shattered: Or Wrong Place, Wrong Time, Wrong Body
The Land of Up & So Much Falling
Climbing the Walls
Rooftops & Hurricanes

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Date: by | Categories: Misfits, My Childhood, On Writing, Stories I Inherited, The Writer's Quest, Uncategorized

Family, Friends, and Our Stories

Lafayette Wattles & His Little Sister“Other things may change, but we start and end with family.”

What is family? For some, it is the heart, the marrow, the soul. For others, the dragon, the demon, the darkness. If we’re lucky, family is a light that guides us toward our own light, the one inside us.

I’m one of the lucky.

I don’t feel guilty for that, but I AM hyper-aware that not all families are created equal, and that when it comes to family I struck the mother-lode (and father-lode and sister-lode, so to speak).

I don’t come from money. My parents didn’t go to college. They got jobs after high school (before and after the Army for my dad, before and after my sister and I were both school age for my mom) and they spent their entire adult lives working extremely hard.

I was lucky because my grandparents never felt entitled. My parents never felt entitled. My sister and I never had a reason to feel entitled.

We did, however, feel happy! And loved!
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Date: by | Categories: Empathy, Misfits, My Childhood, On Writing, Uncategorized

The Birth of a Story

An Interesting Pattern

Patterns

At first, I thought this blog might be about the journey of writing a novel from start to finish. You know, a log so to speak about what it’s like to build Xero’s novel from the first word up, then try to get it published (which is one of my intentions for him).

Only I didn’t think of recording the whole process until I was halfway through the first draft (and now here I am working on final revisions, so it might be a bit late to get started on that).

Instead, I think I’ll just share with you bits and pieces from the process, starting back at the beginning (not my beginning, but Xero’s).

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Date: by | Categories: Basketball, Empathy, Humor, My Childhood, On Writing, Poetry of Witness, Uncategorized

Frequently Asked Questions

Lennart Tanges

Young Scribes

Q: Did you always want to be a writer?

A: Not a chance!

As I mentioned on my ABOUT page, I never read my first poem, short-story, novel (and so on) outside of an English class until I was twenty-six years old. I didn’t have the patience to sit own long enough to read a bubble gum wrapper, let alone a book.

And that was just reading. But writing? It took me years after that first book before I would stop moving long enough to even know I had something worth saying (the way we all do, really). Before I realized how good it feels transforming thoughts and feelings and experiences into words. How incomparably magical it is to spend some time living from the inside out. That’s what writing is, after all. Those moments when you’re at the page.

As a boy, I was so not ready for that. Back then, I was trying to stuff every feeling I had into all the dark spaces I could find. Writing was the absolute last thing I wanted to do. I mean, I’d have eaten broccoli first. Even asparagus. Just not at the same time.

I loved movies, though. They always felt like adventures I was part of and I could enjoy them with my dad. I still love movies. They’ve always been a way for me to decompress. Besides, I envision everything I write (even the poems) as small movies.

Q: What’s the hardest thing about writing a novel?
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