Tag Archives: Xero Treu

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, Projects, The Writer's Quest, Uncategorized

Writing Sample from Xero

Closing Doors - Rusty Knob #2 in Black and White by Bitzcelt“Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints
his own nature into his pictures.” ~ Henry Ward Beecher

Nearly the entire time I’ve worked on my Middle Grade novel The Short Bus, I’ve thought the story has had little do with me personally. Recently, however, I realized that it has everything to do with me.

When I first started writing the book, I wondered what it would be like to be the most ordinary kid in the world. So ordinary that you were almost transparent. So average that you were forgettable.

Most people, after all, have at least one thing they do well. So what would it be like, I wondered, to be the kid who didn’t seem to do anything well?

In some ways, like Xero, I’ve felt invisible at times. As a boy, sure, but even as an adult.

Even recently, I experienced this very thing, at the same time, it turns out, that I was coming up with the idea for the novel. Like Xero, I wanted someone to see the one thing I did best. I tried to show it every way I could think of. In the end, though, that someone didn’t see anything at all.

The novel is about a boy who thinks it’s what you do that makes you extraordinary. He hasn’t learned yet that it’s really just a way you are. Sad to say, I don’t think I understood that myself until Xero showed me.

The following is a very brief writing sample, a short chapter from my Middle Grade novel, The Short Bus.

Bear in mind, it’s a chapter that didn’t exist until, well, just now. It’s brand new. In other words, it’s a rather rough draft. Still quite raw. I hope you enjoy it though.

Oh, by the way, since this is an excerpt from later in the novel, you might need a little backstory:

Xero is thirteen. He and his best friend, Webb, have made friends with a boy they call Knee Boots (an older boy named Kevin who suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury four years earlier). John is Knee Boot’s father and Mick is Xero’s brother. There was a recent confrontation at school between Xero and Mick and Knee Boots happened to be there. Witnessing the conflict upset Knee Boots due to what happened that terrible day in his past. Xero has gone to check on Knee Boots. To make sure his friend is okay.

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

The Gift of Generosity

Lafayette & Sis at ChristmasToday I’m going to write briefly about Christmas and the Gift of Generosity.

I don’t remember a lot about my childhood. I’m not sure why, I just don’t. Even less from my teen years. Perhaps, I’ve just tucked it all away somewhere. The events I recall most from my early years tend to be embarrassing and funny, though a few were frightening. I alluded to several of those last week in the list that appears at the end of this post and I’ll get to those incidents after the holidays.

Two things I do remember from my childhood, though, are how my family showed me the importance of GENEROSITY in the things they did, and CHRISTMAS.
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Date: by | Categories: Events, Feedback, On Writing, Poetry, Projects, Submiting, The Writer's Quest, Uncategorized

A Different Point Of View

A Different Point of View

A Different Point of View by Simon Daniel Photography

“It’s not denial. I’m just selective about the reality I accept.” ~ Calvin and Hobbes

I guess you could say this is a post about truth, whatever that might be, which makes it about fact and reality (double ditto whatevers), which makes it a post about perception, really, a post about point of view.

And what does that even mean?

Sure, point of view is a way of considering a thing, not limited merely to our sensing the thing, but involving an attitude as well (about the thing being sensed, yes, and often about ourselves).

Cold Hard Fact: sometimes the words we least want to hear are the words we need to hear most. Sometimes they provide us (or force us to take) a different point of view.

I suppose a resistance to the words we don’t want to hear might be a form of self-preservation (of the ego, at least, and maybe of one’s dreams). I mean, giving up on our dreams seems to be more common than chasing them once we reach a certain age (that sort of cynicism seems to be taking hold in adolescence these days which is such a terrible shame).

If you’ve somehow found a way to hold onto those dreams, to chase them, your dream-preservation response is probably heightened.

Given the myriad pressures on us from so many directions to put aside the dream (you know, to let go of the “fanciful”), for the pursuit of the practical, I get the inherent need to defend our pursuit, but not at the sacrifice of reason. After all, sometimes the perceived criticism, sometimes the feedback, the insight, the advice, the idea being shared with us (wanted or not) has merit.

Sometimes it bears, at the very least, a seed of truth.
Which is often also a seed for growth.
If we recognize it, that is. If we allow ourselves to perceive it, to consider it, to weigh it, to examine it from various points of view.

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Date: by | Categories: Events, On Writing, Poetry, Submiting, The Writer's Quest, Uncategorized

Practice

Practice Time At The Page Working on Xero Treu

Practice Time At The Page Working on Xero Treu

Dorianne Laux and Kim Addonizio write in the opening pages of their wonderful book, The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry, that 90% of what we do as writers is “practice.”

Rather than contradict myself and spend several hours on a new blog post this week, I’m going to dedicate the next few days to practice. After all, I’m attending an important conference next weekend (Rutgers Council on Children’s Literature One-on-One Plus Conference) and my goal is to have my revision of Xero completed by then so I can share it with the editors and agents I meet.

Of course, that means I need to spend all my free time right now reworking the manuscript.

I need to practice!
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Date: by | Categories: Humor, Misfits, My Childhood, On Writing, Uncategorized

Remember Every Scar

Got Pummeled Here

The Hurt Wall

“A little talent is good to have if you want to be a writer,
but the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.” ~ Stephen King

We all have scars: some physical, some mental, some emotional. Some are deep and dark, others superficial, others in between, but most leave their mark in some way on the person we become (it’s how we respond to the events that caused those scars that often defines us).

I look at my knees and my shins and I know full well that I don’t remember every scar, not all the physical ones anyway (the others tend to be easier to remember, or harder to forget).

There was that one summer afternoon and the banana seat bike at my aunt’s house with its shiny chrome fenders, the bike I tried to hurdle (whatever might have inspired such an act is a mystery). The front fender turned bloody pretty fast and somehow that scar remains on my left shin.

There was the time when I was five or six and I plucked the discarded razor blade (which I was specifically told to stay away from because it was sharp, because it could hurt me) the same razor that had been hidden in a folded Kleenex and stuffed at the bottom of the trash, the razor I tested on my index finger.

Still got that scar to remind me of my youthful curiosity (meaning my flat out stupidity, that is).

I spent a lot of time on the ground as a boy (sometimes playing with my plastic troops and my hot wheels, sure, but most often the result of some outside force acting upon my body – you know, like gravity, or bigger stronger older boys).

I never really thought about it until today, but remembering scars isn’t always bad. Sometimes it can be a lot of fun. For one thing, it’s a chance to give my sister a hard time. And when is that not fun?!? Like now, for example, as I remember the events that led to my propensity for climbing, for being UP. Those events are finding their way into my writing. So, you could say, they’re scars well spent.

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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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