I have two options when, as now, the Muse deserts me (and this has so often been the case of late, and over, say, the last dozen years).
Well, actually, I suppose I do have more than two options. I could recognize, for instance, that anyone who uses the phrase “the Muse deserts me,” or even just “the Muse,” deserves his desolation.
I could simply stop.
But I do not like to stop.
Or I could keep going, Muse-less and muddling, which is, of course, the usual routine around here. If there’s one thing I’ve pretty much figured out how to do, it’s how to keep going. I can keep going with the best of them, just so long as we can agree that by ‘keep going’ we really mean ‘keep saying.’
I could also repeat myself, which I’m more than happy to do in a pinch. Sometimes, I swear, I don’t even know I’m doing it. There are words all around me, stuffed in books and in the pockets of jackets and pants, scrawled on index cards, scraps of paper, napkins, ATM receipts, and Post-It notes. There are shelves of black, lined journals that are also full of words, words that stretch back now over a decade. Those books are a loose –very loose– chronicle of my long nights, an inventory of the conscripted words that march across my skull in the wee hours.
Sometimes, out of desperation, and out of that frankly terrifying and inexplicable impulse to keep going, I just grab whatever words are at hand and force them to flee through my fingers a second time. In the process they are occasionally transformed, often (well, not often) in surprising ways. Most commonly, in fact, they are entirely unchanged from the day they were born –homely, in other words, and entirely lacking in sense.
When I’m truly strapped for inspiration, though, I turn to Jean Kent’s The Professional Writer’s Phrase Book, an essential tool for any struggling writer. Don’t be daunted by that title; you don’t have to be a pro to use Kent’s book. Even a fledgling scribe will find “thousands of descriptive tags that put pizzazz in any copy.”
It says so right on the book’s cover, and the professional writer who wrote those words wasn’t kidding. I have no idea anymore where the book is (things tend to get lost and buried around here, or it’s entirely possible I loaned it out to a professional writer colleague and never got it back), but I did, once upon a time, jot down some handy examples in a notebook. I’m sure you’ll agree that just about anybody could write a professional-quality story using almost nothing but these phrases and a few simple words of their own.
Take a crack at it and see if I’m not right.
ANGER
time to bring out the heavy artillery
the words were sudden and raw and very angry
feisty as hell
she gave him a most unladylike dustup
the rage in him was a living thing
their eyes traded strings of malevolence
like an awakening giant
if I hold it in any longer, I’ll blow out my teeth
LIMBS
hooked her thumb in her panties and cocked her hip
he swatted her behind
raising the tea cup to his heavily mustached lips
kissed his bunched up fingers…MNYEH!
a moth-wind flutter of her hand
rotates a finger near his temple
HEAD
he twisted a benzedrine inhaler up a hairy nostril
and took a somewhat beery breath of fresh air
she pushed her hair back, the better to glare at him
BODY IN MOTION
all his gestures were outside and violent
grabbing up her gown for the run to the kitchen
she slapped her sleeves to get rid of the crumbs
grasped his tightly rolled umbrella like a sword
she ditted around past all the channels
he sat on the porch and waved away the flies
a body so supple it twanged
he moved like a slug
the slow-spitting and squatting men watched her covetously
standing at the lip of a hole
she walks like a construction worker
he moved with the sure grace of a forest creature
a nudge here, a hip there, and an occasional light shove
left the room like a scolded hound
still beavering away
taking on that ‘Let’s be reasonable’ slouch
BODY MOTIONLESS
a thin old man, frozen on the edge of the fallow fields forever
huddled in the water
standing there with an indolent, tomcat grace
TRADE TAGS
bronzed and beautiful
the massive chest of a body builder
a tropical tan even where it doesn’t show
foundation training in the iron game
highly visible in an alluring bikini
with great stability in the shoulder girdle
BUILDINGS–EXTERIOR
a small, nasty shed with a furtive look
a security system that had everything but a moat filled with alligators
it wasn’t an ordinary building but a home
a suspect motel named El Ranko
the sort of railroad flat you find in the ghettos
INTERIOR
sat at a table about as big as a diaper
a husky oak table
the walls started to sweat
the room smelled of dust, mildew, and old love
rancid grease hung in the air like a wet sheet
CRIME AND FIGHTING
a man doesn’t become an investigator without a capacity for cruelty
a man who didn’t think but let his sinews rumble him to oblivion
his first foray into thrilldom
and then came a moment of atavistic horror
he was covered with blood and vomit
the pain in the testicles streaked up to his stomach
the velvet trap of easy living and hard drugs
the code of the vendetta was absolute
an animal instinct told him all was not well
no gun racks in the pickup truck
he ran like unleashed hell
my goal is to stay out of the morgue drawer
DEPRESSION
in the twilight world of the half alive
restless, seeking
hoping the wind and rain would take away the brooding hurt
he stood in the burning lake of himself, unable to escape
slumped into morose musings
pain and loneliness walked with him in the dark
a life which daily negated all her dreams
FACES–DESCRIPTIONS
the upper-echelon mafioso type
his nose looked like a wedge of cheddar
perspiration on her forehead, like water beads on good butter
a nose that could slice cheese
he looked something like a hawk with mumps
he had a face like a benediction
HAPPINESS
a few crocuses of hope poked through the surface
the feeling of happiness rising wonderfully inside you
beer commercial joviality
when I feel this delicious, I laugh at practically anything, sometimes nothing at all
Enjoy!
INNER THOUGHTS
he took the world by the nose
I still believe happiness can be worked out. I am a fool.
there’s nothing worse than a hero out of work
you could catch it and kill it and pin it down, but then it wasn’t a butterfly anymore
The world was a jungle. Only the strong survived.
Bastard! she whispered behind his back.
yet deep, deep inside he still burned with his love for her
preoccupied with matters of nomenclature
you can’t fall off the floor
love was a weed that flourished in the dark
as bad as being told God dislikes you
PHILOSOPHY
I live in a silent movie
a satisfying influx of Mexicans
not everything was cotton candy
two nice people made for each other
when you walk among women, do not forget your whip
Who knows where terrific things begin?
SMELLS
I smell sneakers
I could smell her light, warm femininity
the lusty odors of earth and cattle
See what I mean? Wow! What you have here are the raw materials to make a writer out of the drabbest, most tongue-tied closet dreamer. And I haven’t even made it to the phrases related to lovemaking (he took a look down her decollete). I’ll buy lunch for the person who can send me a reasonably coherent story –or, what the hell, an entirely incoherent story– that makes judicious use of the largest number of these helpful phrases, and I’ll also post the story for at least twenty-five other people to see! So start beavering away! And send those entries to zellar at rakemag dot com.
Leave a Reply Cancel reply