Inspiration from Tim Miller
Not as much writing today as I would have hoped, but any writing is progress, blah blah blah.
Read aloud and edited five different chapters, and really want to expand the chapter I’m working on now. Journalism has killed my ability to not rush. My first chapter drafts are always frenetic. I’m more apt to say ‘there’s 10 people in the room’ and rush toward the action of the scene than to linger for a moment and add some detail to humanize one or even all of them.
So, that’s my task for tomorrow, Monday, however long it takes. I want to make this next chapter incredibly human. It is probably the first chapter in the book where we meet a bunch of people who are not major players in the book, and although their humanity doesn’t really matter to the plot, I think it matters to me. I don’t want everyone to be a cog merely there to move the plot along. I want to give them some space to breathe and let them make the piece radiate humanity. That said, none of them will get to say too much. I mean, on some level, they are just there to move the plot along.
Today was a staring contest day, and I’m saddened to report that today, the first day since I started this diary, the computer won. Obviously, it has won in the past, but there was no record of it. I did edit a bunch of things, and I did write, but not at the level I would want.
I saw “Tim Miller” perform tonight, and I think that impacted my writing. I had planned to head home afterward and bang out text for two hours, but didn’t. Instead, I sat around and thought about the book I’m writing and how I’m delivering my message.
Tim is an amazing performer who weaves beautiful pieces out of his history and body, and he does it in a way that carries a warmth and love, although his pieces are also laced with tragedy. In December, he and his Australian-Scottish boyfriend will be forced to leave the United States when Alistair’s student visa expires. They will relocate in England, a place where gay couples are better accepted legally. Of course, being accepted as a gay couple at all would be a step above the United States. Tim also tells stories about people who were taken by AIDS. Tim was in San Francisco the first weekend after I moved here, and he served me a slice of orange during his performance at Josie’s Cabaret and Juice Joint, which was a sort of my first gay communion in San Francisco. Damn recovering Catholics and their fixed imagery systems.
So, anyway, Tim made me think about the balance of telling a story with life and humor and humanity and love and a sense of purpose, but not at the expense of its anger and frustration and hatred. In fact, the investment he builds up in the former makes the latter even more heartbreaking. Saying a friend died of AIDS wouldn’t resonate with an audience, we’ve heard that story, but once we know that friend, learn their stories, feel the love that flowed through them, and the history they shared with Tim, it makes it that much more impactful when we learn that Tim is the only one still alive to relate that history.
Now, my novel will still be rather dark, and cynical, and all that good stuff, but I think there’s a definite need to make it an incredibly human novel, as well. Because it will make everything funny funnier, everything shocking more impactful, and everything tragic more moving.
You know, I think I’m taking back the first part of this diary. I have to stop my former Teamster, former journalist viewpoint of productivity. I continually equate sitting at the computer and typing words as writing. But everything I do is writing, really.
I mean, I was thinking all of this stuff through tonight, but also bemoaning the fact that because of it, I wasn’t writing, when in fact, I just wasn’t composing. Living is writing.
If I want to be an artist, I need to keep filling myself up like a sponge, because then when I sit down to compose, I will be better equipped to wring out the text onto the page. Tim Miller, and David Drake, and Michelangelo Signorile, and Larry Kramer, and Harvey Fierstein, these are all amazing gay people who have shaped my sensibilities as a gay man and artist.
So, taking time away from composition to figure out how to add lessons I learned from Tim Miller into my novel, nothing could be a better use of my time.
Peace,
Jeff
