Here’s my second writing progress report. Just letting y’all know where I’m at and going, and maybe providing everyone with a little insight into their own work. Click here for the link.
Thanks for reading.
MJG
If y’all want to get to know me a bit better, check me out on FACEBOOK, follow me on Twitter, or at my personal blog.
By: Michael James Greenwald
Hi. I made my regular confession on my group blog, The Parking Lot Confessional and would love if you checked it out. It’s my own little spin on Barack Obama’s State of the Union speech. Struggling writer style.
Check it out here.
You won’t be sorry. Well…maybe a little bit sorry, but not jumped naked onto my horse’s black saddle after he’d been standing all day in the Arizona summer heat sorry.
That’s real damn sorry.
Thanks for visiting (don’t leave!!!! don’t leave!!!! I don’t want to be alone!!!! I’ll do a trick!!!!! Any kind!!!!!! Oh, never done that before…okay, but first let me stretch…)
RANDOM VIDEO!!!! RANDOM VIDEO!!!!!
I wish you all good words!!!!!
MJG
By the way, if you all want to get to know me a bit better, check me out on FACEBOOK, follow me on Twitter, or at my personal blog.
January 24, 2010
By: Michael James Greenwald
If you’re a writer, sleeping with a writer, want to sleep with a writer (hey!!!!!), check out my usual Sunday blog post at the Parking Lot Confessional.
Oh, and find out what the heck this video:
has to do with anything (it might not, knowing me).
Hope y’all have a nice Sunday. Send your questions, on writing, on dating, on life, to jonah14646@gmail.com. I’ll post your question here and give it the best riff I can.
Thanks for reading.
MJG
Here’s the link to my guest post from Sunday January 17, 2009 on The Parking Lot Confessional. I wrote on: You-Know-What or That-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named (Ahem…Writer’s Block). Please Check it out!
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (2008)
By: Michael James Greenwald
Turns out there’s a lot going on in Pittsburgh…who knew. Turns out, as well, I’m a little late to the party…well, everyone knew that.
On Thursday night I took a screenwriting class at Story Studio Chicago and the Chicago screenwriter and teacher, Danny Kravitz (not Lenny’s brother) mentioned he’d reviewed The Mysteries of Pittsburgh late the other night on Showtime. I’d heard of the the best-selling book by Michael Chabon, but had never seen the film adaptation. Boy, was I missing out.
Starring the marvelously chameleon-like Peter Sarsgaard, gorgeous and complicated Sienna Miller, and Nick Nolte playing tough like not many actors can, the movie chronicles one summer in the life of the recently graduated, Art Bechstein (played deliciously wide-eyed by Jon Foster), who has three months to do what he wants before beginning his straight-laced life at a top Pittsburgh investment house, a position his mobbed-up father (Nolte) strong-armed for him. Bechstein gets a job as a bookstore clerk, begins banging his boss, and in one drug-fueled night out meets the catalyst who will change his life.
Coming of age stories have formulas, and this movie, and the book (which Chabon wrote as an undergraduate at the University of Pittsburgh and submitted as his MFA thesis at UC Irvine), I assume, though I’m currently working on Chabon’s Wonderboys and haven’t gotten to it yet, follows the formula quite closely, but somehow this is not disappointing. I think this has to do with the richness of the characters, especially Sarsgaard’s Cleveland and Nolte’s Poppa Dick, and the beauty with which the story of a summer in the life of three people who deeply love one another is told.
I’ve often heard that great stories are told like icebergs, where the peak of the berg is easily visible above the water, but the greater portion of the thing exists below the surface of the water. The friendship triangle between Jane, Cleveland and Art is the focal point of most of the movie, but the viewer feels, from the second Art meets Jane and when Art discovers Cleveland’s bi-sexuality, there is something more intimate lying below the water’s surface between these three. The brilliance of Rawsom Marshall Thurber’s writing and directing, though, is found in his restraint in rushing the sexual aspect of their connection, and even though you, as a viewer, know it’s inevitable that two or all three are going to succumb at some point, watching the strength of their bond develop is so captivating, at the end of the movie you’re left with the residuals of the power of friendship more than anything.
For me, great movies leave me with a sense of hope that such magic, of love or friendship or family or community, can be found in the real world. Sitting in my comfy chair, watching the credits of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh roll, I felt that exact feeling.
[Posted originally for my Sunday guest spot on the Parking Lot Confessional]
I’m not one to take to intimately about myself, mainly because I don’t think people give a shit about my life (being that we’re firmly entrenched in the selfish area, where most people will listen to your problems solely to have the right to unload their own issues, in some sort of quid pro quo misery transfusion), but, as Adam Sandler so eloquently put it, “I have a microphone and you don’t, SO YOU WILL LISTEN TO EVERY DAMN WORD I HAVE TO SAY!!!!”
Last summer, I moved back to Chicago, for two reasons. I turned thirty and was living the life of a nineteen year old stoner: bartending for a living and living rent-free in my folk’s summer home; serial dating, not for the reasons I told myself then–I just can’t find someone to be with!!!– but because it allowed me to not having to commit myself emotionally to another human being, thus eliminating any chance they’d ever learn enough about me to realize what I loser I was; making less than 20 thou a year; drinking, a lot (I’m sorry, but anyone over thirty doing a keg stand should really evaluate their life choices); flirting with 19 year olds (I didn’t even like 19 year olds when I was nineteen, I mean, really, how many “The Hills”–I’m firmly Team Lauren, BTW–can one have?); going to Scottsdale clubs, rotating one of three dress shirts I owned, finding myself gravitating to the 50 something guys sitting at the bar watching a sports game on TV and eye-screwing every 20 year that wandered by…you get the idea. Loser.
The other reason I moved back to Chicago was because my father asked me to. Most of you don’t know (sorry Dad), but my father suffers from bipolar disease (it is a disease, not a disorder–the term disorder is demeaning because it pigeon-holes mental illness in a less-egregious category –and it is bullshit that it’s taken the legislature and the public this long to understand that a mental illness is as debilitating as a physical illness like cancer…I’ll get my 3 inch heel caught in the carpet on the stairs of my bully pulpit now and fall flat on my face) and basically has trouble most days just waking up, so the idea that he could run our family business anymore or provide any kind of support to my mother and sisters was unrealistic. So, I moved from Scottsdale, Arizona (S-Dale!!!) to a suburb 15 miles south and west of the city of Chicago, where I grew up. I’ve been volunteering (literally) my time at our family’s business learning the ins-and-outs and picking up the slack (feeding the dogs, taking garbage to the street, carrying the Christmas tree up from the basement–Mike lift heavy thing, grrrr, man) at home.
So, how has this changed Michael the Writer?
Well, let me put in this way. In the three years I lived in Arizona, all of the writing peers marveled at my productivity. My writing goal was 2,000 words a day, and there were days when I’d drink two pots of coffee and write 10 k, but I had the time to do it. I’d wake up at 8 AM (o-kay, 9…fine, 10:59), freshly hungover (best way to write), suck down enough coffee till I felt as though I was a rapid-beat of the heart away from a heart attack (want to motivate yourself to write, get the gongs of mortality ringing in your head), close and lock my office door, and open my laptop. There were days I’d get in such a groove I’d quit writing when the pain in my stomach became so horrible, as my caffeine-infused digestive acid ate away at my stomach lining, I was typing doubled over (almost all of my characters from those three years had ulcers) and find it to be dusk out my office window. I’d shower and head out to Pearl Sushi in Scottsdale, where I’d plant myself at the bar and drink Asahi sake bombs, eat my favorite Fish Shticks, and type another 2,000 words, drawing on the inspiration of the sophisticated, cultured, classy Scottsdale crowd.
The sophisticated, cultured, classy Scottsdale crowd
But now. Well, let’s just say 2,000 words is still my goal…for the week. My fellow PLC writers are all involved in committed relationships (SCARRY!!!) and have kiddos and Big-Girl/Boy jobs and for the first time in my writing life, I realize how difficult it is to justify sitting down at a computer and writing when the scenes we create today and tomorrow will not buy milk on Friday and Pampers and help mom lug the Christmas tree up from the basement and develop a marketing strategy to draw 20 somethings into your bowling center.
So, my primary goal for 2010, my progress report, if you will, is to m-a-i-n-t-a-i-n, keep some semblance of, as Amy described, momentum, and figure out how to re-prioritize myself. The analogy that comes to mind is a juggler. When I lived in Arizona, I had one big red ball to toss up in the air and catch (no dude: binge drinking; three-somes, unless they are twins; sleeping; and tanning are not balls). I’d just toss that thing up and catch it whenever I want, but now, now, I’m these guys:
So since I’m new to this whole prioritizing thing, I’d love any advice you can give me. How do you juggle your balls (ummmm…did he just say that?)? Seriously…how do you not neglect people and projects in real-life and still get your writing done?
Thanks for reading. Stay tuned next week, for when I probe the delicate nature inherent in the big, bad WB…
Not that WB, silly. The OTHER WB.
From five years old to fifteen (when girls, booze, and pot took over my life) I had my Reading Tree.
My Reading Tree
As you can see, it sits in the P’s backyard, limbs formed into a cone-shape, which nestled my awkward, adolescent body quite comfortably. There had even been a hole in the trunk deep enough to squirrel three books (and later, two issues of “Barely Legal”), much to the chagrin of Charley the Squirrel, who lived in our backyard, and found his cubby full of useless square, bound pieces of parchment.
Charley, Dealing With Homelessness
Useless pieces of parchment? Oh Charley, if you only knew.
Those books, my Reading Tree, the solitude of being away from my family and my painful adolescent world, teleported into 1840’s England with Pip, Joe, and Mr. Wopsle I cannot even begin to explain to you now the impact the Magic of Books had on me. I’d zip through three hundred pages in an afternoon, completely enthralled by the worlds opened up to me by these great (and sometimes not very talented–I read a lot of John Grisham and Hardy Boy’s books too) writers.
Now, though, I’ve found that books have lost their magic hold over me. Why? Could it be that modern writers do not have the skill of enrapturing readers? No, I don’t think so. Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Dave Eggers, Richard Russo, George Pelecanos, all have a skill level as great as Dickens, Fitzgerald, Lee.
No, books have lost their magic for me because of two reasons. The first reason aligns with my decision to become a Writer of Great Importance. Somehow, I flipped a switch and could no longer read books without using my Critical Eye. And you know what I found? Where I used to read five to ten books (there were some marathon summer sessions) a week, I now struggle to read fifty pages in a sitting. Reading has become a punch-in and punch-out job, an ingredient in the recipe to become a W.G.I.
I spend more time trying to study writing technique, mentally critiquing each scene–well, she made the decision to do this, but that doesn’t support the allegorical subtext she’d been building up to this point; purple description there; how does this scene advance the plot, build tension, grow character; wow that’s a fascinating description, how can I steal (ummm…borrow) that one–that I lose what drew me, as a child and adolescent to books in the first place. And that’s sad. Don’t you think?
That in my life, books have become TPS Reports.
The second reason, I think, is common even for non-writers. I blame the educational system (great, just what the public schools need, more fault for crushing the innocence and freedom of children). I remember when I was a kid teachers would hand-out a Summer Reading List, which I’d devour during the first week of summer, loving every second of reading the recommendations of my teachers, who at that time, I didn’t loath. It wasn’t until high school, for me, when book reports and pop tests in English class drove me from the bound texts of “popular classics” to the abridged yellow and black Cliff’s Notes. Once teachers made reading a necessity for a good grade, it seemed only natural I’d find the most productive way of achieving this requirement.
I mean, isn’t that what forming us into proper worker drones is all about? Productivity?
Now, I’ve noticed, book reports and/or worksheets with study questions begin in grammar school (maybe earlier by now, preschoolers getting handed both a bottle and a Q/A sheet). By the time kids reach high school and plot and structure and character are being deconstructed on a grand scale, long gone is the innocent magic of novels, the free pleasure of reading, replaced by the necessity to become a literary mechanic, getting under the book’s hood to determine how the plot engine and characterization transmission work in tandem to motor the car. This might work for some teens (the ones desiring to be book mechanics, IE, lofty, high-society literary critics), but for most of us, taking apart the guts of books, seeing the innards, the tricks, the technique, causes the magic of the bound parchment to evaporate.
No wonder the next generation gravitates to Internet and movies and TV. They aren’t being bashed over the head with study questions and analysis requirements on “Grey’s Anatomy” (course, what is there to study? McSteamyDreamy’s pouty face and how it speaks to 21st Century sex mores?), they can just sit back and watch the magic show.
So, I’ve decided to try my best to return to the purity of reading. Not thinking, analyzing, deconstructing; just reading for the entertainment of the thing. It has been hard, to click off my “professional brain”, to disconnect years of technician training, but I’ve found the more and more I read, the better I’ve become at doing this.
Can you believe that? A thirty-year-old man relearning how to read. Well, that’s me. You can now find me nestled in my Reading Tree with Chronic City, Lowboy, The Great Gatsby.
No goals, analysis, criticism, evaluation, or agenda.
Just Reading. Wow, what a novel idea.
Sorry Charley, but your burrow in the Reading Tree has been reclaimed.
"Aw nuts! I hope he gets my favorite book."
Charley's Favorite Book
[Every Sunday, I am guest blogger on The Parking Lot Confessional, and I will reproduce each blog from their webpage to mine. The first blog, my intro blog, is below].
“Cherub Pageant Drop-Out: Origins of an Attention Hog”
By: Michael Greenwald
I’d like to first mention a couple things. First, I’d like congratulate my fellow confession-er on the birth of his baby girl. Being that I’m the sole child-less author on this site, procreation continues to hold a certain mystic quality for me, kind of like when I marveled at the pile of presents under the Christmas tree and thanked Santa Clause, never mind the fact of how the talented Mr. Clause managed, even with the ferocious presence of Rocky the rottweiller and the absence of a chimney of any kind, to gain entrance into my house, eat one and a half out of three sugar cookies (choke them down, considering Mommy was busy with her Jane Fonda workout and didn’t notice me add a couple dollops of honey, handful of dog food, five squirts of mustard, and twenty or so shakes of cayenne pepper into the cookie dough), and deliver to all the other children in the world in a span of eight hours.
Since my day for commentary falls at the caboose of the week, I’m allowed both the difficult task of following three very talented writers and the opportunity to comment (shall we say piggy-back, PLC?) on S.C. and the Amys (band name anyone?) blogs. I find the origin of the Amys’s literary careers fascinating, and knowing them, how they are as women, the path they’ve taken to their current statuses (I really like the non-existent word stati as the plural of statuses) makes a lot of sense to me, but knowing myself, my path to writing is a very different story.
I am the eldest child and I never got over the birth of my brother. Don’t get me wrong, I love Brian, wouldn’t murder him or anything (cutoff for juvey is 18, right?), but for the first three years of my life I was an only child of two very doting parents and didn’t appreciate the arrival of my brother, this curly-haired, toe-headed, blue-eyed, precocious, demon boy. I was three years old and if I might say so, pretty adorable, but strangers in restaurants strode from other tables to get a better look at Brian no matter how many spaghetti’s I could stuff up my nose.
Not knowing my motivation then, I’m positive now, that I, being the expert strategist and ardent realist, knew I didn’t stand a chance to capture attention with my looks, so I divined other means in response to this cherub competitor that had been dropped into our house by the stork. My first choices, if I recall, aligned with my militant nature. Screaming in the supermarket, taking control of the baby carriage and running it and my brother into a tree, yanking on Cindy the dog’s floppy ears until she snapped at me and ended up getting banished to the basement, not finishing my dinner at a restaurant even after my father’s warning that I’d find the spaghetti in front of me for breakfast the next morning then not eating it the next morning when my father lived up to his threat nor eating it for lunch and pronouncing that I wouldn’t eat it for dinner, forcing my poor mother to take it upon herself to accidently drop the spaghetti container on the floor where it was gobbled up by Cindy, who when discovered by my father with marinara lips was banished to the basement (that poor dog).
Soon, it occurred to me that the drastic negative means of garnering attention were not working to motivate my parents to leave my brother in the hills. Now, don’t quote me on this, but if I remember correctly, I got the idea of writing from Cardigan Sweater,
who, during one episode sat at his kitchen table and made his own picture book with construction paper and tape. I think I made the connection then, that a way to capture attention would be to create a story of my own. I don’t remember the content of my earliest stories, and I asked my mother and she doesn’t remember either, but both of us remember me drawing pictures on pieces of paper and taping them together to form my own books, which I would read to my father and mother (and gramma, grandpa, Uncle Bob, the postman, a lady walking by the house with her dog, the smelly guy sleeping on a bench at the park…).
Throughout my childhood and adolescence, and even now, as a “mature” adult male, I have needed attention, much like a junkie needs smack. I probably should have been an actor, really, but something about creating stories, books, that will be around long after I die, resonates with who I am. I’ve come to realize a lot of what drives me to write is fear. I recall walking through cemeteries with my father, when I was younger, and by myself now, to visit relatives who only exist as ash below the earth’s crust, and feeling a terrible sense that someday I would also be in the ground and a terrible fear that no one will know I existed.
Writing to me is a cry: Michael was here!!!!
(Even after I’m dead, you better pay attention to me).
As the baby of this blog family (I guess the order really depends on whether you consider Sunday as the first day of the week or Monday), I find myself in the similar position, yet now I’m the littlest clambering for attention against my early week blog siblings. Maybe this time, I’m the little cherub with golden literary curls.
I say to you, Dear Reader, please join us each week, strap yourself in (foreshadowing elongated car metaphor), let us drive you to thoughtful destinations (okay, this car metaphor is wearing a bit thin), Sundays are my vehicle of expression, so I guarantee you a wild ride (“don’t drive angry, don’t drive angry”).
Join me next Sunday; same time, same station. In the meantime, I’d love to hear comments about the origins of what made you who you are, what makes you tick.
Thanks for reading.
–Michael Greenwald
[Check me out on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, call me at my house, late-night (HOLLER!!!)].
This morning, while on the pot, (I washed my hands, I promise) I read an interesting profile in Rolling Stone about Jamie Tworkowski, the teen-suicide-Internet-sensation, and founder of TWLOHA, a non-profit organization committed to providing an Internet outlet for suicidal teens. His approach to extending a digital hand out to troubled teens has rocked the stately (and some would say archaic) institution of teen suicide prevention, consisting of stuffy psychiatrists in even stuffier offices or mental hospitals with padded doors doling a litany of pills.
Jamie Tworkowski has focused on love and faith and showing kids they aren’t alone in the world, through his TWLOHA website and Myspace page, and now at speeches at schools and community centers. In the high school world, he’s viewed as a messiah/rock star, some combination of a Jonas Brother and Jesus.
What struck me in this article, though, was a line of dialogue he used at the end: “I want things to be epic. And everyday life isn’t epic.”
Jamie’s a bit younger than I am, but this line cut me to the core (and almost made me fall off the pot), because I claim to be a writer and this surfer turned teen-angst guru found the words to express how I feel about my life and my expectations for life. I, of course, being the 30-something, would never use the word epic to describe my dilemma, me being so not cool it’s rather embarrassing, but the way Jamie boiled down his mental struggle everyday was precisely how I feel.
I want things to be epic (colossal, monumental, tremendous) but everyday is not epic. In fact, every week is not epic, most months are not epic, looking back I’ve lived years that weren’t epic. So what do you when your expectation for life is on an epic level? And, where in the hell did we learn to expect this from life?
I see life as a runner on a treadmill. Life is in decent shape, looks to run a couple times a week, and is handling Level 5 quite well. Then we turn up the Level to 6 and Life continues along, pumping it’s arms, puffing a bit, but still steady. Then we turn the dial to 27 and Life looks at us like we are crazy before spinning off the rolling exercise machine.
Everyday I wake up with a feeling that something special can happen. I think this is probably a common mindset for humanity throughout time. I’m assuming cavemen woke up with thoughts of downing a wooly mammoth that afternoon. Humans are strivers, always have been, always will be, our imaginations stretch the possibility, turn the level of that life treadmill up a notch or two, but my generation grew up on television, with movies, and I’ll admit to the fact that I grew up understanding relationships (because I didn’t have a strong example at home) through Dylan and Kelly on 90210. I knew that 90210 was a television show, wasn’t real, but still, I wanted to be Dylan McKay. I wanted to be with Kelly. And maybe at some point the lines of reality and fantasy might have gotten crossed to where I expected that type of passion, that type of intensity in my relationships. My relationship expectations grew to epic proportions. And real life events can live up to those expectations, can they; no, Life spins off the treadmill trying to keep up.
I find myself constantly disappointed, and I never really knew why until I read that quote by Jamie Tworkowski, ironically, the leader of a movement focusing on reaching out to teens contemplating suicide, doing drugs, drinking, possible struggling with the disparity between fantastical expectations for the world and themselves and the reality, factors that Jamie Tworkowski himself struggles with, and I do too.
Maybe the linchpin of all this disappointment stems with the desire for today to live up to epic expectations and the impossibility of the real world to keep up with our imaginations.
Who the hell knows.
I don’t usually like to get too personal on these posts. Other writers seem to be able to cut themselves open on their blogs and not feel weird about, or maybe they spend a lot of time scrubbing their naked bodies with a Brillo pad under scalding water in the shower and we just don’t witness this. A lot is made about the fragility of an artist. I still remember No Doubt’s best record, “Tragic Kingdom”, how it portrayed a terrible breakup of Gwen Steffani and her guitarist ex-boyfriend (interesting how I can’t remember his name) and how powerful it was; or Alanis Morrisette’s “Jagged Little Pill” (not sure why all the female artists albums are coming to me now) album, which put out for the world to see, Alanis’s angst and broken heart. Maybe that’s part of my problem as an artist, in that, I’m a very private emotional person. A lot of things go on in my life, a lot of issues, and I’m not comfortable, never have been comfortable, sharing them with even my best friends and family, and I think they can sense this, in some way, that I’m hiding things from them and maybe this inhibits us from having as great relationships as I would wish.
My brother left today to go back to San Diego, where he lives, about as far away from us as he can be, and I understand why he lives there, understand this intimately as it was a desire for me to be as far away from my family as I possible could be. I don’t think that growing up in my family was anywhere as horrible as some stories I’ve heard about kids being locked in cages and girls being raped by their fathers and dealing with alcoholic/drug-addicted mothers, but I will say that all four of us (my siblings and I) have developed into individuals who seem in some way incapable of dealing with a lot of things the world has for us. In our own ways we are deficient, and all kind of hopeless in fixing the internal issues that impede us.
I don’t know where this came from. I just know that I have a difficult time processing and dealing with emotions of any nature, whether happiness or sadness, and find it foreign that others can seamlessly absorb a stimulus, have a physiologic response, and move onto the next event. It’s like my body doesn’t know how to react, how to bring the correct chemicals in my brain together, to produce an apparent reaction, so I appear numb to the whole process.
And I feel numb. My brother has just backed down the driveway in my mother’s car, on his way to O’Hare airport to go back to San Diego, not to return until God-knows-when, and I know I should feel sad about this, know that emotion is in there somewhere, but I can’t bring it to the service, can’t let it release, whether I want to cry or pound my fist against the wall or go to sleep for fifteen hours or go to the gym and run until I can’t stand.
I feel an incredible nothingness. And I don’t believe that’s normal.
There’s been some really painful things that have happened in my life since I came back to Chicago this summer and I have no clue what to do with the emotions I feel over them. They seem to be sitting in my chest or floating around in my head, as though waiting to be called to the forefront and dealt with, in whatever way such feelings are dealt with by normal people, but I don’t know how to do this, so they drift around and latch onto other feelings and emotions and grow and feed off of whatever they feed off of until I really can’t ignore or repress them anymore. But even then, I’m not sure how to slay these particular dragons, and have found through practice that drinking a lot or running five miles on the treadmill at the gym or listening to Nirvana at ear-splitting decimals or watching porn or messaging on Facebook or packing my bags and moving to Costa Rica doesn’t help.
So, here, now, in the new way I’ve come up with to deal with my sour emotions, I’ll start small and hope it helps.
Good bye brother. I’ll miss you.
Michael Greenwald
