GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #469: HARRY? JOHNNY?

"How terrible is wisdom when it brings no profit to the wise?"

 

Unsurprisingly, Angel Heart is one of my favorite movies ever. And then I learned that it was based on the book Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg, and I got very excited. Because the book is always better than the movie, right? What kind of sick, fucked up shit was I about to read?

I wish I had this beautiful edition.

I think I was in high school at the time. Either that, or I was freshly a college student. One way or the other I went to my favorite used bookstore of all time, a place that is sadly no more (an old man owned the place, and when he died, no one in his family wanted to pursue his passion), and I found a paperback copy for maybe a dollar, possibly less.

This is the one I have, and it still looks pretty fucking cool.

It was the first time in my life that I discovered that sometimes the movie is better than the book. I still enjoyed it a great deal, but I liked the movie better. I shelved it and forgot about it until something was mentioned in horror news a few years back. I'll get to that in a moment.

Around that time I reorganized my paperback horror books so that the ones I'd read were on the bottom shelves (which were difficult for me to get to) and the ones I hadn't were up high and easy to reach. I almost filed Falling Angel at the bottom when I thought about it more. I'd been a kid when I read it. I wasn't even old enough to drink yet. What if it means something different to me now that I'm a middle-aged man? More to the point, what if the book really is better than the movie, and I just didn't notice it?

So I kept it up top with the idea in the back of my head to reread it sometime soon. Good thing I did because that news I just mentioned? It came to fruition.

I don't know if you all use Book Bub. It's too expensive for me to use as a writer, but it's pretty nice to use as a reader. I saw today that there was a discounted Kindle option for something called Angel's Inferno.

By William Hjortsberg.

Hell yeah!

So the news I mentioned. A few years back, when Hjortsberg died, it turned out that he'd been working on a sequel to Falling Angel. It didn't sound like he finished it, though. I figured it would be relegated to the could-have-been pile of books writers couldn't finish before they died. And yet, here we are. It actually was finished. This pleases me greatly, so naturally I bought the book. A physical copy, in case you were wondering.

Because goddammit, I'm finally going to reread Falling Angel so I can read the new one. I'm very curious and excited. Let's see what happens.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #334: ASSOCIATION OF IDEAS

 The association of ideas. John Locke came up with that. It's not what I'm talking about tonight. Tonight is another exploration of writing. If that doesn't interest you, or if you don't want to know how the hot dogs are made, maybe skip this one.

The easiest (and, unsurprisingly, my favorite) part of writing is coming up with the idea. I'm not entirely sure how it works. Some writers thank the muses. Others blame--hey!--John Locke's association of ideas when they're on the train or driving to work or whatever. Sometimes I wonder if it's like Athena bursting from Zeus's head full formed. But fucked if I know. All I know for certain is that an idea will pop up into my head, and I'll write it down. I used to work at the library, so I'd take a notepad from them and scribble it down between serving patrons. Now I have a Moleskine notebook for such things.

By the way, as awesome as those notebooks are, Moleskine makes the shittiest fucking pens of all time. They're fucking square! Literally! I have calluses on my fingers from writing shit down for nearly forty years, and somehow these square pens cut through and destroy my ability to hold things.

But you write down the ideas. And they don't coalesce right away. They have to simmer on the backburner sometimes. Maybe for years. Maybe for decades.

But if you're really lucky, you write down a few ideas, and you realize that they can actually be combined to make one great story or novel. That's when the gears really start turning. Yet you're still trying to figure out what the story is. And that can be tough sometimes.

So I'm going to give you an example. I came up with this idea for a character a long time ago. I'm talking maybe 12-15 years ago. And then I came up with a story maybe 10 years ago. I thought I could combine the two at some point, but I had no idea how. Fast forward to about a half-year ago, when I picked up The Expanse RPG.

With any RPG, you have to create a test character to see how the dynamics work. I did this, and I suddenly realized how I could fit all of these moving pieces together into one machine. The tough part is stripping the scenario of everything from The Expanse world so I could make it my own. So much depended on the creation of James SA Corey's world that it took a lot of work and maybe some reverse engineering.

That's one of the projects I'm working on now. And it's going really fucking good. It's also heavily influenced by Richard Matheson, and I've been struggling to cut out a lot of that, too, just to make it my own. It's rough because I love Matheson (and Corey, for that matter), but I can't use them as a crutch. Maybe leg braces? (And I can say that. I have one leg brace that I need to get around with.)

So I saw recently there was some bullshit going around on Twitter, etc., about writing hot takes. First of all, fuck the phrase "hot take." It's meaningless and garbage, and anyone who uses it is begging for your attention like a child who keeps saying the same joke over and over again to get the same laugh the kid got the first two or three times. If someone has a hot take for you, and they are serious about it, stop listening to them.

Here is (swallowing pride) my "hot take" on writing. YOU DO YOU. There is no set of guidelines. There is only one rule, and that is to actually write. Aside from that, nothing else matters. I offer what I said above as to how my own approach works. And it works. For me. Other things might work for you. Probably do.

I appreciate books on writing from authors I respect. Laymon, Keene, Piccirilli, Morrell, King, etc. I enjoy seeing how their process works, and I also recognize what would never work for me. I do take these lessons very seriously, but I pick and choose because I know who I am. (Apologies to Mickey Rourke.) The best thing you can do is know who you are. And don't take that for granted. Explore yourself. Reflect on your life. Figure yourself out.

But don't let some asshole throw their hot take in your face like a cup of scalding coffee. Fuck that shit.