Dive Into Schizophrenia

7/31/2019 Dive Into Schizophrenia

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Dive into SchizophreniaBe Your Own EditorAssignment #2 in the Crash Course in Creativity

Introduction

I have to admit that when I read the instructions for Assignment #2 red flagsstarted flying proudly on the cynical side of my creativity: the thing sounded likea standard exercise out of the training text for management candidates at HomeDepot. I had to wonder if some Big Box retailer wasnt subsidizing Tinasdepartment.

Who among us hasnt worked retail? And for those of us who have, who hasnt

heard the pitch, the dozens of pitches, on how to keep pulling them in, pullingthose suckers in.

I was gratified when it was learned that Palo Alto, CA, was not the world and theassignment was broadened to fit reality.

My reality is I have no intention of ever working retail. My reality is also one inwhich I spent 33 years of my life in one or another of the various investigatoryrackets and thus I spent 33 years reading signs that most people never see...andremembering them.

My reality is also that I am forever in an ungodly steep learning curve about howto watch my own words. Aside from several other occupations I am a writer and Iknow from long experience that any writer who thinks he/she does not need aneditor is much in the same league as the semi-literate burglar who thinks hedoesnt need a lawyer.

Writers and editors are different kinds of people. They dont think alike, theydont see the world in the same terms, they have different perspectives andpersonalities. Thus most writers do what they dowrite--and then turn theircreations over to someone, who, in the end, could very well be from a differentplanet. These writers suffer. These writers often fail because their work is alltogether too foreign to those extraterrestrial editors.

The writers who do not suffer, those who get their feet in the publishers door arethose who are blithely schizophrenic and who can in the space of a momentassess the situation, stare at a brick wall for three minutes and then yell Presto-Change-oh and become The Editor. This is a transformation just like when theguy in the psyche ward can bang his head once against a tree and change, changeto the core of his soul, from being Santa Clause to beingCaptain Ahab. Then thatwriter/editor can do the work that the publishers editor was supposed to do and


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do it so impressively that the manuscript slides as on grease from the rejects tothe fast track and no one quite knows how it happened.

So the lesson is: Writers, you need to start getting really mentally screwed up.This is how it works from someone who has played both parts:

In the following exercise I have taken at random some paragraphs from adetective novel in progress that I am writing. I am all too familiar with this workbecause I read it time and time again, each time I start to work on the project inorder to get the voice and the cadence and the characteristic feel of the narratorbefore I write another word beyond the point where I last stopped. I can almostrecite these passages from memory I have seen them, repeated them in my headso many times...familiar territory.

Now, according to the spirit of the assignment, I will get schizophrenic, assume adual personality, and go after them in the EDITORS NOTES as if I have nevereven seen them before. And I do this in an effort to work out of the best of each ofthese two psychotic worlds.

The Excerpt

E-Mile Szczepanski doesnt exist, I tell that to Ghott a week

later when I come into the office and sign off on the agreement that

Lautrec, Whittier and Ghott will represent me in the case of Tommy

The Kid vs Modeen The Main Squeeze.Ive done all the basics that will get you 98 per cent of anyone

that needs to be found and Ive concluded that if Emile Szczepanski is

alive and at large in the USA hes doing it under a different name.

Still, I have two hours left to go for the $600. Miracles can happen.Lets keep going, Ghott says, We need him or at least some

kind of trace where he might be. Ghotts gazing out through the glass

in the front door of the firms building. The late-in-the-day sun is


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cutting a horizontal shaft of clarity straight down the street before

him. He peers along it, west to east. I think that snow bank down

there against Tapias house is melting at last. Its been there since

Thanksgiving. Snow melt is always good to see.Uh huh. I say and consider how cold it has been this winter. Im sitting quite comfortably atop the receptionists desk, softly,

almost noiselessly, bouncing my boot heels against the modesty

panel. The support staff has fled for the day. Contrary to the tastes of

Lawrence Ghott, the reception area is Bauhaus Southwest with

furniture that creates the illusion that Copenhagen is situated along

the Rio Grande. Theres a subtle almost hard edge acrylic grid on a 5

X 6 canvas, a locals 1975 Agnes Martin knockoff, hanging on the east

wall. A framed, autographed print, a study for Luis Jimenzs Border

Crossing hangs opposite. I dont study that study because if I did I

might just start to weepthe unbelievable sculpture, the astounding

study, the man himself who bled to death beneath his own work.

EDITORS NOTES

FIRST PARAGRAPHWhat is this stuff with Modeen? Women

do not have names that end in een. They have names that end in


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ene. If you leave it een- the readers with think you cant spell.

When readers start to think on their own you are dead. Change it.

SECOND PARAGRAPHYou write: Still, I have two hours left

to go for the $600. Keep in mind that some guy on a delayed flight

out of Dallas-Fort Worth is standing in the airport bookstore leafing

through the pages and he scans that sentence. It will mean nothing

though you have worked it out in the chapter before. Dont assume a

reader knows anything or can remember anything. Change that

sentence to work in the idea that the $600 is a retainer. With the

word retainer comes the recognition in the casual readers mind that

this is a detective novel. Change it.

THIRD PARAGRAPHWhy dont you visualize your own work,

for Christs sake? There is a street out there that Ghott is looking at

and all that both he and the narrator can see is a shaft of light. There

has to be something on the other side of the shaft. What was there

before the light started to fade? Put this setting into a meaningful

perspective since, as H.L Mencken once said, the setting is the

personification of the protagonist. This is a way to make the narrator

more real than before. Add all that they can both see or drop the

shaft of light gimmick. Plus you write about the Tapia house.


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Whats a law office doing in a residential district. Who elses house is

out there, who elses law office?

FIFTH PARAGRAPHHere you are writing about office

furniture and dcor and it should make a statement both about the

protagonist and the law firm that hires him as an investigator.

Question: Who since the Great American Dumbing Down of the 1970s

has ever heard of Bauhaus? What does Bauhaus have to do with

Copenhagen? And for that matter, how many know what

Copenhagen has to do with Danish Modern furniture. And can you

give a hint about Agnes Martin and Luis Jimenez? Be a little generous

here.

Conclusion

The time is up for this assignment on how to Observe in the fields

in which we think we are familiar. There is always, always, more to

learn, except when you are working retail where there is always more

and more worth forgetting.

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Dive Into Schizophrenia