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Weekend ReportAugust 13, 2007 So I packed my canvas satchel and set off Saturday morning, not much past the intended hour, which was 8 a.m. Dropped Rhodry and his canvas satchel (containing food, dish, and two squeaky toys) off at the Shabazians', where Tillo was so glad to see us she woo-woofed -- Tillo is a long-haired German shepherd, but all of Rhodry's close friends seem to pick up a little woo-woo -- and jumped up on the truck door. Arrived at the Park & Ride lot well in time to catch the free shuttle, which arrived well in time to meet the boat. The boat was Island Home, which I've disliked ever since it was named. I don't like it better now that I've been on it (twice), but I didn't do much exploring either because the luggage cart was packed to capacity so I had my canvas satchel with me. From the dock Island Home looks as though an airport control tower has landed on the deck of Islander. The interior is an amalgamation of airport, bus, and movie theater. I have to admit, though, that the entire Steamship Authority fleet has been moving in this direction for years, at least since the movable canvas deck chairs on the Islander were replaced with screwed-down rows of blue plastic seats. I fondly remember dodging deck chairs on the old Naushon when she pitched in heavy seas while the less adventurous watched from the dry side of the windows. These days most passengers don't care to be reminded that they're at sea, and that the sea is a good deal less predictable than asphalt, or even bridges. No wonder Island Home somewhat resembles a monster RV. I negotiated my way from boat to bus to subway to (city) bus without much trouble, but was struck yet again by how often you have to know what you're doing (or where you're going) before you can understand the directions. Within the last couple of years the MBTA has introduced a fare card system. I've been carrying a "Charlie card" (love the name) around in my wallet since my last trip to the big city in spring 2006. The turnstile told me I didn't have enough fare for admittance, so I headed over to the machines. D.C.'s Metro system has been using fare cards since its inception in the mid-1970s; if I hadn't been intimately familiar with the drill, I'm not sure I could have figured it out. That, and the graphics interface was unpredictable: the people in line in front of me had trouble getting it to register $4.00 instead of $0.40 or $40.00. I had the same problem. I fed in a $5 bill to upgrade my card, and I think I got shortchanged, but how to tell? The machine was being cagey about how much fare was now on my card, and how much fare I needed. My sister and her family chauffeured me to and from the reading, which saved me an hour's commute in each direction. All the years I spent negotiating my way around D.C.'s public transit system and then locating houses down unmarked dirt roads, Ellen and Michael have profitably invested in navigating the Boston metropolitan area on wheels. I am properly awed. The reading itself -- well. I was expecting small, but it was somewhat smaller than that. Of course I was fantasizing a well-publicized and -attended event in a coffeehouse-size venue; what I hoped for was maybe an interview for a local publication, or a lead for another gig. Didn't get that either. There were three of us on the program. The first reader, evidently the star in the lineup (he's been published by presses and publications that even I've heard of, and he coordinates the writing program at a state college north of Boston), apologized that he wouldn't be able to hear the other two of us read; he would have to leave immediately after he finished because he was a diabetic and needed to eat. Excuse me? Surely he could have eaten first, or brought something with him -- if he'd wanted to? He didn't: he preferred to diss his fellow readers instead. It didn't help that when he left, his entourage -- evidently his students -- left too, diminishing an already modest audience by about a third. Rude, rude, rude. I was nastily pleased that the star's story was by far the weakest of the three: it was clever, yes, but at the end my immediate response was "So what?" I read well, if I do say so myself (memo to self: you really should do more readings), and the third story, "The Man with the Wine-Stained Face," by Jeff Dougherty, was wonderful. Like the star's story it cleverly set its several characters on collision courses, then followed their post-collision trajectories. Unlike the star's story, it was tight, vivid, imaginative, and laugh-out-loud funny. It didn't hurt that one of the characters was a seeing-eye dog who hated his owner (with good reason) and was looking "for an opportunity to lead her in front of a bus or a speeding taxi cab without being struck himself." So the event itself, though disappointing, had its rewards: reading, and hearing Jeff Dougherty's story, and spending time with Ellen, Michael, and their two teenagers (!!), Jacob and Rozzie, who probably had more fun things to do than hear their aunt read but came to the reading anyway. The longer-lasting reward, though, is that it got me focused again on The Mud of the Place. I'm working on its first overhaul in more than three years, focusing on the first few chapters, whose problems I've recognized from the get-go but not known how to fix. Once I started paying attention, the ideas started coming. Not only are the early chapters getting stronger and sleeker -- scene after scene is reminding me how much I like this book. Nonfiction may be my native language, as I'm fond of saying, but my first novel is pretty good -- and if I take a deep breath and keep putting one foot in front of the other, one word in front of another, I can aspire to some fluency in fiction as well. So I've got some concrete plans for the next few weeks: Cut back on the nonfiction. Trust the fiction. Finish revising the first three chapters of Mud of the Place, then send out two or three more proposals, then get on with revising the rest (which will be more of a copyedit and shouldn't take too long). Start pursuing leads toward self-publishing. Spend less time online and more time reading; once summer's over, start looking for (or, more likely, creating) opportunities to read my work. What has made the thought of really trusting and focusing on Mud of the Place so terrifying is that I keep thinking it's my last chance. If it sinks without a trace, how will I muster the energy and time and goddamn money to finish Squatters' Speakeasy? And whatever comes next? Well, so far, whenever I'm sure I'm shit out of options, another one or two show up. The strength, emotional and physical, to keep going may ebb and flow a bit, but right now its surge-and-churning, nudging me to trust it, yelling when I show signs of not listening. I'm listening, I'm listening!
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