My good friend Abeer Hoque's short story Swing State is the featured story on KQED's new program The Writers' Block

I spent the last 2 days doing pretty much nothing but edit WLP. I've been a bitch to be around--working in a basement for 8 hours when the sky is fair in Portland makes me very grumpy.

I think that I'm accomplishing something, though. My analysis of the Gek-Lin/Uncle Charley sections went well. I cut 5 pages and smoothed over some rough edges. I'm also in the process of going through the whole novel and simply cutting out anything that I can get away with cutting. It's hard since my novel is so rhythmic, but there are sections where I got a little too clever, and I'm finding that I can dig out a clause here and a clause there out of some of my verbose wanderings.

Anyway, I long for the day when I'm recognized as the next Pynchon, and can pretty much write whatever the fuck I want without being harassed. There's disadvantages to writing that's accessible, the transparency lulls editors into thinking it's going to be easy to cut.

Labels: Writing Process

We did it! We got the Wall Street Journal to print the word "poopyhead"

It's always interesting to hear what someone says when they haven't talked to someone in a long while...

Q: Hi Jim, it's nice to hear from you. All is well here...I'm eagerly awaiting your book. Will it be published under the same title?

A: World Leader Pretend is still World Leader Pretend. Anticipated publication is Fall of 2006.

Q: I'm still working at __________, but trying to bake more and more. I want out of this publishing nightmare once and for all (sorry, but it's the truth).

A: Can't say I'm surprised. It's a racket, isn't it? Do tell more about your nightmare when you have some time to write. I'd love to commiserate. Also, what's this about baking?

Q: My daughter is awesome and (as evidenced by my friendster photos) flourishing at an alarming rate. She's articulate and has an intense sense of humor. Super smart (blah blah blah)...lovely. How's your little one?

A: Ava is almost 3 now and she rules. She's head-strong, imaginative, and thinks she's a princess. Totally takes after her parents. At some point, I'll post some pics on Friendster.

Q: So tell me what you've been up to.

A: It's been a weird year for me. When St. Martin's agreed to publish WLP, they made me promise to make significant cuts to the book "to make it saleable." (i.e. they wanted to cut the page count to save printing costs) The cutting wasn't easy for me, a) because I didn't have any experience cutting material and b) because I didn't really think it was good for the book to be cut down as much as they wanted it cut (from 600 to 400). I spent 5 months cutting the book down this summer in a way that I was satisfied with, which threw off my other projects and plans.

Anyway, a couple weeks ago they asked me to cut it down MORE, and I'm trying very hard to behave myself and get it done.

Q: Are you working on something new?

A: Yes--when I can get away from WLP. I ended up trashing the book I was working on a couple years back when you were agenting me, and am working on a second draft of a second novel that explores--of all things--Christianity. The narrator (Barth Flynn) is a DIY comic book artist who discovers a sort of modern-day Hazel Motes (the main character in Flannery O'Conner's Wise Blood) who's been preaching to empty pews (literally) in a dilapidated church that he's purchased.

The crux of the preacher's (Joseph Patrick Booker's) teaching is that today's Christians are the equivalent of the biblical Pharisees, and that the young activists who haunt the streets of Portland, Oregon are, in fact, the biblical equivalent of the first Christians.

Flynn makes a comic from his experiences with Booker. This comic ends up gaining some degree of popularity, and along with it, so does Booker's church. The book explores this rise to fame, and in doing so, hopefully gives some insight into what religion, properly practiced, should actually be about.

Q: Do you have an agent?

A: Nope. I go back and forth, on an almost daily basis, about whether to seek one. My new project is really strong and on-topic, but there is a part of me that doesn't want to let anyone else get their hands on it. I would almost rather publish 100 copies of it, and give those to friends, then sell a million, after the book was shaped by some nasty corporate entity to make it appropriate to public consumption.

On the other hand, idealism is financially painful.

Q: How goes the t-shirt business for Andrea?

A: The silly shirts sell like hot cakes. They're all over Brooklyn now.

So a few weeks ago my editor asked me to shorten WLP again, and I've finally cleared some time in my schedule to work on it. It's not going to be an easy task, as I tightened it up quite a bit this summer and there isn't anything obvious to yank out.

There was always something not quite right about one of my plot threads, so this morning I tried something unusual. Basically, I pulled out all the text in which two of my characters appear, Gek-Lin and Uncle Charley, and I looked at the thread without any of the surrounding material.

It was a pretty cool process. I could immediately see flaws that I thought might be there but that I hadn't been able to get at when there were 100 pages between them. Anyway, was able to tighten things up a little between the characters this way. Should be able to pull out a little more tomorrow.

Labels: Writing Process

This week's Baby Wit saga involved a New York Observer article, which trashed us for making T-shirts that "forced children to be little signposts for their parents' opinions." The rest of the article was pretty typical New York snark, most of the references being to things no one outside of New York would ever care about.

We replied, of course, although our letter to editor was pretty watered down by the time we edited it to their specifications. (Yes, they asked us to edit our letter to the editor.)

You, however, get the full-version, uncensored, first draft...

So the New York Observer reporter who wrote today’s lovely article warned us yesterday about it, explaining to us that her editor made her change her story about Baby Wit to a negative slant. I kind of thought coercing reporters to slant stories a certain way was only something that happened at FOX, but apparently it happens just as often at snarky, liberal, New York-based weeklies too.

Of course, I’m not sure the reporter is telling the truth. Some of our customers called us saying she was trying to pry negative quotes out of them, so it could be she just called us out of some sort of latent guilt. Either way, newsflash for NY Observer reporter, get some cajones, or in this case, a vagina. Either tell your editor to fuck off and die, or ask hard-hitting questions and write a negative article. Don’t sweet-talk people, bash them, and then apologize for it. We’re hard-working small business owners; we don’t have time for cutesy, New York, girl-about-town-ness.

I haven’t read the article yet, and I probably never will, since I don’t live in New York and I’m not going to subscribe to the thing, but apparently the crux of her argument is that our kid’s political line is inappropriate because it encourages parents to use their children as a billboards. (We have shirts that say “I already know more than the president.” and “President Poopyhead”)

To that I can only say, what the hell are you doing when your kid’s shirt says BABY GAP, or DORA THE EXPLORER, or FUTURE DALLAS COWBOY CHEERLEADER? Are you not saying: I support Indonesian sweatshop labor, or I’m teaching my child to smile, nod, and talk to the TV, or my child has a future in mini-skirts and breast implants. Oh wait, you only dress your little Emma in pretentious, designer clothing—you’d never let her wear a T-shirt. That happens to say something too.

For the record, I have no problem using my child as a billboard. I’m also using my car, my laptop, my sidewalk, my business, and anything else I can get my hands on. I’m not going to let the media stupefy me or my child into thinking that dropping bombs on and torturing the innocent civilians of a sovereign nation who did us no harm is something best kept on the down-low.

Our president IS a poopyhead, and as far as I’m concerned that’s being kind. A lot of other people out there happen to think similarly, which is why our T-shirts fly out of our punked-out garage. Every time we make one, and it gets stuffed into a biogradable plastic bag, we smile a devious, little smile. Maybe, ten years from now, when these kids grow up, they’ll carry forth the tattered banner we’ve been waving—the banner that says that Mr. Bush is an idiot, the banner that apologizes for our nation’s embarrassing behavior. Maybe, ten years from now, if we keep making T-shirts, the poopyheads will be long gone, we’ll be out of Iraq, and there will be peace.

As far as we’re concerned, there’s no inappropriate way to get across that message. Put it on your car, your baby, yourself, hell, spray paint it all over the New York Observer office at 915 Broadway for all we care. But get the message across. By any non-violent means necessary.

I've been obsessing of late about my lack of good reading material. Pouring through poorly-written books about the Old Testament prophets has been driving me to drink.

Anyway, I was browsing through Laila Lalami's excellent litblog last night, where I discovered a feature she has on underappreciated books. After spending the evening combing through them, I had quite the list developed, and so my trip to Powell's became quite expensive. Hopefully, the reading material will save me from the bottle.

Yeah, it's kind of weird.

Checking out books at the library is kind of weird. I want to say something to the librarians like, no really, I'm just doing research, I don't really believe that this guy rose from the dead after three days, really I don't.

It's also weird because, the more I look into it the more I really, really like Jesus as a historical figure. I mean, how many of our modern-day heroes are crazy nuts who walk around preaching to day laborers and end up getting hung to death in their underwear? Jesus was one nutty dude--it takes a special kind of person to proclaim themselves the Messiah--and the fact that a whole religion sprouted out of the things he said and did is nothing short of, well, miraculous.

It's a little early to say that I've been converted by own writing, but I have to admit that I find Jesus's whole nonviolent approach to changing the world quite compelling. It's too bad most Christians don't know the first thing about their own Lord and Savior.

It was Gandhi who quipped:

"The only people on earth who do not see Christ and His teachings as nonviolent are Christians."

Labels: Religion

Andrea and I spammed our open letter to Google to everyone we knew, in the hopes that we could actually get someone inside the company to speak with us. The results of this attempt were pretty wild. By the end of it, we'd spoken to the Wall Street Journal, the founder of Plumtree, and an old friend who works on the Yahoo! search product. We learned a lot about the politics of this. What an icky mess.

We never actually talked to anyone at Google, although friends had gotten our letter inside the company, and those people got the letter to whoever that person is inside Google who controls blacklisting. We were supposed to get a phone call--never did--but this morning our site's back up on Google. I suspect they decided that just putting us back up would be the best policy, as they probably don't want everyone and their mother thinking there is someone inside Google who will give them a phone call if their site gets blackballed...

In the local coffee shop:

Portland is the last place you go before you give up on the United States entirely

I love this town...