The Junkman Cometh and Sometimes He Writeth / Author Guinotte Wise

Respect your readers, don’t cheat, cut when necessary, and by all means, keep going. I’ve never met this week’s guest blogger artist and author Guinotte Wise, but after reading this blog, I like him. A lot. Not only is he a good writer, he’s a heck of a welder. Nothing would make me happier than seeing a piece of his art and his collection of short stories sitting side-by-side on my office shelf. I’m a bit of a junkyard dog myself.

Happy Reading!

Clay Stafford,
Founder Killer Nashville,
Publisher Killer Nashville Magazine

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The Junkman Cometh and Sometimes He Writeth

By Guinotte Wise

That third person, man, you can get away with anything. It is rumored that Guinotte Wise came within a hair of winning the coveted … The award-winning sculptor and writer has just written a screenplay that some say … The former adman, who during his career won enough chrome and lucite industry awards to make three Buicks …

Snap out of it, Wise. Okay. Junkyards. I’ve loved them since I was a speed-obsessed kid with ducktails, a loud Ford and a smart mouth. Row upon row of decaying cars, some no longer in production, baking, fading in the summer sun. Smells of solvents, grease, gasoline, burnt rubber, and those unidentifiable odors peculiar to junkyards drifting like the turkey buzzards in the cloudless Missouri sky. Maybe that’s why I started welding steel and writing stories. I inhaled that stuff and it made me odd. But it’s my odd and I like it fine.

I have my own junkyard now, and no beady-eyed, bearded old fart in overalls to follow me around, making sure I don’t pocket a carburetor float or a chrome nutcap.

And if, when I’m writing, I get stuck, I go weld. And vice versa. They’re both fugue activities when I’m holding my mouth right and the coffee isn’t burned.

I don’t just stick stuff together when I weld. I’m represented by some galleries, and have solo shows. I’m serious about the writing, too. It’s just that I do what I want. No formulas, no rules, other than this: If I make something and it’s for others, not just myself, respect those people, give them credit for having probably more operating brain cells than I do, and some taste.

I had a horse named Mighty Mouse who passed away this spring. He’s buried on the place. He was a superb athlete in his day and a legendary horseman in his 90’s said of him, “He never cheated me.” From this guy, it was high praise. I would like readers and art buyers to say the same of me, and more, if they’re not blessed with his laconicism. I’d like them to be pleased. Never cheated.

So junkyards and welding and plasma cutting are metaphorically handy in this blog, which is aimed at writers and readers. The junkyard of my mind is cluttered with rows and rows of materials, ready to form new combinations. I’m not being enigmatic when I say of writing, or welding, it happens in the process. I may start out to weld a horse, and a horse happens, but I have no idea what that horse will look like as I construct a frame, an armature, and begin to give it form.

I wrote a book that way, and my agent liked it. No publishers have clamored for it yet, but who knows. I was putting together sculptures for a show the first of this month, and one piece drew a puzzled look from my wife. She didn’t care for it. I have a lot of respect for her opinion, art-wise and lit-wise—she reads a lot, and makes exquisite jewelry—so I left that piece out for a while.

At the last minute, I took it to the gallery and during the show, I was told it was the favorite of some whose opinion I also respect. Go figure.

I think I’m saying here, when you get rejections, have enough faith in your piece to keep submitting it. Your work is not for everyone. If it is, well, maybe you’ll be a bestseller and more power to you. And if, in your reading, you’re fifty pages in and you hate what you’re reading, toss it. Give it to someone else and they may love it.

The plasma cutter. Great when I need it for making things fit. But I sure hate to look at a big piece and realize I made a major error by welding something that doesn’t belong. The cutter comes into play, and not in an enjoyable way. But very necessary if the final form is to be pleasing: to me, to the viewer. Guess where that not very slick allusion fits in the writing process. I hate to cut, steel sculpture or the printed word. But it sometimes needs to be done.

When the rejection comes and they say, as they so often do, “unfortunately your work wasn’t the right fit for this issue,” (I just picked that up word for word from a rejection I got minutes ago) it could mean just that, or it could mean why the hell are you sending us this crap. Or, heat it up and refashion it some. Or write something new altogether. Roam the junkyard. It’s there somewhere.

If you would like to read more about Guinotte Wise’s books please click here.

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Guinotte Wise has been a creative director in advertising most of his working life. In his youth he put forth effort as a bull rider, ironworker, laborer, funeral home pickup person, bartender, truck driver, postal worker, icehouse worker, paving field engineer. A staid museum director called him raffish, which he enthusiastically embraced, (the observation, not the director). Of course, he took up writing fiction. He was the winner of the H. Palmer Hall Award for short story collection, “Night Train, Cold Beer,” earning a $1000 cash grant and publication of the book in 2013, Pecan Grove Press. His works have appeared in Crime Factory Review, Stymie, Telling Our Stories Press Anthology, Opium, Negative Suck, Newfound Journal, The MacGuffin, Weather-themed fiction anthology by Imagination and Place Press, Verdad, Stickman Review, Snark (Illusion), Atticus Review, Dark Matter Journal, Writers Tribe Review, LA, The Dying Goose, Amarillo Bay, HOOT, Santa Fe Writers Project, Prick of the Spindle, Gravel Literary Journal, and just had a story accepted in Best New Writers Anthology 2015. Wise is a sculptor, sometimes in welded steel, sometimes in words. Educated at Westminster College, University of Arkansas, Kansas City Art Institute.  Tweet him @noirbut. Some work is at http://www.wisesculpture.com/

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(Have an idea for our blog? Then share it with our Killer Nashville family. With over 24,000 visits monthly to the Killer Nashville website, over 300,000 reached through social media, and a potential outreach of over 22 million per press release, Killer Nashville provides another way for you to reach more people with your message. Send a query to contact@killernashville.com or call us at 615-599-4032. We’d love to hear from you. Thanks to Maria Giordano, Will Chessor and author Tom Wood for his volunteer assistance in coordinating our weekly blogs. For more writer resources, visit us at www.KillerNashville.com)

Rolling. Speed. Action. Cut! … Darn, Take Two! Rewriting and the Zen of Film / Author Daco Auffenorde

If the thing to remember when purchasing property is location, location, location, then the thing to remember when writing is…well…not writing at all.  It’s rewriting.

Citing examples from Stephen King, Ernest Hemingway, Lisa Scottoline, Charlie Chaplin and others, author Daco Auffenorde examines the process of rewriting, the strong case for getting the idea down and then molding it, and how absolutely critical rewriting is to achieving artistic (if not financial) success.

(And just so you know, I rewrote this intro 7 times.)

Happy Reading! And may you never run out of extra paper.

Clay Stafford
Founder Killer Nashville,
Publisher Killer Nashville Magazine

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According to a 2010 CNN report, famed actor-director Charlie Chaplin demanded 342 takes just to get actress Virginia Cherrill to mouth the words “flower sir” in the silent film City Lights. Iconic director Stanley Kubrick reputedly reshot one or more scenes in The Shining over a hundred times.

Great film directors like Kubrick and Chaplin are often revered for their willingness to reshoot scenes. So why do writers believe their first draft is a perfect, one-take scene, or if they do recognize the need to rewrite, become paralyzed by the thought? I think it’s because rewriting is not only a blow to the ego, it’s also hard and time-consuming. Unlike a movie director, an author can’t call “Cut” and reshoot the scene immediately. Yet, rewriting is as critical to a good book as the retake is to a successful movie.

Stephen King told The Paris Review (Fall 2006), “Every book is different each time you revise it. Because when you finish the book, you say to yourself, ‘This isn’t what I meant to write at all.’” In 1958, also speaking to The Paris Review, Ernest Hemingway revealed that he rewrote the ending of Farewell to Arms thirty-seven times and the last page thirty-nine times. According to a mid-2012 article in the New York Times, Seán Hemingway discovered after studying the collected works of his grandfather that there were actually forty-seven endings to the novel. The Telegraph added that not only was the story rewritten multiple times, but that Hemingway also compiled a list of alternative titles before he decided on the final.

What this means is that the key time in the writing process—the time when the book takes shape—is in the rewriting. So, how does the reluctant rewriter make sure her book gets the rewrite it deserves?

Take 3 … and action.

Done. The end. I’d finished writing The Scorpio Affair, the sequel to my debut suspense novel, The Libra Affair. I’d proofed it over and over, corrected typos, tinkered with sentences, cut verbiage. It had to be ready to send out to the publisher. But books are meant to be read, so before submitting my manuscript, I shared it with a trusted beta reader, and he suggested that I yell, “Cut!” and reshoot some scenes. I didn’t take his word for it right away. Instead, I put the manuscript away for a while, and then later read it on my own. He was right.

I knew how I wanted The Scorpio Affair to begin and end, and those parts of the book were fine. In between, I’d taken my heroine Jordan Jakes, a CIA covert operative, on a wild ride with lots of action and intrigue. But much of Scorpio was too episodic. Many chapters told exciting, self-contained stories, but didn’t move the plot forward quickly enough. There was only one thing to do—retake. And though at first I found myself frustrated at the daunting task of an entire rewrite, I remembered that most successful authors embrace the rewrite as a fundamental step in crafting a good story. For encouragement, I recalled the King and Hemingway examples, and also this wonderful quote from best-selling author Lisa Scottoline: “They say that great books aren’t written, they’re rewritten, and whoever said that was probably drinking Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, because they’re right.” I bought a dozen doughnuts, brewed some coffee, and started to revise The Scorpio Affair.

But here are the first two lessons about rewriting. If the process doesn’t come naturally to you, first put the manuscript away for awhile. As Neil Gaiman said, “Finish the short story, print it out, then put it in a drawer and write other things. When you’re ready, pick it up and read it, as if you’ve never read it before.” It’s advice that you hear all the time, but it’s difficult to put your baby to bed even for a few weeks. And second, try to find that trusted beta reader, someone who’ll tell you candidly if there’s rewriting to be done.

There are other ways to foster the rewriting process. Writing groups can help immensely, both because you get feedback from an audience—that’s who we write for—and often because you can read your work aloud. I can’t tell you how many times words looked good on the page but have sounded slow and extraneous when read aloud. If you’re not in a writing group, you should still read aloud even if only to yourself. Your ears will tell you if your story has the right rhythm.

A final alternative—there are many good private editors/writing coaches out there. They can be expensive, so not everyone can afford them. But if you’re lucky enough to have some spare change lying around, they can be very helpful, especially in today’s publishing world, where the editorial staff expects ready-to-go manuscripts.

Take 4 … and quiet on the set.

To conclude, I’m going to advise something that might seem inconsistent with the above. In considering how much to rewrite, trust your gut. Don’t rewrite just because someone tells you it should be done. As the artist, only you can decide when your story is ready. The gaffer, grip, production designer, and cinematographer might all have good input, but you’re the director, and the final cut belongs to you.

And that’s a wrap!

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If you would like to read more about Daco Auffenorde’s books please click here.

Born at the Naval hospital in Bethesda, Maryland and raised in Wernher von Braun’s Rocket City of Huntsville, Alabama, Daco holds a B.A. and M.A.S. from The University of Alabama in Huntsville and a J.D. from Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law. When not practicing law, she’s encouraging her children to become rocket scientists and writing novels. Daco’s debut novel, The Libra Affair, an international spy thriller with romantic elements, released in April 2013, and was an Amazon #1 Bestseller of Suspense, Romantic Suspense, and Romance in September, 2013. Daco is a member of the International Thriller Writers, Romance Writers of America, Author’s Guild, and the Alabama State Bar. Visit her website at www.authordaco.com

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Have an idea for our blog? Then share it with our Killer Nashville family. With over 24,000 visits monthly to the Killer Nashville website, over 300,000 reached through social media, and a potential outreach of over 22 million per press release, Killer Nashville provides another way for you to reach more people with your message. Send a query to contact@killernashville.com or call us at 615-599-4032. We’d love to hear from you. And, as always, thanks to author Tom Wood for his volunteer assistance in coordinating our weekly blogs.