Of this and that . . .

I received a call from Bank of America yesterday about a job I applied for weeks ago. I almost forgot I’d applied there. The caller took me through a brief qualifying interview and set me up for an assessment of my Microsoft Office skills tomorrow morning in Seattle. She asked what my minimum salary was. Not wanting to brush her off with what I’d really, really like ($36,000), I said $27,000. She said, “Oh, that’s no problem.” Maybe I should have said $30,000.

Yesterday, I also applied at Group Health Cooperative for a customer service position. I’ve applied for administrative assistant positions ranging from $13.36 to $22.53 an hour, but have heard from them only once about a position that started at $15.73 (they filled it with an in-house applicant). I have my health care through them and I’ve heard they’re a great company to work for. Hopefully, something will come up that will keep from having to take that job on McNeil Island.

The suicide novel is flowing fairly well. I’ve added 3,000 words in the last four days, but I’ve run into a time problem. If the main character runs away in 2004 and is gone 22 years, the future meeting between father and son maybe too far out into the future to seem realistic. 2024 isn’t really that far away, but I don’t want to have to come up with a lot of futuristic shit.

I’m thinking about revising some of the background personal histories so that the main character can run away twenty-two years ago from today and meet up with his son in the present. This isn’t much of a deal, except for all of the back story stuff I’ve already established for the characters. I guess I’ll have to wait and see.

Also on the horizon is the short story I’m supposed to write for the Glimmer Train contest for new writers. I’m thinking about using an adaptation from the suicide novel like maybe the story of Arne losing his parents and older sister in 1955. It’s a long time ago, so I’m not certain it will work. When I was going through some of the entries from last year, I came across some story ideas I might work, too. And, finally, there is the intent to write something blatantly humorous. I’m not certain I can pull that off as well as something subtly humorous under the dark, deathly serious stories that I prefer writing.

Last, but not of least importance, was a memory of when I took the playwriting class. I’ve been having trouble with my dialogs; people keep telling me my characters sound like pieces of stone with their overlong recitations. Back in the playwriting class there was this admonition that kept coming up, “Let the story develop within the dialog.” In other words, let the story tell itself and leave out all the explanations. Assume the audience has enough intelligence to pick up on the point of the story without telling what the point is.

I’ve been going back through the suicide novel removing a lot of background stuff that doesn’t need to be there. And, today, when I was writing about Arne and his new “friend” Jimmy, I kept the dialog crisp and neat; not letting either character go off on long monologues as I’m oft to do. The result was Jimmy turning into a knife wielding crazy who completely dominates Arne. Now, if I can go back and do the same for the other characters, everything should turn out okie-dokie.

The main thing, though, is I have to keep telling myself that I’m still at the beginning, many things can and will probably change, and most of the stuff I writing will be thrown away during revision.