Posted on 12/28/2024 2:19:27 PM PST by Ciaphas Cain
Lazamataz started a Writer's Guild awhile back and last week he shared some of his thoughts about the novel he's writing. In the spirit of the endeavor, and because I'm really eager to hear what others think about it, I'm posting the opening of the memoir (actually more of a full autobiography) that I finished the first draft of last month.
Please feel free to post your honest thoughts and opinions about it, no matter how brutal. It's the only way I'm going to improve.
Bit of context: this is how the entire book starts. It's in first person just this one small section. After that it jumps to 33 years earlier, and from there the book is in first person. I just wanted to have better "camera control" over this scene...
September, 2016…
Not another human soul is in sight along the remote highway cutting a tight line through the New Mexico desert. The sun beats down upon the landscape, bathing the scrub and mesas with late-summer glare. A white-winged dove flits across the sky.
The camera zooms in to track the lone vehicle upon this road. A silver Toyota Camry bearing North Carolina registry. The car is packed for a long journey.
The driver is a man in his early forties but has often been told he looks much younger. Laying in his lap is a miniature dachshund, who occasionally raises her head to survey the scenery they are passing through.
It is somewhere along this desolate route that the man does something he has always wanted to do if he found himself in this kind of place. He rolls down the windows, turns up the car’s stereo, and starts playing “Mrs. Robinson” as he crosses the desert floor.
It is an epic moment. The man has long envisioned that it would be the kind of scene from a motion picture. And now at last he gets to be the star.
As the song winds down, the man discovers that he is all out of jalapeño-flavored peanut brittle. He curses himself. “I’ve got to stop eating that stuff like there’s no tomorrow.”
The car continues down the lonely road, as the man’s thoughts drift upon the adventure so far. They didn’t want to believe he could do it. They tried to stop him. But the vision was too affixed. The calling too strong. This might have been the only chance in his life since his mind became his own again, that he would have to break away. To at last become the person he was meant to be. It was either take a leap of faith and live, come what may. Or die alone and unfulfilled in certain bitter regret. And the man did not want that.
The dog is now sitting up in his lap, looking out the window. She seems to appreciate the beauty also.
Until the man came here he had no idea that the desert possessed such a rich palette of color to draw from. Humbled to play his part in the portrait of this parched wilderness, he now muses upon the span of his life, and marvels at the events and people who came along the way that brought him to this moment.
Ping!
In my Christmas stocking I found a bag of jalapeno flavored peanut brittle from my wife. I have yet to try it out.
You gave me impetus to try it.
BTW, your memoir is off to a great start. Good reading and you have me yearning for more.
The writing style seems ok, if a bit choppy—too many short verb-free sentences. Can’t tell much in such a short snippet.
But the content kind of grabbed me. You’ve gotten me curious already about this guy. The dog—not so much.
The New Mexico desert needs more detailed description. Also, the sun in New Mexico is spectacular, especially among the clouds. You could describe the sun more. It doesn’t sound like you’ve actually been there. Also jalapeño peanut brittle must be something you bought in a gas station in Texas.
I just started a novel about Laz..... Chapter 1:
The Great Hot-for-Teacher Debate....I’d tap that!
It was a typical Tuesday evening on the digital battleground that was The Patriot’s Soapbox, an online forum where avatars and aliases danced with keyboards to the tune of First Amendment freedoms. The forum’s reigning champion of irreverence, Lazamataz, perched in his digital lair with a cup of lukewarm coffee and a keyboard that could tell stories of its own. Tonight, however, was no ordinary night. Tonight, Lazamataz was on fire.
“Breaking News,” he typed with deliberate flair, his words dripping with the kind of sarcasm only years of online combat could hone. “Another attractive high school teacher caught seducing a student. Cue the feminist outrage machine and the inevitable double standard. If the genders were reversed, the guy would already be making license plates.”
The post appeared in the “Hot Topics” thread within seconds, where it immediately began to accumulate replies like moths to a flame. Lazamataz leaned back, savoring the moment as his fellow digital warriors joined the fray.
“You’re not wrong,” replied RightWingRanger, whose profile picture was an eagle holding an AR-15. “But let’s be honest. Society’s priorities are all screwed up. We’re out here arguing about morality while China’s building AI assassins.”
“Focus, Ranger,” Lazamataz shot back. “We’re dissecting the societal hypocrisy around attractive teachers. Stay on topic.”
The thread quickly spiraled into what could only be described as a digital cocktail of indignation, gallows humor, and unsolicited legal analysis. But amid the chaos, one thing was clear: Lazamataz had struck a nerve.
“Here’s the real question,” he continued, typing at a pace that would make Mavis Beacon proud. “Why are all these teachers suddenly supermodels? Back in my day, Mrs. Crabtree had a unibrow that could bench press a Buick. Now they’re hiring Victoria’s Secret rejects to teach geometry. Coincidence? I think not.”
The post elicited a wave of emojis, from laughing faces to the obligatory American flag gif. For Lazamataz, this wasn’t just a conversation; it was a performance art piece. And tonight, he was the undisputed maestro.
But as the thread grew longer, so did the pushback. “This isn’t about looks,” wrote LibertyLass, a forum stalwart known for her fiery rebuttals. “It’s about abuse of power. These women are criminals, not objects for your amusement.”
Lazamataz paused, fingers hovering over the keyboard. He respected LibertyLass, even if their digital sparring often left both parties exasperated. Still, he couldn’t resist one more jab.
“Of course it’s about abuse of power,” he replied. “But let’s not pretend the media isn’t salivating over these stories because the teachers look like they walked off a Sports Illustrated shoot. It’s clickbait 101. And don’t worry, Liberty, I’ll make sure the unibrowed offenders get equal coverage.”
The thread devolved into a mix of outrage, agreement, and everything in between. Lazamataz leaned back, satisfied. This was his arena, his Colosseum. He didn’t need to win the argument; he just needed to keep it interesting. And in that regard, Lazamataz was undefeated.
As the night wore on and the forum buzzed with activity, Lazamataz’s phone pinged with a notification. It was a private message from LibertyLass.
“You’re incorrigible,” it read, followed by a winking emoji. “But you do make a point about the double standards. Maybe dial back the snark next time.”
He chuckled, typing a quick response. “Dialing back the snark would be like asking the sun to stop shining. But I’ll try. For you.”
Satisfied, he closed the thread and opened a blank document on his laptop. The title glared back at him: The Great American Soapbox: Tales from the Digital Frontlines. If he was going to write a novel, it might as well be about the one thing he knew best: the glorious chaos of freedom, fought one post at a time.
The dog, Tammy, came along on the journey too. She's as much a part of the overall story as anything. I would be remiss if I didn't include her from the beginning :-)
Several months earlier it was like God was speaking straight to my heart: :"What are you doing? You know your father isn't coming back. You know this isn't the place you want to live the rest of your life. So pack up the bare essentials and your dog and GO. Just GO. Don't plan on where you are headed. Let Me guide you."
We spent a year traveling across America, looking for a new place to call home.
Maybe I should pad this out more?
Bought the peanut brittle from a shop in Albuquerque. We spent five weeks in New Mexico. Tried to find work there but struck out. So we kept heading west...
keep it all in first person… show us, don’t tell us… and use some m dashes—the super commas for dramatic pauses.
great start… show us whatinspired you to sing…
Yeah, I’d wondered about changing it to first person. But then I’d lose the “helicopter zoom-in” effect that I was going for. Going to think about that one.
You can still frame it from the first person by having the lead imagine what it would look like if a camera was panning above him.
And "color to draw from" could be changed to "color from which to draw" (or maybe simply remove everything after "color"), to avoid ending the sentence with a preposition (a hat tip to my dear Mother for making me sensitive to the use of prepositions).
The first time I heard “Mrs. Robinson”, it was on the way to a Boy Scout function several states over when I was 16. I liked the song immediately, it had the kind of sound that made for good driving music. A soundtrack for riding across America to. And though I’d never been to a desert before then I always thought it must be great to drive down a desert highway, through that kind of landscape. So that’s where that particular desire came from.
Thanks!
Hot dang, it WAS a good idea to beta test this with fellow Freepers :-D
Intriguing. Here are a few of my thoughts:
It was either take a leap of faith and live, come what may. Or die alone and unfulfilled in certain bitter regret. And the man did not want that.
You'll know them when you see them :-)
Kurt Vonnegut HATED semicolons with a seething fury. He thought they were absolutely worthless.
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