How My Crazy Brain and a Terrier Dictate my Workflow, by Josh Stallings

Q: A writer's job involves a lot of sitting - scribbling in a notepad, or hunched over in a chair, typing. Do you have a daily exercise routine? What advice would you offer to other writers, to keep themselves fit and healthy over the longer term?

A Case Study.

2:41 AM PST. My brain alerts my central nervous system, "WAKE UP. I have pages for the new novel. I need the fingers to type them. WAKE UP. I have the essay for Criminal Minds. It starts with “CASE STUDY” and a screen grab of the time.” 

Drifting between a dream and this demand I glance at my wrist. My trusty Tudor Ranger tells me it’s too damn early o’clock for any demands. I try to negotiate. “Hey brain, sweetie, twenty more minutes of sleep and I’ll jump to.” 

“No. Now.”

“Right, how about I get up and make some…” I feel myself slipping into a dream about making coffee so I can write. I feel myself measuring the water. I can smell the grounds as I spoon them into the filter.

“Wake the fuck up you lazy bastard.”

“Hey brain, ease up.”

“NO. Get the fuck up and start typing. I work over-time thinking about stories and essays. Coming up with fixes for chapter twenty-seven — she holds the veil up against her face so Harry can see who she was, lowering it exposes tattooed tribal lines of the warrior she is. She is the widow. She is the warrior. MY only request is that you act on these ideas with some immediacy.” 

Fair-play brain. I roll out of bed trying not to wake Erika or the dogs. Buster isn’t fooled, he follows me into my office. 

2:49 AM PST. I’m up and typing. No coffee, my own fault; I wasted coffee making time arguing with myself, Topo-Chico will have to do until I get enough of this essay written that it won’t crumble if I look away for a few minutes. Ideas are like dreams, real concrete worlds that start turning to mist the moment I wake. For them to survive…

3:35 AM PST. …fairy chimes ring out of my phone, ripping me out of my writing. It’s a family member worrying about Huston power outages. I’m not physically in Huston, or I wasn’t until I checked the text. Who is texting this early? Don’t they know I’m working? Yes it is three hours later on the East Coast, but still. Calming down I breathe. My own damn fault again. I forgot to set my computer to “do not disturb.” I work on a Mac linked to my iPad and iPhone. With one setting I can tell all my devices to “Leave me alone, I’m working.” 

If I don’t respect my writing time, how can I expect my brain to keep churning out ideas and coming up with solutions to my first draft messes?

3:48 AM PST. An hour wasted. 504 words written. 507 if you count these. 513… 

3:51 AM PST.  I hide Word Count. Computers have all these amazing tools, choosing when to use which ones can be tricky. Knowing my current word count tends to lead me into a state of I-need-more-words-to-prove-I-had-a-productive-day. 

Less is always more unless more is needed. My life is full of dichotomies. The only way to gain power over my life is to admit I am powerless over my life. This is as true about my alcoholism as it is about my writing career. 

By accepting I have no control over any outcomes I see what I do have control over, these words I’m typing, this moment. Right here, right now, that I can control. I can control setting the do not disturb switch. I cannot and should not control who sends a family group chat out. I have neither the nuclear launch code nor the formula to cure disease. I’m just not that important. Anyone trying to reach me can wait until the sun has risen and I’ve had some coffee.

PROJECTED AGENDA: Future gazing from 4:00 AM.

6:00 AM ish - I will take the dogs on a pee/poop walk around our property. Give them a chance to investigate the smells left by the wild things of the night. If we’re lucky our neighbor dogs will be up and they can have a quick sniff and chat through the fence. This walk takes between ten and fifteen minutes depending on the length and speed of investigation.

7:00 AM - Feed dogs. Make coffee. My breakfast of oatmeal or smoothie. Chat with Erika and Jared. Maybe do some writing after that. We shall see.

8:00 AM ish - take the dogs to County Park or Nature Center for a long walk. This schedule varies based on weather, summer heat gets us out earlier, winter’s lack of light pushes walks until 10 AM. If we’re walking our friend’s dog Daisy, we go as late as 11:00 AM. The key is to get thirty to forty-five minutes of physical and mental exercise. Buster being a terrier needs this or he becomes an asshole. I need it because as a human if I live entirely in my head I become an asshole.

Today is a writing day so after the tromp in the forest I will write. 

12:00 PM ish - lunch. Usually with Jared and Erika. Food and a show of some kind. Lately Jared and I have been watching Snowpiercer, a dystopian TV series based on a French graphic novel and a Korean film. It is different enough from my creative worlds that it can feed me without taking over what I’m working on.

After this depending on my output so far and the demands of life, I will either go back to typing or get to outside chores, chopping wood and carrying water literally. 

3:30 PM ish - Walk dogs in the neighborhood, visit with their and our friends. These walks are anywhere from twenty to forty-five minutes, depending on how many plants need sniffing, and how many conversations we have.

Afternoon is for finishing the hanging threads of my chores or writing or watching a film.

7:00 PM - dinner for humans and dogs.

8:30 PM ish - a quick last walk with the dogs. Family hang time and bed.

Wake up tomorrow and if I’m lucky enough to have my brain still talking to me I do it all over again.

BACK TO REAL TIME

4:46 AM PST - wrapping this up before emailing it to Erika for her first pass edit.

I come from a long line of farmers and peasant folk who aspire to be artists and intellectuals. My body is built for labor while my brain is built to muse and mumble. When I forget to honor both sides of my DNA I wobble wildly out of balance. That doesn’t mean exact equal amounts of physical and mental tasks every day. Creative work like outdoor chores have seasons. Early in the writing process I need a lot of staring into space think time. Chopping and stacking logs give me something to do while I think. Deep into a project my brain becomes a taskmaster, I honor this by spending less time outside and typing more. 

Owning dogs makes sure I never completely disappear into my office. Those big eyes and a hereditary willingness to turn boredom into acts of destruction are great motivators.

4:47 AM PST - Heading back to bed. Catch an hour of sleep before reading this over to see how crazy I am.

9:30 AM PST - Words fixed as best as my dyslexic self can. Emailed to Erika. She’ll let me know if I’ve strayed completely off the page. She hasn’t said so yet. I’m beginning to think she likes me a wee bit crazy. And so do I. It’s important to have an editor who likes the same things about your work as you do.

Hoping a grand and productive day to you all.

****

What I’m Reading now:

All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker. 

Finished it, and it only got more astute, ingenious, insightful, and crazy good. One of the most brilliant books I’ve read since We Begin at the End.

The Mars Room: A Novel by Rachel Kushner

I fell in love with her The Flame Throwers. This is very different but equally wonderful.

I’m listening to The Singer’s Gun by Emily St. John Mandel.

 ****

Todays word count for those counting is, drum roll… 1,439 so far.

F*#k Genre (a Love Letter to Chris Whitaker) by Josh Stallings

 

Q: If you write in an alternate non-mystery genre, which one - and why? If you don't, which genre would you most like to write in, and what attracts you to it?

“If you think of your own life, there’s no one genre it fits into. I was a victim of crime but I wouldn’t shelve my life into crime fiction.” - Chris Whitaker, at Aspen Idea Festival.

https://youtu.be/v71dcIMQm0M?si=oEtUlSuYnjZQKOh4

“Fuck genre.” - Josh Stallings  

Yes, Chris Whitaker says it much more eloquently than me, but the sentiment stands. In that same interview he speaks about working in a library when We Begin at the End came out. He tried placing it in the crime fiction section and it didn’t do well. Placing it in general fiction it got ten times the notice. It was a tiny sample study, anecdotal at best but it feels accurate. As readers most of us read widely. But as a marketing concept genre has become necessary if we want to sell a book. 

I worked in movie marketing and can remember when the comparison game became necessary to pitch screenplays — It’s Back to the Future meets Beverly Hills Cop with a dash of Star Wars — and comps have taken over in publishing. Publishers Weekly often puts out “what’s hot now” articles, a list of titles yours should be like if you want to sell them — “It’s S.A. Cosby’s All the Sinners Bleed if it was written by Anthony S. Fauci.” 

Add to the comps game “the elevator pitch,” distill your novel into a compelling exciting multi-layered thirty second synopsis. We have pitch sessions and pitch wars going on at most every writer’s conference where you get a few minutes to sell yourself to agents and book editors. The ability to pitch has as much to do with writing as chopping wood has to do with rebuilding a carburetor. Being able to split a log with one strike of the axe isn’t predictive of being good at the fiddly work of fixing a carb. 

Yes there are folks who are great at both. And like songs there are great books that have fantastic one line hooks. But these aren’t necessarily must haves for success. Jenna Bush Hager calls Whitaker’s All the Colors of the Dark genre bending, or blending. She is a damn smart reader and thinker and she also said Whitaker is her favorite author. I suspect she would agree that genre isn’t helping readers find good reads any more, if it ever did.  

In delivering a smashing pitch, writers are being asked to deliver the ad line and shape of the sales campaign, often for a book we haven’t finished yet. Earlier in the Aspen Idea Festival interview Whitaker said he doesn’t think about the genre for his book while writing it. 

To need a marketing strategy before writing or reading a manuscript is truly the tail wagging the dog. Yes that’s a cliche, but so is the elevator speech and most of the genre tropes.  

I love genre fiction. Some of my favorite authors only write crime fiction. James Crumley could have been pitched as Hunter S. Thompson meets Raymond Chandler in the back woods of Montana. A reviewer of my Beautiful Naked & Dead said, “Josh Stallings writes like he is the bastard child of James Crumley and Andrew Vachss.”   

I love non-genre fiction. Some of my favorite authors write widely in and out of genre. See Charlie Huston. Or Margaret Atwood, listed as Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, pépiniériste (nurseryman, or person) and inventor. If a writer survives long enough they become a genre unto themselves. Like Margaret Atwood, John Steinbeck’s books run the gamut. With both of these writers their name is the genre. 

TRUE CONFESSION: If I was better at pitching. If I knew how to write high concept novels. If my first books had been blockbusters. I might be a huge fan of categorizing books into sub-sub-genres.

Back to Chris Whitaker. We Begin at the End is one of my all time favorite books. With Duchess Day Radley, a thirteen-year-old self-proclaimed outlaw Whitaker created a character that will live in my head forever.  

Only a third of the way through his latest book, All the Colors of the Dark I can already say Whitaker is surpassing his high benchmark. A girl named Saint and a boy named Patch feel like family I didn’t know I had.

Whitaker’s prose has slammed into a higher gear… 

“It was not until midnight broke that she crossed daggers of nettles and a well of water that basined between mossed rock and inched up her numbed feet that she saw it.”

This description of a sheriff leading youth through a crowd, slays me. “Nix seared them a path with his badge.” Or this, “Another shack to the left, rotting, its frame exposed like charred ribs.” This, “At the first fall of rain she looked through a canopy that stammered light as wind parted it.” Stammered light, fuck that’s good. Reminds me of Jamie Mason’s very personal style.

As good as Whitaker’s descriptions are, where he truly shines is his heart, and his deep understanding of us frail and tough, fragile and unbreakable humans.  

“She smelled faintly of Sweet Honesty and decay.”

“He wondered just how tough it was to be a parent, and if at times all poor kids were some kind of well-intentioned regret.”

“Two people are less lost than one.”

Patch searching reports of missing persons notices….

“The girls outnumbered the boys fifty to one. They varied in appearance but were one and the same. Young. Mostly too young to realize they were birthmarked with targets that only boldened with time, invisible to begin with, taking shape through formative years and burning red hot through puberty and into their teens.”

 

— All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker  

Circling back to the question what genre would I choose to write in? My writing life has been leading me down a broken road into a country that is both familiar and entirely unknown. As I write a new manuscript I see that genre gave me structure to hang my tales on until I found the ability to soar tether free. I hope when this next work is done I will have torn away the safety nets genre offered me. Mostly I want to surprise myself, and hopefully you in the process.

Reading My Way Out of the Darkness, by Josh Stallings

 

View from my desk

Winter is classically a time to celebrate the belief that regardless of the long cold nights, spring will come again. I take it on faith that the hardest days will ultimately end and better ones are coming if I keep holding on. I don’t mean to fly in the face of “seasonal joy,” but for many of us, myself included, these holidays bring up a cocktail of joy and pain. It’s raining on my mountain, snow is coming in this afternoon. I haven’t spoken to my younger son in almost five years. Last time I saw him he had been homeless, and was in the hospital. I don’t know where he is now. I hope he is warm. I hope he is with people who bring him love and joy. I miss the hell out of him.

Simultaneously, my older son is in a good place. Last Saturday we went and saw Ghostbusters Afterlife. We laughed so loud that if there had been more than five patrons in the theater we might have been asked to leave. Next week my brother, his amazing wife and a couple of their offspring are joining us. As always, my life is a mixed bag. It’s been this way as far back as I have memories. I was a child of huge feelings. Raging and laughing in turn. Tears at heartbreak and joy at the simple love of a dog. 

In this uncertain world I can always count on a good book. Being inside someone else's written world, gives me the needed perspective to see my own life clearer. Sometimes it just gives me a much needed break. 

In that spirit I’d like to share some of the books that helped me get through, and even enjoy parts of this last year.  

 We Begin at The End, by Chris Whitaker

This book gutted me. It broke my heart, and ultimately put it back together only better. It is a feel good book, if you’re willing to travel the rough road it takes to get there. 13 year old Duchess calls herself an outlaw, she’ll do anything to protect her little brother. She continually makes life hard on herself. But she’s brave, and unforgettable. Chris Whitaker has created a mythical yet real version of California’s coast and the wilds of Montana. He also created a book that must not be passed up.

Boy from County Hell, by Thomas Pluck

I read this in both draft and finished novel form, and loved it from the get. Pluck takes a hard look at American slave culture as it has mutated and shaped Louisiana’s prison system. He writes characters with humanity and morality, some at least; he’s also willing to write unrepentantly vile characters. This book is part social novel, part mystic bayou poetry, and full of non-stoppable action. If you loved James Lee Burke’s latest work, you’ll love Boy from County Hell.

The Southland, Johnny Shaw

This is the story of three unauthorized Mexican immigrants living in Los Angeles. Shaw paints these characters with strength and dignity and true humanity. They stumble and fall and keep going. In our sound-bite, blip-news world it is easy to lump these women into one monolithic group. Shaw make you see the individuals. People trying to get from one end of the day to the next, sometimes with grace, others stumbling but forever fighting to make things better. This is a hell of a book. 

  Children of Chicago, by Cynthia Pelayo

Is it a grim fairy tale, or a gritty police procedural? A crime novel or a horror novel? It’s all of the above and more. She slips in current and historical facts about Chicago that make the city itself a vibrant character. Pelayo has written a multiple genre novel that delivers regardless of what expectations you bring to it. Confession, I don’t read horror. Full stop. Okay I didn’t. I did completely dig Gabino Iglesias’ Coyote Songs, but I figured it was crime, freaky, but still crime. Funny, I rail against genre constraints and prejudices. “Good writing is good writing.” But Children of Chicago uncovered my own prejudice against horror and made me give it up. I’ll read whatever Cynthia Pelayo writes next, regardless of where it shows up in the bookstore’s filing system. 

 

 

The Invisible Mountain, by Caroline De Robertis

A multi generational love letter to Uruguay. It follows a mother, a daughter, and a grand daughter through their lives. A country through growth, fascist repression, revolution. It is a huge sweeping canvas that always feels small and personal. Take a vacation to warmer days among these amazing women.

Suicide Souls, Penni Jones

A coming of death ghost story? Love story? It’s a feminist novel hidden inside an afterlife thriller that is also funny — like Tim Burton meets the Coen brothers to tell you a ghost story funny. And at the core of this wild tale are people I cared deeply about, and that is what kept me turning pages too late into the night, to discover how their afterlife would turn out.

Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem, Gary Phillips

Think, Raiders of the Lost Ark, with a Black cast, set in Harlem and starring Mathew Henson, a real life Black explorer. Pure fun. Enchanting and exciting as hell. Yes you’ll learn some history, but you won’t know you’re learning it. This is a page ripping gas of a book.

Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs, and Revolution in the Americas, by Roberto Lovato

This is a late entry, I finished it a few nights ago. Non-fiction. I was reading it as research for a book I’m working on, and it took my breath away. Roberto Lovato connects the dots between El Salvador’s 1932 La Matanza ("The Massacre”) a mass murder of indigenous people, and the creation of MS13. Like David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon, Unforgetting’s strength is in the human story telling. We bounce between three stories, Lovato’s father growing up in El Salvador, Lovato growing up in San Francisco, and Lovato as an adult reporter returning to El Salvador.

It is a brilliant humanizing novel that won’t let you ever hear, “MS13, the most dangerous gang in the world,” without understanding these gangster’s humanity and the US government’s complicity in its creation.

     

* HUGE ASTERISK

Three of these books were edited by Chantelle Aimée Osman and published by Agora/Polis, (Chantelle edited and published Tricky.) Most of the others were written by friends. I can’t help it if I’m surrounded by brilliant writers, just lucky I guess.

________

(Shameless self promotion)

Library Journal named TRICKY one of the ten best Crime Fiction books of 2021