Drafting

(I gotta see this movie....)

For more than 18 months, I've been working, off and on, on a memoir about a road trip I took with three buddies in 1988 -- half a lifetime ago. I thought I'd have it done and ready for publication, whether traditional, self-made or ebook, some time this year. But writing projects rarely go as smoothly and quickly as you think they will.

I wish I were done with it, but I've had fun during each step of the process. The first draft involved fleshing out a blog series I'd done in 2008 detailing the four-month journey. In that early stage, I considered offering a wise elder stance, urging recent high school and college grads to forgo business school or smart phone app development in favor of discovering the greater world around them. I wrote about how easy it is these days to stay in touch with friends and family, but that when you're on the road, you should try to cut as many ties as possible to maximize your adventure.

In those heady early days of drafting, I threw in all sorts of background information about trips I took as a kid and at the end of college, mentioned all sorts of cool places I wish my buddies and I had stopped at, extolled the virtues of motels, diners, drive-in theaters and roadside attractions.

As I read the journal I kept on the 1988 trip, and thought more deeply about the journey than I ever had, I realized that I didn't live up to the expectations I had for the trip. As I analyzed some of the trepidation, anxiety and fear I had on the road, I realized that my son, Owen, shares some of these issues.

So I tried to make that part of the book as well. I tried to balance a linear narrative of the trip and analysis of who I was then and who I've become and how that all has an impact on my family.

And I laid a lot of this out in a foreword.

In the second draft I began researching some of the places we'd visited, filling in background information on bars, tourist sites, hotels, motels, etc. I also sent questions to my fellow travelers, as well as members of my family, and other friends, looking for additional information to shore up my account.

The third draft found me tightening things up, continuing to do research and add information from friends and family. Then I needed a break. So I emailed the manuscript to several people, four of whom got back to me with comments and suggestions.

For the last few weeks I've been working on the fourth draft. During this process I shed the foreword, realizing that it served as an outline of sorts for the book, but wasn't necessary for readers. I also ditched the stuff comparing me to Owen, and shaved down extraneous background information and bits about places we never visited, although I wish we had.

I already know that there will be at least one more draft. One of the comments I received from a reader was to punch things up a bit, to make the words sing on the page a bit more. I've done some of that, but at times I get lazy and find myself reading through the text with editing in mind more than rewriting.

Another new facet of the latest draft is photos. I brought a broken camera with me on the road trip, although I didn't know it was a lemon until I tried to get a few rolls developed. Initially I thought my memoir wouldn't have any pictures, which bummed me out.

But as I edited, I realized that I had some pictures to add. Some are from a family vacation that I reference in the book. Others were provided by my buddy Andy, who was on the trip. Others are from college events, provided by friends. One is the worst picture ever taken of me, at a going-away party before I went on the trip. I'm wearing a brown turtleneck, a green sweater, have an unstylish mid-length hairdo and a beard. I'm 22, but I look like I'm pushing 40.

I've enjoyed every stage of writing this book, and look forward to the next one. At some point I plan to seek out an editor or agent, and then there will be more drafting. I don't know when the book will get published, or by whom. I don't know if there will be any interest outside my immediate circle of friends and family.

I'm not writing this book for the money, but I hope it sells quite a bit better than my first book, (C)rock Stories: Million-Dollar Tales of Music and Mayhem, which may have moved 100 units.

I think my memoir has more general appeal than my short story collection did. Whereas (C)rock Stories dealt with universal issues ranging from love, hate, death and growing up, I have a feeling that the music references and themes throughout the book might have alienated some readers.

This book is more self-analytical and deals with emotional struggles and interpersonal battles more openly.

Honestly, I don't want this writing process to end. I enjoyed writing (C)rock Stories, but there was a lot of work -- 10 years' worth, off and on. I'm finding it much easier to write this book, even though I put myself in an often unflattering light. Once I'm done with the memoir, I'll move on to another short story collection based on memories of growing up in my hometown. One of those stories is complete, and will appear in a new anthology being curated by my good friend Jim Corrigan.

Jim published Movable Feasts, which also included one of my stories.

OK, that's enough.

Something/Everything/Nothing

The leaves are falling all around, the Sox are in the World Series, I've got a beard, I'm trying to punch up my road trip memoir, I need to contact publishers about my children's book, I need to finish a short story for Jim Corrigan's latest anthology, I'm gonna look for work as a ghostwriter, I want to rock and roll all night and party every day, I wish I could run again, I have fantasies where I play pick-up ice hockey, and I also think about getting back into baseball, although my hip/groin/back tell me I'm a fool, I can't believe how quickly my kids (and your kids) are growing up but I wish they would go outside more, I'm reading Looking for Przybylski and enjoying it especially the parts about traveling through Texas and New Mexico because they line up amazingly well with my impressions about that desolate part of the country from my memoir-in-progress, I'm way behind on "Boardwalk Empire" and gave up on "Nashville" because it was too much soap and not enough opry,I recently added music by The Vibrators to iTunes, I need to recruit people for my other blog, The Backside of America, I'm resurrecting my old web site, DaveBrigham.com ("Where Dave Brigham Meets Dot Com") and am taking suggestions for how to make it awesome, I spent some quality time today at the National Archives in Waltham scanning in photos from U.S. Government chemical warfare manuals and brochures, I now know how to properly put on a gas mask, I'm free-forming....

Back On the Beat

I had hip surgery 11 weeks ago, and got off crutches five weeks ago. I've been doing physical therapy for the last seven weeks. With each passing day and week, I feel steadier on my feet.

I've been walking Amelia to school most days, and Owen to school (a much shorter distance) just about every day. I'm also doing about 45 minutes' worth of stretching and strengthening to help my hip, groin and lower back.

Another milestone in my recovery is getting out and about taking pictures. I've snapped a bunch lately while on subway trips with Owen. It was during our most recent jaunt that I got inspired for a new subject. While cruising along the C branch of the Green line, I noticed (not for the first time) numerous apartment buildings on Beacon Street in Brookline that have names, i.e. Wexham, Stonehurst, Wenham.

I haven't gotten back over there on foot to take pictures yet, but I did make the rounds of Watertown Square and Newton Corner earlier this week to take pics of a few named buildings. You'll be able to see these photos and more at my other blog, The Backside of America, in the near future.

Below are some church photos (another subject I've taken a shining too in recent months) from Watertown and Newton.

(I love this door, which is on the St. John's United Methodist Church in Watertown.)

(Just down the street is this beautiful building, which was converted to condos several years ago.)

(This is the chapel of Grace Episcopal Church in Newton.)

(And right around the corner is Newton Presbyterian Church.)

Bottle On the Brain

The story I wrote for the short story anthology Movable Feasts is called "The Bottle." Set in the late 19th century, the story is about the pettifoggers who peddled curative tonics, and their struggle in the face of a public who was becoming wise to their ways. I just realized that my story would have been much better if I'd used "pettifoggers" in it, because it's one of the best words I've ever found via Dictionary.com.

Published earlier this year, the collection was edited by my good friend Jim Corrigan. Not a man to let grass grow under his feet, Jim solicited stories for another anthology soon after. Whereas the theme for Movable Feasts was "eating out," the unifying concept for the next book is "travel."

I certainly took some liberties with the the theme the first time around, and wrote too many words, but I felt pretty good about "The Bottle." I published my own collection of short stories, (C)rock Stories: Million-Dollar Tales of Music, Mayhem and Immaturity in 2010. All 15 stories were centered on music (and one of them was called "Message In a Beer Bottle" -- go figure), so I wanted to do something different for Jim's premier collection.

When Jim asked if I was on board for his upcoming travel-themed collection, I of course said yes. I had no idea at the time what I would write, but I knew I'd come up with something. I'd been outlining a collection of stories about the town where I grew up, and realized that one of the ideas I had could be molded to fit the travel theme.

One of the characters from my childhood was someone one of my friends dubbed Lady Death. I sketched out a basic idea for the story, and knew that once again my interpretation of travel might be a little loose, but I liked the idea of the story and started working on it.

I've plugged away on and off over the last few months, and have mostly completed a first draft. As I got toward the story's climax, I did a little research that led me to some important information that fit perfectly into my story. I don't want to give away too much, but I will say that, quite unexpectedly, I've ended up writing another story in which a bottle plays a role.

Unlike in "The Bottle," the glass vessel in my new story (working title "Lady Death Trip") isn't a central component. But it certainly plays an important role.

Once I finish the story and things move along toward publication (Jim is working with several authors, and is in the reading phase right now with some of them) I'll offer more details, and let you know when and where you can buy the book.

Book Review: "The Warmth of Other Suns" by Isabel Wilkerson

I abhor confrontation, whether I'm involved or just a witness. This isn't something about which I am at all proud. Well, except for the fact that this character trait has kept me out of fist fights. I'm the kind of guy who thinks of a snappy comeback well after the fact, or needs to do research to provide back-up to whatever point I was trying to make earlier. I'm just not a good debater. Let's not get into the psychology of this.

Nearly 20 years ago I worked as a proofreader at a Boston accounting firm. The work was extremely dry, the work environment was fairly buttoned down, and my fellow employees were mostly young conservative types. Most days, a bunch of us younger types (the junior accountants, receptionist, interns and me, although I was a few years older than most of them) would eat lunch in the conference room.

Most times, the conversation revolved around clients, or weekend antics or local sports. I spent much of the time hunched over the Boston Globe while I ate. A few of the young dude number crunchers used to fight over my sports pages.

One day the conversation shifted from the usual topics to something more controversial, although I might have been the only person who considered it so. Well, I suspect I wasn't the only one, but certainly nobody spoke up when a few people, especially the receptionist, started bad-mouthing black people.

I don't recall how the subject came up. Could have been a report in the paper about gangs. There have always been gangs in Boston, including the infamous Whitey Bulger and his associates, but in the mid-'90s, as today, many of the gangs are made up of young, black men. In September of 1995, a gang prosecutor was assassinated in broad daylight.

The only comments I recall from this conversation came from our receptionist, a nice woman named Maria, who was, like me, a few years older than the recent college grads who we ate lunch with. I liked Maria. She was easy to talk to, good at her job, if a bit ignorant of world affairs at times.

A proud daughter of Italian immigrants, Maria wondered that day about why black people had such a hard time moving up in the world, when her family and other Italian-Americans managed to find their way in the world and be successful. It was obvious that in her opinion, black people just weren't trying hard enough, or had some deficiency that was holding them back.

Listening to her, I got that feeling that I get when I'm uncomfortable with a conversation or am witnessing an argument or physical confrontation. My nerves jangled, my skin got hot and my brain seethed with disgust. But I didn't say anything, couldn't think of what to say that would get my point across without making Maria feel bad. See, I don't ever want to make people feel bad. Because then they'll say something back, and either I won't have an answer, or I'll get too mad too quickly and end up saying something nasty.

I've thought many times over the years about the things Maria said. I've come up with replies that would've, at the least, made Maria think for a few seconds about what she'd said.

Now, all these years later, I have an answer for her. Sure, it's more than 500 pages long and has taken me weeks to read, but Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration provides irrefutable proof of the misery that black people endured for the 100 years after slavery ended, at the hands of white politicians, lawmakers, law enforcement, employers, everyday people on the street.

"You wanna know why black people have had so much difficulty getting ahead in America?" I would ask Maria now. "Because white people treated them like shit at every possible turn, and that was in the good times. Lynchings, Jim Crow laws, unfair wages and housing opportunities, refusal to allow them to drink from the same fountains or ride in the same train cars (and countless other methods of separate and unequal treatment) -- setting up an entire system designed to keep black people from making anything of themselves."

None of this information is new to people who have any clue about the history of race relations in the United States. But when you read page after page of first-hand accounts of the unimaginable suffering that the descendants of slaves went through, it makes it far too real.

But Wilkerson's book is so much more than just a recounting of terrors and heartbreak. The author interviewed more than 1,200 people in order to get as complete a picture as possible of what people in different parts of the South did to escape North or West and make a new life. Out of all of these folks, she chose three as the "leads" in the story of millions of people who made the brave and sometimes heart-rending choice to leave their homes and take a chance in someplace new.

Ida Mae Brandon Gladney left Mississippi and went to Chicago; George Swanson Starling fled Florida for New York City; and Robert Joseph Pershing Foster bolted Louisiana for Los Angeles.

Each had a different reason for leaving: Gladney and her husband escaped after somebody close to them was beaten for committing a crime that turned out never to have occurred; Starling felt threatened after agitating for better wages in the citrus groves; and Foster felt stifled in the Deep South and fulfilled his longtime dream of going to Hollywood.

All of them faced discrimination in their new cities, and hard times getting started and becoming even a little bit successful. And while they missed the people, food, culture and landscapes of their hometowns, they never regretted migrating away from the brutality of the South.

Wilkerson tells their tales with such intimacy and beauty, providing incredible details at every turn of their lives and hardships and triumphs. I felt so connected to each of the three protagonists, and learned so much about a huge chapter of this nation that I knew next to nothing about beforehand.

I have no idea what, if anything, Wilkerson is working on now. I imagine she's got something in the works. Whatever it is, I'm sure I'll read it.

I've gone on too long. Just go read the book.

Limp

I'm happy to report that after six weeks, I have set aside my crutches. The surgeon told me yesterday that my recovery is coming along well, and that I'm ready for the next phase.

The doctor said I might want to try one crutch for a while, or even two if the pain is too much. But I couldn't wait to ditch the crutches, and so far over the past 28 hours I'm feeling good.

I was half hoping the doctor would tell me I had to use either one crutch or a cane. I would've gone for something like this:

On Monday I'll give the therapist my new prescription. I don't know what that will entail, but he told me on Thursday that once the surgeon gave me the go-ahead for full weight bearing, he'd start pushing me. I've got plenty of work ahead of me, and the doctor said I can expect a few more months before I'm feeling as fully healed as I'm going to get.

My left hip isn't ever going to be 100%. I'm not going to be a runner again. But that's OK. I'll take up swimming or get back to walking. Maybe bike riding. Right now I'm just happy to be limping.

Crutchin'

Man am I sick of these crutches.

I've been on them for 5 1/2 weeks now, and I absolutely still need them. All along I'd assumed that I'd be off them at the six-week mark, which would be the end of this week. I have an appointment with the surgeon on Friday, which is a day after the six week anniversary of my hip surgery. But my physical therapist told me a few days ago that it's likely the surgeon will instruct me to use one crutch (or a cane) for a while before making the transition to full weight bearing.

I don't know for sure that's what the surgeon is gonna tell me, but I suspect it will be. If he gives me that choice, I'm tempted to go for the cane, so I can be wicked dope like Prime Minister Pete Nice.

My dad, who's 84, uses a black cane with a silver snake head on top. I don't think he'd part with it, but I'd like to rent one like that.

I'm glad I'm able to drive despite using crutches. Fifteen years ago I tore my Achilles tendon and couldn't drive for a few months. That sucked.

But there's just so much I can't do, or can't do as well as I'd like. I get very frustrated trying to do the simplest things, like clear the dinner table, or empty the dishwasher, or carry a book or a magazine from one room to the next. Last week I was trying to pick up some of the kids' books and toys from an ottoman in the living room, and lost my balance, and ended up dropping the crutches and falling arm first onto the ottoman.

Of course, I blamed my mishap on the books and toys, admonishing the kids to clean their stuff up so I wouldn't trip and almost fall on my face. I've always had a low threshold for frustration with simple things that don't go right, and while for the most part during my recovery I feel as though I've let little things slide by, lately I've been letting those issues bug me too much.

If I knew that at the end of my time on crutches, and after several weeks of PT and taking some time to get back in the swing of things that I'd be feeling better than I did before my surgery, perhaps I wouldn't let myself get frustrated. But I know that's not the case. The surgeon cleaned torn cartilage out of my hip joint, but he didn't repair it. He also shaved down the head of my femur, so it won't impinge on the joint.

But I notice the same physical issues now that I did before the surgery: clicking sound in my hip, discomfort in my groin, low-back pain. I know that I have to work with a personal trainer at some point to get on a good fitness program, so that will help. But I'm not going to be a runner again, and I fear that eventually my left hip will get worse and that I might need to go bionic at some point.

Maybe I'm just letting myself get a bit down because I've been house-bound for too long. I can't wait 'til the kids go back to school, so I can get to writing and figuring out what the heck I'm gonna do to get back into the work force.

OK, here's a reward for reading my rant. All this talk about canes and watching rap videos led me to this video, which ain't safe for work: Public Enemy, Ice Cube and Big Daddy Kane (get it?):