Self-Inflicted Mid-Life Crisis Wrapped in Beautiful Prose

Off the Shelf Challenge 2021 - January

One Last thing Before I Go

Jonathan Tropper

I write in my books. It’s why I’m not a very good library user. In this month’s Off the Shelf pick, I worked really hard to not write in it. For two reasons: one, I wanted to read it for the sake of reading and two, I felt like I’d probably just end up highlighting whole sections of such beautifully written prose it routinely broke my heart.

This is the first entry for the Off the Shelf Challenge and I wasn’t sure what format these posts would take so I’m going to try this one and see if it does what we need it to do. I’ll accept your feedback, dear reader, in the comments below.

Origin

Where I bought the book is the first note I make in the book. I write where and when I purchased it on just about every acquisition. So I flipped this one open to see where and when and … nothing. I apparently didn’t record that. 

So here’s what I know about this book: the copyright is August 2012 and this is a hardback version, so it’s probably of that year. The cover price says $26.95 US but on the back is a label printed by a local cycle-up consignment store called Roundabouts that priced the book at $8. The label also says 11/19/2015 which I can guess was when the book was acquired. I apparently purchased it sometime after that.

Summary

This book follows Silver, a fifty-something former musician who is estranged from his ex-wife and daughter. He’s living in a sad apartment complex with dozens of other former husbands and earning $70 a week for ejaculating into a cup as part of a scientific research study. The sadness of Silver’s existence is quickly established - he’s a has-been musician from a one-hit-wonder band, and more like a passenger in his own life than an active participant until he’s diagnosed with an operable but life-threatening heart condition.

The book is a third-person close narrative with alternative viewpoints of Silver and his daughter, Casey, a recent high school graduate, whose own medical crisis pulls Silver back into her life while intersecting with his new diagnosis. We also get a few segments from the POV of Denise, Casey’s mom and Silver’s ex. The fragments of this former family and the way they try to repair the ties and heal old wounds are the primary occupation of the novel.

What I Loved

The prose is perfect. Phrases like, “When you grow up in a rabbi’s house, God is part of the package, an amiable resident ghost, floating about in corners, sitting in the empty dinner chair, peering in through the curtains after you get tucked into bed.” I can only imagine all of Tropper’s work reads this way: regular language elegantly constructed for just the right impact. 

There’s also this meta-understanding of the language when Silver begins saying aloud his internal thoughts. It’s a manifestation of his sickness, and serves to break barriers between himself and others, so it’s a great device. But it also calls attention to the way the thoughts are constructed -- they are not the same as dialogue -- and yet they’re used as dialogue. Which is so simple a device as to be obnoxiously brilliant.

In one encounter, after the device has been well established, Silver approaches a woman he’s been admiring from afar. The internal monologue reads, in part, “He senses a profound kindness in her, a softness he wants very badly to know and protect… He could be a better man for her.” The woman looks strangely at him and replies, “You know you’re saying this out loud, right?” to which he responds, “I do now.”

The reader is left to wonder if Silver thinks of himself in third person: “he senses,” and “he could,” or if he’s monologued the passage as, “I sense,” and “I could be.” And this trick, this device, is so compelling that when it’s used strategically throughout the book, it endears us both to Silver and to the story itself. Not to mention as he’s being honest and revealing secrets, the character is also forcing other characters to respond and spurring the plot forward.

So, like I said, brilliant. And simple. So simple I’m jealous of it.

What I didn’t like

We don’t have any reason to like Silver, he’s a self-admitted screw up who doesn’t really know why he let his family slip away and his life fall apart. Now, as he’s diagnosed with a failing heart, as his daughter is in crisis and his ex-wife is about to remarry, he seems to want to make a comeback and although he admits he doesn’t deserve a second chance, we nonetheless hope he gets one.

I don’t like that we don’t get the details of the marriage’s demise. We never see the moment when Denise kicked him out. We’re given the same kind of apathetic summation of the events leading up to his being in a kind of effortless fog for seven years that Silver himself feels and I was frustrated by that. I get it -- life isn’t one mistake that ruins us. It’s a series of careless declines, things we decide not to do, that leaves us desolate. But such a realization is both depressing and lets both Silver and Tropper off the hook.

Should You Read This?

I’d recommend it. I picked it up Sunday and was done Wednesday evening. It’s easy to stick with, engaging and well-written. It’s not particularly groundbreaking but that’s part of what makes it so good - its smallness is self-aware and it echoes one of those universal truths that one only learns after years of believing otherwise: It’s never the big things that matter. It’s always the accumulation of small things that really determines our satisfaction with our own life.

What did you read this month? Leave the book’s purchase link in the comments and answer the prompts: Origin, Summary, Liked, Didn’t, and Would you recommend it. 

Love & Politics on Clemson Road

On January 21, 2017, I attended the Women’s March in Washington D.C. I carried a sign that said, “Because Love” on one side and “Because Hope” on the other.

 

I was there to heal. To understand what the fuck had just happened in the 2016 election when our broken system failed. It failed to deliver a slate of candidates who were (1) qualified, (2) inspiring, and (3) worthy of the great honor of being President.

I’m a Libertarian and I voted for Gary Johnson. Leading up to the election all I heard was that my vote would help elect Trump. Or Clinton. Not sure how that works that one vote for Gary Johnson counted three times: Against Clinton, Against Trump, and FOR the candidate I actually wanted.

But if I’m honest, even Johnson wasn’t the leader I was looking for.

So at the Women’s March I stood shoulder to shoulder with women who were worried about their reproductive rights, about the future of our country, and the lack of decency in politics and in the White House.

In the four years since then we have been on a wild ride. One that has further polarized and isolated us from each other and from what we think our government can and should do for us.

During the pandemic I was horrified at our country’s willing surrender of pretty much every civil right we have. Like supplicants, we looked to our government and begged it to save us. And if that wasn’t bad enough, our government failed. Like big time.

So what now? Where do we go from here?

That’s what this blog will attempt to reason out. Let’s think it through. Let’s talk it out. There are no easy answers and that’s okay. I don’t need easy and you shouldn’t want easy. Easy got us here: sadness, grief, anger, and frustration.

"Easy" – the idea that our politicians could and would fix it, that we “deserve” better, that we don’t have to do the work because they will – “Easy” got us where we are. And this place is at best unsustainable and at worst, a total failure of a citizenry to care for one another.

Something’s got to give.

Let us bring the LOVE. Bring the HOPE. Bring compassion, bring optimism, bring a willingness to roll up your sleeves and do the work. Bring your words and let’s work on this together.

Who’s in?

This is an open invitation to anyone who wants to write a blog on the topic of Love & Politics to contribute to this space. It’s safe here, I promise. You are welcome here. You don’t have to agree with me or anyone else. Just tell us a story. Make a case. Make an effort.

Leave a comment if you’d like to contribute or reach out to me kasie@clemsonroad.com and let's talk.

Meeting Your Characters IRL

This post originally appeared on the Columbia II Writers Workshop blog. It's revived here because I think this audience would appreciate it, too. Enjoy!

Years ago, I went home to Northern Virginia over a school break and met my mom for lunch at Uno Pizzeria. It was on the corner of the most upscale shopping center in our area and it was one of my favorite places to eat.

I’d been away at college for a while and had been writing the novel that would become After December. I knew the story was about Brian Listo, a version of myself I felt confident sharing with others. He was arrogant, privileged, and good at everything he did. He also smoked and drank like it was his job and was kind of a slut.

I loved him. And he loved me back. Through the troubled years surrounding my parents’ divorce and the break-up of our family, when I moved away from Northern Virginia and only rarely went back, Brian was with me.

Josh, actor portraying Brian in the Fanatik Productions trailer

Imagine how it felt to see him walk into Uno Pizzeria. 

As my mom continued talking to me, I watched Brian move through the bar area. Watched him greet his friends who did not resemble the other characters of the book. Watched him light a cigarette and take a deep drink from a tall beer. The afternoon sunlight played on the shades of dirty blonde and light brown in his hair. His grey gaze seared me from across the room.

Day drinking, flannel-wearing, ridiculously hot Brian stood just yards away.

Of course, it wasn’t him. Searing gaze aside, he was just some handsome college-aged guy that looked like he could have been Brian. To the one-raised eyebrow, he could have been him. But of course he wasn’t.

Neither was Josh, the actor who stood in my kitchen listening to me explain how Brian’s kind of an asshole. And how he’s trying not to be. You know, character arc and all that. Then Josh went upstairs, got in bed with Meli, and filmed the opening scene of the book for the trailer.

Being with an actor who is trying to learn more about Brian so he can accurately portray him was both terrifying and thrilling. Josh looks like Brian. Not as much as that guy in Uno 20 years ago, but a lot like him. And he’s handsome and he has a great smile. But as soon as he started talking, he sounded young. Like Millennial young, and I remembered the literary agent that asked me if After December had to be set in the 90s.

Yes, yes it does. 

Josh is a good actor, he really is. Watching the filming of the trailer was awesome. Thanks to Fanatik Productions for putting it together. 

Being in the same room with your characters is the ultimate thrill.

A few weeks back, I visited those Northern Virginia locations where the book is set. Many, like Uno, are no longer in business. But I went anyway. Waxed nostalgic for the 90s and crossed my fingers I'd run into Brian Listo again. Of course, he’d probably have his teenaged son with him.

Here's the link to the trailer they filmed. It's fantastic.

The Grown Up Version of My Tween Dream is Published

In the scene I remember best, Tony lay bleeding on the floor of the cave where they’d built a ramp to skate. All the ramps they skated had these cool names: one in the sewers was called Ratwall and the one in an ocean-front cave (a la The Lost Boys) was called Angel’s Lair. 

I’m not sure how my 7^th grade novelist thought they lit that cave. Torches maybe? Candles? Or some sunlight falling through openings in the ceiling?

Anyway there was a giant half pipe and Brian and his Crew used to skate there. Tony had gone down inside and confronted Kevin, a friend with a bad drug habit who had betrayed the Crew. Kevin stabbed him.

Brian found Tony, bleeding, tried to patch him up, realized he couldn’t get him out, and finally held him, weeping, while he died.

I wrote that scene a dozen times. Best friends in their final moments together. Betrayal. Violence. Devastation. Loss.

What did my seventh-grade novelist self know about such things? Only what she’d read, seen in movies, and imagined.

Imagined.

For the duration of the year we lived in Aptos, California, I imagined what it would be like to have a group of really cool skateboarder friends. Brian would lead them of course, with Tony as his best mate, Jason and Joel as identical twins, and Kevin, the Judas among them.

All those days in the window seat of the house in Aptos, scribbling in pencil into spiral notebooks imagining the day I’d be a novelist. My name on the cover of a book. My characters walking around in people’s heads. Thirteen-year-old me building the foundation of my ambition. A dream.

And this year, it’s been realized.

I have a book. It’s not Tony bleeding in a skate ramp cave, but it is Tony bleeding, dying, and Brian’s loss. His regret. His shame.

It’s a hard book to read, I’m told, because it’s so sad. And yet I don’t feel sad by it. I’m glad to have released it. Freed it. Freed them all to breathe among the readers like feathery seeds of dandelions adrift on the breeze.

In freeing them, I also feel free. And nervous (will they like it?). And proud (look what I made!). And relieved. This thing I’ve been working at, this thing I thought one day I’d do, I did it.

Here’s the link to the book’s site. And where you can buy it on Amazon. And the Launch Day event on Facebook. There will be giveaways and behind-the-scenes and merriment and Q&As and suchness. Find me on Instagram for videos. Check out the trailer here.

More than anything, though, even if you never buy my book, find that dream you had that time and figure out how to make it happen. Because there’s a fulfillment beyond comparison in doing so.

Where ya been? Oh, right, it's #NaNoWriMo

So it's National Novel Writing Month or #NaNoWriMo2017 and I've been under a rock. I haven't worked out since Nov 1 though I have been getting up early every day.

I've been writing. This year's project is a Neverland story which you can read more about here. And I might stick a little bit on the end here just for fun.

So this 41st Year post is about falling off the wagon. 

I'm a professional wagon-faller. Oh, sure, I euphemize it with words like "redirect" and "pivot" but the truth is, when the wagon doesn't seem to be making any progress, I topple right off.

Some of my most famous wagon-fallings include the six-week no-alcohol "tradition" I had for about five years. It stretched from New Year's Day until the Daytona 500. It was meant to give my liver a break after football season because September through December is rough. After 2008, though, I gave that giving-up up. Be sober for nine-ish months and you'll stop inflicting that shit on yourself, too.

Another great wagon-jumping happened when I decided to scrap book Hollie's baby book. I did two mini-books and have been collecting stuff for the rest ever since. She's nine. I'm never, ever going to catch up. Which is fine, I realized, when I learned no other moms are doing a week-by-week log of their kid's growing up except via Facebook (collective groan and eye roll).

I've started and stopped dozens of fitness programs from half marathon trainings to swim team to Beast Mode and even a personal trainer. I've started and stopped dozens of diets meant to offset the booze, lose the baby weight, make recovery easier, make my metabolism faster, and make me hotter for my 20th reunion.

In spite of my wagon-falling, I've also been faithful and steadfast in a number of pursuits. I've attended my South Carolina Writers Workshop (SCWA) group sessions two Mondays a month for about three years. I've been at the Tuesday Twitter chat #wschat for more than 5 years. And I've done NaNoWriMo for five years. 

Writing, it seems, is a wagon I'm glad to be on.

For the last 18 months I've been faithful to 1 Million Cups which meets weekly and I've volunteered to read in Hollie's classroom every November since kindergarten. I'm not afraid of commitment -- I'm framing an assembled 1000 piece puzzle this week -- I'm just easily persuaded to drop relationships that aren't working.

The 41st Year blog is about the things I wanted to do that I felt would give me evidence of a life well-lived. Live events, visits with my Papa, and meaningful time with friends. What I didn't account for in that planning was the downhill slope my work life would take from January until now. 

The 41st Year is turning out to be less about charting new territory and more about resilience, persistence, and steadfastness. 

Lest you mistake these as synonyms, let me explain.

Resilience is about recovery, a return to the original form. I've been working over Clemson Road Consulting for months. The original mission of the company was remote, asynchronous work in storytelling -- a writing studio. We're there. Again.

Persistence is about continuing, a constant effort in a single direction. I've been pushing into fiction writing for half a decade and broke through this year with some highly-regarded work, opportunities, and recognition. 

Steadfastness is about being firm in purpose, resolved to a specific direction. I have not abandoned my dream of being either a writer or an entrepreneur. It's tough but if it wasn't, everyone would do it. 

I have a vision for my life and I plan to achieve that vision. It's just taking a few setbacks to earn the breaks I need to leap forward.

My faith remains. 

Faith in the vision, faith in my partnerships, and faith in myself. It's funny how spending the entire month with a kid who discovers The Neverland is a lie has made me more resolved than ever to make the most of the real world in which we're living.

Now, as promised, a little hint of the #NaNoWriMo project:

The ship anchored off the coast of Neverland, its black sails visible like an ink blot on the horizon. A flag with a skull and crossed bones waved on the highest tip of the highest mast, above a crow’s nest where stood a man peering at the shore through a long, retractable telescope.

I peered back through my own lens and tried to make out the whiskers on his face, the set of his jaw, the evil in his eye.

“How many?” Peter asked.

On deck I’d counted twenty-one. Six pulling at ropes and raising sails, five turning cranks and wheels, four tying knots, three securing ballast, one in the crow’s nest, one studying a map, and one at the helm. The last one wore a wide-brimmed cap with a feather that fluttered in the wind, a long duster trimmed in gold, and tall black books that caught the morning sun and shone as though just polished.

“Looks as though they’re getting underway,” I said, watching the anchor emerge from the water and climb toward the rail.

“And go where?” Peter’s voice had mocking in it. He hovered just above me, legs akimbo, arms crossed. Did he see what I saw? How keen was his vision for such things?

“Let ‘em go,” Hickory said. “They may return with treasure.”

“Or chocolate,” one of the twins piped.

“Or down blankets and feather pillows,” Peter sneered and spat at the ground beneath him. We’d raided the ship before, stolen the materials they’d captured from wherever it was they’d gone. The luxury of those items hadn’t left our memories and the five of us, Hickory, twins, Rocky and me, could share the same fantasy of fresh peaches, warm silks, sparkling jewels, and crisp wafers.

“How long will they be gone?” Rocky asked.

Peter’s sneer turned to a glare that he threw carelessly at the bear-costumed boy beside me.

“No time,” I whispered. “There is no time.”

Rocky blinked, nodded, “Sorry, Peter,” he said quickly so that all the syllables merged into one sound of contrition.

Peter turned his gaze back to the horizon.

Just Keep Writing

The best thing about submitting your work to a publication is that queasy feeling of sharing something important with strangers. 

The worst thing is a rejection email.

On the list for the 41^st year is 40 submissions to literary magazines, agents, and small press publications. That means putting myself out there 40 times (at least) and the inevitable rejection that comes therewith.

Yesterday “Off the Shelf” got rejected. Again.

I can’t help but think those people who reject this story don’t have an Elf on the Shelf that fucks with their Christmas.

The story is from the elf’s point of view. Patrick Henry hates his job and is trying like hell to get the kid he’s supposed to scout to touch him so he can be ruined, shamed, and released from servitude. This story is my first Joss Whedon-hates-The Incredibles story: It’s me looking at something other people take a certain way and taking it a totally different way.

I love this story.

I love the urgency Patrick Henry has and the drama of trying to escape. I love the exposition of the list elves who act like the DMV and the way Patrick Henry sees Santa as a slave owner.

Alas, the story has been consistently rebuffed.

When I drag Hollie to swim practice every day, I tell her she’s learning things through swim team that I can’t teach her. The 41^st Year list is teaching me, too. Submissions mean rejection and rejection teaches me to persevere, to revise and edit, and to keep writing.

Just keep writing.

The only way to produce good work that people read and love is to PRODUCE. I wake up in the morning and I race down stairs to write. I spend most of the day with my head in earphones and my fingers on the key board.

While I am in-between major work, I am writing my way out. Out of rejection, despair, and self-doubt, out of financial insecurity and uncertainty and failure. I am writing my way out.

Ambition and a visit to the South Carolina State House

Somewhere in my past, ambition became a dirty word. I kept it inside of me like a stain I tried to hide. It is the secret I pretend I do not harbor, despite its persistence and resilience within me. This week, however, I let it show.

My first trip to the South Carolina State House was on Equal Pay Day. A local advocacy group, the Women’s Resource and Empowerment Network (WREN) held their first annual summit and I attended. The conference centered around a study on women in the workforce that WREN had sponsored at the University of South Carolina’s Moore School of Business.

The three categories of findings were the gender pay gap, labor force participation, and the distribution of employment. The study found that a 22% pay gap persists in S.C. despite our women being, on average, more highly educated than our men. How can our ambition be so widely disregarded and our abilities be so undervalued?

Ambition manifests in action and my actions have been rather modest.

The snort of disapproval my doctorate has received, the dismissal of my fiction work as a hobby, the intentional misunderstanding of what it is my company does; I let these offenses slide. Then there are the specific phrases that hang on me like graffiti on a storefront. Phrases that remind me how difficult it is to be a writer, how inevitable it is that I’ll fail, how many businesses never make any money, and how naïve it is to still have dreams.

Phrases that are not my own insecurities, but the failures and doubts of others being projected upon me.

I stood in the State House and asked myself, “What right have I to be here? Am I doing good work? Can I do more? When will I?”

Redefining what it means to Lean In

My iPhone makes me crazy. For days now it’s been warning me I’m close to full storage. That means going through and sending to the cloud anything I want to keep and deleting anything I don’t want to keep.

I use the Voice Notes app for my research interviews and so it’s an easy clean-out. I upload all the recordings to the Dropbox folder for research and delete the file from the phone. This usually buys me about 1GB of space.

Today I found a recording I made back in August that talks about Leaning In having consequences. We’re not taking up less space, it says, we’re pushing something else out of the way.

When we Lean In, something has to bend.

In 2014 and 2015, while I traveled about 30% of the time, Charlie had to bend. He also had to accept occupancy by alternate caregivers for Hollie.

Celebrating Wordsmith Studio: Becoming a Real Writer

Before Wordsmith Studio, I wasn’t a Real Writer. I didn’t actually write. Not really. I played around some. Had a couple of novels in the deepest, most hidden files of my computer.

But in February 2012, I learned we were moving from the Upstate of South Carolina to Clemson Road. I would have to leave my real job behind.

I wanted to be a writer.

So I started this blog and I started looking around for advice, avenues, and allies. The path to real writerhood.

I found Writer’s Digest and Robert Lee “My Name is Not Bob” Brewer. In April 2012, he hosted a writers’ Platform Building Challenge on his blog. In the challenge, he had daily social media tasks. Things like read a blog and leave a comment. Open a Twitter account. Get a Facebook page.

Through comments of all the other participants, I learned there were dozens of people trying to do what I was trying to do: trying to tell other people that they were Writers.

Before Wordsmith Studio, I was a “Shhhhh…writer.”

Whispered as if unwilling to admit it.

Though my entire life I’ve felt called to storytelling, prose, composition and revision, I had yet to admit that passion to anyone.

Well, not since undergrad (1999) when it was made clear that being a writer was Just Too Hard and would never make me any money. I was encouraged to want money.

And not since my brief stint as a sportswriter (2000) when it was made clear that being a writer meant following around athletes who were Actually Accomplishing Something while I just took notes.

In 2012, I was in the middle of my dissertation research. I was writing the biggest, most important manuscript of my life. But I called myself Doctoral Researcher.

I was teaching English classes and I called myself English Professor.

I was freelancing, writing anything anyone would pay me for and I called myself an independent contractor.

I was blogging and I called myself a Job Seeker.

Then Wordsmith Studio. Born out of the platform challenge, Wordsmith Studio was the enterprising idea of early adopters who wanted to take our collaborative group and make something out of it. Give it a domicile of its own, a website, a Facebook group, a Facebook page, a Twitter account.