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My Slant on the Writing Life

Tuesday morning, I noticed, even in the dim, pre-dawn light, and not for the first time, how the black line of trim on the roof of my 12-year-old Volvo was badly frayed.

That observation led me to notice, not for the first time, the places where the car’s paint, otherwise in quite good condition, was scratched and nicked. These marks, like the wrinkles and scars time brushes on our faces and hands, were proof of my car’s long and useful life of service. As I sat in the driver’s seat, a wisp of wistful wishing passed through my thoughts, in which I wondered, what might it take to have my trusty car spiffed up a bit? I started the engine, and pressed the button to lower the driver’s side window. The window went down halfway, made a loud chunk sound, and stopped.

I said, “Well, that’s new.”

Another wisp of wistful wishing then passed through my thoughts, in which I imagined the window working properly, the nicks and scratches in the car’s skin receiving the equivalent of the Botox® treatments a Southern Californian’s face might, and the black line of trim on the roof being once again solid and full. However, this shining image of my car quickly dimmed, when I thought of having to find an auto body shop that could and would do the repairs, and having to leave the car in that shop for at least a day, and having to rent a car to use in the meantime, and having to take time off from my job to do all this, and having to spend many hundreds of dollars for what was really nothing more than minor cosmetic surgery. These thoughts made it easy for me to happily release my wisp of wistful wishing for easy and inexpensive auto-body repairs, and to imagine manifesting other things. Like my morning coffee.

I drove to the Pannikin Café, where I purchased (manifested, if you prefer) an extra-large coffee and a still warm-from-the-oven raspberry bran muffin. The three of us then drove along the Pacific Coast Highway to the cliffs at Carlsbad, where I parked so close to the cliff edge that the ocean looked as if it were right beneath my car. As I stared out over the ocean, sipped my hot coffee, and nibbled my still warm-from-the-oven raspberry bran muffin, the sunrise slowly lighted the horizon with the full spectrum of colorful light. I took out my laptop computer, set it on (where else?) my lap, and opened a blank white screen, the electronic equivalent of a blank white sheet of paper.

What happened next, I cannot explain. But I won’t let that keep me from trying.

I began pressing keys on the keyboard, and, electronically (magically, if you prefer) black letters appeared on the no longer virginally white screen. The first two words that appeared were a name: Jesus Amadeus.

Nearly an hour later, the blank white screen on my laptop was filled with long strings of letters. As I read these strings of code, I realized they were a rough but complete outline of the theme, central events, and hero of a short novel. Coincidentally, (miraculously, if you prefer), starting next week and continuing through the month of November, I would be participating in the bizarre annual event called the National Novel Writing Month, in which I would attempt to write (manifest, if you prefer) a 50,000 word novel.

Somehow, while visiting wherever I had been visiting, I had witnessed a strange story unfold, in which some punk-ass kid named Jesus Amadeus, somewhere in his 15th year on the planet, had a revelation in which the ultimate act of rebellion was revealed to him. That act of rebellion which trumped all other acts of rebellion that his teenaged cohorts could come up with was, not to stencil the words LIVE EVIL (which is really just one word, LIVE, backwards and forwards) on the back of his denim jacket, nor to grow his hair long and snarl it in unwashed dreadlocks and smoke massive amounts of marijuana, nor to learn three chords on the guitar and use them in 3 songs that he would only perform at parties where there were cute girls with whom he desired to engage in sexual congress. No. None of the above.

The ultimate rebellion was to say, “I love you.”

To everyone.

I had outlined an entire short novel, (novella, if you prefer) with a beginning, middle, and end. The novel would dramatize the message that everyone who lives by the dictum, “When I see it, I’ll believe it,” is living Life backward. Jesus Amadeus would live Life forward, by preaching: When you believe it, you will see it.” The events of the book would cleverly rewrite the miracles another guy, Jesus of Nazareth, had once upon a time performed. For example, Jesus Amadeus would attend the wedding of newlyweds too poor to serve their guests anything but bottled water. He would then persuade a local Subway sandwich shop, and a local liquor store, to supply the wedding with sandwiches and bottles of wine. In exchange, they would get free publicity that the groom, who happened to be a punk-ass publisher of a small local magazine, would happily agree to give them. And of course, nobody would SEE the miracle of it.

I sighed.

A wisp of wistful wishing passed through my thoughts as I wondered what it would be like to not have to go to my office now, and to stay at the cliffs and begin birthing the novel I had just conceived. But. NaNoWriMo was only a week away. I could hold my water till then.

I closed my laptop computer, started my car, and drove away from the cliffs.

As I drove along the Pacific Coast Highway, I paid zero attention to the wet and salted ocean wind flowing into my car through my stuck half-opened driver side window, lost in thought as my mind grazed in the fields of creativity, chewing its cud. I imagined countless ways to repeat and reinforce the central theme of the novel, that people do not SEE the miracles all around them because they can only see what they expect to see. They don’t understand that miracles are delivered through the existing mechanisms of reality, just like six-packs of beer or organic broccoli. In most instances, those existing mechanisms ARE OTHER PEOPLE. I imagined Jesus Amadeus teaching a gathering of thousands in a new Sermon on the Mount, “You don’t see the magic, because you expect to see a magician. You don’t realize that YOU are the magician, and YOU’RE INSIDE THE MAGIC SHOW.”

I was thrilled. I was delighted. I was amazed. I was thinking thoughts ALL IN UPPERCASE.

Until.

I realized I was stopped at a red light and a guy in a small car beside mine was leaning across his front seat toward his opened passenger side window and shouting at me, “Hey! I can fix up that body damage on your Volvo for just $295.”

I smiled, half of my attention still inside a scene in which Jesus Amadeus is being arrested and put in Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, and half of my attention turning toward the guy in the car next to mine.

He shouted, “It runs good, right?”

I did not answer because I was imagining a young Bellevue doctor performing a psychological evaluation of Jesus Amadeus, his questions, cleverly, brilliantly, allowing me, the author (God, if you prefer) of this alternative world, to present the reader with Jesus Amadeus’s entire back story, complete with all the unseen miracles he had performed! Holy flashback, Batman!

The guy in the car beside me shouted again, “Hey! It runs good, right?”

“It runs great!” I finally answered. I then beamed a smile of dopey good will at the man, while somewhere in the space between the world in which I was driving a car, and the world in which I was writing a dialogue between Jesus Amadeus and the Bellevue shrink, I wondered, “Does this guy spend his day doing drive-by sales pitches like this?”

The guy hollered at me, “So why not fix it up?” He made an exasperated gesture with both hands, as if throwing the question straight up into the air. I thought I detected a Brooklyn-by-way-of-Tehran accent as he added, “Hey! It’s smart thing to do. Whether you keep it or sell it!”

“Thanks!” I shouted back. “But it’s a 12-year-old car. It’s not really worth it.”

I glanced up at the still red light, ready to escape the polite but pesky salesman.

The guy glanced up at the red light, too. No doubt feeling pressure to close the deal, he called to me, “I’ll do it today. For just $200!”

“Thanks,” I said. “But no thanks.”

“Just $200! Today!”

The light turned green, I shrugged at him, stepped on the accelerator, and called out, “Have a beautiful day!”

Continuing my drive to the office, I was immediately lost again in imagining the novel I would write, and the character I would create, who would teach the world to start seeing the miracles that are happening all around us all the time.

Before I knew it, I was pulling into the parking lot outside of my office. I turned off the car.

And it hit me.

Showing my Irish-Catholic-New-England-lower-middle-class upbringing, I whispered, as if it were a prayer, “Holy shit!”

I was seeing the Truth. I hit the steering wheel with both hands and said, “I just missed a miracle!”

And I had.

Dazed, I floated across the parking lot to my office, watching a film in my mind in which an Iranian-born Brooklyn-raised auto-body man recently relocated to San Diego county got in his car, and inexplicably (miraculously, if you prefer) chose to drive to work along the Pacific Coast Highway instead of the Freeway. I watch him pulling up at a red light beside a 1996 Volvo, his trained eye assessing the vehicle in a single glance, and feel how he is mysteriously (divinely, if you prefer) compelled to yell to the driver of that car, “Hey! I could fix up that body damage on your Volvo for just $295!”

The Universe had gone far, far out of its way to send me an easy and inexpensive way to spiff up my trusty old car. But I did not SEE the miracle it had delivered, and said, “Thanks, but no thanks!”

Then a new jolt of creative urgency hit me, and I thought, "Whoa. How can I work this into my Jesus Amadeus novel?"

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Other ICBWB Slants on Writing by David Boyne

Failing to Write

WRITING SUCKS!
DON'T TRY IT!

Write. Exercise. Shower.

WRITING CONTESTS SUCK! DON'T TRY THEM!

Write Naked.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

To Read Slants by David Boyne on Everything BUT Writing, visit, at your own risk: