Writing

The War of the Adverbs

by Tom Trumpinski • Mar 21st, 2008 at 7:57 pm • 4 comments
Today was my second marathon editing session for Hell-Bound Train. The day began with helpful comments from a friend in the Southern Hemisphere and the evocation of Stephen King, chanting “The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”
Once alerted to the adverbs’ presence, I cannot avoid seeing them. They’re laired everywhere within the manuscript–weasels lurking to pop out and slow down the action or muddy my descriptions. Mentally, I throw my hands into the air, hyperventilate, and run around my desk like Kermit the Frog before a Muppet Show. “Ah, ah, ah, AH,” I realize I am yelling out loud. My cat, Mitzi, jumps from the desk and stares at me as if I had transformed into an inhuman monster.
I lift my pen like Tony Perkins in Psycho and begin stabbing at the adverbs. Almost, suddenly, nearly, closely–they all fall before my onslaught. There are ls and ys flying to either side of me as they’re excised. I realize that in the early days of my Urbanagora content, I used those words to shield me, to enable me to equivocate or retreat from an untenable position if a critic attacked. I don’t need them anymore, by God.
Now it’s passive voice that’s everywhere. These columns sound like goddamn lab reports. Slash, rewrite, annotate, cross out entire redundant paragraphs. Pant, pant. One entire piece goes in the trash–not worth saving.
My word babies crawl from beneath the wreckage of a demolished essay on polygamy, mewling like kittens calling for their mother. They stop to lick remnants of the blood and gore of murdered language from their fur. They stare up at me, wide-eyed, and ask, “Is it over? Is it safe to come out now?”
“Very soon, my darlings,” I reassure them.
I’ve made progress. Nine more weeks of this to go.
Tom Trumpinski
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First Book Draft Is Done

by Tom Trumpinski • Feb 28th, 2008 at 9:50 am • 3 comments

I finished the last piece yesterday–a Tonica story about my father and his experiences in WW2 and how they impacted my life.

I did a word count and Riding the Hell-Bound Train will be around 92,000 words. It’s about 40% fiction, 15% memoirs and the rest either speculation or commentary. Twenty-five percent of the material has not been previously published anywhere. I had hoped for a bit more new stuff, but sooner or later you have to stop fooling around and start polishing the material you have written. It’ll be tough getting it all ready to submit by the first of April, but I’ll do my best to meet the deadline I set last November.

Thanks to all of the Urbanagora readers who have been supportive to me either in person or in email/chat while I’ve been putting this together–especially Augur (my word mechanic), Todd (the spark), and Exapno (the Irish Beauty of my entourage). I also appreciate the time and energy that my long-suffering Wives have expended in my behalf for the last year and a half while I’ve been training for my new vocation. I could not have done it without you.

Now, on to the editing and rewriting task….

Tom Trumpinski

"I been Norman Mailered . . ."

by Billy Joe Mills • Nov 10th, 2007 at 9:46 am • 5 comments

So long to Mr. Normal Mailer. If I had the courage and the talent to be a writer, I would be like Norman Mailer. A writer digs at rocks for truth, Mailer did that. A writer uses his blood as ink and open heart as pen, Mailer did that.

NYT Obit.

Mailer’s famous article discussing JF Kennedy and politics and life, Superman Comes to the Supermarket.

Presidential Pens: Sorenson and Noonan

by Augur • Oct 4th, 2007 at 7:54 am • 0 comments

This morning I stumbled across a set of six YouTube videos on a forum that was held by GenerationEngage featuring two of the most famous speechwriters in American history, Ted Sorenson and Peggy Noonan. Sorenson has been described as President Kennedy’s twin soul. Many insist that he ghost wrote at least the first draft of Profiles in Courage, JFK’s pulitizer winner, and he also wrote the bulk of Kenney’s famous first innaugural address. Peggy Noonan wrote for Reagan and the intelligent Bush, and she is a weekly columnist for the Wall Street Journal.

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