Minor Characters

The Gamers- Peeps I don't see enough of these days. We roll icosahedrons to determine the results of simulated combat against our shared delusions.

The Ex Spouse- I was married once. All very sad and tragic and filled with bad feelz, like a proper divorce ought to be. They ended up with custody of a lot of our friends–friends I didn't even expect would be taking sides (certainly not without ever even talking to me). Very tragic. I wouldn't much appreciate the deluge of cranky e-mails I'd get if I shared details. Somewhere around here there's some creative non-fiction with some that story. The important thing they did for my writing was being wonderfully enabling of my addiction, and even took on a sideline cleaning gig so that I could quit waiting tables and instead take a year off to write. That's when I found out I wasn't actually very good at writing, and decided to go to college. They're mostly a character because she knocked over the first domino that led to so many good things. Going to college was the beginning of a lot of wonderful chapters.

Ratontheroad- Trolly question poser and philosophical sniper.  He might show up here or there in cyberspace, make one comment about how philosophically sophist you are in your totally-wrong face, and then disappear again....like a ghost. Never even replying to follow up questions. But he's always there.... Waiting....  Watching.... Ready to take down your layman argument from 5000 yards. And if you try to simply "not move" he'll draw you out with a trolly question like Ed Harris in Enemy at the Gate. Still, he looks like Daniel Craig and could call in a favor that sees you looking down the barrel of an M-1 Abrams, so we don't call bullshit very often.

Thatblondmom- My first serial commenter!  She knew me back when I was a wee lad writing in yellow legal pads about Bunnyrats that took over small towns by reproducing insanely fast and eating people or drowning them in their...you know actually the less said about Bunnyrats, the better. She undoubtedly spends her every waking moment wondering what her life would be like if she'd said that she would totally go out with me on that fateful February day in our sophomore year of high school--even though she will deny it vociferously. Obvi.

The Librarian- No matter what I'm reading, it isn't good enough for The Librarian.

Mother Juxtapose- Raising a psychic superhero is no easy task. M.J. tags in from time to time to help me when Uberdude and The Brain are on extended patrols.

The Profs

Head one: Writing is the fountainhead of true artistic bliss.
Head two: And you suck at it.
Head one: But I can guide you through how to bring all those feelings to life.
Head two: Because right now you suck at it.

[This is an ongoing process to clean up the tabs up at the top of the blog. This is the latest sub menu of Cast and Crew.  Everything in italics will disappear in a couple of weeks.]  

Janusprof

The single most amazing professor(s) I've ever had for the craft of fiction. They made us work and made us work hard, and I learned more from them in a class than I did in 15 weeks of some other instructors. Janusprof was amazing. However, I probably should have sensed trouble brewing when they told me that all students were required to spend one hour in the iron maiden each week having their "pretentiousness bled out."

As I learned more than I ever thought possible about craft, I also knew that Janusprof was slowly killing Cathamel's will to live by turning up the volume inexorably on my internal critics. Janusprof was the air on a New England shore--refreshing, crisp, exhilarating, invigorating, possibly even inspiring but...ultimately corrosive over time.

Fluffyprof

Fluffy prof never did get around to really making us work. Usually we just sat around her class feeling things. Once she had us feel things about all the feeling we had been doing doing, and then had us freewrite about how feeling those feelings about all that feeling we'd been having made us feel. Academic rigor was not something terribly important in Fluffyprof's classes.

Englishprof

With the exception of Janusprof, and in a plot twist that surprises no one who actually writes, my literature professors taught me more about how to actually write than most of my creative writing instructors. Forcing us to read five or ten times as much as the Creative Writing classes and do close reading analysis for our essays turned out to be a better examination of how to use words to achieve effect than all the touchy feely advice about writing after dark and finding the heat. English prof came in two forms: everyone else and Sara Hackenberg.

Sparkly Vampires

Jackass- Jackass once decided that his anti-academic tantrum about analyzing literature instead of doing a book report on it was so important he was going to shit himself right in the middle of another student's oral presentation. That student was me. Jackass didn't think college students needed to analyze how an author's word choice created tone, or do any close reading at all, and instead we should just reflect on how a plot summary tickled our fee-fees. (I concluded this based on his own oral presentation a few days later.) Jackass seemed to think we were in a book club instead of academia and thought close reading was for chumps.

I even looked at him and said "If you don't shut up and let me finish, this is SO going in my blog."

Ta DA!

Peter "Willbehuge" Retentious (Retentious, P.)- Seemed like he was everywhere I looked while I did my undergrad. He showed up in every class, and sometimes it seemed like he was to my right and to my left. P. Retentious liked to talk about how much money he was going to make once he was let loose on the publishing world with his better-than-Stephen-King zombie story. Once he even said Shakespeare sucked--"especially at poetry." I had to resist putting my desk through his head.

Pete, Rabbit.  Usually called R. Pete- A direct descendant of the god of Obnoxiousness, and one of my first lessons in being zen on the internet. When I watch someone have essentially the exact same fight over and over again with everyone with whom they come in contact with, and involving the same basic miscommunication (and in which everyone is always "misunderstanding them"), I know that it's probably not my writing that is at fault.

Once, in a particularly petulant forty-eight hour span, I watched this guy plow through every friend he had, most of his internet acquaintances, and even grouse about the same happening in his meatspace life. That's when I fired up some popcorn, and realized there are just some people who are their own worst problem, and are really truly not mine. Honestly, I've just smiled and glided past so many hotheads since then, I almost owe this guy thanks.  Except...you know...he's a complete mother fucking pedant jackass, ass-hat, dillhole, and after his eighth dramatic flounce unfriending and crawl-back, I told him to go ahead and stay gone.

The Professional- Took the time out at a deceased friend's wake to make absolutely sure I knew he had succeeded at writing for a living whereas I was still trying to finish up my CW degree. Boy, I sure felt like the smaller person that day. Yep.

*By which he really meant editing anthologies of other writers, but whatevs.

The Turncoat

Breakups are hard enough, but there's always that one person who sidles up to you with the concerned face and then whisks away to report everything you've been saying to your ex.

Costars

Non-W.A.W. Chris

There's this weird guy who runs around when I'm not blogging here at Writing About Writing who looks exactly like me, uses my name, and even reads and writes all the time. Trust me though that he's a totally different guy.  He talks a less about threesomes and a little more about zombies. There might some overlap with real me like the writing and the quirky sense of humor, but this asshole is not the real me.

You want to know what's even worse? His ass-pucker face has the fucking gall to call ME a persona. ME!!! Persona this, you n00b! So don't be fooled by this shitty wannabe doppelganger. If you should happen meet this guy at some convention or at a party don't be fooled into thinking he's as awesome as me. He should be so lucky!

Coattail riding poseur.

Roommates

Currently sharing living space with a lovely peep and her teenage daughter.

The Teeming Millions

They aren't actually one costar, but they're out there. And they sure do have a problem with some of my advice.

OG

O.G.- I'm not sure what the "G" stands for, but the O stands for "Original." I know this because after I asked if "O.G." meant "opera ghost," she laughed and told me the O was for "original." ("Original gangsta?" I asked.  "Do I look like a gangster?" she replied. She left it at that. So cryptic!) What I can tell you is that she sure does seem to like me and my writing for some reason. A lot. She came to Oakland from her monastery (The Order of the Cyan Locks) in the high desert of The Rocky Mountains where they pride themselves on ancient recipes for green chili and omelets (and green chili ON omelets, I think) and where they do yoga for hours a day under the arid blue skies and mornings are so crystal clear they could slice your eyeball. She made a holy pilgrimage to Oakland to help me with my writing and noted everything from my productivity cycles to my facial expressions while I type to my posture. She's also had some incredibly motivational techniques that make me very happy to be a writer.

"This cryptic OG sounds like my kind of ghoul!"

The Worshiped (Some Call Them Cats)

Currently I don't entirely share a domicile with any Worshiped. My roommate has one, but I have not yet been recognized as a thumb monkey worthy of attention–perhaps because I have not delivered enough chicken or salmon unto the shrine of worship.

You can tell how much I hated her.

Princess Mononoke- In February 2017, Princess Mononoke decided that in order to truly achieve Peak Orangosity, she would have to transcend this mortal plane. She was a good girl. No matter how much she crankily meowed when I had the temerity to move the bed. Or move in the bed. Or really just move.









The Worshipped at The Hall of Rectitude

I no longer work full time at The Hall of Rectitude but there are a couple of Worshipped there who remember me when I stop by for one of my freelance gigs.

James Bond- A sweet cat started poking around the Hall in 2011 with tuxedo markings. Not just "Hey does this cumberbund fit?" tuxedo markings but "Damn I make this look good!" tuxedo markings. We named it James Bond, later to discover that the sweet James was a girl. Fortunately, James rejects society's gender binary, so she's totally cool rocking a name that's typically male. She strolls around acting like she owns the place and calling everyone Moneypenny.

Moneypenny, I could use some scritches under my chin. Shaken, not stirred.
Oh and tell me I'm not rocking this tux on the brown background.

Benjamin J Cat- The J does not stand for anything. It's just a J.

Benjamin is fuzzy. Also, Benjamin is probably not college material.

I'd really like to snuggle you.
To death.

To understand Benjamin, you have to personify him like Doug the Dog from Up. "Hey guys. It's really silly that you think I'm not college material. Colleges are made of wood and stone and stuff. I'm made of fluff. I like snuggles. Do you guys like snuggles? I also like soft things. You know what I really like? I like snuggling on soft things."

Don't be too hard on Ben. Early in his life there was a door to a bedroom that he could open by slamming his head into it--Alien Queen style. Unfortunately it took him a LONG time to learn that it was JUST THAT ONE DOOR, and that all the others were going to stay closed. There were some serious head-banging sessions in his early life. Ben has no delusions of power or nobility. But he does like snuggles. Also....he is trying to murder me.

The Supernaturals

Cathamel- 

My muse. 

She takes the form of an Asian dragon wood carving that sits on my desk, and she comes to life when no one else is watching. Then she threatens me with unspeakable torment if I don't get back to writing.

Last week she mentioned that she found the sewing needles in the third shelf, and how much they would hurt if she used her fire to make them white hot and then shoved them under my cuticles while I slept. Then she asked me how that story I was working on was coming along.

She really likes chasing the cats around the house, and has an unholy penchant for Tim Tams (or Arenots). She eats entire bags of them in a day, for which I always end up getting blamed.

Cathamel when she's pissed at me.

Blog- 

Blog's theme song is "Big Time" by Peter Gabriel which it listens to it every morning when it wakes up--right before it looks at itself in the mirror, and says"You know who's going to hit 1,500 page views today? You are, big guy. You are!" My blog thinks big, dreams big, and has wild dreams that aren't even remotely realistic for an unpublished writer's blog. Blog constantly gets me psyched up for goals I can't possibly hit. The worst part is that he doesn't care that I'm the one that has to do the actual work. He wakes me up each morning by screaming out "Hey, I'm not going to write myself over here!"

Vera- 

My laptop.

Vera came to me under strange circumstances, but after a horrible data loss involving Dropbox and Microsoft, I really wanted to switch to a Mac for a dedicated writing implement.  Vera knows she's an affectation, but she doesn't mind.  She likes me to use her–which is a lot less kinky than it sounds like.


Art- 

Technically, this is Cathamel's boss.

Art doesn't manifest directly within my life very often, but when she does, it is usually to extract some horrible price for my continued love of her. Though from time to time she actually does something nice for me in return. She is a capricious and jealous and I might even go so far as to say "insecure," but if I said that, she would probably show up right now and absolutely kick my–

Welcome The Patron Muses

[We're still in wibbly wobbly updatey watey time here, so my "main" article will probably show up later in the week.  In the meantime it seems overdue to add my Patron/Muses, of whom I've spoken before, to the Cast and Crew.  Plus one of the Patron/Muses is celebrating Uterine Liberation Day and since emancipation from the Wombarian oppressors only happens once in a lifetime, it is right and proper to do something nice each time the Earth reaches roughly the same point in its perennial solar revolution. So this (sans pictures and some of the text related to their explanation) is what will be going into the cast and crew.]

How about we frolic, and YOU get your ass to work?

Patron Muses

Oglaf.com
VERY NSFW, but also very, very funny.

Though Cathamel retains the Primary Muse status, and is the fiercest ass kicker muse there has ever been (as you can see from this image of her before I came into her care, and she took the form of a dragon), there are a few readers of writing about writing who have been acting as patron/muses.

I can try to sing their praises, but it will never quite be enough.  Whether they show up to social events with their entire family dressed in Writing About Writing t-shirts, donate a non-trivial amount month after month, drop a donation on me that is so huge my mouth literally goes dry, or simply help my social media proliferation by liking and sharing just about every damn thing I put up on my Facebook page, they are who I think of when the writing gets hard.  They are the ones I realize I can't let down even when I sort of feel like letting down myself might be okay.  They are the ones who keep me going.

Right now there are four of them (but there's always room for one more).  Laura, Gillian, Alisha, and Adem.  I salute you.

Introducing Hen Wen

This is Hen Wen.  Everyone say hi.  Hen Wen predicts a good year at Writing About Writing and even though she's a little vague on the specifics, Hen Wen's predictions tend to come true.  I'm cheered by this auspicious portent, even if Hen Wen assures me that my good fortune may mean her terrible demise.

"I love consuming the illusions of value from within your capitalist/consumerist culture."

"I see a Workforce Drop Forged hammer and a lot of litte pieces of piggy bank."
Not a lot of ambiguity here.

You see, Hen Wen believes she has a tragic destiny.  Even though she came equipped with a bottom plug like the new "weak willed" piggy banks, she is here to enact a cliche.  The cliche of saving money.  And all those cliches end with the piggy bank being broken (not simply opened, gutted, and reused).  Hen Wen is oracular and foresees that the end of her days as a cliche might be the most horrible piggy bank cliche of all.

I'm not sure about her predictions, but I hope, for her sake, there's some "dead zone" in her vision that might make this story have a better ending.  Perhaps, as has become the saving grace for other famous pigs, I will make so much money due to Hen Wen that the idea of her death becomes abhorrent to me and I will fling myself into the path of the oncoming hammer like....well, like every self-sacrifice in a movie movie from 1995 to 2005.

"Reach into my box, Chris.
Wait, that didn't sound right."

"Stuff me in my slit, Chris.
Wait, that didn't sound right either."

Why did Hen Wen come to me in the first place?  Well, the story starts with my Financial Pledge.  I promised everyone that ten percent of all proceeds would be reinvested in the blog.  Webdesign at first, perhaps one day a web domain and a Wordpress site.  And if it ever get a steady income stream, I might one day try to actually hire a copyeditor.  If I could just make a a hundred billion dollars from Writing About Writing, this site would be so fucking fly you guys would like be asked in a soft female voice what you'd like to look at.  And that's only if you didn't get the latest computer with the mind reading suction cups.

But at this point, none of those things is on the table because I haven't made enough to do any of them. But I did make make enough to save $13.50 when I got my first paycheck from Google.  I was so excited about this that after I wet myself, I decided to save a whole $20.00.  

"Stick it in me, Chris!
Wait, that didn't sound right."

Despite appearances, I do not have a tumor on my lower lip,
but I am, in fact, sticking out my tongue.
(My lack of hair has NOTHING to do with "evil Chris."  Nothing.)

But I couldn't just open an account.  I couldn't just stick it in a special place.  I needed to embrace a money saving cliche as a cheap gimmick to put on the blog.

And so Supportive Girlfriend heard my cry and enlisted the computer expertise of Uberdude, and they took advantage of this place called "Amazon" which not only produces great rivers and Wonder Woman, but also just about anything you could possibly want--including cliche pink piggy banks.

Now I have a place to put all the 10%'s until they add up to an actual amount large enough to hire some kind of web designer.

GOING

                                                           

GOING

                                                  

GONE! 
("I was actually saying, 'Shove it in me, big boy,' but that didn't sound right.")

Here's to many more $20 bills, and when we've saved enough, a blog that isn't so shoestring.


Since I'm a complete sellout, I will let you know that you can get your own Hen Wen wannabe bank delivered to your door.  (They are actually kind of hard to find--especially ones that are just pink.)  However, unlike Hen Wen, any Hen Wen knock offs will have cheerful smiley pig faces since none of them are gloomily contemplating their own hammer-filled end.

Enter The Dragon

This is Cathamel.

Getting Cathamel to sit still long enough to snap this picture was actually a little like pulling teeth. Not the teeth of little kids who are dreaming of quarters either--I'm talking like the molars of adults. That's why the picture is a little blurry. I was shaking and trying to hold her still. She is self-conscious because she hasn't been dusted in a while (really dusted with q-tips and oil) and because she insists that the pose she has to freeze into in order to look like she's just another dragon from Chinatown that I'm anthropomorphizing is one of her less-cute positions. Cathamel is a little on the vain side, but I'm not going to talk much about that because she knows everything I ever write even before I've actually written it, and because she breaths fire. Fortunately, after a long struggle involving tarragon, most of the fingers on my left hand, and a can of chili I got her to stop squirming long enough to aim my iPod at her.

Cathamel is my muse. I'm not sure why other people get pixies with sparkly dust, and I get a no-nonsense dragon with an uncanny ability to bite Achilles tendons, but as she informed me, we don't get to choose these things. I thought I was just buying a cool dragon carving from Chinatown, and then it started asking me weird questions about my word counts. Cathamel's most annoying trick is to wreak havoc on the house, knocking things over, chasing the cats, burning the curtains, and then when someone other than me comes in, she goes back to looking like a wooden sculpture. It's like that Loony Tunes with the singing frog. Except with burn-care kits.

Cathamel has been a muse for a long time, and will be around long after I'm dust to inspire the next generations of writers. In fact, she's so old she was named after the original Greek muses, her name being an amalgamation of the three muses whose inspiration would relate to writing. She says she's inspired some writers I've even read before, but that's not something personal muses are allowed to talk about, so she can't name names. She picked me in my late teens when I had so much promise and drive, and has spent the last twenty years doing that slow head shake with the index and middle fingers of the right hand on the forehead ever since. Apparently once a muse picks an artist, they're sort of stuck with each other unless the artist swears off the art completely. Since I've never stopped writing, Cathamel has had to hang around. I've been a little disappointing though as an artist. Muses don't just inspire artists, they also feed off of their creative ju-ju. So she had to eat the equivalent of celery with low-cal cream cheese every single meal for years.

I'm pretty sure that's why she took corporeal form instead of just going on being a personification of a cerebral concept. In her dragon form, she can also eat my flesh--which she threatens to do....in grisly detail....at length. Ever since she's been an actual thing living on my desk, I've had to keep up the ju-ju or she threatens to take a bite out of me. Some people get loving muses who cradle them and sing the inspiration into their imaginations. Mine tail whips me, smacks me around with her wizard's ball (much heavier than it looks), curls up on my head, and talks about how painful humans find hair immolation. She was tolerant of smaller meals and expository essay ju-ju (the muse equivalent of alfalfa sprouts and dry tofu chips) while I was still in school, but I have been informed that if she is not the beneficiary of three squares a day of gourmet creative goodness that she is going to use all her musely power to inspire me to leave the house naked and then give my loved ones cigarette lighter shaped burns while they sleep so that I end up in prison for torture. After that I kind of stopped listening because I was getting to work on my fiction, but there was something about how easy it is to inspire someone to drop soap.

I'm kind of her butt-monkey.

But...every once in a while, when I'm writing, and she's enjoying the equivalent of a creative Value Meal-Go Large, she leans over and whispers something in my ear that is SO perfect for what I'm doing that I can't help but think that I have a pretty good thing in her. And even though I'm probably going to have my earlobe char broiled for saying this, sometimes I wake up at night and she's snuggled into the crook of my arm, her little hands clutched to my pajamas and her nose pressed to me, and I realize that an ass kicking, not-gonna-take-your-bullshit muse is exactly what I need, and that her tough love is the most sincere inspiration I'll ever get.

Still, every once in a while, I get this horrible feeling that Cathamel might have had something to do with Sylvia Plath. Not the way she died, mind you, just her in general.