Espresso beans, deadlines, and curbed books

I just got back from walking the dog. We went down Wayne Place, along Lake Merritt, then through the park where they don’t allow dogs – Oakland police, unlike San Francisco police, have better things to do – and back again. My first time out of this chair in a long, long time. When I get antsy or nappy I’ve got my natural bag of speed. Last week it was coffee beans. Four days before the manuscript is due to the editor, I’ve switched to espresso beans.

I’m always curious to hear whether people write to music. I do, and change the genre depending on the character I’m writing about, or how much of a goose I need to get the work done. The past few days I’ve been listening to Drake on full volume. My ears throb. The dog mopes about the apartment, giving me plaintive looks. These short walks are BS. He misses his Sundays in the Redwoods.

On the way to the lake I came across a paperback, left on a couch in a pile of clothes, by an empty KFC box. Leaving a book to warp in the rain and sunshine has always seemed to me tantamount to burning it. Was it really so bad? Couldn’t you at least have put it in storage? It was called “Population: 485. Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time.” Non-fiction stories written by a small-town EMT. As I type I’m tempted to get up and see if it’s still there. Probably. But once I take the blanket off my feet and get up this opens the door on all manner of puttering.

The book struck me, because it’s about a small town, which I’m writing about. And it’s about an emergency, which I’m writing about. And of course there are stories – yesterday a buddy I commercial fished with in Sitka warned against using people’s stories for purposes of entertainment. I know this is something writers much more experienced than myself have struggled with. Who has rights to what stories? Are there universal ethics when it comes to such things? Of course. So what are they?

Along with particular stories central to Sitka, I’m also grappling with whether to rename the town. One reader suggested this, reasoning that such a move would privilege the story of Tara Marconi, my main character, instead of Sitka. It would allow more leeway for the imagination, and remove the staple of reality from the work. But it would also mean renaming Baranof Island. And the Pioneer Bar – Frontier Bar? The volcano, and the mountains surrounding town. Where does it end?

I have no experience with any of this. I do, however, know that Michael Chabon’s Yiddish Policemen’s Union drove me batty. He spent two days in Sitka, had a New York Times article written (with photos of him walking the docks in his UGGs), then wrote a novel centered on a vague Rooseveltian concept of creating a Jewish homeland in Southeast Alaska. All well and good, except he called his town Sitka, even though his story wasn’t set in anything truly resembling the real place.

His imaginative powers are superlative, and he’s a brilliant writer; why not just come up with a different name for town? Because there were people living in Sitka in that period he was writing about. Living true, complicated lives, which he paved over with his imagination. Lives that would have been saved if he had just renamed the town.

Okay. Maybe that’s pushing it.

On the other hand, there’s David Guterson’s majestic Snow Falling on Cedars. He renamed Bainbridge Island “San Piedro Island,” and placed it farther north. This was a slick move, and it works. Of course, Guterson lives on Bainbridge Island, so there’s no huge secret there.

Anyways, small towns, books, stories – I wish I could tie it all together in some neat blog-bow. But the truth of the matter is I’m a little manic because of all these espresso beans. And there’s a desperate undertone to Drake’s beats. Also, there’s that haunting vision of the book kicked to the curb. I’ll just go ahead and say it: I don’t want that to be mine – whether because I’ve offended people I know and respect in Sitka, or because my plot’s not entertaining enough to a 30-something in Oakland. To toe this line takes work.

Turn up the music. Last couple espresso beans. Back to it.