Ostrich Races Here I Come

On Friday morning I am flying to Arizona for the Ostrich Festival taking place this weekend in Chandler.

I am so excited. In addition to the races, there is also an ostrich parade, and a whole mess of other events such as stunt shows and petting zoos. I’m not exactly sure how many of these are ostrich focused, but I can’t wait to find out.

My hope is to soak up as much ostrich culture as I can. I want to know if there are slang words people use for ostriches. How does one get into ostrich racing? What are the finer details of racing or even just raising ostriches? Why would one want to race an ostrich?

I am so curious. I feel like a kid on Christmas eve.
If anyone out there is, by any chance, attending the festival, please let me know. I would love to meet up and talk some shop.

April Learns To Shoot

I’ve hiked to the top of half dome in Yosemite four times. It is one of my favorite places on earth. I love to dangle my feet over that 5,000 foot drop and just bask in the bubbling sensation that swims around in my stomach. It’s always a little scary, because, you know, I COULD jump, and then very life affirming to realize that there’s no way I ever would.

I was reminded of this sensation last night at the LA Gun Club. With the help of my friend (to whom I owe many beers) I picked out a 12 gauge, double barrel shot gun. It was just how I pictured it with black metal barrels and a grainy wood stock.

The proprietor tried to talk me into a fancier version, with a pump action magazine and rubber butt (to help with the kick back), but I went with the cooler looking, more old-school gun (even though, I will admit now, I was terrified of the kick back).

We spent about twenty minutes firing off rounds, taking turns with each reload. By my second turn my nerves had calmed down, and I actually managed to pull the trigger without squinting my eyes. By holding the gun tightly, and keeping my knees bent, the kick back was not as bad as I expected (I didn’t get knocked on my ass), but it was still pretty powerful.

The fear diminished, but my sense of how powerful guns are found a new, solid foundation.

What I found most interesting were the other patrons at the range. There were three couples there on what I presumed to be a date, and the rest of the range was full of men of all shapes and sizes. And that’s what got me to thinking about Yosemite.

Guns can be dangerous, just like sitting on the top of half dome can be dangerous, but as long as you know what you’re doing, you’ll most likely be just fine.

The thing about the gun range is that it’s kind of like a whole group of people sitting on a very high cliff, all with their hands on each other’s backs (I know the logistics of that are a little tricky, but go with it for a sec). You all trust that you’re not going to push each other. You don’t have any choice but to trust it, but then you stop and look around and think “I don’t know the first damn thing about any of you people.”

Then you go home to your safe, gun-free home and count your blessings that your guy’s idea of a date night is more likely to center around ice cream than firearms.

Scene By Scene

To my great disappointment, I wasn’t able to get to the gun shop last week. We had friends and family in town, threw a fabulous New Years Eve party (if I do say so myself), and spent the whole weekend cleaning up.

At said fabulous party, a good friend encouraged me to skip the gun shop and go straight for the shooting range. Dive right in.

I did my best Marge Simpson (rrrrmmmm, I don’t know), but he and his wife insisted. Being from Texas and Utah respectively they have experience with this kind of thing. So I agreed, and we will go shoot some stuff (paper targets?) next week. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, my goal for this week is to rewrite the first chapter (which I have spent the last month envisioning), and to outline the rest of the story, scene by scene, reorganizing as I go and chanting the following basic rules of scene work:

A scene is one place, one time.
Something must happen in a scene.
If nothing happens in the scene – cut it.

In the past couple of weeks I have re-read everything I’ve written on this project so far including the draft, some back-story explorations, and about thirty pages of a different version that I wrote last winter.

In each pile of pages I found a little something I can use in my revisions, but the scenes ramble and run together. Some of them have no point at all – I was just writing – which is fine for a first draft, but this is round two and the bar is much higher.

I’m going to work with flash cards, and outline each scene as a discrete unit. I’m hoping this will help me focus and make the task of rewriting so many pages less daunting.

While staring down the double barrel of rewriting 250 pages, the shooting range suddenly doesn’t seem so scary.

Moving Out Of My Comfort Zone

I have never held a gun. Water pistol? Yes. A very heavy and seemingly life-like prop gun? Check. I even played laser tag once in high school, but the stone cold truth is that I have never dealt with a real weapon. I don’t know how to shoot one, and probably more importantly, I don’t know how to handle one respectfully.

For those of you who don’t know me, I was raised by hippie parents in Northern California. I had steak for the first time at the age of 18. I recycle used CD’s. Guns are scary to me.

I thought I could get through life maintaining my blissful ignorance of firearms, but the fact is that Talula Jones knows how to handle a gun, so I need to know.

Where to start? I googled “gun shop” with my zip code and found about eight places within a fifty mile radius of my home where I can either buy or shoot a gun. At some point I will need to actually fire one off, but for now I just want to hold one, unloaded, and ask a lot of stupid questions.

The current front-runner is a place called “Gun World” in Burbank. It sounds like exactly the kind of place I need, with a lot of selection, and (lets hope) knowledgeable staff.

They are open 11-7, which makes me think that their clientele shops mostly during lunch/after work. I’m going to try to be there around 3. The plan is to catch them at a slow period, so that my many questions will come off as naively charming, and not obnoxiously time-consuming (in case I haven’t been clear, I have no intention of actually purchasing a gun).

The goal is to figure out what kind of weapon Talula keeps on the farm, and the basic functionality and etiquette of said gun. If anyone out there has any words of wisdom as I head out into the terrifying world of guns and amo, don’t hold back.

Research Or Procrastination

Whenever I hit a wall with my writing I feel a powerful urge to go out to the desert to do research.

“The Feathered Tale of Talula Jones” is set in the California desert, and the last time I spent a day among the sand and sage brush, I had a major story revelation. The narrative, which had been unfolding in incongruent parts and pieces, finally found a through line.

Last week I again got the feeling that my story was falling apart, that I was losing the thread of what it was really about. As a direct result, I avoided working on it. I started outlining a paid assignment, I sent out a short story to a few journals, I even cleaned my desk. Then I had the bright idea that maybe going out to the desert would again bring clarity to my process.

But it’s an all day endeavor to go out to the desert for inspiration. If I leave as soon as the nanny gets here I spend a couple hours driving, a few hours soaking up what ever it is that I’m trying to soak up, and a couple more hours getting back before the nanny leaves. So the question immediately arose: do I really need to go out to the desert? Or am I just procrastinating?

I think the answer to both questions was yes, and I was successful on both fronts. I managed to not write all day for a very good reason, and I found the inspiration I was hoping for. The trick was to acknowledge that there was a part of me that was avoiding the work and to do my best to stay focused. I left the music off as I headed up Interstate 15 and methodically auditioned solutions to the problem I was having with my story.

By the time I was headed back to Los Angeles, after sitting for two hours on the hood of my car and writing down everything that came to mind, I had solved my plot issues.

Whether this was the solution I was looking for remains to be seen, but at least for now it has me back on track and at the key board.