6 in the books; Writing On the Wall; Thank You For Lampooning

Just finished writing chapter six. Seven's on deck for this week.

In 2000 I visited a friend in Oxford, Mississippi. While there I toured the home of William Faulkner. What I remember most is that he'd drawn on the walls of his workroom the outline for a book. On my desk I have various mementos from trips to Dearborn and other articles and tidbits, but am getting closer to taking a page from Faulkner. Hell, I've already slapped a "The customer can have...any color that he wants so long as it is black" magnet on my fridge as a reminder. So, basically, I gotta get past Ford to get to either ice cream or vodka.

Since I got in touch with a local Dearborn reporter and blogger, the question, "How do you poke at an issue and a place cleverly?" has nagged me. And then, yesterday, I saw that Christopher Buckley, author of Thank You For Smoking among other works, will be speaking in NYC in October. I've requested TYFS from the library and look forward to picking his brain. Till then, I'll continue to bang away.

Hold Up, Wait A Minute

While looking at Mississippi's economic performance the last ten years or so, I learned something rather important: Compared to Michigan, Mississippi ain't doing too bad. It's easy to pick on a rural southern state because of certain stereotypes, but to call out a state that's home to what was once the Big Three could make for an even better story. I'm going to take a closer look at the numbers and think about how location will impact plot lines.

In the meantime, I finished the intro chapter's third draft and am going to start it's fourth. I'm content with the dialogue, but the secondary action could be smoother and richer. The characters are also coming into focus, but could be more refined. I'd also like to adopt certain writing styles when discussing the African characters as opposed to American ones. The two groups have distinctly different styles and those can be reflected in how they are described as well as when they speak.