Journal: Mar 2026
Memories of Writing Class Drama, Bill's Records, The Sailor, Cleo Sol, the Talented Ms. Highsmith.
Mar 2026 | New York City
Greetings, Earthlings.
I’ve been secretly working on writing a fictional story that may never see the light of day.
I’m thinking of it as a creative exercise — the result might never be seen by eyes other than my own. It’s designed to force me through the process of creating something long-form in a writing style less familiar to me (as the author, I mean) as a “learning by doing” exercise. It’s one of my many weird little creative experiments that I’ve been doing since childhood. Some end up emerging into the world in some form or other, while many are never shared. I always learn something, though, and the process is fun (if often also frustrating!)
As a lifelong lover of words, it’s always incredible to me how the same ingredients — the alphabet — can be used for so many different recipes. Writing fiction is quite different from writing creative non-fiction, journalism is different from academic writing, joke-writing is different from lyric-writing, and so on. Not only are the outputs different, but the approach, tone, and the actual construction and decisions about what goes where (and more importantly, what gets deleted) are vastly different.
As an obsessive lover of music and former musician (it pains me to have to qualify “musician” with “former” — one day I hope to return to my musical tinkering), I think of the 26 letters in the same way I think of the 12 notes in the musical scale. Depending on your culture, your temperament, your influences, your available tools, and your intended output, those 12 notes can be used to produce everything from Beethoven’s “Ode To Joy,” to Slayer’s “Raining Blood,” to “Pink Pony Club,” by Chappell Roan.
As it stands now, this little project of mine is but a jumble of scribbled notes and half-finished scenes, but who knows, maybe one day I will unleash it on the world.
I make no claims to writing “literature”. This is definitely genre-writing, but I’m perfectly OK with that. I only really learned the difference when I took a creative writing class a few years ago. Other than the instructor and me — and one retired older lady who vanished midway through the course — everyone in the class was well under 40. One of my jobs became to interpret the childless instructor’s dated cultural references into more current examples that the younger folks could understand.
The instructor was a nice guy, a struggling author himself, but was a bit of a snob, dismissive of “genre-writing,” saying something along the lines of “those of us who love literature care more about the words than the story.” I knew at that moment that if I could be so bold as to call myself a writer at all, I was a genre writer. The story is everything as far as I’m concerned.
The class was fun and interesting — perhaps as much for the goings-on of its participants as the curriculum itself.
In one class, the instructor started teaching, then suddenly went silent midway through a thought. There was a seemingly endless awkward silence where no one knew what was happening, eyes darting around the room, until he burst into tears, embarrassedly apologizing as he did so. He tried, unsuccessfully, to compose himself (pun fully intended) several times and then finally admitted his live-in girlfriend of five years had broken up with him the night before. It warmed my heart that everyone in the room was eager to make him feel OK about his emotions. “Don’t apologize,” one young woman said, “Isn’t this part of what this class is about — being human?”
In addition to the class being a younger group, it was also an estrogen-heavy environment, with only three XY chromosomes in the entire group of about 20.
One quiet, charming, chubby young woman with big brown eyes and a delightful accent flattered me one day in the elevator at the end of a class, saying how much she liked my stories.
I’d mentioned in passing in one of the first classes that I was struggling to find work, so when she invited me to join her for lunch at her workplace, a major tech company, I thought she was trying to help me by opening a door to gainful employment.
After a tour of the impressive NYC HQ, as we ate and spoke, it became clear to me that she had something else entirely on her mind. She was a lovely girl, cute and sweet, but roughly 25 years my junior. I do frequently hear that I look younger than my years, but I also have a head full of grey hair!
I gently told her my age and the fact that I had a daughter her age. She was shocked that I was as ancient as I was (am), but the budding romance that was being constructed in her mind, a fiction unto itself, was put to rest during that meal.
To her credit, a few weeks later, she did, in fact, try to put me forward for a job, but alas, nothing came of it.
I was flattered to have had the attentions of a young lady, though. It did good things for my self-esteem. Maybe I resemble Nosferatu less than I think?
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👀 Watch
"Find what you love and let it kill you" - Charles Bukowski
I enjoy some of the weird little docs I stumble upon while jumping around on YouTube, and I sometimes toy with the idea of making short documentaries or other kinds of videos one day. I have no real confirmed skills in this area, but that’s never stopped me before.
This one, called “Bill’s Records,” is a charming little slice of life into one man’s obsession and his choice to build his entire life around it.
Unless I missed it, I don’t think the film ever divulges the location of the store, so I went a-Googlin’ and found out it was in Dallas, but it is no more, as Bill, a notorious chain smoker, passed away. Perhaps unsurprisingly, after watching this documentary, he did so in the store itself.
The film was produced by Most Visual.
Of a similar vibe, I also highly recommend the full-length 2021 documentary “The Sailor,” directed by Lucia Kasová.
The film introduces us to Paul Johnson, boat-hermit, eccentric, and seeker of personal freedom, who lived most of his life on the water, drinking heavily. Money and women came and went, mostly the latter in his older years.
The film is slow-moving — almost meditative — and presents questions about the choices we make in life and their costs, for there are no choices without costs.
It’s a strange, short film. I’m unsure if others will love it as much as I did. Still, in my eyes, it’s a masterpiece of the (sub)genre.
It can be found on Amazon Prime here in the US.
🎧 Listen
I’ve recently become a fan of English singer-songwriter Cleo Sol.
The track that introduced me to her music, “Why Don’t You,” is sparse, soulful, and intimate, with lyrics and delivery about a relationship so honest and specific as to almost feel emotionally voyeuristic.
Taking inspiration from 70s soul like Stevie Wonder and Roberta Flack, with hints of Sade and Erykah Badu, the album on which this track is found, 2020’s “Rose in the Dark,” is highly melodic with tasteful production that knows its place, serving to frame and spotlight Sol’s voice and lyrics.
2023 effort“Heaven,” clocking in at an economical 30 minutes, also has several standout tracks, including “Self,” “Go Baby,” and “Airplane,” all also well worth a listen.
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📖 Read
As part of my earlier-mentioned top secret fiction writing project, I’ve been doing research on the general genre I’m writing in (or at least adjacent to) — psychological drama.
I created a list of the most celebrated in the category and have started working through them.
I’ll end up listening to many of these on Audible, rather than actually reading with my eyeballs, because I can multitask and run errands, clean my apartment, etc., as I do so, which makes it easier for me to consume them. There’s also something about hearing the words aloud that, as an aspiring writer, is helpful (like listening to music, in a way), though I do very much enjoy the experience of getting lost in a physical book. If I only had more time to do that…
Regardless, I just finished The Talented Mr. Ripley and Ripley Under Ground, the first two of Patricia Highsmith‘s collection of Ripley novels (there are five in total).
I’m a big fan of both the 1999 film adaptation of the first book and the noir-ish, stylized streaming series based on it. Compared to the film, the book differs in many ways, especially in the character of Marge.
Books, of course, give us more intimate access to the thoughts and inner life of a character, and Ripley is charming but also clearly an amoral psychopath (a true psychopath’s charm is often part of their make-up, which they use to their advantage)
As the story unfolded, I wondered if Tom might be an early prototype of the modern anti-hero so dominant in recent popular storytelling, especially in “prestige” television series (Sopranos, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Succession, etc.)
The first book in the series was very enjoyable. I imagine it was quite unusual for its time — putting the reader in the head of a probably queer grifter and murderer (though Ripley’s sexuality is never outright confirmed in the book, as it often is in more current film/TV adaptations, it’s there in the subtext.) I found that the second book drifted a little too much into quasi-Agatha Christie territory, not so much as a whodunit, but in an elaborate plot about art forgery that I never really found myself caring about all that much.
Reading the book made me realize how present-day technology complicates plotting for contemporary writers. Tom would’ve been up the creek had the internet and phones been around!
The first book was an easy, fun, and sometimes mischievously cheeky read, and is recommended if you haven’t already read it.
🕰 ICYMI
In last month’s Journal: NYC/Art/Me, Overestimating for Good, 25 in 7, Enjoyable Regrets, Feminists on 45.
Featuring: Misty Fujii, Keith McNally, Viktor Frankl, Bombay Bicycle Club, and other cool shit.
Thanks for reading.