Writers have their hearts ripped out

Since I finally figured out how to use the video camera, mainly to photograph all the wildlife in the back yard, I'm experimenting with other stuff, mainly ads for my doomed novel, The Glass Character. Maybe I'll have fun with it; maybe I won't. I like the idea of the screen beside me, and the fact these are silents means I can blather on as much as I want. I know what it is to be rejected (stomped into the ground a few hundred times?), so this scene spoke to me in particular.

It's easily done, you just pick anyone

I can't understand

She let go of my hand

An' left me here facing the wall

I'd sure like to know

Why she'd go

But I can't get close to her at all

Though we kissed through the wild blazing nighttime

She said she would never forget

But now morning is clear

It's like ain't here

She just acts like we never have met.

It's all new to me

Like some mystery

It could even be like a myth

But it's hard to think on

That she's the same one

That last night I was with

From darkness, dreams are deserted

Am I still dreamin' yet ?

I wish she'd unlock

Her voice once and talk

'Stead of acting like we never met.

If she ain't feelin' well

Then why don't she tell

'Stead of turnin' her back to my face

Without any doubt

She seems too far out

For me to return to her chase

Though the night ran swirling and whirling

I remember her whispering yet

But evidently she don't

And evidently she won't

She just acts like we never have met.

If I didn't have to guess

I'd gladly confess

To anything I might've tried

If I was with her too long

Or have done something wrong

I wish she'd tell me what it is, I'll run and hide

Her skirt it swayed as a guitar played

Her mouth was watery and wet

But now something has changed

For she ain't the same

She just acts like we never have met.

I'm leavin' today

I'll be on my way

Of this I can't say very much

But if you want me to

I can be just like you

And pretend that we never have touched

And if anybody asks me, "Is it easy to forget ?"

I'll say, "It's easily done

You just pick anyone

And pretend that you never have met".

This came into my head today – it’s one of my favourite songs from one of my favourite albums, Another Side of Bob Dylan – because as with most of his stuff, it hits it right on the head. No obfuscation, no bullshitting, no fxxing around. One of the best things, the most unusual and powerful things about Dylan is his breathtaking honesty, though it is seldom mentioned by anyone, maybe not even consciously noticed.

Thus, if you analyze the words to Positively 4th Street, Dylan’s notorious diatribe of vengeance– well, guess what?  It isn’t. A diatribe. At. All. The song is merely a series of statements, true statements by the sound of them, strung together in the plainest English you ever heard:

You got a lot of nerve to say you are my friend

When I was down, you just stood there grinnin’

You got a lot of nerve to say you have a helping hand to lend

You just want to be on the side that’s winnin’

When Dylan became impossibly famous in his early 20s, everybody really did want a piece of him, and it eventually became obscene. At heart he is introverted and hypersensitive, has few real friends, and mostly cleaves to his highly-protected family (who, by the way, have been seriously threatened by flaming psychotics like "Dylanologist" A. J. Weberman). If you get past its sardonic hipness and really listen to the song, you get the feeling that this all happened:  he really was used and abused this way, and with his usual who-gives-a-shit honesty he’s going to tell the world exactly what they did to him in those terse, compressed lines that are so characteristic of the most powerful poetry.

Like every other form of writing, poetry is reporting. And Dylan might just be the best reporter who ever lived.

People have argued over who is the “target” of Positively 4^th Street since the song came out in 1965. He recorded it right after his legendary gig at the Newport Folk Festival: you know, the one where he “went electric”, singing two of his ten or so songs with an amplified guitar and a rhythm section. They didn’t just boo him then: they booed him through an entire tour, every time he pulled out that electric guitar. And he kept on singing.

So there were plenty of potential targets for the varnish-stripping Dylan honesty, among them numerous folkie has-beens and never-weres, parasites trying to suck away his vital force as he struggled to be reborn. Some even think it’s about Joan Baez, but frankly, given the way he coat-tailed on her fame in the early ‘60s, she had even more reason to sing that song to HIM. No, I think it’s aimed at that nauseating sycophant and self-styled hipster/flamboyant creep, Richard Farina, a Dylan wanna-be who married  Baez’s 17-year-old sister Mimi strictly to get a piece of the action with Joan.

So let’s get into this one. It has one of those twisty Dylan titles: I Don’t Believe You. But what is it really about? It’s about being cut so dead by someone you like or love that they won’t even acknowledge you’ve met.

Hey, who is this guy.

Are you talking to me?

What? . . . Do I know you?

It’s easily done, you just pick anyone.  Let’s pick someone you HAVE known for years, even had a close relationship with, whether professional or personal.

At some point – well, sometimes it’s just totally baffling. No discernible reason at all, or perhaps things just get a little “thick”, a little less than jolly and easy.

A scum or a fog or a – something – something toxic begins to form.

And you try to clear the air - and you try – and –

It isn’t so much being “ignored” or even having the other person pretend you never have met, which is devastating enough. It’s that sense of – uhh, is there another person in the room? Somebody over there, maybe? Ah, no – nobody there –  (whew).

The opposite of love isn’t hate. It’s indifference. The opposite of acknowledgement is obliviousness. It’s easily done: you just do nothing! Try to call them on it, and all sorts of generic excuses pop up that are meant to be blandly accepted: “Oh! NOW I know why you didn’t answer my email/phone message, you know the one, that message that laid my guts open and made me vulnerable enough to risk everything I had. You didn’t answer me because you were Busy That Day. You were away from your desk.”

No. You were not. Away. From. Your Desk. You made this up on the spot to make it easier for YOU, and if I don’t accept it or if I try to call you on it, I will get some version of “how can you be so cruel? How can you even think of such a thing?”

I can be so cruel as to think, because it is TRUE.

But though it may look like you suddenly shunned me for no reason, it will eventually come to light that there was a reason. You didn’t answer me because I embarrassed you. I embarrassed you because I cared so intensely, and you didn’t. I wanted to know what made things go so wrong between us, to try to understand it or at least get some sort of dialogue going. But you can’t have a dialogue if the other person won’t even acknowledge your existence.

As I get older, I see the real dynamics between people, the way the endless games are played, and it sickens me. I open myself, show my belly, roll all over the floor, longing for someone/anyone to hear me, understand me, or at least live on the same planet as me, and it all echoes back at me as if nobody is there. At. All.

The opposite of love. Dylan almost makes light of this, though not quite. It’s not nice not to be acknowledged. Especially it’s not nice if you’ve gutted yourself in order to be understood, and gotten an indifferent silence in reply. Silence isn’t nice when it’s malignant like that. Nature abhors a vacuum, and the human brain has a tendency to fill it in. And not with the sweetest thoughts.

When people don’t return your phone calls/emails, and it’s happened to me a lot since I decided to fall on my sword by being a novelist, it’s like being stood up on a date. It doesn’t feel nice. The person doing the standing-up should be feeling guilty and bad for letting you down. They don’t. They don’t feel anything. Or they’re busy doing something else, probably having much more fun than they would have had with you. YOU feel bad. YOU feel embarrassed, unacknowledged, dumped. You’re sitting there in a bar or a coffee shop alone, being glanced at, and you feel embarrassed, shamed. You went out of your way. You put your pretty dress on. You told the guy you liked him. Loved him? If you say anything to anyone – but no. THAT truly exposes you as a loser. All you’ll get is pity, or “oh, come on, don’t be so sensitive”.

We must hold our Winner mask in front of our faces at all times. If it drops, we’ll be under attack. Or underacknowledged. Or, perhaps, not even acknowledged at all.

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Plastic Jesus

ARTIST: Trad and Anon
TITLE: Plastic Jesus


Well, I don't care if it rains or freezes,
Long as I have my plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
Through all trials and tribulations,
We will travel every nation,
With my plastic Jesus I'll go far.

{Refrain}
Plastic Jesus, plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
Through all trials and tribulations,
We will travel every nation,
With my plastic Jesus I'll go far.

I don't care if it rains or freezes
As long as I've got my Plastic Jesus
Glued to the dashboard of my car,
You can buy Him phosphorescent
Glows in the dark, He's Pink and Pleasant,
Take Him with you when you're travelling far

{Refrain}

I don't care if it's dark or scary
Long as I have magnetic Mary
Ridin' on the dashboard of my car
I feel I'm protected amply
I've got the whole damn Holy Family
Riding on the dashboard of my car

{Refrain}

You can buy a Sweet Madonna
Dressed in rhinestones sitting on a
Pedestal of abalone shell
Goin' ninety, I'm not wary
'Cause I've got my Virgin Mary
Guaranteeing I won't go to Hell

{Refrain}

I don't care if it bumps or jostles
Long as I got the Twelve Apostles
Bolted to the dashboard of my car
Don't I have a pious mess
Such a crowd of holiness
Strung across the dashboard of my car

{Refrain}

No, I don't care if it rains or freezes
Long as I have my plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
But I think he'll have to go
His magnet ruins my radio
And if we have a wreck he'll leave a scar

{Refrain}

Riding through the thoroughfare
With his nose up in the air
A wreck may be ahead, but he don't mind
Trouble coming, he don't see
He just keeps his eyes on me
And any other thing that lies behind

Plastic Jesus, Plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
Though the sun shines on his back
Makes him peel, chip, and crack
A little patching keeps him up to par

When pedestrians try to cross
I let them know who's boss
I never blow my horn or give them warning
I ride all over town
Trying to run them down
And it's seldom that they live to see the morning

Plastic Jesus, Plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
His halo fits just right
And I use it as a sight
And they'll scatter or they'll splatter near and far

When I'm in a traffic jam
He don't care if I say Damn
I can let all sorts of curses roll
Plastic Jesus doesn't hear
For he has a plastic ear
The man who invented plastic saved my soul

Plastic Jesus, Plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
Once his robe was snowy white
Now it isn't quite so bright
Stained by the smoke of my cigar

God made Christ a Holy Jew
God made Him a Christian too
Paradoxes populate my car
Joseph beams with a feigned elan
From the shaggy dash of my furlined van
Famous cuckold in the master plan

Naughty Mary, smug and smiling
Jesus dainty and beguiling
Knee-deep in the piling of my van
His message clear by night or day
My phosphorescent plastic Gay
Simpering from the dashboard of my van

When I'm goin' fornicatin
I got my ceramic Satan
Sinnin' on the dashboard of my Winnebago Motor Home
The women know I'm on the level
Thanks to the wild-eyed stoneware devil
Ridin' on the dashboard of my Winnebago Motor Home
Sneerin' from the dashboard of my Winnebago Motor Home
Leering from the dashboard of my van

If I weave around at night
And the police think I'm tight
They'll never find my bottle, though they ask
Plastic Jesus shelters me
For His head comes off, you see
He's hollow, and I use Him for a flask

Plastic Jesus, plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
Ride with me and have a dram
Of the blood of the Lamb
Plastic Jesus is a holy bar

I did not write any part of this song. I remembered Paul Newman singing it in Cool Hand Luke, and wondered if I could find a video anywhere (which I could), then looked up the lyrics. Most versions had one or two verses, but this one went on forever, apparently written by that celebrated lyricist, Arthur Unknown (sometimes known by his pen name, Anon).

It's a strange thing, obviously a sour parody of What a Friend We Have in Jesus. The thing is, it was not so very long ago that I was a churchgoing Christian and even a lay minister, a preacher. Seems like a lifetime ago. So I can't quite join in wholeheartedly. But when I saw what was happening to "my" church, its slickness and desperate attempts at hipness to attract a "younger" crowd (i. e. people under 80 with more disposable income), I felt sickened. All of it was done in the name of finance. In all the time I was with that church, the main thing I heard about was not the gospels, but a desperate lack of money and the need to give, give, give.

This wasn't about hungry people overseas or Christian education, but (mostly) paying a mortgage 

which always seemed to be shockingly in arrears. If we as individuals had conducted our finances that way, the bank would have put us in foreclosure. As it was, the larger church carried us as perpetual deadbeats.

Guilt trips abounded if you didn't or couldn't raise the amount of your offerings annually, because after all, the church's expenses kept going up, and it was up to us to take up the shortfall. Don't you want to support your church? Tell us, then, just what are your priorities? Didn't we hear you went on a vacation last year? (WHAT, you went to Vegas?) Once a year, incredibly, someone came to each person's house to ask them how much they were giving, and gently but firmly pressured them into giving more. I hated this and felt it was a violation of privacy and completely unfair, but I never said anything because you just didn't say anything.  I knew if I did, I would likely be gently pressured back into the beliefs and policies of the fold (with a vague but palpable ostracism as the penalty
if I didn't), or perhaps genteelly labelled "mentally ill" (well, dear, she can't help it, you know). 

As a symptom of a structure that had been rotten for years , leadership finally caved in, and no one had the first idea why it happened, or how. It's like my "do husbands fall from the sky?" post. Jobs don't fall from the sky. Husbands don't, friends don't. WE PICK THEM. We vote our leaders in, then bitch about them endlessly, even demonize them. We were snowjobbed by a shallow huckster, fell for him hook, line and sinker, then turned him into some sort of Satanic figure who had destroyed our innocent little lamb of a church.

Bullshit!

So I walked away, even tried a few other churches and was suffocated and frankly bored. The wheezy hymns, the lack of life, the lacklustre attempts to inject some enthusiasm and relevance into the services, all of it fell flat for me. More than once, when I tried to sit down, someone put their hand out to cover the spot on the pew and said, "My family sits here." No hello, not even a "sorry", just a "go away".

It left a hole, because for some fifteen years I was deeply involved, but the last several years were just hell for me, because there was absolutely NO ONE I could talk to about it all. It would be seen as "disloyal".

But I could no longer adhere to a church with such shallow values, a church which would not or could not or just didn't want to take responsibility for all its bad decisions.

Plastic Jesus, indeed.

(CODA. As usual , while I work on these things, or after I post them, more comes to me. In this case, it startles me that I wrote the words I just wrote. I had no idea I was going to. Not that I've never written about church disillusionment before. I have, and I will again. But in this case, I merely came across a YouTube clip from Cool Hand Luke, then thought of the song, then Googled the lyrics. Funny stuff, and strange, too. And that, I thought to myself, would be that. But in the world of exploration through writing, "that" is NEVER "that" - and I thank whatever God I still have for the process.)

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Half-alive in the barren land of publication

This isn't the clip, oh no, this isn't the clip  I wanted at all. If you've ever watched this big lumbering thing on TV - and for some reason I do, every year at Easter time, even though the story of Moses has nothing whatsoever to do with Easter - you'll know that the good part comes AFTER this scene. In which Moses crawls on his belly on the scorching sand, while Cecil B. deMille says stuff like "pitiless days, forlorn nights, only the scorpion and the cobra for his companions", while it just gets better and better as Moses squeezes his wineskin or whatever-it-is (canteen?) into his mouth for the very last drop of water. Then he sort of collapses and all these women come after him, but we won't be bothered with that.

In short, it's about an ordeal in the wilderness, a test of endurance and faith.

It's also all about a certain email I received today, a certain message, not a surprise, mind you, the only surprise was in the timing, but the timing was quite a surprise, yes, quite a surprise indeed.

For it was a rejection of a manuscript I submitted to a literary press, oh, some time ago.

Try JANUARY 2011.

Yes. That is how long it took to get my "no". In the interim I made several inquiries, mainly because I had been wildly excited when they expressed interest in seeing my work.

They asked for it. They asked for ME!

Then came the trek, the miserable trek, the long and miserable trek that nearly dried up my brain, let alone my hope.

This was the biggest press who had ever shown serious interest in me. Maybe it would work out! All I had to do was deliver the manuscript in person (none of this electronic nonsense, no sir, and who trusts the mail anyway?) across 20,000 miles of uninhabitable desert. Sounded fine to me. I love hot climates. 

But just in case, I wrapped one of those thingies around my head to keep the sand out of my ears.

The desert was pitiless, my friend, just like Moses' Land o' Cobras and o' Scorpions. It was a long hard ride as I tried to balance myself between reality
and hope. 

Pretty damn hot out there, but luckily Fulton the Camel was more than willing to carry the immense burden of paper (all 12,000 pages).

Along the way, Omar and I met some pretty weird types who had been out in the sun too long. This guy who forgot his clothes, and speaking of Moses, there was this guy who was looking at a burning BOOK!

My horse got tired after a while, so I had to find a suitable mount. He moved kind of slow, but didn't seem to mind the heat.

What can I say? Shit's shit. It took nine months to deliver the thing there, and nine months to get home again. Exactly a year and a half.

That's two pregnancies, back-to-back.

Why was I so surprised when the answer was "no"?

I wasn't. Surprised, I mean. Just devastated. Nothing like a hard punch in the gut after two pregnancies' worth of hope.

I mean, don't we all know it's better to rip the bandaid off fast? Must it be stretched out to a year and a half?

The only good thing is that I made a new friend, and he hasn't eaten me yet, maybe because he's made out of some alloy or something.  And Abu ben Adam (may his tribe increase!) has become my best bud, even though he insists on borrowing my lipstick and sunglasses.

I may make fun of all this, because it's the only way I can keep profound depression at bay and try to stifle the dreams I've nurtured for more than fifty years. It sort of works. No it doesn't, but the really stupid thing is, I haven't given up hope even though I KNOW I should have, long long ago.

Meanwhile, my manuscript, fading from yellow to brown and lying perfectly camouflaged in the desert, awaits discovery and spectacular success in the publishing world. . . after I die.

Can the dalmation change its spots?

Yes, I admit it. I do get depressed.

This is like a Dalmation saying, yes, I do have spots. Or something.

Just trying to set up this particular post, everything stopped. Quivered and flickered back and forth for a while, then froze.

I feel the twingy, warning signs of a toothache deep in the left side of my jaw. A few months ago I had to have an expensive root canal, a crown replacement and surgery on an abscess. Because of the inflammation the freezing didn't take, so had to be injected four times until I couldn't feel my whole head. (Up until then I didn't think such a thing was even possible. FOUR doses of novocaine? Actually, the last one was delivered in four shots, making it seven.) If this is going to be another dental disaster, it had better happen NOW before our insurance runs out.

I don't know.

I know you're supposed to be chipper, no matter what happens to you, or doesn't happen to you. It's fashionable, and when something's fashionable, 95% of people follow it in great sliding herds like lemmings without even looking at it, let alone questioning it.

If a lot of people are doing it, then it must be right. I even had this used on me (by a minister, no less) to prove the validity of Christianity. Nobody mentions Eichmann and his merry band of assassins.

There's a new documentary out called Pink Ribbons, Inc. which no doubt echoes many of the things I said about breast cancer fundraising in an earlier post. Not that I mind, but why does the damned movie get all this attention when my writing on the same damned subject doesn't?

No, I'm not being gracious, because I don't feel like it!
A very few of my 600+ blog posts have attracted hundreds of views, and one freakish one on Carrie Fisher's ECT treatments drew 12,000, but for the most part I get less than ten views per post, sometimes even zero. Imagine posting something that no one looks at, at all, ever.  It happens to me with alarming frequency. Does this mean I'm: (a) a shitty writer, or (b)cursed?

I've heard pop psychologists/New Age philosophers (an oxymoron if ever there was one) say, "Never take anything personally." They mean anything. I mean, even if your best friend socks you in the face, then laughs. Even if your name is left off your mother's obituary (no joke - it really happened to me, indicating they are so ashamed of me they won't acknowledge that I was even born.) Even if NO ONE is taking your manuscript seriously, not even looking at it! For I am convinced that no one in the publishing industry has read it yet, in spite of well over a year of attempts and even a few promising leads.

It has been completely ignored. Whited out. And I'm supposed to be OK with that.

If I express any of these feelings, certain predictable things happen. The first one: advice. Torrents of it. Even if I haven't asked for it (and I haven't!). This indicates that my feelings are "wrong" and I must be "advised" out of them. (No one thinks just to listen.) The most predictable advice is, "Just write for your own enjoyment and don't think about publishing any of it."

Hm. Dickens would've gone far on that, eh? Or how about Mickey Spillane. Anybody. Writing isn't knitting (and even when you knit, which I do, copiously, you like to think someone, somewhere is going to wear the thing that you're knitting. Or should you be happy to throw it in a drawer somewhere, or even just throw it in the garbage?)

But writers are told to do this ALL THE TIME. I know I go over and over this, it's probably pretty tedious by now, but no one expects a concert pianist to play in an empty hall. But writing is a cheat, something you can't really study, so it doesn't count as "art". Wanting recognition for it is somehow deeply embarrassing. 

There's an unexpected phenomenon now that might have helped my chances enormously if I'd only been able to use it: the flukey runaway success of the European indie film The Artist. It's a silent movie about silent movies, and it has stolen the critics' hearts (which means Oscar nominations, causing the public to rush lemming-like to the box office and rave about it afterwards,not because they liked it but because it's the thing to do). 


But when I began marketing The Glass Character, which BY THE WAY is about the life and career of the phenomenal silent film comedian Harold Lloyd, I didn't mention The Artist because I had never heard of it. I had never heard of it because IT WASN'T OUT YET. And even when it did come out, I brushed it off as too hokey. There was no way anyone would pay attention to something so marginalized and odd.

Woody Allen also made a period movie, now up for several Oscars, called Midnight in Paris. It's all about a writer disillusioned with his own times who is somehow magically transported to Paris during the 1920s and the great flowering of arts and literature called the Jazz Age.

I didn't think to use that as a marketing tool either because, well, I just didn't. It didn't occur to me, and the way I'm feeling now, with a major dental catastrophe only a wet blink away, I wonder if it would have mattered anyway.

Listen, this is a damn good book: Jeffrey Vance is probably the only person who has really read it, and he loved it. Jeffrey Vance co-wrote (with Suzanne Lloyd, Harold's granddaughter, whom he raised) perhaps the definitive Lloyd biography. My favorite one, anyway.

No one else is giving it the time of day. Even my queries aren't being read, and it's killing me.

Over and over and over again, I am being told to either self-publish, or e-publish. I am still hanging back. Though it doesn't mean I will never do it, every instinct in my body tells me to wait. I had enough trouble with distribution and promotion when I had a whole publishing company behind me. So many writers are doing this now that I think the market is being flooded. And I don't know how they put together a promotional tour with readings/signings, how they get the book into stores or reviewed in newspapers and magazines, or even significantly noticed on-line.

Are there editorial standards? I'm just askin', though I have that crawling feeling I shouldn't.

As far as I know, a novel published in this way would not be eligible for the Governor General or the Giller or the Booker or any of the other awards that can propel a writer from the literary doldrums into a position where (though we aren't supposed to want this, it's vanity, ego and other nasty things) people actually read our books.

Do I think the revolution will never happen? Things are in a state of flux now. Come back in ten years, maybe five. Maybe even three. But I wonder what the statistics are. How many self-published/e-published writers are becoming best-sellers and making decent money, or even a profit? One can usually pull out a single smash-hit, but what's the average? But even by askin', I'll be making a lot of writers angry and defensive (that is, if they read this at all). 

It's as if you can't ask anything or say anything (unless you're a non-writer, in which case you are required to give floods of advice on a subject you know nothing about), have to tiptoe around on eggshells or you'll end up a pariah, disloyal. I figured out a long time ago that there is a secret code among writers, one that I will never crack. But once a writer crosses over, is there any chance of reverting back to more traditional methods? I think publishers are pretty freaked-out by all this, though I think some of them are beginning to get on-board. Maybe it's that perceived lack of editorial standards. How should I know?

Along with the reams of other unsolicited advice, writers are forever being told to "toughen up", but guess what: if you toughen up, then you can't write any more. Writers are like tuning forks vibrating sympathetically with whatever buzz is going on around them. Not to agree with it, but often to criticize it and stand up to it. They serve a crucial but often completely unheeded function: to be the conscience of the world.


Being this cranky isn't popular. It exposes things, bare nerves that people don't want to see or feel. There's only so much novocaine in the real world. Another favorite ploy of people who know nothing about this is, "Well, I don' t feel that way about it, and I don't know anybody else who does." More lemming syndrome? Maybe. I can only have a certain emotion, or objection, or opinion, if others share it.

You're the only one. And don't you forget it.
I see why writers commit suicide, I really do. I can't because of my family, but if I did not have them, well, I see why they do it anyway. I don't see why successful writers do it however. I can't see why ANY successful person does it. They do, but it doesn't make a damn bit of sense to me.

Mothers, don't let your sons grow up to be writers! One way or another, they'll be shot through the heart.

P.S. if anyone actually does follow this blog, they will read this post and say, "Oh, I can't read it any more, it's just too negative and depressing." Then they will abandon it. (Not that I have any abandonment issues. Being left off my mother's obituary is totally OK with me.) Never mind that 95% of the posts are NOT negative or depressing. Every once in a while I just feel weighed down with all this and have to try to get words around it.

It's what writers do. Isn't it?

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