BOOKS & PUBLISHING
Writing From the Gut!SAN FRANCISCO 29 October 2009 |
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I recently flew south to do a piece for Poets & Writers magazine about a rather unorthodox writers camp. Called The Write Stuff, it’s run by a writer named Rock Adams. Ever hear of him?
Rock met me at the dock after the boat dropped me off. When I referred to the camp as a retreat, Rock stopped in his tracks and said, “retreat? Hell, we don’t ever use that term around here! Camp, maybe, hell, sometimes. But never retreat.”
Rock’s ‘camp’ uses pain and fear as motivators to help writers overcome writers block and improve their daily output. (“They give me my three thousand words minimum every day,” Rock told me, “or else!")
Located on an uninhabited sliver of the Pacific coast of Baja Mexico, The Write Stuff literary teaching center consisted of a row of twelve picnic-style plank tables with four old Royal typewriters on each, set out on an unshaded patch of hardened dirt. There was a rather large, thatched, amphitheater-like hut with bleachers at one end and a dais and blackboard at the other end, where daily ten hour classes are conducted. It reminded me a little of the old Handy Writers’ Colony that James Jones (From Here to Eternity, The Thin Red Line, Whistle) had attended after he’d gotten out of the army, only it was much more Spartan.
On an after-lunch stroll behind the amphitheater, I came upon eighteen little surplus army tents---‘The Hilton,’ I later learned it was called---and what looked like a medieval rack. I asked a rather tough-looking woman writer with well-defined pecs what that structure was for.
She laughed nervously. “I haven’t the slightest,” she said, before walking off quickly. I continued my unsupervised inspection of the camp, following the head-high chain link fence that covers three sides, finally coming back around to the sparkling blue waters of Pirate’s Cove (in which, I was told later that day, an occasional shark fin is sighted cruising just out past the breakers).
Rock Adams met me on the beach and led me back to the teaching center.
Rock has a motivating appearance, with his shaved, bullet-shaped head, washboard abs (do modern writers know what a washboard is? They will if they use that term around Rock.), jungle boots and cammies. An English Lit PhD., with a Masters in Modern Infantry Tactics, Rock has published 57 novels in POD and is the author of 1427 short stories, 1,355 of which have been published on the Internet, he told me proudly as we mounted the dais where he would introduce me to his charges
When they had all assembled, settled into their seats, and quieted, Rock called to them in a rip-roaring Drill Instructor’s voice: “What are you?”
“We are the slush!” they shouted in unison.
“That’s right,” he said gruffly. "but after I’m finished with you you’ll be real writers, writing from the gut, regardless of what those idiots in New York think.”
“Yes, sir!” they shouted in unison.
“Seats!” Rock commanded, and they sat. I stood beside him uncomfortably as he scanned the faces before us.
“Jenny,” Rock called out. "What’s rule number eight?”
The young woman I’d spoken to earlier stood. “Real writers don’t cry. Their prose does, in tears of blood.”
Rock smiled wryly. “Not bad, Jen. But that’s rule number seven. Give me five.”
As Jenny dropped to the ground and began her push-ups, Rock snapped to attention and stared angrily at his cadets. “Rule number eight!” he shouted.
His troops shouted back: “Real writers don’t use bullets. Just bare knuckles!”
In the advert I’d received that had prompted me to make this trip, Rock called this school a ‘camp.’ “A ‘workshop,’" he said in the brochure, “was a place to get in touch with your inner wuss.”
Rock began pacing as he spoke, attempting to fire up his cadets. “This camp is a place to get in touch with your universal writer’s soul.” He stopped and faced them. “What is writers’ block?”
“A piss poor excuse!” they shouted in unison.
Rock resumed his pacing. “That’s right,” he said, coming to an abrupt halt. “Imagine a baker dumping his flour onto a stainless steel table. He measures out his salt, his oil, yeast… And then he sits and shakes his head and starts crying. ‘I can’t do this,’ he whines, ‘I’ve got ‘bakers’ block.’”
The cadets laughed.
“Pretty silly, isn’t it?” Rock said.
“Yes, sir!” they shouted in unison.
“That’s right,” said Rock. "It’s a lame excuse that won’t work here. Here you better give me my three thousand words a day or I’ll step on your fingers with one of these…” He lifted one of his size thirteen jungle boots as the cadets …
Actually, none of this ever happened. This is Paul typing now. I made it all up. It’s been almost a month and time for me to post. So, you better log off now and stop screwing around. Give me my three thousand words or else…
Later.
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