The Big Lie-dea: Dave Bessom

John Scalzi, notable science fiction writer and knower of things (both sf/f related and otherwise), has a recurring post on his always-interesting blog, Whatever, called The Big Idea, and it features published authors as guest bloggers, writing about their work, and the Big Idea behind a particular piece. Recently, John posted a request for Big Idea contributors (published only, not self-published, not aspiring, not wishful thinkers). A bit more recently, he posted a "How To" type article, all revolving around "how to" (get it?) write a Big Idea post. Now, those of you who know me know I am nothing if not unpublished, so obviously, having my own guest spot on Whatever is a fair spot of work away. With that in mind, I decided to write my Big Idea article, anyway, only I wrote it about a book I have not written. I did this to amuse myself, and I think it worked. At least, I stopped spending my time poking shapes and words into my arms with a straightened-out paper clip.

Here it is:


Dave Bessom:

I've always been an advocate of facial hair, in all its incarnations, and the first thing I do when I start writing is to stop shaving. It's not really something I ever consciously decide, it just happens. When I set out to write my fourth novel, I knew I wanted to do something different. I wanted to take my writing in a new direction, challenge myself. I just wasn't sure how. As I began and discarded draft after draft, some containing as many as 100,000 words, my discontent seemed inversely proportional to the growth of my facial hair: the thicker my beard grew, the more morose I became.
After a while, as my beard came in, a redder brown than the hair on my crown, flecked with premature grey, I began to think of it not just as an accoutrement, but as a physical embodiment of my failure to write. I named it, spoke to it (shouted invective, mostly), I referred to it around my friends, as if it were that elusive "other friend" they had not yet met, and, gradually, it began to take on a life of its own.
I imagined the challenges one might face, playing host to a sentient beard. Throughout history, beards have embodied the essence of many things: wisdom, virility, authority. Inversely, beards have, at the same time, also epitomized dirtiness, despair, filth, and corruption (think evil twin's goatee). Naturally, a sentient beard would be made up of these same characteristics. It was immediately clear which end of this spectrum my own beard inhabited. Once I had decided this, my beard's personality became much more profound, and thus was born Reginald, the sociopathic antagonist in my novel, The Madness of Christopher St John (tentatively scheduled for an October 2008 publishing date, under Imaginary Press).
Aside from being slightly concerned over attributing sociopathy to what is, essentially, myself, I was faced with the obstacle of writing from the point of view of a beard. Would it refer to itself by name? Would it have a gender identity (beards are, in my mind, intrinsically male, but who says this is an undeniable law of the universe?)? I could have avoided the trouble by telling the entire story from the point of view of Christopher St John, the hapless protagonist, and host to the evil Reginald; but that seemed too much of a copout. I would feel cheap if I took the easy way out, and it would (I felt sure) set my story onto a path to ruin and, perhaps, result in my own madness. To save my sanity, then, I set out to find a voice for my beard.
I kept a journal, "written by" my own beard, wherein he would recount his exploits around my neighborhood at night, while I slept; and also filling in some of his background as I went. As time passed, and I wrote more and more of these journal entries as Reginald, slowly his personality began to assert itself, and I heard his voice in my writing. Some of those journal entries made their way into the novel, in the flashback chapters, or are mentioned in passing during several of the exchanges between Christopher and Reginald, who, it turns out, is much older than his human host.
During the course of writing the novel, I began to understand I was writing, not so much about the physical conflicts of hero v. villain, but about the internal struggles we each face every day. Reginald merely provided an externalization of Christopher's inherent conflicts. This had not been my original intent, but once I saw the correlation, I knew that was the story I had been trying to write all along.
Everyone has their own personal version of Reginald living inside of them, just waiting for an opportunity - be it a drunken rage, a personal tragedy, or merely a few days without a shave - to emerge, and begin their slow conquest, first of their host, and then, of the world. We must overcome our inner beast, our Jekyll, our Reginald, in order to fully embrace our own lives.
The rest of the novel flowed easily from fingertip to keyboard, and when I finished typing "The End" at the bottom of page 971, I knew this was my most personal novel yet. I may not be the adept sociology student Christopher St John is, I may not have the trigger-happy recklessness of Sergeant Ackton, I most certainly do not exhibit the libertine elegance and savoir faire of Grace Noelle; but, at the same time, perhaps I do?

They covered the landscape with their cities.

It was a society of continual expansion. The streets were lined with huge, sweeping, spiralling buildings of all shapes and sizes. Some were clusters of small, independent structures; each room of the house standing alone and separate. Others were towering monoliths, clawing their way towards the heavens. Nothing was complete; everything was continually growing and expanding, climbing higher and higher, wider and broader. Scaffold was as common as ordinary wall, and the figures of men crawled across the exteriors of the buildings like ants on a discarded apple. The society was dying.

Their growth had progressed from a creative pursuit to a cancer. They could not stop building. Their sprawling estates twisted and grew, and grew further. They built, and they grew, and they spread. They covered the landscape with their cities.

Until, one day, a young man appeared among them. He spoke of the vastness of the skies and the depths of the oceans. He told them of the myriad infinities to be found within a single leaf on a tree in a forest. He spoke to them, and they listened, and they stopped building. They yearned for the quiet solitude of a meadow in fall, for the busy hum of a pond in spring, insects and animals and trees all abuzz with life. They looked at the clouds and they looked at the oceans and they looked at their cities.

The flames were visible for miles.

Just don't call me Davy

When I was little, my mom used to sing to me. She would sing the theme from Gilligan's Island. She would also sing the theme to the old Disney movies about Davey Crocket, except she would change the lyrics.
Instead of "Davey, Davey Crocket, king of the wild frontier," she would sing "Davy, Davy Bessom, king of Newport News." Newport News is, of course, the city where I was born and raised.
Instead of "Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee...," my mom would sing, "Born in a hospital in Newport News..." I'm sure she would also sing altered versions of the rest of the lyrics to the song, but I don't remember them.
I'm sure I enjoyed this singing, to some extent; but this act also gave rise to one of my first complete sentences,

"Don't sing, Mommy."

As promised...

Here is the text of the two Christmas cards I sent this year. I was surprised by the reactions; particularly, that people didn't find the "creepy" card nearly as creepy as I had. But then, I guess that would qualify as my first, first-hand, experience with that quintessential authorial phenomena wherein the reader creates their own meaning for a work, which does not necessarily correspond with that of the actual author. Or maybe it's really not as creepy as I'd originally thought it (although, I must admit, I still think it's pretty creepy). But, anyway, without further ado, here they are:

A Christmas Drabble

Christmas is a special place.
Every day is Christmas, every night
Christmas Eve. There is always fresh
snow on the ground, a white Christmas
every time. Santa Claus visits every
child, every night. Everyone is well-
-behaved, and there are no bad children.
Days are spent stringing tinsel on
Christmas trees; evenings, sipping hot
chocolate in front of the roaring fires
warming every fireplace. Every morning,
the streets and houses echo with the
laughter of children discovering their
Christmas presents. And if there is
something unnatural about their laughter,
something forced, don't fret. It's Christmas,
and there are no bad children.


What's Christmas Without Monkeys?
A Drabble

If there were no monkeys at Christmas -
none at all - it would be too quiet, and
there would be piles of bananas
everywhere. When people looked up into
the trees, they would only see branches,
and the occasional bird. Chandeliers
would hang motionless, and cats would
have no one to play with but other
cats. When you misplaced something -
a hat, a pen, a sandwich - it would
simply be lost, and not in the hands
of a mischievous monkey following you,
holding the object up whenever your
back was turned. In other words,
Christmas without monkeys would be
extraordinarily dull.


But, here's the strange thing: by my best hand-count, done thrice over, both drabbles contain the appropriate 100 words, exactly. But, according to Microsoft Word, the monkey drabble contains 104 words. I don't know why the program's count is higher than my own - I'm pretty sure mine is accurate (it's only 100 words, after all), but it doesn't even have any combined words, like "well-behaved" in the first one. Oh well, I'm sticking with my own count.

The game is...er...still...afoot...

Hello, and welcome back!

I sent out a mass text message (41 recipients, I believe) on Thursday, wishing everyone a happy Turkey Day, Tofurkey Day, or just plain Thurs Day. I received about ten replies, reciprocating my wishes. I also received two messages, both of which prompted nearly identical conversations:

Me: Happy Thanksgiving!
Them: Who is this?
Me: It's Dave.
Them: Oh. Gobble Gobble.

The "Gobble Gobble" part is what struck me. Both guys, who don't know each other, and who, apparently, barely know me, replied, not with "Happy T-day to you too," or "Oh, I don't have your number anymore. Sorry about that. Cheers," or even "Don't call me anymore." They both said "Gobble Gobble."

I suppose, on a day like Thanksgiving, a text message containing the phrase "Gobble gobble" is not that unusual. I just find it amusing that two people, independently of each other, both failed to recognize my phone number, and then, once thus enlightened, made identical comments.

Okay, so maybe I'm being overly sensitive to coincidence. I'll leave it at that.