John Burridge

Friday, April 11

Mark and I took a Lyft to the Eugene Amtrak station, where we boarded the 4 PM train to Portland. Mark has warmed up to the train, I think; for weekend getaways it makes sense: the drive to and from Portland is usually no fun, and parking the car downtown for a few days is expensive. I always think the train ride through the Willamette Valley is interesting because one gets to see the hidden sides of various towns and cities, and the views of farmland and the country are more bucolic than they are from Interstate Five.

The train filled up as we travelled north; Mark was glad that he’d purchased our tickets a few days prior. Just after Salem, we decided to get a light dinner snack. The attendant in the dining car was the most disgruntled Amtrak employee I’ve ever encountered. Maybe disgruntled is the wrong word, because he had friendly advice about the food selection, even if it was “I don’t eat any of this stuff; they don’t pay me enough to.” The conductors were hanging out in the dining car, trading horror stories about getting shunted to a side line for hours to wait for freight trains. One conductor in particular kept sharing mile stones and times and practically did a victory dance when we passed a particular landmark before a certain time. We made good time, with only one moment of being shunted to a sideline to allow a freight train to disembark from the Portland station. We detrained around 7:30.

We exited the train station and set out for the Benson Hotel. This required skirting the west edge of the Chinatown District, crossing Burnside, and skirting the east edge of the downtown bus mall. Even when I was attending Reed, this part of Portland has never been the happiest part of town, and we had to navigate around dog (at least I hope it was dog) poop, “gentlemen’s clubs,” one-person tents, and folks in varying states of mental crisis. No one was threatening, but it was a sad commentary on how social support networks have some pretty large holes in them.

We arrived at the Benson’s chandeliered and Russian pine colonnaded lobby and strode past the bar and upholstered couches to the main desk. We had to reassure the receptionist that we were fine after our ten minute walk from the train station.

We managed to summon an elevator with our room cards. The elevators were mirrored on all sides, which sometimes made locating the floor buttons tricky. A display board on the right side showed playbills and posters of famous visitors to the hotel. Mariah Carey, in a low-cut, spangly dress, appeared to lean out over her frame, prompting Mark to make a comment about “boobies.”

Our room was compact and perfect as a base for a weekend of urban hikes and adventures. The doors in our part of the floor looked like they were the originals, dark wood with lighter inlays of a shield displaying an entwined OH monogram (possibly for “Hotel Oregon”). Farther down, the south side of the hall, the doors and hardware changed to something post 1940; we surmised that the Benson had expanded at some time and combined with another building.

Since we were starving, we set off (saying “Hi,” to Mariah again, followed by a short rendition of “Fame! / I’m going to live forever…” ) for dinner. Mark said I was in charge of getting us to food, and I wanted to show him Huber’s, a bistro I had eaten at last May while attending DrupalCon. I’d enjoyed the wood paneling, the brass details, and the Art Deco / Arts-and-Crafts architecture. We walked east on Harvey Milk Boulevard; after a slight moment of confusion, we arrived at Hueber’s—which was closed for a week of spring cleaning!

After casting about downtown Portland we ran into an Iraqi restaurant called “Dara Salon.” A huge mural of the Ishtar Gate dominated the western wall of the restaurant, and Iraqi artifacts decorated the entire space. The charming decor was somewhere between Eugene Bellydance and (more) Metropolitan Museum of Art Middle Eastern Gift Shop. The food was great, and I ate a lot of felafel.

I'm on the train after attending a Clarion one-day workshop on character.

What I learned.

1. I write slowly. I think I am editing in my head too much. The remedy for this is to not use the backspace key and instead hit return and recast the sentence the way I want it. Then go back and revise. I was blown away with how much good content people created in short amount of time.

2. It's common for science-fiction and fantasy writers to be good at world-building and writing plots, but not so good at writing characters. Insert "'Tolkien's Women' Essay Joke" here.

3. My particular approach to writing characters is to draw a picture of them, what they're wearing, and any objects or tools they may be using in the story. And then sort of fine-tune the character depiction with an increasing number of approximations. I need to supplement this method with a concisely written set of character traits, character goals, and author goals for the character so I'm not staring at a picture--instead of writing--trying to divine the character as if it were a tarot card. It will help when I'm returning to a manuscript later.

4. Good characterization is layered. Add the layers during revision. The most common writer errors are defaulting to the writer's vocabulary and observations, and having a character observe things because the plot demands it. During revision look at how word choice, character observation, a character's interpretation of observations, and character's vocabulary reveal character on a word by word basis.

So.

Practice, practice, practice. Which means discipline going to bed early so I can have discipline getting up extra early to have solid, consistent blocks of writing time.

It's 5:30 AM and I'm sitting on the Amtrak Cascades writing. Well, OK. Blogging. I'm on my way to a Clarion Workshop in Seattle. It's a short one-day session on Sunday that I'm hoping will help me think about characters more effectively.

The trip to Seattle should be fun, although the conductor has warned us that there's some sort of baseball game and that the (relatively) empty car will fill to capacity once we get to Tacoma. So I should probably write now while I have the luxury of a table to myself. (And while the wi-fi is still good.)

Linda, an old Reed Psychology friend, is planning to meet me at the station, and we'll catch up. I will try to connect with other Seattle friends at Olympic Pizza this evening.

I got a chance to return to the Salem, Oregon, Train Station. I had seen it in the dark from a bus earlier, and the light fixtures drew me back.

In the dark the building seemed more mysterious and baroque. In the gray of an overcast Oregon day, the building seemed almost plain. Or was that plane?

What struck me most about the building was how squares and rectangles made use of threes and thirds. Eyeballing some of the pictures, the design uses golden rectangles, too.

My main photographic goal was to obtain some studies of the lamps. The entrance is flanked by two lights with modern looking glass globes on them. It would be interesting to me to know if these were originally stain glass globes. I think the ones here are a clever, low-cost reference to the lamps inside.

I'd wondered the first time I saw them if the huge fixtures inside were made of curved glass or if the were little flat rectangles soldered together in an approximate globe. They're flat.

This is a Beaux-Arts style building, about nine decades old. Mark told me it was Palladian style. I'm not sure what the difference is other than Palladian seems to be a half-century older.

I think part of what I like about this building is that it has a strong geometry. Maybe I'll allow myself the luxury of making a model of it, as it appears to be made completely out of cubes, cylinders, and spheres. And, uh, no... I haven't finished (yet) that geometric tile pattern I've been working on.

The Great Train Ride is on. I decided that, what the heck, the opportunity to write on a train and then go visit an art library with a funny sounding name and what looks like throne-shaped reading chairs only comes so often (and you know I want to write on a throne). So I've got my tickets.

There's just one problem; I don't know what exactly to wear.

You see, I've got this whole romantic fantasy about writing on the train - sort of The Orient Express meets Don Quixote meets the Moulin Rouge meets Girl Genius. Only it will be just me, gliding over the landscape and typing. I don't think there will be champagne, but there will be tea (or at least Pepsi).

Also, between the train ride, I have to traipse around city streets between the station and the Crumpacker Family Library. It will most likely be cold. And raining. So the current apparel options are:

• The Grey/Green Cloak: PROS: It has a hood; it is wool. I'll have some leg coverage. CONS: Legolas? On a Train?
  
• The Romulan Jacket: PROS: It has nice pockets. I like it. It says, "Business, but from the Future!" CONS: It's not very rain-proof; plus, Mark says it makes me look like a Lesbian Art Teacher from the late 1980's (Mark says this about a surprising number of my ensembles).
  
• The Russian Army Great Coat: PROS: Dahlink! It's just what a spy would wear to make other spies think he wasn't a spy! Plus, it's wool. All the way to my knees. Accessorizes well with trains.  Also bonus! If I add my 21 foot long, multi-colored scarf I'll look like Dr. Who.  CONS: Missing buttons. No head cover. It weighs a lot, so if the weather is nice, I'll be encumbered. And sweaty.
  
• The Leather Jacket: PROS: Waterproof. Uh, classic? I wont look like I normally do? Maybe if I added an aviator's scarf? CONS: Well, let's just say it looked a little more dashing on me when I was a little younger (and thinner).
  
• Safari John with Vest and Tilly Hat: PROS: The hat functions like a hood without the Tolkien feel, not to mention the vest has a lot of pockets. CONS: "George, you naughty monkey; come down from there."  Plus, I will have to carry an umbrella. 

Right now I'm leaning toward the Great Coat because it maximizes weatherproofing with theatrical flair. We'll see; I will have to find some sort of button solution, which will require pushing needle and thread through some pretty heavy wool to re-attach three buttons.

And I really want some kind of hat....

I was thinking that it might be fun to write in Portland. 

I could take the train, where-in I could look up from my manuscripts every now and then to receive inspiration from the landscape.  I would disembark the train at the quaint Portland train station, which is brick and has fossils in the marble lining the halls.  And then I would wend my way up to Powell's Bookstore and the Portland Art Museum (since this is my fantasy visit, my laptop weighs virtual pounds).  Perhaps a short visit to Moonstruck Chocolate between writing, art and books.  Then a snack, and it's back on the train.

Then I looked up the price of a train ticket.  It's cheaper to drive, by about $20.  So the question becomes, is it worth about four hours of not driving (and finding parking)?  And then I suppose if I'm really looking at the cost-effectiveness of this, I'd save money time and effort writing if I stayed home.

And actually, if I'm honest, taking the train to Portland is really an art excursion disguised as writing-on-the-hoof.  (Sigh, cue Dot singing, "Nah, I wouldn't like it much / Married men and stupid boys ...")  I guess I'll try the University of Oregon's art museum.