Palouse Writing Project - 10. October 2007 – Palouse at 100 (pages)

I just wrote my 100^th page of Palouse. I’ve been concentrating mainly on the end of the story—after Micah and David have met again after many years on separate tracks and have started a relationship. The relationship is immediately tested at Micah’s very religious college and on a visit to his home.

I now need some advice and suggestions.

Micah’s personality is less developed at present than are those of the other main characters: his mother and David, his ultimate life mate. What I want in Micah is a person who has a passion and maturity for some things, but is totally ignorant and naïve about others. In his downfall period he will lose his passion for most things.

The first area for advice and suggestions is in Micah’s overall development. One model for Micah’s development comes from a different place—from a basketball court. Bill Bradley, the great Knick forward and later U.S. Senator from New Jersey, wrote a fine book called Life on the Run, about his basketball experiences. In the book, he has a description of the development of star basketball players:

There is no question about it. Being a member of a successful New York basketball team is a mixed blessing. The notoriety forces one to look differently from other people. It provides money and access. At the same time, it sets one apart from the rest of society an denies one the privilege of being an equal member of a crowd. There is little chance, for example for a public figure to fail without people knowing it, and no one grows without failing. Many avoid the embarrassment of public failure by never placing themselves in positions where they might fail. Therefore, they never grow. My constant problem is to find places where I am allowed to fail in private. Everyone does not thirst for fame. For me, fame holds as much danger as it does benefit.

If you are famous you get special service at banks, passport offices, and airline ticket counters, and come to expect that service while not respecting yourself for wanting it .Fame is being paid a lot of money for what people think about you as well as for what you do…having strange women approach you and say they want to meet you, know you in every way, right now…misassessing the amount of interest other people have in you…trying to find yourself while under the scrutiny of thousands of eyes..reacting instead of acting, being passive instead of active…having people tell you what they want you to do with your life…learning to understand what others want from you…sensing people in a restaurant whispering and pointing toward your party..forgetting how hot subways are in August…having someone write that if you visit this kid who is dying in a hospital he will get better…having strangers constantly test you and probe for the dimension of your “real” personality…coming into contact with ten times more people in a year than most people do in a lifetime…remaining unable to escape those few minutes or several years when what you did made you famous…

…

… There are many encouragements for a boy to be an athlete while in high school. The good athlete is popular among his classmates, but the star athlete develops a reputation outside high school. Townspeople, adults, single him out for attention and interest. Teachers might favor him even if unconsciously. Growing up, when most young people struggle to define their tastes and develop their own sense of right and wrong, the star athlete lies protected in his momentary nest of fame. The community tells him that he is a basketball star. For the townspeople his future is as clearly outlined as his record-book past. They expect him to become an even greater athlete and to do those things which will bring about the fulfillment of what is wholly their fantasy. The adolescent who receives such attention rarely develops personal doubts. There is a smug cockiness about achievements, or a sincere determination to continue along a course that has brought success and praise. The athlete continues to devote his energies to sport. Compared with the natural fears and insecurities of his classmates, he has it easy. His self-assurance is constantly reinforced by public approval.

The athletes who succeed in making college teams have the high school experience duplicated on a grander scale. The few who excel on university teams find that admiration comes then, not from high school friends and adult family friends, but from the national press and from adults they have never met. They begin to see that they can make a good living simply by playing the sport. Self-definition again comes from external sources, not from within. While their physical skill lasts, professional athletes are celebrities—fondled and excused, praised and believed. Only toward the end of their careers do the stars realize that their sense of identity is insufficient.

--Life on the Run, by Bill Bradley, page 120-123

I realize that star athletes/actors and star musicians travel in very different environments, but some of the same pressures, the isolation from society, the failure of emotional growth, and dependence on others would be common to Micah as well as a great athlete, though on a different scale. Does anyone know of novels or non-fiction that describe such a person? Stories of actors or athletes. I am not looking at the coming-out problems of a gay athlete. I’m looking for people who rebel against the gifts that they were born with, become angry and give up on themselves and their careers. I am also not looking for problems caused by alcohol or drug addiction; becoming driven by sex is okay. I can write that in.

The second area for advice and suggestions relates to the two- to three-week wilderness trek and small isolated boarding school that I plan to have his parents send him to for a year. This parallels the real story of the cello player as written in the Oregonian articles summarized elsewhere. He and my character Micah were sent on a wilderness trek and a school that deals with anger management. These are not gay-recovery camps, though I’m thinking of having a boy in the school who has anger problems, partly because he is a closeted gay boy. What I’m looking for are descriptions of what actually happens on the wilderness trek and what actually happens at an isolated boarding school. How do the counselors operate? In the wilderness trek, are there team-building exercise or is the trek simply an opportunity for counselors to spend a significant amount of time with one of the attending teenagers? In the boarding school, are there methods of treating anger problems without becoming a military academy? Does anyone know of journals of teenagers that have been through such things?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

A final note: As I alluded to in an earlier posting, I feel comfortable about how the personalities of Betty, Micah’s mother, and David, Micah’s lover, are developing. Betty transfers her own career ambitions (which she gave up for family and church) and her deep religiosity to her son, but it doesn’t work, and it has a significant impact on her. David, who is gay and out, loves Micah, but he wants to make sure that Micah is comfortable with being gay: he sees Micah rushing too much into a relationship.