Chicanonautica: Gonzo Writing On-The-Run Diary

 by Ernest Hogan

One thing I do when I teach my class for Palabras del Pueblo is write a story. The first day I gather some material, usually from the conversation, get an idea, and by the final day I have a story. What better way to share my writing process than to be doing it?

This time getting an idea was easy. In their opening presentation E.L. and Ronnie Dukes had us all do a writing exercise about getting a text from yourself from the year 2070. I tend to have doubts about such things, and scribbled some unusable gibberish, but the prompt got my diabolical imagination going. 

I’m old and will be 115 in 2070. Maybe it would be better if it was about a younger guy. Ronnie had us do a drawing exercise, so I drew what I would look like. A lot of my characters start out as me, then get off on their own.

To further complicate things, in the week between the Palabras weekends Emily and I had planned to do a three-day getaway from the killer heat of the Metro Phoenix Area. I was going to have to write the story on the run. Gonzo!

I decided to keep a diary of the story. And share it with my students. 

Of course, I’ve done some revising, correcting, and rewriting first:

That night, after midnight, a brainstorm woke me up. One of my brainstorms is literally like a lightning storm in my head. I took notes: mental health . . . Robots . . . Franchises . .  . Dying . .   Drones like giant mosquitoes . .  . Taser-headed robot dogs . .  . Like rough, unpolished poetry. Fragments hung on an awkward, jagged framework.

Then I had a dream of running up and down rocky hills on the way to a protest. 

It came in no kind of order. Gonzo information gathering. Cook the rasquache scramble into mutant huevos rancheros later. Like cubism. Sometimes I compose stories like Hieronymus Bosch, Diego Rivera, or S. Clay Wilson.

I didn’t get enough sleep, so I had to gonzo it with caffeine and antihistamines. My days of abusing caffeine to almost hallucinogenic levels are long behind me, but I’ve found that when I do need a boost, a little dab will do me. The muses (Xochiquetzal included) don’t give a damn about your schedules and obligations.

Also, Google was getting glitchy. I copied the stuff from the Drive file to my sketchbook in case I couldn’t access it. Keep your analog. You might need it!

After a first thing in the morning line, I made some decisions: The world is ours, right now–only worse. I still had no face on the main character, but he was younger than me, and a chronically unemployed recent college grad.

Then I decided not to think about it for the rest of the day, concentrate on the class, let the riders in the backseat of my brain work on it.

Later I re-read what I had from the beginning. I’ve found that's a good way to get back into it, and a chance to make changes and corrections.

I named the character Tavo and incorporated stuff from Ernesto Mireles’ talk–about the grim future of Chicano studies. I also decided to change the sex of a minor character because there were no women so far.

Next morning I did the sex change, thought about rearranging things. Let it stew.

I also had to go to my day job. It’s always interesting to go to work with an embryonic story growing in your brain. Kinda like drugs.

The next day Emily and I went on our road trip. As usual, I take a sketchbook/notebook. I do what I call cherchez le weird. I get a lot of my crazy ideas that way.

At one point, we got a flat tire. I took the following notes while waiting for AAA to rescue us:

[KEEP CHANGING MY MIND ABOUT THINGS I WANT TO REARRANGE & LEAVE OUT OF THE STORY. THERE IS STILL TIME TO WAFFLE . . .]

[SHOULD THERE BE MORE PEOPLE ON THE TRAIN?}

[THE PROTESTORS / RIOTERS - WHO ARE THEY?]

[WHEN THE TRAIN STOPS, IT IS NEXT TO AN ABANDONED SHOPPING MALL. TAVO RUNS INTO A NEARBY NEIGHBORHOOD, WORRYING ABOUT WHAT WILL HAPPEN, WILL THEY COME AFTER HIM?]

[TAVO THROWS A ROCK AT A ROBODOG. PROTESTERS CHEER]

[HE FLIPS OFF A DRONE]

[IN THE END, HIS PHONE RINGS AGAIN, WE GET THE “HERE WE GO AGAIN.” SUGGEST OLD TAVO IS IN A SIMILAR SITUATION.]

And the folks at Enterprise switched us to another car, getting us back to running around, having fun in record time.

The next day, while reposting the new Chicanonautica about my preparations for the class, I realized that its main purpose is triggering creativity rather than instruction. I am not an academic. I’ve never been comfortable in a classroom. I set out to deliberately be non-academic. If I can get to students to experience creativity, I consider it a success.

Later, I had a beer with dinner (a Corona lager) and a couple of chocolates from a Whisky Row shop that contained alcohol. I usually do my writing after dinner while traveling, so I decided to experiment with gonzo writing under the influence . . . I wrote my usual rough draft with one finger on my phone. The booze didn’t slow me down, but then I’m a professional who’s been publishing since 1982.

I even got to the end of the story.

Of course, I was not finished. Lots of people go on social media at this point and cheer about being “done.” No, this is not the end. What you have now is a creative mess. This is where the real work begins, the pick-and-shovel stuff. The gonzo frolicking is over. Switch over the other side of the brain, engage critical thinking, get into editor mode—Dr. Jekyll instead of Mr. Hyde.

It’s the part of writing you don’t hear much about, except for impassioned bitching.

The next morning there was no need for a warmup sentence/paragraph.

I felt that the ending needed something. Things kept occurring to me. After thoughts and second guessing. Stuff bubbling in the depths of my brain. I let it. Then worked on making it ready for an editor.

The rest of the day I concentrated on having fun.

Ernest Hogan will be teaching again at the Fall Palabras del Pueblo workshop. Meanwhile, he will be committing random acts of Xicanxfuturism, and wonder what the world will be like in a few months.