I Write

I'm Dustin Pellegrini and I like to write. Take a look around, see what you like, and connect with me to work together on something.

[dustinpellegrini]

Always Be Creating

I'm starting my final semester of classes in a few days, which means in just a few months I'll be done with college and working towards other things. Starting again after a huge break (6 Weeks) is a big change, a lot of things added onto my plate after it was just cleared, but I'm excited. I think I, like a lot of people probably, work best when I'm busy.

I wrote the first draft of my manuscript in five weeks while I was full-time at school, working two jobs, cooking every day, and it was fine. It was great. And not in a stressed-out-but-it's-almost-over way, it was great because I was creating something every day, something I wanted to be working on, and so even when I had a shitty day but I still got my writing done, it didn't feel like a waste. That's how I know writing is what I want to do. Even creating a small piece of something late at night makes me view the entire day differently. It gives me satisfaction the way nothing else does. It's a daily accomplishment that I never want to give up the feeling of. 

So what I'm saying is I think everyone should always be creating something. There really is nothing like making something with your own hands. And it can be anything. I write and I cook and those two together do the trick for me. I think you just need to find that thing that really makes you feel like you've done something great, and keep working on it. Make different versions of it. Experiment. Just keep working. Don't ever give up on what makes you happier than anything else. 

[dustinpellegrini]

Darcy

A piece of Flash Fiction.

“Darcy”

I call her a home-wrecker because that’s what she is. 

Dad’s a butcher in a grocery store. Mom painted things for craft fairs. Darcy wrecks homes.

I remember first seeing her and thinking she was a giant snake. Her legs were wrapped in green scales, squeezed tight so they shined, with her feet hidden inside thick boots the same shade of awful. I thought she might bite me if I got too close, the way her fingers were coiled around dad’s leg, claiming him. Smiling, warning us. I didn’t understand why she was there. I didn’t understand, of all the animals you could dress like, who chooses a snake?

Mom’s lungs got sick when we were still kids, some paint she used that wasn’t good, and Darcy slithered right in. Dad told us out at dinner with her one night, under a cloud of her smoke. I get lonely, he said. Darcy helps me with that. But just until your mom gets out of the hospital, he said, winking at us, sliding an extra dinner roll across the table. Darcy blew smoke in our faces, coated our skin in it, stunk up the whole booth, so that even now when we eat there without her, when she’s back home in bed, locked up in her room, it’s like she’s still there. Haunting us. Darcy The Unfriendly Ghost.

Twenty years since mom died and we haven’t gotten rid of her. It used to be easy to lose her. She’d try to win us over by taking us on trips, picnics out in the cornfields to eat cold grilled cheese sandwiches or visits to the pawn shop she always said she’d get us something from but never did, and we would just run. 

She’d turn her back, the tight scales on her jacket hissing, and we’d bolt. At the picnics, we could just hide in the corn. In the pawn shop, there were clothes racks and dressers with loose doors. It’s easy to hide when you have help. And we’d never come out on our own. Ever. We’d just sit and wait, our eyes always on her, that angry panic clamping her teeth together, hiding her smile as she looked, not giving up, not wanting to go back home to dad and have to say those words. I lost them. But then she’d catch a foot and snatch it, drag us out, the other one following, back to the truck. After the first few times, she made us ride home in the back. After about ten times, she stopped trying to bond with us.

It’s harder now, twenty years later, to lose her. She’s a lot better at hiding than she was at finding. 

Dr. Johansson calls it, “fleeing.” She wakes up in her room, can’t recognize where she is, hears us, thinks she’s been kidnapped, and she tries to escape. He said it was genetic. Basically, she was destined to lose her mind early. Who saw that coming? The lady with the pet lizards in their tank in the living room, bigger than my bed, chewing on the butts she drilled into their wood chips. One night, I woke up to one of those monsters digging its claws into my stomach and I saw her heaped over me, holding it, the glow from her cigarette beaming in the darkness, lighting up her smile. And she just got up and left me there. Not a word. 

Dr. Johansson says when she runs, She really thinks she’s in danger. She doesn’t understand. I know that’s a lie. I know she wants to get even.

I know because when we find her, she’s always somewhere she’s been before. She tries to hide like we did, in one of the places she took us to bond. We found her in the clearing in the cornfield, plopped down where her blue plastic tablecloth used to be. We found her outside the pawn shop, ducked behind the dumpster, her nightgown stinking of grease and oil. She doesn’t fight us about going home. She doesn’t talk. She looks at me and she smiles. 

That’s why, when we’re looking, I pray to find her dead.

Ruined.

Done.

Until that happens, I’ll spend my search thinking of mom. In her flapping gown in the hospital. Behind her table at the craft fair. Smiling. Happy to see us.

[dustinpellegrini]

Another inspiration sketch from my manuscript, this time from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.

[dustinpellegrini]

Another inspiration sketch done while writing my manuscript. This time thanks goes to Maurice Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are.

[dustinpellegrini]

One of the inspiration sketches I did during the writing of my first draft of my manuscript. Drawn from Arcade Fire's cover for The Suburbs.

[dustinpellegrini]

Never Bet The Devil Book Review

A book review I did for my college. Previously published here. 

In his debut short story collection Never Bet The Devil & Other Warnings, Orrin Grey strives to take the familiar, tired elements of the horror genre and use them against the reader. His strength comes from the knowledge a reader will bring to a horror story and takes advantage of this situation by giving them just what they won’t expect. Reinvention, of course, is a mammoth task that requires both a purpose and a thorough understanding of the genre being handled. Luckily, Grey not only has the necessary awareness, he’s motivated by a great respect to restore and preserve the dignity that horror once had.

The first real attempt at reinvention comes halfway through the collection, when Grey decides to create his own version of a werewolf before the reader’s eyes. “The Barghest” presents a man’s torturous experience as said monster, but the story is told by his assistant who was witness to the transformation. The terror, then, is created through observing the mental deterioration of a friend, not through excessive carnage. By addressing this story directly to the man becoming a monster, the emotion becomes real and the worry more believable. “I’ve spent a lot of the time since then wondering how it happened. You were so careful. Was it your eagerness that was your undoing, or did something else render you suddenly clumsy?” The assistant’s confusion feels personal, like a parent hurting for their missing child, regretting the unknown. This dramatic relationship anchors the story and allows the reader to be taken in by this monster’s new origin.

Another story, “The Devil In The Box,” considers the transfer of an obsession from one person to another. It’s a hallmark of Grey’s ability to rework old clichés, but the story relies too much on tension and has no real payoff. An art collector’s boyfriend watches as he comes into possession of a small toy box and it consumes him. Interestingly, the partner then gets taken in by the object, saying, “...I just sat and watched the box emptily, content to let whatever was inside know that it wasn’t alone any longer.” Here the story sheds its powerful focus on obsession and attempts to personify the partner’s mental state. The writing becomes more rushed and summarized, making it a large part of this tale’s downfall. While it’s a fun ride, the reader deserves an ending, a hint, at least, of what is in the box. No such luck. The partner states at the end, “...I guess we’ll just have to see.” This hesitant conclusion makes the whole story stick out as one of the few cases where Grey perhaps allows his own ambition to get the better of him.

The longest and most satisfying story comes at the end. “The Mysterious Flame” is the tale of a Frankenstein monster made of stone named Barnabus who desperately seeks out companionship while hiding his true self from the world. Not much reinvention yet, but the story leaves the monster and devotes time to a tourist, Joy, who is unwittingly pulled into a revenge scheme with the antagonist, Narthos, a wizard hunting Barnabus. Though it may sound overly complicated, the narration stays in a very close third person point of view, which works to reel the reader in and forces them to feel the effect of the creature’s presence on every aspect of the story. The most extreme example is place: “From the side of the tower burst forth a protrusion, then another, taking the shape of two arms jutting from the mass. Then the base of the thing split apart and it took a lumbering step forward.” The tower in which this scene takes place gains life and emotions as it battles with Barnabus. Amazingly, both creatures are sympathetic because so much time and focus has been put into the characters and setting. Grey’s appreciation of the genre is on full display here, crafting believable characters along the lines of the classic movie monsters rather than the mindless killing machines that haunt the genre today. He’s giving the reader Frankenstein instead of Freddy. Unlike the majority of the pieces in this collection, “The Mysterious Flame” feels fully explored. It is broken up into sections, told out of order, and each portion allows a glimpse from a different angle, a look at something new. The time given to the setting, each character, and the history all work to give the reader the sense of a whole story, not just a single moment or event. It’s length, approaching seventy-five pages, seems to be the key. Grey pulls off the trick of leaving the reader wanting more with most of his stories, but others, such as “The Devil In The Box”, could have benefitted from further exploration. “The Mysterious Flame” is the exception which makes it all worth it.

The other saving grace of this collection is Grey’s decision to include author notes directly after each piece. Typically, these are reserved for the end, collected in their own section. Grey again upsets this trope and uses them as complementary pieces to his stories. Reading through them, his tremendous respect, even adoration, for the genre is revealed. His enthusiasm when describing his influences, Lovecraft and Matheson among them, is contagious. One particular comment which follows the story "The Seventh Picture" reads,

“I had a lot of fun coming up with fictional movies to fill out Zenda’s fake filmography, and I created way more stuff than actually made it into the story. Gothic! was a nod to William Castle’s first movie Macabre, while The Enterprise of Death was lifted from the title of my friend Jesse Bullington’s second novel. I think the others just sounded like good old movie names to me.”

These notes expose the true horror fan inside Grey. He aims to make horror relevant again by mercilessly applying it to his real-life characters rather than starting with the horror itself. Experiencing the stories, then, is akin to the transformation of the man who becomes a werewolf in “The Barghest.” The reader doesn’t know what has hit them because they’ve never witnessed this before, at least not for a long time: True terror.

These stories, much like real traumas, will stay with the reader long after living through them. This effect is tangible and backs up what Grey so clearly believes; that even through countless sequels, remakes, and parodies, there is still room for reinvention in the horror genre.

Buy Never Bet The Devil & Other Warnings

[dustinpellegrini]

Unknown Brother

Unknown Brother

A non-fiction piece I wrote for my brother, Tyler, before his first deployment. Previously published here. 

Mugging The night I got mugged was a Monday. I had only been up at school for about two weeks and I remember not realizing that until other people pointed it out and kept repeating it. Like it made a difference somehow. Like it mattered. I remember getting sympathy for it from people I didn’t even know. Feeling uncomfortable at their touch, the hugs they forced on me. Their knowing looks they tried to pass over to me. Like they understood. But they didn’t. I remember feeling the bite of the gun barrel as it made solid contact with the back of my head, smashing down clean like a hammer driving a nail in one swing. I remember not telling people about that part after hearing my brother’s reaction to it. Dad translated it to me first. How Tyler was a hair’s length away from driving up here with every hunting rifle he had to take revenge for me. I remember thinking this was just something dad had said, but then believing every word of it when it was said in my brother’s heavy, panicked voice. How I had to calm him down, convince him not to want to kill on my behalf. How his voice came out in screams between buckets of breaths. How it sounded on the phone like he was driving with the window open and I was afraid he was already making good on his word. And as I was talking him down, I remember thinking, ‘Let him do it.’ Part of me really just wished he would. I don’t know what part that was, but I let it sink back down into my guts pretty quickly. Now, I only wish I could have responded with his anger, his pure frustration at how unfair it was, instead of with my silence. ‘It’ll be okay,’ I told myself. ‘Turn it into writing. Make it something. Rise above it.’ But honestly, that time I wished I couldn’t rise. In fact, I couldn’t help but want to sink. It’s hard to hold it in and just try to float up, it would have been nice to just tread water at their level or just dive down further and hold my breath for a minute or two like Tyler could. I just wish I could give in and do something like him.

[dustinpellegrini]

Beware of Bear

Beware of the Bear

A short folk tale I wrote in college.

I. Winter Armadillo slunk into the mouth of Bear’s cave. It was the start of Winter, and by now, Bear had to be asleep. For Armadillo, this meant only one thing; Bear’s coat was ripe for the taking. You see, Armadillo was a fur trader, the sneakiest around, and his specialty was bear coats. This made Winter his absolute favorite season, when all of the bears were asleep and all of their coats were hung up in their caves to keep them from losing their shine on the cold, dry floor.  II. The Coat Bear’s great big mouth opened and closed like the wind, pulling the air into the cave and whooshing it back out again. Armadillo had to keep close to the cave wall for fear of being pulled in beside Bear’s enormous teeth. It was from here that he first saw it, hidden in the back corner of the cave, away from the sun and the wind. Even that far into the darkness it had a beautiful glisten to it. Armadillo was beyond pleased. His filed teeth clicked together as his eyes grew wide. He had hit the jackpot. III. Different This Time Snatch the coat. Stuff it in the sack. Get out. That’s how it usually went, but not this time. This time, as Armadillo removed the bit of thin plastic that veiled the coat from the outside world, he felt something inside of himself change. Something told him that this was not just another coat. And that something was right. For Bear was extremely conscious of the beauty of his coat. It certainly did not attain such exquisiteness by accident. If Armadillo did not know better, he would have said that Bear was only hibernating in order to regain the strength to upkeep his magnificent fur. No, the sack was no place for it. Armadillo only saw one option and, as he slid the coat gently onto himself, he knew he’d made the right choice.

[dustinpellegrini]

Little Lucy

Little Lucy 

A short story I'm working on at the moment.

IV. Memory Lane  The last time Little Lucy had laid eyes on her entire left foot was on the morning of May 7th, two years past. She had woken up without the aid of an alarm clock, as small children are lucky enough to do, and swung her feet off of the bed and down onto the toy infested floor. Downstairs in the kitchen, her mother informed her that they had lived through quite a storm the night before and today their family would be venturing out into the world to feed the ducks.  Little Lucy had never experienced a slice of life such as this and she was delighted at the thought of seeing the ducks, although she would be disappointed later on, among other reasons, upon learning that a duck is quite different, in both stature and beauty, from a swan. Still, Little Lucy did her best to prolong the trip as long as possible once it was well past it’s starting point. When she was out of breadcrumbs to toss, she traversed her way among the innumerable puddles which dotted the ground like spots on a dalmatian. She made a game of it, in fact, where she would do her best to avoid stepping into the puddles at any cost. It was an instinctual game with not much logic behind the rules. It just felt right, and it in fact was.  For soon Little Lucy tired of her little game and looked up to find that she had gotten quite a ways away from her parents. She decided to head back and took her first step in the right direction. Unfortunately for her, this first step plunged her left foot into a puddle where it went down and down and down. Little Lucy very nearly lost her balance and fell. She had to flail her arms about her, not unlike the ducks which now seemed so far away. She managed to tear her foot from the water and set it back down on the safety of dry land. But something felt wrong.  Her foot seemed to handle the weight of her body differently, clumsily even. She sat down immediately on a dry patch of ground and ripped at her pink rubber rain boot. She flung it off, down to the ground, then grappled with her sock. When it was finally off, Little Lucy began to scream. Every one of her five toes was gone.

[columcareer]

Get Something Done This Winter Break

Dustin here at the front desk, ready for the holidays and all of the downtime that comes with them. Something tells me I’m not alone on this. But before we all head home for a few weeks, whether that’s really home with our families or just back to our own personal blanket forts in the dorms or our apartments, let me ask; What are your plans for the break?

Aside from gorging on Netflix and Goldfish crackers instead of going to class (I’m pulling from personal experience here), does anyone have plans to continue, maybe even start, some artistic project?

Something else I’m probably not alone is that for a while now, I’ve had this big project in mind. I’m a writer and, for me, my big project was a novel. It’s something I’ve been messing around with for two years now, not making much progress, but doing a little bit here and there. Well now, I’m happy to say, I just finished the first draft of it after 5 weeks and my Winter Break is now going to be focused on revising and rewriting.

Finishing this huge project, or at least finishing a draft, did amazing things for my confidence and productivity and I thought I could share the process here in hopes of inspiring someone to tackle their own big project head on. So just like I did 5 weeks ago, let’s jump right in.

First things first, let’s identify the project that you want to complete. Maybe it’s a painting, a song or album, a script, a multimedia piece, it could be anything, really. The point is we all have something we’d like to do, something we’d like to create, that we’ve been putting off because of class or clubs or catching up on Orange is The New Black. No Judging here. Like I said, I’d been fooling with mine for two years and then, bam, 5 weeks and it was done. So find your project, that one thing that wasn’t just for a class. The thing you really care about. The thing you need to make.

Personally, I get a lot of help from knowing how hard it’s been for other artists to complete their own projects. The above image came from Austin Kleon’s book, Steal Like An Artist,  which is filled with great, simple advice. The best thing I took from it was the idea of holding myself accountable for this project.

After all, the point of all this was that I wanted to get this thing done, I needed to finish a draft, so that I would have an actual, tangible thing to work with. Our ideas always sound great in our heads which is why it can be hard to put them to paper because they never quite come out the way we want them to. But honestly, leaving them to roll around with the rest of our thoughts doesn’t do anybody any good. It just allows us to keep putting it off. So I want to give you the trick that helped me make myself accountable. It’s really simple, and while I found it in Kleon’s book, it originally came from none other than Jerry Seinfeld.

The idea is to make a calendar for yourself, I used the front page of my notebook, and to put a big X through every day that you work on your project. How much you work on it each day is up to you, but it should be manageable but still a good amount of work. Don’t take it too easy on yourself but you also don’t want to set yourself up for failure. In those 5 weeks, I wrote about 1700 words a day. That came out to around 7 pages, which I could do in about an hour by the end of the month, and after those 5 weeks, I had a 254 page draft of my novel. 

The calendar trick is great because it’s a simple way to motivate yourself. Once you’ve gone a week straight without missing your work for the day, you don’t want to screw it up. And remember, it doesn’t matter if the work you’re doing seems mediocre or bad or even awful, the point is you’re just getting the work out, doing a draft, so that, again, you have something to actually work with rather than just the perfect idea in your head.

For my project, I was also able to take advantage of National Novel Writing Month or Nanowrimo which was an extra dose of motivation for me. And there are opportunities like this everywhere, not just for writers. Check out your department’s office and try to talk with someone who is knowledgeable on the subject you’re working on. Come see us in the Portfolio Center and talk with your Creative Industry Advisor, get some advice, and then get ready to spend your break not just working, but creating something that’s important to you.

I know we all love our breaks, I totally do and I’m looking forward to spending time with my family, but hey, I have things I’m working on too and there’s no reason that a job or family time should get in the way of that. The fact is, 24 hours is a lot more time than it seems to be, and if you’re like me and you can put in just an hour a day working on something that you love, why wouldn’t you? By the end of my 5 weeks I was looking forward to it because it’s what I want to spend my life doing. So don’t try to find the time when you’re free. Make the time. Do it when the rest of your family has gone to sleep if you have to.

5 and a half weeks ago I wasn’t sure that I would be able to finish this whole draft, but I did and it didn’t kill me. That’s why I know you all can do it too. So get out there, get started, and keep at it. In the words of somebody-I-don’t-remember-but-the-words-stuck-with-me, “You’ll never be less busy than you are right now.” So get on it and in a moth’s time, you’ll thank yourself that you did.

Happy Holidays Columbia and Good Luck!