But Never Mind a Fish Mind

“But never mind a fish mind.” – Les Plesko There has never been another person with whom I’ve had a more profound connection. His very presence on this earth was a blessing and balm to all those involved with him. His unique, sagacious energy that longed-for comfort and strength. He takes with him a substantial part of my heart. I’m plagued and harrowed by a tremendous sense of loss and at the same time I feel calm knowing how I’ll see him every day of my life in the written word. Knowing how inspired I’ve become to carry on his linguistic legacy throughout my years. Les has risen high above corporal constraint and will now permeate my world with his very rare brand of immortality. May you have eternal peace, dear friend. Thank you. Jesse S. Darnay

The Void

I’ve been trying to puzzle it out, to think about why I have such a giant gaping sadness about Les. He’s dead and gone. Okay. No not okay of course, never okay. But really, why does the void feel so incredibly huge and inescapable? He wasn’t my best friend or my confidant. He wasn’t the person I would call in the middle night, (which for some reason is supposed to be the epitome of true friendship.) I wouldn’t have called him if I was in jail or stuck in my car in a flood, although he’d laugh later at the story. He wasn’t a family member. Or the love of my life, not someone I yearned for. No, he played a more important role than any of those, significant though they may be. It was Les who spoke to my desire, his desire, our common in common desire to write, to get it down on the page as right and true as possible because it was and is simply the finest kind of work imaginable. –Janet Clare

Action

It started with a simple invitation from Les that led to the rebirth of my voice as a fiction writer. He worked one-on-one with me, respecting my elementary teacher working life/schedule/etc. My last email from him came Sunday, September 15,2013, but I’m sharing this comment from last January because it’s all about ACTION and I need to take action again. Action without Les has felt scary, but he would tell me to “bring it on!” “The beginning is the best part, and when he first meets Clara. When the action starts to unfold, the writing gets real rough. Like I said, it’s hard to do action. You want enough details so we can see what’s happening, but not so much that the details or their arrangement cause confusion. You want to block the scenes [as if on a stage] so we know the general layout. It’s like checking for continuity in a movie. If you have Clara by the fire, then she can’t also be at the table unless the table is close enough to the fire. If the scene is from Henry’s POV, and he hasn’t been told Tom’s name, then you can’t use Tom’s name. Henry is still working really well as a character! We can discuss if you like, phone or in person or back and forth e-mail.” Now there isn’t a way to discuss on phone or in person. The pain of this last line reverberates. The last time I saw Les we took a short walk together. How I wish I could go back to that walk and make it go on and on. I’ve still got so much to learn. It’s time to focus on the fact that I’m lucky (as many of us are) to have the bundle of memories, treasured check marks, penciled comments, and archived Les emails. Time to shift focus on to what I’ve got instead of what’s been lost. A mentor is someone who recognizes you, sees your potential with absolute clarity, and somehow prompts you to shed fear and become even more you than ever before. That was Les for me and for so many others. Thank you to those who started this Pleskoism site- it’s a “swell” idea. LES was generosity personified. He was still giving of himself up until the day before he left us. It feels good to think of being generous with one another, sharing what Les we have! After our memorial for Les the wind picked up with a strange ferocity. I stood at the beach, sand hitting the back of my bare legs and thought of how Les said there are two types of stories, it’s either: “someone goes on a trip or somebody comes to town.” Now Les is on the trip and we’re still in town. –virgpaz

Running a Writing Group

When I started the Pasadena Group to find other writers, closer, that could and would (and are!) become Pleskoites in their own way…On 11/5/07, Aracely Sustaita wrote: Hey Les, I put out the writing word and it looks like about 8 people/writers will be attending the first “Pasadena Writers Meeting.” Any tips? Hope you’re doing super duper! Aracely *but I actually go by ARA* On 11/5/07, Les Plesko wrote: My two suggestions about a writing group as far as how to run it is: 1. Don’t read TOO MUCH OUT LOUD each time. What worked for me before in a small group is to circulate the manuscripts around by e-mail the week before the class, and then discuss them in class. But to make it work, you can’t send TOO MANY pages or have too many people, and people really do have to read each others’ stuff. 2. Some nominal fee for each class is good. People tend to blow off free stuff much more readily. We’ll talk. –Aracely Sustaita

I saw him on Main Street in Venice before I knew who he was…

From Jamie Schaffner–

I saw him on Main Street in Venice before I knew who he was. Later, when I’d become his writing student at UCLA, I remembered I’d already seen this man: wild gray hair protruding everywhere from his head but for his bald crown. His haggard bronze face was speckled with a day-old beard and a gray mustache. He’d worn a ratty dark blazer. It flopped up as he pedaled his rusty bicycle on the sidewalk. I’d thought he was homeless. At my first workshop, Les Plesko spoke for over an hour to us twelve students crowded along both sides of a narrow table, then announced a short break by flinging fun-size chocolates at us, and left. He returned to the room smelling of cigarette smoke, and continued to speak for another hour. I never heard him lecture again, not like that. I took plenty of notes that evening and have read them often— it’s everything he ever taught me. So why did I finish the course and take many more classes with him? According to my Les lecture notes: you can’t write and pay attention to the rules of writing at the same time. You need a mentor. A guide that nudges you along as you write through the unknown, fishing for characters so they, not you, can tell the story you were always meant to tell, though it won’t come out like you’d pictured. On week two, we students again sat elbow-to-elbow along that narrow table, and each of us read a single page aloud from our work. My turn came and my voice shook. When I finished reading Les raised his pencil and said, “I’m getting that your character is thirsty.” The following week in workshop after I’d read, I pressed my palms into the table and waited for Les’s comments. “There was a bottle of water mentioned on your page,” he said. “Maybe you could have your character drink it.” The next week Les said, “I find it interesting that your character talked about juice.” On the forth week, I’d barely finished reading before Les said, “This is awesome!” He looked at me with his good eye, the other roving, as usual. “Thanks,” I said. “I figured out this thing about my character. She was thirsty.” My classmates laughed. “Good move,” Les said over the din. “Keep doing that.” And we did, he and I week-by-week for 120 weeks. Les taught the uncomfortable process of writing with gentleness and infinite patience, all in service of cultivating your own unique voice. He never once talked about what ought to be happening in your novel on page such and so, and he never uttered the terms rising action, character arc or plot points. That nonsense, he thought, could only produce characters with no souls. He taught us how to tell our stories through whatever was written on each student’s page. Twelve times a week, on the fly, he dug up and served the object lessons. It’s been two years since I’ve been in workshop with Les, and thankfully I still hear his voice in the afternoon when I read what I’ve written earlier in the day. That’s not nothing, but Les was also a brilliant editor who made my sentences beautiful. It was pure joy to use his edits— except the ones like “huh?” and “open this up,” those were hard, but an even bigger joy once I’d wrestle them down. I’ll miss the stench of his cigarette smoke emanating from my page as I raised it closer to decipher his penciled, almost legible, comments. The more pages you eked out, struggling to find the complex truths of your characters, the more Les gave you back. He never shirked his responsibilities to students, peers or employers, even at the end. He was scheduled to teach Novel IV at UCLA in early October and took his life in mid-September. Clearly, he gave his two weeks’ notice. Fuckin’, Les. I was lucky. For years, I sat at his narrow table and learned over and over again—my character was thirsty.

Just Write

Les: “You’re writing through the filter of your brain.” Me: “….isn’t that where the writing comes from?” Les: “No. Stop thinking about what people think about what you write. Just write.” –Aubrey Mescher

One agent down…

From Janet Clare–

Mar.13,2013
Me: One agent down. “I liked the concept and I enjoyed your writing, but I can’t offer representation at this time.”

Les: Why not? Too friggin busy?

Pure Soul

Driving through Mar Vista one night after class, Les sat quietly starring out the window. Sometimes he told me stories about his old car (when he drove in the 70′s) and how a wedged pack of cigarettes kept the battery in place. Sometimes, just about the book he was reading that day. But this night it was particularly quiet. We rolled through a bourgie Mar Vista neighborhood. It was dark and some of the houses had lights on where we saw people drink coffee or watch TV. They had perfectly manicured lawns. Basketball hoops in large driveways, cactus gardens…Les all of a sudden erupted in a smile and went, “It’s like, people live like that? With garages?” And we laughed and laughed.I knew that my every interaction with Les wasn’t normal because Les was special, a prophet always on the outside of what everyone else was thinking or consumed with. It even worried the people close to me how badly I wanted to be like Les with his fuck-the-dentist swagger, but I knew I’d never be as pure, as close to the great consciousness of life where the only truth was transcendence through pen and pad. Whenever I stopped outside his brick building, he’d sling his backpack and somehow vanish like a ghost into the night, I swear, it was weird. I never saw him open a door to his building. Come to think of it, I don’t even know where the entrance to that building is. It was just always dark and Les would basically float through the walls. He was pure soul. –Johnny Alfi

I was so happy to get your critique…

From Ann de Bruin

On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 12:52 AM, Ann de Bruin wrote:  Hi Les. I was so happy to get your critique. I forgot how much I enjoyed this process. You identified areas I suspected dragged on too long, which tells me I’ve learned a thing or two about writing over the years and I need to trust my instincts. I’d almost convinced myself that I didn’t want to write anymore, so thanks. I’ll send more pages in another week or so (experimenting with third person POV and not sure it’s my thing).

P.S. My computer was hacked and contact list compromised, so if you get some strange emails from me re YouTube, Alpha Photos, or Viagra, please delete.

From: Les Plesko
Sent: Sun 6/13/10 8:07 AM
To: Ann de Bruin

Hi, yay that you’re writing. I always never want to write anymore, but then what else is there? Anyway, yes, I did get a weird e-mail from you that linked to some Viagra thing, haha, and thanks for the warning.

Delay the Tension

“Write a sex scene without naming body parts. Look for what the two people are trying to fix in each other. Delay the tension. Wanting to do it is sexier than the act.” –Patricia Albela